>>James Jensen: Today's webinar host, I am a contractor supporting the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs Tribal Energy Webinar Series. Today's webinar titled Energy Infrastructure and Climate Resilience is the third webinar of the 2022 DOE Tribal Energy Webinar Series. It covers some event details. Today's webinar is being recorded and will be made available on DOE's Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs website. In about one week. Copies of today's presentation slides will be posted to the Office of Indian Energy's website shortly after this webinar. 

Everyone will receive a post webinar email with the link to the page where the slides and recording will be located. Because we are recording this webinar, all phones have been muted. We will answer your written questions at two points after the first presentation, and then after the final presentation. You can submit a question at any time by clicking on the question button located in the webinar control box on your screen and typing in your question. Let's get started with opening remarks from Lizana Pierce. Miss Pierce is a senior engineer and the deployment supervisor for the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs and duty station in Golden, Colorado. 

She was responsible for the execution of the deployment program which is national in scope. Specifically, in the deployment program includes financial assistance, technical assistance and education and outreach. She also implements national funding opportunities and administers some of the resultant tribal energy project grants and agreements. She has over 25 years of experience in project development and management, and has been assisting clients in developing their energy resources for over 20 years. Miss Pierce holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Colorado State University, Arizona. Lizana the virtual floor is now yours. 

>>Lizana Pierce: Thank you, James and hello everyone. I join James in welcoming you to today's webinar. This webinar series is sponsored by the DOE Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, otherwise referred to as the Office of Indian energy. The Office of Indian energy's congressional charter is to promote Indian energy development, efficiency and use, reduce or stabilize energy costs, enhance and strengthen Indian tribal energy and economic infrastructure related to natural resource development and electrification, in to bring the electric power service to Indian lands and homes. To provide this assistance our deployment program partners with Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages, to overcome the barriers of energy development. 

Our deployment program is composed of a three-prong approach, consisting of financial assistance or competitive grants, technical assistance at no cost to tribal entities, and education and capacity building. This webinar series is just one example of our education capacity building efforts. Specifically, the webinar series is intended to provide attendees with information on tools and resources to develop and implement tribal energy plans, programs and projects. To highlight tribal energy case studies, which you'll hear a little bit later. And to identify business strategies tribes can use to expand their energy options and develop sustainable local economies. This year's webinar series entitled Empowering Native Communities, and sustaining future generations is focused on the changing energy landscape, and how tribes can position themselves to participate in the energy transition to benefit their communities and future generations. 

In this third webinar of the series, we look to provide attendees with information ideas and resources, to help improve your energy system resilience in your communities. As the changing climate brings new and more extreme weather-related events, there're increased risks to energy infrastructure, thoughtful and deliberate energy infrastructure changes can help reduce the severity of these climate change impacts, and improve the resilience of tribal energy systems and infrastructure in the face of these group growing threats. This webinar will discuss opportunities for tribes to proactively change their energy infrastructure to reduce climate related risks and impacts. And for today's presentations, we also have a great tribal case study followed by three presentation sharing tools and resources available to you. 

For those of you who are looking to improve the resilience of your energy supply and systems. We do hope the webinar and the webinar series as a whole is useful to you. But we also welcome your feedback. Please let us know if there are ways that we could make the series better. You can send any feedback to our main email address at Indianenergy@hq.doe.com. Before I turn it back to James, I did also want to personally thank the presenters for giving up their time and preparing and for presenting today's webinar. Thank you all. We couldn't do this without you for sure. And with that, the virtual floor is yours, James. Thank you. 

>>James Jensen: Thanks, Lizana, before we get started with presentations, I want to introduce all of today's speakers. Our first presenter is Daniel Wiggins Jr. Daniel is a Bad River tribal member and air quality technician in the tribes Natural Resources Division. In addition to his work as an air quality technician, he has had oversight of the tribe’s renewable energy activities since about 2017. Daniel is the project leader for the tribe’s recent micro grid project, which installed over 500 kilowatts of solar and 1000 kilowatt hours of batteries at three tribal facilities. Following Daniel, we will hear from Rachel Novak. Rachel is Acting Coordinator of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Tribal Climate Resilience Program and also serves as the tribal climate science coordinator. She is Navajo and her first clan is gap in the Rock clan, and her maternal grandfather's clan is towering House Clan. 

At BIA she leads efforts to support tribal resilience including annual competitive funding opportunities, and tribal adaptation planning and the development of the tribe’s indigenous people’s chapter five of the National Climate Assessment. She has a Master’s of Science in geosciences from the University of Arizona, an undergraduate degree in environmental science and International Studies from Oregon State University. She currently resides in Albuquerque, with her husband and two young sons. Our next presenter will be Alison Griner. Alison is the direct technical assistance manager for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program also known as BRICP. 

She focuses on increasing equitable access to federal funding and connecting communities, including tribal governments, to subject matter expertise around for long term resilience and mitigation planning support. She has a master's in public health specializing in global disaster management, humanitarian relief and homeland security from the University of South Florida, and 12 years of experience in disaster management, public health and community development. In her previous role with the Department of Health and Human Services, she focused on connecting rural and tribal communities with access to quality health care services. For our final presentation, we will hear again from Lizana, who I have previously introduced and just spoke, thanks to each of our presenters for making the time to join us today. With that, let's get started with our first presentation. Daniel, you may proceed once we have your slides up. Thank you. Hey Daniel, you're still self-muted. 

>>Daniel Wiggins Jr.: Yeah, I'm sorry about that. It's so an Indian thing, thank you guys. I appreciate the USOE for invited me to this session. And look forward to presenting on the issue and again another day, project that we implemented here on the Bad River Reservation. James gave you a little bit highlight about myself. I am the air quality technician for the Michigan ZB Natural Resource Department located on the Bad River Reservation. I've been air quality technician for over 10 years, I have been working on energy projects not just renewable energy, but energy projects in general since both 2017. Both on the policy side and on the implementation part. Next slide. The Bad River band, we're located in northern Wisconsin, I always tell people as far north as you can get. We are located on the southern shores of Lake Superior, we have beautiful 12 miles of sandy beaches and 125,000 acre reservation located on the mainland and then we have a little bit of territory on Madeline Island. 

We have about 7000 members overall with about 2000 that live on or near the reservation. Next slide. Project summary, we did a project that really focused on resiliency after a flood event we experienced. Post flood the tribe developed an emergency response plan identifying critical infrastructure along with measures addressing those future emergencies. With those documents, we devised specific projects that address mitigation measures, one of them being microgrids at certain facilities. When the DOE was issued their infrastructure on tribal lands, the tribe really jumped on that RF. I'm sorry, that request for proposals. And with that, the tribe was awarded a $2.2 million project and through COVID, the USDOE was able to contribute $1.8 million towards the project. Really making it possible for the tribe to kick that project off. 

Without the USDOE, I can honestly say that this project would not have existed. With some of the specifics of the project, the tribe installed over 500 kilowatts of solar, with over 1000-kilowatt hours of battery storage at three facilities are located in the data community. Specific buildings address where the chief Blackbird administration Bill, kind of handles all of our government functions along with other departments, wastewater treatment plant deals with water and wastewater within Odanah community and beyond. Well, I would say for the most part all over the communities within the reservation. And then obviously, the Health and Wellness Center, the only tribal clinic on the reservation and it goes without saying how it's important, next slide. Again, this project really was focused on resiliency, you'll see that word use repeatedly throughout my presentation. It's a word that I use repeatedly through the planning and development of this project. 

I really believe there's two routes that are a lot of projects are able to be focused on. One is the resiliency and dependability side. And then the other side is really the push for the financials or savings. In 2016, the tribe experienced a flood event, a 500-year flood event to be exact. Floods and experiences that a lot of us tribal members really never experienced through those experiences. Next slide. We experienced just a number of outages and a number of gaps in a lot of our infrastructure, we had outages, the event took place over kind of a two-week span. And with that, we identified a number of outages that were happening at a lot of our facilities. One of the primary reasons is we are on radio lines on a lot of the infrastructure, both gas and electrical that come onto the reservation are dead ends. And so, when we do experience outages upstream, everything downstream definitely is affected. That in itself is one gap, but also just the facilities in themselves and where they're placed. 

Sometimes, as you can see, we're located right next to the lake, so we are rather wet. With flood events and sorts, we can experience a lot of erosion. And even stuff that's buried underground isn't necessarily safe as you can see in the right-side picture, with underground gas and electrical. Next slide. Just to give you a timeline of the project, again, the flood event occurred in 2016. It is 2022. And I would say my feeling is definitely that we successfully completed a project finally in 2022. However, you look at the time gap that's about six years of both planning and development and implementation. And in 2016, we had the whole event. And immediately after that, the tribe started emergency preparedness and strategic energy planning. The emergency preparedness really addressed a lot of the gaps that we had both in our emergency preparedness practice. 

And then also really identifying a lot of those mitigation measures or those solutions to address some of those gaps that we found within our infrastructure, both on the utility side and the tribal side. On the Strategic Energy Plan, really looks at the resources that are available and the technologies that make sense for us. In 2019, after those documents were completed, the tribe looked into a techno economic feasibility study, specifically for microgrids implementation on the reservation that identified specific scenarios that we put into an application for the DOE Tribal Energy grant. And we don't go in with all of our eggs in one basket, this really was A, we've got multiple scenarios we feel this one is our priority, addressing our clinic, administration building and wastewater. However, things for whatever change, this may be how the scenarios look or how the expansions may look and so on. 

A lot of that information and stuff is included a lot of those emergency preparedness and strategic energy plans were also included in the application for the DOE tribal Energy grant. And really used as a basis for getting the assistance that we needed here on the reservation. In January through me, after we were successfully awarded the grant, we worked on the RFP development and contractor selection, the RFP can be fairly tricky because that's really given you the base for what the contractors are building and planning around, so you want to be complete in that. And then you also want to be sure of your contractor selection. Aside from resiliency, there's we want to be dependable, and that relies on bringing in contractors that have dependability in their background. In 2020, we hired or we brought under contractors, and we started construction in September. And then in May of 2020, we commissioned the systems. Next slide.

What is resilience? We really toss this around within the group of both the planning and development, and then also with the contractors who were awarded, it's definitely something that I will say is defined by the planning group that's developing the project. I'm always careful of defining it for other groups, because I think resiliency can mean different things for different municipalities, different tribal groups, different tribes in general. For the tribe at this project, it really was a top priority for the Bad River tribe, not just resiliency but dependability. Again, we're coming out from 2016 flood event, we realized that our being resilient towards that event wasn't really successful. And we identified a lot of gaps that showed there was a lot of infrastructure that wasn't dependable. And we're saying that, aside from resiliency we want to make sure a lot of the stuff we're putting in place is dependable. 

If you look into the definition, I don't want to get into terms and definitions. But if you look at the definition of resiliency, it's more of a reaction to a problem or a gap. Dependability is avoiding those problems and gaps in the first place. A powerful differentiator in the grant process. I think that's one reason why we were awarded, is we weren't necessarily looking for the financing side, I think we go outside of that, we're always paying attention to it. But it really wasn't the lead and driving force for this project. Being resilient, being dependable making sure we have infrastructure that can get through a flood event. That was our top priority. Resiliency is still hard to define, when you're explaining it to contractors. And you're saying, no let's just ignore the finances right now and make sure that we have a system that can support this load, sometimes that throws them off a little bit because they really feel like they could get you an extra $1,000 a month here.

They can get you a little bit more financing push here, you really have to stick to your values and what the goals are of the project. And if it's resiliency, hold on to that because at the end of the day when the power goes out, you want these systems on, they have to be dependable and they have to be resilient and hard to value, that value of having those infrastructures in place and working properly. Going back to the water facilities, when that went out everybody was on a hot water, boil water order. A lot of those things you take for granted until it's gone. Being able to flush your toilets, being able to turn on your faucet, being able to turn on your lights. It's hard to value when these things are gone. And trust me when you can keep that stuff on through an event, that really does help the communities and stuff push through those emergency crises. Next slide. 

I expanded a little bit more specifically with the micro grids and defining what resiliency is, I have great contractors that I work with new grid analytics, I was able to really dive into what these systems have been doing for the last year and really how they perform. Resilience duration is a finite amount of time the system can support the building before failing. Resiliency performance is also dependent on the time of day, seasonality, load conditions at the building, and therefore durations vary. Also, the following evaluations that you see at the bottom of the slides are for solar plus storage only. Resilience may be supplemented that both of these sites with fuel-based generation. And while that means is we have generators on standby, for whatever reason the utilities fail, the micro grid kicks on, the micro grid fails, we still have another layer of resiliency with generators, at all sites. 

And making sure that we have those layers of resiliency really support the dependability of all of the infrastructure in place. And I'll highlight both of the charts because they do speak very loud. At the bottom left, you'll see the health and wellness center that line relatively stays above the other dotted line. I am not new grid so I'll give you my interpretation. What that means is that the Health and Wellness Center has a duration of indefinitely, if the micro grids had to support the load. And that's great, that's exactly what we were going to. The clinic is relatively a flat load, there's not a lot of spikes I'll say, within the load profile. And we're relatively able to address and support that load fairly, I wouldn't say easy, but with a fairly simple system. The wastewater treatment plant harbor has mortars all over the place. And there could be a specific spike at a certain time that day. 

And really, that's why you see the length of an outage, if there was an outage that was going to happen, or the system probably could only support the wastewater treatment plant for one, possibly three days is what we're predicting. Next slide. Resilient seasonality, at the ultimate solar production creates sufficient generation to provide nearly indefinite resiliency from March to November, winter months go without saying up here in northern Wisconsin, you could get a whole month with no sun as sad as that sounds, it is a reality. And even with an indefinite or an uncertain solar production and sufficient generation, we may still not see that indefinite support from a micro grid during wintertime. As mentioned before at the wastewater treatment plant due to flatter load resilience durations provide a rest or a long cover most nominal grid outage while fuel base generation supplements for the longer durations. 

And we really lean more on the generator at the wastewater treatment plant than we do at the clinic. Next slide. This is just as highlighting the rate tariff summary and operative strategy. The left-hand side, you'll see what were charged by our utilities, both on the energy and the demand side. And then it also shows you what we can sell back to the utilities when we over produce and have extra energy. When we are grid connected, normal mode, the operating strategy is simple increase solar self-consumption and reduce demand charges. Next slide. How is the performance? I'll show you the reason I don't have the administration building it's rather a smaller system just addresses emergency analog 20 Kw system, is fairly self-sufficient. What I'm going to show you is the two larger systems a Health and Wellness Center has a three KW solar PV with 500 kilowatt hours of battery, while the wastewater treatment plant has 200 KW solar with 250 kilowatt hours of battery storage. 

And what you're looking at really right here is the profile from when we turned it on. Around June, or just after May, so we have to June, July to March on the Health and Wellness Center. And one of the things you guys might notice is that there is no power being sold at the Health and Wellness Center. And that is partly an accident and partly on purpose. We did have some troubleshooting, we weren't able to sell power back. However, we also made a finding that there was a beneficial measure currently that we didn't need to sell power back at Health and Wellness Center. It's not always in the best interest sometimes to sell power back to over produce. And what we are working on is an operation strategy that really makes that system more efficient at the clinic. It's a little bit easier at the clinic, as I mentioned before that load is a little bit easier to work with. We're not necessarily leaning back on the production that much. 

We're just really experienced in what the micro grids are capable of doing. On the wastewater treatment plant, you'll see the other side of it where you do have the potential to sell a lot of power back, again, that's a rather crazy load. The system is built rather large compared to what the average load is. However, during those peaks and stuff when all those loads are running. During the summer, we are going to have over productions with the solar system as well. And we do, you'll see in the charts June, July, August, September, October, that we are selling power back to the utilities and really both systems offer this option. We're just using these both as pilot studies on operations strategies. Next slide. I'm getting into the savings. We all want to know what the savings still are. I think leadership knows that this project was built on resiliency, knows that these microgrids are made to support the infrastructure that it's built with.

However, the question always comes, what are we actually saving? That's something we're absolutely monitoring, both with the kilowatt hours, but also the demand charges. And we have been successful with not eliminating the demand charges, but addressing pieces of it. The demand charges have a lot of variables, and so it's how the utilities implement them on the customer, but also how the customer is able to alleviate maybe boards during the time of the day. You can address it a lot of different ways to decrease demand. However, it still becomes tricky. Savings at the wastewater treatment plant, we have some experience about over $14,000. And that system has been operating fairly efficient. Next slide. Savings at the Health and Wellness Center, that's a little bit larger system. And we've experienced over $16,000 in savings on that system. Next slide. Just as I mentioned, the administration building does provide savings as well, that system is not on here, it's just getting the system was rather smaller. 

It's a 20 Kw system, you'll see about $2,000 in savings annually on that system. Some of the lessons learned, there's a lot of lessons learned, I don't know if Dan can go through all the lessons that I learned myself, between the contractors of the project, working with all of the DOE staff. My role, trust me lessons learned are our long list. Some of the straightforward lessons that the tribe really identified immediately in this project is, resiliency along with the financial benefits needs to be emphasized in the beginning of planning. And all that means is define what your project is, if you are you looking to alleviate savings, or address the savings part, then hold on to that. Hang on to that and work with the contractors, tell them what your goals are. However, if your goal is resiliency, at the same breath hang on to that. Contractors want to push the financial side of more solar projects and make those solar incentives not just for the tribe better, but for themselves better. 

And when you say resiliency, sometimes that takes away from those financial incentives. And you'll get a little pushback from internally, and also with the contractors you're working with. Hang on to that resiliency tone, that dependability tone, you want these systems dependable and resiliency before you want to make money. And those are facts. If you're coming from a resiliency approach, all microgrids are not smart. This is something my contractors definitely have been yelling at me across the room and it's something that we always are working with our contractors on is to make our market a bit smart. Smart controllers can make a difference. When we're talking demand charges, alleviating these loads through emergency crisis indefinitely for multiple days, not just one but for multiple days, these smart controllers can really push the performance of the systems and really extend both of those timelines. The next lesson learned is micro grids can absolutely be a solution. 

They're not the full solution. But they absolutely can be a solution in dressing emergency gaps. The tribe is already investigating how to expand the microgrids and neighboring infrastructure, if not just implementing additional micro grids on infrastructure that's critical. And some of the smaller successes which you really hold when you bring a big project like this onto tribal lands or into any municipality or community is that, you have to buy in from the community. And one of the things that I've seen during our project is that two tribal members have installed solar plus storage systems at their residence, personally reached out to the tribe asked if what they were doing was a great idea. They said what basically their same story they experienced in 2016 flood event. 

They had outages and they just want to make sure they have power in a residence next time. And we have to remember during these crises that sometimes when out without power, and without water, people are forced to move. They're not able to live within their homes and stay within their normal lifestyles. And keeping those residence up and running properly, can definitely be a safe haven for a lot of tribal members or the community members. And then the final lesson learned I think this is something really common from a tribal perspective too because I think when tribes specifically take on projects like this, utilities. I don't want to say get defensive, but you definitely wake them up. And at that same breath, utilities always need to be at the table during emergency discussions. If you have a utility in your municipality or on your reservation, and your discussion, emergency preparedness and mitigation measures, utilities should be there. 

They have staff that are on the frontlines, every single day. When there's an outage their staff is being called in, they're being pushed towards where the outages and so they have a lot of resources. And don't shun them, don't push them to the corner and say, well, we'll talk to him when we're ready. I think it's always best to bring them in first, make sure you understand what they're capable of, what their goals are. And then work on partnerships, work on relationships. Next slide. Oh, miigwech, definitely going to keep talking about the project. I think really the next steps that we're working on is, expanding these micro grids looking at our next options, making sure that we're still addressing gaps from an emergency perspective. And so emergency planning, strategic planning, I don't think that's ever ending, that's something that's definitely we're going to be revisiting probably on a cycle basis. And we're saying that keep up the great work. And thank you guys for inviting me, miigwech.

>>James Jensen: Thanks so much, Daniel. We really appreciate your presentation. And it's really timely and perfect for this webinar. We're going to pass here a moment to take questions for Daniel because he has to leave. If you have a question, type it into the question panel on the control box, and we'll get to it. Daniel, first question here. Have you had an opportunity to test the systems? Have you had any outages for the facilities on the utility good?

>>Daniel Wiggins Jr.: Yeah, no, that's a great question. I highlighted the savings, I could have highlighted the outages. And one of the things that we're finding is that we haven't necessarily experienced outages that we experienced in 2016. And to answer your question, first is yes, they do support the buildings we have experienced outages on short span, so four hours to six hours, and they've been successful as far as supporting the load. One of the things that these micro grids and maybe a lot of systems will do is they'll actually introduce you to even smaller outages that you've probably never even known were happening. And we have monitors all over these microgrids, and we're experiencing what they're calling micro-outages, or there's another term for them, but they're basically micro-outages. And actually, we're highlighting even more outages and more things that are happening within the system than we even knew about before. Great question.

>>James Jensen: Excellent. We've got some questions pouring in. Let's cruise through them. Have you considered starting your own utilities?

>>Daniel Wiggins Jr.: Absolutely, I would say that the tribe is exploring starting their own utility so we haven't started our own utility yet. We're in a partnership with people who installed the systems right now. While we're in that partnership, we are exploring what a utility authority would look like. 

>>James Jensen: Great. Can you talk a little bit more about the tension between resiliency and financial benefits?

>>Daniel Wiggins Jr.: Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the things again, my contractors were really surprised at the tribe emphasized on and so when you're emphasizing resiliency, you're really looking at supporting that load. And a lot of the resources and stuff will be going into the upfront cost of building that system up. With saying that, you're not necessarily pushing the financial model, so there's financial models, if we were to say, hey, we're not really worried about resiliency, and we just want to see what the system would do. Go look at my other sites where we're doing a pilot study project where we have one project that selling power back and the other part is not selling power back. That is looking at what the financial benefits of even selling power to the utility isn't. There's not always just because you can produce energy and just because you're able to sell energy, doesn't mean you're always making money in the financial blocks. 

You have to be very careful on how you're producing this energy, and then how you're transferring both to the utilities into the loads. I can't get into the details on how one really affects the other without going down a huge rabbit hole. But what I will say is definitely lean on your contractors to provide both the models and soft both for the resiliency side of what a project can look like. And also, what the financial side of a project can go look like if you were to push both sides. Hopefully, that helps. Kind of in the wind sorry.

>>James Jensen: Yeah, no, thanks, Daniel. Another question here. Have you considered adding additional storage capacity to the grid, or champion micro grids to improve the duration in the event of a macro-outage? And have you also pursued energy efficiency measures at the facility? It's also n energy efficiency.

>>Daniel Wiggins Jr.: An energy efficiency. Yep, absolutely. Energy efficiency measures always come first, and then should always be addressed on a regular cycle basis. Every couple of years, you should be going into these buildings and looking at how we can make these buildings more energy efficient. Technology these days, just pushes that measure. You're always going to see new technology that works better than technology five years ago, it's just going to be more efficient that's just how life is. Yeah, definitely exploring that you looking at adding more storage and more solar and more loads. We are looking at not just a micro grid, but possibly a mini grid. And we do have a feasibility study looking at the technical feasibility of making that happen. And we have contractors on the ground, I've taken load profiles, looking at the utility side, looking at the existing micro grids, and seeing where expansions make sense. And we're hoping to have all of that stuff ready this year, and present it to the tribe as far as a pathway forward.

>>James Jensen: Excellent. Thanks, Daniel. I think we're going to cut the questions off here, because we have quite a few coming in. But we need to move on terms of our overall schedule.

>>Daniel Wiggins Jr.: Yeah, feel free to have people email me any questions and continue these conversations after the meeting. Thanks again. 

>>James Jensen: Okay, sounds good. Thanks so much. With that, we'll move on to our next presentation. As a reminder to the audience, the rest of the presentations, we're going to take the questions for at the very end of the webinar, but submit them at any time as individuals present. Our next presenter is Rachel Novak, and we introduced her earlier. And let's just proceed, put up your slides Rachel.
 
>>Rachael Novak: Okay, great. Thanks. Can you hear me? [Speaks foreign language] My name is Rachel Novak. And I just wanted to introduce myself and the way I was taught when we speak to a group of people. I'm really grateful for Daniel's presentation before this, I feel like it really demonstrates an example that illustrates the tribes are leaders in the area of climate adaptation and resilience. I really appreciate that. And I was able to do a detail when I first started at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to the Great Lakes agency. And it was a week after that storm hit in 2016. I remember how impactful that was on the whole region. And New Age really appreciate that presentation and feel like it. It's so well kind of sets up the rest of these with that, just that real world example and the all the great efforts that tribes are undertaking. I am with the BIA branch of Tribal Climate Resilience. And this is our small team. I'm located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

And this is our group, Alexis Wagner, Elisa Samoye, Corwin, Carol, Carol Avery, and Krystal Keys. We're a small group at the central office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and we also do some regional support as well. Next slide, please. Today, I'll go over the purpose of our programs, our awards program because I think that would be of interest and we have an open RFP right now. Training opportunities, technical support helpful resources in partnerships and examples of funding for energy related projects from our program. And also, from one of our sister divisions within BIA as well as our division of energy and mineral development. Next slide, please. We do really focus on climate preparedness in general, I know the energy is a piece of this. And I'll try to highlight that where it's relevant, because it is a bit more focused generally on climate adaptation and resilience. But what we really focus on is trying to help enable tribes to be more climate resilient, and be more prepared for the impacts of climate change. 

And we do this in two different ways. We support tribes through technical assistance and through financial assistance. And technical assistance would include access to science, education and training. And we have a regional network of liaisons I'll describe a little bit later. And we have some regional support as well. And we actually have more coming on this summer. We're really excited about that kind of expanding the regional support. On the financial side, we have our annual awards program, and I'll go into that more detail in just a minute. And that also includes in support for ocean and coastal management efforts. And we have some big changes this year through the bipartisan infrastructure law that provides funding for relocation related support, as well as climate adaptation implementation projects. And that is our website, if you are interested in checking that out. We've been doing some updates and hopefully improvements over basically 2021. Next slide, please. 

Yeah, our priorities are really focused around climate impacts, extreme events. Many of these can impact your infrastructure or your energy infrastructure, and its resilience. And we also can support impacts around kind of chronic and compounding events like sea level rise, erosion, permafrost degradation, drought, ocean acidification, etc. Both the acute and the chronic events that can compound. And for purposes of this webinar, as these apply to your energy infrastructure and those impacts, I think that's relevant. But we support planning and preparedness and resilience across pretty much all sectors that could be impacted by climate change. And we do also support ocean and coastal management planning, relocation, managed retreat and protect in place planning for coastal and riverine communities. And I know that is an intersectoral effort as well, including considering energy impacts there. 

I think something really important to point out at the beginning is, since our program started in 2011, we've really been focused on supporting the planning side of things, planning, training, capacity building. This year marks a really significant change where we are now able to support implementation activities as well. I'll go over the support in a little bit. Next slide, please. Alright, yes again, our focus areas are adaptation planning, including implementation for climate risks, supporting management, relocation and protect in place. When I say manage retreat, I mean, like partial relocation, sometimes people aren't clear on what that means, for both coastal and riverine communities. And then the ocean and coastal management and planning and that does include Great Lakes tribes as well. Next slide, please. Alright, I will go through our awards program now then. Slide. We have an open solicitation right now, it can be found on our program site, as well as the ECO Opps, where we're taking applications this year. 

It opens on April 11th, and it is closing on July 6, so it's almost 90 days. And we are asking people to submit proposals directly through the ECO Opps website, that application. We're asking applications to be limited to six pages for the proposal content requirements, but supplemental materials can be added as well. And other entities can participate as sub grantees. This is really focused on federally recognized tribes and tribal organizations that serve federally recognized tribes and have 638 contracting authorization, but other entities can participate as sub grantees. Next slide, please. Again, you can go to our site or to the ECO Opps to find more out there, there's more information on ECO Opps and the registration process there, because this is a new platform that we're using, and we hope it proves successful, and we can use in future years. There's more information in the appendices of the new DOE or the RFP, and how to access to that.

Next slide, please. Alright, a little bit about the categories of funding for our awards program. Next slide. We have 13 categories of funding this year. And we kind of broken it down into four main areas, climate adaptation, oceanic coastal management planning, relocation related categories and youth related categories. The first ones here are focus on climate adaptation, focused on supporting regional trainings and workshops, adaptation planning, travel support for adaptation planning, capacity building for scoping efforts. That one is focused on tribes who have not received any of our larger awards, and is seen as kind of a stepping stone. This was developed in to help tribes who are reaching out to us about their capacity issues and the need to have some kind of stepping stone. Because we realize a lot of tribes don't have current writers on staff, and it makes it hard to compete in the whole world of capacities. 

And we've seen this really healthy stepping stone for a lot of tribes that struggle with capacity. And we've seen this yeah, it really helped tribes in the next steps in getting bigger pots have funding for adaptation planning, and beyond. For our category 10, this is focused on implementation of climate adaptation strategies. This is a new category this year because of the increases of funding we've gotten from the bipartisan infrastructure law and from our FY 22 appropriations from Congress. We are really excited to be able to move not beyond planning and still funding planning, but being able to move beyond that to help tribes who have existing adaptation plans, or climate actions identified and other tribal plans to implement. This does not include things that DOE already funds in terms of like setting up the solar array and things like that. But there are concerns about like extreme weather events, impacting the resilience of your energy infrastructure.

That would be something that that could likely be like a category two, adaptation planning or implementation if it's already identified and existing plants. And our category 13 is new also, it's focused on international, ITEK virtual exchanges. ITEK spelling out indigenous and tribal ecological knowledge or TK, new memorize different names. In the maximums, I have here in the parentheses, those are maximums per award not for the entire category so that's just per award. We have two categories for ocean and coastal management planning. And those probably aren't as relevant for this presentation so I won't go into those in detail. Next slide please. Okay, and then our relocation managed retreat protected place categories of funding are here as well. There's category seven for planning, category 11 for implementation, category 12 for more capacity building, supporting staff for up to three years to help with coordination. 

And we have two categories for youth engagement and internships as well. And that goes for category 12 youth engagement as well as students in terms of internships. And I'll have an example of where that has intersected with energy and towards the end of my slide deck, next slide. Alright, some notable items that I've alluded to already, is we did get significant increases in categories of funding, two planning categories and then also the implementation categories. We have our maximums increased for the adaptation planning, from 150k to 250k per award. And then for Category seven, that's the relocation related category for planning and that increase from 150k to 300k per award. And I mentioned already the increases in, the new categories of funding for implementation for climate adaptation, and then also for relocation activities. Yes, we have a new platform for applying that I kind of mentioned already. Next slide, please. All right. 

Since 2011, we have been able to award over 700 proposals from Alaska Native and lower 48 tribes. And that combined has been over $74 million. And before 2022, our annual awards budget was at 15 million. And that was just from the annual appropriations. In 2022 as I mentioned, we had significant increases due to the infrastructure investment and jobs act or bipartisan infrastructure law, as well as our 2022 appropriations. You can see in this table here, how drastically our program has increased just this year compared to previous years. We're estimating that we'll have about 46 million available for awards across all of those categories of funding I just mentioned this year. And that should translate to a pretty significant increase in awards as well, although some of those are significantly large awards with higher caps. That should be taken into account too, in terms of the number of awards.

You can see the previous summaries that describe in just a paragraph or so all of the previous awards in previous years at our website, that link there. This is just to really demonstrate how much our program has grown. We're really excited to see all the wonderful projects across Indian country and Alaska Native villages that can be funded this year through these increases as well. Next slide, please. Right, just a quick slide on training. Our next slide. We work with the Northern Arizona University's ITEP, Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals. They have a climate change program, we've been working with them since 2015. With their cooperative agreement, they are like our training arm. They provide climate change one on one trainings, advanced climate change 201 cohorts that last closer to a year and meet on an ongoing basis. And of interest hopefully, is also the national indigenous climate conference that we fund through ITEP. 

And we had to hold this virtually in 2020 of course, due to COVID. But we had almost 2000 attendees virtually, and 230 tribes represented. We're having the second one in 2022. This August, from August 29th to September 1st, it's going to be in St. Paul Minnesota, and you can go to that site if you're interested in learning more and perhaps registering, I believe that the proposals are closed. But I do think one of the tracks focused on energy. Please take a look at that and consider attending I think it will be really amazing experience. It's really focused on tribes. There's a lot of tribal input that's gone into designing this. And the theme this year is today's stewards, tomorrow's ancestors, and how can we to do that today. That's a little bit about our trainings and workshops, and with ITEP and with the exciting in tech or national tribes and indigenous climate conference that is going to be held this fall. Next slide, please. Alright, this we'll go through a little bit about technical support and reports. 

Next slide. In this section, I'll try to breeze through it. But this is just about some technical support, if you're not sure where to start, a lot of this a little bit more focused on like natural resources, so I won't go too into depth. But I know that a lot of tribal programs, don't just think like in one sector and there's more holistic thinking considerations about inter sectoral efforts and how one affects the other. Hopefully this is still helpful and relevant. But we work with our climate adaptation science centers the DOI, and our USGS colleagues run those centers and they are very partnership driven. And we have supported a network of tribal climate resilience liaisons through a partnership with the climate adaptation science centers. Next slide. And these folks are located regionally. Here's a photo, we are bringing on more as well. And they really are there to help connect the resources and the information of the CASC to the tribes and tribal priorities and needs to the climate adaptation science centers or CASCs. 

We've got Melinda Chase and Justin Lyon, they're on the far left. They are located in Alaska and serve Alaska Native villages. Yep, Chas Jones in the Northwest, and he just brought in Amelia Marchand as well, to join the Northwest don't know if anyone knows the wonderful Amelia Marchand, so they service in Northwest. April Taylor is the longest serving tribal climate resilience liaison. It's funded through USGS and the Chickasaw Nation, for the South-Central Region. Stephen Tanjun, is our North Central liaison. And with the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance, Sarah Smith, is funded through an agreement with the College of Menominee Nation for the Midwest. And then KC Thornborough is our liaison for the Northeast and southeast regions. And they are in the midst of trying to hire an additional liaison. These folks have been really instrumental in helping connect tribes to resources and expertise at the CASC and also bringing the priorities and needs other tribes in the regions they serve to the CASC. 

There's an information exchange. And they're all really great communicators, and they know a lot about our NOFO, our RFP, so feel free to get in touch with any of them. If you have questions more focused on regional ideas for projects, they can kind of help think about projects and help you potentially kind of flush something out. Next slide, please. We also are a partner in the cooperative ecosystem studies units. And this just is a really great partnership. If you want to work with a university that is within the network, we already have kind of an existing MOU, and that allows for a 17 and a half percent indirect cost rate. If you have a researcher that you've worked with in the past would really like to and you put it into your proposal, this could really help direct more funding towards the project instead of indirect cost rate. For the indirect cost rate in many universities, it's around 50%. That can really take away from the project funds. 

We just want to make sure people are aware of this opportunity, if you are interested in applying for funding and if you are interested in bringing on a partner through that funding from university, and they're within this network. Most major universities are so if this sounds like it's of interest, just check that website out, you can see if they are partners. Next slide, please. And we have some more examples if you don't know where to start, we have the Indigenous People's Resilience Action maps, there's over 1100 examples of climate resilient actions. Many of them do have energy focus or intersect in some way with energy. You can go into that interactive map and get a small description at least of that project. Next slide, please. And here's some other resources if you're not sure where to start or want to see some examples, the University of Oregon has a wonderful climate change guide. You can find funding opportunities there, you can find examples of tribal climate plans. 

You can search by energy in here as well and see what comes up. They do I think, update this every month, so it's really wonderful source. And there with the blue banner is just a screenshot of our climate award summaries, of so you can see what tribes have been funded every year from our funding opportunity and a small description of what was funded. Next slide, please. The National Climate Assessment can also be very helpful here. Regional chapters from the fourth National Climate Assessment also included indigenous focus messages and content. We're working on the fifth National Climate Assessment as well. And there is a chapter specifically for tribes and indigenous peoples, there is content included on energy. And I know some of the other chapters also are having that, there will be a public comment opportunity later this year as well. I encourage anyone interested in that to take a look at it when that comes out. Next slide, please.

And we also have regional fact sheets available through our Tribal Resilience Resource Guide, we have fact sheets by region. Next slide. And we also have fact sheets by tribe. It has examples of previous awards, relevant groups that might be potential partners, relevant documents, tools, examples and climate data maps. We are trying to update this later this year, because we've not updated it for several years. But it can still be useful. If you are trying to figure out where to start and kind of what's available, just be aware that it will be updated in not-too-distant future. Next slide, please. Alright, I'm going to round out this presentation focusing on some examples of energy, renewable energy activities that we've funded from the Tribal Climate Resilience branch, and also from our colleagues over at the BIA division of energy and mineral development as well. Next slide. I just have three examples from our program I put in here, but there are more, and you can take a look at our old summaries for those. 

But this one was an award from last year to the Big Sandy Rancheria rebound of Western Mono Indians in California. And they had some real concerns about the significant catastrophic wildfires that were encroaching closer to their lands. And their proposal was focused on advancing climate change adaptation for their tribe through wood energy development and workforce training. In this proposal, and the project is really interesting, because it has so many co-benefits. They included in that an assessment of the biomass as an energy source, a feasibility assessment that is, and a preliminary design of the biomass combined heat and power system. And they saw that as a climate adaptation strategy. And this also would provide training and employment opportunities for their tribal employees, and their tribal youth. And also, a reduction in wildfire risk, and also increasing their energy resilience. 

This is really interesting project, it did have a lot of cool benefits, again, like stressing the holistic nature of many of the proposals that really underlie the importance of holistic views and perspectives and approaches to climate resilience. Next slide, please. The next one is focused on the Northwest Indian College, this is the Tribal College up in Bellingham, Washington. And this was an award from last year as well. And this one was focused on our youth engagement category. And they had the tribal college staff and students work with K-12 students on hands on STEM educational activities, that link engineering at solar energy to humanitarian services through building and sharing these portable solar electric systems that they call solar suitcases. They connected the students at Northwest Indian College to K-12 tribal youth and they ended up providing these solar suitcases to some of the homes and community centers where they're needed. 

Next slide, please. And the last one from our program was from 2020. And this one was focused on Nez Perce tribe, this one was awarded to them as Perce tribe for their proposal. It was called seeds of sovereignty, planning for food security and cultural survival in a changing climate. And this was really focused on food and energy sovereignty for the tribe. And the proposal that was funded was for community garden and traditional foods, including development of a food map through trail design. And that really will have the gardens and natural plant areas in future solar projects and sustainability into this cohesive whole. This really emphasizes the holistic approach that many tribes are taking with, combining their energy and their food efforts towards sovereignty together and to introduce holistic projects. Next slide please. I'm going to transition into some of the examples from our Division of Energy and Mineral Development program. 

And their mission is to provide the best possible technical and economic advice and services in assisting Indian mineral owners and to achieve economic self-sufficiency by creating sustainable economies through environmentally sound development of energy and mineral resources. They provide some technical assistance and business advising, and they have two grant programs focused on energy and mineral development and tribal energy development capacity.
Next slide, please. We've got a couple examples from them. This one is focused on the Fond du Lac, tribe of Chippewa, Lake Superior Chippewa. And this was again very holistic, they looked at feasibility studies for many different energy sources, including wind, pellet manufacturing, waste to energy, natural gas, solar, biomass heating, microgrids, and potential for tribal utility. And, yes next slide, please, if this continues. Here's some of the accomplishments and this includes the DEMD grants and technical assistance. 

And they supported their pledge to the Kyoto Protocol in 2007 to reduce emissions, their vision also for energy efficiency and development within their cultural traditions. It resulted in 50% reduction in fossil fuels well the plan, and 80% reduction in carbon emissions, and 70% broadband deployment and improvements to community health and economy. And also really was an example of Midwest regional leadership. Again, you can see all the co-benefits and all the co-benefits that are woven together here. And the leadership that this tribe is demonstrating. Next slide, please. Okay, and there are other success stories from DEMD funding opportunities, including from the Metlakatla Indian community, and the Pueblo of Laguna here in New Mexico. In Metlakatla up in Alaska, they have a 2022 DOE award, 2021 DOE award. And that has really helped set in place through 2015 BIE DEMD grant, for a feasibility study. 

And in 2014 grant also for another feasibility study focused on hydro, just like their Purple Lake hydropower source, and then technical assistance as well, including planning that helped result in those projects. And for the Pueblo of Laguna, and I should have highlighted sorry the Pala Band of Mission Indians as well here. Basically, these just really show that the feasibility studies that DEMD has been able to fund for the tribes to actually do the working and be empowered to do it, themselves has gone on to help the tribe apply to further awards and implementation through DOE so there's a really strong relationship there. And DEMD funding is a stepping stone to help tribes get to the next level. Next slide, please. If you're interested in our DEMD grants, or any technical assistance that they have, you can contact Jennifer Reimann. She's the acting Branch Chief there, the Renewable and Distributed Generation branch of DEMD.

Next slide, please. And then I just have a slide of helpful resources, and then we'll close. Next slide. This is just a link to our website again, you've probably seen that like five times already in this presentation, the Tribal Resilience Resource guide I mentioned, ITEP site, the University of Oregon's tribal change guide that I mentioned earlier, and then the cooperative ecosystem studies units. And last slide, I think it's just our contact information. Thank you so much for joining today. And if there's time for questions, I'm happy to but I know we're getting shorter on time so thank you. 

>>James Jensen: Thanks so much, Rachael. Excellent presentation, broad scope for your program and you've covered it well. And it's great having those links in your presentation, the presentations will eventually be posted on our webpage and people can download them there and then have access to those links, so is the also recording. And yes, we will take questions but we're going to save your questions as well as questions for the subsequent speakers until after our last presentation for the day. With that, let's move on to our next speaker. Alison Griner, we're pulling up your slides now and there they are, you may proceed.

>>Alison Griner:  Thank you so much, can you hear me now? 

>>James Jensen: Yes. 

>>Alison Griner:  Great. Hi, everyone, very nice to meet you all. I am Alison Griner as mentioned earlier, I work for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program. Specifically, I manage what's called non-financial direct technical assistance. Today I will be speaking about the whole program, which includes BRIC funding, and also technical assistance. I like to say hey, what would I like you to come away with after speaking is that FEMA does have opportunities that will be coming up very shortly, to apply for technical assistance and for hazard mitigation grant funding, which you can use for energy resilience. Though we don't have any open opportunities, we will have some really soon. And I hope this just shares a little bit about how you could think about using these opportunities for your community. Next slide. I'll be talking today about just overview and background, about the basis of BRIC or Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program. 

I'll also be talking about our guiding principles, what funding looks like and trying to share a little bit about the three different parts of BRIC funding, as well as I will be talking about as I mentioned, direct technical assistance. Really what I like to do to describe direct technical assistance, it's the way to access federal funding, including grant funding, and just help communities that are not only active swimming, but plan their long-term resiliency. I'll be talking a little bit more about that as well. And then I will say throughout this presentation from communities for draft technical assistance, is specifically tribal governments. Federally recognized tribal governments, non-federally recognized tribal governments, cities, counties, special government districts. There is a broad definition of communities that we use, to be able to provide technical assistance. Next slide. Just the basis of BRIC is that it was created under the disaster recovery Reform Act. 

In section 1234, it's really easy to remember, there's a lot of sections in the DRA as well as in the Stafford Act, which is what the DRA amended. And what that did is it gave BRIC 6% of federal post-disaster grant funding. And what that looks like is 6% of the funding FEMA get for a disaster is put into what we call the BRIC piggy bank, and that is used for eligible applicants. For states or territories and tribes with major declarations, then are able to use that money for hazard mitigation within their jurisdictions. When this was created, the legislation states that, you have to have a disaster within the past seven years because of COVID and everything related to that all jurisdictions have disasters in the past seven years. We also, the BRIC program replaces the pre-disaster mitigation program, or other hazard mitigation programs as well, including HMGP or the hazard mitigation grant program as well as flood mitigation necessary. 

And there's a new initiative out called swift current, related to flood as well. There are other hazard mitigation programs, what is different about BRIC is BRIC is for all hazards. And that you could use it for energy resilience. We do have current BRIC funded or fluffy communities. And applicants that have put forward resilient projects, as long as we have several communities that we're working with for direct technical assistance on energy resilience, and especially on tribal energy resilience. Next slide. The background of BRIC and just the overall guiding principles are capability and capacity building, we're not trying to do it for someone, we want to work together to build capacity for that community, be able to do whatever they want to do themselves. But maybe they need resources or subject matter expertise, to be able to figure out the best solution for their problem. We also like innovation, and we try to encourage that and promote partnerships among between the federal family. 

I work with others at Bureau of Indian Affairs, as well as DOE and so happy to be invited to talk today, because they work really well with us in our communities for direct technical assistance. And we try to engage in partnerships, because we feel like that strengthens just a community in the building of resources, and just information to be able to create a better project. We look at large infrastructure projects, because those are going to have a large impact, unless based on our funding and the Stafford Act, we look at flexibility and consistency. Our programs do change from year to year somewhat, so you'll see potentially different amounts of money. We've increased that over the last two years. That change but program priorities stay the same, we do try to make it more accessible, and to reduce the complexity of it. Because have your medication is complex. Often there are multiple hazards involved, or cascading impacts. 

One of the things with the FEMA strategic plan, as I already looked at reducing the complexity, but we're also looking at building a culture of preparedness. We all know that, it's not just a discrete disaster cycle, where you go from preparedness to response, and then to recovery and mitigation. We're having all of them happen at once now. And we can be prepared at any time, anytime is a good time to be prepared. And then also anytime was a good time to be ready. We want to be able to support communities and applicants to be able to be prepared as they want to be in ready as they can be for these factors. Because it's not a matter of if a disaster will ever occur, it's when and where disasters will occur. Next slide. BRIC, as well as direct technical systems, which I'm going to get into, the two differences of the funding and the technical assistance shortly. But what I want to touch on is that the BRIC program is part of the Justice40 initiative. 

And what that includes is we want to increase our benefits to disadvantaged communities as outlined in Executive Order 14008. Basically, what that boils down to is the, on your right-hand side of your screen you'll see a lot of bubbles. And those are the areas that the initiative Executive Order, think that we can prioritize community to either apply for funding or apply for technical assistance. And you'll see some of those that probably definitely apply to some people, and some communities that are represented in this virtual room. And you'll see areas with tribal jurisdictions and being one of those, and so we've especially with direct technical assistance, but as well as BRIC funding. We didn't get this initiative until last year so 2021, it has made its way into our last Notice of Funding Opportunity, which was the cycle September to January. But it's going to have an even bigger or impact on our next funding opportunity which will be around the same timeline.

Next slide. I talked about BRIC funding. And I'll get two slides on that for funding, so I'll break down the numbers in just a second. But just to break it down again, is a disaster happens, any one of the disasters happens. And then after 180 days, that 6% of disaster funding that's gone through, gets put into our BRIC piggy bank, we don't actually have a piggy bank but it's there for the slides for visual reasons. And we also use some of that funding for direct technical assistance. Direct technical assistance is non-financial, meaning we do not give a community money. As far as the grant, but we do provide a significant amounts of subject matter expertise, and be able to help with capability and capacity building. I'll talk about those specific options that are available. But it can be related to any hazards. And it can not only just be about mitigation planning, but it can go forward to resilience planning and climate adaption. And in forward thinking as well. 

Next slide. This is FY 2021. That application cycle as I mentioned, it opened September of last year and then close in January of this year. We will be coming up to our next application cycle. And we usually post it in August, last year actually posted in late July or early August. We will be posting it within, it's already June so we will be posting it very soon. Though we don't have an open funding opportunity, one of the things that I would recommend, I'm going to talk about each of these areas, but really what we do in technical assistance to, how do we maximize your time for the area that you would be most successful with? Who's getting the funding that you're looking for? And basically, trying to leverage your time, as well as your resources to be the most successful. And so, in the BRIC funding for last year was $1 million, the previous year was $500 million that we gave out. And then next year, we'll be even increasing it a significant amount. 

There we are trying to, as you saw, innovate and enhance our program to make it one more accessible to all communities and well, being able to utilize and distribute funding to communities that need it. What does that funding look like? Basically, there are three different areas. The first one is state and territory allocation. What that looks like is, capability and capacity building projects. And I will have all of our website stuff at the end of this. If you'd like to check out those links, to see what kind of options you have to submit for capability and capacity building, please look at that includes mitigation projects as well. And then we also cover management costs. That is 15% of overall cost, can be covered by management costs, we'll pay 15%. It's 100% of the management costs, 15% of what was submitted. Last year we gave out $56 million, to states and territories. They were given up to a million dollars per state and territory.

Tribes can plot apply under a state and territory if they'd like to, that's your first option. If you have adapted or working with a state or territory, and you would like to submit under that state or territory as a sub applicant, and the state or territory submit those the applicants are willing you can do that at any time. I recommend that if for example, if you would want to work with other tribes or other communities potentially in that state, and you're committing a project related to that. If you don't want to be the applicant, and you'd rather be the sub applicant, and you have a strong relationship with the state, I'd recommend that. The one caveat I would say though, is one or two submitting against all other city counties, all the sub applicants within that jurisdiction as well as you would also need to make sure that they're willing to prioritize submitting yours as well. Their deadlines for states and territories, may be a little sooner than our end of January deadline.

They often need you to submit prior to that. They are able to submit everything into our system called FEMA Go, for that state and territory allocations. Next is tribal set-aside, which is a really great option for a lot of people on the screen. I can't see you, but I'm envisioning you on the other side. That tribal set-aside this year was $1 million per tribe. And that is the same as state and territory allocations. But the difference is, the tribe applies. And you do have to be a federally recognized tribe. But same thing as the state and territory allocations capability, capacity building projects, mitigation projects, and as long as you're submitting as your own tribe, that will increase obviously next year, I'm hoping that anybody who's representing a tribe, submits to this tribal set-aside next year, because those are really great quick wins. As far as you're not competing against other tribes really, as long as you're applying by the deadline and meeting the parameters of applying, you're able to secure that funding. 

That's the easiest way to secure funding and not have to compete against other sub applicants potentially. Next is our national competition. That's for usually our larger mitigation projects. Because there is competition, there is a lot more funding. Last year, there was $919 million, that's primarily mitigation projects, that also we do cover management costs, and that's up to 15%. Which breaks down if you submit under a state, that would be 10% would go up to the state for management costs, and 5% will go to you as a sub applicant. But if you submit as a tribe yourself as a federally recognized tribe, then you would get up to 15% for management costs. Additional thing to know about national competition, competing with other projects. But the great thing about it is we are increasing our funding next year. And there are projects that you can combine resources. If you would like to combine with other jurisdictions, that's something they can do to submit larger projects. 

One of the things I like to say when trying to go for national competition, is that please really look at our criteria. There's two types of criteria. We have a qualitative criteria and a technical criteria. Really looking at those we have two just quick pagers that show you how to maximize that, really look at that when you're submitting. One of those is population impacted. If you're able to show for example, energy resilience, you're able to show that you all have a large piece of energy resilience and that the amount of population impacted would be significantly benefited by that. That's something that's going to give you a higher ranking. Next slide. I've talked about funding, that's funding, direct technical assistance. Overall, it's helping with program project design. And it's also helping with communities who need help getting access to the BRIC funding or other federal funding for hazard mitigation. This is based out of something that was established in the beginning of the BRIC program. 

Last year, we were able to choose a community and this year we chose 20 communities, recently May 18th and we also will be posting and being able to choose even more communities in our next posting, and that should be around August. And we'll post in August and probably the cycle would be very similar to previous years in the September to January cycle. Next slide. Is everybody still there? Okay, thank you. These are our current communities. The green is the communities the eight that we chose the first year. And then the 20 that were recently selected, are in blue. They represent all types of FEMA regions. And we try to make it equitable across the board, you'll see there's a lot of tribes within this section. I know it's a really cool slide and I wish I could look at it forever. But I want to give time to answer questions. Let's go to the next slide. It will be in the slides for you too, if you want to see it later. 

It's also on our website and there's summaries of all the communities as well. DTA, how does it work or direct technical assistance? We work with communities to meet them where they're at, and try to provide planning support to figure out where they need help to get to their mitigation projects. Some communities have a hazard, they know that this is affecting them, they want to get to energy resilience. And they know that storms potentially affect their energy supply during disasters. How did they get there? And some are further along, some of them have applied for other funding, some of them have already worked on grants already, and maybe haven't been successful. We work on also application systems and grant management, grant development, those kinds of skills and just connecting with subject matter experts. Sometimes in communities, you don't have the subject matter expertise to look at tribal utility authority. 

Maybe you don't have someone to show you how to do FEMA grant, someone how to look at tribal sovereignty in relation to the utilities, maybe you just need someone to help pull all those things together. That's where we come in, to be able to help pull things together, to be able to accomplish what your community wants. And you'll see the wheel on the right-hand side, that map out what direct technical assistance looks like. Basically, we select communities, we do a kickoff, we work with them to devise a plan. And then we signed an MOU saying, hey, we want to do this by this date, this is what we're trying to accomplish together. And then we work on that. And we do regular engagements to make sure that the people that you're working with are one, the right fit for y'all and have the right resources to be able to accomplish your goal. Next slide. Eligible, I mentioned this a little bit before for direct technical assistance. 

That's all-tribal nations are recognized, non-tribal recognized cities, towns, counties, special government districts. And really the three kind of main areas that we're looking at assessing with our capability and capacity building for mitigation, and then also increasing resilience to natural hazards, and identifying projects to move forward and complete the goals that your community wants to do. Just to note, for direct technical assistance, you do not have to apply for BRICs or FEMA application, either after doing direct technical assistance, or before you can apply for direct technical assistance anytime the window is open. And you do not need a local hazard mitigation plan. It is required to apply for direct national competition funding. And that's one of the things that we can work with for draft technical communities, is that we work with them to work on their local hazard mitigation plan, as well as potentially to maximize points for BRIC.

Sometimes building codes are needed, or adopting building codes or additionally, application development. All of those things we can work on to maximize the amount of potential points and potential success that you'll have for buying separate program things. Next slide. I talked a little bit about the activities just now but really looking at needs and plans that you have, looking at what kind of stakeholders you have and bringing those together, looking at available grant opportunities within FEMA, and then outside as well. And then also moving forward, the community towards resilience objectives, and increasing access to subject matter expertise. And also training, assisting, needed or wanted. So, that's activities. Next slide. These are child examples of technical assistance types that we're providing right now. This is the main buckets where a lot of what we do falls into, one of the main things we get asked for is mitigation planning support.

And benefit cost analysis support, which is a tool that you use to be able to justify the cost of the grant. And we look at those and we have experts who can help with developing that, so that your potential applications to or stop applications going to FEMA is set up for success. Next slide. I'm nearing the very end. And I'm excited to see if anybody has any questions. These are all the different programs support materials we have. For the BRIC programs, I've had the chance to develop many of these thankfully. And one you'll see is on direct technical assistance, we also have to transition to a webpage. And we're trying to transition all that content so it's easily searchable. But you'll see that when I talked about capability and capacity building, that includes building code activities, mitigation planning activities, partnership activities, and project scoping, which is looking at a project to see what are the needs that you need for it.

And those are just tools for capability and capacity building under the tribal set-aside, if you'd like to submit a recap of the set application or application for that, we have an application tips one, which is really great. We also have the mitigation action portfolio, we call it the map as well. It has pictures of different projects, as well as just examples of what they submitted and examples of what you can submit as well. We also have a tribal specific resource. And that gives you an idea of how you could submit in different ways to maximize your benefit. And because tribes have a lot of great options when it comes to BRIC. I also mentioned the qualitative criteria and the technical criteria. Those are the two areas that I mentioned I was like looking into before submitting for BRIC, all these resources are the ones from this last cycle. And we'll be updating them and posting them in August. But they're not going to change, they will change but not super significantly. 

Looking at them ahead of time could be useful as far as when you're looking at developing or submitting, if you're interested in submitting to the BRIC program, getting an idea of what was being involved. Next slide. If you want to submit, I encourage you to submit to the BRIC program and the technical assistance opportunity or the grant opportunities there. But also encourage you, if you would like technical assistance, you can get both. You can submit to both and be able to get assistance for something that you didn't get funding for. Maybe you applied for funding for one thing, but you're wanting technical assistance for another thing. That's okay. We will again be posting in August of this year, how to apply. It's very simple, we don't ask for a lot of information. And we are moving from just an email format, to just filling out a form on our website. That will be posted at that time, links on this webpage. 

They'll also be other opportunities and resources available there if you'd like to learn about other communities that I shared here. Next slide. These are just some more help lines and tools, in case you're committing to the BRIC program. Next slide, should be done. Thank you.

>>James Jensen: Thanks so much, Alison. Wonderful presentation, a lot of stuff in there. Just the reminder there is a recording of this and it will be available on our website, Alison's tech so much in here, I find that it might be valuable to listen to second time to learn everything. With that said, we have one more presentation, then we'll go to a short question answer. Lizana, let's get your slides up and then you can close out.

>>Lizana Pierce:  Thank you James, and I just wanted to take a few minutes to give you a little information on DOEs Office of Indian Energy offerings and some other funding opportunities that might be of interest. Next slide, please. As I said in the introduction, the Office of Indian Energy does offer financial assistance typically through competitive grants, technical assistance offered at no charge to Indian tribes and tribal entities, and education capacity building. Next slide, please. Since 2010, the DOEs Office of Indian energy has invested over 114 million in more than 200 tribal energy projects across the contiguous 48 States and Alaska. And these projects are valued at $200 million, because they were leveraged by cost share as well. Through these grants, the Office Indian Energy is continuing its efforts in partnership with native communities to maximize deployment of clean energy solutions for the benefit of American Indians and Alaska Natives. 

The deployment of energy projects in these communities has had some really tangible impacts, as you heard from Daniel at Bad River earlier in the webinar. And by the way, this slide shows just a screenshot of our interactive project database that can be found on the Office of Indian Energy website. Next slide, please. In addition to those investments, the office announced in March another 14 projects and 13 tribal communities have invested an additional $9 million. And that $9 million is expected to result in and effect 1200 tribal buildings and create $48.5 million in energy savings over the life of those systems. Next slide, please. I would say that if you're interested in hearing more case studies of tribes, and their energy and resilience projects across the nation to join us for our annual program review is typically held in November, in the suburb of Denver, Colorado. 

And you get to hear directly from tribes, it's truly a unique opportunity to see what tracks you're doing across the nation. Next slide, please. I also wanted to bring to your attention some upcoming opportunities through DOEs Office of Indian Energy. Earlier this month, we issued a notice of intent that we're going to release a $20 million funding opportunity announcement this summer, for the deployment of energy infrastructure on tribal lands. Through this plan the Office of Indian Energy intends to solicit applications from Indian tribes including Alaska Native, regional corps and village corps, inter- tribal organizations and tribal energy development organizations to start clean energy generating systems and or energy efficiency measures to tribal buildings. To play community scale, clean energy generating systems, or community scale energy storage on tribal lands, or to install integrated energy systems for autonomous operations. 

Microgrids if you will, to power single or multiple essential tribal buildings during an emergency situation or for tribal community resilience. Stay tuned on that. And if you're interested, you can subscribe to our email newsletter on the main page of our website to receive email notifications of these and other funding opportunities. That email address is energy.gov/indianenergy. Next slide, please. Just yesterday, we announced another Notice of Intent. We intend to issue a $15 million funding opportunity announcement this summer to score powering unelectrified tribal buildings. And again, you can find the link to the full Notice of Intent on our website, as well so stay tuned for more information on both of those. And if you'd like to be notified, please join or consider joining our email newsletter. Next slide, please. Also yesterday, the White House issued the bipartisan infrastructure and law tribal playbook.

Which is intended to be a roadmap for delivering opportunity investments in Indian country. The playbook has two specific goals. And it's organized in two parts. First, identifying programs and sources of funds. Specific set asides for tribal communities under the law, and providing a guide to tribal eligibility for other programs after the bill. The link is really low, so the easiest way is just to search on tribal playbook and it should pop right up. Another recent bipartisan infrastructure law or bill opportunity is a grid hardening State Tribal formula grant program. They did issue a request for information. Unfortunately, the deadline for that to provide input on the structure of the $2.3 billion formula grant program is tomorrow, however, information is on our website if you do want to look at that or provide input. I would say that once this is achieved it will be a terrific opportunity for tribes to obtain funds for strengthening and modernizing their power grid.

Against wildfires, extreme weather and other natural disasters, exacerbated by climate crisis. DOE also has a bill bipartisan infrastructure law webpage with opportunities through DOE that could be found at energy.gov/bill. And I think that will get you there, there's a whole bunch else. But if you sign up to receive email updates on that homepage, you will get notified of other bill opportunities through the Department of Energy. There's also a $7 million opportunity for the electric school bus rebate program for underserved communities through EPA, you can find that through the Office of Indian Energy current funding opportunities webpage. Another resource for identifying funding opportunities, besides the current funding opportunities webpage on our site, or signing up for our email newsletter, is the Interagency Working Group on Coal Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization funding, for clearinghouse. 

Now, this is coal power plant communities but they do have terrific, pretty inclusive, it looks to me a website clearinghouse of funding opportunities. You can sort by tribe, or other entities, whether it be bill funding, or annual appropriation funding or whatever. It's a great resource. Next slide, please. I hope this was helpful. It's a historic opportunity for Indian country through the bipartisan infrastructure law, there's a lot of funds out there, as well as increased regular appropriations on programs, such as the Office of Indian Energy. And there are many more opportunities coming out that we will try to get out through our newsletter and post on our website. And our colleagues at the other agencies a couple of which you've heard from today. Thank you, and I think we have some time for questions. 

>>James Jensen: Yes, we do. Thanks so much Lizana for summarizing the opportunities that are out there outside of what was presented on today. And seems like yeah, there's a plethora of opportunities here in the near term, good that our attendees are getting prepared for it. I'll jump into the questions here. And we likely will have time for all of them. If others have questions out there, please do submit them, and we should get to them. And the first question is a general question that was submitted early on. Parts of it have been answered certainly. But I'm going to pose it anyways because it's a good summary opportunity for our presenters. And opened up to everybody kind of all of our panelists, but how do small and needy tribes as designated by the BIA with no technical expertise on energy get started? This person in particular is from Alaska, but can you guys just expand briefly on how tribes can start working on their resilience to program.

>>Lizana Pierce: I'll jump in there, it's Lizana. I'd say there's a wealth of technical assistance, for strategic planning to get you started. Or even if you're further along in your project development. As you heard earlier there's TA through FEMA, we have TA VIAs Division of Energy and mineral has technical assistance as well. I think I would recommend maybe, for us to go to the website, you submit the little email with questions. And we'll call you have a dialogue and see, what resources we can bring to bear. That would be my recommendation is to reach out and to the variety of agencies that offer technical assistance as a start. There's also a wealth of information on a number of agency websites as well. Climate resiliency planning, information on resource availabilities. We have the tribal energy Atlas, which you can use for some analysis as well. 

>>Alison Griner:  Lizana, that was my second technical system. 

>>James Jensen: Great. And then that's certainly to your program, as well as Indian Energy Office also has taken off. There's two great existing Technical Assistance Program. Rachael, do you have anything you want to add?

>>Rachael Novak: Yeah, I just put in the link in the chat also building to our RBI DEMD technical assistance page. We also have those tribal climate resilience liaisons. And they're great to bounce ideas off of them, could set up time to think through some options. Again though, it's less for energy deployment so much, because they're more general. And often, then we're focused on natural resources, but they could help think through impacts on your energy resources. But if it's more about specifically trying to develop energy infrastructure feasibility studies, and DEMD would definitely be the best for the TA there.

>>James Jensen: Excellent. Thanks, Rachel, and others. Kind of a good follow up to your response there Rachel, is someone's asking how to find the contact information for the technical assistance days on and related question was also find out the fact sheet. 

>>Rachael Novak: Yeah, for tribal climate resilience liaisons, I can put the link in the chat, but you can navigate to it from there as well. We have a section that focuses on regional contacts. I will put that in the chat to just pull it up. And it'll be there in a second, you just select your region. And it'll bring the main BIA POC and the cast tribal liaison now corresponding to that page I had where I had all their photos up in the regency circle. I'll put
that in there right now. In the chat, that is.

>>James Jensen: Excellent. Thanks, Rachel. Question here for Alison. Could you provide some examples of eligible climate mitigation projects under BRIC? Could they include energy efficiency and renewable energy projects?

>>Alison Griner:  Yeah, definitely. We have microgrid projects that were selected first year and second year well, not functional composition yet, but yeah, there's also in technical systems, we're working on a couple energy resilience projects as well. There's not a rubric, like a hey, you can't do this. It's more of, hey, we want to help you be able to do that. Just tell us how, so if you're looking to put different things together, I encourage that as well. Or to work with several. If you have something that has cascading impacts to other maybe it's a city or county or another tribe. Putting that together too and submitting it is always good, because it shows a strong population impacted, like the area as well. 

>>James Jensen: Thank you. A follow up question on small midi tribes. What if there isn't any match at the tribe 15% match requirements, and it's prohibitive there and waiver processes or any funding opportunity for net?

>>Rachael Novak: Alright, I'll say it after, go ahead. 

>>Alison Griner:  Oh, I was just saying for BRIC, and it's 75 to 25. But if you can demonstrate disadvantaged community status as I mentioned, that goes to 90 10. And that includes in kind match as well. So, especially for technical assistance, we can usually be able to look at income sources for matches as well, it doesn't necessarily have to be funding for BRIC. 

>>Rachael Novak: Yeah, and I'll just follow up with Alison said with on the VA side, our awards this year we're returning back to 638, self-determination contracts and compacts. And our funding can actually be used as a federal match. Because once those self-determination contracts and contracts get to the tribe, they lose their federal character, they still need to see in scope, but those funds could be used as a match to so like if it's a related project you could use that as a match too, that helps. 

>>Lizana Pierce: And its Lizana, I would follow up that there's a tremendous number of funds from a variety of sources where there be HUD OMAP, or BIA, self-governance funds so forth, that within their statutes will allow those funds to be used as cost share, we do try to have a list in our funding opportunity announcements, and the past ones are on the website to refer to. And also, there's a lot of creative ways to look for in kind matches well, as was said earlier. Or state funds, for instance, Alaska's renewable energy funds previously was also a huge match opportunity for the Alaska villages. 

>>James Jensen: A lot of opportunities there. We'll take one last question. And that is directed to Lizana but anyone can chime in as well. And that is, how do tribes figure out what sort of renewable energy options they have available in their area, are there resources to identify? 

>>Lizana Pierce: There's the tribal energy Atlas, which are office co-funded. And that's on our website so you can look at that. And again, submitted technical assistance requests, it's fairly simple. Just go on the website, answer a few questions. I think you could call BIAs Division of Energy and Mineral Development, they have a ton of folks there that will provide technical assistance to do some options analysis. There's a lot of resources for some of those initial steps.

>>James Jensen: Thanks, Lizana. Before we move on does anyone else want to chime in on that last question? All right, and I'll assume no. With that, thanks everybody for your participation today. We want to thank our panelists for their excellent presentations and expertise. To our audience, we are very interested in your suggestions on how to strengthen the value of these webinars. Please do send us your feedback. On the final slide here, we're going to bring up the remaining webinars of the 2022 series. The next webinar is titled Organizing for the Transition to a Cleaner and More Sustainable Energy Future. It will be held on July 13th, of this year at 11am. Mountain Time. And we hope you can join us for that. This concludes our webinar for today. Thank you again for your interest in attendance and we look forward to you joining us for future webinars. Good day.

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