National Community Solar Partnership – Annual Summit 2022 (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video National Community Solar Partnership – Annual Summit 2022.

>>Jackie: Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining today's National Community Solar Partnership Annual Summit. I'm going to wait about 20 to 30 more seconds before we get started just to give everyone a chance to get logged in. All right, I think we're going to go ahead and get started. Once again, welcome everyone. Thank you for joining today's National Community Solar Partnership Annual Summit. My name is Jackie Petre, with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. I'm going to be running some of the technical stuff behind the scenes today. But before we get started, I want to go over a few quick housekeeping items for everyone.

Today, we're using Zoom for the virtual summit. You have a couple audio options. So, if at any point you're experiencing issues with your audio, you can change that by finding the mute or unmute button in the lower left-hand corner of your screen, clicking the up arrow and changing your settings there. This is also a reminder to all of our speakers to please mute yourselves when you're not presenting. If you are wanting to see all the speakers and the slides today, we recommend that you change your view from gallery to speaker. You can do that by navigating the top right corner of your screen. There should be a button that'll allow you to change your view.

If you have a question or comment, we have a chat box that we encourage everyone to utilize. Just to note that those chats are public. So, just be aware of what you're saying. We also are recording today's summit, and a recording will be made available after the presentation. Just a quick note that if you don't consent to having your audio or video recorded, please just make sure that you remain on mute with your video off for the duration of the presentation. With that, I'm going to hand things over to Anna Balzer. Anna is the Solar Community Engagement Coordinator with the National Community Solar Partnership. Anna?

>>Anna: Thank you, Jackie. Welcome, again, to the National Community Solar Partnership's Second Annual Summit. It is truly an honor to share this space today with so many champions of community solar and energy justice from across the country. Just to let you know, today we have participants from 49 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands with us. So, as we're getting started, I encourage you to jump in the chat and introduce yourself and your organization.

As Jackie mentioned, my name is Anna Balzer. Today, I have the privilege of serving as your guide through this summit. We are incredibly thankful that you elected to spend the next five hours on Zoom with us. So, we've developed an agenda that we expect to be highly engaging if very packed. So, we're going to start the day with a few welcome messages both from the Solar Energy Technologies Office Acting Director Garrett Nilsen and the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Kelly Speakes-Backman. We'll then ground the rest of the day in conversations and sessions developed with our data and modeling friends in mind about the new NCSP target and our pathway to reaching it.

After that, we're very excited to have remarks from Secretary Jennifer Granholm, my former governor, and the current Secretary of the Department of Energy, who's going to tee up a series of four dynamic roundtable discussions about the various initiatives that we have on the NCSP Pathway to Success. A theme that you're going to hear again and again today is that we are all in this together and we cannot reach this new target without you. We think that our agenda today really reflects the Partnership's vision of that collaboration across the industry. In these roundtable sessions, we are going to be hearing from over 20 NCSP partners and leaders in the community solar space, and their perspectives on how we will execute rapid community solar deployment that is rooted in equity and access.

We are also going to have several scheduled breaks throughout the day, but we do encourage you to take breaks as you need or as they come up. As Jackie mentioned, to minimize distractions and background noise, all participants in this meeting have been muted. But we encourage you to use the chat to engage with each other throughout the day. We are going to have several NCSP team members on standby to answer any questions that come up in the chat and provide links to the resources that we're chairing throughout the event. If you haven't already, I do encourage you to take a moment to introduce yourself in the chat with your name, your location, your organization, and perhaps something why you're excited to be here today. Just a reminder that the chat is intended to be a space to engage with and add value to the content of the sessions. So, please, just try to keep your messages relevant and appropriate.

Now, it is my pleasure to introduce the acting director of the Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office, Garrett Nilsen. Garrett joined the office in 2012 and has led both the manufacturing and competitiveness team and the soft-cost team. He has worked with businesses of all sizes, focusing on the development of innovative products and manufacturing technologies to help drive down the cost and increase the deployment of solar energy. Garrett has managed over 100 research and development projects covering all technology spaces in the office, and multiple technologies from projects he's managed are now actively used in the solar energy industry.

Garrett has a degree in physics from Union College in New York and a master's in solar energy engineering from Dalarna University in Sweden. When he's not hard at work supporting the incredible team at the Solar Energy Technologies Office, there's a good chance you can find him golfing. Garrett?

>>Garrett: Thank you for the very kind introduction. I'm really just thrilled for everyone to be here today. These kinds of events are not only a lot of fun, but they're just a great way to get to know the community and allow the community to get to know one another. So, as Anna mentioned, my name is Garrett Nilsen. I'm the acting director of the Solar Energy Technologies Office here at the U.S. Department of Energy. Solar Energy Technologies Office is part of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. It strives to reduce the cost of solar energy while making it accessible to all Americans. By doing this, we can create jobs, drive domestic industry, create a more secure, resilient grid, reduce America's carbon footprint, continue to lead the research worldwide in all of the renewable energy spaces, and much, much more.

Our office is known for its work funding research/development/demonstration of commercialization of photovoltaic, concentrated solar thermal power, and grid technologies. We also work to address factors that can help accelerate the deployment of solar in the U.S. in line with the very ambitious Biden Administration's decarbonization folks. Part of this is ensuring that non-hardware costs, aka soft costs, can be driven down. So, a soft cost comprise things like permitting, siting, zoning, environmental, workforce, access, and business model issues, and more.

Related to access, an important role the DOE can play is in the identification, incubation, and proliferation of new business models. This is particularly important for increasing energy access and the National Community Solar Partnership is a critical effort for our office in the access space. We are just thrilled to be working on this with all of you. We are very excited to see how far community solar has progressed. Some of you may remember the original partnership, which was launched well over five years ago, with just the ambitious goal of defining what community solar was. To look to where we are today is really something. Then, thinking about the future, I know myself and everyone else in our office is thrilled about the potential that community solar has to drive access in the U.S. to solar and spur greater generation in the domestic solar market.

I know you're not all here to hear me. So, with that context, I would like to pass the mic to Kelly Speakes-Backman, who is the principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy. Definitely a mouthful. In her role, Kelly leads and directs EERE's work focused on creating and sustaining American leadership and the transition to a clean global economy.

She oversees the planning and the execution of the organization's $2.8 billion Oroyo Research and Development Demonstration, deploying commercialization across energy efficiency and renewable energy and transportation technologies. Prior to joining the DOE, Kelly most recently served as the first CEO of the Energy Storage Association and has spent over 20 years working in the energy and environmental sector at public, NGO, and private sector entities. In 2019, Kelly was honored by winning a Cleanie Award as Woman of the Year. So, with that, I'll pass it over to Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Speakes-Backman.

>>Kelly: That is a mouthful. Thank you, Garrett. Really appreciate it. It is so fun to see all the names running through on the side there on the chat, and all the various organizations interested in community solar. So, thank you for joining us. Thank you for spending your day with us. There's a huge line up of folks to speak. So, I'll just be brief. I just wanted to say hello, and thank you, and lay out just a few of our priorities and why this is such an exciting time for us. The Biden Administration is really committed to achieving a decarbonized electric system by 2035 and a decarbonized whole economy by 2050.

Solar is the fastest-growing source of new electricity generation in the nation. It's grown from about 2.5 gigawatts in 2010 to 83 gigawatts now, more than 3 percent of the U.S. electricity supply. There's enough solar installed in the U.S. today to power more than 18 million American homes. The solar industry employs hundreds of thousands of Americans. Achieving these decarbonization goals that we have means that we're going to be able to deploy clean energy even faster, including deploying solar energy at three to four times the current rate if we're going to meet our goals.

So, in order to meet those goals, all communities have to be able to benefit from the clean energy transition, especially those who've been historically under-resourced and overburdened, and those who have been impacted by the nation's transition from fossil fuels. Right now, low- and moderate-income Americans are less likely to adopt solar than wealthier ones, perpetuating energy inequalities and decreasing adoption. Community solar specifically is a tool that can enable that greater access to solar for all, reducing energy burden, increasing resilience, creating jobs, and building community wealth.

Community solar allows everybody to share in the benefits of clean energy regardless of whether they're renters, homeowners who lack affordable financing options, or lack suitable roof conditions for solar panels. It's a form of energy generation where members subscribe to their portion of the solar array, and the solar array produces energy. As they do so, subscribers receive a portion of that revenue from the energy produced, typically as savings on their monthly electric bill. It's a critical factor for low-income and disadvantaged communities whose energy burden is three times higher than for non-low-income households.

Community solar's already growing pretty rapidly. It's grown by about 120 percent every year since 2010, more than doubling, on average, year over year. Projects are on the rise and span 39 states now and the District of Columbia. As of December 2020, last year, or a year ago last, there's a 3.2 gigawatts of community solar capacity in the U.S., enough to power the equivalent of about 600,000 households. Over one gigawatt of community solar capacity went into operation in 2020 alone.

We need to rapidly accelerate this though. It's got to play a pivotal role in increasing affordable solar access for all Americans. That's where this National Community Solar Partnership program comes in. It's pretty exciting. Launched in 2019 of September, and it aims to expand the access for affordable community solar to every American household. There is a network of over 800 members representing over 550 partner organizations that work together leveraging peer networks and technical assistance resources to overcome persistent barriers to expanding community solar access to underserved communities.

On October of 2021, we announced a new target for the partnership. That is to power the equivalent of 5 million households by 2025 – so, in 3 years – and create $1 billion in energy bill savings. This new NCSP target represents a new North Star for our community solar industry. It prioritizes equitable access to the meaningful benefits of clean energy transition. It's an opportunity for everyone in this virtual room we have here to put our capacity behind this historic effort, to ensure that our future energy system includes the benefits for all of us.

This new target also represents DOE's commitment to deliver meaningful benefits of clean energy to all Americans. It fits in so well with President Biden's Justice40 Initiative, which is where 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain federal investments, including investments in clean energy and energy efficiency flow to disadvantaged communities. This partnership developed its new target through extensive engagement with you all, community solar stakeholders, just as well with data collection and market modeling that was done in collaboration with our National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Our stakeholders informed us of the persistent barriers that we need to overcome to enable this equitable community solar deployment, including the need to build technical expertise and organizational capacity, the need to have supported policy and regulatory environments, access to project capital and other funding, customer acquisition and management pipelines, and consumer awareness education and protections. So, data collected by the Partnership shows that expanding community solar capacity leads to energy bill savings for American households. Right now, that average bill savings for community solar subscribers is about ten percent.

Feedback from our stakeholders, from you all, overwhelmingly indicated that that's not enough. We've got to go to 20 percent. We need bill savings to increase to 20 percent to allow community solar to provide the meaningful benefits to the people who need them best. That's on par with what rooftop solar customers save. So, why wouldn't we do that so that we can reach the same levels of savings for community solar subscribers?

To overcome these barriers and to get to the target of $1 billion in savings for 5 million households by 2025, we created this Pathway to Success, which is going to be discussed throughout the summit today. It's pretty exciting. Just to underscore, we cannot do this alone. We need everyone in this room and beyond to get to that 5 million households. This new target and the initiatives on the Pathway to Success were created by listening at the very outset to stakeholders that help us to empower the many folks that are in the room today. The represent an opportunity for the industry to align toward a common goal. Everybody here today has an important role to play in ensuring this just and equitable clean energy transition. If your organization is not yet supporting the new NCSP target, we encourage you to update your partner registration or complete the new partner registration. Sign on to this ambitious effort.

We're committed to working with stakeholders like you all to develop and refine and deploy these initiatives on the Pathway to Success. Today's event is going to highlight the many opportunities to get involved, to raise your hand, to commit to supporting this work. I encourage you to step up and be a clean energy champion. So, we appreciate you sharing your time with us today, and we look forward to continuing to collaborate with you on this new target. With that, I would like to introduce Nicole Steele, the Senior Advisor on Energy Justice and Workforce for the Solar Energy Technologies Office, and she's head of the National Community Solar Partnership to boot. She's going to kick off our first panel discussion, a deep dive into the market modeling that inspired these ambitious new goals. Nicole?

>>Nicole: Thanks so much Kelly. I really appreciate you joining us today and really setting that context on where the national community solar partnership sits within not only the Solar Energy Technologies Office but also EERE and DOE, generally, and really how it aligns so closely with the new administration's goals of decarbonizing our electricity sector by 2035 and full decarbonization by 2050. So, it is so important to set goals and really ensure that folks understand what those goals mean and how we actually are going to get there.

So, again, Kelly, really appreciate you joining us today. Thank you for those remarks. I also want to say a huge thanks to Garrett for also joining us today, and Anna. A major shoutout to Anna who will be taking you through the sessions as your guide. I also would be remiss if I didn't give a huge shoutout to the whole National Community Solar Partnership team, both at the Department of Energy and at the National Renewable Energy Lab, plus Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. So, we'll do more thanks as we move through the agenda today.

So, again, my name is Nicole Steele. I joined the Department of Energy exactly one year ago today. So, I'm very excited to be capping off that year anniversary with this National Summit to unveil the Pathway to Success to meet the goal of powering an equivalent of 5 million households with community solar with $1 billion in savings by 2025. We cannot do that alone. Like Kelly said, we've spent the past year really listening to our stakeholders and understanding what the major challenges and barriers are. That is how we designed the Pathway to Success and really spent a lot of time modeling and collecting data.

So, we're going to kick off this first session today on how we got to the goal and how we look at some aerial planning with the Pathway initiatives and why it is so important to hold ourselves accountable through tracking and storytelling through data, and commitments not only that we sort of announce but ensure that there's opportunity for everyone to be able to commit to not only the whole goal but what is their role within that goal. So, I am really pleased to be able to introduce our panel today. They all have superpowers on Geeking Out. We've spent a lot of time over the past year geeking out on both the NCSP Pathway and new target, like I described earlier.

So, first, I get to introduce David Feldman. He has 15 years of experience in the clean energy and financial sectors. He currently is a senior financial analyst at NREL, helping the organization carry out a wide range of analytical activities related to financial policy and market developments in the solar industry. David has published and presented widely on topics related to renewable energy project finance, PV system and component modeling, PV supply chain analysis, innovative financial models, and solar market development. Dave's superpower really is the fact that he really embodies Zen and is never rattled with deadlines or pushing the limit around numbers and goals and really has been a lot of fun to work with in determining both the goal and the Pathway to Success.

Next is Jenny Heeter. Jenny is a senior energy analyst at NREL as well. She has spent more than 12 years at NREL and is currently focusing on equitable solar deployment and community solar deployment and cost while also serving on detail assignment with the Department of Energy's Office of Economic Impact and Diversity to support implementation of President Biden's Justice40 Executive Order. Before coming to NREL, she was an analyst with the Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Council, focusing on energy efficiency and bring power programs. Jenny has a superpower for actually being famous for the headshot picture on this slide. She is signing a community solar panel, her community solar panel, way back in 2014 with her son. So, this picture has been used all over the internet since 2014, because who can deny community solar and babies.

Then last but not least, I want to make sure that I also introduce Ammar Qusaibaty. Ammar supports the CDOE Soft Cost Team and also manages the Catalyst NLG Prize, the Orange Button Data, and then projects with both NREL and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Prior to joining CDOE, he worked as an investment officer for a boutique, a $100-million venture capital investment firm, and served on a number of boards for startups. Ammar co-established the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, which is a non-profit organization in Washington, D.C. focused on information and security, growing the staff from 3 to 15, and later serving on a board member between 2004 and 2009. He's been recognized for many awards throughout his career and dedication to DOE. Really, Ammar's superpower in this conversation is his willingness to always think outside of the box and push the limits. I love the fact that he was constantly consulting the oracle in our conversations over the past handful of months. So, without further ado, let's pull up the next slide and really dive into the goal and the Pathway to Success.

So, I'm going to give a little bit of an overview of the elements on the Pathway, and then we're going to sort of dive in on what the market looks like today, how we got here, and what we need our partners to do. So, we've talked a lot about this goal, 5 million households and $1 billion in savings by 2025. A few things that I think are important to note as part of this conversation in that the billion dollars in savings really is a nod to increasing energy bill reduction or energy savings to 20 percent as a community solar subscription. So, the average community solar subscription today is at about ten percent. So, that is not an insignificant increase, but what it does is bring it more at parity with what the benefits of rooftop solar looks like.

It also is a 700 percent increase since December 2020. At the end of 2020, there as approximately three gigawatts of community solar deployed in the U.S. In order to power 5 million households, we need to develop approximately 20 gigawatts of community solar over the next 4 years. It is not a goal that is for the faint of heart, but it's absolutely doable through this Pathway to Success. The other thing that I would love to mention is that we really do have the lens of ensuring that meaningful benefits such as resiliency, job opportunities, and community ownership is really woven in as a lens to this conversation.

Then, just quickly, the items on the Pathway to Success include the roles of states and supporting state engagement and ensuring that there's opportunity to both expand and open new state markets, access to capital, and ensure that there's affordable access to capital for all types of community solar deployment, particularly for those systems that are serving low- to moderate-income households or are community owned and developed by community-based organizations.  Customer engagement, really ensuring that the process for acquisition and management, particularly, again, for low- to moderate-income households is accessible. Then hearts and minds. How do we talk about community solar? Who are we talking to community solar about? What is community solar and why should we care?

Then, the other end of this arrow is technical expertise and capacity building and ensuring that that is the glue to support the success of all of these different barriers. So, let's jump in and talk about them. So, as Kelly mentioned, the Biden Administration's goal is 100 percent clean electricity by 2035, a full decarbonization by 2050. The Solar Futures Study that CDOE put out over the summer says that about 40 percent of generation could be solar by 2035 and could be up to 45 percent by 2050. So, my first question for this group is, "How did we get here? Where is the market today?" I'm going to direct that first question to Jenny. Take it away, Jenny.

>>Jenny: Yeah, thanks Nicole. Yeah, I really appreciate everybody's comments on the aspirations of this program and wanted to ground folks in where we are today in terms of market deployment. We actually just finished some preliminary numbers for the end of 2021, which put us at about 5.3 gigawatts of deployment across the country. For some context, I was just looking at when NREL started tracking projects in depth, in 2018. At that time, we were at less than 100 megawatts of capacity across the country.

So, we've grown from 100 megawatts to 5.3 gigawatts over the last 5 years. In 2018, we had less than 100 projects across the country. Now we have 100 projects in a number of different states. Now, we have over 2,000 projects that we're tracking across the country. So, we are scaling. The market is definitely scaling, but we also have a long way to go.

One thing that I wanted to mention, in particular, is where we're at with deployment of community solar that is serving low- and moderate-income subscribers. This is something that we've just started tracking recently, and we look at what share of projects are dedicated to low- and moderate-income subscribers, either through a mandate or through some additional incentives that the utility or state may have. When we look at that capacity, it's at about 65 megawatts across the country in about 100 projects. This is growing as well.

Just earlier, about a year ago, we were only at about 23 megawatts. So, up to 65 megawatts, but still a long way to go if we really want community solar to be serving folks that may be in disadvantaged communities or underserved communities or just may not have access to other types of solar products. So, that's my big takeaway is we're growing. The market is growing fast, but we have a long way to go and a long way to bring access to folks who may not have access to solar products otherwise.

>>Nicole: Yeah, I really appreciate that context setting and really where we are today. It's exciting to sort of think about the opportunities that lie ahead and how we sort of envision that. So, David, I want to direct this next question to you to talk a little bit about the importance of goal-setting and tracking and modeling before we dive into the drivers.

>>David: There, Nicole. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to quantify what we need to do to get there in order to set the proper things in place, market drivers, whether it's both from the private sector or from the public sector in order to achieve these things. I think when the sunshine goal was announced in 2010, I think people didn't think it was possible, sort of thought it was pie in the sky.

But by just sort of having those number – having something to benchmark against, being able to quantify, "Okay, having an hour a watt means that we have to get modules down to this, an efficiency of that," I think really has been attributed as a large driver to actually getting those goals accomplished. So, I think we have – as Jenny said, it's a growing market. It's a young market. So, we have a bit of data and we're getting more data, but I think having that, being able to have more data will give us the opportunity to really see where there are opportunities and where there are challenges, yeah, will be important.

>>Nicole: Yeah. I really appreciate that sentiment, Dave. I think the next question I'm going to ask is really along those lines and really why we need partners for better data and, "Why is it so important that the folks on the call today are engaged in helping supply that data and understand why the importance of accountability, transparency, and timelines is an integral part of this process?" So, Ammar, can you sort of speak to that and why partners are necessary for success?

>>Ammar: Yes, absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. As you know, Nicole, we start looking at the community solar at the Solar Technology Office, I think, a couple years after the Colorado Community Solar Gardens Act in 2010. We are all lucky because we have Dave on the call today. He worked on a paper around 2013 with some of our colleagues in the office, 2013, 2014, and NREL published that paper in 2015. It was titled "Chair Solar". If you look at the analysis, I think Dave's analysis sort of projected in 2020 that we will get to 5 gigawatts, at the minimum threshold, and to 10 gigawatts, that's sort of the range for shared solar or community solar as a driver.

Now we got to 5 gigawatts by 2021. Almost there. So, we should trust whatever Dave comes up with, some projections of the future. But what's really – we certainly had a lot of programs since 2015. A lot of people I've noticed joined the Solar Ink Community prize competition. We wanted to go after new business models. But what's unique, I think, about this particular National Community Solar Partnership version is really that you have these what I consider key elements. The four Ts I call them. So, you have a target. We said, "Okay, we have a target," which is the 5 million equivalent households that we want to get by 2025. So, that's another T, have a timeline. But what's critical about the way we're thinking about this program, unlike other programs perhaps that we have done in the past, is really thinking about the togetherness and the transparency.

We recognize that this goal and this timeline is really audacious and that we can't do it alone. The federal government cannot do it by themselves. The state and local governments cannot do it alone. Cities and counties cannot really do it alone. Utilities, developers cannot do it alone. So, we need all of us to work together. This is the type of challenge that is really excited because it is one of these problems that you know that you can't solve alone. In order to solve it together, we need to be accountable for each other.

So, the usual accountability, it's a really, I think – it's not about data only. It's a cornerstone for success because we will face lots of obstacles going forward, lots of problems to solve. I love problems and we're not getting there. But unless we know what these problems are and we are collaborating and solving them, there's no way to solve them together. So, this idea of having mutual accountability for results and being able to have this transparency, data helps to have transparency. We talked about having a score card for all of us to say, "Okay, are we getting really to the gigawatts that we want to deploy on the grid within the next couple of years?"

If you think about sort of back of the envelope, from 5 gigawatts to 20 gigawatts in 4 years and total capacity, you're talking about tripling the capacity that we have in half of the time. It took us almost eight years to get from – if you think about the Colorado community solar garden, that's sort of the catalyst law that sort of started a lot of the momentum with the community solar sort of concept. It took about eight years to get to five gigawatts. So, we want to triple that in half of the time. So, it's a tremendous challenge. Without having that transparency and sharing data, we cannot get there.

>>Nicole: Yeah, thank you so much, Ammar, for really highlighting the fact that there's just so many elements to sort of diving into the data collection. I think part of it is, you know, we have close to 850 members of the National Community Solar Partnership today, and we have about that many people registered to participate in today's events. So, we need to leverage everyone that's on this call today, everyone who is an NCSP member today, everyone who becomes an NCSP member today to really ensure that we're collecting their successes and their failures to really be able to tell the story of community solar and know whether or not the work that we are doing is working or if we need to make adjustments and sort of shift on how we're approaching. So, the data really is ensuring that we're able to solve these problems.

So, let's go to the next slide and really dive much deeper into the drivers of the Pathway to Success and how do we bring this capacity online earlier. So, I'm going to direct this question really to Dave in why these drivers, specifically, and really how do we scale. So, how do we use these drivers to scale and how do these – so how do these levers or drivers really impact the scalability of community solar?

>>David: Sure, yeah. I'm happy to. So, when we think about where community solar is coming from, a lot of it is state programs. That's where a lot of those states have a high percentage of the community solar deployment thus far. Those states that have – the programs that have caps still play an important role but are, by nature, sort of in some ways inhibited. There's community solar in other areas, other states, other locations, but it's more challenging. In those locations, a lot of times it's the utility providing that push in conjunction, obviously, with the private market and the importance of driving that. That's where sort of hearts and minds come into play. Sorry. Nicole, do you want me to talk about the – well, you've sort of talked about the top row. Do you want me to talk about the left side?

>>Nicole: Let's really dive into the different levers, the drivers of what's going to impact those different Pathway to Success elements.

>>David: Sure, sure. So, yeah. So, I mean – right. So, first, I mean, first, getting utilities to embrace this concept and realize all the benefits that it brings to them and their subscribers, their customers, can really drive to have a good deployment. We're seeing that in Florida right now with significant community solar deployment happening there. I think when I looked at Jenny's numbers, and I think there was something like 1.6 gigawatts as of mid-December of community solar installed in 2021. I think over a gigawatt of that came from Florida. So, that's really utility driven.

That's going to come from a bunch of factors. I mean, but we can help. Access to technical expertise and capacity building, that's going to – I think we can have a role there and help with the drivers there. Also, just changing the hearts and mind. So, getting consumers aware, starting campaigns and things like that will help that.

Also, Ammar mentioned this, right. We're trying to triple or quadruple what we have in half the time. We're going to have to accelerate the timelines. So, that's going to be an important part. We hear this all the time. There are community solar projects, but they're getting held up for various reasons. So, really accelerating the timeline is going to be important in hitting those targets. That's, again, technical expertise is going to be important. Access to capital has been an inhibitor. So, this thing that we can do to drive those. Then, again, hearts and minds, and things like that.

There's also just, you know, price elasticity. If we made things cheaper, more people will want it. It's basic economics. Even it's as simple as you make things cheaper and more people want it, but also there's certain projects that are sort of go/no-go. So, just sort of getting it under that threshold.

So, there's a lot of things that we can do to reduce cost, and that includes access to cheaper capital. But there are also just better customer acquisition, lowering some of the soft cost associated with that, and some of the interconnection cost. I think there's a role there, and by reducing the cost, we can really allow for there to be cheaper products and therefore, more demand. So, we're going to have to also get those states that are not active right now ramped up. I mean there are active states right now, but we need to really get the states that have not necessarily ramped up yet on board in a short amount of time because it's not as viable if we're just sort of relying on the states that have driven the market thus far. They have their own challenges that they're going to have to face.

I think it's going to be – and all the work that's happening here with over 25 states participating, that's going to be play an important role. It's not going to come from three states. It's going to come from dozens. We're really going to have to get that participation up either by capturing a larger share of the distributed market or by just growing the whole market as a whole in total because as the Principal Assistant Secretary said in the beginning, we're talking about the – the President's goals are very, very ambitious of decarbonizing the grid and therefore – it's 15 years but we have to start now. So, we're really talking about significant – like I think she said tripling the amount of installations that are happening everywhere. We want community solar to be a very big part of that tripling. I say there's a lot of benefits there. So, again, getting some of those non-active states ramped up quickly.

Then just, also, getting those active states more – just simply sort of installing what they have been installing is, unfortunately, not going to get us there. We have to ramp those states up, too. As well as they've done, it's great. It's been – we're going to have to kick into another gear. There are a lot of ways we can do that. Is that helpful, Nicole? I'm happy to go into more. I thought I talked too much.

>>Nicole: Perfect. No, no, no. Honestly, from my perspective, David, I really appreciate that sort of context setting of when we dove into the – when we started having the conversations of like, "What is the theory of change around these barriers that the stakeholders have identified as being sort of the core issues or challenges in additional community solar deployment?" But then we had to really dive in and figure out what the levers are. So, really being able to clearly articulate the fact that we need to engage utilities, that we need to accelerate timelines, that we need to reduce costs, we need to open up new states, and we need to expand existing state markets. All are sort of gluing those axes together and really helping better define this Pathway to Success and track and really – and adjust, too.

We have about 12 minutes left to this session. So, I am actually going to move on to the next slide. I want to give Jenny Heeter an opportunity to really talk about the Justice40 Initiative and how that is woven into the National Community Solar Partnership, and how sort of the metric tracking of Justice40 is such an important element to ensure that 40 percent of benefits are flowing to disadvantaged communities. So, Jenny, take it away.

>>Jenny: Thanks, Nicole. Yeah, I think Nicole, in my introduction, mentioned that I'm serving on a detail assignment with the Department of Energy right now to help implement the Justice40 Initiative. So, when we talk about, "What is Justice40; what is Energy Justice," I wanted to spend some time in this session kind of reviewing that and how NCSP fits in. So, the Justice40 Initiative was passed by Executive Order about a year ago. It is focused on the whole of government. So, this is not just NCSP. It's not just CDOE or DOE. It's across all of the federal government.

It is looking at sending 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain federal investments to disadvantaged communities. So, the government is looking at each of these columns here, on the left, and how to define them and what that means. So, when we talk about benefits, when we're looking at NCSP, what kinds of benefits does NCSP provide or give to communities? When we think about this in terms of the partnership, we think about direct benefits like engaging stakeholders, capacity building, through providing technical assistance, through running collaboratives and peer networking. All of those things are direct things that NCSP is engaged in.

But there are also a number of indirect benefits that will come as a result of developments by partners, by everybody on this summit today. By developing projects, we see greenhouse gas reductions. We see jobs created. We see improvements in air quality, reduction in energy burden. All of these things associated with projects that NCSP plays a tiny, little sliver of a role in. But as I think Ammar said earlier, the federal government is not going to run the whole market, is not going to create every single project out there. We really rely on the private sector and utilities and NGOs to move this market. So, direct benefits and indirect benefits coming through the NCSP.

We also want to talk about, through the Justice40 Initiative, what are the investments that quality or that are required to send 40 percent of benefits to disadvantaged communities. NCSP was actually flagged as a pilot program under the Justice40 Initiative meaning that we got a head start in figuring out how does Justice40 intersect with the program. That means that really engaging over the last summer and the last year communities to understand what the barriers are, what the stakeholder engagement plan should be, things like that.

Then lastly, we're looking at what are disadvantaged communities. So, in the community solar market, I would say there's been a focus on low- and moderate-income subscribers. That's sort of the terminology and the framing that most states have used when we talk about opening up access to community solar subscriptions. Justice40 uses the terminology of disadvantaged communities. Disadvantaged communities can mean lots of things. Income is one component, but other components are things like are they flagged as an environmental justice community, have they had sort of energy transitions happen in the past like closures of coal plants or natural gas facilities that are impacting the community, do they have higher energy burden than other communities around them. So, disadvantaged communities means slightly different thing from just low- and moderate-income but certainly, there is some overlap.

So, what does this mean for NCSP? One of the things that I like to think about when I think about Justice40 for NCSP is that we need a better understanding of how NCSP is reaching disadvantaged communities. That's been part of our work in terms of asking folks to do things like update your profile and mobilize so we can understand, for everybody on this call, where are you located, and what projects are developing, and where are those projects located so that we can really get a handle on how the benefits of the program are going to disadvantaged communities and the many different ways. So, we will be focusing on this going forward and asking for more data and engaging different types of partners. It's really exciting to see this transition from just focusing on market growth to focusing on where is that growth coming from and who will that growth benefit.

>>Nicole: Really appreciate that overview, Jenny. You said something the other day where it was like NCSP has seen big changes over the past year. We all know that there will be big changes moving forward. So, I want to take the last few minutes to sort of talk a little bit about, "What do you see?" Thinking big, thinking outside of the box, where do you see big changes happening in NCSP and community solar more broadly?

>>Jenny: Yeah, I can take it first. So, to me, the big changes really are on this equity piece and how do we use community solar as a tool to increase energy equity and energy justice across the country. We have, as I mentioned earlier, been tracking about 65 megawatts of projects serving low- and moderate-income subscribers. But we know there's a lot in the pipeline that has not come online yet and there are a lot of barriers there to making sure that capacity comes online quickly and can even ramp up after that. So, I'm really excited about the equity piece. I think that's really exciting to think about. We're just starting that. "What will that look like five years from now," I think is really interesting and existing.

>>Nicole: So, Ammar, consulting your oracle, what would you see happening over the next four of five years in community solar and NCSP?

>>Ammar: I would echo what Jenny was talking about. The equity piece is really critical. But I really – if you want to push the paradigm in terms of business models, I think we really need to rethink this whole credit score qualifying for subscription. I think we just – we don't need any qualifiers for subscriptions. Let's think about the business model in different ways. I think as Jenny was saying, community solar, as a model, really has a lot of strength to it. Right?

If we want everyone to save 20 percent as subscribers, there's always – people experimented with these ideas of this model across subsidization, in which some people were happy with 5 percent or 10 percent because they know their neighbors who happen to be low income, they can get 25 percent sort of cost savings. I feel like the model itself really – there's a lot of creativity out there and we should push that creativity forward and maybe get to David was saying. The economies of scale are there. If we can work on the community scale projects to become at the almost closer to grid-scale kind of economics, you're getting to $1.00 per watt, you can completely change the game. So, I would like to see no credit scores at all and no qualifiers for subscribers.

Let it be like you're subscribing to Amazon Prime or Netflix so it's really easy. The customer experience is really easy and simple. There is enough people who want to subscribe because this saves them money, and people are enjoying the experience instead of trying to really complicate it. The mechanism of customer acquisition and retention in an old model is you have to get the FICO scores for everyone in order to make sure that, for the next 20 years, they're going to be subscribers to this one project. That would be my predictions and hopes for the next year.

>>Nicole: I love the outside-of-the-box business model thinking. How do we not only create the business model but create the right environments that support those business models? Really, that's the whole point of the Pathway to Success and all of the stakeholders here today. So, David, consulting your crystal ball, what would you see happening with NCSP and community solar over the next three to four years?

>>David: Yeah. No, I mean I think Jenny and Ammar said it right. I think there's a lot of great ideas out there. We're seeing some of those things happen. We're seeing more LMI participation in places. We're seeing higher residential customer participation in other places. It's not going to be a one-size-fits-all because we have a bunch of different markets, but there are a bunch of models that I think we can all learn from. So, I see a lot more utility participation and more convincing that this is a business model that also works for them and that there are benefits to them to sort of pushing this. The things that Ammar was talking about, opt-out strategies that would significantly reduce customer acquisition and ways that would also make financiers more comfortable with these type of things.

So, I think there's a lot of opportunity there. Just sort of I think we're seeing this in the state legislatures and in the state regulatory bodies. There's just a lot of activity happening here. So, we're not going to – I was saying this, unfortunately, we're not going to have to – we can't just look at three states. We're going to have to start looking at 25 states or hopefully 50 states. So, those are good things.

>>Nicole: I think that's a perfect way to end this session. So, I really want to say a huge thank you to Ammar, Jenny, and David for being willing to come on and talk mostly without slides and really dive into the importance of the goal and the Pathway to Success that we will be talking about in our sessions. We'll dive deeper into those different topics later on this afternoon. So, thanks again, and thanks for all NCSP members who are joining us today. We have a really exciting agenda moving forward. So, I'm going to hand it back over to Anna Balzer to talk about what's next. So, thanks, again. Take it away, Anna.

>>Anna: Thank you, Nicole. Thank you, again, to all the participants of the Geeking Out Session for grounding our day in some really rich conversation about the importance of goal-setting and modeling. At this point, we are going to head into our first break of the day. This is going to be a short, five-minute bio break. So, we will be back at 12:05 P.M. Eastern time. During this break, for those that want to stick around, we're going to have a slide show of some community solar and other resources and events shared from our partners rolling for you. One of our NCSP team members will drop all the links to these resources in the chat, and we encourage you to check them out. So, with that, enjoy your five-minute break, and we will see you back at 12:05 for our keynote address.

>>Anna Balzer: Alright. Welcome back from break. Hope everyone was able to get in a stretch or a coffee refresh during that break. Just as a reminder, Robin has been dropping in the links to these resources in the chat and we really encourage you to check them out when you get the chance. We will also be sending them in a follow up e-mail, so, if you don't get the chance to look at them today, you will have access again.

So, moving right along with today's agenda, I am now going to hand it back to Nicole Steele, who will introduce our keynote address. Nicole?

>>Nicole Steele: Thanks, Anna. It is absolutely my honor to be able to introduce our keynote speaker for today's NCSP event. I don't think she necessarily needs an introduction, but wanna really give her the credit that she deserves. And so, Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who is essentially my boss, was sworn in as the 16th Secretary of Energy on February 25th, 2021, becoming just the second woman to lead the U.S. Department of Energy.

And so, she's leading DoE's efforts in helping America achieve President Biden's goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 by advancing cutting edge clean energy technologies, creating millions of good paying union clean energy jobs and building an equitable clean energy future. Secretary Granholm will also oversee DoE's core missions of promoting American leadership and scientific discovery, maintaining the nuclear deterrent and reducing nuclear danger and remediating the environmental harms caused by legacy Defense programs.

Prior to her nomination as Secretary of Energy, Secretary Granholm was the first woman elected Governor of Michigan, serving two terms, from 2003 to 2011. I think it is absolutely appropriate to have Secretary Granholm kick off the rest of the day and be really our keynote as we dive into a discussion around states as a governor herself, and the rest of the Pathway to Success.

So, with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Secretary Granholm.

>>Jennifer Granholm: Thank you so much, Nicole, and hello, everybody. I am really thrilled to take part in this DoE National Community Solar Partnership Annual Summit for the very first time. And even more than that, I'm really floored to see that there are well over, what, 500 of you joining us today? And we really do need every one of you to help us reach these really big goals for community solar, and we need to get moving.

So, think about this. Last year, natural disasters cost the country $145,000,000,000.00—145,000,000,000. In the 1980s, we spent about 18,000,000,000 a year cleaning up after extreme weather events. Wow! So, there's a simple reason why, of course, that skyrocketing growth is happening, and that's climate change. And it's making these disasters bigger, it's making them more destructive, it's making them more frequent. And the only way to get out from under that, the only way is to build out clean energy, as much and as fast as we possibly can. And, of course, community solar has an essential role in that.

So, as you know, not everybody can put solar panels on their roof. Some folks just don't even have the option, whether they rent or they live in a big apartment building or they, you know, they just can't afford it. And, you know, too many of those folks are in lower income communities and communities of color.

But you know what? They don't have to be left out. And we're gonna make sure that they won't be. With community solar, we can give them access to clean and cheap solar energy all at the same time—cheap and clean and solar. We can lower their energy bills by up to 20 percent, we can create good paying union jobs in their communities, we can give them greater opportunities to build wealth.

And that's why, last October, we set this ambitious new goal for the National Community Solar Partnership. We wanna add enough capacity to power the equivalent of 5,000,000 households by 2025—and of course, generate $1,000,000,000.00 in energy savings for community solar subscribers. That is how we build a more equitable future, powered by clean energy.

I actually caught a glimpse of it myself just last month, I visited the Gar Creek Solar Project in Illinois. And when that project is up and running, over 800 low and moderate income households in Northern Illinois, just outside Chicago or in Chicago, too, will be powered by community solar. It's gonna save each of them a projected average of about $400.00 a year on utility bills. And even better, this project is employing about 45 union workers, with starting pay at $20.00 an hour plus benefits. Just a two-week training program is all they have to undergo, and then these union workers are able to acquire the skills necessary for employment at community solar projects all across the country, delivering more clean energy and more big savings to households in need.

So, we want more projects like Gar Creek—far more, in every state across the country—and we need your help to make it happen. Already, the response to our new 2025 goal has been phenomenal. Not only has our partnership grown from 600 to 800 members in just the past few months, I'm so pleased to announce that the Coalition for Community Solar Access has committed to deploying 20 gigawatts—20 gigawatts of community solar by 2025. So, you've given us all the confidence in the world that we can hit our goal, and this Summit is all about laying out how we'll hit that goal.

So, as you've heard, we've identified the five biggest barriers to community solar deployment. First, we need to streamline customer acquisition and customer management. And second, we need to broaden our messaging and make sure that we're communicating the benefits of community solar, especially for lower and middle income communities. Third, we need to build expertise and we need to improve knowledge sharing, which is why we released our Solar Power in Your Community Guidebook, which of course, is to help local governments increase solar deployment, and it's also why the partnership is gonna invest $2,000,000.00 in its technical assistance program. And then fourth, we need to improve equitable access to capital. Which is why I'm so pleased to share now that we're developing a new Credit Ready Solar Initiative with the specific goal of making it easier for small developers and community owned projects to get financing. And then we will build a pipeline of projects and connect the right folks to the right funds that can move those projects quickly off the ground.

And then finally, fifth, we need to support programs at the state level, which is why we're launching the States Collaborative, which is gonna develop best practices and policy tools that state governments can adopt to speed community solar deployment. I know, as a former government myself, the important role that state governments are playing in driving energy trends, and I'm thrilled to say that we already have nearly half of the states interested and engaged.

The panel discussion up next is gonna dive into the challenges that this group faces and the kind of ideas that are gonna flow once we convene them. And then later on, you're gonna hear more about all the initiatives that we are developing to address each of these five barriers. Each one of these initiatives is gonna get us that much closer to our shared goal for 2025, and that means that each one of them is gonna help us deliver lower energy bills for families with high energy burdens and deliver, by the way, good paying jobs and greater wealth for communities in need and cleaner air for all, and a better shot at overcoming climate change for the planet. It's a quintuple win. [laughter] So, we've got the game plan, and with all of you on our side, I know we have the talent and we have the expertise and we've got the gumption to get this done.

So, I hope that by the time this Summit concludes, that you are eager to dig in and make it happen. So, with that, it's my pleasure to hand this back to Nicole to introduce Ali Zaidi of the White House Climate Police Office, and my friends, Governors J. B. Pritzker of Illinois and Jay Inslee of Washington.

>>Nicole Steele: Thank you so much, Secretary Granholm. I love the quadruple play. We've got this under control, and the message today really is ensuring that we need all of you for success.

So, I am also thrilled to introduce our next moderator of our State Engagement Panel. So, Ali Zaidi is joining us today. He currently serves as the Deputy National Climate Advisor and Deputy Assistant to the President. In this role, he helps lead the White House Climate Policy Office, which is responsible for coordinating the policy-making process on domestic climate policy issues, coordinating domestic climate policy advice to the President, ensuring that domestic climate policy decisions and programs are consistent with the President's shared goals and that those goals are being effectively pursued in monitoring implementation of the President's domestic climate policy agenda.

So, with that, it's absolutely appropriate that we are diving into the state conversation with two state governors. So, Ali, the floor is yours, and I'm really looking forward to this fireside chat.

>>Ali Zaidi: Great. Thanks, Nicole, and thanks to Secretary Granholm for her tremendous leadership here. And it's fitting that we've got two state level leaders who have really set the pace for how we think about deployment in this form and in this arena.

First, we will be joined by Governor Jay Inslee, who is a fifth generation Washingtonian, the Washington on the West Coast with the better weather. And he has lived and worked not only in urban communities, but in rural communities on both sides of the state and with folks on both sides of the aisle. He began serving as governor in 2013 and, under his leadership, Washington is consistently the state that ranks as the best place to work and the best place to do business. I know this firsthand. The leadership that Governor Inslee has shown in the state has been replicated time and time again all around the country. It has been an incubator for creativity on climate. And certainly the President, when he was running, and still today, leans on the governor for his creativity and advice and counsel on topics of climate. We certainly could not have put back, put together the Build Back Better Plan without his input and his insight.

We also are joined by Governor J. B. Pritzker, who was sworn in as the 43rd Governor of Illinois in 2019. Since taking office, the governor has won bipartisan passage for Rebuild Illinois, which is the largest investment in the state's history to upgrade roads and bridges and rail and broadband and universities. And in 2021, last year, Governor Pritzker showed again why we're so excited about states driving progress, passing a comprehensive Clean Energy Bill, and making Illinois a national leader on climate action, and the first state in the Midwest to pass a law phasing out fossil fuels. Before becoming governor, Pritzker founded a nonprofit small business incubator in Chicago. You see that entrepreneurial energy and that focus on innovation in, really, everything he's brought to the climate fight.

And we're just so grateful to have both of these governors with us today in conversation, and of course, we've stolen a great governor, Jennifer Granholm, to drive us at the Department of Energy.

So, let me cut to the wise people joining us here as quickly as possible and just start out, first to Governor Inslee and then to Governor Pritzker. Would love to just hear how community solar looks in your state and how your community solar programs are structured, what you're seeing out in the field. Let's go to Governor Inslee first.

>>Jay Inslee: You bet. Well, listen, community solar looks great in Washington state, for several reasons. One, we've got a President and a team with Ali that are pitching Build Back Better and are gonna help community solar in a variety of different ways. So, we're looking forward to your success on this. We know you're committed to it, and the President's leadership has been absolutely fantastic on this. I could not be more tickled with what he is doing for the nation right now in this direction.

It looks good because we've got allies like J. B. Pritzker, who's the star of the Midwest, who has single-handedly brought solar to his state, and his leadership has just been stunning how fast he's moved in his state, trying to catch Washington State. So, we have that continued rivalry, but he's been absolutely fantastic.

It looks good, because we have this inexhaustible source of energy, the sun. We haven't seen the sun now for about two weeks in our state because of our fog, but the Hubble telescope, which now is a million miles away, has confirmed the sun is still out there. So, we've still got a tremendous source of energy.

Our community solar has been successful for a couple reasons. One, we've really given it some capital. So, we have a $200,000,000.00 Clean Energy fund that's leveraged over $400,000,000.00 of private investment. We use it to leverage private capital, and that's one of the reasons it's been successful, because we've found a way to really put private capital to work with us and at least double our public investment when we do these projects. Because we really have a good working relationship with the folks who are interested in that kinda project in the private markets. That's been one of the reasons we've succeeded.

Second, we really believe that this is the perfect way to embed and implement the idea of equity when it comes to beating climate change and building a clean energy economy. And so, we focus where our community solar work makes the most good in communities of poverty that have been breathing diesel smoke and have kids with epidemics of asthma. And so, we have focused an appropriate level of intense investments in these communities. We look at the Merritt Manor affordable housing in Olympia, it's helped 82 families. These are the families that have really been affected by soot and particulate matter from burning fossil fuels, and it's a way to really demonstrate our commitment in that regard.

Now, we do that—as you know, Ali, we've done this throughout our climate and clean energy plans in the state. We do have a Cap-and-Invest Program here that I think is the best in the nation, because it embeds the equity and justice provisions, 40 percent of all the investments we're gonna make. And that fund, which is a $5,000,000,000.00 fund at the moment, are gonna go to BIPOC and communities of, disproportionately affected communities from these pollution sources.

So, I think those two principals have been most effective. And then we've just got tremendous enthusiasm for it. I mean, these things are like just, you know, just dropping a little seed in, and they just sprout. I mean, these communities go crazy when they learn that they can control their own destiny. I mean, I look at the Orcas Island, it's an island Northwest of Seattle, the most beautiful place in the world to vacation. And now that they have their own destiny under their control, it's just like, freedom. I mean, this is like, you know, the 10 amendments of freedom of energy. [laughter]

So, there's tremendous enthusiasm, limited only by the seed capital. So, we're gonna supplement that with another $100,000,000.00, I hope, this year in my budget, my solar budget that I hope appropriators will join me with. I can't guarantee it at the moment, but that'll be a step forward, as well. So, all systems go. And again, I wanna thank the President's leadership on this.

>>Ali Zaidi: Great. And Governor Pritzker, how's the sun looking in the middle of the country?

>>J. B. Pritzker: Well, the sun always shines on Illinois, just to be clear.

>>Ali Zaidi: [laughter]

>>J. B. Pritzker: And contrary to some remark that was made earlier, Illinois is the best place to work and live in the country. But I have enormous gratitude and respect for my colleague, the Governor of Washington, because he really has led the way, not just in community solar, but just broadly in fighting climate change. And so, we have a lot of work to do in the State of Illinois, but we've come a long way just in the last year, frankly.

Very proud of the community solar programs that we have. You know, ours are central to our efforts to expand renewable energy statewide. Our programs are designed to allow our participants to benefit from solar without installing solar panels, of course, on their own properties. The Illinois Power Agency runs competitive procurements for community solar through its Adjustable Block and Solar For All Programs, and our low income program is targeted toward low income communities by making solar installations more affordably, broadly, resulting in really measurable savings for all the participants.

And just this last September, and Ali, you referenced it, we passed and signed really sweeping climate legislation into law. It's something monumental for our state, and it expanded these community solar programs significantly, helping to put our state on the path to 100 percent clean energy by 2050. And we set intermediate goals—2030, 40 percent; 50 percent by 2040. And under the state's Adjustable Block grant program, at least 25 percent of the projects must be community solar. And 250 megawatts of capacity are allocated to wait listed community solar projects.

So, you know, the new laws also increase our Solar For All allocation for low income community solar from 37.5 percent to 40 percent, and $20,000,000.00 is dedicated specifically toward low income community solar pilot projects. We wanna do even more.

Finally, we require prevailing wage on construction of most community solar projects, and the Illinois Power Agency offers upfront financing to contractors who need assistance in paying a prevailing wage. Our programs, broadly, have equity at their core, and I wanna talk about that a little later. But just know that our excitement level is high in Illinois for reaching our potential. In many ways, what Washington State has done is what Illinois wants to be able to do.

>>Ali Zaidi: That's great. And both of you touched on this really important theme. You know, we're chasing a cleaner source of energy and it's because that is the scientific imperative to take on the climate crisis, because it cleans up the air in our communities, the soot and smog that's choked especially black and brown communities, even rural places like where I grew up impacted by the harmful effects of this pollution.

But I think what you talked about and, you know, when I was in state service, this was a big focus for us is—how do you tap into this opportunity to unlock, in particular, upside for low and moderate income folks? How do you tap into this opportunity to unlock good paying union jobs? And both of you spoke a little bit about putting low and moderate income, putting equity at the center of your programs.

I wanna just double click on that and have you unpack it little bit more. Governor Inslee, you wanna lead us off, here?

>>Jay Inslee: Well, what I'd say is that the most important thing in this realm is to embed it in everything you do across the state platform. It's not just your Energy Office that you need working on this. It has to be part of your transportation system, prioritization of projects to see to what extent you're gonna serve high density, low income communities. It has to be part of your housing program, it has to be part of your social service network so that you are feeding all of these state assets into the same projects.

And that's why we've been successful at, you know, I look at this project over in Ellensburg, Washington that's called HopeSource, it's 48 low income households. They're gonna save like $6,000,000.00 of energy over time by getting community solar into their system. But you marry it with the social services, you provide that, you make that a priority for the social service side of it, for the transportation side, for the access to education side. And I think the challenge for governors like Governor Pritzker and myself is to make sure the entire enterprise embeds this throughout their prioritization system. So, it becomes part of the ecosystem of building. It can't be just kind of a stovepipe solar program to really make this thing sing. I think that's the most important thing governors can do to focus on this.

Now, the other thing, though, is to leverage this in the community. You know, these things are educational centers as well as just helping the direct users. When community solar goes in, you know, every community solar goes in, it springs 28 more solar installations when people see it and start talking about it throughout their communities. And so, finding a way to maximize the story, these are—we're telling a narrative here about this revolution, and finding a way to really tell that narrative throughout your state and point to your success, that's a big deal, too.

So, I would say those are the two things that we can work on.

>>Ali Zaidi: Governor Pritzker?

>>J. B. Pritzker: Well, I wanna start by saying that our community solar is intended and focused on helping low and moderate income households in the first place. It's inherently an equity-focused program, and we designed it to ensure that economic benefits flow directly to program participants and to communities from which many of the contractors will come as well.

So, you know, my vision for community solar is that it works as designed, by supporting low income communities who wanna participate in growing clean energy and our clean energy economy and that it continues to expand. And again, we're, you know, we've made tremendous steps. Our new laws specifically require the Illinois Power Agency to make every effort to ensure that small and emerging businesses, particularly those located in low income and environmental justice communities, are able to participate in the Solar For All Program.

And furthermore, 5 percent of the Solar For All funds are directed toward community-based groups and a whole bunch of other qualifying organizations to assist in community driven education efforts related to the program, including general education and outreach efforts. What Governor Inslee said is true, you know, when people see a project, hear about, learn about a project in a community and start talking about it, it spreads. And we want that to happen. The IPA, the Illinois Power Agency, offers a whole bunch of support to participants from its Program Administrator and has been holding virtual workshops for members of the public who need help navigating the programs. And so, we offer that. IPA also reports annually on progress and barriers to participation that are being experienced by small and emerging businesses so that we can, as we move forward, make fixes, adjustments to make it easier.

In short, we're building a green economy that reflects the diversity of our state. You know, the population of Illinois is the population, the only population in the nation among the states that is reflective of the population of the entire United States. If you look at our demographics, it mirrors the country. And so, we wanna make sure that our, you know, as we build the green economy, that we're focused on diversity and that we have supports for communities who have disproportionately suffered the impacts of climate change and of a history of racism and systemic disinvestment.

>>Ali Zaidi: That's really good. And, you know, we're trying to do so much of this to be a good partner at the federal level. Governor Inslee mentioned the Build Back Better Act, but Governor Pritzker, just, how do we team up better to facilitate and sort of accelerate this vision? How do we get going in this direction faster, together?

>>J. B. Pritzker: Well, I think that coordinating means aligning our clean energy goals, and deploying funding as quickly as possible. And what we need from the federal government as a partner is additional funding to further support the community solar programs at the state level. I mean, these programs have been going for some time, and now are expanding rapidly. Renewable energy procurements are funded by rate payers, and the more federal funding that we can leverage in Illinois, the less that we're asking rate payers to front these costs.

And I'm also excited to hear about DoE's new National Community Solar Program States Collaborative. Because when states can access each other, you know, share best ideas, work together, it'll reduce barriers to expanding community solar. In a big state like Illinois, you know, knowledge sharing is critical for us. We wanna share what we've learned and hear what others have learned and, you know, the more we can learn from each other across the states and the federal government as a kind of moderator for that, the more quickly we can grow more effective programs.

>>Ali Zaidi: I love that, and I wanna underline something you said about small businesses. You know, when we talk about this opportunity reaching everybody in America, it's not just the opportunity to put the panel on your roof and get the energy consumer savings, but also to be part of that business, to be part of that enterprise, to have equity in that transformation that we're seeing in our communities.

Governor Inslee, we turn to you often for ideas on how to team up with the states. You certainly drove a lot of that in your leadership with the Climate Alliance. What else can we do?

>>Jay Inslee: Well, how about—this is outside of the box—why don't we rev up that Air Force One and fly a Senator from West Virginia to Illinois and show him the great stuff Governor Pritzker is doing and help him do it in all 50 states? And, you know, because we just have such a great story to tell, and it is in every other state. I was reading about a solar hilltop in West Virginia, actually, a solar program, I think it was a community solar program. This is something that fits all 50 states, and it's just a matter of scale.

We have the template for doing it, we have the technology for doing it, we've got the political support at the local level doing it. We just need scale of capital, and that's where the federal government comes in, and that's why we're very hopeful that you will succeed in the Build Back Better and you do reach your agreement with our Senators on this. Nothing could be more important.

I wanna add something else, though, to the discussion, and that is, storage is really important in those communities; solar, as well. And that's one of the focuses we're gonna have this year in my legislature. I've proposed another $100,000,000.00 in our Solar Plus Storage Proposal. And I think this is a part of our community solar program. It is important for a variety of different reasons, because we're gonna start running our transportation system off of our community solar program. And so, getting storage available to succeed in powering our whole transportation system, that has to be a goal as well. And I think community solar is a perfect place to demonstrate how storage can be so effective.

So, it's production plus storage now when we think of any solar project in our state. Because we are gonna rapidly electrify our transportation system. It's going like gangbusters, you know, they're gonna make—they just doubled production of the F-150 truck, the most popular truck ever made, and they can't make it fast enough. My son just got bumped down on the waiting list for one, he's a carpenter. So, you know, we're—this is happening, but we gotta produce the electricity. So, I think I would add to storage.

I would also say that your proposals, the President's proposals for R&D is also important. Because, you know, we still need to drive down the cost curve. R&D is still important in this real, and there are some incredible things happening. We have a little company in our state called Group14. They have figured out a way to make a silicon anode battery that potentially could increase capacity, like, by 50 percent. Imagine that. That's actually being tested by some of the OEMs and automobiles right now. That type of transformational research is still important. That part of budget long-term is important to community solar and we're really glad you're pursuing it.

>>Ali Zaidi: That's great. I think the storage piece is so important and, you know, one of the big investments that we got in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which both of you were critical to helping us get across the line is really revamping the grid to take advantage of the opportunities that we've got available to us. And now, some of that's gonna be utility scale and transmission lines to bring that power in. And I think both of your states, and Illinois sits next to a bunch of really low cost wind out across the Midwest that they can bring in and has been.

But even as we look at those aspects of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, it strikes me that we've got a bunch of resources in there around storage, and around modernizing the grid, period full stop, making sure that we have the data and the systems, the sort of Internet of electricity so that we can fully harness this opportunity.

I wanna close out just by sort of opening the floor for the sort of free style rap session with the two governors, here. You know, we've got, I think, together on this Zoom call, folks who are aligned on the innovation opportunity, the climate imperative, the focus on delivering benefits to communities that have been disadvantaged and workers who are hungry to get in on the game.

Closing thoughts on how we chase after that, chase after it together? Governor Pritzker, you wanna lead us off?

>>J. B. Pritzker: Well, I have a couple comments, I guess, and I'd begin by saying that, as you know, energy, electric reliability is hugely important. So, you know, when we talk about investing in the grid, and where we sit, of course, in Illinois, hugely important. We've got more nuclear than any other state in the country, we're producing relatively low cost energy, and in a reliable way. But we've gotta make sure that we're hardening that grid and making it even more reliable for the rest of the surrounding states and the rest of the country. So, that's just one comment I would make.

You know, one of the things I also wanna focus on is that we've got a significant amount of research and development that's going on, funded in large part by the Department of Energy, at our National Laboratories, and we've got to great ones here in Illinois. Battery technology development is a real specialty for Argonne National Laboratory here in Illinois. And we've seen commercialization of that technology. We wanna see more of that, because as that technology is developed and considered, you know, commercializable, we want everybody to be able to use it and think that there's real opportunity.

So, just what Governor Inslee was talking about, certainly, innovation in his state, same thing going on in Illinois, and we have some specialized scientists who are focused on that. So, whatever DoE can do to help us get those out and commercialize those and keep investing at Argonne so that we're a leader in the world here in the United States in battery technology development I think would be a tremendous thing, just for national security, if nothing else.

>>Ali Zaidi: That's great, and good shout-out to the national labs. I think folks think about, oftentimes, sort of scientists in white coats working on bench scale innovation, and surely, we have that at our national labs. But we've got folks who have been sleeves rolled up, teaming up with communities and with entrepreneurs, hastening the commercialization of technology that will literally save lives and save the planet. And it's so critical that we continue to invest in those critical assets.

Governor Inslee, what have you got for us?

>>Jay Inslee: Well, I wanted to not leave this discussion without maybe stating the obvious, but it's really important. We just can't wait. Whatever we're doing, we gotta accelerate it times five. My job now is, every two weeks, I go to a new natural disaster because of climate change. Two weeks, three weeks ago, it was floods in Everson, where the Nooksack River went through this lady's house. She'd just got done fixing it from the last flood, and the river just went through her picture, you know, window in her living room.

Last summer, it was the Methow Valley where the smoke was so bad, people could not go outside. Literally, we had, in Washington State, the worst air quality anywhere in the planet last summer, where kids couldn't even go outside. And Malden, a whole town that burned down. You know, just, we have to accelerate this to the extent humanly possible, not only for the cost savings, not only because we're gonna pay a prevailing wage and have good, union paying jobs, not only because we have to give people power for their electric cars—it's so that we can survive. These disasters are now becoming the full time job of, certainly, Western governors at least in most of the United States. So, I just wanna give that accelerator, if we will.

The second thing I wanna say is that we just can't fall in the trap that any one policy here is better than any other policy. Having distributed energy with either rooftop or community systems is extremely important, but so is concentrated solar energy sources. We have a company called Helion that you're helping that is a fusion company. It actually has a commercial product, they have a huge manufacturing plant already going up in my state. That's concentrated, and we need to do that as well. I just wanna point out that everything we can think of, we need to do. [laughter] We can't argue about this is better than anyone else, we gotta do everything right now when it comes to decarbonizing our system.

And again, I wanna thank your leadership, Ali, it's been fantastic. Keep it up, and I can't wait to see you at the signing ceremony of Build Back Better.

>>Ali Zaidi: Amen. Look, so grateful to be with both of you. Both governors underscored how connected we are in this challenge. You know, you talk about things that are happening in the Arctic, change in the way weather patterns play out West, fueling wildfires and droughts that we're breathing in on the East Coast. We are all inherently connected in this challenge that we face. We're bearing the costs of it, as Governor Inslee said, $750,000,000,000.00, and that's just the federal cost of the largest disasters in the last five years, $750,000,000,000.00. And that's the cost in dollar terms. We're talking about lives and businesses, people getting knocked down, and it's time for us to stand up together and chase after this opportunity today.

We actually had one of the big auto makers, General Motors, announced $7,000,000,000.00, 4,000 jobs. It's a set of a series of announcements in the last just year of $100,000,000,000.00 flowing into this space. And we've gotta make sure this isn't $15.00, $16.00, $17.00 an hour work. Met with Liz Shuler, President of the AFL this morning. We were talking about how we've gotta make sure these were jobs $26.00, $30.00 an hour. And it's not just for the workers' sake, it's so that we deliver these products and these services on time and on budget. I think about every time the power goes out or a line falls down, we've got those IBEW line workers out there. We want our best and brightest folks trained, folks who are building out the middle class, helping sustain us through this period of crisis.

And I just wanna give a shout out to the Department of Energy team, led, of course, by our phenomenal Secretary of Energy, Secretary Granholm. But I'm really grateful to Nicole Steele and to the entire team that puts in all of the hours to get us to where we are. I actually got a chance to spend some time with Nicole putting panels on roofs here in D.C. over the summer. So, we're excited to get back to warmer weather so we can go do that.

But very grateful—thank you, governors, and back to Nicole for the rest of the program. Really appreciate all the leaders on this call.

>>Jay Inslee: Go get ‘em.

>>Nicole Steele: Thank you so much, Ali and Governors Inslee and Pritzker. Really appreciate your time today in highlighting the work and importance of states and the crisis that lies ahead, and really the role that community solar, in the larger ecosystem plays, in addressing that climate crisis.

So, with that, I really wanna highlight that the element on the Pathway to Success is stakeholder engagement. And I like to joke, we had a roundtable a couple months ago with a maybe of CEOs from the community solar space, and one of the major feedbacks was, “For the love of God, please help us with states!” And so, we're so excited to be getting such an amazing reception from folks at the state level. As somebody who worked at state and local government in the past, I'm incredibly excited to be collaborating with states and local governments moving forward on community solar and really ensuring that we're providing the right types of resources to them. And we are also learning from them, so, I think that's just such an important two-way street on how to build better programming.

I wanna really highlight the staff and our strategic partners in this effort. And so, with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Robin Burton and our strategic partners to talk a little bit about our state engagement plans.

>>Robin Burton: Hi, I'm Robin Burton with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. DoE and the National Community Solar Partnership Team recognize the essential role that states play in creating markets and setting the stage for community solar in their jurisdictions. That's why we've been engaging with states to understand how best NCSP can support their efforts to advance community solar.

Based on these conversations, the NCSP is launching a States Collaborative to facilitate peer exchange and provide technical assistance and resources to states at all stages of community solar market maturity. NCSP is very fortunate to have two strategic partners supporting our work with states, The Clean Energy States Alliance, and the National Association of State Energy Officials. It's my pleasure to introduce them both.

>>Abbe Ramanan: Hi, all, my name is Abbe Ramanan, and I'm a Project Manager with the Clean Energy States Alliance. CESA is a national nonprofit coalition of public agencies and organizations working to advance clean energy. Our work focuses on how to best support the expansion of state clean energy policies and programs to ensure that the benefits of the clean energy transition are accessible to all. Through [inaudible] projects like Solar with Justice and Scaling Solar, we have seen the importance of fostering connections across state agencies and providing tailored technical assistance and research in promoting the expansion of community solar in an equitable and impactful way. So, we're very proud to partner with DoE, the National Community Solar Partnership team, and the National Association of State Energy Officials to create the States Collaborative as a resource for states to expand and innovate around community solar.

>>Sandy Fazeli: Hi, I'm Sandy with the National Association of State Energy Officials. NASEO represents all 56 energy offices from the states and territories. On behalf of their governors, our members oversee energy and economic development, policy and planning, and they impress every day from helping to coordinate responses to energy and climate emergencies to working with community partners to advance a more sustainable and equitable energy economy.

At NASEO, we work hard to support the states in meeting their goals. I'm excited about NASEO's exclusive Shared Solar Initiative, which will help align state energy programs to open access and capital for community solar projects. And now that we've become a States Collaborative partner with CESA, DoE, and NREL, this will not only enable us to continue to learn, but also to make community solar a reality for even more states and communities across the country.

Thank you for your time and have a wonderful Summit.

>>Anna Balzer: Thank you, again, to Ali and the Governors Inslee and Pritzker for really demonstrating the importance of state leadership in community solar deployment, and for all of your own leadership in this space. And then a special thanks to Robin, Sandy, and Abbe or their great coordination on our brand new States Collaborative. And we do encourage you to take a look at the link that Robin dropped in the chat to learn more about our States Collaborative and our efforts there.

So, before we move into the other initiatives on the Pathway to Success, we will be taking a brief lunch break or a mid-morning snack break for those of us joining us from the West Coast. We are going to reconvene at 1:15 p.m. Eastern time, and in the meantime, we're excited to showcase a selection of community solar projects that were submitted to us by our NCSP members. So, we hope you enjoy these projects and we will see you all back at 1:15 p.m.

>>Anna Balzer: Welcome back, and thank you to all of the NCSP members that submitted photos of their work to us, expanding access to community solar. For those who receive our "What's Up?" weekly digest you can keep an eye out for additional spotlights of some of these projects. And if you're not already subscribed, I would encourage you to take a moment to register to become a member of NCSP and you will get a weekly digest of everything that's happening on our online community platform and some great project spotlights. And I think we'll be dropping that link to register in the chat right now.

So, at this point we're going to turn to our next session which focuses on an initiative on the pathway to increase access to community solar project capital. We will start this session with a brief overview video from our NCSP team members and our strategic partners leading this initiative, and then we'll move on to an engaging roundtable discussion among some thought leaders and practitioners in the community solar financing space. So, let's go ahead and tee up that video.

>>Chani Vines: Hello, I'm Chani Vines with DOE's Solar Energies Technologies Office supporting the National Community Solar Partnership to develop a credit-ready solar initiative. Through stakeholder outreach we have heard that access to capital remains one of the most pressing barriers to equitable community solar deployment. The National Community Solar Partnership is responding to this need by building the Credit-Ready Solar Initiative, which will leverage working groups, technical assistance, training, and strategic partnership to build a partnership of credit-ready community solar projects and broad access to a marketplace that connects owners, developers, lenders, and philanthropy to support more deployment of community solar.

I'm excited to welcome two of our strategic partners, Trenton Allen from Sustainable Capital Advisors and Michael Swack from the Center for Impact Finance, Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Sustainable Capital Advisors will be leading the lender working group and the University of New Hampshire will be leading on developing the credit-ready learning lab.

Now we'll hear from our two partners. Take it away, Trenton.

TA: Thank you, Chani. I'm Trenton Allen, CEO of Sustainable Capital advisors. We are a financial advisory firm based in Washington, D.C. but work across the United States and even globally on connecting capital to sustainable solutions. For the last decade we have worked with utilities, developers, and capital advisors to successfully deploy an array of clean energy technologies, particularly solar. We have worked with policymakers, environmental and community organizations, as well as entire ecosystems to not only identify barriers but solutions to expanding inclusive solar finance opportunities.

So, we are extremely excited to be part of the Credit-Ready Solar Initiative and lead the lenders working group. Our work will be focused on developing frameworks and create the supply of capital for community solar projects and accelerate the implementation of projects across the country. We look forward to engaging with many of you and work with Michael and his team on this incredibly important initiative. So, now I will turn it over to Michael.

>>MS: Thanks, Trenton. I'm Michael Swack, Director of the Center for Impact Finance at the Carsey School at the University of New Hampshire. We provide training, technical assistance and work as partners with impact lenders on a range of community finance issues that address solar and a whole range of financial issues from housing to business to more recently clean energy. We partner with organizations like banks, CDFIs, and government agencies to develop innovative financial tools to promote lending into low- and moderate-income communities. We're really excited to be participating in the Credit-Ready Solar Initiative, leading the learning lab effort, working with developers of solar initiative and lenders to promote the growth of solar energy in low- and moderate-income communities.

Now I'll turn it back over to Chani.

>>CV: Thank you, Michael. I'd like to now introduce Michelle Moore, the CEO of Groundswell, who will be leading our next panel on "Show Me the Money: Developing the Credit-Ready Solar Initiative." We are excited to have her perspective and leadership as she moderates this panel.

>>Michelle Moore: Thank you so much, Chani. It is wonderful to be here. And it is wonderful to be here among so many friends and colleagues. There is such extraordinary expertise and commitment represented in this virtual room today that any among the folks who are attending would be able to be up here and sharing stories alongside myself and all my fellow panelists.

As we go into the conversation, I wanted to share just a tiny bit about Groundswell and then share kind of a couple of opening thoughts as we transition into questions. Groundswell is a nonprofit. We work as community solar developers in communities and in multiple states around the country. We run subscriber management programs. And we also lead a multiyear DOE-supported research initiative called LIFT Solar Everywhere because it wouldn't be an energy project if it didn't have an acronym. And that project is led by my colleague Chris Nichols working with Chani and in collaboration with colleagues across the country and Dr. Elvis Moleka on data science. And so, we have a practitioner's view and also an unrecovered policymaker's view of how critically important access to capital is to be able to deliver on the promise of community solar.

And so, as we have this conversation together I would ask us all to do two things. Number one, let's think about shovel-worthy projects. Shovel-worthy. What are the benefits that we're delivering beyond just getting something built? And number two, how do we always keep community at the center of the conversation so that where we're focusing on credit-ready solar and expanding the benefits, expanding the markets, and reaching these bold goals that we are all working alongside DOE to help achieve, how do we make sure that we're always doing it with and in service to communities as we advanced this vision?

So, with that, recognizing that there's extraordinary expertise as practitioners and thought leaders and policy leaders on this panel, I wanted to start us off just by asking folks to tell a story about their own experience in this marketplace that illustrates the potential of this powerful new program. And I'm going to start, Bracken, with you.

>>Bracken Hendricks: Excellent. I'm Bracken Hendricks. I'm the CEO of Urban Ingenuity. And we are a solar financier and developer of clean energy structured finance partner based in Washington, D.C. We work on a range of projects from pace financing to microgrids, but increasingly we've gone deeper and deeper into clean energy project development and specifically supporting direct local ownership with partners.

I loved your language, Michelle, of solar-worthy rather than – or investment – "shovel-worthy" rather than "shovel-ready." And I think probably the most important story to tell is our own journey of getting to where we are. We've recently launched a project called Working Power where we are trying to bring down the total cost of capital to allow people who work with community groups, who are centering justice and job creation and local ownership at the heart of their clean energy projects to help bring a suite of tools including lower capital support on legal structuring, support on organizing the direct ownership, but also benefiting from bringing in investors and benefiting from tax credits.

Urban Ingenuity kind of organically moved into trying to serve affordable housers. That was a community where we were very actively engaged and we had a partnership with the National Housing Trust, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. who are doing both policy and deployment of affordable housing and we were touching many, many, many affordable housing projects. But what we found was affordable housers were very sophisticated asset managers, they were very comfortable with tax credit finance, but they couldn't – and they were frequently brought solar projects, proposals for PPAs on their rooftops, but when they looked at the deals they basically didn't see real economics that they could relate to. The money was either going into – it was changing the utility reimbursement structures with HUD and getting scraped by the market, or the economic benefits were getting pocketed by the financial partners who were monetizing those tax credits.

So, what we did was try to unpack and reassemble a traditional solar deal so that we could bring our community-based partners directly into that local ownership, give them a stake in the cash flows, give them long-term participation, but also – even though they were nonprofit – help them monetize those tax credits so that they could take those dollars and directly channel them into enhanced community service. So, we've now done several pools with National Housing Trust. We've been working with the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and supporting multifamily housing through their multifamily housing community solar collaborative.

And what we've found is that there are a suite of tools that hopefully we can talk more about in this discussion where we can lower the cost of capital, where we can create greater efficiency for these community partners, and as Michelle was saying, we need to keep community at the very center and essentially take those line items that are in the capital stack – "Show Me the Money" operates in a lot of different ways. One of the things that we do most often that many times our community partners are most grateful for is we literally show them the money. We transparently bring them a financial model and we say, "Here's the money that would otherwise be going to a financial investor and instead it can flow to community organizers, to workforce training, to direct provision of benefits, whether it is constituent outreach or direct training."

And I guess I'll just say in closing as I hand it back we did a pool of properties, 24 different properties in the District of Columbia under a single pool ownership structure where we created these direct community benefit agreements. One of our partners was a faith-based community housing developer in the District of Columbia, and when COVID hit and they had folks who were in danger of losing their housing because of loss of access to income they were able to take the money flowing from their rooftops in a community benefit pay-in and use it directly to paying – like, actual support for housing, food, rent assistance to keep folks in affordable housing and really directly support a high quality of life by centering ownership, centering justice, centering community control and a community vision for what clean energy assets can do to drive the next generation of just and sustainable clean energy assets in our communities most in need.

>>Michelle Moore: Thank you so much for that, Bracken. And something you spoke to I also want to just uplift as we're having this conversation, and that's the idea of community ownership, because the structure of federal incentives around tax credits is a blessing in many respects but it can also be a real challenge to community ownership when you're working with nonprofits or you're working with institutions or individuals that don't have wealth, because tax credits can reward wealth with ownership.

So, with that thought in mind and thinking about, Eric, as you have observed in some of our preconference conversations, thinking about the entire ecosystem around project development and project finance is incredibly important. And that's one of the tremendous potential benefits of this new program from DOE. So, can you tell us a story about what you do and add to your perspective?

>>Eric Hangen: Sure. Well, I'll tell you a story about how I came to this work. So, I'm a community developer and actually my background of – my 25 years of work experience has actually been in community housing, which Bracken was just talking about. And one of the things I'm so excited about with National Community Solar Partnership is how we are finally seeing this alignment between the climate space and the community development space. And I'm hoping that more and more community developers will realize that climate is the community development issue of today and that more and more climate folks will realize, just as you guys were saying, we've got to keep community at the center of this and think about all of the important co-benefits that we could be generating.

So, for me, when I really got back in – I graduated with a degree back in 1991 in environmental science and then dove into community development and really got deep into thinking about community solar after Hurricane Maria because I had worked for many years in Puerto Rico and actually lived there – my wife is Puerto Rican – in a low-income community in the mountains that was without power for nine months after Hurricane Maria hit. And we were able to develop a community resilience hub with solar and storage just with money that we raised literally from bake sales and concerts and stuff like that. And the community wanted more. It wanted to develop a microgrid. And I actually met Vic through that project when Vic was at Environmental Defense Fund.

But the challenges that that community faced trying to – they have – as of today they've done a little pilot with a few homes but they don't have their community microgrid. And I think the challenges that that community faces are emblematic of some of the challenges that you've already started alluding to. Michelle, you mentioned the tax credit and needing to monetize it through investment rather than having a directly refundable option. That challenge has sort of doubled in Puerto Rico because you have to work with an off-island investor. So, it's a tremendous amount of legal cost. But also, just the trust issue, I think, ultimately for that community just proved insurmountable. Like "Wait a second, we don't really get to own this? It's – somebody we don't know and don't even understand who's not even from our country is going to basically control it?" We just couldn't get over that hump. So, I think that's really important.

But to the other theme that you started to take us into, Michelle, about the ecosystem is one of the things we have to think about is we've got community groups like the community group that I was working with in this low-income group in Puerto Rico. They don't have sponsor equity. They don't even have paid staff, much less an engineer on staff to figure this out or a subscriber management system set up. Yet, they're the folks who are conceiving of this project and who should be benefiting from these kinds of projects, because we have real co-benefits to deliver to them. So, it's incumbent on the rest of us, I think, to figure out what's the scaffolding that we're going to build so that a community group like that can ultimately control its energy future. And we're going to have to build, I think, organizations like Bracken's – and what you're doing, Bracken, with affordable housing developers is sort of an example of that. We need to figure out who the helpers are and how we help and support the helpers. So, I'll stop there and turn it over – back to you, Michelle.

>>Michelle Moore: Thank you so much, Eric. That's a really great perspective and I think you're – between the stories that you've shared and, Bracken, that you've shared you've also begun uplifting another incredibly important factor that we all consider here, and that is that we have national partnerships and a wonderful national forum here together but energy markets are shaped by federalism and state level policies and even local level policies and local level built environments being different with different challenges and different blessings around the country. So, navigating toward these big, shared, important, visionary goals to put communities and justice at the center of our energy ecosystems has that additional layer of complexity.

Now, Victor, you are and Sustainable Capital Advisors are definitely among the original innovators in this space. And can you share some of your story and maybe even illuminate it with some projects that you guys have worked on that help sort of fill in this picture of where we are and what do we need to know to get to this goal together?

>>Victor Rojas: Thank you very much. First of all, thanks to DOE for allowing us to be part of this conversation. It's really important and in large part overdue that we have this dialogue around these alignments that Eric talked about. I think I also want to underscore that where we're happy to be part of the lender working group and engaged in that process, and that process. I think certainly as Governor Pritzker indicated, it is always sunny in Illinois. It's only eight degrees today but it is sunny. So, there's a lot of opportunity in Illinois for solar, community solar, rooftop solar, and a variety of renewable projects.

I think what's interesting to talk about in this context is – Eric talked about alignment between communities and developers and I think I want to add to that alignment financiers. I think in large part in my experience there's been a lot of talk – this happens a lot at the state and local level where you have stakeholder engagement, which is critical to this process. We talked about that previously this morning. I think what's been lacking in large part in that dialogue has been bringing finance to the table in a very meaningful way. I think we've for a long time talked about or thought about this issue in the context of how much public money can we find and deliver into our initiative or our project, but I think the real question we should be asking is how little public money is available – or necessary to really animate private capital. We need to more fully engage private capital in a way that has not been done to date for a variety of reasons.

But I think the old question about just taking public money and spending it for whatever initiative, whatever purpose is great. I'm not faulting that at all. But I hank – what I am suggesting is that we need to think kind of differently of how we leverage public money and really use it in a very kind of creative and limited way in a way to engage private capital. And that's what – I'm a firm believer in the power of markets to catalyze action around the climate change imperative. It's why I do what I do. I think at Sustainable Capital Advisors, where I've been for about a year now, is fully committed to that effort as well. I think our clients range from philanthropy to green banks to social justice groups. And I think our underlying kind of motive in working with these clients is to find creative ways in which to animate private capital, to get them to think about ways in which to leverage whatever their source of capital is into market-animating activities.

But I think certainly part and parcel to that is finding ways to really create new mechanisms, new tools, and not just financing tools but what we call non-financial policy supports that can really – that are in some ways often well-designed, well-intentioned but perhaps in some way don't fully motivate private capital the way it's necessary. And I think what's really critical to think about in that context is whether in fact you're doing that effectively and creatively.

So, I love – as Bracken indicated, I love the "shovel-worthy" versus "shovel-ready." That's a great way to think about this. I think certainly in talking about credit-ready projects that's a great context in which to think about that, is whether in fact – not just are these projects getting shoveled in the ground but are the projects actually accessible to capital and developed and framed in such a way that capital will find it attractive. I think what's really fascinating about this initiative is this acknowledgement that we just haven't done a very good job doing that to date and that there is this persistent capital gap that's not unique to community solar. You see it in energy efficiency. You see it in almost every endeavor around the climate change space where you have lots of great projects that can't access capital and a lot of capital on the sidelines that can't find credit-worthy projects. Why is this? And I think part of the problem is this lack of a good dialogue between policymakers, between financiers, between developers, between community groups, between all stakeholders, utilities around what can we do to make projects more accessible to capital, and what can finance do to make their processes and their diligence in a way that's more friendly, if you will, to developers in a way that really they can access capital more readily? Because it's a bit of a black box now. It doesn't have to be. Finance is not this kind of esoteric thing that only a few of us know about. It's pretty easy to figure out when put in terms of how to make projects more accessible and developed more fully and developed in such a way that capital can understand and access and –

>>Michelle Moore: Well, and I want to –

>>Victor Rojas: Sure. Sure.

>>Michelle Moore: I want to interject and kind of pick up one of those threads, – 

>>Victor Rojas: Absolutely. Sure.

>>Michelle Moore: – Victor, because you've talked about even in the scope of your work at Sustainable Capital Advisors, and this is part of the beauty of the program that DOE is convening here too, is bringing together capital from multiple sources, because having shovel-worthy projects that keep communities at the center sometimes means – often means, in our experience, that projects go through quite the journey to get there. And I think that all of us from a policy perspective really need to see these investments in a reparative framework. Some of you may have seen the article that was in Wired a couple of months back about – and again, this definitely resonates with our experiences – that solar projects that are being built in communities that have been impacted by redlining and other racist policies and practices have much higher costs. We've seen this recently on a community solar project that we're developing in Illinois because the site – I mean, I won't bore you guys with all the details but suffice it to say it was really hard with a lot of additional costs and outrageous interconnection costs. And all of those things had to do with the community just having been underinvested in for decades.

So, a question I want to pose to you – and we'll make this a jump ball with me incredibly uncomfortable using a sports metaphor since I do not watch sports, alas –forgive me if I get them wrong – how do we think about partnerships across philanthropy, the public sector, and finance so that reparative investments in communities to cover those additional costs that are associated with decades or centuries of racist practices get projects to the point that they are investible and ready to move forward and with structures that are reinvesting ownership and wealth in those communities too?

>>Victor Rojas: This is something that Eric and I worked on in Puerto Rico jointly, was this notion of you have your relatively unsophisticated market that doesn't really fully understand how finance works, as it were. And not a complete understanding of the fact that money is not fungible. There's – certain types of capital that are good for certain types of projects, and within those projects there's certain types of capital that are better staged in different parts of the project. There's a place for philanthropy in predevelopment of risk capital. There's a need for technical assistance that can be provided by – from public entities.

So, I think it's important that we kind of understand and more fully convey to developers this notion that capital is unique in the context of the stage in which you're developing a project, how you bring it to market. And ultimately, credit providers will see that, understand that, and have more confidence in a project when they see the capital has been assembled properly and thoughtfully in a way that can really sustain a project, take it from the drawing board to an operating system.

>>Michelle Moore: Well, and I'm going to chime in with an idea and then, Eric, I'll come to you. I think that when we consider the extraordinary investments that are being made now in infrastructure, including infrastructure investments being made at the local level through Arca money, that this is a wonderful opportunity to think about where are those reparative investments that need to be implemented to bring the infrastructure up to the point that a financeable solar project would be able to move forward, because that is a separate step, that if you have to finance that as a part of the credit structure of the project you would be really not operating on a level playing field. So, Eric and then Bracken.

>>Eric Hangen: Yeah, I think that's right on. I think broadly what we're seeing is that there's some investments that have to happen just to set the table for deals to be able to move forward. And I think, Michelle, you really nailed it on the infrastructure side of things. And Victor, I just wanted to lift up too some of the stuff you were saying about a role for philanthropy in predevelopment and sort of the early-stage risk stuff. And yeah, I don't know how many philanthropists we have on the call but I have a white paper coming out that encourages philanthropy to do more in that space. I think – so, we're sitting here and we're talking about finance and I know there's tremendous appeal to philanthropy and everybody else in thinking about how we're going to ultimately issue hundreds of millions of dollars of green bonds and if philanthropy could credit-enhance those or be a tranche of the investment in that. And it's really exciting and a lot of people who are in philanthropy come from a background in finance, and so that kind of high finance is really fun to talk about.

And I do think that there's something there. I don't mean to pooh-pooh any of that. But where philanthropy is really needed right now, I think, is working capital for small community organizations or for platforms that people are trying to build to help community solar developers really early risk money, and sometimes – I actually think a lot of the time sort of at the enterprise level, not necessarily even at the project level.

>>Michelle Moore: Bracken, did you want to join in?

>>Bracken Hendricks: Yeah. Please. Victor spoke about gaps in the market and I think that's where – and I think Eric just went down into one around early-stage risk capital and the additional sunk costs that attach – and you did too, Michelle – the associated costs with having a community-based project, a project that's trying to reach difficult-to-serve communities. Often, that risk is often perceptual risk more than real risk. It's both, right? If you have a community that has inadequate infrastructure, that certainly creates real challenges. But there are real opportunities from bringing clean energy into these communities.

As we at Urban Ingenuity looked really closely at these challenges, in part because we were practitioners wrestling with deals and trying to source money and just banging your heads into walls again and again in terms of accessing capital, we came to a realization that there was a lot of willing money and a lot of potential projects but they weren't talking to each other. What the capital needs is replicability and scale and risk management for very real and legitimate reasons because they're dealing with larger pools of funds, the transaction costs could drag the deals down, and there were real structural issues why they were asking for money like that. But those aren't the pipelines that the communities are ready to develop.

What the communities need is affordable capital that allows them to not have to sell at the first moment when they need some capital infusion. We're working right now with a group, UPROSE, a wonderful, wonderful women-of-color-led organization in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. They've been putting together these community-based deals. They're really, really exceptional community solar projects with deep community buy-in but there comes a point when they need a couple million dollars to make the panel deposits. And they as a nonprofit organization, they don't have the credit; they don't have the deep pockets. So, the question is how do you support them with appropriate infusions of construction capital and then rethink the capital stack to allow those partners to remain in permanent ownership so they can get an ongoing annuity that can directly support those community benefits and at the same time organize these deals so they're clean and de-risked and stable and they will last reliably for 20 years in the way that the financial community requires for legitimate reasons. And I think Eric has his finger on a critical piece, which is philanthropic capital can be very catalytic, and that's one of the places where this Credit-Ready Solar Initiative bringing together debt providers, public dollars, philanthropic dollars, and community-based developers can be truly catalytic to your point about scale, Michelle.

In addition to that, I think it's also important to think about non-concessionary ways where just with a better structure you can de-risk. Some of that philanthropic money is absolutely necessary, but there are ways to rethink the way you put equity in, the way you put debt in that can actually unlock a lower cost of capital overall. So, this is to me the exact right conversation for us all to be having.

>>Michelle Moore: Thank you so much for that, Bracken, because you also illuminate another theme in your remarks and attention as well, and that is the capital's need for a replicable, scalable, pretty predictable structure, and then a tremendous variety of needs from the community perspective. Those needs may be financial in nature, having access to deeper pockets to be able to meet some of these key project development milestones. It may be structural and related to the infrastructure because communities – many under-resourced communities don't have – not the latest electrical infrastructure because of anything they did but that other people did. So, how do we move forward and equitably invest in those communities?

And then, uplifting a comment from Larry Glover in the chat, it's also about what are the community's priorities? Because there also needs to be an assessment at some point in project development to understand really what is it that the local community needs to meet their needs? Is it energy system ownership and resilience, Eric, as you're sharing from Puerto Rico? Is it long-term ownership and annuity revenue, as you're uplifting from the work with UPROSE in New York, Bracken?

So, from your all's perspectives and from your vantage points, what are ways that this new initiative, the Credit-Worthy Solar Program, can help bring those things together so they're meeting in the middle so you've got the scalability and the replicability and the predictability that you need to enable more capital flows in this space, so that we're understanding and reparatively investing in communities, leveraging our philanthropic and potentially other government partners too? Eric?

>>Eric Hangen: Yeah, there's a lot there. I hope I'm picking up just enough of it. So, I mean, just getting back to the piece that University of New Hampshire will be playing, we'll have a learning lab for the Credit-Ready Solar Program where we'll be convening developers, starting with a group of experienced developers to kind of share our – share knowledge and best practices and tools. And I know, Michelle, Groundswell will be participating in that, which we're really excited about.

And I think – so, one comment is to the extent that there are certain tasks within the process of developing a solar project where it is kind of similar from project to project, that sharing tools and sharing best practices, sharing documents even, there are – there's, I think, a small but meaningful contribution. I think the next level up from that would be thinking about are there platforms that we can build? And this is more speculative now on my part, but just an example that people will be familiar with who are solar developers is Amicus Solar. There's probably even some members of Amicus Solar on this call, I would guess. So, you can buy stuff cheap or you can get a shared IT solution. You can get certain shared expertise.

So, what would that look like in the community solar space? I don't know, so I'm being kind of speculative and inviting comments or thoughts on that more than presenting. I don't know the answer to it, but I suspect that there's a way that we can kind of build the community solar industry smarter than we build the affordable housing industry, because in the affordable housing industry a lot of affordable housing nonprofits have been built as vertically integrated standalone shops that try to do it all. They even GEC their own jobs, they might take property management in-house, the whole nine yards. It's really thinking about, well, okay, is that really the most efficient way to do it? And are there other ways we can do it while still – where we can focus on the community mission and the community benefits and kind of utilize partnerships or platform-type relationships to get some of the technical stuff done for us?

I think there's possibilities for there, both on the development side actually and for lenders. So, I mean, I think – I don't want to steal Vic's fire but we've been working with a lot of community-based lenders. At the University of New Hampshire we have a commercial solar lending course for CDFIs and community-based lenders to learn how to lend to these kinds of projects, and Vic and Sustainable Capital Advisors are going to be kind of convening that working group. And I think there's a lot of potential there to just engage folks. I mean, there are basically – what I will say to kind of tee it up for Vic is there are literally thousands of community-based, mission-driven financial entities who could play a role in financing these kinds of projects. The issue is that most of them don't know how to yet. But they would love to if they had the skills. And so, how do we unlock their engagement in this space, I think, is an interesting thing. And I think there's possibilities here for the partnership to work on that.

>>Michelle Moore: Vic –

>>Victor Rojas: I'm glad Eric cued me up like that. So, I do want to thank Bracken for mentioning the need for replicability and scalability. I think we all know that by and large we probably are just too small to attract large investors or large capital that can really be there for the long run. I think – and speaking to Eric's notion about platform, I think when you have small projects like these that are perhaps below the radar of some of these large investors, it does speak to maybe the need for sort of an aggregation platform or something to really facilitate the ability of – once you have a credit-ready kind of shovel-worthy set of projects that are designed with the same design characteristics and credit quality and can be diligenced by a financial firm in a way that's easier for them to do, ultimately I think that lends to this notion of having a portfolio of projects that can be dropped into an aggregation platform. And I think the National – the Clean Energy Sustainable Accelerator in the Build Back Bill recognized that and the acknowledgement that we can really build a network of green banks across the country that can really serve that role.

But I think getting back to Eric's other point about community engagement and the need to really get those folks more actively involved, I think here again, pointing back to Puerto Rico we had a lot of experience doing that. But also, we have a current client, a philanthropic client that we're encouraging to develop a guarantee product to support an early-stage projects. I think certainly there's – and in some ways they would be acting like a green bank as well because they would be offering a tool that's designed to really animate project development to get the projects from the drawing board to the shovel in the ground.

So, there's a lot of different ways to think about it. I don't want to preordain the outcome of our lender working group but I think ultimately it's important that we focus upon – we understand who the lenders are and design tools that are specifically designed to engage them and not just a kind of broad-brush approach that says "If we do this we can get lots of investors." I think we need to really understand who those specific investors are, what their needs are, and design projects that are palatable to those investors but also have investors that really understand just the nature of the beast and the unique characteristics of a community-based program that's small but very viable and very financeable.

>>Michelle Moore: And I'm sure you guys may be watching too, but Bracken, as you chime in here as well we've got some really incredible questions and ideas in the chat. Majora, about mentorship between – or sponsorship, maybe more active than just mentorship between experienced developers and community-based developers. Vito at Elevate, one of our collaborates on the LIFT Solar Everywhere project, uplifting questions about subscriber management. And we also have Tor chiming in with questions about resilience, incorporating energy storage. So, we have an incredible breadth of ideas here to work with when we're discussing where do we go from here with the program? Bracken?

>>Bracken Hendricks: And just to your point, it's humbling to see the names come in on these comments because this is such a star-studded group who have been long-time leaders in the field. It's wonderful to see your name, Majora, as well.

I want to touch quickly on Eric's point about affordable housing. There's certainly a lot that can be done to improve upon affordable housing but I think one takeaway that I have from looking to the affordable housing community, if you go back 30, 40 years ago, banks wouldn't lend to affordable housing because they thought it was a loser and they thought it was these tiny little pots of low-income people who could never pay their debts. And they artificially ascribed credit risk and it was just – it was a very large but very decentralized marketplace.

And we think about community as an example – excuse me – it's this notion that it's possible with policy and with smart market design to create a market that doesn't exist, that is meeting public objectives and public purposes and helping people in need through the market effectively and without sacrificing really delivering the service. So, by aggregating community solar, by really thinking about subscriber management, by thinking about innovative ownership models, by thinking about strategic deployment of early-stage capital to preserve control of projects, by thinking about innovative ways to structure debt and equity

In terms of this notion of a platform, one of the things we're trying to do with Working Power – others are certainly active in this place, and Sustainable Capital Advisors has been doing amazing work, especially on the debt side, and I think this collaboration through this partnership can really do very powerful work. But one of the things we're looking at in Working Power is the equity side of the equation. Really, all you need to do is drive down the cost of capital somewhere in the capital stack. So, you've got debt. You've got project equity put up by the owner of the property, which is hard to source if you're a local, scrappy nonprofit living hand to mouth. And then there's the tax equity component.

Our assertion – and we have yet to be proven wrong, which to me is enough of an invitation to keep going – is that there's enough mission-motivated money right now chasing these environment and social governance, ESG commitments, really looking at trying to make serious contributions at the community level through real projects that are advancing racial justice, social equity, economic empowerment, wealth formation. There is an opportunity in high single digit, even low, mid-single digit that is beating the market for other opportunities where there should be enough capital at prices that are way cheaper than what the current solar industry demands from its equity. And if we can get these mission-related investors connected to a robust pipeline of deep, justice-centered projects, we will be doing very, very powerful and transformative work. And we'll be driving down the total cost of developing these projects, not cheapening underwriting but actually making better money available.

>>Eric Hangen: Yeah, Bracken, I've had some really tantalizing conversations with folks who are advise corporations on their responsible investing portfolios, and I've heard the same – heard about sort of a dissatisfaction with just buying offsets. I've heard interest in really wanting to rap your knuckles on it, the sort of impact that people can point to. Corporates are worried about the reputational aspects of their investments at this point. And so, that does make me feel very broadly – I think it's a door that we should be knocking on. I think we're going to have challenges to unlock it at its full scale but we've definitely got to make the effort and figure out how else we can meet their parameters, because I think that here is some cheaper impact money looking at this stuff in a way that there hasn't been until recently.

[Crosstalk]

>>Michelle Moore: I want to bring us back, if I can, in our last ten minutes togethers, in contemplating this new program that DOE is bringing forward and this tension between the needs of capital and the needs of communities, because those two things are not always aligned. And one of the things that we set off to discuss, even from the values perspective, is how do we keep community priorities at the center of the conversation? And Bracken, you've shared some really tantalizing ideas about how you bring community ownership into that conversation too. And we know that as we set out on these bold goals that DOE has set for us together, we not only have some differences between potentially local – very place-based needs and very place-based priorities for communities that have to be inquired and understood and listened to up front with capital market needs for replicability, scalability, making things so easy they can kind of cut and paste for big dollar scale.

And then we have this other intersecting line that's the policy, that's our very federalist energy policy marketplace where there are extraordinary differences from state to state and sometimes from place to place. And has been uplifted in the chat here as well, we have energy storage coming to the party now too that brings energy resilience benefits, and that sometimes in some places adds to the economics of the projects too. So, in the last nine minutes that we have together – and I would invite folks in the chat to please continue participating here. You guys have added so wonderfully to the conversation today. What's your wish list for what this new partnership, what this new initiative from DOE can produce? How can it help to address some of the tensions that we've identified, focusing on community-centric, shovel-worthy projects, and solve for some of the opportunities and needs that our chat has identified here today too?

Victor?

>>Victor Rojas: Yeah, I think I would push back a bit on the notion that the interests of finance and the communities are misaligned. I think they're largely just misunderstood because there's not been a real constructive dialogue between those parties about what is required on both sides of the equation to make all of this work. And so, I tend to be an eternal optimist in these matters and the power of markets to fix these issues if done creatively and thoughtfully.

So, I do think that there's a path forward on the policy side to really, as I said, design these tools in such a way that really do acknowledge the community concerns, the absolutely critical environmental and justice concerns, and still can make money in a way that satisfies the investors. So, I think ultimately it's not – and I hope Eric can fix this problem through the learning lab, but there's a significant education component embedded in all of this and I think we often tend to overlook that as well. We need to really invest the time and effort to educate not just the developers but also financiers because they're looking for, as you said, Michelle, ways to make their job easier. And you can't fault them for that certainly, but at the same time you've got to be cognizant of the dynamics of the community.

I'm glad that Bracken talked about this issue of the perception of credit risk. We have a client – we're working with a local green bank that is designing a low-to-moderate-income rooftop solar financing program and there is this broad perception that there's a significant credit risk in loaning money to people to do rooftop solar in these communities. It's just not the case. We're finding in our analysis that it's just – they – it's not a more significant credit risk than, say, a non-low-to-moderate-income community.

So, I think really you have to address those perceptions. And here again, I think part of this process, we'll certainly, I think, hopefully recommendations make on how to really educate the community and all the stakeholders around just what a significant and positive investment this can be.

>>Michelle Moore: Great. Bracken?

>>Bracken Hendricks: A couple quick things. There was a brief reference, I think implicit in what Eric was saying just a minute ago, about accountability. We need projects that are accountable to the communities that are in service to the people generating the projects, rather than the project developers being in service to the market. It needs to be accountable to the market. It needs to be a reliable and functioning investment, but ultimately we need these capital investments to be accountable to the people in the communities. And that's achievable. And there is a real hunger in the financial market to actually be able to kick the tires on these investments and know that the money is actually hitting the ground, actually touching real people. It's in that accountability that they become real ESG investments, real impact investments, and truly just as centered.

To your point, Michelle, about regional markets, regional disparity is very real. Energy is not nationally regulated; it's regionally regulated. And most solar incentives and renewables incentives, climate policies in this environment where we have stalemate in Congress, even with an administration that's trying to lead through its executive authorities, we need regions to lead. In these questions about structure and capital and lowering costs I think a lot about the state of Michigan. They have incentives but the incentives are just below the level that makes a difference in the market. So, if we can just bring down that cost of capital, we can make that low req price actually work. But until then, Detroit and Flint are going to be stuck and people aren't going to be investing money. So, these questions about capital structure really matter.

And then, I guess the last thing I just want to just echo and sort of say "plus one," on the notion about battery storage, microgrids, all of these financial innovations can be very useful on technology innovation as well because it's about de-risking, it's about lowering cost, and it's about streamlining deployment effectively. And I think that we'll find that these community-based projects become the front line of really deep energy storage and battery resilience. And we've touched a number of those projects and it's exciting to see what's starting to come online.

>>Michelle Moore: Thank you so much for that perspective, Bracken. And thank you, everybody, for the incredible ideas and connections, examples, and wish lists that are being shared in the chat. Groundswell is blessed to work with the City of Baltimore and the Maryland Energy Administration and partners at SunCatch and A.F. Mensah on a resilience – community resiliency center program there that is fixing to have built five community resilience centers, with many more underway. And there you do see just a real expansion of community benefits by bringing energy storage to the party. And to Larry Glover's question earlier in the chat, in a way that – what the community members themselves are prioritizing in terms of what they want to see from solar, because the reality with these – with smaller projects in particular is not only are the economics kind of thin but the projects are small. So, even with good returns there's not enough return there to resource a community-based organization to fulfill its vision beyond this tiny little slice. So, we can be thinking bigger about how community-based energy projects fit into this broader ecosystem in the spirit of your work, Eric, and thinking about community development, restorative community development that gets us further with what we have to work with here.

So, Eric.

>>Eric Hangen: Yeah. I was looking at the chat right now and I see Amar from DOE talking about the – shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism and he mentioned BlackRock specifically, which we just had some – an interesting series of conversations with BlackRock where we were kind of giving them a tour of the community investment universe. And from those and other investor conversations – one thing that Amar's chat is just raising up for me that I thought I'd share, I guess it's sort of a long-term optimistic take on things, but money gets – what I have learned from working in community development finance is that money gets easier to raise the more money you're trying to raise, and it tends to get cheaper and more liquid. And so, if we can figure out how to get through the really hard growth phase of things and present investors with – I mean, basically investors want big-bite, scaled investment opportunities with liquidity, and size of – market size drives all of that and you do get – you get cheaper money for longer terms.

And we're starting to see it just in the community development finance world. We're starting to see community development nonprofits who are now directly accessing the bond market. So, you have LISC, for example – Local Initiative Support Corporation – issuing tens of millions – I think a $100 million bond issue was the most recent – I might not be quite right about the exact amount – but with the cost of capital in the one, one and a half percent rage for long terms. So, once you start doing enough of something it does become more possible to raise that kind of money. And so, that's something we can kind of keep our eyes on the prize about as well. And I think building the ecosystem of shovel-worthy deals, as you called them, Michelle, is the way to – very broadly the way that – the path to get there.

>>Michelle Moore: It wouldn't be Zoom if someone didn't try to speak while on mute. I'm glad that could be me for this panel. I want to uplift a couple other ideas that have come forward in the chat too. Kimberly Armstrong is uplifting the need to think about how minority-owned businesses, for-profits and nonprofits, have a part in this. And we've also got some great conversation here about tools that might help move in this direction, standardized criteria to bring transparency for impact investors, and… let's see. Gosh, there's so much there. It's incredibly, incredibly rich.

So, now we really do just have four minutes left. So, in a final lightning round, considering not just our conversation but the wonderful ideas in the chat, whether you have a universal idea to add here – I do want to say $10 billion is a consistent theme in our chat as well in terms of investment – or whether you have a particular solution, something that we could request of this community or an idea that we could request DOE consider as the NCSP continues to grow. How can we continue to work together to drive restorative investments in community to manage this tension between big capital needs and place-based community priorities? And how do we do it in a way that is inclusive and is enabling startup businesses, minority-led businesses, women-led businesses to be a part of this conversation as well? And I am sure – I saw her enter the conversation – Ajulo from – Othow who is going to be leading us forward in one of the next panels is going to have a lot to contribute to these ideas as well.

So, lightning round beginning with Bracken.

>>Bracken Hendricks: I guess maybe I'll close with a question more than an answer. There's a tension between trustability and ambition and we can't sacrifice either. And I guess I sort of put it back to the group and really put it to this convening that's coming together and getting launched here today, is how can we have the ambition of the very large-scale pool of investments without disempowering the finely grained project development that needs to happen to get traction and simultaneously how can we have a project orientation that is grounded in the reality of the task at hand of really doing the careful knitting to get the job done without losing track of the big picture? And I think there's kind of a dance of bootstrapping that will make this work, but hopefully we can all kind of come together and feel our way towards inventing that future together.

>>Michelle Moore: Beautifully put, Bracken. Eric? Sixty seconds.

>>Eric Hangen: Wow, yeah. That was so spot on, Bracken. I am just only going to add to that that I think we've been playing that dance in the community development finance field for a long time, and so that there's a lot to learn from that experience. And also, a lot of infrastructure there that actually I do hope that this alignment between sort of solar developers and climate thinkers and sort of mainstream traditional community development will continue to happen. And I would just maybe end with my last few seconds, just sort of a pitch to think about how you might use some of that existing infrastructure, actually community development infrastructure. Could any of it be repurposed to help this cause?

>>Michelle Moore: Thank you. And Victor, take us home.

>>Victor Rojas: Sure. I'll refer back to the question you posed around a solution or a big solution. I think we've done a very good job at all levels of government of deploying solutions to the market that are designed to really animate activity, both casual engagement and project development. I think we're at a bit of yet another inflection point, if you will, in how we think about that, and I think we need to think more broadly around very targeted solutions, a suite of solutions and not any one thing that might work that's across a variety of sectors. I think we – and hopefully, this lender working group that we're managing as part of this process will look at just all these solutions available in the market that are designed very specifically to address a very targeted issue in the market, which is credit access. And I think here again there is no one answer. And I've certainly got some notions going in, but we have a very stellar group on our panel and our working group and they'll come up with a lot of ideas as well. So, I would just encourage people to think more broadly around suites of solutions that are targeted to very specific requirements, understanding barriers, understanding the solutions, and pairing the two up in a very effective way.

>>Michelle Moore: Great. Thank you so much, Victor. And thank you so much to DOE for enabling us to share here on the panel today. We so appreciate you bringing this community together again. We love the National Community Solar Partnership and your ambition and the team. And thank you all so much to the audience here today for participating and being such a vital part of this panel. So, Anna, back over to you.

>>Anna: Thank you so much, Michelle. And another huge thank-you to all the roundtable guests for sharing their deep expertise on creating truly equitable community solar, and thinking through the financing of that. We encourage everyone here to visit the link that Robin dropped into the chat, to learn more about the Credit Ready Solar Initiative and the Credit Ready Solar Marketplace and how you can get involved.

And next up we will have another session on our Pathway to Success that's focused on the importance of technical expertise and capacity building, really, to all of the initiatives on the Pathway to Success. Again, we'll start this session with a brief overview video that includes NCSPT members and our strategic partners engaging in this initiative, and then we'll hear from another roundtable of technical assistance providers and recipients, about the impact of the NCSP's technical assistance program. Let's go ahead and tee up that next video.

>>Greg: Hello, I'm Greg Leventis from National Community Solar Partnership's technical assistance, or TA, coordinator. To meet NCSP's goals, Community Solar stakeholders will need the knowledge and the know-how to expand this market. That is, they'll need to build capacity. The NCSPT program helps partners build this capacity through supporting NCSP efforts; technical assistance really serves as the glue that ties together a lot of NCSP's work. Now, three of our strategic partners who provide technical assistance are Joyce McLaren, Andrea Ponsor, and Ian Fischer.

>>Joyce: Hi, I'm Joyce McLaren from the National Renewal Energy Lab. The TA program provides free expertise to help you develop your Community Solar project. For example, we may pair your organization with one of our technical experts, to give you one-on-one support over a few weeks or months.

>>Andrea: Hi, I'm Andrea Ponsor from Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future. In addition to direct TA, the TA program also supports collaboratives [inaudible] focused on specific topics like multifamily affordable housing, municipal utilities, and the new state collaborative. For example, TA for the multifamily housing collaborative includes conducting research to address barriers to adoption such as utility allowances and affordable housing.

>>Ian: Hi, I'm Ian Fischer from Urban Ingenuity. The TA program will also support upcoming initiatives like the Credit Ready Solar Initiative, which will create a marketplace for Community Solar developers, lenders, and philanthropists. Within this initiative, TA will coordinate a lender working group. For more on NCSPTA, you can visit energy.gov/communitysolar.

>>Greg: This next session, "What do we need? Capacity building. How do we get it? Technical assistance," is a conversation when partners were involved in NCSP's Ta program. It will focus on Community Solar capacity building needs, how technical assistance can help, and what that looks like. So now, I'm pleased to turn it over to your moderator Ajulo Othow, founder and CEO of EnterWealth Solutions, and general counsel of Carolina Solar Services. Ajulo –

>>Ajulo: Thank you, Greg. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm really pleased to be able to moderate this session along with the panelists you see listed here. Again, my name is Ajulo Othow, and I'm the founder and CEO of EnterWealth Solutions. We're an early-stage developer of battery storage and solar projects, based in North Carolina. I'm also general counsel with Carolina Solar Services, which is an operations and maintenance company. We've got about a half-a-gigawatt-worth of assets under maintenance. So, my experience kind of bookends the projects. And, so I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk with you all, today, about capacity building and technical assistance, in particular, from the National Community Solar Partnership.

The TA that we specifically sought with the partnership was to help us, in addition to measuring the benefits to energy-burdened, in particular, low-income households, in terms of savings on their electric bill. We also really wanted to figure out and, with the assistance of the partnership, measure and verify grid-level benefits. We know that the distribution grid that is providing this resource is also benefiting from the resource, and we wanted to be able to measure that, and then share that out with the broader electric utility industry, in particular, the rural electric cooperative market. Specifically, we were looking at the load factor improvements, and this is particularly important in the context where you have a rural electric cooperative that may be experiencing either a flat load or, in this case, declining load, year over year. And so, the only way to keep the company and the rate payers from having escalating costs is really to control the wholesale cost.

And so, we wanted to be able to measure improvements in load factor and the efficiency of the grid, as a result of solar and batter storage technologies. So, super excited to be working with the partnership on that task, and I'm really grateful to be here to moderate the panel with Sandy, Kerry, Travis, and Lauren, who are either technical assistance providers or themselves receiving technical assistance. So, we're gonna go in turn, and each of them will introduce themselves and, just like I did, talk a little bit about the market you're working in, provide a little bit of context for the audience in terms of what regulatory or market structures you find yourselves working within. Specifically, what were your capacity building needs, or how are you addressing capacity building needs for others. And talk a little bit about how successful that's been and any gaps along the way, as a part of your introductions.

So, I will start with Sandy Fazeli. Welcome. Could you give us that introduction and maybe answer those few questions for us?

>>Sandy: Absolutely. And thanks so much, Ajulo.

It's such an honor to be part of the panel and to talk about some of my favorite things: the states [laughs], the power of capacity building, and thoughtful, strategic, and informed technical assistance. And of course, if we decide to expand the list, I'm very interested in talking about the inner lives of cats, and also complaining about winter, so feel free to chat if you're interested in those topics, as well.

But my name is Sandy Fazeli; I'm with an organization called the National Association of State Energy Officials, or NASEO. NASEO represents the energy officials and their staff from the 56 states, territories, and the District of Columbia. As you can imagine, these offices vary in size, scope, and priority depending on which state you're in, but one of the common attributes across many of our members is their forward-looking focus. Distinct from regulatory bodies, which are responsible for regulating utilities based on existing laws and policies, state energy offices work with stakeholders and partners to identify and advance a forward-looking policy agenda around key priorities such as clean energy, electric grid modernization, climate change, economic development, job creation, equity, and resilience.

And so, it's no wonder why Community Solar has become a focal point for many state energy offices around the country. For many of the reasons already highlighted in today's discussion, we know that Community Solar can be an important tool at the national level, to advance affordability, access, community involvement in the energy transition, and this is no different at the state level. But the reality is that Community Solar continuing on a business-as-usual path may not create the scale or the levels of access and investment needed to bring the benefits to populations, households, and markets that have historically been underserved, those with lower incomes, lower credit, less access to clean generation options. Community Solar projects can be really complex, with a lot of need for subscriber management, payment and revenue management, and consumer protection and education.

And this seems to have created a situation where the path of least resistance is often with larger or wealthier customers and those with better credit, leaving out an important part of the market. So this is where NASEO believe state policymakers can really begin to make a difference, and we've had the opportunity to observe more and more state energy offices assume this position of change agent, examining and reexamining what about their Community Solar policies and programs needs to change, to unlock greater access and opportunity. And in these positions, they're unpacking some pretty big questions: What is the process for qualifying customers? And what steps do subscribers need to take? Can the state integrate other programs such as food stamps or LIHEAP, to reduce the burden of proof on potential subscribers, or automatically qualify them?

Are there incentives, subsidies, and program designs from the state, are they set up correctly to drive subscriptions from lower-income customers? And how can the state achieve scale by lessening the dependence on subsidies and grants, and reducing barriers for private capital to play in this space effectively? So I'll just end my intro by noting a few bright spots that we're really hoping can help states deliver better, stronger, more accessible programs, moving forward. One is the Inclusive Shared Solar Initiative, a project that NASEO has launched with the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, with funding from Sedo, to examine options to better integrate low-income programs such as LIHEAP, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, with Community Solar policies and programs.

Another bright spot is the new states collaborative under NCSP, which DOE and NREL have been developing in partnership with NASEO and the Clean Energy States Alliance. The collaborative is being born as we speak, I believe, currently, out of months of discussion and consultation directly with states about what they need in terms of technical assistance and planning support. And once it's launched next month, it will promote direct peer-to-peer exchange, to help states learn from one another. So again, I'm really thankful to be here and to learn, and I am also very appreciative of this panel to help us take a step back and think about how to build capacity and deliver information to the change agents and champions on the ground for Community Solar. So thanks so much, and Ajulo, I'll turn it back to you.

>>Ajulo: Thanks, Sandy – look forward to the discussion, in a little bit. So we'll go with Lauren and then Kerry and then Travis, in terms of the order of introductions. Lauren –

>>Lauren: Great, thank you. I'm excited to be here with everyone today, and thank you to DOE for hosting this important summit.

So, I'm Lauren Westmoreland; I'm the VP of energy and sustainability for Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future. We're also known as SAHF, that's how our acronym is. We're a nonprofit collaborative that has 13 national affordable housing members working across the country to provide housing to over 150,000 households across the country. Our members have multistate portfolios and are in the process of looking towards what they do both around energy and sustainability, as well as how to move to a low-carbon future. At the same time, they're also considering how they increase resident agency and voice, both through traditional resident services as well as other things, as they're thinking about their climate initiatives. And that's why we were really excited to provide technical assistance to the National Community Solar Partnership's multifamily affordable housing collaborative.

This collaborative has been around for about a year-and-a-half now, and it's with some of the leading affordable housing nonprofits and for-profits around the country, as they think through and problem-solve how to address Community Solar through their own mechanisms. The partners are varied, included groups like NICHA, as well some of our members like National Church Residences, and others. It included folks working on the East Coast, middle of the country, and the West Coast, so, facing all different types of policy challenges. Our role was really to ensure that that peer exchange and collaboration could happen. It's really important to have technical assistance that's really to the nitty-gritty around project management, around getting solar panels onto actual properties.

But in addition, especially within the affordable housing community, they need to hear from each other, and they need to understand what's going on, what has worked, what hasn't. And especially under the lens of having to also think about the complicated nature of affordable housing deals. The last panel got into that, a little bit. You know, and moving forward, I think that technical assistance is still necessary, and one of the things that we really need to consider, moving forward, is that our affordable housers, and actually, a lot of organizations, mission-based organizations, are really strapped for capacity, right now. One of our members who typically leads solar efforts, he was actually pulled off and was one of the integral members on the team that worked on getting vaccinations out to their residents across the country.

So, we know that some of our internal folks who typically work on asset management are being pulled in lots of different directions. So, not only how do we get them technical assistance, but how do we make sure they have the capacity and the bandwidth to actually think through some of these big and important challenges that lie in front of us when it comes to Community Solar.

So I'll stop there, 'cause I've talked a bunch, and I'll hand it off to Kerry.

>>Kerry: Thanks so much, Lauren. It's really great to be here, today, in this community, and so many friends and colleagues. I feel like we're all happy warriors on this question to achieve the goals that DOE laid out for us. I'm with Inclusive Prosperity Capital; we're a not-for-profit investment fund, and we work at the intersection of community development and clean energy and climate. And we're exclusively focused on underserved markets, we wanna make sure no one gets left behind in the transition to a clean-energy economy. Vic talked a little bit about green banks. We are a boundaryless green bank, we spun out of the Connecticut Green Bank, and we partner with other green banks, lenders, developers, nonprofits, local governments. And when we think about this space, you know, there are a variety of loan products and debt facilities and structures that we can offer, and we're also a mission-aligned owner and operator of Community Solar.

But we really think about how do we scale up, put a lot more zeroes on the end of the amount of investment that's going into Community Solar. And we know that that takes a world of blended finance and all kinds of de-risking strategies, and, you know, the previous panel – oh, my god, big group hug for the previous panel, you know, speaking my language, it was so exciting to hear. We really wanna see scale productized approaches and platforms that can crowd in a lot of different private capital, so we're really excited about that. So, our context is, being a part of the Credit Ready Solar Initiative as one of the lenders or financiers, we're really excited about how that initiative can supercharge the investment, but, boy, is there a lot of work to be done. So, let's think about that.

As an organization, and there are other, you know, lenders out there that work across the country, particularly focused on disadvantaged communities, so many challenges. Which have been talked about all throughout the day, there's no standardization with utilities and states on the regulatory framework, on the incentives. And so, we get contacted by local groups all across the country, and, like, you know, they need to know where to start, what's available in their state, and what does a financeable project look like. So really excited about some of the other TA projects that will, you know, help those folks get started. But I think our TA group, you know, our group that's just getting started, we, as a lending and investing community, also have to give folks a roadmap, like, what does an investable project look like, what are their decision points, what materials are we going to need, what are the proformas, the modeling that needs to happen.

And I'll just say, also, as a lender working nationally, I mean, thinking about all the different flavors, I think what we're striving for is, there's not gonna be one flavor, not one size fits all. But can there be some standardization around what a "typical" offtake or agreement looks like, what are some of the standard terms, what are some typical capital stacks in some of the different use cases, what do those project proformas look like. How do we communicate, as a lending community? What we're looking for as folks come to us looking for financing? How can we standardize some of that documentation that we provide, you know, when we ink an agreement, what does that look like?

I think about the initiative, from years back, on standardizing what PPAs look like, right? It's that sort of work that we need to go through, so, a lot of work to do. But imagine, you know – one of the things somebody talked about, I can't remember who, about, you know, there need – and maybe it was Vic – about, there needs to be, like, education on both sides. Lenders need to understand what developers and community groups need, but community groups also need to understand what lenders and financiers need. So, imagine, if you will, you know, we as lenders, we ultimately have to – we have to perform due diligence, and we have to go to the credit committee, and we have to get signoff, we have to understand what the risk is. So there's a lot of work involved when we think about the pretty messy environment that we have today, but really, really excited about the opportunity of the Credit Ready Solar Initiative, and how it can also plug into the other TA initiatives going on.

And when I think about, you know, the opportunity, ultimately, for the Credit Ready Solar Initiative, and someone like IPC and all the different folks that we work with, like, imagine, if you will, a shared data room that, you know, any different lender in the capital stack, whether you're on the predevelopment or construction or term or private equity, coming together. Maybe you're working on a shared data room with, you know, some shared models and terms and what have you. So, you know, when I think about the scale and the ambition and the amount of private capital that we need to crowd in, those are the sort of things that I'm excited about when I think about what's kicking off, the prior panel thought about. And then, you know, I think about our ability to kind of take all that and, as IPC, we could create standardized products and platforms where we work with other lenders.

And somebody on the previous panel talked about bonding, like, ultimately, that would be the goal, you can imagine a community solar bond for community-owned Community Solar projects, wouldn't that be cool. So, that's the context I'm coming from, Ajulo.

>>Travis: All right, thanks, Kerry. My name's Travis Neil; I'm the head accountant for Orkis Power and Light Cooperative. We're a direct recipient of technical assistance. So we're a pretty small cooperative, electric cooperative, distribution cooperative out in sort of isolated northwest Washington, between Seattle and Canada. We're about three miles off the coast, and we're serving power to about 20 islands out here. We've got around 12,000 members, 15,000 meters connected. We do have a microgrid already; we built kind of a smaller community solar array, about a half-a-megawatt, and paired that with a lithium-ion phosphate battery, a couple years ago. That battery actually just came online at the end of 2020.

And so, now we're moving on to our next microgrid project, we're kind of scraping our way through this landscape kind of on our own a little bit, getting grants for pieces of it throughout. And for this next project, we were lucky enough to receive some grant monies from the state of Washington, for not only the battery component of our project, but also, the Community Solar portion of it. We're building a larger closer to two-megawatt array, and we were lucky enough to receive about a $1 million grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce Clean Energy Fund. It was the Low-Income Community Solar Deployment Fund, so, this million dollars is specifically for Community Solar for low-income. And that will allocate a good portion of this new array for low-income use specifically, while the rest of the array is going to be sort of freeform Community Solar availability.

And, so what that did is just kind of complicated things [laughs] a little bit for us, in terms of program structure. And, you know, being a small cooperative, we have less than 50 employees, and so, we kind of needed technical assistance to sort of understand what are some different options about how can we structure this program. We've got, now, a more complicated situation going on: the first array was very small, it was a very straightforward participation of Community Solar; this next array, not so much. So, we wanted to understand, we had a lot of goals, internally, of what we thought we wanted to do for our low-income community, how we wanted to involve low-income partnerships, low-income service providers, do we provide benefits to them, you know, and what do those benefits look like, how do we provide benefits directly to our low-income members. And then, how do we wanna structure the rest of that Community Solar participation, and what does that agreement look like; it might not be exactly how our first Community Solar array was.

So, we've heard a lot about talk how Community Solar is different all across the country. As Jay Inslee said earlier today, the sun doesn't always cooperate with us out here in the Pacific Northwest, so that adds its own sort of level of complications. We are lucky enough to have a lot of support from the state, that provides some of the grant funds, and we've had state sort of production incentives, in the past, that are no longer available to us since we've sort of fully used ours. So it just sort of changes the landscape of how do we make this a financially beneficial investment, not only for the co-op but for the participants that are going to benefit for this. And how do we maximize the benefits while also, you know, making it equitable for the utility, the membership, the low-income membership.

And so, and that's really where the technical assistance came in for us. We worked with a team and we sort of developed a tool that allowed for a lot of flexibility, because we didn't know, you know, how much the benefits were gonna be passed through. We sort of needed to tweak all these different dials, and we needed a tool to say, "Okay, if we wanna do this, can we lower this? And can we increase this? And do we wanna provide incentives here?" And we've seen a lot of flexibility, and I think a lot of different co-ops are gonna need that type of flexibility. A lot of small co-ops don't have a lot of internal expertise in this field, it's great to talk to people that do, see a lot of different projects and say, "Well, have you ever thought about this?" and we say, "Well, no, we haven't. [laughs] That's good to know."

And just have something that you can kind of play with and tailor to your unique situation. And so, it was greatly beneficial for us, and we'll still be using that tool going forward, as we sort of move closer into completing this project.

>>Ajulo: Great. Thank you, guys, for the introductions. Terrific. So, Kerry kind of lifted up this idea of standardization of project documents. Sandy, I'm curious, at the state energy office level, given the, you know, huge variation across the states and the way that they're approaching this issue, is there a set of interventions that you could lift up that might harmonize across the states?

>>Sandy: It's really hard to speak to across the states, but I think even just looking within one particular state and looking at how to harmonize across programs is probably the initial first step. We've been working with a few states, as I mentioned, on looking at their LIHEAP programs, how can those be leveraged. We know that LIHEAP already has an infrastructure for income-qualifying households, for setting up benefits that run through the utility. Is there a way to integrate a Community Solar benefit through that, or to use LIHEAP, potentially, to offset the subscription costs that an LMI household might have to pay? And so, you know, what we've been looking at is just even within inter-program at the state level, is there a way to streamline that process and make it a little bit more palatable for project developers and investors and Community Solar projects to consider how to better integrate low- and moderate-income households?

I do think because LIHEAP is a federal program, there are certain aspects that could potentially be zoomed out. So you can think about, you know, a model program that really relies on a strong partnership between the state energy office and the LIHEAP office. We're seeing that in New York, actually, where the LIHEAP office has provided lists, to the state energy office, of the qualifying households, and NYSERDA, the state energy office, essentially, aggregates those households and pulls them together to be an anchor tenant for low- and moderate-income-driven Community Solar projects. And so, you know, I don't know that there's necessarily a way to mandate that kind of thing across all of the states, but those are the types of models that we're encouraging more state energy offices to look at and really think about how to integrate for a better user experience. Even though, internally, it is a lot of behind-the-scenes work to actually get those programs to talk to one another and to integrate seamlessly.

>>Kerry: If I could just build on a couple of things, Sandy, so agree with all that. I think, also – so, those of us who are involved in multistate or national kind of financing activities, we get it, energy, you know, 50 states, different – I mean, that's part of the ballgame, we understand that, but a couple of things. Within certain states, you have lots and lots and lots of municipal and, you know, co-ops, right? And so, standardization within a state can be helpful, outside of the investor-owned, you know, regulated, you know, that side of things. And Sandy, I know you're working on some projects around that, or there are some collaboratives working around that. But the other thing that I think is really important, that we've seen in the green bank world and in other parts of financing, is you can get momentum when states see, "Okay, here's a model that this state over here was able to drive a lot of investment through."

It takes time to work its way through the regulatory framework and the energy office and what have you, but these sorts of collaboratives that are bringing states together to learn from each other, and we heard the governors talk about that, that's really, really critical. And we on the financing side can partner up and say, you know, on the show-me-the-money side, like, "We'll bring the money, but it's gotta look like this. If it's not gonna look like this, you know what, your state's not gonna be very attractive for investment." That gets really powerful, 'cause you're connecting, now, in the economic development and jobs and not just clean energy and climate, that we're really passionate about all those other things. So I do think – and think about this, too, when you think about, like, community-owned Community Solar models, Bracken was talking about this, the wealth-building, those can seem scary to, you know, investors.

But if we can create models that investors are comfortable with, and then we can come to states and say, "Look at what – like, the money will flow, but here's what we need," I just have a lot – and this is all, like, under the rubric of TA, right? I have confidence that we can actually get there. So, yeah, it's so cool – and Lauren, your work on the affordable housing side, like, wonky, challenging, difficult, like, on every, you know, barrier, barrier, barrier, barrier. But, like, imagine connecting all these pieces together – it's very cool.

>>Lauren: Yeah, [crosstalk].

>>Sandy: Actually, Kerry, I was just gonna say Lauren's work on the multifamily side, I think, is such a great example of helping unpack what the challenges are. Because affordable housing, in and of itself, is a bit of a mystery, I think, to a lot of us in the energy world. So Lauren, I'll let you take the floor, but I think that that was a perfect segue.

>>Lauren: Yeah, thank you. And I'm actually thinking about standardization from maybe a little bit different of a perspective. So, as we have, you know, affordable housers who are across multistates, there are some definitions that would be helpful to have consistent across, you know, across different programs. So we recently did a scan of Community Solar programs and how they are treating LMI, low- to moderate-income communities, or low-income, however they're defining it. As well as how they are prioritizing affordable housing organizations and their developments. And one of the nice things about affordable housing, especially regulated affordable housing, is that if you are subscribing those residents within those buildings, you can be rest assured that you are, you know, accessing communities who fit, typically, the definitions that are associated with low-income communities.

With that said, what we're seeing is that, both definitions around affordable housing, definitions around income, definitions around, like, how to show community benefit and resident benefit, how to how that you're not, you know, creating a scenario where you're raising rents or you're raising utility allowances, those vary across every single of the Community Solar programs right now. And for those who do work on the multistates, that can have a chilling effect around what they feel that they can take on, especially if there's all these different definitions around. So I think that that's something that's a great opportunity, especially with these SAHF collaboratives, and then, with more implementers talking.

>>Kerry: [inaudible] Credit Ready Solar Initiative, kind of, you know, are there – Bracken talked about whether there are structural approaches that might mask that messiness, and harmonize up here for the investor up here, there's maybe someone who sits in the middle and does that, you know, brain damage. And so, I think there's a lot of opportunity to bring these initiatives together.

>>Ajulo: Excellent, thank you. Travis, how did you go about figure out your target population? How did you go about reaching who you wanted to reach?

>>Travis: Well, twofold, I suppose. So just, due to our general isolation, our cooperative serves, you know, our entire county and – you know, so, that's our target group and they can't get away from us, unless they take a boat or a ferry or an airplane, you know? So, you know, that's the area that we're working within. For this next microgrid project, the array will be constructed probably, like, six months from now, sort of mid-2022, as the ground gets not-as-wet anymore. And the target market for that, I mean, and that's different, because, you know, half of it is going to be this Community Solar participation, and that's gonna be open to the entire membership, to the entire county. But the benefits have changed pretty drastically from our first project that we still had the availability of state production incentives that really made that first project quite nice [inaudible] nice for the participants. This next array won't.

And in terms of the sort of half of the array, I'd say, that will be dedicated to LMI participants, that's sort of something we had to figure out. We had an idea for what we wanted to do when we applied for the grant in the first place, so, a lot of that is passing the benefits to all of our sort of low-income members that participate as cooperative low-income members that we know of. But we know there's a lot of low- to moderate-income members that sort of don't participate with the cooperative, directly. And so, we wanted to figure out a way to reach more people that don't necessarily reach out to us, and that's kind of where we started thinking about providing benefits directly to low-income service providers, you know, food banks, housing shelters, any organizations that also sort of provide benefits to the low- to moderate-income community, that may not be on our radar. Because we can't possibly know, if people aren't coming to us for help.

So, that's sort of where it got a little more complicated is in understanding how do we spread the benefits out to most people. I saw Jill mention in the chat – so, Jill Clyburn and Associates and Christian Castillas were the boots-on-the-ground that sort of helped us out with this tool and this technical assistance. And they helped us build in this sort of energy efficiency benefit that we could do for some low-income members, as well. So, if they are a participant in this low- to moderate-income community solar project, we could also use some of those funds to provide maybe low or an incentive towards maybe a heat pump water heater, something like that, which is a high, you know, energy use for our territory. And sort of lower the overall energy burden, not just provide, you know, money through a Community Solar production incentive. So, that probably answers your question, there.

>>Ajulo: That's great, Travis, and that's exactly what Roanoke is doing, too, all the way on the other side of the country. We couldn't be further apart from one another geographically, but we're deploying very similar strategies in terms of adding people on as subscribers to the Community Solar array. But then layering that with energy efficiency upgrades, and providing the support for low-income consumers specifically through the on-bill finance mechanism. So that low-income people don't have to upfront that major expense, and they can pay a little bit at a time on their bill.

>>Travis: Absolutely. I can add a little bit to that. That option wasn't available to us when we built our first Community Solar array in 2018. Since then, we've received plenty of capital, through the USDA Rural Energy Savings Program, RESP, I think, is the acronym. So, zero percent loan funds that are meant for relending. So, since that, we've developed what we call the switch-it-up on-bill financing program. So we have the low-interest two percent on-bill financing program for ductless heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, and EV chargers. And in 2022, we're really expanding that program to open it up to a lot of different energy efficiency measures, but one of those things is going to be Community Solar participation.

So, aside from the million dollars that we will just direct towards low-income service providers and our low-income community that we know of, how we can, we'll also have the availability for folks to participate via on-bill financing. So, whatever a solar unit ends up costing, you know, if they want ten units, they don't have to come out-of-pocket to do that. It can just show up on their bill and they can pay for that over, you know, two percent interest over ten years, something low like that. So, I'm excited for that option, as well, because that was a little bit of a barrier, even on our first Community Solar array, I noticed, just for middle-income folks, you know, if you want ten units of Community Solar, and each unit is $150.00, maybe you don't have the cash to come out of pocket to, you know, $1,500.00 to just, to have solar.

And a lot of our homes are sort of in trees and a lot of homes aren't available to even have solar on their roofs. So, having the option not only to buy Community Solar if your home isn't suitable for solar, but also have the option to not come out of pocket is – I'm very excited for that on our next array, as well.

>>Ajulo: Right, and I don't think we can overstate the role of the federal government in all of the work that we're doing, whether it's Sandy's conversation about LIHEAP, or the USDA funding that Travis raises, or the various collaborations within the DOE Community Solar Partnership. And that really is the role of the federal government, and it's working, in some ways, to help create this harmonization and standardization that we're looking for, that will help the market to actually grow.

So we've got four minutes left, and in that four minutes, we're gonna do a lightening round, just like the last panel did. The question to each of you is: What makes you hopeful about capacity building efforts that you're involved with? What makes you hopeful. And we'll go in the same order in which we introduced ourselves. Sandy –

>>Sandy: Sure. So, I'm really hopeful and grateful to NCSP for launching these different collaboratives. I think they help organize the conversation in a way that, otherwise, we might all just be individually scrambling in our own silos, trying to find the appropriate experts on and contacts to make some of these conversations happen. So, you know, just by virtue of this panel, I've gotten to meet [laughs] some really great experts who can probably help me in my own work working with the state energy offices. I know Kerry already has lent a ton of expertise to our group. So, that's what I'm very hopeful about.

>>Lauren: I'm really hopefully that we will continue to see the development of all of these resources. So, just in the time that I've been participating in the multifamily affordable housing collaborative, and seeing everything from, you know, tools and resources that affordable housers can use out in the field with their residents, all the way up to, you know, HUD's most recent climate adaptation plan, mentioning DOE's National Community Solar Partnership. I mean, those are hugely different things, but it sort of demonstrates just the wide range of both opportunity and interest at all levels. And I think we need all of that in order to move this forward, both for affordable housers but also for the residents who are living in these properties and deserve access to clean energy.

>>Kerry: I'm really hopeful and really excited, 'cause I look at the infrastructure that the DOE's put together through this partnership, the folks that they've engaged, like on our Credit Ready that you just heard on that last panel, oh, my god, amazing people, right? And the folks like us, and our colleagues and friends in the finance world, who are coming along and saying, "Yeah, we wanna be a part of this." So, I feel like we have this opportunity to create the right kind of financial plumbing that's gonna allow us to scale, but then connect in to all the other TA efforts, whether it's on the ground for local groups, and the messaging, and the states, and what have you. I just think it's this really unique special moment that we're in that it feels like, on the financing side, we are gonna get there. We're gonna create standardized, you know, products and structures and platforms and documentation, but connecting to all those other efforts going on. It's a really exciting time.

>>Travis: Yeah, and I add to that, I'm really hopeful because of things like this. [laughs] And I've gotta give a shoutout to NRECA. You know, when we did our first solar project, the Sunday Project was extremely helpful, the Community Solar playbook, kind of reading through that really informed a lot of how we went forward with that project. Most recently, we've been involved in the NRECA's access project, Energy Access for All. And through that, have just met a whole group of people that are out there trying to standardize, yeah, like you said, contracts and projects, and provide tools that can help small cooperatives, or, you know, anybody, kind of figure these things out. Because a lot of folks don't have this experience or expertise, and we need somebody to kind of come and talk to us about it and learn from. So, I've seen that change a lot, over the last three years, the discussion has expanded, more and more groups are coming in to help with this problem, all across the country.

So, I'm really hopeful that, five years from now, there's gonna be just an abundance of resources available for all sorts of entities and cooperatives or whatnot that are looking to build a Community Solar project. There's gonna be tools out there, groups that can just sort of come in and help understand, you know, what you're trying to do and, "Oh, yeah, we can do this for you." So, I see it going that way and I'm really hopeful for that.

>>Ajulo: Right, and like all of you, I'm also really hopeful by the amount of intention and focus specifically on low-income people, the least of these. I think that the strength of our nation is really contingent upon how well we do by these folks, our folks. So I thank all of you so much for this panel, and to the audience for being here. Thanks so much, and have a great rest of the day.

>>Kerry: Thank you, Ajulo.

>>Travis: Thank you.

>>Sandy: Thank you.

>>Lauren: Thank you.

>>Anna: Thank you again to Ajulo for guiding this discussion, and again, to all of the roundtable guests for participating in the discussion and sharing your expertise, but also, for being such great partners in the work of the NCSP. At this point, we're going to head into our final break for the day, which is just gonna be another, at this point, three-minute bio break. And during this bio break, we're really excited to spotlight 68 of our NCSP partners that answered our call and raised their hands to commit to publicly supporting our new target to power the equivalent of 5 million households with Community Solar by 2025, and generate $1 billion in savings. We're really grateful for the leadership of these partners, and really encourage all of you to join us in committing to publicly support the new target for the partnership. And we'll drop some links in the chat during this break, to show you how to do that.

Enjoy the break. We will be back at 3:05.

[End transcription at 3:58:36]

 

[Begin transcription at 4:01:37]

>>Anna: All right, welcome back from that very short break, and thank you, again, to all of these organizations that are really leading the way towards this new NCSP target. We absolutely could not do this work without you.

And now for our final session of the day, we're gonna be exploring the importance of winning hearts and minds to opening up new markets and accelerating the deployment of equitable and accessible Community Solar. Once more, we'll start this session with a brief overview video from our NCSPT members and the strategic partners that are supporting this initiative, and then we'll hear from a powerful roundtable of Community Solar developers from various industries on how we might amplify market influencers to win over hearts and minds. So let's tee up this next video.

>>Julia: – Ostapiej, and I support the Community Solar Partnership. Thank you for joining us for our next session focused on amplifying market influencers to support equitable Community Solar development. I'm excited to welcome Jeff Cramer and Nina Lobo from the Coalition for Community Solar Access, who are one of NCSP's strategic partners in this effort.

>>Nina: Thanks, Julia. I'm Nina Lobo, and I'm a policy and regulatory affairs associate with CCSA.

>>Jeff: Thanks, Nina. I'm Jeff Cramer; I'm president and CEO of CCSA. We're a national coalition of businesses, nonprofits, working to expand Community Solar access for all Americans, through our advocacy work across the country. What we've found is that, the more Americans learn about Community Solar, the more they wanna participate. However, more than half of the US states still don't have Community Solar programs, and many of the states that do have significant pent-up demand and room for growth. So, what we're doing is working to share the Community Solar success stories of people and communities already benefitting from the monthly bill savings, emission reductions, local economic growth and job creation, with policymakers and states looking to grow their existing programs, like New York, Colorado, California, and others. And then also showcase these benefits for states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, and others that are looking to cut the red tape preventing Community Solar project from currently being built and customers participating.

>>Nina: That's right, and at the national level, we've been working with the Solar Access for All Coalition, which is a group of community-based civil rights and environmental justice organizations, to advocate for federal policies that can drive equitable local solar adoption at scale, so we can reach the shared goals embodied in the Justice40 initiative. The right investments can really lead to Community Solar growth that creates benefits for states from the ground up.

>>Jeff: And to catalyze and provide a clear pathway for growth, the Community Solar industry has set a goal of building 20 gigawatts of Community Solar in the next 4 years, enough to help meet the DOE's goal to power 5 million households by 2025. To make this happen, we'll need action from state and federal policymakers and regulators, to help drive continued policy improvements, innovation, job creation in the industry. As the federal government's leading program on Community Solar, the national Community Solar Partnership has the opportunity to expand awareness of the many benefits that Community Solar provides, by creating a cohesive messaging strategy and amplifying success stories from around the country.

 

>>Julia: Thank you to CCSA for being NCSP's partner in this important effort to get the message out there for what Community Solar is and why awareness matters.

Now it's my pleasure to welcome our next roundtable moderator, Katherine Hamilton, chair of 38 North Solutions and international clean energy policy expert. Katherine?

>>Katherine: Thank you so much, really appreciate it, Julia and everybody here today. Jeff and Nina really teed us up perfectly. We have four speakers on this panel who are gonna really talk about what is the importance of story, what is the narrative that we need. We have all the targets, we have the commitments, we have the financing. Now how do we talk about it. So I'm really excited to welcome Zaid Ashai, Kiran Bhatraju, Julia Hamm, and Kristal Hansley, and I'm gonna ask each of you to introduce yourself, your company, and what you do relative to Community Solar. And then, I want you to tell one little story about a project, and it can be positive or negative, either way, but something that illustrates the importance of messaging for Community Solar.

So Zaid, let's start with you.

>>Zaid: Great. Thank you, Katherine. My name is Zaid Ashai. I am the CEO of Nexamp. Nexamp is a Boston-based company. We are a company focused on bringing distributed generation solutions throughout the country, and community solar is a big part of what we do. What's unique to our business model is we are a generator as well as an end retailer for large corporations as well as households. A couple interesting facts, I think one is my first job in clean energy was actually with Katherine, so Katherine's introduction undersold her. After grad school, I got to work with Katherine at Good Energies, and in all seriousness, she taught me a lot, which set me up for my entrepreneurial journey here at Nexamp.

At Nexamp, we pride ourselves on a couple things. One is really breaking the barriers on access. When I joined Nexamp, I challenged our team in 2013 to develop products that had no FICO scores, no long-term contracts, and we pride ourselves in trying to break down those barriers, and it wasn't easy. For us, community solar cannot repeat some of the mistakes of other solar programs, which typically have benefitted [break in audio] rate-based payers and left others behind. And that was really important to our journey. It wasn't an easy journey. Lots of banks closed the doors on us given that these are such capital-intensive projects. But we really pride ourselves on being able to do this. And just recently, we closed on the largest debt financing ever done in community solar, and all the customers had no FICO score. It's a huge amount of LMI customers, and this was something that was almost $450 million in debt financing for that, so we really pride ourselves on that.

And the second thing I would sort of comment, a project that we really were excited about because sometimes companies like ours are always potentially in the polar opposites with utilities. We have one project in Rockford in Illinois where we worked with Con Ed to deliver clean energy benefits exclusively to LMI customers. So Con Ed and Nexamp worked together to essentially target 650 LMI customers in that geography and offsetting about 80 percent of their bill. And that's something I'm just so proud of because these partnerships with utilities are going to become really critical because we don't have time to sort of be at loggerheads with one another. We really need strong public-private coordination to allow community solar to grow and allow us to hit our clean energy goals. So thanks for having me.

>> Katherine: Thanks so much, Zaid. You're too kind. Let me turn to Kiran and ask – we're going to talk a little bit more about the utility issue too. So Kiran, tell us about your company and tell us a little story.

>> Kiran: Thanks, Katherine. Yeah, it's great to be here. Arcadia is a technology company, so we don't own assets, we don't build them, we don't do any of the tough work as Zaid does. We build the software and work with dozens of developers to actually interact with the customer, understand their energy usage, apply the savings, manage the customer experience, manage a single bill. And so we've built that software and we've managed to manage customers across pretty much every community solar market in the country. We have over 650 megawatts that we're managing. And two stories. I'm going to give a negative and a positive because I'm sure we're going to talk about both here.

We had customers ready to go in Maine at the end of the year last year. Developers ready to go, projects ready to go, customers. And the utility at the last minute threw up cluster studies. That is basically putting up roadblocks to getting the projects built, and we're still waiting on the outcome of that. And I think it'll sort of dovetail with a lot of what I think we find as some of the roadblocks to really getting ubiquitous access.

On a positive side, in New York, we have an amazing partnership with the New York Housing Authority where we've also gotten low-income customers into these projects, no FICO, no credit check, no contract, no cancellation penalties, just cheaper, cleaner energy, which is amazing to see. So excited to be here and talk more about this industry.

>>Katherine: Great. Thank you so much. Julia, your turn. Tell us a little about what you do and a story.

>> Julia: Yes, good afternoon. Good to see you, Katherine. I'm Julia Hamm. I am the CEO of a nonprofit called the Smart Electric Power Alliance, and we work really across the electric power sector with all stakeholders helping to accelerate the transition to a carbon-free energy system. And so our stakeholders or members are about half electric utilities, so about 700 electric utilities across the US, which includes investor-owned public power and rural electric co-ops. It includes the significant majority of the public utility commissions, the regulators of the utilities. It includes large energy users like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, as well as hundreds of technology companies and solution providers that are project developers, technology manufacturers, software providers, et cetera. So really working collaboratively across a very broad ecosystem.

When it comes to community solar, we have been very engaged since – almost even before the term existed. Back many years ago, we first started to see some of the municipal utilities early on develop programs before we saw any of the current state programs that are in place. So for many years, SEPA has been working on community solar issues. In particular, we have, over the past few years, published four different publications on community solar, both looking at specifically what community solar customers want, what different utility program design models look like. We have a community solar working group currently that has about 265 people who participate in that, of which about half are utilities and the other half are a mix of developers, policymakers, regulators, community groups, and others who have an interest. And then also, in addition to sort of that broad education, research collaboration that we do, we've actually directly helped more than a dozen utilities design their community solar programs.

So my story. Gosh, I'm going to dig pretty far back for my story. I have no idea what year this was. I'm horrible at judging how long ago things happened, but it was in the really early days of community solar. I was in New York at a meeting with all of the municipal utilities and the rural co-ops in the state. And I was presenting to them on trends in the utility industry, and I was talking to them about this emerging trend of community solar and how some of the early utilities like Sacramento Municipal Utility District and a small utility in Washington State were really seeing positive engagement with customers around community solar. And after I presented, during one of the breaks, the head of a small municipal utility came up to me and said, "Oh yeah, our customers love our community solar. It's so amazing. It's such a good thing." And at that point in time, we knew – like you could count on one hand how many utilities had community solar programs, and I knew this guy – this utility didn't have one. So I started digging deeper and asking him questions, and I came to realize he was talking about something very different than I was, but it's important in terms of this conversation around messaging and what customers hear and think because in his mind, community solar, as a municipal utility, community solar was any solar that the utility was installing and putting back into the grid because all of their customers in their entire community benefitted, and therefore, that was community solar. And so I had to explain to him, that is amazing and it's great you're doing that, but what I'm talking about is a very specific program where individual customers participate. So that was the story I thought I would share. Again, it sort of goes way back, but I think that's still an important consideration in terms of just acknowledging that when we're talking to – all of us know what we mean by community solar, but the average person doesn't.

>>Katherine: That is a really good point. Kristal, so glad you're here. Please introduce yourself, your organization, and tell us a story.

>>Kristal: Yes, hi Katherine. Thanks for the invite and the warm intro. I'm Kristal Hansley, founder of WeSolar, Inc., located in Baltimore, Maryland. We're a next generation community solar [inaudible] focused on the [inaudible] development as well as subscription management. I started WeSolar about – on Juneteenth of 2020, right in the heart of what I would call Freedom Summer, when the George Floyd protest was taking off and also we were in the middle of the pandemic-induced recession. And yes, that was the perfect time to launch a company, and people thought I was nuts. But I mean, that issue for African Americans and overcoming adversity isn't new or taking a risk. It's just like Jeff Bezos said, if you don't like criticism or be scared, just do what everyone's been doing. You don't have to take any risk at all.

And I spent about three years in the community solar realm before launching WeSolar, and the mission of my purpose behind WeSolar was to (1) create affordable accessibility, and I was noticing the gaps as far as who were signing up. My previous experience, we brought on the very first community solar programs in Maryland, and the skew of those demographics were higher-income families, and that will lead into my story a little later on after I finish introducing WeSolar, but I wanted to make sure that the cultural competency and the language and marketing was from a lens that I knew that I can bring to the table that was unique to my community. And right now, we've also secured our first community solar PPA, which is a huge accomplishment for us, 8 megawatts, and to accomplish that with a statewide institution and then leveraging their buying power for such a young organization recognizes and sets the model to say, yes, support and contract with minority businesses and startups and allow us to really punch above our weight class where we wouldn't even be in the room if we wasn't looked at with another lens and not compared to our larger well-capitalized competitors.

And so I would say I have a story that has two forks. Back when I was in my previous role doing LMI advocacy, engagement, testify in hearings, the community solar program in Maryland, there were a lot of obstacles, and even across other jurisdictions, even after it had passed the State House, there were local I would say obstruction and the county municipalities, and you had to testify and really give the account or explain why this roadblock and we should move forward with permitting, and it's not going to impact your land. There was a group that was really successful, a green group. It tends to be like boomers, very green and I would say well-informed in the green space, environmentalists that were really green. And they were able to advocate very clearly as far as why community solar should be a thing and why people should sign up. And also, there were some utility issues with connecting the program, and they were so well connected that they were able to get to the president, to the CEO of this particular utility and get the project turned on after being stalled by roadblocks.

And then I would say the same group also was a very active component in making sure that the first LMI project within this space was also turned on, and it was 30 percent of LMI customers can fill up a community solar project in Maryland, with 10 percent being low and 20 percent being market – I mean, medium income, and then the rest can still be open, but it's classified as LMI. But with that being said, the LMI portion of the farm wasn't being fulfilled or subscribed at the rate, and a lot of the market rate customers, the same group that were really well connected and was able to advocate very clearly to get the project, the previous project turned on, turned against some of the LMI customers. And this is why I would say the disconnect is just like they were mentioning, oh, what's taking so long, and this is absurd. If they don't want the discount, someone else can fill up the program. I'm just like you see, there needs to be a language or folks that understand, yes, community solar is great, but if you want to focus on underrepresented communities, there's trauma and other issues that's happening, and there needs to be resources around the educational gap, which would then close why the learning curve, and also the customer acquisition cost for those communities could be cheaper. And you have to have the right tools and the right policies in place to make sure that that's a thing, and that's a part of WeSolar's mission to close that gap and to obviously support the groups that's really successful in carrying the industry forward, but not leaving those out and also becoming really harsh in the language or really just not understanding their plight, and that's where WeSolar can close the gap.

>>Katherine: Those are such good points, Kristal. And this leads me to a question about audience when we're telling our stories, like who is the audience in this situation. Let me first ask those of you who are deploying on the ground, Zaid, Kiran, and Kristal, to talk a little bit about who's your audience and what's the best way to get to them, and then we're going to go over to Julia to talk a little bit about the utility piece of it, but Zaid, how do you see the audience in how you put forward your messaging?

>> Zaid: I think the challenge and the opportunity is the audiences typically where we are building projects and owning projects is diverse by nature. You have renters, LMI customers, pensioners, young millennials, or new homeowners. And the challenge is, despite the fact that we have sort of no FICO scores as a gating item, because we always think about the analogy of the mortgage industry. You don't want to start redlining customers, black, brown, or LMI customers, especially customers who have faced the brunt of environmental externalities.

We made sure to design our marketing programs so that they attract a diverse set of customers, and in terms of means and methods, digital is a huge acquisition platform that we use. Mailers, partnerships with groups like Catholic church in New York, the YMCA, and sort of other groups that have sort of brand affinity within their different communities. And that first and foremost is our approach. The challenge for community solar is not all LMI customers are created equal. So when you talk about digital acquisition or mailers, a lot of customers in LMI community are typically renters. They're moving quite frequently. They don't trust the mail on energy because there's a lot of scams out there. And I think that's been a learning process for us is working with groups on the ground, similar to what Kristal's been doing, and making sure that we don't leave those customers behind.

And then it's really the second phase is once you get those customers, and I think Kiran alludes to it, outside of waiting for a project to be turned on, which utilities generally have done a very poor job on, is what other value can you add there? And I think that's going to be a very important step for the community solar landscape is having entrepreneurs like Kiran and Arcadia and others making sure there are other products that can drive clean electrification for the households outside of community solar.

>>Katherine: Great. Kiran, why don't you address that issue too, the issue of your audience and who you're telling your story to and communicating to.

>>Kiran: Great. Yeah, so we all know this and been here for a few hours listening to it. Community solar is for everyone. That's the beauty of this product. It's not just people with rooftops. And we try to hone in on a single narrative for our product – no contract, no credit checks, no cancellation fees, and guaranteed savings. That is – it's actually kind of a difficult thing for people to wrap their heads around, but that singular narrative, and then multi channels. Because you have to. Every community – being able to get the 70, 80 percent of people who can't do rooftop solar into this market, you're going to have to use every channel possible. So we're in communities, we do things like mail, digital, even in COVID door knocking and tabling. We do partnerships like the New York Housing Authority. These have been huge for us to lend credibility.

But ultimately, we also just end up spending a lot of time with regulators, state legislators because there are so many issues state-by-state on getting to the right customers, onboarding customers, making it simple and easy to get them onto a project, getting the project on. And that's part of what makes this business difficult, actually. It's like the demand is there. Once people understand what I told you, guaranteed savings against the utility price, it's not – there's not really an argument against this product. It's the single best energy in America. It's everything else that comes along with it that is actually affecting the project, like getting it live, getting the customer their bill savings, where we have to spend the majority of our time.

>>Katherine: Those are great points. Kristal, let me go back to you, then, as you think about your audience and the best ways to reach them and how you build trust with them that this is something that they want. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

>> Kristal: Yes. I would just echo with CCSA, Jeff, what he mentioned in that intro as well as Kiran, my fellow panelist, as far as making sure that we have cohesive messaging across the nation. With each jurisdiction doing their own thing, that becomes really wonky and like, well, I received 10 percent here and it's only offered to supply in Illinois for – and in New York, we have integrated billing, and then Maryland, why are we receiving two bills. And so if there can be a national strategy, that would help those who are communicating what the product is, and we're also trying to shorten the learning curve. If we only have to have one message for everyone, then that would just make it a lot simpler.

And I have two audiences because one I obviously need to attract investors. I'm a startup. And so financiers need to see, wow, we should invest in inner-city-based community solar development company just starting off, and that's a huge risk. Your model hasn't been proven. Yes, it has. Just like what Kiran said, this is the most single important product, beneficial product in the energy market. It speaks for itself. And for us, my audience just understands that I don't have an issue with obtaining contracts. We have over 5,000 subscribers, and I don't even have my first subscription contract ready. They've seen what I've said, they understand the messaging.

At this point, if you don't understand that resiliency, economic justice, environmentally being sound and making sure we decarbonize our footprint at this point, we don't have to sell you that anymore. It's just like you're going to get on the bus or you're going to miss the bus. We have enough people in our cohort that understand, so for the investors, for the partners, we can just really focus on those who understand it and not waste that time on those who really don't understand it as far as those who have the bank or who can really create the policy. Because in the communities, they obviously want it, and as long as you have the messaging and the really good intentions, they understand that, you know what, we do trust you. We've seen you out here advocating for us. Now we just need the players that or everyone that make up the pie to work together. So that's our messaging.

>>Katherine: Great. Thanks. That's a perfect tee-up for Julia because, Julia, now we're going to talk about another part of the ecosystem, which is the utilities, and you have a lot of experience with utility programs. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how they're involved in community solar and how they're both the audience and the messenger. So tell us a little bit about that.

>>Julia: Yeah, well as everybody has already heard many, many times today, there is the lack of a standard on many things related to community solar, and there's no one size fits all. And that is true with utilities as well. So there are many different ways across the country that utilities are involved in community solar programs ranging from cases where the utility really does it all themselves, soup to nuts, to cases where the utility may be – the developer's building the project and working with customers, but the utility has to administer the bill side of it. There may be cases where the utility really isn't engaged other than interconnecting the project, and lots of iterations sort of between those three things. So lots of different ways that a utility can be engaged in community solar.

I think an important message – I mean, listen, again, even in just this session alone, the audience has heard there are continuing to be challenges with interconnection cues and getting projects, not just community solar project, but honestly new projects across the country interconnected in a timely fashion in many places, and that continues to be a frustration. And that's something that, as a sector, we've got to figure out in order to decarbonize as fast as we can. We can't let interconnection continue to slow us down in the way that it has in the past. But acknowledging that, I think it's also important – I think Kiran you said earlier we need it all. In order to accomplish not only DOE's community solar goal, but the broader goals around decarbonization for our country, we need all players engaged in this. It's an all-hands-on-deck sort of thing, and utilities can play a really important role in reaching customers and helping get to that DOE target as fast as possible.

I'll give as one example Florida Power and Light has its Solar Together program. This is a community solar program, a single utility community solar program that is over 3 gigawatts. So a single utility community solar program is actually as large as all of the rest of the community solar capacity in the country as of the end of 2020. So when we talk about scale and reaching as many customers as possible, utilities can be hugely helpful in getting to as many customers as fast as possible. Another thing that we've seen from our research – now, admittedly, this research I'm going to cite is dated. This is back from 2016, but we did a study in 2016 where we surveyed – don't quote me on this, but I think it was 2,000 end consumers, homeowners – or not just homeowners, I'm sorry, but end energy consumers about a whole variety of things related to community solar, and one of the things we found – and I'm going to say something many of you have heard before – that most people don't like their utility, but they do trust their utility. They know they're going to be there, they know they're not going to go out of business, so they trust them when it comes to electricity.

So one of the things we found in this 2016 study was that, of people who expressed an interest – first of all, we educated them about what community solar was, and once they were educated, those who expressed interest in community solar, two-thirds of them said that they would prefer that the program either be sponsored by their utility or that there was a very clear and direct partnership between the community solar developer and their utility. So customers, again, recognizing this data is a little old now, customers do have an interest in knowing that their utilities are actively involved in these projects, and I think it's an important message that it can help give customers – lend credibility to these projects, and although there may be frustrations that come along with it, really helped customers feel confident that these projects are things that they should have confidence in being involved in. So I think I'll leave it at that for now, Katherine.

>> Katherine: Okay. That's great. Thank you. So let's assume we all have more demand than we can deal with, we've all figured out how to tell the story. Then how do we supercharge this market? How do we actually deploy more community solar? And what do you all see both as how do we do that, and then how is the government going to help us do that? How do programs like the National Community Solar Partnership participate and really help us get supercharged? So, Zaid, let me start with you on that one.

>>Zaid: Yeah, Katherine, it's a great question. So just to start, I have to challenge a little bit of the stuff that Julia said about Florida Power and Light because [inaudible] utility that was keen on crushing rooftop solar, and its community solar program was really a premium product. I really think the whole idea behind growing community solar is figuring out really is this going to be consumer-driven or utility-driven. And I would [inaudible] that consumers want control of their energy data, they want to control how [break in audio] scale, and they want to control sort of the choices they make. And I think really the biggest challenge, candidly, has just been utilities. One is the archaic methods they're using for interconnection, and I think it's super problematic. Developers like Nexamp and others are thinking through non-[inaudible] alternatives that reduce the costs on ratepayers, but the challenge is utility business models are not created that way. They're created to rate base distribution costs. So everyone looks at their electricity bill, their distribution costs keep going up and up and up. The supply has actually been pretty steady. So I think, Katherine, until we break that mindset, that is going to be super problematic because I'm skeptical that utilities will figure this out.

We've had a very different reaction with our consumers. They don't trust their utilities. They don't trust them on other measures of electrification, and they're looking for a different path. Now, does that mean there's no future in community solar with utilities? Absolutely not, but I think it's how do you create a [break in audio] value chain that's better aligned for consumers. Utilities were never trained to engage with consumers effectively, and I think from the DOE's perspective, it's not really just credibility with community solar because I think Kiran said it, it's the greatest product out there. It's how do we get utilities, state legislators not to see this as a threat but as an asset. I really want utilities to see DG as something that creates value on the grid, not a cost on the grid. And unfortunately, utilities continue to sort of say they like community solar, but then they're putting roadblocks, whether it's not only in their connection; it's also the billing process for community solar is being challenged. So hopefully DOE can (A) create standards that utilities can adopt, best practices, but also really create standards on how DG and community solar assets can add value to the grid because I think that's going to be really critical. If we don't get that right, it's going to be really difficult to scale.

>>Katherine: Thanks very much. Kiran, let me turn to you on that one too. How do you see – you know, how can we really amplify and supercharge community solar with DOE?

>>Kiran: Yeah, I mean, DOE works for the country, right? We've got 50 states, 50 different energy markets, so creating – I mean, to this point, creating the right technical assistance to be able to help PUCs and state legislatures and utilities actually create programs that work well for the customer. Piggybacking on the point Zaid was making, there's so much – and I think Kristal was saying this too, we deal with so much complexity in this market as is. I would love for every customer that signs up on anyone's community solar program to get a letter from the Secretary that's saying, hey, you're decarbonizing; here's the impact you're making. And I agree we need the distribution utility to get these projects up and running faster, and I think that's where DOE can really play a role. We're going to do the work in the states. We're going to do the work at the state level to continue to pass legislation, but DOE can really say here's the playbook, here's how to get a project up and running in three months, here's how to get customers their savings quickly, and the utilities should see the benefit in that. I think it's in the resilience, it's in lower distribution costs, and so I think that's the role, at least, that I would love to see DOE step in and play.

>>Katherine: These are all great ideas, and I'm sure Nicole has already started executing on them, but first, Kristal, let me turn to you on this too because you're adding in an extra layer. You're working with communities that are traditionally very under-resourced. So then how do we make sure that everyone has access and everybody can benefit from community solar?

>>Kristal: Well, there's combatting the myths. First, let's start off with incentivizing the financiers. The fact that low-income families are at higher risk and if they have a lower income FICO score that their default rate is higher, that's not true. In fact, lower-income families pay their bill, and they're being paid more. And so if there was any incentives from DOE or through Congress to incentivize DOE, to incentivize the green banks or the financiers to make it more accessible to build LMI farms, that's how you can have the trickle-down effect. And also incentivizing solar developers and subscription organizations because it's really unfair that the burden of proof or the messaging is on us because that's where it's at right now.

It's just like even with the developers having their complexity and fighting for financiers and also fighting permitting and working and challenging the utility obstacles, you didn't have the complexity on the subscription management side and the marketing and the sales in the heart of the community, cutting through all the red tape, the trauma, the redlining through other energy suppliers that promised them savings, and we're kind of saying the same thing, but it's completely different, and we have to draw that line of demarcation, which is really hard for our community – anyone doing subscription management in the market. And so having monies to just focus on the education from DOE, put out official pamphlets. And obviously the coalition is helping moving that forward, but if there is ways to trickle those monies into the organizations that's already doing it and they hear it from the folks that they see at their bank or at the grocery store, that's just – it hits different.

And also too incorporate the millennials, the Generation Z. They're cool, they're hip, they have the TikTok videos. We're not doing any of that. Nobody wants to get fed marketing and feel like you're being sold to. In any marketing or sales environment where someone feels like – you know, business psychologists study this. If a customer says I'm walking and I feel like I'm getting sold to, their defense is already up. So let's bring people to the community. It's just like make it cool, make it fun, have creative messaging. And the only way to really do that is monies and incentivizing because there's the community solar and solar development, the margins are small. However you cut the pie, it's not like a tech company, and those who are in the space that are not tech companies, that don't have 10x, and we can't promise our investors that, we really need the resources from the federal government, from the state government to trickle down to help cut that learning curve.

>> Katherine: Let's get the real influencers involved, right. Julia, let me turn to you because as we think about utility programs, we've heard a lot of ideas about what utilities could do, but what else – what could utilities get from partnering with DOE and the government to help them do more on community solar?

>>Julia: Yeah. We heard it a bit from Travis Neil in the last session where he talked about the value of the work, you know, the NRECA engagement that they've had, and it's true. Utilities really appreciate learning from one another's experience, so being able to share success stories, and especially if we can highlight examples where those of you who are on this panel, the cases where you have had positive experience with utilities, let's showcase those experiences and talk about why – what made them work so well. What were the drivers for that utility? What were the benefits for that utility? And really hold those up as the gold-star standards. And again, the more other utilities can hear those stories directly from their peers at other utilities, the more likely they are to come along, so that peer-to-peer learning, the sharing of success stories, again, it has been a huge focus for DOE all along, but I would just encourage a continued focus on that going forward.

>>Katherine: Great. Those are great ideas. I want us to kind of pan out a little bit more and think of the perfect world. Not just the perfect world, but we're outside the box, we're looking down, what would it mean for DOE and all of us to be all in on community solar? What would full market success look like? So you can give this as an example of policies that would be in place, messaging that would be in place, or just a story, like tell us a story about what would it look like if we were all in? So, Zaid, you get to go first.

>> Zaid: I'm always getting to go first, Katherine.

>>Katherine: Sorry.

>> Zaid: No, so I think success is about what community solar's going to achieve. I applaud the 5 million household requirement, but for me, community solar is a foundation to electrify your life in a zero-carbon manner. And I think the DOE, the private sector utilities should all be working to that to see how can they create constructs and policies that allow the private market to create great customer solutions where you save money going solar, you can go electric for your transportation, and you can electrify your heat all in one spot. And I think if we can do that right, we can drive decarbonization at the household. I don't think the typical energy efficiency models which were successful with utilities are going to work with electrifying households. And for me, that would be success. If you could make it simple for my parents to say how do I go 100 percent electric, how do I save money doing so, and how do I do where I can see everything in one spot, where the customer controls their experience, where they control their data, I think that would be a win because that would drive change in how we interact with electricity and how we drive carbon reduction.

>>Katherine: That's great. I've been dreaming of that for the last 12 years, so I'm hoping that happens too. Kiran, let's turn to you. What do you see as full success? And give Nicole some more things to do.

>> Kiran: Yeah. So from the customer side, it's choice, and that's as basic as it is. It's like in all 50 states, it's not based on your ZIP code or not based on your income. You actually have a choice to choose cleaner energy and pick your fuel source. Kathy Castor and Tara Lujan have a bill right now in Congress to unlock for every state to consider a community solar program. Sort of broadly, what is that? It's if I live in an apartment, if I pay a power bill, I can't put a power plant on my roof, I can virtually net meter and choose the asset I want to get power from, and the distribution grid will help deliver that to me. And then making that process simple and easy for someone actually building the project. I mean, that's ultimately where we should go, and then that customer should have all the choices available to them on how they want to manage their energy use broadly. But there is a bill to unlock this across all 50 states right now that has a lot of support in the House and Senate.

>>Katherine: That's great. Thanks so much, Kiran. Julia, let me turn to you now to really step back and think about if utilities really could do everything they could, and in some cases, maybe they will choose not to. Maybe they will – there will be other kinds of programs, but as you see what you're doing with utilities, what would be the most helpful thing for them to really supercharge those programs that Nicole and her team could do?

>>Julia: So can I answer a different question? So I wanted to go back to actually answer your previous question and just one other thing for DOE to think about, and this is not the big picture end all, be all, but it is one thing, one slice of the pie. Just one thing our team has been thinking about is with the federal goals now of the administration, what opportunity could there be potentially for DOE to work with General Service Administration, Department of Homeland Security to actually use federal facilities, military bases for sites for community solar and/or is there an opportunity where federal agencies could commit to being anchor tenants for large community solar projects to sort of give sort of the initial upfront oomph to a project that it needs to get going. And then there's the federal power agencies – TDA, BPA, WAPA – and what sort of role could they potentially play on a regional basis to help spur the markets in their parts of the country. So that's, I think, one just sort of thing for DOE to think about is what might that cross-agency engagement look like at the federal level. So how could DOE leverage other federal agencies toward these community solar objectives?

And then, on your final question about sort of what does success look like, I have a really 50,000-foot answer. It would be, I think, if everybody could set aside their own business model interests and sort of get aligned on a common long-term vision. Because I feel like a lot – and I mean everyone. I mean, utilities are protecting their own business model, each developer's protecting their own business model, everybody's got their business model that they're trying to protect and create policy that it supports their own model. And I think where we could really unlock markets is if we could get beyond that and figure out what are the win-win things that regardless of what your business model is, customer's going to win, the environment's going to win, and ultimately we're all going to win.

>>Katherine: That's great. You answered my question twice. That's awesome. Thank you so much. So Kristal, you get the final word here. So supposing everything is great, what have we done to get there? What do you see as the perfect world, and how has DOE helped?

>>Kristal: Yes. I would echo exactly what Julia said. If we can get out of the scarcity mentality and really look at the pie full circle and say, hey, we're going to get to 5 million households, so let's carve it out so you have co-op community solar, you have a portion where utility owns solar, development owns solar, and community owns solar. So it's just like you have those four buckets where we all can have. It's a large pie, and if we can come together where it's not like we're protecting our own business models, that will also offshoot to the messaging problem. Because if we're all working together, then the messaging on the subscription side would be a lot easier, and the goal for that is where community solar is a household product. When you hold up a Heinz bottle or you mention Nike, immediately everyone knows what that is, or everyone can identify those symbols. So when we say, hey, what's the most ideal version and what's ideal for the sector is when you walk – have dinner conversations at the holidays or birthdays or really great family events, someone say, hey, you know, I signed up for community solar, and everyone knows what that is and it's uniform and it's a dinner table product just like other products that – everyday goods that we interact with, that would be the goal for everyone. And obviously, once that's the case, we all have won.

>>Katherine: Yeah, and maybe we wouldn't even have to say that we have it because everybody would just have it. You wouldn't even have to mention it. It's just one of those things. It would be great – thank you all so much for doing this. I would ask you each if you have an idea about a slogan that you would say – and, Kiran, I think you've said a few of these, and Kristal, maybe you have too, but I'm just going to go around the table and say, all right, everybody come up with one slogan of what community solar is since we're supposed to be influencers. I think I'm out of the influencer age group, but anyway, let's give it a shot and see if everybody has an idea for some kind of a tagline that we can say about community solar. Kristal, do you want to start? I decided not to start with Zaid this time.

>>Kristal: Community solar, save tomorrow by everyone.

>> Katherine: Nice. Julia.

>>Julia: Oh gosh, I really feel put on the spot. Community solar, love it, share it.

>>Katherine: Nice. Kiran.

>>Kiran: That was pretty good. Cheaper, cleaner, local, resilient, equitable energy.

>>Katherine: Nice. Zaid.

>>Zaid:  Simple, clean, and accessible.

>>Katherine: Great. Well, I think all of you have been amazing for this and thank you so much for being part of this panel, and I will now turn it over to Nicole. She's probably still taking notes, but I'm going to turn it back over to Nicole. Thank you so much.

>>Nicole: Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Katherine, for moderating such an amazing last panel of the day. I got my bingo card filled with Julia's dog having a good time in the background. So I want to say a huge thank you to all of our panelists, all of our speakers today, including Governor Inslee and Governor Pritzker and Secretary Granholm. Another big giant thank you to all of our strategic partners who participated either on panels or in the videos. We could not do this without you, and again, as a follow-on to the who is the messenger conversation, we need partners. We are not always the right messenger, and so to continue to build those partnerships and understand what the message is is just such an imperative element to success.

Big giant thank you to the DOE team who spent at least three months putting this event together, including the NREL team and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab team put countless hours into setting up logistics. And then also just a huge thanks to you, everyone here today, whether you're an NCSP member or not, I hope that your action item is today to sign up to be a National Community Solar Partnership member. What that does is get you access to our online community, and as part of that, you will publicly have the opportunity to support the goal of 5 million households and $1 billion in savings by 2025. And you also will be given the opportunity to participate in these working groups that we discussed throughout the entire day. There's lots of different ways to be engaged in the success of this goal and the pathway to success.

So a couple of the other key takeaways that I really just heard throughout the day were things like standardization. Standardization around financing, standardization around contracts and lending opportunities, even standardization around how do we talk about community solar, standardization around what is the definition of community solar, and even what programs look like across the states. So I hope folks are really excited about what's to come over the next four years.

And then lastly, before I close out the end of the summit today, I want to ensure that folks really did have an opportunity to hear the big announcements. So there was an announcement out of the Department of Energy that really highlighted the fact that we launched a states collaborative today, so over half of the states; Washington, DC; Puerto Rico; and the US Virgin Islands are all very interested in participating in Our States Collaborative, which means it's sort of Step 1 of ensuring that we've created an environment that is friendly to community solar. And so that is a huge win in both growing existing markets and opening up new markets.

Second was the conversation around credit-ready solar and that initiative and marketplace and what it really needs to – what really needs to happen in terms of connecting lenders and all different types of lenders, whether you're CDFI or a credit union or a green bank or a market bank, an impact investor or philanthropist. And then also community solar developers as well as learning institutions and community-based organizations. And so really bringing all of those different stakeholders together to unlock the barriers to access to financing, including tax equity.

And then last but not least, really wanted to highlight the Coalition for Community Solar Access and their announcement around committing to deploying 20 gigawatts of community solar by 2025. Today their 80 member companies raised their hands and said we are here and we're ready to deploy as long as everyone is able to come to the table and work on the pathway – both the pathway to success and other elements that outside of the government folks can take the lead on. So again, top of the hour. Thanks to everyone who participated and stayed with us until the very end. We will continue these conversations, and we look forward to next year. So have a great day, and we will talk soon.

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