Industrial Technology Innovation Advisory Committee Sixth Meeting – Text Version

ZACH PRITCHARD: Welcome everybody.

And yes, this is recording perfect.

So first an announcement. This team's call is being recorded and may be posted on DOE's website or used internally. If you do not wish to have your voice recorded, please do not speak during the call or disconnect. Now, if you do not wish to have your image recorded, please turn off your camera or participate only by phone. If you speak during the call or use a video connection, you are presumed to consent to recording and to the use of your voice or image.

Alright. Thanks everybody and welcome.

Welcome to all the members on the call as well as anybody joining us from the public for today's meeting of the Industrial Technology Innovation Advisory Committee. I'm Zack Pritchard. I'm a technology manager and DOE's Industrial Technologies Office and I'm the designated federal officer for the committee. I'm joined today also by Selena Harris. She's also a technology manager and ITO, and she is the alternate designated federal officer for the committee.

Before we dive in, I have a couple housekeeping items to cover.

Today's meeting is an open meeting of the Industrial Technology Innovation Advisory Committee.

It's being held in compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act and other applicable statutes and regulations for the meeting today. The audience is not able to unmute or turn on their cameras, and the chat is disabled.

The chat's disabled both for the audience and for the committee members.

So members, this is a little different from usual, but please e-mail me, Caroline, or Selena if you have any technical issues or if you need to step away.

And we'll do our best to help you.

And in general, as a reminder, all substantive topics need to be discussed orally for the benefit of the public audience. The procedure to offer oral comments for this meeting was described in the Federal Register.

Notice we did not receive any requests to offer oral comments, so the public comment period has been taken off of the agenda. And that said, the committee does want to hear from you.

We welcome your comments.

Written statements can be submitted to ITIAC@ee.doe.gov.

And you can also register to provide oral comments at future meetings when those are announced and the details for that are always in the Federal Register notice in particular, the committee welcomes your comments on preliminary recommendations that were published in January.

So Caroline, if you can go to the next slide.

Earlier this year, the committee published 29 preliminary recommendations that are being considered for inclusion in the committee's final report.

That's planned for later this year across a number of topics.

Overarching recommendations, cross cutting technologies, and opportunities. Recommendations for specific industrial sub sectors, overcoming barriers and the industrial workforce of the future.

A lot of good content in here, and the public's input is invited on those, so feel free to review from the link in—in the slide here, which will be shared on our website, or you can probably just search for it online and we'll find the report.

I also want to note that DOE is continually seeking new member nominations to consider for future vacancies. At this time, we're particularly seeking nominees with expertise in advanced nuclear technologies for the industrial sector, and electric load growth in the industrial sector, and in the refining industry as well, as nominees who represent labor groups associated with the committee's focus areas, and this is a topic that we'll talk a little more about later.

Nominations can be submitted to that same e-mail address.

I mentioned earlier ITIAC@ee.doe.gov.

And those nominations should include the person's name, their resume, their biography, and any letters of support.

So doing a quick check on attendance, let me just note the members who are currently present, ICR chair Sharon Nolan, our Vice Chair, Jeff ResMed, Sunday Abraham, Cathy Choi, Betsy Dutrow, Neal Elliott, Abigail Rachitzky, Sridhar Sitaraman, Jolene Shield, and Sasha Stashwick.

If I missed it, Joe is here as well. Joe Powell. Perfect.

And. That looks like everybody, but if I missed you, please speak up.

Otherwise, I will hand things off to the Chair of the committee, Sharon Nolan.

SHARON NOLEN: Hello, I want to welcome everyone to…I believe this is our sixth meeting, and since the last time we met, we have published our preliminary recommendations.

I think we're all proud to get that done.

I was just going to mention I was able to attend the Department of Energy Better Buildings, Better Plants Summit a couple of weeks ago. I had an opportunity to talk about our committee.

The recommendations at that meeting, I did have numerous positive comments about what this committee is doing.

One reason I wanted to talk is just to raise the visibility of the committee among the industrial community. And when I asked how many had heard about the committee, I saw about 1/3 of the people in the room raise their hands. So it's good to see that some are aware but also appreciated they had the opportunity to make more people aware.

So today we're going to be hearing about some things that are going on with DOE.

We're going to talk about some things that we want to add to the preliminary recommendations.

I do just want to add for everyone's benefit, I think most of you are aware of this, but where we're headed with our final report is to take the preliminary recommendations that were published in January, make some maybe minor modifications to those, add any missing gaps that we see, and so I do think the bulk of our work was done in getting the preliminary recommendations together.

So with that, Zach, unless you have any other comments, we'll go ahead and move into our agenda, and you're gonna cover the first agenda item on the committee charge and objectives - correct?

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah. So I will talk a little bit and then we can have some discussion as needed with the committee.

But one thing that has just been raised among some committee members is wanting to have some time to go back and look at the committee charge and duties that we outlined a little more than a year ago when the committee kicked off.

Now that you've gotten your preliminary recommendations out there and are thinking about how to refine those for the final report.

So Caroline, if you can go to the next slide.

Here. So this is essentially I think the same information that we had before. I—I might have changed it a little bit by putting in more direct quotes from the legislation that established the committee and the program that the committee is intended to advise.

So just to work through the information here, the purpose of the committee is to advise the Secretary on a program to advance industrial—industrial technologies.

That and this is a quote from—from the authorizing legislation, specifically as to the purpose of that program and what it's supposed to accomplish; it's supposed to “increase the technological and economic competitiveness of industry in the US to increase the viability and competitiveness of US industrial technology exports and to achieve emissions reductions in non-power industrial sectors.”

So the—the next thing on the agenda is going to be - we'll hear from Carolyn Snyder, the deputy assistant secretary for buildings and industry at DOE, and Avi Schultz, the director of the Industrial Technologies Office, and I think a theme that you're going to hear a lot through their comments is around competitiveness and thinking about how to ensure American industrial excellence and compet…[inaudible] on the global stage.

And so, I wanted to preemptively highlight this piece of our committee charge, to point out that this is really baked into the committee's duties, is to think about ensuring that the US is competitive, not—not just…. So there's the first thing in this list, the competitiveness of industry itself. And then the second thing, development of industrial technologies that the U.S. can export and be competitive on the global stage.

So I think those are both two important pieces that the—the work the committee is already doing, already touches on those, and starts to address them, but just wanna make that connection explicit that the priorities of the department are aligned with the charge of the committee. Within that purpose.

There are some specific things that you all are asked to do. There is identifying and evaluating technologies that are being developed; there is identifying technology gaps so what's not being developed that—that should be; in making recommendations to DOE for us to address those gaps; surveying and analyzing factors that prevent the adoption of emissions reductions technologies by the private sector… So looking at those adoption challenges that come after technology development and then thinking about screening criteria that the department should use to decide what technologies to focus on.

And key metrics we should be focused on advancing, obviously the North Star of the committee so far, has been to develop these recommendations and this advice and to put it into a report.

That is what is statutorily required - is that you produce a report to the Secretary. The Secretary then sends that report to Congress… And, as we're on a timeline to finalize that report.

About two years after the establishment of the committee. And then you're asked to update that report every three years after.

So this is the only slide that I specifically wanted to cover. I do have some reference slides on the legislative language - if we need to use that.

But maybe I can just open the floor for discussion.

And on this if—if you all have any concerns or thoughts about how going forward, your recommendations will fit in this framework.

SHARON NOLEN: One question would be, and I don't know if you can answer this or not, but I do know that there have been at least some internal discussions about the committee, so maybe Carolyn's gonna cover that; or I don't know if there's anything you can share to tell…

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah.

SHARON NOLEN: …us the reaction of the new administration for our industrial committee.

ZACH PRITCHARD: I think that is something that Carolyn will definitely touch on.
I mean, I can say broadly, I think that things, like getting the approval process for committee meetings, goes up through political leadership.

They were supportive of us holding meetings, going into the future, and they're engaged on thinking about how the committee can help support the department.

I think that's something that Carolyn will—will touch on some as well. How we see the committee supporting the administration's objectives.

But in general, I would…I would say that we—we have gotten support from the department leadership on continued work from the committee and I—I think in particular one thing that they really value is the program being driven.

And by industry needs, and I think that the committee is in a great place to advise the department on that.

You know, we—we don't want to be totally insulated in deciding things all on our own. Having external input and, especially from a group like yourselves who have some continuity and get to see the department over time, it's not just a one-off point of input, but you guys can really understand what we do and understand what's going on in the outside world as well and—and bring those together.

SHARON NOLEN: Any other questions for Zach comments?

ZACH PRITCHARD: OK, not hearing any.

I maybe one other point, just to make the—the bullet points here on the ways that you advise on technology is just a reminder on that as well, is that there is quite an extensive list of technology focus areas that you all have been working in and that's the bounds for those technology bullets. However, that list is subject to be redefined by the committee.

So you all are welcome to add and remove and modify.

Basically, within the bounds of what you think makes sense for achieving the purpose that is—is laid out in that first section of the slide.

OK. So I feel like…

We—we do have a little bit of a—a gap here.

Carolyn and Avi, I think are not going to be able to join until just at 12:30, so I wonder…

Abigail, go ahead.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Yeah. Thanks, Zack.

Maybe it's good I can fill some time, but just I need a question to what you just mentioned.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Sure.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Regarding the list that is statutorily included for the committee.

I think we've—we've had conversations around the things that we want to cover in that list and actually some things that we decided to not cover. I think some of the things relating to transportation that we saw were maybe outside…

Is that something that we need to?

Like explicitly address in the report and say this was the original list. We think that this is this is the list of things we actually cover that we think makes sense.

And just to have that as one of the things addressed at the top —
so that people understand we've—we've chosen specifically not to address some of those things.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, yeah.

So that's a good question.

The committee the—the statute that directs the committee to submit a report does have one of the—the points in the contents is about modifying that list.

So I think it is something that would be helpful to include as maybe an appendix in the report or something like that could be a good way to approach it.

To yeah, just note what you feel the appropriate list is at this point.

Neal.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Just to follow up on Abigail's comment, one of the things as we move through the process that we've begun to realize, is there are overlaps between the work that we're doing within our scope and potentially other advisory committees or other offices other than the Industrial Technology Office.

And I think that, just to amplify what Abigail said, I think it probably behooves us to also identify some of those other subject matter overlaps that may be worthy of consideration in our report.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Thanks Neal.

OK so. Sharon, unless you had a comment on that.

My suggestion was gonna be that we maybe…

SHARON NOLEN: No, I yeah, go ahead.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Skip forward a couple slides and just start to preview the agenda for the rest of today.

So over the past several months…

So basically, after the last full committee meeting where the preliminary recommendations were adopted, the committee set out a number of ad hoc groups to start working on recommendations and topics that weren't able to be covered in that initial set, as well as to think about other refinements that the committee might want to make.

So lots of you have been engaged in those over the past several months and have been working on recommendations.

So this is basically going to be the main meat of the meeting today — is running through these.

I think the—the format that we have been thinking is in the slides we…

Basically, I just copied and pasted the draft recommendations over and we'll let the leads for developing each of those recommendations talk through the recommendation and then have some committee discussion on any additional points that might need to be addressed.

Any thoughts?

As a baseline, just for folks to know the—the expectation is not that we were voting on anything today and is not that we're reaching final decision about anything today.

So for most of these, this is going to be the first time that some members on the committee have gotten a chance to look at them and have had a chance to offer any input. So we're just trying to get that discussion started and then over the next several months, there will be time for the committee to make adjustments and address any additional topics that come up.

That you all want to work on.

Cathy, you have a question?

CATHY CHOI: I just wanted to add for the group that there are four new recommendations from the barriers team.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Oh OK, perfect.

So we can add that to the list to be discussed as well.

CATHY CHOI: Thank you.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Is there anybody else who has topics that they wanted to address that are not on the list?

Abigail.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: So maybe since we're—we're not actually voting during this call, and I think I mentioned when I submitted the ones that I did submit, that I had been noodling on some additional that would, I think, more edits to some of the recommendations we already have.

If we have time, maybe I can take a few minutes to just discuss that with the group and see if others have thought… And this is relating to the budget related recommendations that are already in the preliminary report.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, for sure.

I think there's about an hour of unclenched time on the agenda, so there—there should hopefully be time for that.

Maybe a question for Cathy.

Can you? Please send those recommendations to Caroline.

E-mail them and then during one of the breaks she can copy them over into the slide deck.

CATHY CHOI: Yeah, absolutely.

I apologize, Caroline.

I forgot to include you.

ZACH PRITCHARD: OK.

So then maybe just…

To…People have been looking at this but just given overview of the—the topics that are being discussed…Most of these, I would say, fall into the... in the existing sections and structure, are in the cross-cutting topic or in the industry sub sectors topic.

So, we have [inaudible] nuclear energy and heat for industry LNG; data centers, controlled environment, agriculture, pulp and paper, aluminum critical materials…

And then the rest.

Here are some more recent submissions.

So Shruter and Sunde put something together on coal and coat for steel production.

Abigail submitted a few on U.S. competitiveness and global leadership.

And then obviously, Cathy and Abigail just requested those two other topics.

So I think we'll have plenty to talk about later.

And…

Let's see, it looks like Avi has joined us. Hi, Avi.

And so then we'll…

AVI SHULTZ: Well, thank you.

ZACH PRITCHARD: We'll just be…

SHARON NOLEN: Hey, Zach. Abigail did have her hand up.

I don't know if we want to cover that quickly before we get to Avi.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Oh, did she put her hand back up?

Sorry if I missed that.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: I'm good. Thank you.

ZACH PRITCHARD: OK.

SHARON NOLEN: OK. What about Cathy?

She also has her hand up.

CATHY CHOI: Oh yeah, just for associated housekeeping from the barriers perspective, Sasha, I think, has… may not be able to stay with us for about an hour within the meeting.

And she she's she submitted several of the recommendations.

So I want to ensure that her voice was heard during a time that was amenable for her.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Mm hmm.

CATHY CHOI: I think it was between 2:00 to 3:00 and she had some issues.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Sure.

SASHA STASHWICK: Thanks, Cathy. I was wondering how to let you guys know, Zach and Selena, so between 2:00 and 3:00, I'll need to leave, and then I'll come back.

ZACH PRITCHARD: OK.

SASHA STASHWICK: At 3:00.

SHARON NOLEN: Thank you.

ZACH PRITCHARD: That works so well.

Maybe just move that one in the list a bit.

I mean, do we? Should we just start with that?

SHARON NOLEN: That's kinda what I was thinking, Zack.

ZACH PRITCHARD: After Avi and Carolyn speak. Yeah. OK. Perfect.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, let's do that.

ZACH PRITCHARD: OK. So. Our next speakers are going to be Carolyn Snyder and Avi Schultz. We do have Carolyn slated to speak first and she is not on the line yet, so we might just want to take a minute or two of a break and then we'll get started once she joins.

And all right, it looks like we do have Caroline here. Carolyn. Sorry.

CAROLYN SNYDER: Zack, can you hear me OK?

ZACH PRITCHARD: Carolyn, are you there?

Yes, we can. OK.

CAROLYN SNYDER: Ha, great.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Well, with that then I would like to hand it over to Doctor Carolyn Snyder, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for buildings and industry here in, to make a few comments
on the, DOE.

CAROLYN SNYDER: Thank you so much and hello to everyone.

Thanks for making the time to meet with us today. For those of you I haven't met before, my name's Carolyn Snyder and I serve as DOE's deputy assistant secretary for buildings and industry.

In that role, I lead investments across 3 technology offices that catalyze innovation in the U.S. industrial sector and our nation's buildings to make lives of Americans better by reducing their energy bills down in the future, strengthening U.S. economic competitiveness and increasing the security and resilience of American materials and manufacturing buildings, infrastructure, and energy systems.

As I'm sure you're all aware, DOE is currently undergoing a process of change. Normal process that incurs with every transition to a new administration always brings change.

And I like to look at this transitional time as a real opportunity for our portfolio, an opportunity to look ahead in fresh ways, think big about what's possible.

An opportunity to build new relationships and actively maintain existing ones that help us foster real positive change for Americans across the country.

There will always be a need to think big and together, and with this group thinking big to catalyze opportunities to strengthen American industrial competitiveness, to drive innovation for processes and technologies that save Americans energy and money, and to ensure that our industrial sector continues to grow. along with our economy.

So thank you.

Thank you for everyone here volunteering your time for this important work you're doing to help DOE achieve these goals for our nation. In particular, I want to thank two members of the IDIAC who are stepping down from the committee after this meeting.

Anna Finley, who has been a wonderful partner in bringing a labor and workforce perspective to the committee's work and is moving on to a new role.

[inaudible] role with General Motors and we wish her well, so please join me in thanking and appreciating Anna for her role on the committee with a big virtual applause.

Secondly, I want to thank Betsy Detroit.

Betsy's brought decades of experience helping industry to be more efficient, and she's retiring after long and deeply inspiring career in public service. I have had the pleasure to work closely with Betsy for many years, and I know, like many of us, have learned so much that industry from her.

So Betsy, thank you for your decades of service to the country and for your role on the committee.

Great. I also want to thank this committee for being so busy.

You've developed a robust set of preliminary recommendations that you submitted in January. Those recommendations are already helping us inform the way we think about how we best use our time and our resources at DOE and across the federal government to maximize positive impacts for industry in the American people.

This committee IDIAC committee was created because DOE recognizes how important it is for us to get input from industry and other external stakeholders to meet collective goals that we all share for the industrial sector, for our country.

You've each been chosen because of your expertise and your experience working within the US industry and as part of enduring advisory committee you have been and will continue to be able to maintain a deep understanding of DOE activities and provide such invaluable strategic agency-wide insights.

IDIAC’s help advising DOE on key objectives going forward will continue to be instrumental and this includes how we can increase technological and economic competitiveness in the United States, and the viability and competitiveness of US industrial technology exports.

Your insights on how to strengthen key industries for U.S. competitiveness and security such as iron and steel, aluminum, chemicals, refining, and data centers.

Your insights on how to advance development of innovative sources of process heat, such as nuclear energy, combined heat and power, and hydrogen, and your insights on how to leverage technologies that enhance productivity and efficiency, such as smart manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and high performance computing—computing.

These recommendations that you provide help inform our strategy to build a more competitive, secure, and efficient U.S. industrial sector.

We are so grateful for your service to DOE as advisors so far, and we are so excited to continue to work together—to have this meeting today and to hear your next round and refined recommendations for all of us and how we can advance the department's [inaudible] through U.S. industry.

I would now like to hand the virtual mic over to the head of our industrial office, Avi Schultz, who will share some recent news and updates from our DOE portfolio over to you, Avi.

AVI SHULTZ: Thank you, Carolyn, and hello everybody.

Great to get a chance to. see and hear from you all again after a little bit of a break.

First I want to start off by letting you all know that our office, the office that I manage, has begun the process of officially changing its name from the Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office to the Industrial Technologies Office—ITO.

We are hoping to let everyone know when that name change is official—soon and—and we'll let when it is.

I do wanna emphasize that our mission is remaining the same. The name change does not reflect any change in our focus. In fact, what the name change is meant to signify, is our ability to better speak to our comprehensive work developing innovative industrial technologies that reduce energy costs, increase U.S. economic competitiveness, and make our energy system more resilient.

Focus areas that we have been… we have been… That have… that we have identified from the beginning of our offices’ creation.

As I've said before, the U.S. industrial sector contributes $4.8 trillion to the economy and employs more than 21 million Americans, creating the materials and goods we depend on every day. However, the industrial sector accounts for nearly 1/3 of the country's primary energy use, and that number is growing rapidly alongside the U.S. economy.

At ITO, we're focused on strengthening America's industrial sector to compete on a global stage by accelerating innovation of affordable, secure, energy efficient technologies and processes.

We will continue to do this by ensuring energy abundance through industrial efficiency to create new opportunities for U.S. business success through the development of new innovative industrial processes.

We will continue to work on modernizing America's industrial infrastructure to strengthen national security and compete globally, and we'll continue to fortify grid reliability and security through industrial innovation. That includes improving the flexibility and reliability of industrial energy demand on both electricity and fuel infrastructure as well as advancing energy affordability and reliability through innovation and [inaudible] process technologies and facility-level integration.

And we will continue to unlock industrial energy and cost savings, generating American jobs and improving the lives of Americans.

We know that a modernized, competitive, U.S. industrial sector will lead to the Re-shoring of American manufacturing and the creation of thousands of good paying manufacturing jobs and opportunities for Americans. ITO is funding millions in research and development to accelerate the development of industrial technologies that can unlock energy and cost savings.

And have helped American industry streamline their operations and see the opportunities in the global marketplace. As you've heard from me before, ITO funds both sector-specific technology solutions, with a focus on helping the most energy intensive industries, including iron and steel, cement and concrete chemicals, and refining food and beverage, and pulp and paper, to help those sectors operate more efficiently, overcome barriers and benefit from the latest in technology innovation and sophisticated modeling.

In addition, we continue to support cross cutting technologies that can be applied across the industrial sector.

And as before, we are continuing to provide tailored technical assistance programs to leverage energy-efficiency measures and help manufacturers save money and increase the adoption of existing energy-efficiency practices and technologies.

Turning to a slightly different topic, as you the committee members all know, many of your colleagues. Umm. And some of you, will be reaching the end of their—of your initial two-year appointment at the beginning of next year. As we think about what the committee—committee looks like in the months and years to come, we want to keep bringing in new perspectives while maintaining continuity in the committee's work in the near term.

We also want to fill the handful of empty seats that are coming up on the committee. To that end, I'm excited to announce that we're officially kicking off a second call for nominations for committee members. We welcome nominations for individuals that have expertise in any of the committees’ focus areas, and we're particularly interested in individuals with experience in advanced nuclear technologies for the industrial sector, electric load growth in the industrial sector, as well as the refining industry.

We're also looking for individuals who represent labor groups associated with any of the IDIAC focus areas.

An announcement in the Federal Register is coming soon and will be followed by an e-mail to the ITO stakeholders with more details about how to nominate individuals for current members. We'd love to have your help promoting the call for nominations, so please keep an eye out for details on that.

With that, happy to open up the floor for any questions from the Committee on any of the topics that either I or Carolyn have brought up so far.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Thanks, Carolyn.

Thanks, Abby.

Any questions from the committee?

I think we—we have them here for another 15 minutes or so, so plenty of time.

SHARON NOLEN: One question I had—you talked about the committee and the fact that we all have two-year terms at some point. Would you like us to indicate if we have interest in staying on the committee?

I'm just wondering how you want to handle that.

AVI SHULTZ: Yeah, that's a great question.

And—and Zach can handle the logistics of that, but just to say, yes, we are, we'd be very interested and can [inaudible] if—if any of you are interested in renewing your appointment, we would be very interested in pursuing that.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Mm hmm.

AVI SHULTZ: So Zach will follow up with how exactly to communicate that—that interest.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yep, thanks.

SHARON NOLEN: OK.

Abigail, did you have a question?

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: No, I'm good. Thanks, Sharon.

SHARON NOLEN: Oh, your hand is showing raised for some reason.

I'm not sure why.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Oh, it it's not showing as raised for me, so that might be on your insurance.

SHARON NOLEN: OK. Sorry about that.

NEAL ELLIOTT: I think it was Sasha's hand that was raised.

SHARON NOLEN: Well, I do see Sasha's hand as well. So. OK, go ahead, Sasha.

ZACH PRITCHARD: OK.

SASHA STASHWICK: Thank you, Carolyn and Avi for that.

I'm wondering if you will be publishing those specific areas of expertise where you're—you're looking to call in nominations or if you're able to just say them again if not.

AVI SHULTZ: Yeah, what?

I.. what I did mention specifically—we have an interest in integration with nuclear of advanced nuclear technologies with industrial sector, electric load growth in the industrial sector, and the refining industry are particular gaps we've identified.

But that's—that's certainly not exclusive to what we're looking for.

For additional new members, I'm sorry, and labor representation as well.

But—but we'll call those out specifically in our—in our call for nomination, so that those will be called out.

SASHA STASHWICK: Thank you.

SHARON NOLEN: No. Yeah. Joe has his hand up.

JOE POWELL: Yes, hi Avi.

You mentioned the reorganization to industrial technologies. So can you give us any indications in terms of how scope changes beyond the nuclear and refining and—and what that new office remit would be relative to—to what we've had to date?

AVI SHULTZ: Yeah, so—so I want to be very clear that that we are not talking about a reorganization, at least today. We are talking about a name change to better communicate the breadth of—of—of our objectives for the office.

So the office name change is very explicitly not meant to represent any change in our scope. So the expertise and—and collaboration you've had with our office to date will continue just as it has in the past.

The name changes is purely meant to emphasize the multiple objectives that we have as—as a nation in terms of ensuring a robust industrial—industrial technology innovation landscape.

JOE POWELL: Alrighty. Well, thanks for that clarification.

SHARON NOLEN: I'd like to ask a question about nuclear because I know there's other areas within DOE that do cover nuclear, but I think the chemical industry in particular has had interest in nuclear as a future source of power.

So what role do you see ITO playing in nuclear knowing that some other parts of Doe are also working on nuclear?

AVI SHULTZ: Yeah, absolutely.

And I want to be careful here because I don't—I don't want to speak for the office of Nuclear Energy.

What I understand from conversations that I've had with them, and—and continue to have with them, is that they really want to focus their resources on reactor development on—on the core nuclear technology. And they're very interested and they have been talking to us and working with us. on how to leverage our expertise on how to integrate those technologies with industrial facilities.

So that's really the focus of—of—of what we're interested in, continue to, to explore with this committee and—and in our own programming within ITO as well.

But we certainly are not going to be redundant to any core nuclear technology development.

SHARON NOLEN: Neal, go ahead.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Sort of to follow on Sharon's question, you mentioned electricity and interest in adding people with experience in that area. And I'm sure you remember this as a topic that you and I've had many discussions over the—over the year tenure at ITO.

Can you talk a little bit more about how you and the secretary are envisioning coordination between things like Office of Electricity and the ITO?

AVI SHULTZ: Yeah. I mean, I think we—we certainly see opportunities there.

I'm actually maybe going to ask Carolyn to step in and share some thoughts, since in her role she's been overseeing A—a widespread coordinating effort that we've been calling—the supercharged effort—which is not just on the industrial sector but broadly looking at the demand sector, including buildings, and—and engaging with transportation as well.

So maybe Carolyn…

Why don't you talk a little bit about—about that?

CAROLYN SNYDER: Yeah, happy to and I think this is not a either or conversation about one, where really it requires the best of us showing up across multiple parts of the agency, whether that's those working on power generation, those on transmission or distribution or those on the NU sector.

And so, we've really come together to—to, in some cases, jointly fund things, design things together or have really clear complementarity across our portfolios. There's always been an awareness that the ND sectors are an important part of the conversation. I think we go through waves of that every five or so years in this field, and data centers have definitely brought that to another level of—of peak interest and awareness.

The kinds of conversations one can have with…

The sophisticated level of conversation we need when we're talking about grid integration and on site energy for industrial facilities just is so much bigger and more complicated than what we would have in buildings or transportation sectors. and I think more individuals outside the incredible world of those who know industry really well are waking up to that and appreciating how—how large the challenges faced by industrial facilities are in some ways.

But also, what the benefits can be to the whole country. If we think about that in a really thoughtful, holistic way—whether that be thermal or other storage in addition to electricity, and that moment of integrating those conversations, that planning process, that technology research I think is—is really ripe today. And I know something we've heard from all of you, and I think a conversation we—we will [inaudible] have.

So we're working very closely with them as the shorter answer to your question, but, I think that's going to be a growing part of the conversation of integrating our work and Avi's team has been building out expertise in that.

Again, a way that's complementary to the expertise that we have in office electricity and in our power generating sister and brother offices.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Thank you.

SHARON NOLEN: Are there other questions or any comments anyone would like to add?

Neal.

I don't know why it's showing up something for me that I don't think you do have your hand up. Sorry it's highlighted.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Nope. Nope. Not—not me, not me.

SHARON NOLEN: Technology. Sorry, Neal.

OK anyone else?

CAROLYN SNYDER: Sharon, thank you for your leadership.

Really, really appreciate.

SHARON NOLEN: Oh well, thank you.

CAROLYN SNYDER: You.

SHARON NOLEN: I feel like it's been such an honor to be involved with this group and work with DOE, so I really appreciate it.

Right. So Zach, I guess we'll move on to our agenda.

And Caroline and Avi, you're certainly welcome to stay.

Or if you have other things we understand.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Thanks so much, Carolina and Avi.

AVI SHULTZ: Speaking.

SHARON NOLEN: Thank you for being here.

ZACH PRITCHARD: So we already talked through the topics.

We're gonna discuss one thing I forgot to mention is that Selena kindly set up a mural board for us. You know, certainly, feel free to raise your hand and voice comments, but just if we don't have time to get to everybody's, that's a helpful way to collect additional input.

So she sent out a link for that just maybe… yup, looks like 20 minutes ago. Should be in your e-mail.

I think the permissions on it we originally didn't have set right, but it should be working now.

If you're not able to use that link, though, let us know and we'll—we'll see if we can fix it.

I see several cursors flying around on there.

And for folks in the audience, we will publish this mural board after the meeting so you can see the input that came in from the members.

SHARON NOLEN: Back, I think it's probably worth just a reminder, too, that we're not trying to vote on these recommendations today.

So this is an opportunity just to hear what the various ad hoc committees or standing committees have done and provide feedback, so we don't have to get every word exactly right. But we do want to collect everyone's thoughts and reactions to these.

And with that, we can go ahead, and Cathy, turn it over to you or Sasha, whoever's going to talk about the barriers.

CATHY CHOI: Sasha, maybe the first three, if you could go over the first three and then I can handle the 4th one from the barrier side.

SASHA STASHWICK: Sure thing. So. These were admittedly thrown together somewhat hastily, so I'm glad that they're going to get exposed to some discussion here with you all.

I went back and looked at our preliminary report and I was just thinking about areas where we, I think, had a lot of robust discussion, and ended up with important recommendations; where I thought we could maybe go farther or do more on some of the existing nodes that we had identified.

So the —the 1st that I thought about was access to affordable electricity for really important electrification technologies for industry.

The second was around just internal processes within DOE where we might be able to streamline the experience of, companies, other industrial actors that are trying to access DOE support.

And then the third, which we'll go into, was around just some additional barriers to affordable energy for industry…that I thought was an additional place where we could go a little deeper as the committee.

So maybe you can go back to one.

Yeah.

So the first idea I had for our, and this is very much for discussion, was that there are a lot of really novel and very flexible, highly flexible, industrial electrification technologies that are really emergent at the moment. Whereas a lot of the regulatory interconnection processes are not.

I think in—in at least our…in at least my view in a lot of it, and I've—I've talked to some of you about this are not. adequately, appropriately, completely valuing that—that—that flexibility that those technologies offer around industrial electricity loads.

And thinking about—what do we could do to maybe help—to help—advance refinements in how... RTO is another… Actors are thinking about these highly flexible industrial loads.

So here again, this recommendation was hastily pulled together.

So I'm sure can be refined, but essentially thinking about how there's, in many instances, not a fair or accurate evaluation of really highly flexible low load capacity industrial technology.

So thermal batteries are among those which we had identified as a really critical cross cutting technology. And thinking about how we could help push FERC to accelerate interconnection processes for those loads that can demonstrate that they avoid—having avoid—adding system costs. And actually, provide system resilience and other benefits.

So I don't know if you want me to stop there, Cathy, and have a have a discussion around this.

CATHY CHOI: Yeah, I think we should go through a recommendation by recommendation for comments.

SASHA STASHWICK: OK. So maybe I'll stop there.

SHARON NOLEN: Neal.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Thanks and this is Neal Elliott.

So a couple of things come to mind as we start dealing with this. Obviously, only nominally 2/3 of the U.S. utility system is actually covered under an ISO RTO Context. The other 1/3 is a vertically-integrated regulatory model.

And I think based on my experience working across the country, I think that what you have identified are actually common issues across all of the—all the utilities, not just the RTO ones.

The, I think, the challenge from the approach you're laying out here is that there's limited [inaudible] federal jurisdictional oversight with respect to the non-RTO region.

So just think about how we deal with that somewhat holistically.

Is—is worth considering?

The second piece, I think, which is somewhat tangential, and maybe outside the scope of what the committee wants to go, is one of the issues that we run into with most of the ISOs or RTOs. These are nonprofit 501c3 organizations and have their own internal governance. And I know there are some folks in the electric utility regulatory space who have expressed concerns about the patchwork of governance structures that exist for RTOs that can make it difficult for non-incumbents, both suppliers and users, encountering difficulty in addressing some of the concerns you've identified there.

That's it.

SASHA STASHWICK: Neal, can I ask you a follow up question?

NEAL ELLIOTT: Certainly.

SASHA STASHWICK: So understanding that this wouldn't cover the totality of regions…

What do you think about this idea for—for what it does cover and then, to your point, would you…and how would you build on this to be even more holistic?

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah, I think there are.

Certainly, I think having DOE and—and I'm not sure FERC is the right vehicle here—having DOE make recommendations in, with respect to procedures for addressing some of the concerns that you talked about here, are, which would then be applied to both.

Both RTOs to vertically integrate utilities and to state and locally regulate utility entities. May be a useful discussion.

I think the other piece, which again is—is it's a scope question—we have very diverse governance structures across the—the [inaudible] across the country.

And that's in part because I think of the patchwork that we've seen—evolution that's occurred over the last 30 years.

And it may be appropriate for DOE to consider making recommendations to existing regulatory bodies, or potentially Congress, on standardizing some a governance process. Ensuring stakeholder access to some of the decisions, particularly in terms of Fair, just nondiscriminatory and non-preferential, as covered under the Federal Power Act.

SASHA STASHWICK: Thanks.

SHARON NOLEN: Any other comments on this one?

Thanks Sasha. You can go ahead and move to the next one then.

SASHA STASHWICK: Sharon, before I do, how are we?

I wasn't exactly sure what the process is here, so I—I mean I—I definitely took some notes on what the feedback Neal just shared.

What is the idea here in terms of … Next steps for our given recommendation.

SHARON NOLEN: Yes. So and Jack, I see you nodding.

I don't know if you wanted to interject or. No. OK.

So I think it, I think it'll be very similar to what we did before, but just it's not quite as accelerated as schedule. But sending out the recommendations for consideration and then ultimately having a meeting where we'll vote on the ones that we want to add.

ZACH PRITCHARD: You can go ahead, yeah.

SHARON NOLEN: And so, I see this meeting as preliminary just to get the ideas out there and then start to craft what we actually wanted. Support with the idea that we will be voting on those in the future.

Does that help?

And Zach, feel free to add.

SASHA STASHWICK: Yeah, so. Oh, sorry, Zach. Go ahead.

SHARON NOLEN: Go ahead.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Oh, I yeah.

I mean, I think that's probably right. I was just gonna also say, yeah, it's I think helpful for you to take notes on what to do. But we'll also share the meeting minutes in case you missed anything.

SASHA STASHWICK: Thanks Zach.

I mean what I could maybe do is this is only like a sentence or two here.

I could try and update it based on the feedback from Neal.

Neal, I'm happy to work with you on turning around an updated, very brief, summary recommendation here before our next meeting.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, if Neal's willing to work with you, I mean, it seems like Neal has a lot of information on this subject.

So I think that'd be great. Neal, if you're willing to do that.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Certainly happy.

SASHA STASHWICK: OK, great. I'll keep going here.

The second recommendation I think is something that we talked about at our last in person meeting in DC, but I didn't feel that it quite got captured and made it into our preliminary report, and this is the idea.

You know, to continue to help make the process smoother for companies that are trying to navigate DOE's awards process. And at one point we had talked about this idea of streamlining subsequent funding opportunities for a company that had already successfully received a DOE award and navigated the requirements once.

We did have a recommendation. I noted its recommendation #24.

Or, in our preliminary report, around a fast-track program.

But I think this is slightly different than that.

This is basically saying, I think the plainest way to say it is, that if you've already been the recipient of an award at some point in the…with one office within the DOE constellation, there should be some provisions to expedite or ease your processes.

You move through TRLs and potentially are applying for a subsequent funding opportunity.

ZACH PRITCHARD: And I will maybe jump in here to say that this is not something that Avi and Carolyn touched on much, but it actually think—thinking about how to cut through the red tape of the grant making process is something that's very much of interest in the department right now.

So I think the committee's input on this topic is—is very much welcome.

SHARON NOLEN: One question I would have, and I have not gone back and looked at recommendation #24., was it also in the overcoming barriers section or was it in a different section?

SASHA STASHWICK: You don't remember Sharon? I could quickly try and look.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, I'll just make my point and then it's something you could look at later.

But I was thinking - if it does have some similarity with #24, I think it would be worthwhile just to look to see if it should be combined in some way rather than a whole separate recommendation, or if it's similar.

Maybe they at least need to be side by side versus one—one place in the report. And then this one somewhere very different in the report.

So that was really the point I wanted to make.

SASHA STASHWICK: Yeah, that's a good point to not necessarily proliferate recommendations, but, to refine the existing ones where possible.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Thanks. Yeah, I—I like the idea and not having duplicative requirements.

It reminded me of having something akin to a—a common application like the analogy would be to applying to universities, where there are some that accept a common application, but may have a supplement, like ITO, may have its own things. It looks for in what it funds that are different from what ARPA-E or the Office of Electricity looks for, but they also probably look for some of the same things, like a company that's well managed.

So perhaps there are the common elements could be consolidated onto the universal DOE application and then each office has a smaller, however-many page supplement of questions, that speak to that office's specific priorities and how they allocate funding.

SHARON NOLEN: Quick follow up to that. I read this, and I don't know, Jeff, when you were talking [inaudible] more like you were thinking about how they award the money and I was thinking more… This is after the award when they're negotiating.
You know all the—the DEWEY grant requirements. So I don't know. Could someone clarify that?

Is it? Is it when they're making the decision or is it the follow up work that happens?

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Sasha.

SASHA STASHWICK: Maybe I can clarify because I did this hand-wavy slash, which is maybe unclear.

SHARON NOLEN: Bye.

SASHA STASHWICK: I actually that should have been a plus sign, I suppose, rather than a slash.
So I—I wanted to put on the table at least for discussion both.

SHARON NOLEN: OK. Yeah. I guess one thing that concerns me a little bit is you don't want to make a system where if you've gotten a grant before, it's going to improve your chances of getting another grant.

Because I think we want to continue to diversify the funding and fund different organizations.

So do you think that would be an issue if you streamline?

Yeah, the—the initial selection process.

SASHA STASHWICK: Is that to me?

SHARON NOLEN: Yes.

Sasha Stashwick 1:06:32
I don't know that it's an issue in the way that Jeff just described, where like there's some common information that would already….like the common application part of it.

I don't know that—that compromise I—I understand the point you're making, which is that you wouldn't want to be to have a group of incumbents that preclude new entrance, right, that's—that's not supportive of the agency's goals.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

SASHA STASHWICK: Around innovation so on, but.

I don't know that Jeff's suggestion, necessarily, that does that.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, I think that is it. I like Jeff's comments.

I think that's a good way to think about it. So I just wanted to at least state that concern for consideration.

Cathy.

Oh, I'm sorry, Abigail.

CATHY CHOI: I think Abigail is next.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, she was next. Abigail.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Thanks. Yeah. I think some of what I was thinking was already mentioned.

I think what you said Sharon, on not wanting to create…make it more difficult for newer folks. I think that is a concern, but I do agree that I think Jeff's recommendation of a common application type format would I—I don't think would create those issues and would I think. address what Sasha's considering on the application side.

I do wonder on the negotiation side. Like what level of streamlining could be done. You know, because there's probably going to be different requirements for like different programs and different specific funding.

But I think… Interesting to also think about that process as well. And I imagine that this is something that would go beyond ITO and is much more of a DOE-wide recommendation, which I fully support. But just putting that out there that this would go beyond just the—the industrial pieces.

And then just to—to answer the question on #24. This does exist. The recommendation? The fast track is under the barriers chapter under commercialization support.

So whether it's an addition to the existing recommendation, which I think it is different, and especially if it goes more the direction toward Jeff was saying, it probably makes sense to be a separate recommendation.

But I think Artie has like a nice little place to live.

In this commercialization support section that we have.

SHARON NOLEN: Thank you, Cathy, you were next.

CATHY CHOI: I think Abigail stated what I was going to say, so I'll echo her concerns or suggestions. Particularly after you've been [inaudible] award when you're an entity— an industrial entity, a company or corporation you're trying to do your—your budgeting year over year, out maybe 2, 3-5 years, and a lot of the comments when it comes to—it's wonderful to get the award, but it takes years to actually start to execute and that's hard to plan around.

So I support this recommendation. I—I have the same concerns of incumbents because there are already a lot of DOE grants. Not necessarily in the ITO, but DOE grants that are year-over-year, and the incumbents just naturally have a—an advantage because they're—they're already developing technologies off of which others can build off of.

SHARON NOLEN: OK, Neal.

NEAL ELLIOTT: I just wanted to note.

And we may want to go back and look at some of the past IDIAC recommendations. I know Avi, in discussing some of the procedures that were developed for the…what do you call them now? SAC RFPs.

Is that the correct term?

ZACH PRITCHARD: We do.

We do NOFOs now, notice of funding opportunity, yes.

NEAL ELLIOTT: You do NOFOs, OK?

Yeah. OK. I'm—I'm still working on coming up to speed on the latest terminology the NOFOs. That there had been a shift for some programs, particularly focusing on small and medium sized manufacturers, to using other…Other transactional authorities’ OTA's.

Which allow for a streamlining of some of the grant awards.

And that's been very successful and, I think, there were several efforts particularly focused on the Infrastructure Under Secretary that had looked at what worked really well on some of the NOFAs, And—and on the contract negotiations that enable more rapid movement and compete—completion of those agreements. And it may be worthwhile, maybe this may be a form of recommendation to review some of the contract experiences over the last four to eight years, to look at it, if there are ways to establish some of those standard operating practices within the department.

And there may be some that are specific to the industrial sector that we may want to consider calling out specifically with relation to the ITO.

SHARON NOLEN: Hey, Cindy.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Yeah. I guess when I say that, I agree with Sharon's comment that you don't want to make it easier for all companies who receive prior [inaudible] to get the next one. But if some of them have shown significant progress to developing new technologies, maybe when I make it easier for them to get new funding… To make it to the end—end goal, maybe we can add something to that effect to this recommendation and—and have it submitted that way.

SHARON NOLEN: All right.

Thank you, Jeff.

JEFFREY RISSMAN:

I just wanted to note that in addition to recommendation 24 in the preliminary report, recommendation #4 on—I'm sorry—yeah, recommendation #4 on page three is also about streamlining DOE funding processes and I believe also came from Sasha.

So there may be… we may want to also consider whether or how to consolidate that or put that with 24 and the new one all together in a little section about streamlining funding.

I just didn't want it to be overlooked. That recommendation four was also in the same sphere.

SHARON NOLEN: Thank you, Jeff.

Right, Abigail?

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Yeah. And last quick thing.

Recommendation 26.

We have the last sentence includes partner intermediary agreements and other transaction authority and to take a look at that. But I think it was an add-on because the rest of Recommendation 26 is really about LPO.

So I think for some of what you were talking about, Neal, it could make sense to have a new recommendation with some of what you were mentioning, maybe that it includes some of what Sasha was thinking here and then we could also lift out that sentence from recommendation 26 so that it lives, maybe, in a better spot than just being tacked on to this LPO one.

SHARON NOLEN: OK.

NEAL ELLIOTT: I think we, if I can respond back to Abigail, I think we added that in response to some of the success that.

SASHA STASHWICK: I.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Avi had reported to the committee in the application of the OTA's. And so wanted to [inaudible] capture that we were supportive of continuing the deployment of those contracting authorities.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Yeah. And maybe just a general question comment for us—I think in the preliminary recommendations that we put out, there was a decent amount of consolidation that was going on amongst recommendations.

And so some of the recommendations turned into these—these things are kind…

SHARON NOLEN: Thanks.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: ...of related, we'll put them into one recommendation.

So just curious—if we are more open as we're finalizing the report and recommendations to, since we now have a bit more time when it makes sense to maybe, actually, add a few more recommendations if things actually made sense to—to keep them apart and—and add a little bit more rather than the consolidation that happened during the first preliminary round.

SHARON NOLEN: Think it could certainly be done.

Part of the decision for doing that was just the length of time to vote on the recommendations. And then there's also a balance, because daily once a manageable number.

So I think there's—there's some room to add some, but we probably don't want to add a huge number as well.

OK. Sasha, maybe we can wrap this one up.

SASHA STASHWICK: I just wanted to.

I can't recall who suggested this, but I just wanted to [inaudible] the idea of maybe having a—a section of recommendations around streamlining processes—just given what Zach said a moment ago about this being an area of interest for the agency, I think maybe just being responsive to—to that.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah.

SASHA STASHWICK: So I—I—I don't want to say that's definitely the direction we go in, but I think we should strongly consider having a section of that kind.

SHARON NOLEN: I think that makes sense. Right. So obviously, a whole lot of interest in this one. So that's great. But I think we'll try to go ahead and move to #3.

SASHA STASHWICK: I'll try and be quick on this one.

This one is trying to think about access to affordable energy for industry, which needs a lot of it, and at the same time, seeing a proliferation of local-level bands around the country on the development of some of the lowest cost forms of energy, and immediately available forms of energy.

So when solar storage and so on and this in turn could be driving up the price of electrification technologies for—for industry, creating a barrier to industrial electrification. So the idea I had was that we should take this seriously and actually take a look at these ordinances and try and put forward a set of recommendations for I use the word reasonable, but a set of ordinances that could be protective of public health, avoid critical lands, avoid other concerns, but also avoid prohibiting outright the cheapest forms of energy that are being developed.

And are really desperately needed by—by industry and others.

SHARON NOLEN: Comments on this one question.

Jack, do you have a feel for the current administration? How open they are to when solar, etc…

I did have that conversation with Lou Herkman, who did not seem very open to it.

So I'm just wondering.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, I'm not sure if I have a great read on that.

I mean, I think part of the—the feeling might be that they're relatively mature technologies, but that that—that's relevant to [inaudible].

But if you're thinking about more of like deployment side issues, then maybe it's not as relevant.

But I'm—I'm not sure that's speculative.

SHARON NOLEN: Any comments or questions on this one?

Tasha, I guess I'm just not very familiar with this. You know what is causing the bans?

Do you have a—can you answer that?

SASHA STASHWICK: I think it's probably a range, but I can share some resources for folks.

They are happening in a lot of places around the country. And I think it's in—they’re proliferating the number and the speed at which they're being replicated is, I think, increasing.

And it's at a time when there are already significant barriers to adding sufficient capacity.

SHARON NOLEN: Mm hmm.

SASHA STASHWICK: To support a number of electrification demand, a number of large loads that need to be added…

So here the idea is for do we to think about what are what are the reasonable protective measures? But avoiding prohibitions on the really affordable sources of—of—of energy and also sources of energy that can be brought on quicker than others and would support electrification.

SHARON NOLEN: Thank you.

All right, looks like no comments on. Oh, sorry, Jeff. I just saw your hand go up.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah. It's highlighting an important topic, I guess. What, I'm a little uncertain of is how much influence do we have on local and municipal and county governments.

I don't know if…what levers do we have exactly. Does anyone have any insight on—on that? Would it just be publishing a report saying, hey, here's what ordinances we think should account for and hoping that local governments listen?

SHARON NOLEN: Were you going to answer that or did you have something else?

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: No, I had something else.

SHARON NOLEN: OK.

Does anyone want to respond to Jeff then?

SASHA STASHWICK: Jeff, I guess my thought here was that it's an [inaudible] deal.

We can—can raise awareness, I think, around the issue—use ITC 
platform, for lack of a better term…

To…Yeah, that's [inaudible] the recommendation around a report, at least initially. I think your points well-taken. But this this is something I think we could do.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Got it.

SHARON NOLEN: Sridhar.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Yes, I—I would be interested in also learning what's the motivation for the—the resistance of the bands, especially if there is an economic case that's being made that this is the best solution.

But I also wanted to maybe think about DOE's role there. I've heard some criticism in terms of the analysis work that has been done through labs and other places.

That they've been biased.

I…. I don't know.

I'm not saying whether that's true or not, but is there any work DOE can do in terms of objectively evaluating the economic cases?

And—and put out reports in terms of what—what's being questioned with those analysis?

Was it the assumptions or the boundary conditions?

And that might be a study that DOE could look at objectively, right?

To—to make the techno-economic case based on the needs.

SHARON NOLEN: Any other comments or questions on this one?

Hi, Cathy.

Are you presenting the 4th 1:00?

CATHY CHOI: Yeah, I'll do the 4th; 4th and final one.

Thank you. This is essentially a resubmission.

It—it did not garner the priority during the first round, so I wanted to resubmit it and get everyone's thoughts on it. And actually part of this may actually help Sasha's number three recommendation, potentially 1.

So I'll just read off the screen here—Advanced clean technology options—

These adoptions of them.

It can be challenging for companies that commercialize, particularly if they're a global company and particularly when those best available technologies may be regionally dependent, so I —I echo what Sridar said—that there's—there's some concern of… Is there a level playing field when we're talking techno-economic analysis?

So a lot of times the techno-economic analyses are originally dependent. So to overcome this barrier, can DOE better utilize their local representatives around the country, whether it's their field offices, or national labs, or studies that are regionally dependent.

Hubs are very regional as well, so that's an example… to… in order to drive the best technologies that sometimes are very regionally dependent.

So for example, I don't know what's causing these county level bans, but if they truly are economically viable through its life cycle and through the value chain as the lowest form of energy, what can DOE do in that space?

So it… this may be able to not only help everyone understand the technologies that work best for each region, those that are regionally dependent—and solar, wind, storage are very regionally dependent—and fund accordingly to help drive a much smoother transition to cleaner technologies and hopefully yield a better adoption rate.

So like I said, this is a resubmission.

It would be nice to know everyone's thoughts because I'm sure everyone reviewed this before and it—it didn't have a very high priority and it would be very good to get that feedback here.

SHARON NOLEN: One thing I wonder about, and I'm trying to remember, they used to have regional combined heated power offices, and I think those have been renamed and have a broader focus now.

Zach, do you know what those are called now?

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, that's right.

It's now the Onsite Energy Technical Assistance Partnerships program.

So it used to be the CHP Technical Assistance Partnerships. But that is still like a distributed regional model.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah.

Anyway, I just was thinking Cathy.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah.

SHARON NOLEN: I know you were asking about priority, but when I read this, it just seemed like that would be an ideal fit for that technical assistance program.

Because it is regionally focused. So I just wanted to bring that up.

CATHY CHOI: OK. Very good. Thank you.

SHARON NOLEN: We might want to call them out in particular.

CATHY CHOI: Very good.

SHARON NOLEN: Does anyone have any concerns that including this recommendation?

I'm not. I really do not know why it was not included before.

CATHY CHOI: We had a lot of good other suggestions, a lot of other good suggestions so.

SHARON NOLEN: I know, yeah.

CATHY CHOI: So to move this along, if anyone has any comments or questions, please bring them back to me.

And I do have a process question before we move on, are we going to have a similar meeting that goes through…

SHARON NOLEN: OK.

CATHY CHOI: …recommendations to another level or well, do you think… do you envision the next meeting to be more voting on the recommendations that go into the final draft?

SHARON NOLEN: I'm honestly not sure if we have a plan for that yet, Cathy, sorry to say.

CATHY CHOI: OK.

SHARON NOLEN: I don't know Zack.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, I mean, I guess what—what I have been thinking is that from this meeting, folks will get feedback and understand who's interested in their recommendations to do some offline work on the recommendations and get them to a point where they could be voted on at the—the next meeting and we can handle other feedback offline.

One thing that we can—can talk about later in the meeting as well, but just to consider is that there's a good chance it will be maybe six months before our next meeting, four to six months.

Because we are no longer compliant with all of our labor member requirements after Anna steps down, we'll have to appoint someone to take her place, and that can just take a quite a while.

So a lot of the work that the committee does will be happening in subcommittees.

So we want to have things make lots of progress there that we can present to the next full committee meeting.

SHARON NOLEN: Do you want to just take a moment to remind everyone that we have the mirror board?

So I'm not, at least unless I have a technical problem, I'm not seeing any comments there, but do take advantage of it. If you have additional comments that you want to add.

And then, process question, so we've been in this for a little over an hour and a half. We didn't really have a schedule for breaks, so I don't know if we want to take a break now, or I would think 2 hours, would be the most would want to go. So,
Zach, are you nodding, suggesting it's a good time for a break?

ZACH PRITCHARD: Thinking is, that we do the next topic and then take a break after that unless people are feeling like they really need a break right now.

SHARON NOLEN: Yes. I'm fine with it.

OK, what is our next topic?

ZACH PRITCHARD: I believe it is CCUS and is Jeff leading this one.

SHARON NOLEN: OK.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Jeff and Joe.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Sure I can.

Although I think, yeah, I—I Joe was the original principal author. So Joe, please, feel free to jump in as needed, but the recommendation was that in collaboration with academia, industry, and national labs, we should continue and expand its support for technologies to achieve the following goals associated with carbon capture and storage deployment.

• Reducing the cost of retrofitting carbon capture technology in existing facilities
• Facilitating access to CO2 transportation to geological storage in different regions, 
• Accounting for where industrial facilities are located or clustered
• Developing innovative solutions required for certain sub industries such as cement making and primary steelmaking to efficiently capture CO2 emissions from their waste gas streams and 
• Mitigating any risks of CO2 transport and storage, such as preventing leakage.

I don't think I need to read off the rationale for these, unless you'd like me to share another Zach.

ZACH PRITCHARD: I don't think so.

JOE POWELL: Yeah, I would just add that we've been a world leader in this technology and ability of industry to place its product into global markets really needs to consider those that have the high concern over the carbon footprints, and so it’s a it's a really a competitive issue, competitiveness issue, for—for U.S. industry to be able to both utilize for its own products, but then also dissemination of the technology, which is also another market play globally for the industries that have been involved here.

And so, you see many industries developing low-carbon technology business models. To—to really enable that as a...as a technology export business and—and we certainly see quite a—a global demand for that that we should be able to capitalize on, given our current leadership position.

SHARON NOLEN: One question I would have is whether we should consider anything about research related to different storage opportunities. Like I know DOE has [inaudible] some research around storing CO2 and abandoned coal mines, so I don't know.

That's one possible consideration for adding.

JOE POWELL: Yeah, I think additional research into the subsurface, in terms of ability to monitor, and—and—and get the—the storage correct is would, could certainly be in—in —in scope the—the coal mine opportunity.

I can certainly present itself as well and so in addition to making sure you have the right toolkits for that monitoring on-on, on the storage side.

And then I would say further reducing the costs of the…on the capture side, is also an opportunity to improve the—the —the competitiveness.

SHARON NOLEN: Yes, I agree. Anyone else?

Right. Yeah, this is one we had definitely want to include before.

We just sit and, oh, I'm sorry. You have more recommendations on CCUS. Let me let you keep going. Thank you.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Sure. Yeah. The there are a few [inaudible] ones.

So #2—DOE should develop and release a toolkit to enable structured evaluation of carbon capture technology versus other emissions, reducing technology options for different sub industries, at the project level, to help industrial firms understand when carbon technology is the best fit…Capture technology is the best fit for a specific project.

And the toolkit should also help firms estimate the impacts of proposed CCS projects.

Some communities, with regard to employment opportunities and environmental outcomes, such as changes in non-CO2 pollutant emissions, and I'll just go on and read #3 here to facilitate carbon capture and use.

The DOE should continue and expand its support for improving efficiency and yields for CO2 conversion to product—to products using thermo-, electro-, photo- and plasma-based chemical pathways.

And DOE should encourage patient of CO2 using industries with carbon capture products to make optimal use of infrastructure for CO2 capture and transport.

SHARON NOLEN: All right, comments on #2.

JOE POWELL: And that's another area where we have the technology leadership and—and a number of these conversion technologies.

There's a recent National Academies report on CO2 capturing utilization which—which goes through that research and technology portfolio. And so certainly would want to—to leverage that. You know, in terms of the opportunity to utilize that development and capitalize on—on—on that knowledge base in the global economy.

SHARON NOLEN: Right. Any comments or questions on #3? Right.

Are there more? Or is that it, Jeff, for CCUS?

JEFFREY RISSMAN: I think there were only the three.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, I think that's right.

Yeah. So the next one is nuclear, but we could maybe take a break here. Sure. Does that sound good?

SHARON NOLEN: Minutes. Would that be reasonable?

ZACH PRITCHARD: Ah, sure, let's call it 1:55 eastern, 13 minutes.

SHARON NOLEN: All right. Sounds good. OK, thank you.

ZACH PRITCHARD: All right. Thanks. See everybody in a few minutes.

All right, folks, it is 1:55.

And I ask Members, if you're—you're back to maybe raise your hand so that I know you're here.

Seeing hands rolling in.

Do we have Neal?

Joe Powell, Jolene, Sridhar.

You can raise your hand.

8.

Right. Looking good. OK.

All right. So I believe the next topic on the agenda is nuclear energy and heat for industry.

And this is gonna be Abigail and Joe.

JOE POWELL: Alrighty, would you like to start, Abigail?

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Well, I think Joe, this first one is mostly the one you drafted with just a little bit of my edit.

So maybe you want to take this one and I'll take the other two.

JOE POWELL: All right, I'll be happy too.

So nuclear energy and heat for industry.

DOE should directly support implementation and demonstration of advanced nuclear technology in the U.S. for GW scale industrial, petrochemical and refining, clean hydrogen production, and other large industrial heat and steam users.

DOE should also consider nuclear energy for data centers and other industries where expected future growth, and whose energy needs are a good match for nuclear, where possible.

DOE should explore projects that integrate new nuclear technologies with other technologies, EG: thermal energy storage; and that collocate nuclear with industrial facilities that can take advantage of nuclears’ heat and electricity output in an optimized energy system.

And so, I don't think we'll read through the—the rationales, but certainly the—the data center problem is —is—is front and center a number of our industrial partners are looking at highly reliable 24/7 energy.

And nuclear can provide that. The U.S. has been a leading developer of the technology; but currently, demonstration and deployment is—is limited in the U.S. and occurring primarily in China.

And so given also the interplay with some of the defense adjacencies of—of having leadership and that knowledge base, I think it's important for the U.S. to be participating in that space for—for national security and in addition to the industrial impacts that it can have.

As mentioned previously, our industries are placing products into many different global markets, some of which have carbon footprints as an important characteristic, and nuclear matched with high capital intensity is—is a good match where you need that 24/7 power in that space.

Looking around on the workforce training side, you just don't find too much in terms of nuclear engineering departments like when I was coming out of school last century; and so maintaining that knowledge base is also really a—a concern and having that adjacency in terms of industry implementation along with some of the defense needs I think is important.

And so with that who else would like to enter in here?

SHARON NOLEN: It's like Cathy has her hand up.

JOE POWELL: Yeah, go ahead, Cathy.

CATHY CHOI: Hi, thank you.

Really like this recommendation. One piece of input, potentially, is: Can DOE identify the first one, two, or three beachheads where nuclear would have the highest probability of success?

It could be data centers.

It could be something else.

Otherwise, it can get very…if we put it out there for all industries…it's—it's analysis paralysis. And adoption gets…there's so many different technologies out there that it's hard for different industry, particularly the companies in these different industries, to make decisions.

JOE POWELL: Yeah, I think the data centers are there and we've certainly heard that, and the—the petrochemical refining industry in terms of the amount, the GW scale, high energy intensity, power that's needed to—to make that happen. And so, the—the interest has been reported there - in —in petrochemicals and refining, and then certainly for the data centers as well.

CATHY CHOI: Yeah. So do we have a study that shows good beach heads for the first round?

That would be one recommendation I would add to that…your existing one.

JOE POWELL: Alright.

SHARON NOLEN: Anyone else comments on this one?

All right, we can go ahead and move on to the others then.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: So happy to take this one and maybe this is just two of them, I think maybe.

But this is a more general recommendation.

Kind of, on how to make sure that anything on the DOE-supporting relating to nuclear for industry is cost effective… And can be done in…on a time frame that makes sense.

Given some of the historical projects in nuclear buildout that have happened recently, and so this is taking mostly recommendations from existing other reports and—and committees since nuclear goes beyond just the industrial sector.

So this is my attempt at taking some of the—the recommendations and then pointing to some of the resources where they came from, so the recommendation would be: DOE should support best practices and innovative models, such as those identified by DOE's Advanced Nuclear Pathways to Commercial Liftoff Report, and the Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee's January 2025 letter to the Secretary, to ensure DOE-funded nuclear projects for industry are delivered on time and on budget. Recommendations could include better sharing and allocation of costs and risks across multiple roles involved in project development.

Utilizing consortium approaches, using an integrated project delivery model and standardization of reactor designs and equipment, DOE should also support ongoing efforts by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to modernize and optimize licensing reviews of advanced reactors to follow a technology-inclusive, performance-based, and risk-informed framework that could be standardized, simplified, and digitized in the future.

So further description of what some of these recommendations mean, would be found…actually going into the Liftoff report and the letter.

So that’s the hope of being able to just link those directly there and—and keep this a little tighter.

Yeah. Any thoughts or questions?

SHARON NOLEN: We have the nuclear energy—the Liftoff report that you mentioned there.

Do we have those in our appendix? Appendix of sources?

We should, if we do not.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Yeah, I don't remember if that one has been listed yet, but yeah, we should be sure to—to add it.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, something that you can check later, Jeff.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah, I just had a quick comment that I—I like this approach and I like the idea of the way that you're referring to the other documents for highly detailed material on—on that and—and the preliminary report in the other materials section at the back didn't have a nuclear subsection, but totally supportive of this, this one having it and putting them in there.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Great. Thanks Jeff.

SHARON NOLEN: Anyone else?

All right, you have one more, Abigail.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Nope.

SHARON NOLEN: I thought you said there were three, OK?

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Yeah, I think I—I was mistaken. They're just two.

SHARON NOLEN: OK. All right.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Thanks Sherry.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, I think that is Neal.

SHARON NOLEN: All right. Who's talking about LNG? Sorry.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Great. Thanks much. So the question which came up was is LN… is LNG an industrial technology?

And so, several of us dug a little bit into the data, and it appears while the data has not been focused on LNG as an individual, it appears that this is a rapidly-growing, very highly energy-intensive industry.

And, so some of the questions with respect to… What is the scope? Should we make our recommendation?

I think one of the things to look at, is there are a range of different efficiencies associated with conversion.

Most of those are getting a tradeoff, if you will, between the—the liquefaction of the natural gas to produce LNG and the cost of the facilities.

Currently, most of the facilities are self-powered. By diverting a portion of the natural gas stream that can be 27-to-15 of the natural gas in Utah, so obviously moving to greater efficiency has the potential to significantly save a lot of energy and potentially increase the volume of LNG that can be exported from the facility.

There have been some examples of using grid-supplied electricity, which reduces the local air quality issues, that does not address the utility at our electricity adequacy issues that we've been talking about as a committee.

The other note that Shridhar made, was there is a potential for…if we focus on this to collect noble gases and other rare gases as a side product of the liquid liquefaction process. And it may be potentially worthwhile looking at those as we look at the national security implications of those rare and noble gases, for industrial and national security applications including semiconductor manufacturing.

So our recommendation is - DOE should continue and expand its support for technology associated with LNG, improving the efficiency of the compression and refrigeration processes for LNG facilities, reduce looking at steps to reduce the methane leakage at liquefaction and export facilities, and separating the noble and commercial gases from natural gas during the liquefaction process.

And additionally, DOE should assess the economic environmental benefits of—of liquefaction and export facilities relying on the electricity grid rather than consuming a portion of the natural gas to meet their energy needs.

So Cathy, I guess.

CATHY CHOI: Yeah, yeah.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah.

CATHY CHOI: Thank you.

But just a question, do you feel like detection is encompassed in here? And do you… do you feel that detection… better ways to detect leakage is something that LNG will need?

NEAL ELLIOTT: So I think there…we have some good fairly good detection technologies out there, I think.

So one of the questions is - where do we set the boundaries of the LNG facility?

The working group basically decided that was from the point of pipeline delivery to the point of offloading of the—the liquefied LNG.

Sorry redundancy there.

And in those cases, those numbers are fairly modest compared to issues associated with expiration, production, and the pipeline operation; as well as the recompression along the pipelines, we did not consider any of those.

I think the technologies are probably there. I think the question is beginning to look at plant configurations and identify the location of the LNG leakage with an idea of… Are there cost effective means by which we can reduce those?

CATHY CHOI: OK. Thank you.

SHARON NOLEN: Anyone else?

Great. Were there any other LNG recommendations? Yes. OK.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Second recommendation is - The Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.

Or I guess it's now just the Office of Fossil Energy again... Is that correct, Zach?

ZACH PRITCHARD: Actually not sure.

NEAL ELLIOTT: OK, should consider the potential for LNG imports to increase natural gas prices for domestic industries and car manufacturers competitiveness when making public investments; to determine…Determinations on applications for LNG export.

Think that's pretty self-explanatory.

SHARON NOLEN: Any comments or questions on this one?

So the data centers.

Was talking about that one SEC.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yep. So we have one recommendation on data centers.

This will be either Neal or Jeff or both.

NEAL ELLIOTT: You wanna take it, Jeff?

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Sure, since you were just…Last set, so DOE should support work to fill knowledge gaps in data center design and operation, particularly as it relates to data centers’ energy efficiency and integration with communities and the electric grid.

DOE should assist grid operators and regulators in developing policies and rate plans that reward data centers for operating as flexible loads that help balance the grid, avoid contributing to the net peak demand, and address electricity supply adequacy by making better use of existing generation and transmission resources at off peak times.

There are a variety of spatial and temporal load shifting mechanisms that data centers can use to increase their electricity demand flexibility, especially when focusing on tasks such as AI model training or cryptocurrency mining, where no human user is waiting on an immediate response.

SHARON NOLEN: Anyone have comments or questions?

ZACH PRITCHARD: And I.

CATHY CHOI: I have a question.

Sorry I didn't raise my hand.

I'm still reading through it, so I understand that when you say DOE should support knowledge gaps, is that to help…

Because I…the data center owners. I very well know their design and operation, so is this to fill knowledge gaps in the future and how new technology can help? I'm a little a little lost.

NEAL ELLIOTT: I—I think the knowledge gaps we're looking there, so certainly on the technical configurations of the data centers.

We have some ideas. The operators certainly have some ideas.

We're looking at particularly the, excuse me, the generative AI data centers. We don't really understand fully what the energy consumption looks like for them because we don't understand how they will be operated or what their use cases are.

A good example of this would be the Tesla facility outside Memphis, which started at 200 megawatts, grew to 400 megawatts, and is now seeking an additional 600 megawatts. With a total load peak load there of approximately GW of demand.

And that's evolved as the technologies involved. I think, the other day, the knowledge gaps, I think we were thinking about particularly are related to policymakers, utility system planners, and other external parties that are not of the data center operators themselves.

There is actually initiative being led by a former colleague of ours on the committee, Eric Masanet, which is looking to collect an open database of information on this new generation of AI data centers, which have substantially different use and operating characteristics, as well as technologies than the either the crypto or the cloud data centers that the industry has been familiar with over the last 15 to 20 years.

CATHY CHOI: OK. I understand.

Thank you.

SHARON NOLEN: Sridhar.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Thanks.

So I had two thoughts here.

One is DOE has…think it's just been closed, pretty large RFI around data centers for…in federal lands, I think, but we contributed to the, I assume, as many other people around the country, I wonder whether a summary from that RFI report would be useful before we finalize these recommendations. Because there should be a wealth of information there and I don't know, Zack, if there is some way of…once DOE has analyzed that, to get some feedback around that.

Umm.

ZACH PRITCHARD: I—I know the person who is running that R5 so I can talk to him about what might be able to be shared and what the timeline for that would look like.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: OK. The other thing Neal, is we do have an ongoing project that looks at analysis.

It's a bit focused around the Greater Phoenix Valley because we are the second largest data center location in the country now, but we're looking at it from the view of industrial electrification. So the growth of the data centers and their demand for power, how does that affect industry potential for electrification? Because of the increased cost, it's more of a survey and analysis.

But that might be useful as well.

I'm happy to share that information.

NEAL ELLIOTT: There are senior similar studies underway in the Southeast, in particular in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia on the similar type issues and, I think that was —was something that I know Avi Schultz has publicly mentioned that —that the interaction between data centers and large scale industrial electrification is potentially an issue of interest to the department, and we may want to call that out.

So I think that's a good recommendation. Thank you, Sridhar.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah. I agree.

That's a great addition about understanding how data centers and other sources of electricity demand would affect availability of electricity for industry.

I think speaking back to the knowledge gaps, a lot of the current rack is written about flexibility, how data centers can support the grid and be flexible as opposed to being seen as this additional difficult to support load.

It would add stress to the grid and maybe some of that ties into our… the—the —the first recommendation Sasha had today about ensuring that industrial firms see the that are flexible, get rate plans and such that reward them for that flexibility.

Well, data center operators might be much in the same boat where if they're exposed to higher pricing, if they're contributing the net peak demand, and—and—and are really rewarded for operating in this highly flexible way. They're smart.

They know their business.

They could optimize around that.

So rather than telling them what to do, it might be more about our rec… might be more about that integration piece and making sure they're seeing the right signals so they…so they optimize for the right things.

SHARON NOLEN: Any other comments from anyone?

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: I guess I can interject one more thing.

So in the industry sub sector, when we discussed critical materials, we briefly discussed what particular critical materials demands are going to be stressed even more because of data centers like some things are common with other things like batteries or lithium copper, semiconductors chips, that's not specifically for data centers, although they use them.

But there are certain types of materials that are specifically used for energy-efficient data centers, like high capacity switches, a certain type of transformers, gallium nitride… there are certain types that are just gonna peak because of that.

That might be a good analysis, a taxonomy study for DOE to undertake.

I don't know if we should put that in our recommendation in the Industry Subcommittee under critical materials or it's something that you can add here.

Neal, I'm —I'm happy to share the information. However you wanna do it.

NEAL ELLIOTT: I think that might be more appropriate.

Under the critical materials, I'm concerned that, for the from the perspective of what we were thinking about… Jeff and I, with respect to data centers, that we're looking at macro energy considerations of how data centers interact with other parts of the economy and potentially how those could impact availability of electricity for industrial electrification and economic growth.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: OK.

NEAL ELLIOTT: So the critical materials I think would be…

The considerations of how the critical material, how the critical minerals and material…UN critical, whatever they…the differentiation between critical metals and critical materials are associated with.

Data centers is probably….a….something that should be dealt with separately.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: OK.

SHARON NOLEN: All right. I think we're ready to move to our next category.

ZACH PRITCHARD: And the next one is controlled environment agriculture, which Neal again worked on and —also Betsy.

And there's just this one recommendation.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah. So controlled environment, agriculture has been something that the ITO has been working on for the last couple of years.

And I think it…what we did was took a look at that and then looked at what the status of CEA was out there.

And so, I think the first consideration, we do know that controlled environment agriculture is very energy intensive. And we see it as potentially growing rapidly, particularly with drought and urban shift population to urban areas and the need to produce…or —or agricultural products in proximity to those urban areas.

And so, one of the things we suggest, or what we suggest here, is DOE should continue its exploration of the market, and technical challenges facing controlled environment agriculture industry, reflecting the findings out of the U.S. CEA market accelerator—which was an activity supported by—by the way, and run by a nonprofit called Resource for Innovation…Resource Innovation Institute, along with Lawrence Berkley Lab, and Farm Tech Society, and 1% for the Planet.

One of the issues that we thought probably warranted some consideration is—CEA is a pretty broad category, and we see CEA emerging very differently in rural and urban environments.

And so looking at those differences, including both the conventional greenhouse, as well as what's called vertical agriculture, and one of the questions that appears in the literature fairly regularly is identifying what are the optimal society or optimal sizes of each of those modalities of facilities.

Do we…should also consider options for CEA space heating using alternatives to propane, which is the current, dominant, heating technology; including hydronic heating using high efficiency boilers or heat pumps in systems that recover waste heat from co-located industrial facilities or data centers.

The reason for the consideration of avoiding the propane is, propane is very highly volatile in terms of pricing and can create some real risk exposures for low margin applications. And so, moving to a more stable energy source is preferable, and many of these facilities do not have access to natural gas.

Additionally, DOE should support automation and robotics as a means of addressing worker shortages that currently exist. The workforce and the shift to automation has been a trend within the U.S. industry, but needs to be accelerated in order to ensure the competitiveness of these growing technologies.

SHARON NOLEN: Any comments or questions on this?

Cathy.

CATHY CHOI: It's really just a question.

Are there synergies here of what you're talking about with the CEA and the carbon capture?

NEAL ELLIOTT: There are some, I think the questions that come up with respect to the control of CO2 concentrations in greenhouses.

The literature is mixed on that and it is dependent on which crops you're actually growing in the CA facility and specific configuration.

I would say that's one of those things where the literature is fairly robust and the results are not.

So this I think is…I would consider to be based on the literature or the review that Betsy and I did is somewhat of a secondary consideration.

CATHY CHOI: Very good.

SHARON NOLEN: Just one other thought.

If you add a rationale to this, like our normal way of stating these, I think to put in something about the competitiveness associated with reducing volatility of the fuel cost, I think that would be a good addition.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah, it's something I always cite.

SHARON NOLEN: Right.

NEAL ELLIOTT: It's been really popular. Talking to congressional offices from agricultural states.

And it's something that DOE EIA has been tracking regularly, and they do an annual propane outlook in the fall for this explicit reason—of the risk exposure that this poses for the agricultural production community.

SHARON NOLEN: Alright, very good. Anyone else?

Right. What do we have next? SEC.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Next up is pulp and paper. Just one recommendation and this will be Jolene.

JOLENE SHEIL: Hello everyone.

The initial recommendation that ended up in the preliminary report for pulp and paper was somewhat more general in nature, advocated for more research into how renewables could be scaled up to meet the heat requirements in—in the pulp and paper industry efficiency.

Modular nuclear reactors….basically anything that would apply to any of the other sectors that we were looking at in our industrial sector committee.

So I went back to the team of engineers that I had been working with on this project and asked for more specific, technology related, items that they would see a need for additional research that could help in this area.

So the one they came back with was their first recommendation that DOE should invest in development and deployment of mechanical vapor recompression or MVR heat recovery technology for paper drying and—and Yankee hoods.

The rationale being that an MVR uses electrically-driven compressors. And a working…and working fluid to capture low quality heat and turn it into higher quality steam that is suitable for pulp and paper processes which require that really high temperature.

They noted that this process is efficient and does not emit air pollution and added additional benefit at times of peak electricity demand. A facility could switch their gas-fired steam system, turn off the compressor and thereby reducing the peak load on the grid.

So a common theme through their information they gave me was this heat…heat stacking principles that you can combine; like a heat pump technology with an MVR to convert high humidity, high temperature vacuum exhaust into electricity.

But they basically…their main point was that you can use some of these lower—lower-use waste heat type of things and combine them together to get the level of temperature that you need to do a lot of the processing in pulp and paper mills.

So that's what I got from them.

If anybody has really more specific technical questions, I'm happy to go back and get something from them.

But that was the one that rose to #1 on their list.

SHARON NOLEN: Questions on this?

I guess the one thing that I would question is…I'm supportive of the development part, but the deployment I mean, is DOE really going to be deploying the technology?

So I'm just wondering if that's the right wording there.

JOLENE SHEIL: Yeah, it might depend on what they might have for, I won't say incentives, but sometimes they have those RFPs that have companies apply to get funding for doing something on a particular technology or in a particular area.

So I'm thinking maybe that's what they were thinking, but…

SHARON NOLEN: Maybe that could be explained further.

JOLENE SHEIL: Sure.

SHARON NOLEN: Jeff.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah, I think we have similar things in some other recs where DOE does have some support for deployment, whether that's the loan program, office giving loans to companies or the Office of Clean Energy demonstrations for deployment of, sometimes first of the kind, commercial scale projects. So let's—let's just be cautious that this is the pulp and paper rec and so if it's getting into just general, how does it support deployment that should probably be live in some cross sector place?

JOLENE SHEIL: Good point.

COMAS HAYNES: OK.

SHARON NOLEN: Oh yeah.

COMAS HAYNES: Hi, Julian, I'm sorry for the delay.

Yeah, mine is probably just a technical point of clarification and maybe it's something even offline we, you, and your colleagues could clarify.

I'm just looking at the last sentence, where its saying basically taking heat pumps in MVR and you take in the thought as you could use it to convert high humidity, high temperature vacuum exhaust into electricity.

And you know what I'm saying? Heat pumps in NBR seems like it would be…your —your—you’re needing electricity. They may be in for heat pumps, obviously, to the opposite of a heat engine, but if we're saying you're gonna take the high humidity-high temperature exhaust and convert, basically, thermal energy into electricity, that's more like a heat engine. But so, it's—it's a…it's the opposite effect of what I would expect from heat pumps, and I'm not definitely with MVR, but just in looking at those being electrically driven compressors.

So it might just need to be, it might just be a clarification for me. Out of lack of familiarity, but basically, I'm just saying it seems like you're kinda taking thermal energy and converting it into electricity, but I wouldn't expect that from a collection of heat pumps.

And again, MVR technology that I'm just initially learning about. So again, it might be an offline technical clarification just for me.

JOLENE SHEIL: Sure, that would be great. I'd be happy to.

If you can send me an e-mail, I can forward that to my team for clarification for you [inaudible] or comments, I'd be happy to do that.

COMAS HAYNES: OK will do.

SHARON NOLEN: OK, Cathy.

CATHY CHOI: Yes, thank you.

I think what could be pulled out, maybe a little bit more from your team, is MBR, depending on its use, it's—it's been out there for a while, so if there's a certain area of development in MBR that's needed for pulp and paper; is it just the scale of it for pulp and paper? Or is it…it's a—a cost or something I'm not…I know MBR from a—from a generic standpoint as a technology, but apparently there's a challenge here for pulp and paper.

So that I would draw that out, maybe a little bit more and…

JOLENE SHEIL: OK.

CATHY CHOI: And is Yankee Hoods a—a specific hood?

JOLENE SHEIL: Yes, I was.

CATHY CHOI: OK.

JOLENE SHEIL: I was doing some research on that too, I mean, I think they've been around the question about the efficiency of them…I think that's what they've been working on more, is how they could get more higher efficiency Yankee hoods out there.

I know it's been…seen as a best practice, and our program did…has done one of them so far.

So again, it might be that depending on the—the company you're talking about.

I know they work on pretty slim margins, so sometimes, it takes a lot of history and them seeing a lot of successes—successes elsewhere before they'll pull the trigger and go ahead and install something.

So I don't know if that's the exact situation there either, but…

CATHY CHOI: And I'm—I'm thinking maybe from a recommendation standpoint.

Using a brand we might want to be careful of doing that.

JOLENE SHEIL: OK.

CATHY CHOI: That might…Zach…and Zach might be able to chime in on that.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yankee Hoods is a not a brand. It is a device. It's a—yeah, it's.

CATHY CHOI: OK, OK.

JOLENE SHEIL: I was gonna say, I don't think it's a brand.

It's a type of device and how it's configured more than.

CATHY CHOI: OK.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah, it's a very highly-specialized…I just pulled up the definition.

It's very highly specialized piece of equipment that uses very high temperature air for high speed drying.

Primarily in tissue and towel products.

CATHY CHOI: OK. That's helpful, 'cause it sounds like a brand. Appreciate it.

NEAL ELLIOTT: It's yeah.

JOLENE SHEIL: Yeah. No, no, you…

That was my first thought too, but it's not.

And I think with, again, what they were getting at was…So we have that piece of equipment, but how can we get whatever we…the—the—the energy that we need to have it do its thing, how can we use waste heat, heat pump recovery or heat pump waste recovery, heat recovery, to get those to be more efficient?

And within the facility.

SHARON NOLEN: All right. Anyone else?

Thank you, Jolene.

ZACH PRITCHARD: OK, the next thing here is aluminum and I think Subodh is not able to join us today, so if someone else willing to read these for us and we can pass along any feedback.

Jeff, are you volunteering?

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah, I can do that. Since I compiled these based on Subodh.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Thank you.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: You know some pages he wrote and I reformatted them into these recs—recommendations.

So these are his, but just edited for format by me.

So recommendation one: DOE should continue and expand its support for key emissions-reducing technologies in the aluminum industry, including inner anodes that do not break down during the smelting process, mechanical vapor recompression to produce steam for use in alumina, refining electric alumina, calcination, and furnaces that use electricity, hydrogen, or other non-emitting fuels to overcome cost barriers. DOE should support projects that aim to drive down the cost of all these types of equipment, as well as hydrogen electrolyzers.

And two, and I think there's more than two, I think there's at least three.

DOE should help ensure that…Oh, maybe OK, maybe not.

2: DOE should help ensure the domestic supply of aluminum by funding technologies or programs to improve aluminum recycling rates, address impurities, and improve recycled aluminum quality, and enable landfill mining—meaning extracting aluminums from landfill.

So #1 is a lot about the refining technologies and energy and #2 is more about aluminum supply and recycling.

SHARON NOLEN: Any comments on these?

Probably a good opportunity just to say Jeff, thank you for all the work you've done pulling all the recommendations together.

I think we neglected to say that up top. So I want to make sure we don't forget that.

Cathy.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: My pleasure.

CATHY CHOI: Yeah, I echo that for Jeff as well.

But I did raise my hand for something else. Jeff. So #2 is that…does that align well with the recommendation were already made in January on recycling?

JEFFREY RISSMAN: We did recommend, I think things like technologies to ensure availability impurity, managing impurities, and such. Although I forget if that was under a specific part like Iron and Steel.

CATHY CHOI: I think it…

JEFFREY RISSMAN: I can double check.

NEAL ELLIOTT: I think it was.

CATHY CHOI: I have it open.

So circular economy and material efficiency.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: OK. So there is some overlap there with—with what Subodh suggested for the aluminum industry, yes.

CATHY CHOI: OK. Very good. Thank you.

SHARON NOLEN: So Cathy, are you suggesting changes or clarification?

CATHY CHOI: No, I'm not suggesting changes.

I just wanted to…this is very focused on aluminum, whereas the other one, maybe, is more generic.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, I do think the other was.

CATHY CHOI: Maybe [inaudible] let's suppose know there is a recycling one out there.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah.

CATHY CHOI: And—and there might be a more efficient approach to do this in—in the final.

SHARON NOLEN: OK. Good point.

So we'll just need to provide that feedback to him.

I do think the other one was intentionally very broad though, about recycling.

Neal.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah. And just picking up on that theme there, there are some very material-specific issues associated with aluminum. And to somewhat of a similar extent, steel, that, I think warrant treating them somewhat discretely, because those are challenges that are unique to the material—not more broadly to the circular economy recycling topic writ large.

SHARON NOLEN: Yep.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: So on that maybe…a recommendation to Subodh, maybe to identify some of the elements that are particularly problematic for aluminum, right?

Like I know iron is one of them, silicon is another.

But we can let him point those out, just like for steel - it's copper and tin.

But that may put a little bit more specificity into this.

SHARON NOLEN: I think that's a good point. All right.

Anything else related to aluminum?

ZACH PRITCHARD: And Jeff, did you get did—did Subodh give any feedback on these after you drafted them from the material that he had?

JEFFREY RISSMAN: He just sent a quick, like one sentence, thing saying—looks good—or something.

ZACH PRITCHARD: OK, OK.

But he has seen them—OK.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah.

ZACH PRITCHARD: So that’s yeah.

OK. Thanks. Next topic is critical materials, which will be Shridhar, I think.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Yeah. So on this one, don't—don't read too much into the recommendation yet because it's still work underway.

But, I appreciate Jeff for compiling the discussions here, so maybe I can talk a little bit about what we have been doing in this area more than anything.

So we—we have a small sub subcommittee looking at critical materials.

One thing is—it's somewhat ill-defined in terms of critical materials…broadly involves—involves the mining sources, but also the metals. Sometimes the compounds.

And I think even within DOE it seems a bit unclear which they refer to, when…but all of those are bunched into what they call critical materials whenever there is a supply chain.

We had a meet…we had a really nice overview from AMMTO’s Helena, I think was her name…right. On the overall activities of what AMMTO is doing in that space, including the Critical Materials Hub and the Critical Materials Accelerator.

I think we have not had a meeting after that meeting, so I would like that subcommittee to revisit this based on the information that we got as a first step, as a second step, I think we're also setting up a meeting with the Critical Materials Institute specifically, or a person from there, to understand more of what they're doing.

Some of the impressions that I got was that it was a bit more low-level TRL work and some great stuff has been done in terms of recycling and patents and great work on that level, but it's not clear if it's actually relieved any stress in the critical material.

So at least for me, I'm interested to learn, how that is being addressed.

I've…we've also asked Zach and company if we could get a briefing from FECM, because I believe some of the—the critical material efforts are now specially those related to raw materials are —are done by FECM right? So it would be nice to learn, what they are doing.

Large part of the problem, as we've understood, isn't about the mining. We know how to do that and that's often shipped abroad, but it is about the post-processing.

How do you separate and create processes that are cost effective?

[Inaudible] and sometimes it's even on top of that, it's certain types of machinery or processing facilities or technologies to produce compounds, like for example, electrical steels.

None of those chemically are rare, but the ability to make electrical steels that process is rare, so sometimes it it's in the supply chain somewhere.

So I think, as a long story short, we would like some more information and discussions before we finalize our recommendation, if that is OK.

Also pertaining to the importance of this area that I think the administration has pointed out, I would rather give something more specific than too general in terms of recommendations.

SHARON NOLEN: So you can certainly take more time on this.

Does anyone have comments in the meantime for consideration?

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Should we review the two draft recommendations as written?

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: You can, if you want.

My—my suggestion is wait till this committee has looked at them first perhaps and gotten some more information.

But yeah, it's up to you.

SHARON NOLEN: OK. Well, Neal, looks like he may have a comment.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah. I just wanted to say thank you to Zach and Helena.

I think all the members of the Task Force Working Group or whatever we call it really appreciated. It was extremely helpful and informative.

And to 2nd Sridhar's comment, I think we need to perhaps internalize that and actually talk to some of the folks at the Critical Materials Institute to identify what are the additionality gaps that we need to consider with respect to our recommendations coming out of this.

So that would be my comment and—and again thank you Zach for making that event happen.

SHARON NOLEN: So perhaps it's good.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Hey.

SHARON NOLEN: Oh, go ahead, Zach. Sorry.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Well, I—I was just gonna say happy to…and maybe that's a—a good prompt to any other subcommittees or ad hoc groups, or anybody else if you feel like there's something that would be helpful to have a briefing on from someone in DOE. We can try to arrange that. And then to the—the point about CMI [inaudible] knows somebody there and is helping to arrange that.

You can also think about external briefings as well, if those will be helpful for you.

SHARON NOLEN: All right, Sridhar, do you want to go ahead and just maybe read the second recommendation and see if anyone has any comments or do you even, or are you even, looking for comments at this time?

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: You know we can…we can read it if you want, but it's generic enough that I think it would be hard to speak against it at this point, but DOE should continue and expand its support for technologies that increase the supply of critical materials.

This includes technologies that made the recycling of critical materials easier and more cost effective, such as improved separation of impurities, technologies that locate critical mineral deposits, and technologies that enable critical minerals.

So we extracted cost-effectively and in a way that doesn't harm the environment on nearby communities in cases where material refining or manufacturing capacity is an important constraint, as in certain high grade electrical steels, DOE should continue to support…

NEAL ELLIOTT: OK.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: …at least to improve, I'm losing myself, U.S. materials refining and manufacturing capacity.

DOE should also continue to expand its support for technologies that allow equipment to use less of the most expensive and hardest to secure source materials, such as by substituting more accessible materials via materials efficiency, products assigned that use less material without sacrificing product quality, or performance.

DOE should provide support through the…through AMTO, the Critical Materials Hub, the Office of Clean Energy, and the Loan Prog…Program Office as appropriate. I mean, I personally would add FECM here because I think they're also starting to look at this, but think somebody added question.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, and yeah, I was just gonna say I said my understanding is no longer exists.

Is that correct, Zach?

ZACH PRITCHARD: I'm not sure about the current status. I—I do believe it still exists right now.

SHARON NOLEN: Oh, OK, I heard a couple weeks ago it did not, but OK, never mind. Go ahead, Cathy.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah.

NEAL ELLIOTT: It may. It may not have any. It may not have any staff at currently.

SHARON NOLEN: Oh.

ZACH PRITCHARD: I.

I believe that they are still on the work chart, yes.

SHARON NOLEN: OK. All right. Never mind, Cathy. Go ahead.

CATHY CHOI: Question, Shridhar.

When you look at this recommendation, actually including the first one, what—what's the scope that you're envisioning? Is it when it comes to materials or is it the refining part?

You know, there's the mining part, there's the transportation of it, and then there's also the refining, mining, transportation, refining, the whole thing.

I'm just curious how big the scope is that you're envisioning here, or if that's still under debate.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: I think that's still under debate and that's an excellent question, right? Because sometimes it is upstream processing that is a limitation, rather than it's a processing piece of equipment as opposed to a material, but it's the equipment to make that material.

So it—it—it is ideally all of those but even identify maybe where it's the most important thing to look at. Or we may come up with a conclusion that says CMI is actually handling a lot of the separation work and hydrometallurgy that's in a good state. But actually, coming up with more sustainable mining might be an issue or incorporating and testing those separated material into compounds might be an issue, so they might…we might land somewhere there, but at the moment it's …I wouldn't rule any of them out.

CATHY CHOI: OK.

Thank you.

NEAL ELLIOTT: I might just add to what Shridhar said. The Helena's briefing was very informative.

We do have three agencies that are working in this space. the U.S. Geologic Survey, which is focusing on the sourcing of the minerals, and then DOE, which focuses specifically on energy related materials, and then the Department of Defense, which looks at strategic defense related materials.

And so, there is some overlap between the three, but there they are the activities that the three agencies are somewhat distinct and according to our briefing from Helena, I think it's worth looking to the Critical Materials Hub…Innovation Hub because they are bridging all three of those agency activities.

SHARON NOLEN: Right. Oh, go ahead. Sure.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Yeah, and—and to Cathy's point, maybe we end up splitting it into three different things, right?

There's the mining part, there's the separation and processing part, and then the equipments that might provide another supply chain.

So yeah.

SHARON NOLEN: OK. Well, I appreciate you reaching out to others to get the needed information.

All right. I think we can move on to our next category.

ZACH PRITCHARD: OK.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: OK so.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yep, next one is Sridhar and Sunday. Good.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: OK. So Sunday, do you want to do this one or do you want me to?

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Yeah. Why don't I talk about the first two recommendations and then you can do the rest.

Is that, OK?

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Sure, sounds good.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: OK.

Our focus is for the use of core and coke industry—industry within. Consider the use of coal as a fuel for other processes in the USA. Plastics are very small in size compared to other countries like even China.

So there is the potential to use coal blends, and the suggestion is to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to develop synthetic coals and even bio coal blends for use as coke.

We have a…we have plenty of data, but not enough analysis has been done to design new blends.

Then, for the electric arc furnaces, we think consideration should be given to supplying core in composition, IE enriched carbon content and physical properties. They are large enough and densified for use as a charge material or described to supplement the use of ingestion carbon, or biochar, in electrophoresis to control scrub melting and slab forming.

As everyone knows, I think this industry is moving towards the use of biochar as ingestion material instead of petroleum coke. But we don't have enough biochar out there for every state company. So using coal as a supplement will be beneficial to state companies using electrophoresis to produce steel.

So those are the two recommendations that will cover.

Sridhar, you wanna go on to the next ones?

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Sure. Yeah.

So as a background, we got these from discussions with the Coke and Coal Committee of AIST, which is the largest on technical committee for iron and steel.

And they include both the integrated and the EAF-based producers, and as a background to what Sunday just said, I mean U.S. produces about 70% of its steel from scrap currently. But that scrap has impurities that limit it from being indefinitely recycled.

And also, there are certain products that you cannot make out of recycle steel.

So therefore, there is a need for a certain amount of virgin iron if—if for stuff that is made in the U.S., including some of the very high-end products like automotive steels and wires, and for defense applications. Large supply of that did come from Ukraine and Russia, which no longer is the case.

So there is a supply chain issue for virgin iron that needs to be considered. So just as a context for that—so graph recommendation three was the blast furnace operates predominantly with coking coal.

It's not just for an energy and reduction source, but the coking coal has a certain mechanical strength that requires it to have those properties and permeabilities for the blast furnace to just function.

Now you can replace up to 30% of that coal…coking coal with lower grade, cheaper products, natural gas or gasified coal, and that's called PCI—pulverized coal injection.

So that’s another area to look at the cheapest forms of substitutes that we could add to the blast furnace to make it more competitive.

Recommendation for…I'm not sure if it belongs here as I would love the committee's opinion. They pointed out that there is a lack of automation engineers in the coking and coal sector, I'm wondering whether automation engineers are needed everywhere, right? Not just here.

So maybe this can be folded into some other recommendation in the educational committee, or something that automation engineers that are able to apply their automation knowledge to various fields including coke-making, right?

But check for people's committee there.

Do you want me to go on to Neal?

I guess we can take your question first.

NEAL ELLIOTT: No, go ahead to the—the final recommendation.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: OK.

The—the —the fifth one was that the U.S. operates, I believe, two or so coke batteries and these are considered to be, dirty things. Right there in Braddock, PA, and Gary, IN. But in fact, if you compare with core batteries in most other countries, they are way cleaner as far as, not just carbon, but also SOx, NOx, everything else that comes out.

They operate under a—under a positive pressure in various things, so one recommendation was to look at the comparison of the emissions coming out of U.S. coke batteries compared to others in the world. Which would actually…which may show that the U.S. product of virgin coal is cleaner than other people's products, which might help, for example competitiveness with regards to the Foreign Pollution Act and things like that.

So that was a recommendation that came from the coal and coke committee as well…and regional regulations for emissions are often stricter than federal ones.

That makes them even more cleaner than competitors in China and other places.

So I’ll stop there and see if you have any comments.

NEAL ELLIOTT: My one comment was on your recommendation for, and your suggestion that, perhaps that should be moved in to more of a general training, I think that we see a number of the manufacturing industries out there.

There are very specific training needs associated, particularly as we think about moving to AI and things like that—like that, that there are attributes associated with the specific industrial process that are critical to the understanding and operation of the facilities that go beyond the more general automation out there.

And so, I think we need to differentiate between what you said in terms of general automation and—and then the very specific application…specific training that's required to address variations in code quality or input requirements or stuff like that.

SHARON NOLEN: Go ahead, Jeff.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Sure. So just a question.

So the state and—and local air quality standards aren't referring to carbon dioxide. Therefore, particulates and [inaudible] and such.

So I guess...I guess my question is given that the U.S. blast furnace fleet is older than the fleet in some other countries, when looking at CO2, which is, not handled by post combustion capture equipment other than carbon capture, are we actually less carbon-intensive than steel from new blast furnaces elsewhere?

Do we actually have an advantage of selling into the EU market with the carbon border adjustment mechanism or do…or do we not?

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: That's a yeah, that's a good question.

And—and Sunday, please chime in.

I do think we do for this not because of technological reasons, but because we're able to substitute up to 30-40% natural gas.

So you know that reduces the carbon tremendously, right?

So even with an old furnace, if you're able to supplement with 30-40% natural gas, you reduce the carbon footprint.

Our competitor might be in Brazil, because Brazil operates blast furnaces, they are entirely able to be run by biocoke.

They're much smaller, but they have been able to produce biocoke that performs the same way as cooking coke, but otherwise I think the natural advantage’s not because of technology, but just because of the price.

But I—I think you are right. I mean, our furnaces are older.

Sunday.

Any thoughts on that?

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Your comment, I think we have abundant of natural gas here in our East.

Alot less cost-intensive for us to use it in the blast when, as compared to other countries, particularly in Europe.

So from that point of view, the blast furnace process is less CO2 intensive and also in general we know that the coke here as well is purer compared to other countries, so we don't have to do a lot of conversion to coke like other countries do, to use the coal in the blast furnace as well.

So from those two points of view, I think, the CO2, steel production via the blast furnace is less carbon-intensive in the USA compared to other countries.

SHARON NOLEN: Abigail.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: On just the conversation, just now, on the carbon intensity of us and other countries, I think some of the studies that are out there, that people have tried to do on this also a lot of times use an average CO2 intensity across all steelmaking in the U.S. primary and secondary. And that is sometimes what leads to the better performance. Is because we just have also such a high secondary steelmaking compared to other places.

There are studies, I think, that do disaggregate between the blast furnaces versus EAFs and so then you get a different picture, and I don't remember off the top of my head, but I think there, there have been some attempts.

I think you know Ali Hasanbeigi and Global Efficiency Intelligence has published some stuff, so we could definitely take a look at that.

I think to answer that question, and also wondering whether Recommendation 5 is—is broader than just steel…I think we do have maybe at least one recommendation in the preliminary report that like touches on CBAM and talks about this a little bit in a broader sense, but just to put that out there.

And then just a broader question on the more specific recommendations about coal and CoQ's for steel production this is not something that I'm thinking about every day, But generally when I see decarbonization reports for like steel industry, it's—it's really moving away from blast furnaces, moving away from using coke, coal or even natural gas to—to get to net zero.

And so, I'm just curious how these recommendations line up with the long term—term decarbonization strategy for steel.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: So I would answer that in the sense that and Sunday, please correct me if I'm wrong, but if you take decarbonization out [inaudible] there is no carbon tax and we allow carbon to be emitted, there is no more…there is no more cost effective way to produce the amount of steel that the world needs than through the blast furnace.

The capacity is simply so high that there's nothing that really…repeat the number of DRI furnaces you would need with any other source.

The capital cost is just prohibitive.

We cannot produce the amount of iron that we need worldwide.

So this is…this recommendation was really put in the context of the President's executive order, right?

And the stand that the current secretary has, I won't say anymore. Whether I agree with it or not, but it's just given those boundary conditions.

What competitive things might we be able to do with—with coal in terms of steel making? That's—that's the framework under which we operated.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Yeah.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: You know, I—I appreciate your question, and I think every day whether I should remain in this country or not, but that—that is…that's the context under which we did this.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Yeah, I just wanna add before no chance in here that the blast furnace ain't gonna go away anytime soon.

And that Sridhar said earlier, he indicated that scrap recycling would never replace the virgin material that we need for steel making. If the blast furnace goes away, we have to replace it with DRI production capabilities. And then the DRI, for us to be CO2 neutral, requires us to use hydrogen. We also know there in terms of hydrogen technology also.

So what we are talking about here is how to efficiently use what we have right now to minimize CO2 emission and to a point, Abigail, about that the secondary steam-making. I think what you mean by secondary steam-making is modern steam-making process, which is electric furnace-based in the USA,
70% of steam making process is from electrical furnace and 30% from blast furnace.

In Europe, the opposite is the case. You know, 72 percent is from blast furnace, about 28% from electric arc furnace steam-making process.

So from that point of view, Co2 emission in the USA in terms of sea making is less intensive compared to in Europe.

So I hope I answer your question, Abigail.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Yeah, I—I think you know that background and motivation for this like totally understand.

I just wonder given the way that…I —I wonder how this set of recommendations is gonna fit against the existing recommendations that we do have, and given that I think our committee is meant to withstand to span multiple administrations and is generally…

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Meeting.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: … supposed to be providing like industry and other external insights and direction.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Uh huh.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: I—I guess I wonder whether we want to use these kinds of very specific recommendations for this particular industry, with that background, but yeah, I don't…maybe a broader question to—to everybody.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Yeah, I think the other thing that we—we mentioned in our recommendation is carbon capture, right?

You know, so that doesn't prevent us from doing this if we have the capability to capture it, right?

So we have to bear that in mind.

So I won't necessarily say then, but I think they are together—together they will allow us to meet our CO2 emission goals.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Yeah. And maybe if we put that more clearly here—where this is like attached to carbon capture or—or something like that.

Then that would make that…make sure everybody understands…yeah, that they go together.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Yeah, good point.

SHARON NOLEN: OK. I think Neal had something to add.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah. I mean the thing I was gonna mention and, you make a good point, Abigail, we tend to look at the steel industries in aggregate.

And one of the challenges with doing that, is all steel is not created equal. And and I think we tend to conflate steel with steel and one of the things we also need to understand is each of the sets of coke batteries that exist out there and integrate steel industry are of different vintages and, to put it tactfully, different levels of maintenance.

And so one of the questions we would have there are certain coke batteries in Indiana and Pennsylvania that basically need to be completely rebuilt because they are not…Basically, they have been rebuilt in probably 30 plus years.

And there are others that operate in the Midwest that are…have been maintained and modernized over the years.

We also see a trend, and Sunday mentioned this, of blending coke and natural gas in the glass furnaces and BOF operations out there. And I think we lose some of that resolution that you cite and—and Ali Hasanbeigi has pointed this out, as have some of the other group, sustainable steel that you have to look at it on a site basis to try to understand what are the various emission signatures of different plants that are trying to lump integrated and secondary steel in the United States is not necessarily that particularly useful in doing international comparisons, because you need to compare like to like.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Yeah, I just wanna.

NEAL ELLIOTT: For whatever it's worth.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: I don't think that's done here at all.

I mean, AIST is very well aware of integrated versus electric arc furnaces. They wouldn't make that comparison.

They would rate it per product group. You know, the products that you can only produce out of integrated or something like that.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Right.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: But I—I don't think we need to worry about that.

But we can…we can certainly emphasize that that's not been done as far as this goes.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Well, I—I'm less worried about AIST than I am about general perpetuating distortions in understanding of the steel industry and its diversity, I think that's…has been problematic for some of the policymakers in the past.

And so I think we'd wanna look at it with a little more nuance.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Yeah, but yeah, I don't see it.

My job to look at the public image of steel, but the data we put out is—is—is differentiated.

That's all I'm saying, but I do think we could add some a disclaimer here that we are aware that producing in…out of coke is gonna produce CO2 and it's not that we're disregarding it, but some…a disclaimer that…this is a bit aware of that point, right?

NEAL ELLIOTT: And there is the producing steel.

But I think there's also the question of how do you produce your—your coke?

Because the coke battery emission signatures themselves are a significant portion of the overall coke plant signatures.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Yeah. And that's why they comment on the pulverized coal.

It's important if you can use pulverized coal, then you bypass [inaudible], which in a in a way it makes it efficient and reduce CO2 emission as well.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Now, thanks for these.

It…this—this brings up a good point about how to approach sectors where we have immediate goals right now for competitiveness and energy efficiency, but we also have a longer-erm vision of a transition towards, for example, cleaner or non-emitting processes where we want to do both on different time scales.

And I think recommendations like this can successfully thread that needle, and we could even be a little more explicit about the time scales because we have a recommendation already about Hydrogen Direct Reduced Iron in the preliminary report and that sort of thing.

And so we could say things like, well in the in the short to medium term we can explore biocoke blends and have specialized training courses and put in more pulverized coal instead of coke, all of which improve effectiveness and lower emissions in the longer term.

We still need the road map to get to hydrogen and electrolytic steel and the rest.

So maybe, the concern is just making sure we don't do something that encourages a lot of lock-in. So like Neal mentioned, rebuilding coke batteries from the ground up and that's the sort of activity that could lock-in COQs for a long time.

And that's…I'm more concerned about that than I am with biocoke blend or training or the other things, but this recommendation doesn't have anything in it about rebuilding the batteries. The things in this recommendation don't seem to actually have a ton of lock-in risk when I read them.

So I think, maybe just making a little more clear about different time, different actions, over different timeframes and not foreclosing future pathways that we're gonna need to follow to meet our national goals.

Might be a good approach.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Yeah, I—I don't know.

I—I don't…I mean….that's—that's maybe some guidance from Zach or somebody because we do serve at the pleasure of the Secretary, right?

Whoever that happens to be at the moment.

ZACH PRITCHARD: I mean I—I—I think that's right.

I'm not sure that I necessarily have anything to weigh in here on.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Yeah.

ZACH PRITCHARD: I mean, I think the—the way that Jeff is saying it is a totally valid thing to write in the report if that's what the committee wants to do.

It's up to you all.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Yeah. And an interesting point is how does industry view this from their perspective?

I think there are some steel companies that have very strong net zero goals still and they're pursuing that—such as CMC for example.

They want to go towards complete electrification and use of biomass and scrap sortation, things like that.

That's what they're pursuing.

I don't necessarily think I get that view from, say, Cleveland Cliffs or U.S. Steel.

So the steel industry is also divided depending on what it's going to cost them or whether their benefits are right.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: And that is true, actually.

HER and SSAB as well are committed to getting to net zero at some point.

You understand that? Where?

The where is the forefront of the fuzzy free steam making process and in Iowa, we use maybe over 95% renewable electricity to make steel.

I think that is not going to stop other countries’ companies in the future to consider joining the same goal, but you're right.

[Inaudible] to even as long it's here in the USA and Cleveland Cliffs are not there yet.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Sharon, you are on mute. I think I see you talking.

SHARON NOLEN: Eric, sorry. Thank you.

Yeah, I was just going to say the direction of the committee is something I think that is a challenging subject that we're going to have to discuss; and we do have some time at the end for that.

But I think I agree with everything that's been said about we are supposed to be independent of the administration, but at the same time we want to be taken seriously by the current administration.

So I think we have a fine line to walk here. So more to come on that.

Anything else on coal and coke use before we move on?

I think that covers all the recommendations except Abigail had asked for some time.

ZACH PRITCHARD: And.

SHARON NOLEN: Is that correct? Yes. OK.

ZACH PRITCHARD: So she submitted a couple.

Yeah, specifically here, plus some general time to talk about budget recommendations.

SHARON NOLEN: Of.

ZACH PRITCHARD: But I was just gonna say if we are going to take another break, this might be a good time to do it because we'll have two more sets of recommendations and then some more open-ended discussion about next steps for the committee before we wrap up.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, I think that's probably a good idea.

So do we want to say 10 minutes again?

Maybe 2:30 or I'm sorry, central time 3:35.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yes, 3:35. Yep, that sounds good to me.

SHARON NOLEN: Thank you, Seth.

ZACH PRITCHARD: OK. Thanks. All right. Can we have Members raise their hands when they're back?

Hands. Let's see. OK. I think we're good. Alright, thanks.

Can go ahead and put your hand down and then we will hand it over to Abigail to talk about the…her recommendations on U.S. competitiveness and global leadership.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Thanks Zach.

These two recommendations were previously submitted, and I think similarly to one that Cathy brought up earlier, just like didn't make the cut in one of the initial rounds.

I think Jeff also was very involved in drafting these, so I invite Jeff to provide any thoughts as well on—on these. But the—the 1st I’ll just read it.

DOE's laboratory should seek to license their intellectual property pertaining to clean industrial technologies to companies worldwide on competitive terms, this can further American technological leadership guide emerging economies toward cleaner industrial development pathways and help drive down harmful pollutant emissions globally. In some cases, technology licensing can be facilitated by engaging in partnerships with countries that have AMB. For industrial development, one example is the U.S.-Kenya Climate and Clean Energy Industrial Partnership.

So yeah, I think.

Given the charge of the committee that Zach mentioned earlier, remarks by Carolyn and Avi, as well on competitiveness for US industry, I thought it might make sense to—to reevaluate these two recommendations and consider adding them in.

So yeah, this one is specifically about lab technologies and licensing them.

And then if we go to the next one, it's more about promoting technologies at-large that have gone through three ODOE programs and DOE working specifically with U.S. agencies that are dealing with things like technology exports.

So DOE should promote industrial technology exports by further engaging with US agencies with international remit such as the U.S. International Finance Corporation, Export Import Bank of the United States, and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and sharing lessons learned regarding promising technologies through the labs as well as DOE, grant and loan programs sharing lessons learned with other agencies can help build pipelines of viable technologies and potential companies that could export their products abroad with additional support.

This will also ensure that DOE programs, and federal funding more generally or more broadly, have a greater impact on global emissions reductions and lead to prolonged U.S. industrial competitiveness.

So I think generally both of the recommendations are about how do we…can support the technologies and companies, the U.S. technologies and companies that it's already supporting to reach broader markets internationally for both, the benefit of the company itself, U.S. competitiveness, and then also global technology.

Deployment and U.S. International Finance Corporation Export Import Bank of the United States and emissions reductions in that way.

So yeah, Jeff, if you wanted to add anything else on these two?

JEFFREY RISSMAN: No, I think. I don't think I have anything to add right now.

SHARON NOLEN: Any comments or questions from anyone else?

Neal.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Sorry, coming back from break, I never turned my mic back on.

This seems very much appropriate for us. This idea of export of both physical, but also intellectual property and seems to be very much in keeping with our charge from Congress.

And so I would very much support. both of these provisions, I think they're both well written and well-articulated, so…

SHARON NOLEN: Right.

Oh, Cathy.

CATHY CHOI: This question Abigail, if it's actually on recommendation #1, specifically the wording, what is? What do you when you say licensed technology or licensed intellectual property?

What does that mean?

So traditionally, licensing is…there's a royalty, all that stuff.

I'm just curious what you…in your thoughts, what license means?

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Jeff, kid answer, but I think the…our intention is that it would mean the traditional—like what licensing means for technology is—is—is what was intended.

CATHY CHOI: With royalty, you give fields of use rights to—to—to use.

So. As a government entity. How does that work? How would that work?

JEFFREY RISSMAN: It's already licensed.

CATHY CHOI: Would this be the first entity forever to ever do that?

I'm just…I'm curious. I don't understand as I follow the money.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: I don't believe this would be a first.

I think labs already licensed their—their technology and intellectual property to companies for use.

CATHY CHOI: And it's in…on a royalty basis or—or some sort of profit.

I lack a better term profitable—profitability P&L kind of basis.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yes, the labs are paid for it.

NEAL ELLIOTT: In DOE, Zach can probably speak to this very well, but do we have some well-established protocols on how these agreements should be structured?

And they are, I think, I would say, have worked quite well over the years coming out of both DOE-developed,  how they deal with their…DOE funding IP versus, some of the how that gets divvied up between the private developers and DOE.

SHARON NOLEN: So something went out ahead.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Sorry.

NEAL ELLIOTT: Joe. Or Sridhar?

JOE POWELL: Yeah, I think that this has been done in decades past.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah.

JOE POWELL: I think the protocol was, at one point, some of the VPS were required to spin out companies that took some of the better DOE IP positions and—and then went private to do the—the commercial development.

So Velocys, Sundrop Fuels…can name a few Examples from a couple decades past where that was done.

SHARON NOLEN: OK, Sridhar.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Yeah. So. This was just a thought on the IP licensing, and it was a concern raised by from [inaudible]. So [inaudible] has an IPO director. It's—it's at a lab director-level person that's responsible for work outside of DOE.

So I think unique for [inaudible], but the person was telling me that one challenge they have is companies often want, more often than not, exclusive license.

And sometimes that doesn't lead to anything.

They just keep the license and then the lab is not able to do anything else with it.

So they were kind of interested in what models exist out there to overcome that—that, from a company point of view, they want an exclusive license, but from a lab point of view, I mean exclusive is fine if it goes somewhere.

But they want to keep it open somehow. A term limited or so wanted to learn more about it.

Just—just throwing it out there.

JOE POWELL: That's no different than academia and so quite often you're dealing with non-exclusive licenses in that regard.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: But if there's a middle ground around that, something that's exclusive but term-limited or something, but I don't know.

JOE POWELL: Favored nation—if you participated in the research, so you're guaranteed to get a better deal than other entities who didn't fund the research…can write that into the contract.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Yeah.

JOE POWELL: As...so yeah, there's—there's terms that can be enabled to reduce risk, but still I mean the labs aren't allowed to give it away for free.

SHARON NOLEN: OK, Sunday. Oh, I thought something had to stand up.

Right. Anything else?

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Sorry, sorry I—I had a question. I just wanted to clarify.

I think Jeff stated that DOE is already doing this, right?

License in the intellectual properties; is that correct?

NEAL ELLIOTT: That was, that was me, Sunday. That was Neal.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Oh, OK. OK. Then then my question is that I will leave suggesting something new to them—for this recommendation.

NEAL ELLIOTT: I think the protocols are not…I think the focus on exporting manufacturing technologies as a priority.

Maybe something that is a little different.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: OK.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah, I think the idea here was to prioritize making real efforts to license industrial technology, and to do so globally, exporting American technology and intellectual property and know how rather than just saying labs should have procedures to license their technology, which they do, but they may not be as focused on in manufacturing technologies or might not be as focused on doing so.

Global exclusivity of licenses could be a challenge, and maybe that's something we ought to write something about some guidelines about pushing for them to be non-exclusive or term limits or have certain conditions, like it has to be practiced and produce at least such and such revenue, or else the license reverts to the lab.

There's maybe different possible solutions that would be novel, like our recommendation would be additional to what's done today.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Got it.

SHARON NOLEN: Anything else on this one?

NEAL ELLIOTT: This might be something, Zach…We might wanna get Cresko involved in because I know we've been involved in some activities.

Oh, looks like Joe is here. So OK.

SHARON NOLEN: Yes. Here. Yeah, go ahead, Joe.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yes, Cresko's is getting involved, yeah.

JOE CRESKO: I'll just—excuse me—I'll just make a very quick comment that there is the Office of Technology Transitions and I—and I was trying to remember if somebody from OTT had presented to the committee on that…introductory days when we had different offices and I think they may have, but OTT.

NEAL ELLIOTT: But not on this topic.

JOE CRESKO: Not—not—not on this topic, but I was just…

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yep.

JOE CRESKO: …I'm sorry on the on the idea of the intellectual property and licensing and some of those things, so you can get a little bit more insight into—into that. Just—just some of the contextual things that…when it comes to licensing, intellectual property and some of the—the work that goes on there.

So I know this is a…that—that—that—that point that was just coming up about licensing and that's what I just wanted to mention on, sorry.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah. And that—that office specifically leads the Technology Commercialization Fund program at DOE, which focuses on commercializing national lab technologies.

So we could—could look into having them.

JOE CRESKO: Yeah.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Talk to you guys about it.

JOE CRESKO: They do have what they call a Visual Intellectual Property Search—VIPS, so it's searching all DOE intellectual property, and there's some pretty ginormous amount of patented content that they have so.

SHARON NOLEN: Thanks Joe.

JOE CRESKO: Yep, bye.

SHARON NOLEN: Advance.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: That's just a thought, but, so Stephen and Tomkins, who was the director of DARPA, she and I don't about the specifics, but she used to tell me that DARPA has…is trying out some really new IP models for accelerating IP from government funded entities to commercialization of that…is for dual use and that's really experimented with various things.

And seeing how different things work and come up with some new models.

If—if it's of use to the committee, I'm sure Stephanie would give an overview of how they are doing those things.

She just stepped down from DARPA.

So she's no longer a Fed and this is common knowledge anyway.

But if it's of use, I'm happy to contact her.

SHARON NOLEN: Guess I would direct that question to Abigail since you and Jeff maybe all through this.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Yeah. I think Jeff probably had more of a pen on—on this one, but I'm happy to continue working with Jeff to refine this and—and take people's recommendations.

And yeah, have—have meetings with…yeah, Stephanie, that you mentioned Sridhar, or folks at OTT to refine.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah, happy to work with Abigail on it for sure.

SHARON NOLEN: I think that sounds good.

All right, I think that takes us to...

Oh, no. Abigail, you had some more on budget, didn't you? Is that correct?

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: I did.

I don't know if that's…we'll do that now or later or yeah.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, we—we can do that now.

There's not a slide for it, sorry.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: OK. So yeah, there wasn't a specific recommendation for this, but it has to do with the recommendations that are already in the preliminary report relating to budget requests.

So I think, they're just recommendations one and two.

I talked to Jeff and maybe other folks were in…whatever one of the subcommittee meetings that we were having where we happened to have this discussion about whether we wanted to include more specific budget figures because the recommendation right now is very broad.

It just says, like…in future requests, the DOE should increase the request for specific offices. And the first recommendation points to a set of offices that are very specifically focused on industry and manufacturing and then recommendation two are offices that are cross-cutting but a good chunk of it should be focused on industry and manufacturing.

And so that's kind of how we split one and two, but neither of them have very specific budget figures.

And my thinking behind this is during the budget process and during even the...thank you…the appropriations process of, folks submitting appropriations requests to congressional offices for what Congress should appropriate—appropriate for—for these offices.

People are often looking for resources of how to pinpoint the recommended appropriation request that they're making.

And absent a number that's defensible, that has good backing, it's often just default to—to look at previous appropriations, or previous budget requests, and—and go some amount up or down from there.

So I was thinking about whether we could put in some kind of figure.

Jeff and I were discussing maybe we could put a range of figures and just put it in the rationale and not necessarily recommend something specific because that might be very difficult for—for us to do as a committee.

And so I was trying to think of doing something that based on historical office appropriations, but I did not get very far because I didn't know what the right number range to put in there was; which I think is why there isn't one in there to begin with. But I…since we have some time, thought maybe I could just bring this to the group to see whether other committee members thought that it would be worthwhile to put some more specific figures in there, even if it's a range, because I know… for a fact that there were groups out there like NGOs, who work on appropriations requests…who looked through the preliminary report for this committee for ideas on what they should request for Congress, and are often looking for figures to cite.

And so, I think it actually could be quite impactful if we did put something in here.
But I agree it would take probably a lot of effort for us to come up with something that everyone is comfortable with and that has good reasoning behind it.

Beyond this percentage increase, over the—the existing which is where people are at now.

So just wanted to put this out there as—as kind of what I was thinking and then a minor thing is whether we at least need to update things like IE to—to ITO, Ito and maybe moving OSED actually to recommendation two because that isn't just industry- and manufacturing-specific and whether we actually have other offices that we want to add to recommendation too, especially now that we have recommendations related to some of the technologies like Nuclear Energy Office or fossil energy, carbon management, and whether those need to be added to Recommendation 2.

So those are minor things, but the larger discussion point is—is actual budgetary numbers. If we'd want to put in here, even if just in the rationale.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, let's come—come back to the budget question just for a minute and let me say, I mean, I've certainly had in mind that anything that's changed I—I don't know if you're saying ITO—ITO.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Yeah.

SHARON NOLEN: I feel we should definitely update things like that, and I do think if there's other offices that need to be added, we will have an opportunity to add things.

So I feel we should certainly do those kinds of things, particularly given that we put out the preliminary recommendations on a very expedited basis.

So that's my opinion on that.

I'll—I'll go ahead and open it up to Neal now.

Neal, did you want to talk about the budget issue or question?

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah. So speaking of somebody who's been involved in the appropriate process now for 30 plus years, I worried that that gets outside the realm of stuff that we probably should be thinking about as a committee.

I look back on our charge and I think that getting into particularly…getting into specific budget numbers—number one is moving into the lobbying space.

And I think that gets us into a little bit of a problem.

The other is, I think, that—that is a moving target.

And that gets to be very challenging as somebody who gets into this…we go back and when we look at approximate…with approximate staff, which I have not done since I've been on the IDIAC, just to let  Zach, I make a point of not actually meeting with the probe staff.

But when we did, those would change every year based on external considerations. So I just think we should take a look at that.

And this may be also something that we need guidance from,  General Counsel on as to whether budget numbers fall within the what is allowable for the advisory committee.

SHARON NOLEN: Other opinions? So Jeff, I was kind of curious what…

Oh, I'm sorry I saw…

Well, let me ask this question first, Sasha, and then we'll get to you.

But Jeff, I think Abigail said she'd talk to you about it. So I was just curious if you had an opinion on the subject.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Umm. I didn't.

I had trouble thinking of any way that we would be able to come up with numbers that would be very defensible.

I mean, as compared, I mean the first thing that comes to mind is let's look at the budget in past years. But that's exactly what Abigail said we wanted to get away from. So if we're not doing that, what will we be doing analyzing at the program by program or even project by project level—what each office is doing and coming up with how many dollars we think should be thrown at that activity and then adding it all up.

I guess I was…I—I didn't see…

I think that would be too…that—that just to finish that thought that would be too strenuous, too much detail for our committee.

So I guess I said that I wasn't sure. Like, I wasn't opposed in principle, barring any legal issues Neal might have identified, but I also didn't see how whether or not we could necessarily actually do what Abigail is suggesting.

SHARON NOLEN: OK, let me call him Sasha.

SASHA STASHWICK: I guess I'm less concerned about doing this either with dollar numbers or some slight abstraction, like percentages, or however we decide to do it. I think if we do it though, it immediately could make our report seem quickly stale, is my concern.

Like if it's attached to just a very near term a single year, or very near-term horizon if we're going to do this, I think we would want to put these types of recommendations in just a separate discrete section with a little bit of preamble.

So that some of the other recommendations, I think, are somebody could pick up the report a year or two from now and it could still seem hopefully relevant cause some of the time horizons to achieve some of the things that we're talking about are much longer. So I would—if we do this—I would just support putting it in a separate section with a little bit of written voice over to introduce it versus some of the other recommendations which are not so year dependent.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Maybe I can respond to—to feedback thus far, which I appreciate...yeah, everyone's thoughts. And I think the fact that I don't actually have a proposal to you all today is evidence of why this was difficult.

But where I started to go, just to put an idea out there and see how folks react, is for instance, I think, in the way that the DOE budget has been proposed in recent years and the way EERE has subdivided its offices.

There's the sustainable transportation bucket, which I think includes Vehicle Technologies Office as well as hydrogen fuel cells and bioenergy—and that's the sustainable transportation bucket.

There's the renewable generation bucket, which is like solar, wind, water, hydro or water, hydro geothermal and then that's that bucket.

And then there's the buildings and industry bucket, which is IEDO/ITO, AMTO, and the Building Technologies Office.

And I think [inaudible] good news in just looking at past trends. And one the industrial and manufacturing space, has gone through maybe the most renaming of all the offices, at least over the last I don't know, 15 to 20 years or something [inaudible]. But if you assumed that the offices which I believe actually when I was looking at FY 22, [inaudible] was industrial technologies was the name.

So we've just gone full circle and then went to advanced manufacturing. And then had the AIDO/AMTO split.

But if you just consider those still together budgetary-wise in terms of numbers and now, ITO plus AMTO, you still keep it together and just call that the industrial technologies line item that has actually now trended upwards such that industrial technologies and vehicle technologies is pretty much on par.

So I think that's a good indication that those things are being considered at a closer level, but maybe one argument for why there's still need for increase, especially considering all of the sub sector that are under consideration all the cross cutting specific cross-cutting technologies that are under consideration.

And where vehicle technologies is one piece of sustainable transportation, but then there's a whole…the hydrogen piece, the bio energy piece. Also, pieces of those are also relevant for industry.

Maybe an argument for saying the sustainable trans…industrial technologies overall bucket which would include ITO and AMTO in the current instance should be more in line with sustainable transportation bucket. Or if we took a more energy mix or emissions mix approach of what percentage these [inaudible] sectors are contributing and how that should be reflected across the budgets for the office.

I don't know, I guess these are ways maybe of giving some direction as to what the increase could look like or comparisons of others that doesn't necessarily involve putting a—a figure or a number. And doesn't lock us into this year, I don't…folks are more comfortable with something like that.

SHARON NOLEN: I'm gonna make a comment and then call on Jeff and I think we should probably wrap this up.

So my one comment I have is, just from a fiscally responsible type of viewpoint, I think I would have a hard time saying, “add more money here” unless I said, “take some money away somewhere else.”

And so, I personally would have a really hard time feeling like I had enough knowledge to say where should we…should reduce something else.

So I struggle with this. And it sounds like everyone is struggling with how you would do it. So I'm inclined to say, at least not now or not until you could come back with a specific recommendation. So that's my thought.

Jeff, do you want to add anything else?

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah. I—I wanted to sound a cautionary note about linking it to the budget of some other office, like Sustainable Transport, because what if tomorrow they decide that sustainable transport should be cut, and our thing says so? It should have as much budget as they have.

That's—that seems too risky to me—linking it to a share of the economy or something.

Well, I mean, I don't. It's 1/4 of the economy or something.

Should it be 1/4 of DOE’s budget? Would that include the nuclear security budget?

I mean, it might seem disproportionately huge compared to any historical reference because the industry sector is large and important.

So there's—there's trickiness to each of these options. Maybe some qualitative language “considering that the industry sector is this,” … 1/4 of U.S. energy use or a third of the economy it deserves appropriate consideration for its budget size, or something that seems less controversial.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, I think those are good points and I'm going to suggest we just move on.

Abigail, thank you for raising the question.

I will say as I've gotten questions about the preliminary report, that is one question I've had is “why did you not include budget numbers?”

So I've also experienced that, but I think the challenges are too great.

So unless someone comes up with a way to do it, I feel like we should just move on from that.

I do like Jeff's comment though about putting it in context.

So I think some language could be added around that potentially.

OK. With that, we're gonna move on.

So Zach, I think you're covering this next portion.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Sure. So. Yeah, some of…the first two bullets here are maybe a little more just information sharing, but we can pause for questions if folks have any.

So the first thing here, we touched on a little bit at the beginning with Avi's announcement.

So the nearly all committee members, I think, not quite everybody, but nearly everyone has their first appointment at first two-year appointment ending in January of next year.

That feels a really long way away, but as you all know from the first time you got appointed, that process takes a long time.

So we're starting to think about it now.

Bobby already indicated this, but  we'll be reaching out to folks over the next couple weeks and month or so, just to check in with you, Gage, your interest in continuing to serve for a second term, the—the process [inaudible] we're getting reappointed is identical to the process for being appointed the first time, so you don't get talking about a fast track process earlier.

There is no fast-track process for renewing your appointment.

SHARON NOLEN: S…

ZACH PRITCHARD: You'll still have to go through the regular process.

So that's why we'll need to figure it out relatively soon. In addition to that, like Abhi mentioned, we're releasing a new call for nominations.

And that first and foremost is focused on filling some of the gaps that we already have. A couple seats that are open on the committee. We'll have a couple open, with Betsy and Anna stepping down soon, and so we'll try to get some folks into those seats sooner if possible in the beginning of next year and for everybody else if there are people who are not interested in continuing with the committee, then we'll be looking to that call for nomination to get replacements for those people.

Umm. I think that's all I wanted to say about that. Does—does anybody have any questions about your appointment, about new members, anything like that?

CATHY CHOI: Exact this is Cathy. I just.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Mm hmm.

CATHY CHOI: I understand our—our tenure or our appointment is—is due to be complete in January…and I can't remember is—is—is the product of the committee going to still be a report to the secretary to Congress on a two-year cadence or one year?

Can you explain that a bit more?

ZACH PRITCHARD: Mm hmm. Yeah. So the—the first report, the goal is for you all to get that published before January, right?

So you'll have that kind of completed work product for the—the current composition of the committee. The statutory requirement then is that a follow up report is issued within three years.

So there's actually quite a long amount of time and—and longer than you had to work on this first report before the next one is due.

That's what the last bullet is here. Something for us to talk about is what you all might want to work on. Other than that, this report you've been working on—so we'll talk a little bit more about that later.

But the—the—the idea is that there are…there will be a gap between this, and the next report and you all can think about other things you want to do during that time, and you have a little more discretion.

And what those activities will look like.

OK. Yeah, I…like I said, I'll reach out to folks to—to talk about your interest in renewing, but even aside from that, feel free to—to email me or reach out if you do have any other questions about this.

SHARON NOLEN: I'm sorry, Doug. Just one more question. When you said if you do want to be reappointed, it's the same process. So does that mean you'd update all the paperwork?

ZACH PRITCHARD: The next topic? Uh huh?

SHARON NOLEN: Is that. Would it require that?

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yes. So I mean, I think we will need, up to date, financial disclosures for people who had to do that…will want your most current resume, all of those kinds of things.

SHARON NOLEN: OK.

ZACH PRITCHARD: I—I think we'll check and see. So the—the actual, I—I believe the package that gets… goes up to the Secretary does not have to have every recommendation letter and things like that in it.

That's more for our consideration in who we recommend.

SHARON NOLEN: Mm hmm.

ZACH PRITCHARD: So I if you're current committee member, I don't expect that you need to get recommendation letters or anything like that.

It's really just the…about yourself that will need updated.

SHARON NOLEN: OK.

ZACH PRITCHARD: And I'm guessing Jeff was asking about that since he put his hand down.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah. I was gonna ask about the recommendation letters, since that's the most troublesome thing to obtain. New financial disclosures or resumes is easy.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yes.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Maybe you can, when you when you ask committee members for…if they're interested in being reappointed, you could a bullet point list of what documents they'll need to submit or something.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Mm hmm. Yep, absolutely.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, I agree.

ZACH PRITCHARD: OK. The next point on here I also mentioned earlier, but the expectation is that the next meeting is going to be a little bit longer of a gap than we have had so far. And that's just because it's going to take a while to get a replacement labor representative appointed into Anne’s seat.

But we're still, I think…I think something like…uh….five or six months is definitely on the long end.

We don't know at this point how long the appointment process will take. I think there is not a lot of…there are not a lot of other facets that are meeting and active right now in DOE, so that could mean that it goes faster than usual.

Or maybe it means that nobody's paying attention to focus stuff, and it'll take longer than usual.

So I—I'm not sure, but hopefully we'll get it, get that replacement through in a couple months and we'll be able to meet towards the end of summer or early fall and just given our—our timeline that we've had in the past, the hope would be that—that meeting, we're able to finalize the report.

If you guys feel like you're getting close there, hopefully an in-person meeting where we can work through all of it, vote on recommendations and adopt those.

What that means, though, is that a lot of the work between now and then will happen in subcommittee meetings and offline. So yeah, just—just something to consider.

I have pathway to final report on here for discussion. I think that's something that Sharon and Jeff and I will send probably more instructions on what we're hoping for people to do coming out of this meeting. But in general, it…I'm taking the recommendations that you have already been working on, taking the feedback that you got during this meeting, and making any updates as needed.

Does anybody have any comments on either of those things that the next meeting or how we're getting from here to there?

Not hearing anything? I think so.

The next thing is hopefully the fun part of the discussion, but because the committee might not be able to meet until the fall and I —I—I feel like there were there was feedback brought up today, but not five months of feedback that is gonna take for you all to work on it.

I—I actually think there's the opportunity for y'all to go ahead and start thinking about, and working on, some of the follow-up activities that you'll want to have after this report is published. We wanted to have a little bit of a brainstorming session, I think when I've talked to Sharon and Jeff, about this part of what we have talked about is thinking about there being the opportunity for more deep dive work, so setting up a working group on a particular topic like, the ad hoc groups now.

But you will have several to work on the topic and maybe ultimately the committee releases a 10-page…10-page report specifically on that topic. You don't have to worry about combining, well, everything, that DOE does in the industrial space into a single report but can really focus on things that you all think will be impactful and interesting.

So I wanted to just open the discussion there. If there are topics that folks are interested in, or if you want to approach this time totally differently.

Like I was saying to Cathy earlier, other than that report cycle, there's not a lot of specificity in the statutory language about what the committee has to do, other than advising DOE on its industrial program, so…

Anything you want to add to that, Sharon or Jeff?

SHARON NOLEN: But she might give the example that you gave to me and Jeff about the secretary's advisory committee, whatever that's called.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah.

SHARON NOLEN: I think they had done a deep dive on was the artificial intelligence maybe?

NEAL ELLIOTT: They did data centers.

ZACH PRITCHARD: Mm hmm. Yeah. Let me maybe get a second to pull that up.

So I'm going to share my screen here. Let me pull this out so you don't have to see how many tabs I have open. Here is this report from CB. It's just a six-page report…recommendations on harnessing AI to accelerate clean energy development, and they published this in December. But they have an introduction…talk about what they did, so their approach on this, they did some of their own kind of stakeholder engagement both within DOE, but also, they went out and talked to Microsoft.

After they talked to some consultants, renewables developers, etc. to help inform these recommendations, they had, again, some findings…potential use cases for AI challenges, and then they get down to recommendations.

So it still follows this recommendation format that you all are using for the current report, but on a very targeted topic. And then yeah, the six pages includes the cover page. So there's only one here, so it's closer to 4 pages.

But this is the thing that…yeah, that you all could set up a working group around, put out a quick report over a couple months and then move on to another hot topic.

SHARON NOLEN: So I can get that also be interested in hearing. Are there topics  of that DOE would like for us to address?

ZACH PRITCHARD: I don't think I have any form answer on that right now. It's something that I could discuss with the…with Avi some.

SHARON NOLEN: I think that feedback would be valuable if Joe's on the line…excuse me, if Joe is still on the line. I don't know if he would have an answer to that.

JOE CRESKO: Sorry, what? What is the? What was the question, Sharon?

SHARON NOLEN: Oh, I was just asking, are there things within DOE that you would…a topic within DOE that you would like industrial input on that you might want us to take a deep dive?

JOE CRESKO: That's a…that's a…That's actually a very good question.

I—I—I think we could get back to you on that. I think in the coming weeks and maybe a month or two, I suspect there's gonna be some topics of more clarity as we are discussing strategic directions for our—our office over the coming months and there are some amount of briefings that are happening that Avi is doing with the political leadership inside of EERE, so that that, I think, could be very valuable.

You know, there are clearly certain areas that I think you guys probably discussed, including things like data centers, that are…we found inside of our office that are emergent and—and—and impactful to things like electricity demand across the country.

So you guys have already spoke today about things like critical materials and you probably have seen, and you brought up you, know you, guys were talking earlier about the use of metallurgical coal for—for steel and that's there's been some attempt to put that on the critical materials list as a—as an example.

So there's a number of topics that you guys could infer from the…what you're seeing out there at a high level of DOE, but we could provide you, probably, with some directions from our…from our office too.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, I think that would be helpful, not to prevent any other ideas anyone has, but I think it…I think part of the purpose here is for us to meet DOE needs.

And so, I think to know what you all want to know about would be…

JOE CRESKO: Right.

SHARON NOLEN: Helpful to us, Jeff.

JOE CRESKO: Yep.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah, I agree with getting info from Zach and Joe on what do we…could find useful.

Zach mentioned this was supposed to be a brainstorming session, so I was going to start throwing out ideas for deep dives. Is this an OK time to do that.

SHARON NOLEN: Absolutely, go ahead.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: OK. Well I had one or two related to energy sector coupling.

One would be, I think that there is room for a better understanding of how to co-optimize the industrial and electricity sectors right now.

Some of those loads are just seen as totally exogenous or—or uninfluenced by the energy sector. Electricity just has to supply it. And with the right flexibility, maybe industry could be a real asset to helping with grid stability and not requiring a huge build-out of new grid infrastructure just to meet demand in a few hours per year. So sector coupling would be one potential deep dive topic.

Another idea I had was about the future of the gas system, where a lot of the gas customers are residential or commercial.

And they're…their rates, their payments help to maintain all that gas infrastructure, which some industries also rely on. And as more and more of them moved to electric heat pumps, which are cost effective today, and it's easier to make the cost effectiveness case in the building [inaudible]…

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Thank you so much for this.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: …than it is in the industry sector. There will be fewer and fewer remaining ratepayers that can contribute to maintaining the core transmission lines and infrastructure.

Of the people who are left might be, yeah, there might be some low-income renters and such, which is important, but it's not our committee's focus.

And then there's industry, which uses gas and is our committee's focus.

So what do we do to help ensure that there's a successful transition pathway there?

Two ideas.

SHARON NOLEN: Neal, did you want to add to the list?

NEAL ELLIOTT: No, I wanted to respond back.

I really like Jeff's first comment there or suggestion, and this might be something that we also want to think about.

How do we connect that with the work of SME? Which changed its acronym. The meaning of its acronym recently. But the Smart Manufacturing Institute.

At UCLA, because they're working some…on exactly what you're talking about—that grid energy co-optimization. So I think that would be a potentially a really exciting topic to expand or explore.

And related to that, another idea has been…with the emergence of the…emergence of awareness of the criticality of supply chains, particularly for critical materials…minerals, but just—just generally supply chains and the role that DOE can play in helping to make those more resilient by applying things like information, communications technology, artificial intelligence, and some of those kind of things to supply chains.

That's—that's all I got, Sharon.

SHARON NOLEN: OK, Sridhar.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Thanks, and I don't know much about this, but I wanted to learn more about…there is this act called the Foreign Pollutions Act right?

By, I think, Cantwell and Lindsey Graham that produces...I think it requires a tax on anything that's less clean than American-made goods.

I wanted to see whether there's a way to tie that into our technology developments to justify pollution control and even carbon control from a monetary perspective.

And I would just like to learn more about…that's a clear way to tie competitiveness to emission reduction that has a dollar to it connected to it, right?

Maybe Jeff or others know about this more.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: I do. So—the act is the Foreign Pollution Fee Act, it's one of four or five different proposals that's not the law.

It's—it was a proposed bill; hasn't —hasn't been enacted.

It's one of four or five proposals related to various types of carbon border fees, border adjustment mechanisms, etc. for the United States.

Each of the different proposal —proposals have its pluses and minuses and design quirks.

One quirk of that one, for instance, is that it treats each other country as a unitary entity. So even a super-duper clean steel producer in France would have to use the average pollution intensity of all steel producers in France.

Which means it may not necessarily incentivize any individual firm in France to clean up, but every…I wouldn't want to be critiquing nuances of specific bills here.

The broader point of…let's look at how to justify pollution controls and monitoring by tying competitive newness to it and attaching a dollar figure and maybe setting all four or five of these bills is examples is an idea I would really support.

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Yeah, that's even…that's much better than the way I—I articulated it.

SHARON NOLEN: Others to add to the list.

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: I'll just quickly add my support to what Jeff and Sridhar mentioned, and given that there are,  us proposals, but there are laws like the EU’s CBAM that is a thing that's gonna come into effect.

That something that could also be considered, since that will become real for manufacturers in the future.

And then a random idea or something that I've been thinking about, that I don't know if it applies to something this committee could work on or not, is insurance and the role of different types of insurance.

In risk reduction for projects and whether there's…whether someone should look at how different types of insurance have played a role in things that we have, that the private sector has more comfort financing, oil and gas, or which maybe is more appropriate or renewable…general renewables development.

And applying that to industrial technologies and industrial retrofits or—or projects…and yeah.

Basically is there…is there a role for different types of insurance to reduce the risk of those projects to make them more comfortable for general private sector financial markets?

NEAL ELLIOTT: Maybe what Abigail’s talking about are—are really securitization or de-risking strategies and you use the term insurance and that's one, but there are there are a number of other mechanisms that could be used on that.

And one thing we could look at would be what our roles…that the government could play in addressing investments in domestic manufacturing capacity.

You know, I'm thinking about particularly…about innovative technologies out there so…

SHARON NOLEN: Anyone else?

I think this is an interesting list and one that we can add to. I don't think anyone is prohibited from…if they wanted to bring an idea to the committee and get consensus from the committee to work on it, I think anyone could do that.

But in general, I think our committee should be probably focused on finishing up the things for our final report before we start on something else.

Zach, is that what you had in mind? That this would be more for after the final report? Is that correct?

ZACH PRITCHARD: Sure. I—I think that's possible though that the…that folks might have their recommendations pretty firmed up in the next couple months before we're able to vote on recommendations so…

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah. And I—I mean, I do want to say more clearly if I didn't that if—if there were two or three people who said, hey, this is something I really want to work on and work on it and bring it to the committee, I think anyone's free to do that so…right.

Is there anything else we need to talk about then?

NEAL ELLIOTT: Can I throw one more idea out?

SHARON NOLEN: Anything else, Zach?

Yes, you can, Neal.

NEAL ELLIOTT: So we've played around with this, but one of the things that I'm going back to some of the work that I've done over the years with the Department of Defense on their manufacturing activities.

And I'm not sure DOE has a clear understanding—understanding what DoD is…needs and I'm not sure DoD has a clear understanding of what the goals of DOE are beyond co-funding certain projects.

And I wonder if that might be something that would be beneficial to look at—what are the defense and national security activities that—that DOE could prioritize to meet our obligate federal or meet the federal obligations for a secure and strong America.

SHARON NOLEN: Any last thoughts for anyone else? Add to the list?

I think this should be an evergreen list that…if people have ideas, hopefully it can live out on our box and people can add to it as they think of things 'cause, I think, they're very well may be timely topics that come up that we will want to address and so I like having an idea of a list that we can just add to and then tackle as we have time and interest to do so.

I think that concludes everything for today, but before we do conclude, I want to be sure and thank Betsy again. Betsy and I have worked together for a very long time, and I've certainly appreciated not just what she's done for IDIAC, but she's been a really good mentor and coach for me in many ways.

So Betsy, we wish you all the best in your retirement.

Thank you for not just your work, but everything you've done with Energy Star as well.

ELIZABETH DUTROW: Thank you, Sharon. I'm not sure why my camera's not working.

Try this again. Oh, there it goes.

SHARON NOLEN: Now.

ELIZABETH DUTROW: Thank you.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah.

ELIZABETH DUTROW: And it's been my pleasure to work with you as well, and the entire committee. You all are wonderful folk, and you have a lot of knowledge and you're gonna do really good things. So I will look forward to seeing the report come out in the fall and it's been my honor to work with all of you. So thank you so much for putting up with me and having me on the committee.

SHARON NOLEN: Thank you. And of course, Anna's not here, but we certainly want to thank her too.

I think a lot of the good recommendations we had on workforce were pulled together by her leading that subcommittee and we certainly appreciate that as well.

ELIZABETH DUTROW: Speaking.

SHARON NOLEN: So Zach, any last comments from you?

ZACH PRITCHARD: I don't think so. Thanks everybody for joining today. And you'll hear from us soon.

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, lots of good discussion. I thank you everyone.

ZACH PRITCHARD: All right. Thanks. Bye.

SHARON NOLEN: Bye bye.

ELIZABETH DUTROW: Bye. Thank you all.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Thank you. Bye.

ELIZABETH DUTROW: Have a good evening.

COMAS HAYNES: Thank you all. Thanks.

SUNDAY ABRAHAM: Bye.

JOLENE SHEIL: Bye everybody.

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Thank you.

[End of audio]