Ford School-Brookings Institution: Election 2024 and U.S. climate policy

0:00:00.7 Celeste Watkins-Hayes: Good afternoon and welcome to the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. I am Celeste Watkins-Hayes, the Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of the Ford School. We are so honoured to be hosting this event with the Brookings Institution, looking at how the 2024 election could affect the future of climate policy. This event is part of the Issues at Stake 2024 series that Brookings is holding across the country with academic institutions examining a range of policy issues that the nation is confronting this election year. I am so happy to see my dear friend who I admire so, so much. Cecilia Rouse, Ceci Rouse, president of the Brookings Institution here with us today. More on her later in the program. It's also relevant today to flag that this is a part of our university-wide year of democracy, civic empowerment, and global engagement initiative, which I am so honoured to Co-chair. We seek to navigate the complexities of a democratic society together through civic empowerment. Democracy depends on diverse perspectives, and we hope to inspire people to express their views and to listen to others as well. Throughout this democracy theme year, we'll have many more year of democracy events in the coming months, and we hope you will continue to participate with us.

0:01:27.5 CW: So today we will hear first from Brahima Coulibaly, vice President and Director of the Global Economy and Development Program at Brookings. He will give us an overview of the issues at hand. That will be followed by a panel discussion with our professor Barry Rabe, our very own Brookings, as well as Brookings Scholars, Samantha Gross and Sanjay Patnaik. And Phil Roos, the director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy. This will be moderated, this panel by Kelly House, Environment Reporter for Bridge, Michigan. There will be time for audience questions at the end of this very, very rich discussion, we know it promises to be. Later Ceci will have a conversation with Tonya Allen, the president of the McKnight Foundation. Again, more on that later. Welcome. So for questions in the room, please use the QR code or submit one using one of the note cards that are around the room. If you're watching online, the question link can be accessed on the event page or in the event description on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Facebook. So for now, let me hand it over to Brahima. Please come forward.

0:02:56.0 Brahima Coulibaly: Thank you, Celeste for hosting us and to the Ford School as well for convening this important conversation on where we go from here with US climate policy. Just for the record, I was also a Michigan graduate. I was here 20 plus years ago. So I was in the seats that you're sitting in as we speak. And I do have really fond memories of my time here, not that it was always easy. Remember the prelims, you had to pull all nighters. I also remember then the great things too, right? The vibrant learning environment, the great student parties and even something else that's actually unique to Michigan, you won't see anywhere else. We call it naked mile. I don't know how many of you know about this, but I only know it as an observer, not as an active participant. But really, look, this is all what makes it really great to be back here, and to be able to have this informed conversation with all of you. So warm welcome as well to all of those who are following us online. Over my professional career, I've come to really form the view that our future is gonna be shaped by two critical mega trends around the world. The first one is technology, and the second one is climate. And Brookings is really happy to be elevating its work, ramping it up in those two areas to be able to contribute to meaningful solution to address the challenges that they bring. But in terms of the climate, the science is very clear, right?

0:04:45.1 BC: Human activity is warming the planet much faster to a point where it's not gonna be able to sustain life, let alone livelihoods. So if you look at the red line there, that's how much we're emitting and that's how warm the planet is gonna get to 3.2 degrees Celsius plus, right? So what we need to do to make it livable, we need to cut drastically down, at least to the green line, but ideally even like to the blue line, right? And it's very clear. You could see climatic events increasing both in frequency and in intensity. Think hurricane, think wild fires, think floods, et cetera. And in recent report that I saw indicated that in 2050, we actually had 50 or so climatic events a year, since 2000, it's now been between 300 and 500. So that's a little bit concerning, right? And those events are really costly. So let me share with you just some cost, right? By some estimates it can cost us up to $3 trillion in terms of damages and can push about over 100 million people into poverty and cause 250,000 in death through malnutrition and through air pollution, et cetera. Okay? But up until now, we've always been talking about climate as a risk as a cause, as et cetera. In recent years, we've begun to understand climate too as an opportunity, and that there are benefits associated with embracing a carbon free society.

0:06:25.7 BC: And among those benefits, just to list a couple of statistics, we could generate $26 trillion in additional global GDP, and then we can also generate green jobs about 65 million or so, if we do that. Alright? So it looks pretty simple. We're not on a sustainable path. There are tremendous cost to doing it, but there are tremendous benefits too for addressing climate change. So one, we're doing it, seem pretty simple. Well, not quite, okay? The first challenge is that climate is a global public good. And you've probably seen in your econ classes that public goods, you don't deliver on them the same way you would do any other good, right? So that's the first challenge. Who's gonna fund it? And because it's non-rivalrous, it's non-excludable, it comes with a free rider problem. You say you solve it, then I benefit, I solve it, then you benefit. So then nobody solves it. That's the kind of challenge you have with the global goods and climate has been seen as a mother of all public goods. And the other associated challenge is that it's at a global level problem. But solutions are actually at the local level within counties, villages, townships, at the nation level, et cetera. So massive coordination is needed. But even if you focus on the challenges within the local communities, there are still tremendous challenges to overcome. Let's just take a first one, fuel dependency.

0:08:00.8 BC: For the past 100 plus years, we've built a society that has become highly dependent on fossil fuels. It runs through the veins of the entire global economy and society. So just shifting that overnight is not gonna be easy. And I would invite you to read an essay by my colleague, Sam, you'll hear from later, that's entitled, Why Are Fossil Fuels So Hard to Quit? You will find that super informative. But then next to that, you have the cultural and social dimensions of it. Just habits, right? If you wanna buy a car, do you think, Okay, let me get an EV and then I'll find out which among the EV category, I like. Or do you think, Let me get a car, I choose the one I like. And if it happens to be an EV, even so be it. Right? So there's just some of those habits that are not easy to change. And then you have regulatory hurdles, and you have climate justice, which is really a big thing. In other words, there are some who suffer most from the climate change, but with less capacity to adapt. And when we see transition to green energy or green clean energy, then they're gonna be disproportionately affected. Talk to a coal... Somebody who works in the coal mines in West Virginia, tell them there's this thing, called climate change. If we don't quit coal, then we're not gonna be having a livable planet in 10, 20, 50 years. It's like, Okay, that may be true. Maybe it's not.

0:09:25.1 BC: But what about my job? Right? If you close the coal mine, I'm worried about feeding my family over the next day, over the next week, over the next month. So you got to show me something that would protect that for me. And then we can talk about closing down the coal plants, right? And then, by the way, I'll call my senator to say, I'm against this plan to close the coal mine. So this is really what goes on. And then it spills over into the politics of it. And then finally, it's just about trade offs as well that are not fully internalized, because climate change is not sitting alone. Some trade offs have to be made. What are you willing to give up to make more progress, et cetera. So it's really complicated. So let me show you how we, it's being addressed at the global level, and then we'll get into the US national policies and how US is approaching it. At the global level, so there's a United Nations framework that has come together to say, let's get together and solve this. This is everybody's problem, right? It was set up in 1992, the framework convention. And then as part of that, they meet every year through the process, known as a conference of the parties or COPs. And at the COP in 2015, the nation were able to agree on a plan to cut back drastically on emissions. And it has two key features.

0:10:42.7 BC: The first one was the NDCs, the Nationally Determined Contribution whereby each nation comes back and say, Hey, me, country X, I'm gonna cut my emission to zero by 2050. Another one say, Ah, me, maybe 2060, right? And then the low income countries emerging market say, Hey, wait a minute. That's not fair to us. We didn't pollute the atmosphere. You advanced economies, you did. So you cut, you take the whole continent of Africa, it's only emitting 4% at the most. China alone is 27%. US over 10%, right? So why you want us to cut? We don't, we didn't do that. Advanced economy like, well, that might be true, but it wasn't exactly us. It was probably our great-grandfathers who did this. And let's not... Let bygones be bygone. We're in this together. Let's... And by the way, we'll give you $100 billion for you to be able to support your transition. And those, I think were the two key ingredients that held together, the glue that held together, the Paris Agreement. The resources from advanced economies to low income countries promise. And then the second one was that it was voluntary, but because it was voluntary, the NDCs, that also was the weakness. As a result, when you pull together all the commitments made under NDCs worldwide, you are still not gonna achieve the objective. So the orange line is the status quo, business as usual.

0:12:08.4 BC: The blue line is what's gonna, where we're gonna be in terms of emissions if all the countries deliver on the NDCs they promise to deliver on. And then the green line is ideally where we wanna be to reach net zero by 2050. So clearly there's a huge implementation gap in terms of delivering on what you promised. And there's clearly a bigger ambitions gap, which mean we need to ramp up the ambition, right? And there's been some progressive ideas that maybe NDCs now need to be mandatory and not voluntary. So those would be interesting conversations at the subsequent COPs. So now let's shift a little bit to the US's own policy. And over the US administrations in the... The climate policy has gone through significant shifts, right? So let's just focus on the past and the recent ones. So under the Obama administration is when we signed the Paris Agreement. And one of our affiliates actually was among the key negotiators on behalf. When I say our, I mean, Brookings affiliate was among the key negotiators of the Paris Agreement under the Obama administration. So he signed the US into the Paris Agreement and also issued some executive orders to accelerate, facilitate the environmental protection and the climate agenda. And then came the Trump years. And under the Trump, they withdrew from the Paris Agreement and even reverse some of the protections that were put in place up until that time, right?

0:13:40.8 BC: So it's fair to say that we've seen a bit of a setback in federal policy on climate. And then Biden shows up in 2020 and he is like, this climate thing is serious. So, the first day one in office, I'm gonna get us back in, which he did. But he didn't just stop there. He recognized that US also had a significant leadership role to play. So then he convened early on a summit of the major emitters into Washington DC to discuss how they can also raise their ambitions. But you don't tell others to raise ambition unless you raise your own ambition. So therefore, he raises the US's ambition on climate, and then followed it up with the largest, federal legislation, pro climate in the history of the us. We'll get a chance to cover that in subsequent slides. So here's the plan for the Biden administration released in the long term strategy to address climate. And again, one of our affiliates was actually seconded to John Kerry's office to help work on, draft this long-term plan. So what you see here in the solid line is where we are in terms of emissions. And then what you see in the dotted line is the plan for where we need to be. And Biden raised the ambition by targeting a 50-52% cut by 2030 compared to the 26-28% below the 2005 level that was set under the Obama administration. And the plan is really to take this to net zero by 2050. Will that get there? I don't know.

0:15:15.9 BC: But it's certainly already interesting that they have this ambitious plan and then they have a strategy to go with it. And you can read more on this in the long term strategy, but it's now trying to target energy transition, which is the biggest contributor. The larger the bar, the bigger the sector is gonna be an important part of the agenda. And then they have a decarbonization agenda too. And then also energy efficiency. And then in that too, they have what's known as carbon removal. So that's another way of thinking about the problem. It's like the issue is not necessarily that we're emitting the carbon, the issue is that it is finding itself in the atmosphere and trapping heat. So that means that if we can find a way to emit it and trap it so it doesn't go into the atmosphere, that can be part of the solution, may not be the whole solution, but it could, anything can help at this stage, right? So they also have a focus there on CO2, carbon technology or carbon removal. Now this is a goal and then they have a strategy, but it's still incomplete unless you have the funding for it. So that's where comes in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2002 where he promised hundreds of billions toward clean climate and clean energy over the next decade. It included all kind of incentives for renewable projects, funding domestic manufacturing of clean energy, tax credit, rebates, consumer tax credit.

0:16:41.9 BC: If you wanna buy an EV, you're gonna get a tax credit for it. I'm gonna get a tax credit for it. Maybe that incentivize me to considering an EV next time I'm buying a vehicle. And together, it's hard to say how much, but there's estimates, is that it's gonna cut significantly the emission. But it tends to be to overshadow another legislation that was passed a year earlier, the Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act, which actually had a lot of climate elements to it, including infrastructure for EV charging stations. I'm not buying an EV if I can't be sure that I can find a charging station like I find gas stations, right? So it was important to have that foundational type of investments to facilitate the agenda. Alright? So then we're now two years into the Inflation Reduction Act. So a logical question is, Okay, how's it going? Right? What difference is it making in terms of getting US a step closer to its ambition? And it's too early, I would say, in my view to tell, but at least we can begin to look at some data and try to assess in combination with some anecdotes. What are some of the emerging progress? What are some emerging challenges? So let me start here by showing you the number of projects that have been announced since the Inflation Reduction Act across the US, 646 projects have been announced. And of those, guess which state is at the top in terms of number of projects, always the blues, right? Yeah, you can applaud, yes.

0:18:20.0 BC: But then in terms of then, and then in number two, in terms of the amount of investment and number three in terms of job creation. But in by sector in Michigan, which is the top state in terms of number of projects, the EV sector dominates. And then the batteries sector, also dominate. But then in investments, it's all EV batteries, but also solar 'cause there was one, this one big solar project that was I think about $9 billion or so. And then in terms of job creation, again, EV sector and then the batteries in the state of Michigan. Alright, so then in terms of tracking those projects, it's hard to really read too much into the data. But if you focus on the right panel for Michigan, of the 62 projects that they have, one can look at it and say, Only six are operational, right? And then 43 are still in the announced phase, meaning haven't moved to the next phase, but the other project are anywhere in between, right? But doesn't mean that it's not working. It just may, it means some project may, there may be good reasons why it might take longer for some of them to begin making its way. But when we also combine that with some of the anecdotal data we're seeing, it's clear, there are clearly some challenges at different levels, right? Just last month, the Ford announced that it was going to pause or scrap a $1.9 billion into the EV sector for SUVs, right? Because it was, just wasn't profitable. The price point was too high, demand wasn't there from the consumers.

0:20:05.4 BC: And I think GM also did revise down the ambitions when it came to that. Next to that, there's also other challenges. Clearly there's zoning challenges there, permitting challenges. And our colleague here, Tony Puple, has been running a podcast that has tried to understand a bit better. What are some of those challenges on the ground, right? If you are a farmer and we show up and say, Okay, there's this thing called climate change, and by the way, can we have your land to put a wind turbine here? You're like, Okay, what's in it for me? Right? And if you're convinced that there's something in there for you, then you're like, Oh, well maybe I don't want this noisy and thing that it doesn't look good in my neighborhood to be set up here. But the townships, the villages, they actually have a big say in what gets put there, right? In terms of the zoning, the permitting issues, et cetera. But then the goal is statewide, it's nationwide. So State Michigan and other states have been now passing legislation to try to work through some of that, those type of issues. And then there's also the workforce itself, right? But then importantly too, there's the politics and the political, the outlook for the IRA itself. And some have cited that as being a big risk because if the next administration repeals the IRA, it would mean that there's no subsidies.

0:21:26.1 BC: If there's no subsidies, it's hard for investors or firms or businesses to cost the project and therefore they can price it. And then they basically sustain on hold. See, we see clearly where federal policy is headed before we put more into this. So this has been a little bit, a flavour of what some of the challenges have been on the ground. And I think you may hear from our panelists that are going to follow to dig a bit deeper into those issues. Alright, so be it as it may, where do we go from here? We have three choices, right? We can retreat, say, Ah, this climate thing is too hard, let's let our great-grandkids solve it, right? Or we can stay the course, right? Let's figure out what's wrong, what's not working well in the IRA, early lessons, keep away off those challenges and sustain the progress. Or we can try to do even more and then we can have a conversation around what that even more looks like, right? It could easily be maybe doubling down on carbon pricing. And you get to hear from one of my colleague who's a big fan of carbon pricing. And then, or the regulation. Maybe you just need to impose to those, and airlines that if you don't get your act together, you're not gonna be able to fly in 20, 20 years. Maybe they'll get their act together through regulation or maybe you go nuclear.

0:22:45.9 BC: That's another option where I don't, I think there's potential there that has not been sufficiently leveraged, but whatever is it that we do, I just wanna leave us with one thing. It's gonna be about the choices we make. And those will not just be political choices in terms of the federal people we elect, the local people we elect, et cetera. It's also gonna be about the choices we make in our daily lives, right? It's gonna be about your choice, it's gonna be about my choices, because I ultimately think that the consumer has a lot of power. And what you demand, businesses are gonna make. This is a case where I fundamentally believe that demand will create its own supply. But certainly having some lawmakers, policymakers who understand this, support this, can definitely go a long way. So maybe with that, I'll stop here and then pass it on to the panel. And it's gonna be moderated by Kelly House from the Bridge Michigan newspaper. So the podium is yours, Kelly.

[applause]

0:24:09.3 Kelly House: Can everyone hear? Well, first, hi everyone. I'm Kelly House. I'm a reporter with Bridge Michigan. We're really excited to have a great panel of experts here today and I think everyone's been told already but there are QR codes around the room. So use those if you have questions to submit them and they'll be asked at the end and we'll have 10 or 15 minutes for questions. So just to briefly introduce the panelists one by one. First, we have Barry Rabe, who's probably well known to many people in this room. He is the J. Ira and Nikki Harris Family Chair of Public Policy here at the Ford School. And his work sort of centers on how politics influence climate and energy policy. We've got Phil Roos, who is the Director of the Michigan Department of, oh my gosh, I'm gonna butcher this, EGLE, Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy.

0:25:13.3 KH: It's gone through a couple of name changes over the years. And previous to that was a long-time entrepreneur and environmental advocate in the state. We've got Sanjay Patnaik, who is a director of the Center on Regulation and Markets and a senior fellow at Brookings with a focus on climate policies, corporate political strategy, and globalization. And then last but not least, we have Samantha Gross, Director of the Energy Security and Policy Initiative at Brookings, where her work focuses on how technology and policy sort of intersect to fuel the energy transition. So, and we're here talking today about all of that. And I wanna start with Sanjay. We are entering this election season. No matter who wins, there's gonna be a new president. We have a previous president who, along with Congress, has passed quite a lot of climate-related policy, as was just discussed. The most significant of which, of course, is the IRA, hundreds of billions of dollars for climate-related initiatives. Can you just talk a little bit about the significance of that, and how it is going so far actually deploying that money and those policies?

0:26:34.8 Sanjay Patnaik: Of course, it's a pleasure to be here and to see everyone here. So taking a step back, when we look at climate policy, right, the optimal path for the US would have been the same with Europe, for instance, it took past the carbon price. We've tried for 20 years, we were not able to get it done politically. So the IRA is the next best thing. It's basically instead of using a stick, which would be the carbon price, we use a lot of carrots, almost 400 billion dollars initially, that were the initial costs, to provide tax credits, subsidies, support, financial support, to really catalyze investments both by the public sector and by the private sector. And so in this regard it is really a historic climate package, the first one passed in our generation in the US.

0:27:17.7 SP: And so obviously it's a very different mechanism because when you pump all this money into the economy, your intention is to catalyze the transition to a low carbon economy and build a lot of infrastructure, a lot of things, right? New power generation plants, new charging stations, new transmission lines. And this will take time. And so when we look at where we are with the IRA, I'm gonna start with the good news. We really have seen a spike in investments, especially in certain sectors like solar and battery storage. Even within the last two years where a lot of investments both from the private sector and then through the public money is going to new projects. When we look at actual projects implemented, because Coul talked about announced projects, and that is a very important distinction because you will hear a lot about announced projects, but you have to look at the actual ones.

0:28:07.7 SP: Because announced projects can fall apart, as we have seen in the past. We see already more than 160 projects that have been implemented, almost 100,000 jobs, and actually Michigan is among the top recipients. So really, really beneficent of this money. And so we see a lot of good signs within the first two years. And I think the reason is that we already, before the passage of the IRA, we saw a movement of the marketplace towards low-carbon technologies. When we look at, for instance, a move away from coal. And the IRA has supercharged that. And it also has made the US more attractive for multinational companies to come here. First, because we have pretty cheap energy compared to the rest of the world. And then second, they can get subsidies and IRA money to build plants here. And so that is that aspect. On the flip side, there are also a lot of challenges.

0:28:53.1 SP: One of them is that the IRA was supposed to cost $400 billion over 10 years. The latest estimates put it at $1.2 trillion, so that's a huge impact on the deficit and on the federal budget. And one of the reasons is because a lot of the tax credits are not capped. And so we don't really know what the end costs will be. And I think this is a challenge we have to look to the future. And then two more challenges, and Samantha's gonna talk more about one of them, is in order to build out all that infrastructure, as Coul mentioned, we need permits. And permitting is extremely slow. We did a couple of reports in my center on permitting to get a right-of-way permit, for instance. The median duration is nine years, if we look at the last couple of years, and that's crazy. If you want to build a lot of the new infrastructure, you cannot take so long to put that infrastructure on the ground.

0:29:41.2 SP: And so we need permitting reform in order to actually fulfill the potential of the IRA. And the second one is, we had an event on this last week, is workforce. To actually build all this and to operate this, you need workforce and a skilled workforce that can do it. And that means retraining fossil fuel workers, the ones that Coul mentioned. People that maybe are petrochemical engineers and now need to do something else. And also new workers that need to be skilled up to do these jobs in electrification plants, for instance, in transmission lines, in installing solar. And those are definitely bottlenecks that make it more difficult for the IRA to fulfill its full potential.

0:30:20.0 KH: Can I ask you a quick follow-up? I may be revealing my own ignorance, but you talked about many of the tax credits not being capped and that's leading to higher costs. Does that also mean that more activity is happening? Is that a positive climate thing, or does that just mean people are getting more money?

0:30:35.1 SP: It is a positive climate thing. That means the credits are being taken up more than expected. And that's why it's also very hard to estimate what the ultimate impact will be. I think one thing, we had actually an inquiry from a reporter on this. One thing where there's some need for reform is that some of these tax credits are not tied to income levels. So even relatively wealthy homeowners, for instance, can claim those. And I'm not sure if this is the best use of resources. So I think there are tweaks that need to be done to make it more efficient. But you bring up a good point. It means that more people are probably using those tax credits. That means we're building more, or at least people are trying to decarbonize more than we expected.

0:31:13.5 KH: And so, Phil, a lot of this money gets funneled directly to states who then are really the ones building out the programs and spending it. How is that going in Michigan so far? I mean, we saw this number of projects, but it's hard to understand what that means. How is that process looking here so far? And I know you're on a bit of a timeline too. What will it look like going forward?

0:31:37.2 Phil Roos: Yeah, the Biden-Harris administration's IRA has been unequivocally, had an unequivocally incredible impact on our ability to gear up to achieve our own MI Healthy Climate Plan and the goals that very much mirror Biden administration's goals. It's helped us with the climate plan, but also it's setting the basis for, I think just as important actually in getting broad acceptance of this, saving families money, generating economic activity, creating good paying jobs, even some public health benefits that have been modeled credibly on this. You saw the number. We are number one in the country in terms of IRA-related projects. It's $26 billion in projects, 21,000 jobs. So some of that impact has already happened, even though most of the projects are in the announced phase for sure.

0:32:42.6 PR: And we just had a week ago, we just had a new study that came out that said that between the IRA's impact, as well as other Biden administration programs, and the state funding that we've had, it models out to about $300 in annual savings per family in energy costs. That's all implemented. $7 billion savings in public health costs. An additional $15 or $16 million, I don't know the exact number, in new programs, new investments to the state. And that's supposed to grow by 2030 and 2040. It's supposed to be up to $30 billion on top of what we've already had. Big new investments, new resources. But I think you're right in the premise and what Brahima talked about. Not many people feel it yet on the ground. But we're starting to see signs of that. And I'll just give you a couple quick examples. In terms of building out more renewable energy. We just got an award of $129 million.

0:33:49.4 PR: This was just a month or so ago in the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant Program. Each state or entity who put in a grant request had to devise how that money would be used, and we focused it entirely on renewable siting 'cause that's the number one barrier for us, as you talked about, Sanjay, to us being able to achieve our climate goals. So it's gonna really help. It's totally focused on making it easier to deploy renewables, solar, wind, et cetera, and storage by resolving some of the siting challenges by actually putting incentives there. In fact, some of that is siting renewables on brownfield sites, which I'm a big fan of. There's also, back in May, we got, I think it was $212 million for home energy rebate program from the Department of Energy. That is, it's one of the first things that is investments that's being made that is really kind of democratizing and increasing access to the clean energy economy to everybody. And that's totally targeted to low income folks.

0:35:07.5 PR: But it's really about giving them access to cleaner energy, but also 20% savings on average in their energy costs, adding to the value of their homes and so forth. The other one is onshoring clean manufacturing. And I've got a long list of projects, and many of those are at/or near groundbreaking. One that I happen to be in an event with Secretary of Energy Granholm maybe a month ago or so. General Motors received a grant for $500 million at a plant in Lansing that will now make the transition to EVs. And it's saving, I think it's 650 jobs and adding another 50 high-paying jobs on top of that. So you've got all of these things that are directly from the IRA, but I think it's worth just saying as a final thought that it's not just the IRA. When there had been a vacuum in policy and opportunities like this, but we had the American Rescue Plan, we had the IIJA that covered certain aspects of the IIJA EV infrastructure, for instance. So I think it's really those elements of the administration's programs together, plus state funding, 'cause there are many cases we needed state funding to leverage those programs really been game-changing for us.

0:36:36.3 KH: Can I ask a quick follow-up 'cause you mentioned there's tons of money and investment coming in, hasn't all hit the ground yet. Do you have a sense for when, especially those things that I think the individual person notices most, hey, I can get a rebate for my new water heater or whatever will be available?

0:36:54.2 PR: Yeah, that rebate program will be sending out grants later this fall. We have another program called Solar for All, which is another massive price, $156 million, to allow for disadvantaged communities access to solar. That's going out next year. A lot of these clean manufacturing on-shoring products, those are happening now. There are a number, I think we've had a bunch of ground breakings coming up in the months ahead. Yeah, it took a while, mostly administratively, getting them through the federal government and then get them through our shop. But now it's really happening.

0:37:37.6 KH: Thank you. And Samantha, we're talking mostly about money here, putting money toward a priority to incentivize that shift. Obviously, that's not the only way to tackle climate change. What do you see as some of the pieces that are not addressed by the IRA that we should be thinking about?

0:37:58.9 Samantha Gross: Well, Sanjay really teed this question up for me. And I really think that the biggest thing that the IRA does not cover that we need is permitting reform. So this is kind of obvious, but if you want a new, clean, green, zero carbon energy system, you're gonna have to build a new clean green zero carbon energy system. You're gonna have to put a lot of concrete and steel in the ground and you're gonna have to build things. Today Sanjay put up a number about sort of linear infrastructure and rights of way. Just to build a solar or a wind generation facility the average time for the environmental reviews and the permits is about four and a half years and folks that's a long time. But how we got to this place is that our environmental permitting and study process was really built during a different time. It was put together to prevent bad stuff from happening.

0:38:53.0 SG: And it was really important for that for a long time. That's kind of how the entire environmental movement got going. We were in this to keep bad stuff from happening. We're not so much set up for encouraging good stuff to happen. And so what we need to do is think about where we want these projects, where we want to expedite them. Phil's point about Brownfields is fabulous. You want them to go in places that already have the infrastructure so they can hook into the grid. There's a lot of different places that are fantastic to do this, and we want to expedite those places, which is a different way of thinking than the way we've always done it of preventing bad stuff. This is a tricky subject, so I get a little bit of politics for you for just a second. There's actually a bipartisan bill in the Senate. It's come through Senate Energy and Natural Resources to do some reform of the permitting process.

0:39:45.1 SG: And it's not perfect for anybody. It involves compromises. It increases goals for clean energy development on federal lands. It streamlines transmission permitting, shortens the timeline for judicial review so you can't get tied up forever and ever in a lawsuit. These are all good for clean energy development. It also, to get more parties on board, requires leasing of federal land for oil and gas development. And it expedites approvals for LNG terminals. These are the political tradeoffs that sometimes need to happen to get things done. I don't necessarily think that those, I think that those tradeoffs are fine. I'm actually okay with those programs. I think we need this kind of reform to get a new energy system done. So there's some talk about this potentially passing in the lame duck, and I hope it does. We can talk more about other challenges to getting more concrete and steel in the ground in a later Q&A cocktail if you want, but the permitting is the biggest one for me.

0:40:46.5 KH: And that is a good note to address something that I probably should have said when we first got up here, which is that all of the panelists will be available afterward at that Cocktail Hour if people have additional questions. So stick around. Barry, I just saw an article on this topic today talking about methane. And I know you've done quite a bit of research into this greenhouse gas that is sort of like the secondary thought for many of us. We talk about carbon dioxide. Methane is extremely potent, doesn't get as much love. And the article I was just reading today was talking about how we are missing what targets we do have on it. So can you talk a little bit about just where that's coming from, right? Lay out the problem for us. And also, from a policy perspective or a spending perspective, what we could be doing to get a handle on that?

0:41:47.1 Barry Rabe: Sure. Thanks for the question. Often we talk about climate change as the carbon problem, carbon dioxide. And so if we could just double down and really deal with carbon dioxide, we could solve the climate challenge. And yet, as you note, when you look at methane, CH4, other contaminants that I would call super pollutants, hydrofluorocarbons in the cooling sector, nitrous oxides in the agriculture sector, and some industrial activity, that is collectively responsible for about 40% of current warming. And these are interesting contaminants, they are impacts, they don't last in the atmosphere nearly as long as carbon dioxide, but their potency is front-loaded. They're much more intense in those first years or decades in the atmosphere.

0:42:40.9 BR: And we do have in this space an extraordinary environmental climate policy success, and that is the hydrofluorocarbon regime known as the Kigali protocol, the Kigali amendments to the Montreal protocol, and bipartisan legislation that was passed in 2020, actually signed into law under former President Trump, followed by a treaty, the first major environmental or climate treaty in nearly a half century, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate in 2022. And interesting just to think for a second about that as a model because it uses all of the policy tools that we might weigh and consider, not just the subsidy approaches that we've been talking. Tough regulation and phase-out. Using market-based tools to allocate remaining allowances, a cap-and-trade system in the United States. Ways to transfer revenues from advanced economies to less advanced economies with major financial contributions from the United States, the European Union, and others.

0:43:43.0 BR: When we turn to the other super pollutants, including methane, we've not seen that kind of progress. And yet, in the methane space, we've made some progress, including recent years. You had mentioned sources. There are many of them. Certainly the fossil fuel sector, production of oil, gas, coal. No small matter in the United States where we now lead the world in oil and gas production, and our oil and gas methane numbers remain quite high. But also other sectors as well. Agricultural, livestock, landfill, wastewater treatment. It's a large compilation of pieces that contribute to the kinds of numbers that you're mentioning. I would argue that in the last few years what we've seen receive the greatest attention is methane in the oil and gas space. This is a big country. Lots of places produce oil and gas. Supply chains are long. Lots of firms, small and large, are engaged.

0:44:43.2 BR: There are indeed cost-effective abatement technologies out there and measurement is getting better and better all the time through satellites drones, and the like. And we've clearly begun in the United States to make project progress. And there's really a kind of remarkable experiment underway in the Biden-Harris administration that has both an executive action component to it but also new statute that kind of brings a lot of policy tools together. We don't put a price, as Sanjay notes, on carbon dioxide but we are planning to do so for methane losses in the oil and gas sector. We have putting in place through regulatory action through the Clean Air Act some very tough regulatory provisions on both public and private lands. We're also subsidizing things like remediation, cleanup of abandoned wells, orphan wells. It's a package. And yet that's an ambitious strategy and little if any of that will be fully operational.

0:45:40.6 BR: Or much less implemented before whomever the next president of the United States takes office. And that does lead to some fairly significant issues and choices of what a Biden-Harris transitioning to a Harris Walls administration might try to do in these areas. In some cases with legislation, but also some very aggressive litigation that's beginning to emerge from opposition states and industries and how that might play out. Or a Trump-Vance administration, which has actually not said much at all about methane, has renounced President Trump, former President Trump, has renounced the project 2025 provisions, which might have had substantial shifts and changes. We really don't know what a second Trump era might look like but there's a strong likelihood that it would replay the actions of the first, which was basically to systematically try to undo administrative actions by its predecessor.

0:46:31.8 BR: That's the oil and gas area, and it's really very much in play. And even things such as the new Global Methane Initiative launched cooperatively between the United States and the European Union in 2021 is more kind of Paris like going back to Coul's comments. It's an interesting mechanism, but it's nothing like Kigali. It has a series of voluntary non-binding pledges, which just as you were saying, if you don't honour the pledge, there are really no consequences except perhaps embarrassment. So I think a really interesting question going forward, two of them, one is what happens to this sort of new regulatory pricing regime for oil and gas methane in the United States? But then where do we go with all of the other greenhouse gases where we've really struggled?

0:47:15.7 BR: Tony, you've been here for the last couple of days and have worked extensively in the agricultural sector. How might we actually, whoever wins the election, really begin to address the agricultural issue where you don't see downward trajectory of emissions, whether it's methane or carbon dioxide in Europe, the United States, Canada, or anywhere in the world. Livestock, landfill issues where landfill methane in Michigan is certainly a large issue or these other areas. I think all of that is in play, very little discussion about it in the election, but all is in play globally going forward.

0:47:49.7 SG: Can I add the briefest of comments to that? I'm an optimist by nature and I kind of have to be given what I do, but I wanna point out that one of the reasons why you see these new regulations coming forward in terms of oil and in terms of methane emissions from the oil and gas industry is that these things are fixable. What is difficult with respect to methane is often finding the leaks and detecting the leaks. It's a tricky gas to find when it leaks. But the flip side of that is often the fix is a guy with a wrench, literally, and I'm not even joking. And so the real thing is getting better at leak detection, getting better at monitoring. And the operators that are good in the United States today are very, very good. The problem is that we have laggards. And so I am a 1000% in favour of the things that Barry is talking about, because what it does is it cleans up the laggards, but the very good operators show that we know how to do this.

0:48:44.3 PR: Can I just add one thing on that? A bit of small good news, but one of the areas for methane leaks and oil and gases abandoned wells, and we have, in the state of Michigan, we had 350 of them, I think or we call them orphan wells and there's nobody to clean it up. There's federal grant money for this, and our team has plugged, I think they're closing in on 200 of them in last 18 months, and they'll be done with them next year. So that's just purely having the funds to be able to do it. And it's so tangible, like you said you can just check the box on that.

0:49:26.4 BR: If I might. Just such an interesting point because we don't think of Michigan as a big oil and gas state. And yeah I could remember about 10 years ago when this room was absolutely packed because there was some thinking that Michigan might really take off as a major fracking venue, and yet the legacy wells, the issues there. And I think, Sam, that goes directly to your point that this is really spread out, including all of these leaks and challenges fixable. But then can you bring all of the technologies, all the labour force together to really do the fixing?

0:49:58.4 PR: Yeah. Yeah.

0:50:02.1 KH: So prime example of what I wanna ask you about Phil, which is how states can play a role in climate and energy policy. Michigan just last fall passed pretty major climate legislation. The centrepiece of which is requiring a clean energy standard by 2040 in our state. Again, your agency is one of several responsible for carrying out aspects of that law. How does that sort of reflect state's abilities to set their own climate policies? And also, where do we go from here? It's on the books. Now we have, what is it 16 years till 2040?

0:50:47.2 PR: Yeah. We did have a big fall a lot going on. But I want to just maybe reverse the clock a little bit and talk about what got us there and what enabled that to happen so quickly in the fall. Luckily we, Governor Whitmer was right from the start pretty proactive about trying to address climate. And this was in a moment when I mentioned earlier there was a complete federal vacuum in terms, and everything's being rolled back. And I think it was a good thing that we had to actually develop a Michigan specific plan. That's not as dependent on, I mean, it's dependent on some funding to accelerate it, but we will keep moving no matter if there's a change of administration or not. One of the first things she did was rejoin, I'm sorry, the US Climate Alliance, the set of states who committed to the Paris Accord.

0:51:38.8 PR: And then she put together a, it's called a Council on Climate Solutions. I was part of that. That's how I got into this world. And developed the, MI Healthy Climate Plan, which was announced in spring of 2022. And those steps I think they were important because we had to have that framework so that if we got to a place where we had state legislatures, the two houses that, the two chambers that would be pro climate, which ended up happening in 2022 remarkably. We could make some stuff happen quickly. We'd already had the plan. And so there were five bills. Just a quick review for those who aren't familiar that were passed in the fall. The first one is the one Kelly talked about 100 percent clean energy by 2040. And that's generated on top of the money coming in.

0:52:31.2 PR: It's generated a lot of interest in Michigan as a place to do renewables and clean energy related projects. There's also the second one was about improving our energy efficiency. So that's just directly about not just greenhouse gas reduction, but it's about saving people money. Then back to the sighting challenges we changed the way that we regulate sighting of renewables. 'cause we had a lot of townships, local municipalities, outlawing renewables. So it just changed the structure. I won't bore you with the details, but basically set conditions that citing decision can still happen at the local level, but certain conditions have to be true for it to be citing to be rejected. And then it gets kicked up to our public service commission. The local authorities still have a role or proceed at the table when the decision's being made, but it really kind of a game changer in opening that up.

0:53:32.6 PR: We also changed the scope of the responsibilities and authorities of our state's, the agency that regulates the utilities the Public Service Commission. So now, formally they were charged with making decisions based on cost and reliability. Now they are instructed to take labour, environmental justice and importantly climate considerations into it. And that's just gonna make a really big difference. It gives us, as we have issues where we're trying to figure out what the mix of energy of a utility is. It really matters when you add those ingredients into it. And then the final thing was meant to address the just transition aspect. So created a new office within state government called, I always have to look this up 'cause it's a lot of words and not easy acronym, Office of Worker and Community Economic Transition.

0:54:34.2 PR: And that was an important symbol I think to help get the other bills passed, but also to make sure that we do this in a just way. So that really provided a really important basis and there's a lot more to do. I think right now we're focused on implementing all of that. There are other bills that are in... There's a community solar bill that's being looked at. There are other things in the works transit, other things that we may show up. But what we have is the foundation. And now we've got a roadmap for action. And actually what we're starting to do now is take the climate plan we have and given the IRA dollars, the new realities of everything, we're revising that and we're doing it on a statewide basis, taking every pillar of the plan and doing big stakeholder work groups so that we've got a big coalition behind this. And we can sharpen the plan and it'll be kind of continuous improvement going forward.

0:55:34.7 KH: And what do you see as sort of the biggest hurdles to clear, as you mentioned at the beginning of implementing this, are there any major hurdles that we need to clear administratively in the state to sort of get that moving?

0:55:48.3 PR: I don't think so administratively so much. I mean the solar, there's big opportunity there and there are different proposals out there for how to address that so that we can get solar in more communities. The Solar for All programme that I mentioned earlier is one aspect of it, I think it's citing and I think we've got the guts or at least a good beginning on that. And then the other thing is, MI Healthy Climate Plan calls for the pillar one is clean the grid. Pillar two is transportation. So both public transit and electric vehicles. And it has a goal of 2 million electric vehicles on the road in a state with 10 million citizens by 2030. And there have been challenges there. You've seen some of the, we talked about some of the rollbacks pulling back a little bit from the automakers.

0:56:50.1 PR: I think that we need the dust to settle on that a little bit. I think there will probably be a bigger mix of plugin hybrids that may pick up a lot of that slack. But a big hurdle is really EV infrastructure and we are still orders of magnitude away from where we would need to support anything close to 2 million vehicles on the road in Michigan. But it's a big priority every year. We're dumping as much as we can in the budget. We put $40 million into the state budget in this recent cycle. So I think we'll get there. I think if those hurt those adoption hurdles, the infrastructure goes away and then we gotta work on price. But I think you're gonna see some competition where people, more companies are gonna try to offer low price vehicles and I think that'll make a big difference.

0:57:37.9 KH: Thank you. And I wanna go back to Barry to sort of bring it back to the federal conversation. And we just had a debate last week where climate change came up once at the very end for like a minute. And what does that say about the state of our political discourse and the political climate around climate change in 2024 and why does it seem like candidates are still pretty hesitant to talk about it?

0:58:13.4 BR: Climate politics is tough. You're asking individuals, families, communities, institutions to think about things they normally do and are accustomed to doing and change them perhaps pretty significantly. Immediate impact and change with the hope and expectation that down the road, years, generations in the future, things will get better. That's a hard thing to work out, especially when even if you're in a state or a nation that aggressively pursues this, it may have little impact unless you can coordinate that on a global scale. It's tough politics, it's also tough politics when you live in a national context where substantial portions of the citizenry, the electorate have doubts that the problem really exists or that it's credible or that different policies might work. I do think it's interesting to compare 2024 in that debate where indeed the last question was on climate and it was short with 2022 where you had a longer primary campaign amongst Democrats and there was a lot more discussion in at least a number of those primaries from multiple case candidates on climate.

0:59:40.9 BR: And there was some thinking at that point and then into 2021 and 2022 when the legislation we've been talking about past, was climate change really starting to move up as a frontier issue? Were people taking it more seriously? Were they more receptive to substantial shifts and changes in the United States? But also in other context you begin to see some public opinion moving where climate change has historically been a low tear issue compared to the economy, national security, other issues, was it beginning to change? We haven't lost all of that, but I do think, Kelly, it's pretty hard to look at the 2024 campaign and a strange one since we didn't have vetting of candidates through a democratic primary and all kinds of things that we're familiar with. But has it sort of regressed back? Where does it occupy? And we look at survey and polling now, it does not emerge as a top five issue for most Americans across party affiliation, most parts of the United States.

1:00:45.4 BR: And yet as we approach an election, another election that we know is gonna be very close, where a few states, including this one will play significant roles in elections that are now too close to call climate concerns. All of that means could be a significant tipping force in some of these key battleground states, including who shows up to vote, who stays home, who builds networks, who refrains from networks. And there is this sort of head-to-head thing going on Harris vs Trump. But I'm also mindful that we've seen in a series of recent elections, the other candidates and in really close elections that can be significant. In 2016, other including Libertarian candidate, including Jill Stein from the Green Party collectively got about 5%. And in a number of states, kind of like 2000 where 538 votes in Florida tipped the outcome. This is an interesting consideration.

1:01:56.7 BR: And so if you think of someone like Jill Stein Green Party candidate who has been talking a lot about climate change but is coming in around 1% in the polls in 2016, she got just under 1.5 million votes. That was a tipping factor, arguably just as it was with Ralph Nader in the Al Gore, George W. Bush race. And so when we think about all of those things in terms of voters where they put their energy, where they place their vote voting for, we assume one of the two main candidates, or do you have people who draw back who engage in a protest, vote for any third party candidate or write in someone's name? All of that does become relevant. And so I think you're absolutely right. The kind of saliency on this issue is sort of dropped back a bit. We're also seeing responses like this in other countries. Certainly true if we were to go across the Ambassador Bridge and look at the Canadian election results where climate is really dropping as a concern except for the fact that there's a strong backlash there against the carbon pricing system that's emerged. And yet still really, really relevant at at a point where we're talking about election 2024.

1:03:05.7 KH: Thank you. And so Samantha, we do know something about [1:03:15.5] ____ and its views on climate and energy issues generally we can expect a Kamala Harris presidency probably to continue the policy stances of a Biden presidency by and large around favouring green energy. Donald Trump has said he's going to cancel certain aspects of funding from the IRA and unleash oil and gas. And so that's a lot of rhetoric, but what's the reality? How can climate policies potentially shift one way or the other depending on who is in office come January?

1:03:49.5 SG: Sure. So it's very clear that the two candidates in this election, two main party candidates have diametrically opposed views on what we should do about our energy system and about climate. That is definitely a given. However, it is also true that the world and the energy system are moving in a particular direction and they are moving in a greener direction and the US can go along with the flow or it can be a laggard. And so it's important I think, to think that the entire green energy progress won't stop even if Trump gets elected. A lot of the things that he says he wants to do are somewhat nonsensical. Businesses will continue to invest in green energy. I actually think that the Inflation Reduction Act is likely to stick around. The primary reason being cool. And you've talked about investments that are being made under the Inflation Reduction Act and the majority of them are being made in red states and red districts. Not because of some massive political calculations somebody made, but because that's where our industrial basis.

1:04:57.5 SG: So you, and you're already hearing this on arguments in Congress now with people telling the speaker, ah, don't necessarily come out in favour of rolling back the IRA 'cause it's good for my district. And so I don't think you're gonna have a congress that's gonna want to repeal all these benefits that are helping their own constituents. I don't think the cutoff your nose despite your face constituency is quite that big. And it's also important to remember that we're investing in renewables because renewables make cost sense as well. Even before the IRA during the previous Trump administration, fully 75% of all power generation that came online during those four years was renewable. That was pre IRA during the Trump administration. Why did that happen? Because things are cost effective. These projects make sense and so we're not going back from some of this green construction because it makes business sense.

1:05:58.3 SG: And so that's a real sort of an optimistic point of view. It's also true that Trump says he's all in and he's gonna unleash oil and gas and he has a few other verbs he likes to use, but he says he is gonna cut energy prices in half. He doesn't have the ability to do that. He claims that he's gonna increase US oil and gas production by multiples, two times, five times, depending on the day. Under either candidate no matter who wins, the US is gonna continue to be a really significant oil and gas producer. And producers are gonna make these decisions about how much to produce and where and when based on their own economics. 'cause that's how the world works and that's how it works no matter who wins. Trump's deregulatory instincts concern me. Barry brought up his instincts to sort of, or the possibility of enrolling back methane regulations.

1:06:54.3 SG: I worry about that. I also worry about things that the administration has the ability to do without Congress. Rolling back fuel efficiency standards for instance. Changing regulation that's established under current law is something that the administration can do. So I worry about slow walking IRA staff rather than the IRA disappearing entirely. So there's rhetoric and then there's reality. And the reality isn't quite as bad as the rhetoric, but there's one place where I am really worried. And that is in terms of us standing abroad and the US ability to lead the world in dealing with climate change. Coul talked about this earlier, US leadership matters. Do we wanna be in front of this issue, encouraging the world to be more optimistic, providing technologies, providing funding, or do we wanna be a laggard pariah country who dropped outta the Paris Agreement? And I'm sure that will happen again, should Trump win? And so I'm being a little political here, but I'm trying to also add some balance and some things that may not be quite as bad as you might think on their face.

1:08:02.9 KH: And I think it's just about time to go to audience questions. But I wanna squeeze in one last question for Sanjay because we are in the auto capital of the world here and the auto industry has a huge transition ongoing and we just heard over the past few months from some of the major US automakers that they are slowing down their transition to EVs. As you noted that's independent sort of in some ways of policy. And so I'm curious what that signifies. What that means for our ability to make climate progress and where you think we'll go from here.

1:08:44.0 SP: Really glad you brought that up because one thing that is really critical is at the end of the day, we should think about climate change as an economic issue. And oftentimes it's being led by ideologues on both sides, and that leads to that acrimony. But at the core, it's an economic issue. And the reason for the EV drop is not surprising to me because EVs on average still cost significantly more, even with the tax credits. And we had the first wave of buyers that wanted to adopt EVs, they bought them. Now we're down to families that are looking at the next family car, right? And if they have a choice between an SUV where all their kids fit in, and then an EV that is $10,000 more, what are they gonna choose, right? And so one thing, and I think that builds on Samantha's point, the economic aspect requires that we need to have nuance, that we need to be realistic and pragmatic.

1:09:34.6 SP: That also goes for the environmentalist groups and obviously the other side as well, that we need to make sure that we not only focus on climate as the most singular issue, but we look at it in the context of everything else. That means in the context of cost of living, of high inflation that people are going through every day. That means in the context of national security, of energy security for our country. And that means that we will need, for the foreseeable future, a significant amount of fossil fuels to make this transition. We cannot do it overnight, and it's not feasible. It's not desirable to do overnight because it will be too much of a shock to our industry and to our households. But there are really good signs. I mean, if we look at the latest data, in 2024, almost half of all the power generated in the US will come from renewables or nuclear. If you look at the latest, and coal is a very small amount now, but it will take time.

1:10:25.6 SP: And where do we go from here? As I said, I think obviously it will depend very highly on the election outcomes. I agree with Samantha. I don't think the IRA will be fully repealed, even if the Republicans win, let's say a trifecta, because a lot of the money's going to their districts. I think there will be a lot of rolling back of regulations and implementation of the RA if that happens. If we have, let's say a democratic presidency and a divided Congress, I think we'll see some room for compromise. And one room that I'm very optimistic about, one area, is a carbon border adjustment mechanism or carbon tariff. For those of you who don't know, the Europeans have decided to put a carbon border tax in their region.

1:11:05.4 SP: That means if you sell a product into the European market as an American company, you will have to pay a carbon price at the border. And that has spurred a lot of actions in the American side because now they're thinking maybe we should do something similar. And now we have two bills in Congress, one Republican and one Democrat that are looking at some form of carbon border tax in the US. And that's very rare to have a bipartisan approach for something that involves carbon pricing. And I'm actually very optimistic on that. We had a private round table on this last year with both Republicans and Democrats, and there's significant room for compromise. So I expect this to come up, especially in 2025 when the Trump tax cuts expire, and both parties seem to want to extend some of them. And for that, you need revenue. And where can you get revenue? Well, one relatively easy place would be some form of carbon price. Maybe it's taxed at the border. We already started with methane. It didn't really take much of opposition when we look at the methane fee. And so I'm optimistic that as we... As this transition unfolds and people see it's an economic problem, that there are ways that we can find paths forward.

1:12:14.4 KH: Thank you. And so we're gonna go to audience questions now. And I know there are also people watching online, some of whom have submitted questions. So we're gonna try to weave a couple of those in too, but first, can we take a few questions from the room?

1:12:28.0 Speaker 8: Sure. And can you... Everyone hear me? Yep. Okay. So there's a number of questions that have come in regarding the Chevron deference and the recent overturning of the deference by the Supreme Court. And so the gist of the questions are, you know, what will this new regulatory world look like in terms of administrative agency's ability to tackle climate policy?

1:12:54.8 SG: Yeah. I can start with that one and if anybody else wants to jump in, that is just fine. There were a number of cases that have been through the Supreme Court, not just that the case on Chevron deference. Where the Supreme Court has, it looks on its face as if they are giving Congress more power. The major questions doctrine that has now come forward. If this is a major question, you know, we think that Congress needs to do it to address it expressly or we don't think that we should necessarily defer to agency interpretations of laws that aren't perfectly clear. That's the Chevron deference doctrine. What the court has actually done is actually pulled more power back to the courts because who says what a major question is, or who says whether that law is unclear or not, to where we should defer or not defer to the agency interpretation. Well, that's the courts.

1:13:56.8 SG: And so this will make things more difficult, but it's not just the Chevron case, it's this laundry list of cases that have really overturned a lot of precedent. The major questions doctrine basically came out of thin air and have brought a lot of power back to the courts about what agencies can do. And so I think that will in many cases make it more difficult for regulation in general. However, that may not necessarily be all stopping environmental regulation. It will make other kinds of regulation difficult to do too. And it may make it more difficult for Republican priorities as well. So this doesn't just swing one way, it just brings more power back to the judiciary.

1:14:41.4 SP: Just to build on that, I think there's been a lot of panic about that among certain quarters. And I think what it definitely will do, building on your point, is it will increase uncertainty.

1:14:52.1 SG: Yeah.

1:14:52.5 SP: Because you will have a lot of these rules being challenged in court. And we don't know how the courts are gonna rule on this. So any rules that the agencies make will be more uncertain. And that is not good for anyone. Businesses hate uncertainty, investors hate uncertainty. But as Samantha said, this has some potential unpredictable outcomes. We don't know where this will play out. And we'll have to see how the courts rule can like... What it will really impact on the administrative state.

1:15:18.9 PR: Okay. If I might add, the uncertainty in this is just profound. It has now been 34 years since a Congress last reauthorized the Clean Air Act. In that time, we've had every combination of Republican or Democratic control you can have in a presidential and a two chamber legislative system. Congresses have passed on this issue. And so much of what we're dealing with, as in the Obama administration, as in the Trump administration, as in the Biden administration, is looking at that statute for ways to hook something on carbon, methane or other areas. And I do think one of the things that we're beginning to see, along with the important points that were raised around the major Supreme Court decisions relating to Chevron earlier with the West Virginia case, are more and more challenges by some industries or some environmental groups who've lost, but are gonna try something. Even in the case of Hydrofluorocarbons, this legislation is about as clean and clear a statute... Environmental statute, as I've seen in my career. 25 pages. You're seeing some efforts to attack that and actually win at lower court level because Congress did not write in the authorization of using QR tracking codes in dealing with smuggling.

1:16:38.4 PR: And when we get into the issue of how much specificity has to be in stature. This is an open box in a huge area of uncertainty. My point is not that all of these pieces are gonna prevent fall, but it's those very elements, Sanjay, that you mentioned, of uncertainty to actually function and govern, almost regardless of whom is president, is gonna take an extended period of trying to sort out and see what does and does not fly. But this is just a magnet for every constituency imaginable to try to file suit to see if you can hook it on a court.

1:17:15.4 KH: So the next set of questions we have is really looking at both government investment in climate conscious behaviors, and then private investment. So the first question is, you know, how do we reconcile the IRA's lack of economic sustainability with trying to get people to do the right thing in terms of climate? And then what role do companies, investors, and green bonds play in the scenario of climate policy?

1:17:45.9 SP: I can start. You're not gonna get people to do the right thing, just asking them to do so. You're gonna get people to do the right thing by having the right price signals, the right market signals, and the potential right incentives. And I know this is like the pie in the sky, like, oh, we just ask people to be green and they will do it. No, they will do it if the cars that are EVs are cheaper and better, and they will pick those. They will do it when they can save money by doing so, and or it becomes too expensive to use coal or something else. And so I think it's really important that the private sector and the public sector work together, the public sector by putting the right incentives in place through policy, and then the private sector acting on those incentives.

1:18:30.4 KH: Anyone else wanna take a stab? Then I'm gonna take a question from people who are watching online. And they're asking specifically about grid transmission. And, you know, in order to make a clean energy transition, we need the energy grid to be able to deliver all of that energy where it needs to go when the sun is shining here and not here. And this person asks, what can policy makers do to expedite grid improvements? And I know we spent a lot of time talking about permitting reform, but is there anything, well, you can expound upon that, but I'm also curious, are there other barriers beyond just permitting?

1:19:11.8 SG: I'll start. But I think you may have, I think others may have something to say. I don't wanna put words in their mouth. But linear infrastructure is particularly hard. And when we think about long distance transmission, you're thinking about lines that can go across multiple states. And so you have a lot of different jurisdictions that you need to get in line. And this is always particularly challenging. It's even worse when you have linear infrastructure that goes through a state that doesn't actually provide a ton of benefit from that state necessarily. There's a transmission line that's been up in the air forever, and I pay a lot of attention to it because it goes within a few miles of where I grew up in rural Illinois. It's called the Grain Belt Express line, and it's intended to take wind power from Kansas, across Missouri, across southern Illinois and then into the the East Coast grid in Indiana.

1:20:09.3 SG: And this thing has been a nightmare to get permitted. Nobody wants to look at it. There's been a lot of issues with getting landowners to agree with it. And it's been a real challenge, even though one could argue that this is probably in the greater benefit. There is one little piece of funky legislation about long distance transmission that I think actually could make a difference. And that is the federal government has a lot more power to permit and to take over the permitting of natural gas pipelines than it does for power lines, even though those power lines are much more important for our energy transition. And so something that I would be in favor of is increasing the federal authority to help permit these long distance transmission lines like they do natural gas lines, because these are gonna be really important for our transition.

1:21:02.9 SG: But I mean, a lot of landowners are like, I don't wanna look at that big ugly transmission line, even though it goes through my corn and bean field, which is exactly what it would go through near where I grew up. And these are difficult things to deal with. You have to find ways to make people in those communities whole. To make them feel like they're getting some benefits from the project. Otherwise they say, no.

1:21:24.8 PR: I don't have anything to add on this. I understand the technical knowledge to really understand the complexity of that issue is great.

1:21:34.9 SG: Yeah. It's rough.

1:21:36.1 PR: Yeah. And the financial requirements to make this kind of difference, I don't think we have answers yet.

1:21:45.9 SG: Yeah. And you have to, I mean, to have the financial wherewithal to stick it out, to build a project like this, to go through a process that takes so long. I know this particular line, this project has gone through a couple of different ownership structures because the original owners couldn't stick it out. They didn't have that financial ability to do it. So these things are particularly hard.

1:22:11.4 KH: And we're gonna have to cut it off there because we've got more great programming and I think we've exceeded our time. But thank you so much to our panelists for being here. And thank you to the audience. And looking forward to the rest of it.

1:22:24.3 SG: And thank you.

1:22:25.2 PR: Thank you. Yeah.

1:22:27.4 BR: Thank you.

[applause]

1:22:50.5 CW: Now that was really informative. So now we move on to the next phase of this afternoon's event, a conversation between Brookings Institution President Cecilia Rouse and McKnight Foundation President Tonya Allen. Cecilia and I have known each other now for more than a decade, going back to my time at Northwestern University. And she has been president of Brookings since the start of this year. Her distinguished career has included serving as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. She has also been an economics professor at Princeton University since 1992, where she also served as Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs from 2012 to 2021. And we know how much we love our fellow schools of public policy. And she is still serving on the faculty at Princeton.

1:23:44.3 CW: Ceci will be speaking with Tonya Allen, president of the McKnight Foundation, where she has been since 2021. We'll hear more about the foundation, which grants approximately $100 million annually in support of equitable communities, a clean energy economy and global food systems, among other important causes. Previously, she had served as president and CEO of the Skillman Foundation, and she co-founded Detroit Children's Fund and Detroit Parent Network. Welcome back to Michigan. So we will again have time for a few audience questions at the end of this discussion. So now I leave it to these two remarkable leaders.

1:24:27.2 Cecilia Rouse: Well, thank you Celeste, for that. A very generous introduction and welcome everyone. I am going to do one clarification, however, which is, we're gonna take the full 30 minutes, but I will say that there will be a reception afterwards. And so if you have questions for Tonya, you can ask her then. But thank you for being here. And Tonya, we're so thrilled that you're joining us for this event on climate policy. Many questions, so let's get to it. So you served as president of the Skillman Foundation from 2013 to 2021, where much of your work centered around education reform. Now as leader of the McKnight Foundation, you're working on advancing climate solutions in the Midwest. Could you share your personal journey into climate advocacy with us?

1:25:13.8 Tonya Allen: Sure. Well, thank you for having me. It's good to be back on Michigan's campus. So I'm gonna share a couple personal stories to get us to this broader question. So my grandfather was a coal miner, and when I would hear people talk about climate, they would villainize him or vilify him, right? And so part of what I have been thinking a lot about is that we have to, like respect the people who were doing what we needed to create the energy during that time. And the way that we respect them is the one, honor them and make sure that there will not be workers who have to die because of that, like my grandfather did by actually having clean jobs in front of them. The second thing is, is you noted, I led the Skillman Foundation where we worked on a lot of things, ed reform, economic policy, all place based in the city of Detroit and across the state of Michigan.

1:26:22.0 TA: And you have issues that are real for people every single day. And it was hard for me personally to say like these things that feel urgent and super present are not as... Didn't feel like there was even a competition to me, particularly because I think for a really long time, the climate movement really talked about the planet and never about people. It was a planetary crisis, and it's really a people crisis. It's so simple. If you don't take care of the earth, it'll be around. We just won't, right? Like that's as clear as it can be. So helping people understand like the implications of that gave me real urgency around doing this. And so as I think about this work in general, I think about it, really about how do we think about the policy environment, great success doing that work here in Michigan around education, but now how do we think about it on a global scale?

1:27:29.6 TA: And how do we think about how we make a difference here in the Midwest on this global issue? And I think that's a big part of the challenge is that most of us hear climate change and actually believe in climate change, even though some people won't do it publicly. We know that it exists, but how do you tackle a global issue? Or we talk about it even at these big broad national levels, which actually makes it feel like, is there anything I can do? And we'll get into all of the things we can do.

1:28:10.7 CR: Fabulous. So McKnight, the McKnight Foundation does work globally, but can you speak a little bit even more specifically about the foundation's work in Michigan with climate, and I'm particularly interested in how that intersects with racial justice and issues of racial equity.

1:28:27.0 TA: Great. Thank you for that question. So the McKnight Foundation has twin imperatives. Racial equity and climate action. I call them our headlines and our through lines, meaning that, like that's who we are. You know it through our headlines, but it has to be integrated in every piece of our work. Like we have to have integrity in everything that we do, that we're actually advancing our mission. And so our climate portfolio is in the Midwest and we see the Midwest, the upper Midwest, the seven states in upper Midwest as a global strategy. So let me tell you why I say that. So if you pulled the seven Midwest states out and put them somewhere in one of the oceans, we would actually be the fifth or sixth largest emitter in the world, just those seven states. And so if you think about like that emissions coming from these six places, that if you could actually reduce that, you actually got a global strategy. Like you are really contributing to how we reduce emissions and advance climate action.

1:29:42.4 TA: Now we can't stay in the place that this is a place that emits and we just wanna reduce emissions. Yes, we do, but we also have to be places where we actually innovate. That we're creating climate solutions. That we are investing in people and places and economic enabling environments that actually allow climate action to come out of it. And so we do that across the seven states. We also, our climate work for us is not about, you know, a lot of times you'll hear people talk about climate and it's like, well, you can't... You gotta focus on climate. We don't have time to work on equity. And I would argue there's always time to work on equity. It's always time to center people who are furthest away from power and to figure out solutions. And I think that if we do this well, that this could actually be the first equitable transition we make in the world. And so we really focus on making sure those people across these communities, be it in large metropolitans or micropolitans or rural communities, that they all have a opportunity to access and to show up in the work. And I'll give you two quick examples. Here in Michigan, in Ann Arbor at the Bryant neighborhood, I don't know if you all are familiar with it?

1:31:10.0 TA: We've been investing with partners here, and they're basically taking a neighborhood strategy, it's a neighborhood that doesn't have a lot of access to resources, however, it is a neighborhood that has great aspiration to be one of the first clean energy communities in the state of Michigan. And so we are helping them, they're basically doing all of the kinds of implementation into people's homes that do all of the things that the panel talked about, increase wealth, increase their health or reduce health challenges that are related to it, but helping them walk through it because this is a really difficult problem, even big businesses that are trying to use these tax incentives have to hire so many attorneys to actually get the work done, we're doing it with a building, I'll talk about that later, maybe. And it is excruciating to try and get these tax incentives, and so we cannot ignore that and we can't say we're going Justice40 and make sure that people of color or people who are in these low power... In communities where there's less power that they can access these resources, when there are so many hoops to jump or so many hopes to jump through and hurdles to jump over. So we have to fix that and resolve it, if we really wanna move climate action and McKnight is all about that.

1:32:30.4 CR: You raised so many interests, I'm gonna just skip right to actually the Justice40 goals, I think you should describe to... I'm not... I don't know if everybody who's listening, 'cause there are those online and here in the room understand what they are, but I'd love to hear what your assessment is on, so these are... You should explain what they are and then describe how well you think we're doing. So the Biden administration in terms of specifically for the Inflation Reduction Act and the IGA, which the last panel discussed, but it sounds like you're also thinking about it in terms of what you're doing more locally, which may not be tied to legislation, but just the difficulty of actually implementing some of these equity goals.

1:33:16.9 TA: Yeah, so in legislation, it basically makes the case that 40% of the resources should go into communities who are experiencing the most harm from climate, I know that's a wild idea right there, but we know that based on a lot of the EJ issues, we know about where we see large emitters locate it, they end up landing in places where people don't really have a say whether or not it exists, so Justice40 is really about saying to states and places that you have to get those resources into those communities and to be intentional about the practices, because a lot of times it's really, I would say, targeted universalism, right? It's a universal strategy, but how do you target it or take very specific strategies and approaches and make sure that these places actually benefit because we know when we normally do these projects, we go with a kind of like a high tide lifts all boats, and actually only the yachts are getting lifted, those little row boats are staying right where they're at.

1:34:23.5 TA: So what we're trying to do is figure out... So that's what the policy is about. And then I would say this, that they're even in that policy, there are tons of things that are around weatherization, and these are actually... There are more resources there, there are tax incentives, there are rebates, but as you know, the rebates are generally not ready, even I think in some of the taxation, even if you look at your... If you file your taxes, it's hard to even see where you can find the rebates to get them, so it's very difficult in general, to access it, and I think we gotta take that down, but I do think that there are ways that we can advance it. So the first is this, we have community development dollars that are moving all through this country in almost every community. We know that we got a housing crisis across this country where there's not affordable housing.

1:35:24.3 TA: Well, if we actually focus on the financing, making sure these resources get into those strategies, then you get the money on the ground, people can benefit from it without having to take such deep individual action. We can actually have a communal action that would benefit people of color and people that are in these low wealth communities, so I would say that... That's the stuff that we have to do better on. And what I have found is that... And Ceci and I were talking about this earlier, there are so much money that is moving, not only at the federal level, but even at the philanthropic level, and people are saying like, We gotta get the money on the ground and what I would argue is that the challenge for that is because we've only focused on policy.

1:36:15.0 TA: Now, I love policy, I know all you do too, otherwise you're in the wrong place, but we can't be caught flat-footed that when the policy and the resources actually get here, we can't execute it because we've never thought about or envisioned what that world is gonna look like, and I think at McKnight, what we're trying to do is make sure that we're targeting resources to actually make these things come to reality. So if it's creating a energy district system in low income neighborhoods, or helping a community center figure out how to re-finance and build the infrastructure, so that its heating bill, which is in a historic African-American community in Minneapolis, right, two or three blocks passed where George Floyd was murdered.

1:37:10.6 TA: They pay $30000 a month for a heating bill, so if we could help reduce that, then there are lots of ways, then they get to stop focusing on whether or not they got a wrench that someone said, or, and also these expenses that they can't afford and focus on serving the people in those neighborhoods. I said one last thing, but I'm terrible at enumeration. So here's really the last thing I would just say. I'll give you another example. In the city of Becker in Minnesota, it's a community that actually relied highly on coal, close down the coal plant, and now they actually have reorganized their money, their attention, their focus on attracting clean energy industry. It's now a place that actually has replaced all of those jobs and also replaced them at a livable wage, because I think one of the things that we often don't talk about is that clean jobs, sometimes they are good wages and sometimes you might do okay going to Burger King. And so we just have to be super clear about that. But they have not only transitioned in a just way, they are also now helping communities that were former places where they got extractive energy and actually transforming them into places where it's additive and regenerative energy.

1:38:43.2 CR: You raised a really important point and I'm gonna... Oftentimes, at least in my world in economics, we focus on the legislation. Policy schools are students, and a lot of us focus on the legislation, but even after legislation then you get to the administrative... What are the regulatory rules? So this is where we talk about Chevron. That is a place, especially with climate, that's been very important, but it is in general, and so for those of you policy students, I think it's so important here to be focused on that as well, and what are the levers we can work on there. But what, Tonya, what you're highlighting is, and then after that, we have to think about implementation, because just because the money's been made available, there are a lot of cities where they just don't have even the capacity to whether it's applying for the grant, if it's a grant that has to be issued. I remember with under Obama, when we had the Recovery Act, there was a lot of money for weatherization in particular that was going out to cities, and there were cities including Detroit that just... They were leaving money on the table.

1:39:44.8 CR: I think if you actually look, there are a lot of cities that are sending money back to the federal government every year, 'cause you just don't know how to take advantage of it. So it is a really important point that that is part of ensuring that the money that is available, is more equitable, it's not as sexy as thinking about the legislative part at the very beginning, but it's just this part for [1:40:04.4] ____ to the other end. Okay. Go ahead.

1:40:08.5 TA: Can I say one quick thing about that? I'd see the legislation as an opportunity for us to build muscle. These resources should help us as a country actually build the muscle to be able to do this work, which, one of the things we didn't even talk about, the panel didn't hit on, but I know they have lots of stories, is actually the supply chain. So we got to figure out like how you move, how do you build industries actually be able to move the product so that we can get to clean energy into sustainable practices. And so I would just offer that it's just important for us to make sure that we're building muscle, it's not just the largest climate action for this country, it's the largest climate policy in resources that has ever happened in the world, we cannot let this fail.

1:41:10.6 CR: I have two more questions. So I have 10 minutes. But these are good questions. Okay, in the last panel, it was noted that in the presidential debate, climate came up at the very end, and then the question was posed, Why aren't our candidates... Why in this election, are we not seeing more attention paid to climate, which we have even devoted an entire event. So my whole team, we came from DC to Ann Arbor to be with you, because we think that climate is one of the most important issues at stake in this election. And yet I think it was Barry who suggested that it's because it's almost a third rail of politics, and we've got to raise... We've got a very partisan and a very close election, and we know that this country has become more polarized. And so my question to you is, and this may be broader than climate, but how do we address the fact that climate remains such a partisan issue with 78% of Democrats prioritizing it versus 21% of Republicans. Can you help me understand this difference.

1:42:20.9 TA: I will try. So here's what I would say is this, the question that data is actually specifically asked to people who identify with a political party and they think they're asking them, Do you think government should fix this problem? And so that's the difference in what you see in those numbers, but 72% of Americans actually believe in climate change. Now, some of them might not call it climate change, they might call it extreme weather, or they might say something like, I couldn't tap that maple tree and get me maple syrup this year. So part of it is, is that I think we do a terrible job at narrating, like changing people on this issue is about changing the narrative that they're playing in their head so that when the facts come in, that they can actually connect it and have a coherent story, and we just do a terrible job at it.

1:43:15.8 TA: And I'll give you one quick example. I promise it is one quick example, My sister lives in Detroit about two or three years ago, there were huge floodings in Detroit, so much so that the Expressways were flooded, cars were covered. Her basement got flooded. She had just fixed the basement, so she just had it re-finished and so maybe she spent... I don't know, $40,000, $50,000 on it. Ruined, then she gets somebody to come over after this to get all of the water out, they put their equipment down there and three days later it floods again. So they started a little bit of work, lost equipment, etcetera, and so she was super frustrated and she was talking to me about this and I was like, Well, you know, this is climate change, this is because we don't have infrastructure to carry and hold all of these weather events that are happening. This is not about the city not doing their job based on infrastructure, it is really about the city not doing their job on climate change. And so she was shocked that this was the issue, and then I went to the papers all throughout Michigan that were talking about this to see if climate was ever mentioned. Never. Never.

1:44:40.7 TA: So we have to help people understand these issues, and I don't use the maple tapping for syrup in the maple tree. That's not just a joke. Literally, I've talked to people who are like, I can't get any maple out of the tree this year, and I'm like, Okay, you understand that's climate change. So helping them understand that if we don't act and that there are small ways to act, yes, we can have regulatory practice, yes, we can have incentives, and we can also be more proactive like the UK in terms of really pushing forward things and not just solely relying on innovation and technology, which I would argue is important, but it is not the only way that we can make change.

1:45:33.5 CR: Thank you. I'm sorry. Allergies. Okay, I kind of feel like you answered the question, kind of did not.

1:45:38.0 TA: Oh, really?

1:45:40.1 CR: Because at one level, you suggested this what... 72% of Americans voters, I'm not sure what the denominator was, or the population suggests understand that climate is real, but we seem to have a divide in, is it divide in terms of who should solve climate change or how should we address it? Because I still feel like... And okay, now I do have one more question after this, but I'm sort of curious, if 72% of Americans think it's a problem, then why aren't our candidates talking about it?

1:46:11.0 TA: Well, I think there's a difference between Americans and political parties, is what I would argue. And I would also argue that most political parties don't actually act in the interests of the people who vote in those parties, so I'm just saying... But I would just... I mean, I think the thing is, is that until we help people understand the issue, they will not make a demand of the politicians or the parties, and we have to talk to people where they're at. If I go and try and talk to a conservative group of people about why climate change is important to me, I'm likely to fail, right? They don't know me, they don't trust me, they might not even like me, but if someone in the church that they may go to comes and talks about it from a perspective of your responsibility is to steward the earth. One of the first things that God told you to do. There's a whole different conversation. So it's not about like, do I talk to them about climate change? It's about, do I talk to their values? And I don't think that we have done that, and I think if we talk to their values, they will put more demand and pressure on political parties to show up related to this, but I'm in agreement with the notion that we're gonna have to keep pushing forward regardless of the political parties.

1:47:52.8 CR: I like that as we... What's the through line? How do we bring this... How do we have conversations to bring the country together. So that brings me to my last question. So some students here today may wanna get involved in climate action, how can students find effective ways to contribute to the climate movement?

1:48:10.9 TA: Alright, whatever you decide to do in your life, make sure that climate is a part of it. And here's what I mean, if you decide... If you're working on health equity, you're working on health policy, climate change is influencing the health, so you got to bring it into your work. If you're a housing, you're working on housing and urban planning, it's in that if you're working on agricultural policy, it's in there. So one is, I think we have to all actually see ourselves as climate leaders regardless of our interests. So it doesn't matter if you're working on education, how does it show up? So I would say that's one, I think two, is that there are so many efforts that are happening, like even in your backyards here in Ann Arbor, all across the place, there are projects that would, could highly use your intellectual capacity and also your physical capacity, sometimes they just need people to show up. But there is an opportunity for analysis and data and research, and actually, even if you just went to some of these places and put a paper into AI and then you spit out a summary, that would be helpful for folks like me who are like, AI, what's that?

1:49:33.2 TA: So I think there are just so many things that you all can do related to that, and so I think those would be the two major things I would say, but the last thing I would say is that you all are so powerful, you are not letting go of this issue, I would say that I think the only reason we're really moving on this issue beyond economics and the possibility of destruction is because young people have pushed this issue with such passion because you really do understand what's going on in a way that is so much more acute than I think people who have been here and who might not have a seven generation kind of philosophy like the indigenous folks, so I would just argue, hold on to that issue and fight for this country, this world, this earth, like you wished we would have fought for you.

1:50:41.8 CR: Alright, okay, I think that's a great place for us to end.

[applause]

1:50:50.7 CR: So thank you so much Tonya.

1:50:52.8 TA: Thank you, Ceci.

1:50:53.0 CR: This was a fabulous conversation and thanks everyone who's here with us in the audience and to those of you who are online. If you'd like to continue the conversation then please join the panelists and me in an informal reception in the lobby from 7:00 to 7:30 and I've been told there will even be food. So I hope to see you there. Thank you again.

1:51:13.8 TA: Thank you.

[applause]