Moderator:                 The broadcast is now starting. All attendees are in listen-only mode.

Sean Esterly:              Good morning or good afternoon to everyone wherever you may be, and welcome to the sixth webinar of the 2017 Department of Energy Tribal Energy Webinar series titled "Effective Tribal Project Partnerships." My name is Sean Esterly and I'll be today's webinar chair, filling in for Randy Manion, the manager of the Western Area Power Administration's Renewable Resource program.

                                    And just want to go over some of the event details for today. Today's webinar is being recorded for future listening and will be made available on DOE's Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs website along with the copies of today's presentation. And that's usually available in about one week after the broadcast. Everyone will also receive a post-webinar e-mail with that link to the page where the slide and the recording will be located. And because we're recording this webinar all attendee phones have been muted to help eliminate any background noise. And we will answer your written questions at the end of the presentation during the Q&A session. And we do encourage you to submit questions at any point during the webinar, so if you have a question for the panelists you'll just go ahead and click on the question button located in the webinar control box on your screen and type in and submit your questions there and we receive those for later. And we'll try to keep the webinar to no longer than two hours.

                                    So with that I'd like to get started with some opening remarks from Lizana Pierce. And Ms. Pierce is a Senior Engineer and the Deployment Supervisor in the Office of Indian Energy Policies and Programs, duty stationed in Golden, Colorado. And Lizana is responsible for managing the technical system services, implementing national funding and financing programs, and also administering the results of tribal energy project grants and agreements. She has more than 20 years of experience in project development and management and has been assisting tribes in developing their energy resources for the last 18 years. She holds a Bachelors of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado State University and pursued a Masters in Business Administration through the University of Northern Colorado.

                                    And so with that, Lizana, I'll turn things over to you.

Lizana Pierce:            Thank you, Sean, and hello, everyone. I join Sean in welcoming you to the sixth webinar of the 2017 series. This webinar series is sponsored by two US Department of Energy organizations: the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, and the Western Area Power Administration. The Office of Indian Energy directs, fosters, coordinates, and implements energy planning, education, management, and programs that assist tribes with energy development, capacity-building, energy infrastructure, energy costs, and electrification of Indian lands and homes. To provide this assistance our deployment program works within Department of Energy across government agencies and with Indian tribes and organizations to help Indian tribes and Alaskan Native villages overcome the barriers to energy development.

                                    Our deployment program takes a three-pronged approach consisting of financial assistance, technical assistance, and education and capacity-building. And this webinar series is just one example of our education and capacity-building efforts. Specifically the series, part of the Office of Indian Energy's efforts to support fiscally responsible energy business and economic development decision-making and information-sharing among tribes, 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, a couple of which you'll hear from today, and to identify business strategies tribes can use to expand their energy options and develop sustainable local economies.

                                    Today's webinar, Effective Tribal Project Partnerships, will start with a presentation focusing on energy project financial partnerships, their business structure options, and how those affect project financing and development. That presentation will be followed by a couple of very specific case studies that showcase a variety of ongoing successful tribal project partnerships. We hope this webinar series is useful and welcome your feedback, so please let us know if there's ways we can make it better.

                                    I also want to take this opportunity to remind you that there are three funding opportunities through the Department of Interior. The first is due August 12th and it is soliciting proposals for funding for the Native American Business Development Institute Feasibility program. The second is due September 25th, which is the Energy and Mineral Resource Assessment. And the third is due October 9th, which is for the development of organizations to build tribal capacity. So please take a look at those. You can find those on our website at www.energy.gov/IndianEnergy. And with that I'll turn it back over to Sean.

Sean Esterly:              Great. Thank you very much, Lizana. And now we want to present the agenda for today's webinar. We do have four great speakers lined up for you. First is going to be John Clancy, then Jana Ganion, John Flores, and followed by Paul Cleary. Just wanted to give some brief introductions for our panelists.

                                    John Clancy is a shareholder at the law firm of Godfrey & Kahn and works out of Madison, Wisconsin. John has had the privilege of working with numerous tribes on environmental and energy matters, and John's environmental work with the tribes primarily relates to work to protect reservations from significant environmental impact, and that has included working with the tribes in obtaining treatment at state status with respect to air and water and Class One air designation, as well as working to raise concerns and potential opposition to environmentally impactful projects that could cause significant grand and surface water and/or air pollution on reservations. John's energy work with tribes has included helping them to secure federal and other funds for projects and helping them to develop those projects, including working to establish partnerships with taxable entities that can allow for tribes to take advantage of investment tax credits and other tax and financing incentives for the development of energy projects.

                                    Following Mr. Clancy we will hear from Jana Ganion. And as Sustainability Director for the Blue Lake Rancheria, Jane has established the tribe strategy for community resilience and rapid transition to zero carbon energy. In fulfilling the zero carbon strategy Jana has managed over $15 million in projects in energy efficiency, distribution grid optimization, solar PV power, advanced energy storage, green transportation and fuel, supply chain efficiency, building efficiency, and a low carbon community scale micro-grid. As a result of this work the tribe has reduced energy costs by about $300,000.00 per year and increased employment by 10-percent. As an appointee to the US Department of Energy's Indian Country Energy and Infrastructure Working Group and the State of California's Integrated Climate Adaptation and Resilience Technical Advisory Committee, Jana works with other governments and stakeholders at the tribal, federal, state, and local levels on zero carbon energy and sustainability policies, programs, and projects.

                                    And then following Ms. Ganion we will have a joint presentation with two speakers, John Flores and Paul Cleary. John Flores is the Director of the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians Environment Department and Manager for the San Pasqual Domestic Water Department. John has worked in Indian country for over nine years on tribal environmental water and wastewater issues, ranging from water quality, water quantity, and renewable energy. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Political Science and US History from the University of California, Berkeley. He's also received his GIS Certification from Mesa Junior College in San Diego.

                                    And joining Mr. Flores during the presentation is Paul Cleary. Paul is the Executive Director of Grid Alternatives, San Diego, a non-profit organization that trains and leads teams of community volunteers to install solar electric systems for families with limited resources. Paul joined the organization in 2008 to open the San Diego office, which has served nearly 900 families to date. Paul's non-profit experience began in the early 1990s, when he helped evaluate a rural electrification project in Guatemala. And after receiving a Masters Degree in International Relations from UC San Diego, Paul worked in public health along the US-Mexico border. Human trafficking prevention, fundraising for an anthropology museum, and his most challenging position yet, a short stint as a stay-at-home father.

                                    And so with that now I'd like to turn things over to John for his presentation. John, give me just one second to pull up your slides.

                                    All right, John, you should be able to see your slides now and floor is now yours.

John Clancy:              Great. Thank you very much, Sean. As Sean mentioned, my name is John Clancy. I'm an attorney that has been fortunate enough to work with a number of tribes on both energy and environmental matters. And with respect to energy matters, I've been fortunate to be able to work up with tribes on projects mostly in the renewable energy space, I guess you'd say and more recently mostly with back to solar because of the dropping price of solar, but also wind and biomass and biogas projects, most of which have involved partnerships with some sort of investors, and mostly to take advantage of the investment tax credit or production tax credit that is available for certain types of renewable energy.

                                    And this is a matter of background. I won't go into great detail, but this is a go-forward, but historically there has been either production tax credits or investment tax credits for a wide variety of renewable and related energy facilities. That is kind of narrowed down now based on, you know, as time goes by and laws sunset, to really just solar and wind. So those are the two primary technologies that receive beneficial tax credits, and so I'll focus a little bit more on those. And especially in light of the _____ to work by a number of tribes, especially in the solar area, but also in the wind area to pursue projects.

                                    One more thing as a bit of a background is that this is going to focus on taking advantage of the tax credits as well as grants and other incentives that could be received by tribes throughout partnership with an investor. There could also be other reasons for having these partnerships and they may make sense even without tax credits, but tax credits tend to be the biggest driver for bringing the two together, you know, tribes and tribal entities, which are non-taxable, with taxable folks to try to take advantage of these tax incentives.

                                    So if you go to the next slide, Sean, that would be great.

                                    So, you know, as we were thinking about how tribes pursue projects, you know, oftentimes the biggest issue with projects is financing them, frankly. And fortunately there are a number of and have been a number of federal, state, and other incentives for energy-type projects that are very important to pursue, I think, and also to pursue kind of first, to try to make sure that you're not leaving those incentives on the table as you're thinking about doing a partnership or potentially working together with an investor.

                                    I just listed out some of the incentives that I think are real important to be aware of. You know, recently the Department of Energy announced its tribal energy grants for renewable energy and energy efficiency. Those are very valuable grants or projects. They typically pay for half of the cost of the project, or another way is saying they require 50-percent non-federal cost share. And those are ones where it's probably very important to think about is there an opportunity to bring in a tax investor to help pay for that remaining amount. Tribes we've worked with have also oftentimes thought about and have sought and obtained Indian community development block grants through HUD, which can be used for solar as well as energy efficiency as well as other energy projects potentially.

                                    There's also—folks are going to be aware of these too, but the USDA REAP grants for both energy efficiency and renewable energy. One important point there is that the REAP grants, you know, are available typically for rural areas, which most tribes tend to fall into. But then secondly for basically business entities as opposed to governmental entities, and so they actually work well within the structures we'll talk about because they focus on being given—they're basically given out to entities that qualify as small businesses, and tribes can set up businesses and set up businesses that can potentially, you know, monetize the tax credits that would take advantage of both the REAP funding and the tax credits.

                                    There's been also the Department of Interior IEED Grants, the Indian Energy and Economic Development Grants, which actually I think Lizana noted at the beginning of the call. I think they're due in September, which can be used for planning and feasibility studies and can be very important for a larger solar or wind project or other project to get them off the ground. And it could actually be potentially contributed the value of those grants into the LLC or into the partnership, let's say, that involves the investor, where the tribe would get credit for that. So it's important to be thinking about, you know, all the incentives that you get, even pre-development incentives, and how those can fit into the partnership.

                                    And there's also—it varies a lot by state, but several states have very good programs for grants and incentives. I'm in Wisconsin here; our program is called Focus on Energy, which can be very valuable. But in working with tribes in other states I get kind of jealous sometimes, if you're in California or New York or other locations, oftentimes there's better programs to take advantage of.

                                    And then finally sometimes there's direct utility funding. Sometimes the grants are from the utilities as opposed to from the state. But all those things I think are very important to be aware of and thinking about first when you're putting together a project. Actually, maybe step back one second. The key thing is that you have a project that makes sense to begin with, even without the grant, that you're producing—you know, you're in an area that can produce the type of energy you're trying to produce and it works well in feeding either your tribal buildings for resale offset or you have a good situation set up to sell the energy in some manner that produces good revenue and makes sense for the tribe. But then next it makes sense for me to be thinking about the grants and incentives because those are key to bringing down the cost of the projects.

                                    But then secondly, you know, typically there's typically grants don't cover everything, so that's where I think it becomes important to think about "How do we finish this project? How do we make it work?" For instance, the REAP grants are 25-percent grants, so you need to fill out a fair amount of the project still. I mentioned the DOE grants are typically 50-percent grants. So it's important to think about how do we finish our projects, and I think that's where this really comes in with the partnerships and the financing.

                                    I guess, Sean, could you go to the next slide then?

                                    Then so, you know, basically one thing I want to refer to is because I'm guessing some of the folks in the call have been exposed to this and some have not, but I think it's important to think about this because of the similar structure, that if your tribe has worked on any low-income housing tax credit projects, they use basically the same partnership style structure and have a relatively similar tax credit involved in the sense that there's low-income housing tax credits that can be monetized or value can be taken from them as long as you bring a tax investor into the project.

                                    And basically, you know, similar arrangements can be put together for both wind and solar projects, so I'll refer sometimes to the low-income housing tax credits not because this webinar is about that, but because I think a fair amount of tribes have been exposed to those. They also create a little bit of fear in folks, I think, in general, both tribal and non-tribal, because they tend to be very complex. There are complexities I think with tax credits and energy projects, but those are typically driven more by the complexity of the energy project than the complexity of the tax credit, and I'll talk about that a little bit as we go forward.

                                    The next slide please, Sean.

                                    And so, you know, the big issue with tax credits in Indian country is that, again, I think typically in 99-percent of the situations tribes and tribal entities don't pay income tax. So one question that usually comes up is why are income tax credits even relevant to tribes when they don't pay taxes? Well, the big issue here is how do we make them work for tribes, and the way you typically do that is to have the tribe, or I say TDHE, you know, the Tribe Designated Housing Entity, if it's for housing, like for instance solar for housing or again, the idea of a low-income housing tax credit project, they typically form a partnership with an investor that can use the tax credits and where they're planned to be together for a period of time. Typically it's at least the period of time that's required by the tax law, and may go on beyond that as needed to kind of pay off the financing and make sure everybody is—all their financial issues are addressed.

                                    And also what typically happens is that you want to have the investor for tax purposes, not necessarily in terms of kind of in my mind real purposes in terms of how the money actually flows, but for tax purposes, especially, to be a very large percentage ownership of the partnership. Typically 99-percent, and again, low-income housing tax credit projects sometimes go to 99.9, but I think there's a little less clarity on that in the energy context. But regardless, the idea is to have them be, you know, the kind of super-majority owner initially, but just so that we can monetize that percentage of the tax credits and then also to allow the investor to receive the depreciation tax deductions to the extent possible as well.

                                    And the next slide, please.

                                    And so before we go forward I want to make sure that we're on the same page of what I mean when I say different terms, these business terms. A tax credit, you know, is actually, well, it's very valuable because it's a dollar-for-dollar credit against income taxes that would otherwise be due by the tax investors. So if they get a $300,000.00 tax credit on a $1 million project under a 30-percent investment tax credit for solar, for instance, it's like them getting $300,000.00, so it has real real value to them and it should be thought that way by the tribe too in terms of sharing that value with the tribe.

                                    So and then energy equipment, especially solar, typically has what they consider a rapid or an accelerated depreciation schedule. For solar it's typically 5.5 years. And depreciation is really the right by the investor to deduct the capital costs over time from taxable income. So they get to write off, and there's bonus appreciation as well, so they can write off typically over half of the project costs or depreciation in the first year and then the remainder throughout the next—to get to the 5 to 5.5 year timeframe for solar, for example. That's an important issue. One thing is that that may be addressed, there's been hints of that in terms of tax reform, to perhaps—and I think the congressional Republicans have been proposing the idea of having the media expensing, which would then make depreciation more valuable, because you get investors who get the deductions kind of right away in the first year. So we'll have to see how that goes.

                                    But one thing about depreciation though, too, is that typically, at least and this really defines—I'm not a tax attorney; I work with tax attorneys and tax accountants on these projects, but typically the investor can—will be told by his accountant basically, or his tax attorney, that that it can only take depreciation on the money that it puts in itself as opposed to like the grant money that might come from a tribe. So the depreciation may be limited that way, but it still typically has a lot of value because you're still talking about a good chunk of depreciation on projects and value that way.

                                    The last thing is just the limited liability company. That's really the partnership we're talking about. Every state has typically a limited liability company law that allows for the allocation of ownership interests for tax purposes for profits and losses. So you can have a partnership setup where the investors consider the 99-percent owner, for instance, but then you can also have money flows within that partnership that may not be that 99-percent of the money actually goes to the investor; it might be a lesser percentage than that, so

                                    And the next slide please, Sean.

                                    So under these approaches basically the investor receives a tax benefit, but the benefit to the tribe is receiving, you know, investors' cash to help build the project. And their cash may likely be more than the value of the tax credits and the amount that they would provide and the credit that the investor provides for the value of the tax credit, you know, is subject to negotiation. We worked on transactions where the investors then wanted to give the full value of the tax credits to the tribe, which I think is fantastic. There's other situations, though, where they want to keep more to themselves. I think that's partially dependent upon the role of the investor, do they have other roles in the project, is the project valuable to them besides just receiving the tax credits and the depreciation benefits.

                                    And so basically the idea is it has to work out, the value of the tax credits and depreciation have to be big enough so that both the investor and the tribe benefit and that therefore makes sense to go through the process of being partners together. But typically it adds a lot of value mostly 'cause of this—in the solar context at least, but 30-percent investment tax credit.

                                    So next slide, please.

                                    Then basically this is a slide that sets up the different kinds of tax credits. They vary and I'll just go through them briefly. Next slide, please.

                                    So I mentioned before, when I was in tax credits, I have this slide mostly so that folks that have been exposed to them know—can see the differences between those and the investment tax credit and the production tax credit. Those are typically they're incredibly valuable because they can deliver say the bottom 70-percent or more of the total development cost of the project. So they're very, very valuable, but they're also very competitive in their run-through state administer programs, so you have state regulatory oversight for typically 15 years. So it's a very—they're much more complex, they're very valuable, but complex, and if you talk to the housing folks within tribal organizations they'll probably tell you that they're worth a lot, but they're kind of a pain.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So there's also a 4-percent investment tax credit for low-income housing tax credits as well. It's less complex. You typically don't have to apply for that; you just have to apply for and receive multi-family housing bonds. But they're worthless. You know, this mentions here it delivers 30-percent-plus of the project development cost typically. It's also mentioned that they can be combined with solar investment tax credits potentially for low-income housing tax credits that include solar a little bit later on. So that's another reason why I mentioned the low-income housing tax credits, because if you're doing low-income housing tax credit projects and you want solar to be included, there could be more value from the tax credits for solar installations.

                                    So next slide please.

                                    So then we get to the investment tax credit, and really here the investment tax credit or the production tax credit, because the production tax credit is a production tax credit for wind as well, in addition to the investment tax credit. The bottom line is that there is no competitive process for them; you don't work through the state to get them to an application and there's no state oversight. And for solar at least, they can deliver up to 30-percent of the total project development costs, so they're valuable, not quite like a low-income housing tax credit, the 90-percent low-income housing tax credit, but they are really valuable and can help fill in, especially gaps where you have some money perhaps from the tribe, perhaps from grants, but you still have a big gap to fill on projects.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So there's two tax credits I want to just note. There's a solar ITC, or investment tax credit, that's available for solar PV, you know, so electric as well as solar thermal. And the key is, you know, for tribes I think it's to try to use the structure to make it feel like a grant, you know, that we get—we can up to 30-percent of the cost of development essentially paid off. And you can do that through an LLC structure, which I'll talk about later on, at least potentially, depending on what the tax investors are willing to provide.

                                    There is a phase-out for these, though, too, I want to make sure everybody is aware of, that if you begin construction after 2019 it goes down to 26-percent for beginning instructions in 2020 and 23-percent if you began in '20-'21 and then 10-percent thereafter. So I mean folks that are looking at this, they probably know that solar has become more and more reasonable in price, and it may go down in the future, but eventually this tax credit may go away, likely go away, and then it will probably be more expensive again, because you won't have this tax credit available. So it's important to be thinking about these projects in term of timing I think too.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So there's also a wind production and a wind investment tax credit, and really the alternative, you can get one or the other, but not both. And those were extended out through 2019, but they began phasing out actually beginning this year. So the full value of the production tax credit for wind is 2.3 centers per kilowatt hour over ten years, so it's a really big adder to the value of the energy being produced and can make products work well. But as you see, it steps down; this year it's 80-percent of that, next year, the beginning of the project next year it's—so at the beginning of the project this year it would be 80-percent of that. If you have some argument that you could make that you began it last year you may be able to get the full 2.3 cents. And then if you begin the project in 2018 it would drop down to 60-percent of the 2.3 cents and then 40-percent for 2019. So if you're thinking about wind and you're thinking about tax credits, it's probably important to think about this timing issue.

                                    There's a similar bill—there's similar issues I guess with the investment tax credit. So the tax credit for wind began as a production tax credit and then later on they allowed it to be taken in the alternative as an investment tax credit. And it basically was the full 30-percent, like solar, but it's gone down already. So if you began your project just this year it would be a 24-percent, and then if you began it next year it would be 18-percent and then 12-percent in 2019. And there's rules regarding what you need to do to qualify for beginning construction, which is usually either working on site or having specialized work done off-site for equipment, or there's a—_____ call it the ten-percent safe harbor, the ability to—I'm sorry, the five-percent safe harbor. You spend five-percent of the project, you potentially could qualify that way as well. So there's rules that provide for that.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So then if you were using the tax partnerships to pay for a project, you know, I think the way to think it through is potentially paying for a large portion of the project through federal or other grants. So for instance, if you received a DOE grant, if you're fortunate enough to receive one, for instance, for the community scale projects you might've received a $1 million grant on a $2 million project. That would pay for half of the project. And then you could utilize the investment tax credit or potentially the production tax credit to help fund or finance the remainder. Let's say it's a solar project and you've got a tax investor that's going to provide you full value for the tax credit, that might bring the value an extra almost $600,000.00 to the project. And then you might just have a certain amount of payoff, like $400,000.00 or $450,000.00 or whatever for the remainder of the project, which then makes it so it's equivalent to receiving in some ways like almost 80-percent in grant money.

                                    But then you might—then the next step is how do you pay off the remainder of that amount and how do you run this as a business, because it needs to be run as a business for the IRS to respect that the investor's actually involved in a business role. So typically the way that's done is to have a power purchase agreement, which might also be called that, it might also look more like an energy services contract, you know, like an ESCO contract that you might see for energy efficiency savings, maybe it was guaranteed savings. Or in some cases it might be a lease, although a lease typically cannot be used directly with a tribe or other non-taxable entity. There's ways around that though, too, or addressing that.

                                    But basically to fund the rest of the project, so you might then pay off the rest of the project by through essentially your energy savings or through payments that they are less than or perhaps a little bit more than your energy savings during those years to pay off the rest and then eventually buy out the investor and have them go away. Oftentimes these transactions, especially where in the viewing grant, they'll want to make sure this happens, that the tribe has the opportunity to purchase the asset. Typically that's got to be at fair market value, but you could have certain conditions that would lower the fair market value, like for instance the right to require removal. Or perhaps having a PPA go down in price after the tribe has basically paid off its amount and/or for the investor to have the right to sell at a designated price.

                                    But either way I think it's important to remember both of these things. If you're doing a deal with an investor that you're really paying both under the PPA or other, you know, arrangement and buying them out, and you don't want to have basically double pay for that; you want to make sure you understand the total amount of the cost and it makes sense in light of what the investor is providing and what remaining amount is to be paid off on the project.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So as I mentioned before, it is possible, and I don't want to go into too much detail, and this kind of gets complex, but basically if you have a low-income housing tax credit project you can potentially receive or treat—the solar potentially can receive both a 30-percent investment tax credit and half of the value of the low-income housing tax credit that applies. That's why you might be able to get up to 65-percent, you know, tax credit on a solar system and you have to give 9-percent low-income housing tax credits or up to 50-percent if you have a 4-percent low-income housing tax credit. The one twist there is that IRS doesn't let you kind of sell the energy commercially, but you can use it to reduce tenant rent. So if you're doing a low-income housing tax credit project and you're incorporating solar you could incorporate the energy into the rent payment and therefore cover some of the remaining costs in the system that way.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So let's just go through an example, and it kind of shows that typically if there's some kind of a cap on rent based on the tenant's adjusted income and then based on the cost of electricity, the rent might be lower than the amount you'd normally charge to take into account that the utility allowance—here the utility allowance might then instead be incorporated in and you might be able to charge someone extra for the rent, but still save the tenant money by, you know, charging something that might reflect the cost of paying off the remainder of the system after taking into account the grants and the tax credits.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So basically this is, again, just some folks that have thought about low-income housing tax credits and maybe exposed to them, they're very similar structures you're going to have an LLC or in a partnership with an investor. The investor is given an ownership interest so they can claim the credits, so we want to go to 99-percent because of that. And the investor compensates the tribe for the tax credits by providing equity to the project, and then after a period of years the investor may go away.

                                    And then the next slide please.

                                    But the basic difference is that you don't have—there's no state role basically; there's not an application process for the credits. You have an application typically for your grant and stuff like that, but not for the tax credits. And the tax credits are, you know, for low-income housing tax credits it's a 9-percent tax credit, actually it's 9-percent every year for ten years, that's great, but it's over time. Here the investment tax credit is, you know, right away available, and then the investor might be ready to leave after 5 or 6 years instead of 15 years. But there are complexities here still, but I think those complexities I think are more driven by the requirements of the energy situation of, you know, the _____ _____ was working on energy projects, you know, that are relatively complex with all the utility connections and all the interview issues to work through. And then there might be requirements for the grant that make it a little more complex, both in getting them and proceeding. But the complexity on a tax credit _____ _____ because there's no state role and no application for them.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    And then just briefly—I don't have much time left—I'll just briefly note, you know, kind of go through these items briefly, but you'll have them for your materials, just the kind of documents that you might, you know, kind of legal documents or transactional documents would be applicable. One is obviously if you have a federal grant, especially you go through your normal procurement process, which, you know, requires reaching out with us to request for a statement of intent to Indian-owned firms and then, you know, doing an IRP and selecting.

                                    So the next slide please.

                                    You know, and this is the same—this next one, you'll need it for any energy facility, depending on the design _____ contract. The difference here is, though, the contract would be between the LLC and the design-builder or let's say solar installer or installer of the wind. I just know we oftentimes use, you know, you typically use some sort of form contract, but then you'd want to modify it to address if you have grants, federal procurement requirements, and you might also have, you know, contracts and subcontracts, especially opportunities for training and incorporating tribal members as employees or workers on the project or, you know, a labor on the project. Actually you want to make sure your warrantees are good and your, you know, commissioning requirements, stuff like that. But the big thing is the contract is actually between the LLC and the builder.

                                    Next slide please

                                    Then as I mentioned before, you typically would have a power purchase agreement or an energy services agreement or similar agreement, and that's really used, you know, to pay back the remaining amount due to the investor if it's to put money and beyond the investment tax credits. And also it's key because you need to have some kind of agreement to show that the LLC is operating as a business for tax purposes, so the tax credits are good. And it could, you know, if it's selling energy to the tribe it may be able to set prices lower than the amount the tribe is paying now for energy. It may be higher if you're trying to pay it off faster too, but it may be lower as well. And it may be also that you're actually going to _____ _____ to sell energy to others besides the tribe, and then you might have a—the PPA may be with them, like with a utility or a company that's on the reservation.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    Then the PPA might be, you know, it's typically there's form contracts for that, and one of the most commonly used ones is the SEIA form, it's a Solar Energy Industry Association. But if you're using those the key thing to remember about them is that they're form contracts that are typically put together for a company that's going to sell energy to someone who typically has no ownership interest in the structure. So you need to probably modify it so it can meet the grant requirements, but also is written well from the perspective of the tribe, so the tribe is going to treat it well under the contract. For the SEIA form, the exhibit 3, the general terms and conditions, that's actually the meat of the agreement regarding the purchase and sale of the energy. You may also want to have prepayment options or other options to pay different rates at different times, especially if you can get a discount for prepayment of amounts, which sometimes happens as well.

                                    And then you also typically have in there, you know, a clear statement that the LLC owns the property but you likely might have an option to purchase the fair market value for the tribe.

                                    Next slide, please.

                                    And then another key issue is that because the LLC is a separate entity from the tribe you have to kind of document that it has access to the land in order for it to be able to demonstrate to the IRS that it actually owns the asset and therefore the tax credit should go—be able to be received by the investor.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    I'll get to the point on this in the next slide, you'll see. So there are special BIA part 162 leasing regulations for wind and solar and, you know, as most people are aware, BIA, if it's a true lease the BIA needs to approve it, but there is the ability to have permits in other situations where perhaps the BIA does not need to approve it, and we'll try to talk about in a second in terms of different strategies to use.

                                    So next slide please.

                                    So if it is going to be a lease one thing that's important is there is the hard fact that most folks may have by now heard about it, which allows for tribes to be able to kind of avoid the BIA lease approval by adopting their own BIA-approved leasing ordinance, and then the tribe would do the environmental review, which is typically the thing that holds up leasing and that sometimes tribes get frustrated with.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    And so, you know, it basically the HEARTH Act allows, you know, tribal sovereignty to be enhanced by having the tribe make these decisions rather than BIA, and it can reduce costs and delay, especially with BIA approvals, and can also, you know, encourage home ownership and economic development. About 25 tribes have now BIAA-approved HEARTH ordinances, so it's probably important to think about both for energy projects, if you're doing partnerships and then just for housing and other development on the reservation.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    But then there's also a way of potentially if you're going to have a shorter-term PPA especially, because you've paid for the project with a lot of grant money or other money and then also the tax credit value. You can also take advantage of potentially the BIA regulations that allow for shorter-term permits to not require their approval and just require a ten-day BIA review to confirm it's not a lease. And the key thing for that, though, is you have to kind of put something together that works, so you're not granting what they consider a legal interest in the land, which are typically situations where you have a shorter term, let's say you had a five or ten year or seven-year, whatever, permit, especially that, you know, again, if the project's going to be paid off in that period of time and the plan is for the investor to leave, and it's got to be non-possessory, which really is, you know, there's no right of possession or right to limit the _____ the acts of others, which can work pretty well with solar and wind, especially if you I guess need access, especially, or instance, for solar, access to a roof or access to an area, but not necessarily the right to exclude others. And then they've got to be revocable at any time, so that provision is to allow for the tribe to revoke them.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    Then another key thing is the, you know, you have an LLC setup or a partnership setup, so you need to organize it. There's what's called the articles organization typically, and there's an operating agreement and there's a federal employee identification number because of the separate entity, but let's talk about the operating agreement.

                                    So next slide please.

                                    So the operating agreement, you know, is an agreement between the members of the LLC, so let's say for the tribe and then an investor. And it should provide, you know, credit to the tribe for the grant or other funds it brings to the project. So you think credit is provided through what's called a capital contribution. So let's say you made a capital contribution let's say of $1 million of a DOE grant, and then it also is used to kind of figure out or to express how the tax benefits are shared by the investors. So the typical way that's done, at least the ones I've worked on, are by eliminating the amount of money that flows to the investor based on not especially as full contribution of money, but it's contribution money minus some kind of value for the tax credits, and perhaps other tax benefits that they receive.

                                    What we've done typically is have the management of the LLC be done by what's called managers, but then you typically want to have both a tribal manager as well as the investor manager basically. And the tribal manager you want to have control over the project, especially during development, because especially if you're getting federal funds for the project to make sure that you're controlling development of the project.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    Then there could be other key documents that you might have. You might, you know, the LLC is going to be typically the one responsible for maintaining the facility. So there might be a service agreement to maintain it, and how that's handled, services may be provided by the tribe, but perhaps under a service agreement. There may also be a development agreement, perhaps where the tribe receives—is under a development agreement because it's doing the development work on the project and perhaps gives some funds for that.

                                    So also you likely may want to consider wither you want an energy ordinance, so the tribe is then regulating the energy facility as well and making, you know, kind of the tribal council is making decisions on that.

                                    And the next slide please.

                                    And then there's post-project the idea that you'd want to have some kind of recognition that once the buyout occurs that you now own it, you know, the tribe now owns it in full and it's all the tribe's. And then you—at that time if I want to think through do we want to have that in a department of the tribe or do we want to keep it as a separate entity, that kind of stuff, which a lot of times get s into the question of if you're going to have it's such a great tribal utility—energy/utility assets, do you want those directly in the tribe or do you want them as a separate entity owned by the tribe, and that's kind of a policy decision.

                                    I think the next slide is it—that's it then. Yeah, thank you very much.

Sean Esterly:              Great. And thank you, John, very much for the presentation. We'll move on now to our next presenter, Jana Ganion. Jana, just give me one second to get your slides up.

Jana Ganion:              Sure. Can you hear me okay?

Sean Esterly:              Yes, we can. And you should be all set.

Janet Ganion:             Great. And are we on the slide with the agenda?

Sean Esterly:              We're on your cover slide. I can move on to the next one.

Jana Ganion:              Next slide please.

Sean Esterly:              There you go.

Jana Ganion:              Thank you. So thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I'm going to move through my slides pretty quickly so that we can save some ample time for Q&A at the end. I'm going to talk about our energy projects that we've done at Blue Lake Rancheria, basically what we've been able to accomplish through strategic partnerships, and then I'm going to talk a little bit about the partnerships themselves with focusing on just a few of the key partnerships that maybe—that are hopefully of interest to people, that may be somewhat new too.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So a quick sense of place. You should be looking at a little bit fuzzy map, I apologize, of Northern California. The Blue Lake Rancheria is the small tribe located in this far northern Northwestern California rural environment. It's fairly sparsely populated here, we're geographically isolated, as many people listening today probably are in the same logistical position. Our local capacity is somewhat limited and as our tribe is small, the tribal capacity is somewhat limited, which drives our need for strategic partnership.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So just a little bit of background on Blue Lake Rancheria, California. One of the things that I'll say is that in addition to our stats here, we do conduct considerable outreach and try to forge partnerships throughout Indian country in a couple of key ways, one of which is that we sit on the Department of Energy's Office of Indian Energy, the Indian Country Energy and Infrastructure Working Group, and that has been really one of our key strategic partnerships to working with other tribes and learning as fast as we possibly can about energy development in Indian country. It's really been a great give-and-take networking opportunity, and of course we also make recommendations on policy and programs through the Department of Energy, which has strategic value.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So the Blue Lake Rancheria energy vision are based on these pillars here, and we want reduced, levelized, and predictable future costs of energy, and we want to create resilience, basically support for our lifeline inspectors, which are energy, water, food, communication, and transportation and all those are interconnected, and as we all know, they're all supported by power.

                                    And then the third main reason we do it is because we are focused on transitioning to renewable clean zero-carbon energy as fast as possible, certainly for environmental reasons, but also equally important for economic reasons. And we can talk a little bit more about that if people have questions.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So our energy strategy can be broken out into parallel tracks. We always keep our eye on energy efficiency, and some of the partnerships that support that we'll talk about in a little bit. We're moving to clean energy, distributed energy resources to create power on the Rancheria itself for our own use. We are looking at green fuels, electric vehicle infrastructure, biodiesel manufacturing using the waste oil from our commercial kitchen. We are also right now looking at sort of the food energy and water energy nexus and we are doing a couple of projects there. One of the most exciting is that we're developing our own sort of smart water grid to serve our community. The first phase will be for emergency water and the second phase will be for a full community system.

                                    And then our upcoming projects are we were just approved for a microgrid—the new microgrid in addition to the one we already have, which I'll talk about in a minute. For our gas station and convenience stores, many tribes have these really critical infrastructure pieces on tribal lands, and so we're hoping to create an ultra-efficient energy and building efficiency package that includes solar, battery storage, and some software that ties everything together and makes the high-energy uses in those facilities like refrigeration, ultra-efficient. So stay tuned on that; that starts next month.

                                    We're also adding more battery storage for our solar array, which I'll get to in a minute, through partnership with the State of California. And we are looking at our residential housing stock and figuring out a way where we can build out infrastructure to reduce and/or eliminate peoples' power bills. So that's a near-term project that we're looking at too.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So why are we doing all this? We talked a little bit about it in summary, but I wanted to talk about the emergency preparedness piece in detail, which is the second bullet there. We in our area, as many of you listening do as well, have a very tenuous supply of both power and natural gas, and actually trucked in supplies of diesel fuel and other sources of energy that have to be brought in from outside the area. We have significant landslides that often constrain these deliveries, and so when we develop energy strategies on the Rancheria we are always thinking about long-term energy security and emergency preparedness.

                                    One of the things in the picture that you see at the bottom that really woke us up to the need for this is that that picture is of Fukushima tsunami that is coming up the Mad River that the tribe sits alongside. That came all the way across the Pacific, and even though it's only about maybe 12 to 24 inches high there.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    These are the kind of earthquake profiles that we see in our area typically, so we know that we have to be prepared for these kinds of events.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    And even that little Fukushima tsunami did this kind of damage in Crescent City, which is just about an hour and a half north of us, on the coast.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    We also have landslides that take out our arterials. We only have essentially three roads that get to us from anywhere outside of our region. And just this last winter actually all of them were blocked at the same time with landslides at several points during winter. So when we talk about being prepared for these kinds of constraints we are not exaggerating.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So I'll talk a little just briefly about a microgrid design. So our microgrid is a mini electrical grid and in business-as-usual times, when we don't have the emergency and we are connected to the larger grid, we can use our on-site energy generation resources for energy arbitrage, we lower our costs and we ease those demands on the larger grid through greater sort of demand response capability and load shed. In emergencies we can disconnect from the larger grid and we can provide emergency power on site really for as long as we need it, for months at a time, if necessary. And we also have an MOU with the American Red Cross; we are a certified evacuation center. The Rancheria sits about five miles inland, out of the tsunami zone, and so when we have events like those, and we have earthquakes and tsunamis, people do evacuate inland obviously to try to get to higher ground, and oftentimes we're inundated with people in those events. So we need to be prepared for that.

                                    Our microgrid integrates renewable storage and controllable loads within one consolidated system. We built a new 500 kilowatt, half-megawatt solar array, which is fantastically successful and is actually producing about 15 to 20-percent more power than the engineering estimates were at the beginning of the project. We have currently a megawatt hour of battery storage on site, which can power our whole microgrid for at least a few hours just on its own without bringing in any of the other generation. And our microgrid powers about a six-building campus of the tribe from those critical infrastructure: our travel government offices, our casino, the hotel, our event center, and a couple of other administrative outbuildings.

                                    We meet about 40-percent of our annual energy production with zero carbon energy, using the solar and batteries. And we're hoping that this is a replicable model for other tribes and other communities interested in these community scale microgrids that need to be imposed on already built environments.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So now that we've talked about what we've done, let's talk about how we've done it. And we've managed to do it in a fairly short amount of time, and the reason that that is the case is through our strategic partnerships. We don't have a lot of capacity on site. Certainly we don't have, you know, engineering capacity on site of the kind that you need to deploy some of these projects even at the community scale. So and we're in a rural community, where even if we look regionally, some of our capacity and these specialties are constrained. So we are always talking about creative capacity-building locally, both as the tribe itself, but also as a regional effort.

                                    And so for the microgrid project the project lead is the Schatz Energy Research Center. This is a research center that's co-located at Humboldt State University. Humboldt State University is also a strategic partner of ours. But the Schatz Energy Research Center provides our engineering, our system integration engineering and our project management for most of our energy projects. Humboldt State University, we have tapped them for expertise and feasibility studies, and one of the most exciting parts about it is that we get to have students, both Native American students and other students, on site at Blue Lake Rancheria, working on these projects as a part of their studies.

                                    So you have that embedded knowledge transfer to the tribes and then from the tribe to the students that are going to form our capacity, probably locally, as they graduate and go into professions. And it's also cost-effective for us. So, you know, engineering and other project management costs are really effective when we source them through the university.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    John talked very eloquently about funding partnerships, so I won't spend a lot of time here, but I will say that for our big project, our microgrid project, we were fortunate enough to work with the State of California and the California Energy Commission and we received a $5 million grant under what's called their EPIC Program, the Electric Program Investment Charge. So the California Energy Commission Partnership is a little bit novel. I think we're one of the first two tribes ever to receive state funding for energy projects that we've done on tribal land. And so that's a great partnership around the funding, but we're also expanding that partnership to work with them closely on policies to improve tribal state energy partnerships, and that gets into how we interact with our utilities and all of those things that really need a lot of attention and a lot of work to create these co-benefits for tribes and states where they can be created.

                                    Our technical assistance and testing partners are listed here. We work heavily with the Department of Energy on those things. The Idaho National Lab did a what's called hardware and loop testing for our microgrid. So they basically recreated our microgrid in their lab, they allowed us to push a bunch of buttons and try to break it and fix things before we imported it and went live on site. And it provided a way for us to train our facilities and our IT staff on the new infrastructure that we were building. So it was really a fantastic partnership; they were great to work with.

                                    National Renewable Energy Laboratory, we worked with them on cyber-security, but we've also worked with them on solar operations and maintenance. We requested through technical assistance available at the DOE solar operations and maintenance training for Blue Lake Rancheria staff, but then we worked with them to open up that training to other tribes. That training was conducted by Grid Alternatives, which is another one of our partners that we can talk a little bit about, but I recommend everybody to look up Grid Alternatives. They have a fantastic solar program for tribes. And it really has been sort of this evolving technical assistance that has I think been very meaningful to not just Blue Lake Rancheria, but other tribal governments that were able to participate in that.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    So, you know, I'm going to set aside the technology and contractor partners and I'm going to focus a little bit, because I want to make sure that we don't run out of time, on our utility-related partnerships. Specifically Pacific Gas & Electric, PG&E, is our local utility, and we knew that they were going to be important. Through our microgrid we had to execute four different agreements with PG&E, and so whenever we go and plan an energy project we sit down with PG&E first and we explain what our strategy is, and we do this before we have a specific request for them or a specific issue. And in every case they have come back with ways that we can value engineer our project, they've disclosed, you know, maybe different costs or ways of doing things that we may not have been aware of in our, you know, on our whiteboard phase. And they have been just exceptional partners.

                                    And I know tribes don't have oftentimes established partnerships with their local utilities, or maybe they're contentious. If you don't have a relationship with your local utility I highly recommend you go out and conduct that outreach and just pick up the phone and do it. You know, start with your local rep; go to corporate if it's an investor-owned utility. But conduct that outreach, get out there with them, establish that rapport before you have a request or an issue, and then when you get into those situations, which invariably you will if you develop energy, it's a much easier and collaborative space to work in, rather than calling them up when you have an issue already.

                                    So next slide please.

                                    This is just sort of a list for reference of the different outreach and strategic partnerships that we went after. I want to focus just for a moment to go back to Humboldt State University, under "tribal" at the bottom there, the HSU program. So Humboldt State University is a non-tribal university. We don't have any tribal universities in our immediate region. But they have been incredibly progressive and inclusive and they've developed programs specifically for tribal members, and two of them are listed here. ITEPP is technically the Indian Teacher and Educational Personnel Program, but basically it has a broad focus on key support structures for tribal students to succeed at the university level, and their services include everything from course mapping and planning to mentoring, to counseling to campus and community resources and project planning. They really have a well-defined program and it it's nice to see those programs at non-tribal universities.

                                    The other one that we interact with a little bit more closely is the Indian what's called INSREP, the Indian Natural Resources Science and Engineering Program. And this really is another program that's focused on STEM education, science, technology, engineering, and math. And it is another program that we interact with to get internships, to get students on site, learning about these energy projects, learning about the subject matter, getting just familiar with what it takes to develop energy on tribal land. And it's been an incredible partnership. Some of our regional partners are listed there.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    At the state level I talked a little bit about the California Energy Commission. They obviously are huge help on specific projects, but as I mentioned, we are expanding that partnership to work with them greater on policy and program development. One example of that is energy efficiency. Now some tribal gaming products in California adhere to California energy policy. So this relationship is very important because California Energy Commission owns a lot of that energy policy, they do research into energy policy that fits a certain sector. And so to the extent that tribes with—especially tribes with gaming, but also tribes who are developing energy, can establish a rapport with the CEC on how some of these policies roll out in Indian country and what works and what doesn't work and what can be tweaked. That's an important partnership to develop.

                                    We, you know, on an international level we've spent some time and consulted with United Nations, their special envoy for tribes came through about six months ago. We commented on energy strategy, we actually spent a lot of time talking about the partnerships that we developed, especially university tribal partnerships. And of course we discussed the rights of indigenous people and some of the other international work that the United Nations does.

                                    On the national level of course the Department of Energy is a key partner for us, and all of you are pretty familiar with these other partnership stakeholders. One of the things that I don't have on here, but is also important, are cooperative efforts, like national cooperative efforts and advocacy. A couple that we have looked at is the U2 MOU, which basically is a climate action group, both national and international, and the clean energy ministerial that works on everything from super energy-efficient appliances, which benefits everybody, to broader environmental issues.

                                    And next slide please.

                                    I'll just wrap up by saying that, you know, partnerships and stakeholder management by tribes is a specific strategy. It should be a part of any energy development effort. As a specific strategy you're going to need these partnerships no matter what you develop, even if it's just a broad-based energy efficiency program. And partnerships do another key thing in my opinion, and that is that they strengthen tribal government position as key stakeholders in these areas on a national and international level. And that is important for long-term strategic tribal government, tribal nation-building, tribal sovereignty. And that's another reason why these partnerships are both important and effective and a good use of time, effort, and resources by tribes.

                                    And so I thank you for your time and I'll be around for the Q&A.

Sean Esterly:              Thank you very much for the presentation, Jana. We will move along now to our final presentation, which is going to be presented by both John Flores and Paul Cleary. And I have those slides up for you right now.

Paul Cleary:               Hey, this is Paul. Can you hear me?

Sean Esterly:              Yes, we can, Paul.

Paul Cleary:               All right. You there, John? Unfortunately John and I are not in the same place, so it's going to be a partnership to present this presentation. We'll see how this partnership goes.

                                    You ready, John?

                                    Why don't you, Sean, if you want to just move on to the first slide and we can kick it off.

                                    Just a quick overview of this presentation. First of all, this is Paul Cleary from Grid Alternative, San Diego office. Quick overview of this presentation: we're going to talk about a project that Grid Alternatives is working on right now with three other partners: San Pasqual, La Jolla, and Mesa Grande Tribes. So we'll talk about the project, we'll talk a little bit about the partners, the four organizations involved, and then we'll spend a little bit of time talking about how we got here, and then to this point of working on this project and then we'll talk about what does collaboration look like on the ground, between these organizations.

                                    Next slide.

                                    John, you want to talk about the current project?

John Flores:               Yeah. So, sorry, I accidentally got cut off there for a moment, but I'm back on. So yeah, so the current project that we're doing with Grid and our other two travel partners is effectively going to do 42 grid-type systems, 40 of which will be for low income single families throughout San Pasqual, La Jolla, and Mesa Grande. And then these two others will be for the San Pasqual tribal education facility and the La Jolla Tribal Community Center. So that will help, of course, state funding for our tribal government operations so we can put more funding _____ _____ of course our education department, and then La Jolla can then put more funds to their community center.

                                    And then the last part is the training. Mesa Grande, one of our partners has been very good at getting their people trained up through grid. And so we saw this as an opportunity to try to get folks involved at 10-12 La Jolla, and also anyone else at Mesa Grande that wanted to be trained on how to do solar installation since solar is such a fast-growing industry, especially here in Southern California and throughout the nation, so it's a good way to try to get people into good-paying jobs that are going to be around for a while.

                                    Next slide.

Paul Cleary:               And here you see the outcomes, as John mentioned, we're going to install 42 PV systems, over 170 kilowatts of solar. And you can see the economic benefits there, both for the families and the tribes, over $1.8 million worth of power that's going to be produced over the next 20 years. You can see the figure there for greenhouse gas emissions, and then as John mentioned, you know, really this idea of providing hands-on solar installation training. So we talked about there are at least 20 tribal members getting this hands-on training through installing these systems. And then as sort of a part of the work that grid does, you know, we come in and really talk to the homeowners about energy, about their energy use, energy efficiency, renewable energy, make sure they understand how the system works and also how to get the most out of it by being energy efficient.

                                    Next slide please.

Paul Cleary:               And then a couple further details. Oh, go ahead, John.

John Flores:               I was going to say, you know, one of the questions we get a lot here at San Pasqual and our partners is "Once I get grid am I still on—once I get solar am I still on the grid or am I off the grid?" So one thing that's important for them to understand is that they're still on the grid. There's not a battery backup at all, so I just want to mention that. You can take it over from there, Paul.

Paul Cleary:               Yeah, so as John said, further details, these are grid-type systems, net metered, and then typically, you know, the homeowner is seeing savings from 35 to 75-percent, mostly depending on available space for solar and their usage. And then we do have a third-party inspector that verifies all of our GRID's work independently and doing thing like giving San Pasqual the plans for these systems, making sure they're independently inspected, and then obviously Grid takes care of the interconnection with the local utility, which is SDG&E, San Diego Gas & Electric.

John Flores:               Yeah, and the third-party inspector was something that was requested by us in La Jolla, only because we don't have the staff and the technical capability to go out and inspect it. Like if this were the city and, you know, you're putting a solar installation on the city, on a home, a residential home in the city, the city inspector or county inspector would typically come out, check GRID's work or whatever solar _____ work and verify that everything was done to the proper code. And because we're small tribes out here, you know, limited resources, staff, we don't have that kind of in-house technical expertise to do that, so that's one reason why we work with Grid to get a third-party inspector to come out and verify all their work.

                                    Next slide.

                                    So these are pretty much our project partners right here. You have La Jolla Band of Luiseno Indians, Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians, San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians, and then of course, GRID Alternatives. And all of us have had histories working with GRID, so we all feel very comfortable going into this partnership, because we've worked with Paul and his team for many years, either doing installation or training. And each one of the tribes are very close to each other; you'll see more in the upcoming slides. You know, San Diego County there's about 18 fairly recognized tribes within San Diego County, and La Jolla, Mesa Grande, and San Pasqual are separated by basically 12 miles. So we're all near each other relatively in the Paloma Valley, Valley Center area. And so we're also comfortable, we've worked with each other on other projects in the past, and we decided to go after this solar partnership.

                                    Next slide.

                                    So this kind of shows how many tribes there are in San Diego County. Like I said, I believe there's 18, and we're up in the northern part of the county and then, you know, pretty much everyone is disbursed between north all the way down south towards the Mexico border, US-Mexico border and out east. So yeah, I think you have _____ land to land where all the tribes are kind of located within San Diego County. And this is one reason why we think that hopefully we can take this partnership and continue to grow. You can see there's a lot of potential tribal partners throughout San Diego County that are hoping to bring in in the future and expand this going forward.

                                    Next slide.

                                    And this is just the location—those are the three tribes. So the furthest west, in the orange, that's San Pasqual reservation. The green is La Jolla Indian Reservation, and then the red is Mesa Grande out east.

                                    Next slide.

                                    And just a little background on each one of the tribes. San Pasqual is about a little over 2,900 acres. We have about 1,400 to 1,600 homes—our residents occupy 335 homes. And we've done about—I think once we complete this solar partnership on this round we'll have about 80 of our 335 homes with solar on the reservation, with our goal being all 335 homes having solar by 2020. So we're moving rapidly.

                                    Next slide.

                                    So then this is our partner, La Jolla. They're a little bit larger, almost 10,000 acres. A little bit smaller in population and number of homes, at 280. And I believe once we're done La Jolla will have about 40 or so homes with solar on their reservation.

                                    Next slide please.

                                    And then last, Mesa Grande, 1,800 acres and about 130 to 150 residents and 36 homes. And they're going to pretty much be all solar eventually; they'll be hitting every single home with solar _____ before anybody, and they've been a great partner.

                                    So next slide.

Paul Cleary:               Just a little brief background grid. As you can see her, and as was mentioned in the top of the hour, we make—we're a non-profit. We make solar technology and job training accessible to underserved communities. We do work with tribal communities both through our ten local offices—San Diego is one of ten local offices, so we work both at local offices where there is a tribal presence, we work with them locally, and then we also have a tribal program that's based in Denver and works with tribes that aren't served by our regional offices. So I know they do work in the Four Corners region, in the Dakotas, they've done work in Eastern Washington and I think Fort Peck and a few other places that aren't coming to mind right now.

                                    But so both locally, through our local offices and through a tribal program in Denver is how we interact with tribes, and you can see some see some of the stats there. As of a few days ago, 550 tribal families served. You can see the megawatts and then the value of the energy that's produced by those systems.

                                    We also, you know, we're a volunteer-based organization, so every one of our projects is led by a GRID staff, but with volunteers or job trainees that are doing the work and getting the hands-on experience. As you can see there, we've had over 450 Native American volunteers, and as John had mentioned earlier, a key part of this grant is actually making sure that the folks that do this work and get this hands-on experience are from the tribes that we're serving.

                                    Next.

                                    And really maybe this belongs down a slide or two, but, you know, one of the things that John pointed out is that if you take GRID's tagline, which is "People, planet, employment," so saving people money, helping the environment, getting people jobs, it lines up really nicely with San Pasqual and sort of their mission and vision. So just sort of putting our two—our cultural values side by side I think has really helped this project and this partnership to be successful.

                                    Do you have anything to add, John?

John Flores:               Yeah. You know, that's one thing that we really liked about GRID here at San Pasqual and I think I can say the same thing for La Jolla and our other partners, is the cultural value of GRID lines up very closely with San Pasqual and that of our tribal partners, of what they're trying to accomplish and what each tribe is trying to accomplish. And I think that's really important when you're doing the partnership, honestly, is _____ and making sure everyone's on the same page with the same vision. And I think that's something that why GRID has been so successful, not just here in San Diego County, but with other tribes, is I think that their kind of values do match up with a lot of tribal values throughout the nation. You know, 'cause there's just so many solar companies out there and other solar non-profits out there, but between all of them we felt GRID was the best match for us here at San Pasqual.

                                    Next slide.

Paul Cleary:               Here's just a little bit of history of how we got to this current partnership. Way back in July 2010 at a meeting of the Southern California Tribal Chairman's Association, which was focusing on energy, which really was a—it's a meeting of the local Southern California tribal chairman, myself and a colleague of mine, we did a presentation for this group, and out of that came a gentleman from the La Jolla band who said, "Hey, this sounds really interesting. Let's start working on this." And you can see it took a little while to get going, but in the spring of the following year we had our first installation with La Jolla.

                                    And then that really kicked it off and typically that's how it works often, you know, candidly with GRID it's like, you know, there has to be an early adopter and then it kind of snowballs from there, and so La Jolla was the early adopter and you can see over the next five years we've done over 90 installations between 2011 and 2016. Basically between then and the time that this current project started we did over 90 installations with these three tribal partners. We really built up that track record and that relationship to sort of get comfortable working together.

                                    And then there in 2015 you see Tekamuk Energy is an energy company formed by Mesa Grande. They had a group of their tribal members and members from a few other local tribes that basically worked with us over most of that year, getting this hands-on experience, and they basically, you know, went from 0 to 60 in that time, basically no solar experience to basically forming an energy company and partnering with sort of a business partner to have—just to form a solar installation company. And so that sort of proved that we could do this sort of workforce component, this job training component that we incorporated into this current partnership.

                                    Next slide.

                                    And so then we go into like what is collaboration look like on the ground with this partnership. And I think maybe I'll start it with the communication piece. I think, you know, you just have to have a good open line of communication between partners. It seems obvious, but even this is basically this project that we're working on now with the DOE funding is sort of, you know, an on-steroids version of what we've done for the past five years. So it's just a lot more, a lot quicker, and, you know, more complex. And so having those lines of communication is super-important, so we have regular meetings with staff. One of our staff has office hours at the tribe, where they can be out there, be on hand to talk to homeowners, answer questions, collect documents, that sort of thing.

                                    And, you know, I can pick up the phone and call John or my other tribal point people and just have a conversation and work through some of these challenges or celebrate some of the stuff that we're doing. Do you want to talk about tribal in kind support, John?

John Flores:               Yeah. You know, I just want to follow up too on the communication being key. I mean it really is. And the office hours are something we—and we're constantly learning, like Paul said. We've been partners for a number of years now, but we're always learning new ways to make the process better for GRID, the tribe, and of course the homeowners. And what we found is that the office hours are really helpful and Paul was willing to have one of his staff members drive up every other Wednesday to meet with families, both either walk-in families or schedule meetings with them. And the reason why that was important is, as I showed you in that map where most of the tribes are, we're up in the eastern portion of San Diego, the northeast or southeast, and GRID's offices are actually down in the city of San Diego. So to drive from San Pasqual, if you're a family, to get down to city of San Diego, where Paul is located, from San Pasqual is about an hour drive, and from Mesa Grande it's about an hour and a half drive. So if you're a low-income family you might not have reliable transportation, there really is no public transportation to get you down there, so that was one of the problems, was making sure the homeowners can meet with the grid folks. So one way we fixed that was by having the office hours where GRID was able to come to the tribe and the family could come here.

                                    The point person is very important. We have one person on my staff that's designated to be the person to contact the families, and, you know, she's from this reservation, she's a tribal member here. And the reason why that's important is because obviously she knows a lot of people, she's a trusted person in the community. Not to say that GRID doesn't have many trustworthy people, 'cause they are, but they're outsiders, they're not well-known, you don't know if this person's trying to sell you a solar system. You may not believe that you're actually going to get something for $20,000.00 at no cost to your family; it almost sounds too good to be true sort of thing. So it's very important to get people in the community's buy-in by having that community—that person, that point of contact within our environmental office who can verify everything that GRID's done and kind of walk them through all of the paperwork. And then that also helps with GRID because we collect a lot of the paperwork, we scan it and we send it to GRID, and so we're kind of the contact with the family on that portion.

                                    And then lastly what we've been doing is on our _____ San Pasqual we've been doing a lot of the grading, trenching, site mapping, showing GRID where water lines are located or septic lines are located or electrical lines, because out here in California, San Diego we have Dig Alert that comes out and shows you where utilities are in the ground, but Dig Alert doesn't come on to reservations, so we're kind of a black hole in that sense. So our public works department, though, knows where that is, and we'll oftentimes, especially for the ground-mounted systems, we'll get out there and show them where all the utilities are on that homeowner's property so we know when we're digging a ground mount system we're not going to, you know, hit someone's water line or dig it over their leech line for their septic system. So that's helped the process for the ground mounts get sped up a little bit here. So yeah, so that's been really important.

                                    And then we use that as maps for GRID to help kind of—you know, we don't charge the family that typically, we don't try to pass that charge on to GRID. It's something that we do as an in-kind support to kind of help leverage the funding, make sure we can serve more homes on the reservation or other low-income families off the reservation to take GRID's budget as well. You know, and some tribes may have that capability, some may not. But if you do it's a great way to help speed the process up for installations here—or at your reservation.

                                    Next slide.

Paul Cleary:               I think that might be it, but just—just real quick on that last slide, before we go on, we have a few pictures here that you can just sort of scroll through the sec to just sort of see some of the stuff in action, but that last, the previous slide really—the last, the _____ _____, we talked about that, sort of our shared values, but I think it's also a really important part of this project's success so far has been the history and relying on that relationship that we built up over several years when challenges arise. You know, like I said, inherently this is a more complex project than we've worked on before and stuff comes up and being able to rely on that history, that we have to get just to solve those challenges and work through them has been really, really important.

                                    And next here are some pictures of both rooftop and ground-mounted systems going in, out at, you know, with our three tribal partners that you can just sort of click through. And then that—unless you have anything to add, John, that about does it.

John Flores:               No, and, yes, it's been great working with GRID and our tribal partners. You know, and the main thing, like Paul, especially in a partnership like this, definitely communication so that your partners know what's going on and when GRID is going to be going up on the other reservation.

                                    So yeah, that's about it. _____ _____--even though we've had this partnership or GRID's worked with other tribes in terms of flow it's still a learning process. You know, like I said, we're always figuring out ways that we can do things better, more efficiently, both for GRID, the homeowner, and the tribe. So this thing has been somewhat of even a learning experience for GRID and us here, but it's been good. So that's about it.

Sean Esterly:              Great. Thank you both very much for the presentation. And thank you to the other panelists as well for all the presentations today; they've been very informative, really appreciate it. And we'll move along now to the questions submitted by attendees. And just a reminder to all the attendees out there, if you do have any questions for our panelists, please go ahead and submit those through the question pane in the go-to-webinar control box that you have there.

                                    So with that we'll—the first question that we have received is for everybody, but perhaps, Lizana, you might have some insight into this as well. They're asking if there's been any history of success using both the DOE tribal energy grants along with the investment tax credit in funding the same project.

Lizana Pierce:            John, you want to take that?

John Clancy:              Oh, sure. Thanks, Lizana. Yes, that has been used successfully. I think DOE has been very good at working with tribes and tribal entities on utilizing the investment tax credit to help meet the non-federal cost share. I think Lizana probably notes that there are, I think in the grant awards now that occur in projects where there's tax credits there will be special provisions regarding that, and DOE wants to make sure essentially that the project is in the LLC with the opportunity or intent for the tribe to have an opportunity to basically take it over again itself after the tax financing period is over and to meet other conditions. But yes, there's been I think either a few or perhaps even a number of projects that have been done that way and that's an important strategy I think to help meet that federal cost share.

Lizana Pierce:            Yeah, there's probably been about a half a dozen that are in work that have used ITC and DOE grant funds.

John Clancy:              Okay. Thank you.

Sean Esterly:              Great. Thank you both.

                                    Moving on to the next question, again, this one's for everybody, do you have any advice for tribes interested in renewable energy that may be located in less renewable energy-friendly states? So can investors—what would be your advice for investors located in a renewable energy-friendly state to take advantage of tax credits for those projects in less friendly states? Or any advice in general.

John Clancy:              This is John again. I guess I think that's a very good question, because there are a few in like New York or California or a lot of states on the coast, there's been much more activity by investors in projects. I think we've been able to work to find investors that are willing—especially if they're kind of—they understand the project early on, to potentially do projects that are outside of those kind of more competitive states or that. I think it's also important for tribes to think about, you know, who those partners should be. I think the question is really why does the investor want to get involved in your project, especially if it's not in a state where there's been a lot of activity in this area. And a couple of things come to mind. One is there are some solar companies that have owners of those companies or related entities that have investment tax credit appetite, so that's important to think about for the various, you know, for wind or solar technologies.

                                    And then secondly, I think it's also important to think about who are your business partners. Generally the tribe, if you have a casino and casino operations, other business operation or other operations of the tribe that utilize certain services, including, you know, kind of construction services from companies that might have tax appetite, they may be interested in partnering with you, even if they wouldn't be interested in partnering with others.

Lizana Pierce:            And I would mention regarding they maybe not states that may not have renewable resources like solar, that are not in the Southwest, for instance we have a number of tribal projects: Wisconsin, New York, et cetera. So typically depending on the state policies an so forth, whether it's economically viable for that state. But again, there's a number of tribal projects that are in states for solar that typically one would not, you know, expect. New York State for one, Wisconsin, I'm sure there's a number of others that I'm not thinking of right now.

Sean Esterly:              Okay. Thanks, Lizana. And, John, just to confirm, another part of that question was if you had a project in—well, the state tax credits would only be applicable to the state that the project is occurring in. So for example, an out of state investor couldn't claim state tax credits for their state, it would have to be the state the project was occurring in, correct?

John Clancy:              Yes. I think what you're referring to there or they may be referring to there, there's certain states, one that comes to mind is North Carolina, where they have—historically I think they still have, but historically at least have had a state investment tax credit for solar in addition to the federal investment tax credit. So what I was referring to mostly was the federal investment tax credit or production tax credit, and those are available throughout the country, so you don't need to worry so much about matching up states. But if there's an additional state investment tax credit then typically, yeah, that project has to occur in that state and typically it becomes a credit against taxes owed in that state, so you might need to have a partner then that has operations and pays taxes in that state.

Sean Esterly:              Great. Thanks, John. That's—

Jana Ganion:              Hi, this is—

Sean Esterly:              Yeah, go ahead.

Jana Ganion:              Sorry. This is Jana. I just wanted to add that there's a couple things for tribes that are in states that don't have aggressive RPSs or anything like that. The first is to look at the energy efficiency sector. There may be incentives. You know, energy efficiency is sometimes cordoned off from other energy strategies at the public utilities commission level for programs and policies, incentives and rebates, so take a look at that and make sure you've brought your energy loads down as far as you can.

                                    But then the other thing that we're seeing a lot is that corporations like Amazon and Google and, you know, these big corporations are requiring renewable energy for their operations in any state that they're in. And so you see states that maybe have historically not embraced renewable energy for whatever reason actually looking around now to figure out how they're going to make renewable energy happen to attract and retain these corporations into their states. So tribes should take a look at that, because sometimes there may be renewable energy projects on tribal lands that could provide through PPAs this emerging requirement for renewable energy, and it's significant.

                                    And then, you know, I would say that anybody can develop solar. Everybody has a solar resource. If I can do it in a fog bank in Northern California on the Pacific Coast anybody can. So, you know, keep looking for those different ways of developing those resources and obviously if we can help in any way let us know.

John Clancy:              This is John actually. One more quick point on that, building off of what Jana said, I think that the fact that Google and companies like that have very strong renewable energy requirements could also be something to think about. If the tribe is looking at trying to bring in, you know, helpful development to the reservation in addition to clean energy, the ability for the tribe to perhaps help put together solar or wind or other projects that might feed their facilities might make that actually more attractive as well. So it can actually be used almost in the reverse to benefit the tribe as well.

Sean Esterly:              Great. Thanks, everybody. And, John, we're actually going to stick with you for the next question. One of the attendees was wondering if you have any sort of general recommendation or benchmark for what the minimum project size would be for bringing on a tax equity partner in either a wind or solar project.

John Clancy:              That's a good question, because it does add some complexity to the project and some cost obviously. And I think typically the projects—to tell you the truth, I worked on projects that were as small as 100kw, where we had a tax investor involved. Those were not tribal, but they were very similar; there was a non-taxable entity involved. But that was also when solar cost more, to tell you the truth. So the dollar amount was a little bit more than it would be now for a 100kw system.

                                    I think that the sites to really think about would probably be—I guess I'm thinking now if you're trying to be efficient about it, probably like between $500,000.00 and $1 million, where it becomes more—makes a lot more sense, especially for solar. Typically the projects I worked on with tribes we've been trying to take advantage of, you know, federal funds too. And a lot of those federal funds programs actually fit well into that construct. You know, DOE has historically been either $500,000.00 or $1 million grants on projects, and ISD is usually around $500,000.00 and $1 million grant as well, and REAP is about—it goes up to I think up to $600,000.00 so all of those kind of fit in well.

Sean Esterly:              Thanks, John. This next question is for John Flores and Paul Cleary. Could you talk a little bit on how these specific homes are selected and then what the homeowner's responsibility is in the projects?

Paul Cleary:               You there, John? Or I can take a stab. Well, so to start with the basis of the funding that GRID brings to the table is a rebate for low-income homeowners in the state of California. And so we sort of have our target population that we're looking for, so there's an income requirement, and then of course they have to, you know, own and live in their own home and we've been able to sort of make allowances for tribal sort of definition of home ownership so that can fit.

                                    So we have our basic requirements, and what we've really done with, especially with San Pasqual is sort of defer to them about who should we approach first, do they have ideas about, you know, maybe there's a priority in there in the tribal community about who we should serve, and we lean on them very heavily to do outreach in those communities, as John said, because they devote staff time or tribal member time to do that, and they have those connections that we don't necessarily have as outsiders. So I don't know, John, do you have anything to add about that?

                                    The other piece is that what do we require. The systems that we're doing now, these are homeowner-owned systems, and so what we require is, you know, help us pull together the documents that we need to get this rebate, which is basically proof of home ownership in some way, that's usually done through the tribe, and then energy bills. You know, we need access—we need basically—we don't charge money for our work, but we do sort of charge—we encourage sweat equity. So get involved, help us get what we need. You know, typically, hey feed the volunteers lunch when they come out to this project, let us use your restroom, things like that. You know, help us, you know, be a sort of a spokesperson or help us with our outreach in your community, whether it's tribal or, you know, in the city. And, you know, and some of our projects are third-party owned; the tribal ones are not, but the third party—but some projects that we do elsewhere are third-party owned and then there's a different set of things that we would ask the homeowner for. Basically it's just, you know, let us make sure your project keeps working and keeps producing energy over the lifetime of that project. So typically, like I said, sweat equity is the big one that we sort of charge.

Sean Esterly:              Okay. Thank you, Paul. Move on to a question for Jana. You've had a lot of successful partnerships through the work at Blue Lake Rancheria. Do you have any just general guidelines or tips on how to first find those productive partnerships and then build those relationships, secure the partnership?

Jana Ganion:              Sure. So one of the things that we did actually back when our energy strategy was just starting, was that we looked for ways to include regional partners like Humboldt County, the Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services, into maybe grant-funding opportunities that we were able to go after as a tribal government, and then, you know, work with them during that process to, you know, maybe get them a little bit of funding to do things such as tie in the tribal emergency communications with the county emergency communications. So a little bit of funding went to the county, but during that process we formed that partnership, right? And they learned a lot about the tribe and we learned a lot about what they have to do.

                                    And then when it came time for say the grant application for this microgrid project, we were able to go to them for some support. And so I would say that wherever we can we think about who we want as strategic partners, who we think we're going to need as a part of these projects, and we try to find ways to bring them into an educational setting. Sometimes it's through a joint grant application, sometimes it's just through, you know, a joint planning process, but really try to keep up that relationship. And that's why I say it is a specific focus of wherever your energy strategy lives, you know, of those staff members is to seek out, develop, and maintain these partnerships. You know, other times, like with the utility, I just called them up. It was basically a cold call.

                                    We had established a good sort of tactical working relationship with them, you know, we had participated in their demand response programs on the casino side. And so we had sort of this good work-a-day relationship, but when we decided that we wanted to do a more strategic, more resilient energy plan I just called them up and invited them out to the Rancheria and we all sat down and said, "Hey, this might be a crazy idea, but here you go, this is what we want to do." And they really appreciated it. I think that they don't get a lot of those phone calls. And so don't be afraid to cold call with the people that you think would be a good stakeholder group for you.

                                    The universities I think are a key, because you have, if you think about it, so many professional environments over there, and usually, you know, the professors are qualified in their fields. You know, we have certified electrical engineers, we have certified civil engineers that are teaching and working at the university that we bring into our projects, number one, because somewhat like the great alternatives model, you know, they're a non-profit. Number two, they are interested in these leading edge energy development opportunities. Three, it's a great way to educate the university about what a tribal community is all about and what our strategic plans are, especially around energy. And then number four, you get to interact with the students. And maybe you have tribal members that are attending that university and they can learn as they go by working on projects, you know, at your site.

                                    So I'll give you just one example of that and then I'll end. But we wanted to do for a potential biomass project, we wanted to do a woody biomass fuel supply study. We wanted to really understand how much biomass is in our region. Turns out it's a lot. And how much would be available for our energy idea. And the students largely worked on that with an overview by the professor, and it was great and we used it. We used it in grant applications on, you know, within the Department of Interior for some pre-project work.

                                    So don't be afraid to cold call. Give some thought to who you want as your partners. Try to bring them in in a kind of a soft meeting situation first, whether that's a cooperative grant funding application or something else, a planning effort. And then keep it out. You know, keep people informed of what you're doing and see how you can leverage resources back and forth. Maybe tribes can leverage resources into a different regional effort, and maybe that regional effort could leverage resources into what the tribe is working on. So that's how we've done it.

Sean Esterly:              Great. Thank you, Jana. And that's the last question we received. So at this point I just want to thank the panelists once again, both for the presentations and addressing the questions from the audience, and also thank you to the attendees for joining us today for the webinar.

                                    Just a reminder, you will receive an e-mail following the webinar with a link to where we will be posting the recording and the slides. That's also shown on the current slide.

                                    With that we'll wrap things up. I want to show you the agenda for the rest of the year for the webinar series. Our next webinar is going to be held on August 30th at 11:00 AM Mountain Daylight time, and that webinar is titled "Powering Your Community with Tribal Energy." If there's anything else please feel free to reach out to us and give us feedback or if you have any remaining questions that may come up after the webinar, always interested in hearing from everyone.

                                    And so with that, thanks again and I hope to see you at the next broadcast and hope everyone has a great rest of your day.

Lizana Pierce:            Thanks, everybody.

Male:                          Thanks, everybody.

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