Industrial Technology Innovation Advisory Committee Fourth Meeting – Day 2 Text Version

ZACH PRITCHARD: All right. All right. Thank you. Welcome, everyone. If we can get to the next slide, please. 

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Welcome back to all of our members today and to anyone joining us virtually. I am Zach Pritchard. I am the designated federal officer for the committee and joined today also by Selena Harris, who is our alternate designated federal officer. 
I'm going to recap a couple of our housekeeping items from yesterday, just as a reminders for folks. For today's meeting, the general chat has been disabled, and the audience is not able to unmute or turn on their cameras. Members, please reserve use of the presenter's chat for technical issues only and discuss any substantive topics orally. Anyone who joins the Zoom who is here in person, just a reminder, please do not join the audio. We don't want to have any feedback issues with the microphones. 

And like we were doing yesterday, you can use your name to ask questions. Please mention your name at the beginning of your question, just to help with the transcription later. 

The procedure to offer oral comments for this meeting was described in the Federal Register notice. Thanks to those who registered to provide comments. We will have a public comment period at the end of the meeting today around 12:50 p.m. Eastern time. For anyone else, the committee does want to hear from you. You are welcome to submit written statements to ITIAC@ee.doe.gov. And you can register to provide oral comments at future meetings. 

And we'll also just mentioned that we're continually seeking new member applications. So that same email address you can submit nominations, including the nominee's name, resume, biography, and any letters of support. So with that, I will hand things off to Sharon for today's meeting. 

SHARON NOLEN: I'm Sharon Nolen. I'd like to welcome everyone back today, and let me just say a few words about the agenda and a brief recap from yesterday. So yesterday we did have a long discussion about the format of the report and ideas about what the report should look like, and so I put together a few just very basic slides trying to capture the ideas we had yesterday. And so I've spoken to each of the committee leaders. 

They've all agreed to let that go in front. So, we're going to have a bit of a change agenda. We'll start with Avi Schultz. Welcome today. And then we'll have this discussion about the report structure, and hopefully leave today with a good understanding of the group. So Avi, welcome and I'll turn it over to you. 

AVI SCHULTZ: Maybe just—the camera's on? Maybe I'll stick… 

ZACH PRITCHARD: It is. Yeah, it's up to you, yeah. 

AVI SCHULTZ: So good morning, folks, and apologies. I wasn't able to make the meeting yesterday. I was on travel, but happy to come here today and give you a bit of an update on what we've been doing in IEDO since the last time we got together. Just controlling the slides… 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Carolyn on the internet. 

AVI SCHULTZ: Hey, Carolyn. Great. So, what I'm going to do in this presentation is give just a little bit of a reminder of what we're working on now, how we're structured, and what we're focusing on. And then I'm going to give some specific updates on particular new announcements and initiatives we've launched since the last time we met. So of course, as a reminder, we all of course know the importance of the hospital sector in addressing our greenhouse gas emissions goals. 

In IEDO, we are the Central Applied Technology Office that is responsible for having the core technical expertise in DOE responsible for addressing this. But of course, we work with many other offices that are relevant or have functional expertise in large-scale demonstrations or deployment efforts like, of course, the office of—Loan Programs Office. If you go to the next slide, Carolyn. 

Our vision for decarbonizing the industrial sector and manufacturing is really, how do we decouple the economic growth of the U.S. and the growth in manufacturing and industrial—the industrial base in the U.S., while decreasing the industrial emissions and the associated environmental impacts of those emissions, and of our business-as-usual industrial processes? 

This is really key because we see, of course, not just the greenhouse gas emissions benefits for achieving this decoupling, but a number of other benefits in terms of increasing economic growth, increasing the job base for the U.S., and overall increasing the well-being of Americans and communities by fully achieving this transformation. 

If you go to the next slide. Of course, we've started a strategic effort 2 years ago that we released in the industrial decarbonization roadmap that lays out the technologies that we believe are going to be key to this transformation through what we call these industrial decarbonization pillars of energy efficiency, electrification, low-carbon fuels, feedstocks, energy sources and carbon capture, utilization, and storage. 

Since we released that report 2 years ago, I think, as you're all aware, we've been engaged in substantially improving the focus of our analytical and strategic efforts and putting a lot more definition on where we see the specific priorities for our efforts in IEDO and for DOE generally to achieve that transformation. Next slide, please. 

What that effort looks like? Again, as I believe you heard about yesterday is our pathways for U.S. industrial transformations vision study. We held—as many of you are aware—we held a workshop on this back in May and released the request for information to get a lot of feedback on some initial draft analytical results that really lays out our vision for our next—for what we see is this strategic need for DOE, which is identifying the cost-effective and industry-specific pathways for achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and really addressing the technological, economical, societal, environmental, and health impacts between those different pathways. 

And what we really want to do in this strategic effort is present these tailored pathways, the metrics, and the targets. Next slide, please. Oh, sorry. I should go back one slide, Carolyn. 

Sorry, I thought I had one more there. Just to clarify what I mean, again, I think you all heard about this yesterday, but when I talk about or when we talk about the pathways for U.S. industrial transformations, what we mean by pathways is the set of specific technologies that need to be deployed within each subsector that are consistent with a net-zero or near-zero emissions scenario. 

Some of those pathways are going to be complementary to each other, some of those are going to be exclusive to each other. And so what we really want to do in this study, what we're really planning on presenting in this report, is that detailed quantitative analysis of, OK, here are the different scenarios. Some of these are consistent with, say, optimistic scenarios for hydrogen cost and availability, for clean electricity, for other aspects of technology development. 

So we really are planning to present this study. Again, is that landscape of what are the different feasible options to decarbonization and that will then let—certainly let us and IEDO and in all of DOE and frankly hopefully broader in industry and through the community working on this to prioritize efforts to make some of those pathways a reality? 

Next slide, please. A quick update on where we are as an office. So, I think last time we met, I think I said that we had just a about complete leadership team in place in IEDO. We've had some minor changes since then. Maybe taking a step back in terms of complete, we had a very exciting retirement from Isaac Chen, who was our program manager for cross-sector technologies. 

Excited to see him move on to retirement and take a break after many, many years of devoted service to DOE, of course, in our office and predecessor offices. In the process of recruiting replacement program manager for that position in the meantime, our new Deputy Director, Paul Gauche, is stepping into that role. But other than that, we have a really robust and successful leadership team that's been executed, that's been working on executing our vision. 

And that's what I'm going to talk about today for the rest of these slides. So, some updates on that work. Next slide, please. Again, just a quick refresher. So, the way we are organized in IEDO is we have three technical subprograms or pillars through which we execute our work. Two of those are focused on technology development through research, development, and demonstration. 

One of those—our first pillar there, is our energy- and emissions-intensive industries, which is looking at the sector-specific approaches to decarbonizing specific systems within industry, with a particular focus on chemical subsector, refining, iron and steel, food beverage, forest products, and cement and concrete. 

Complementing that, we have our cross-sector technologies team, which is again, looking at the cross-cutting technologies that need to be developed with a specific focus on thermal processes and systems, low-carbon fuels, feedstocks, energy sources, efficiency. And I should emphasize, grid decarbonization or grid integration of electrified technologies as well. And then a robust portfolio of water and wastewater treatment. 

We have been very, very active over the 2 years that we have been in existence, as we have been working on executing on a lot of our funding and our budget. And we're really, really proud to be able to announce that we have announced over half a billion dollars in funding opportunities and project selections over the last 2 years. So, I'll take this opportunity as I very much often like to do, to just give kudos to our fantastic team in the office who have been working more or less nonstop over these 2 years to get those—to get that funding out. 

So really exciting that we're now in a position where we've got a fairly robust portfolio of projects in IEDO, and now we're taking the next step, especially with this pathways effort, to take a look at our portfolio, take this strategic efforts to figure out what are our—what do we need to do to fill in the gaps to accelerate the development of a lot of that—investment.

Next slide, please. 

Our third subprogram is focused not on the technology development, but using the technical expertise that we have in the office through the national laboratories through other partnerships, public-private partnerships that we've set up through our stakeholder engagement networks, working with existing commercial companies and helping to accelerate their adoption of existing commercially available technologies to achieve energy emission reduction goals. 

This is really the focus of what we call our technical assistance and workforce development team. Of course, that engages and stood up a number of programs specifically around public-private partnerships, education training, developing no-cost tools and resources that we make available to the private sector, as well as end-user support in terms of stakeholder engagement and partnerships and networks that we set up to help enable the technical services needed for industrial innovation. 

Next slide, please. One thing I want to emphasize is I start to talk about the exciting new programs and initiatives that we've been able to announce recently, is that we have an intentional strategy in our office that, I would say, is very reflective of a lot of thinking that's been going on in DOE overall, to diversify the funding modalities that we're using in our office. We are keenly aware that the typical funding opportunity announcement… 

You see NOFO there, because we're in a process, along with the rest of the federal government, to normalize how we refer to those solicitations. So, you'll be seeing soon, stop referring to FOAs and start referring to NOFOs. Government jargon. Unfortunately, NOFO just stands for Notice of Funding Opportunity. 

There's some, again, kind of details in the weeds that the bureaucratic weeds about what that means. But I think of them essentially as what we typically refer to as well as in DOE. But we are keenly aware that those FOAs and NOFOs can have a substantial burden associated with them, with organizations being able to apply for funding, being able to react rapidly to their own research needs and agendas. 

And so we are very much aware that FOAs and no NOFOs are not a one size fits all, not going to be responsive to all the time when we want to—work with. We, of course, have other instruments that we've historically used, of course, like the manufacturing institutes, like EPIXC and RAPID. Those give other kinds of flexibility, but of course, also come with additional challenges and associated barriers given that they use the cooperative agreement contract structure with… 

The new things that we've really been ramping up in DOE and in IEDO that we've been figuring out how to apply effectively are prizes, where we're able to very rapidly reduce the overhead associated with applicants to prizes. So, we're really excited about launching our first prize in IEDO, that I'll talk a little bit about, that's focused specifically on energy storage or integration of industrial energy storage systems with facilities. 

And I'll give you a little bit of an overview of that. We've also been—we've also launched our first PIA. So PIA is another acronym for partnership intermediary agreement. We don't need to get into the details of what exactly that means. But similar to prizes, it's a mechanism where we're able to use a third-party contracting mechanism essentially, to substantially reduce the overhead associated with applicants, being able to participate and receive funding through this program. 

And we've been exploring this through what we call our IC collaborative, which is specifically focused on workforce development—decides about what that looks like. And then we're also exploring what we can do more creatively with the national labs. We recently announced that we will be releasing a lab call for a cement and concrete center of excellence that's really going to be focused on convening the communities and test facilities required for really pushing forward performance-based standards for novel cement and concrete materials, to really enable the utilization that we've heard from a huge amount about the challenges of using performance-based standards is going to enable new materials, lower-carbon footprint materials. 

Next slide, please. So let me go through some of these new announcements that we've made. Just last week, October 8, we started 2 weeks ago now. We were really excited to announce the selection of 16 projects totaling $38 million in funding from our Fiscal Year 2020 for cross-sector technology. So, this is a FOA we released earlier this year. This is, of course, a more conventional funding process, but really excited to announce projects in three topic areas to support the development of that cross-sector technologies portfolio that we have in our office. 

Those three topics have a focus on one electrification of industrial heat. So, developing new electric heating technologies. Two, efficient energy use in industrial systems that had really two subfocus areas. The first one was specifically focused on developing membrane technologies. So, to reduce the need of heat for separations, of course, that are conventionally through either distillation or drying or de-watering processes. 

So, developing membranes that can essentially replace heat with electrical pressure. And then the second subtopic there was in advanced heat exchanger design. So, developing new heat exchanger technologies that can substantially improve the efficiency of thermal processes, waste heat recovery integration with indirect technologies in industrial processes. 

And then the third topic that we announced selections in is supporting our wastewater treatment portfolio, where we announced five projects that we think are really going to push the ball forward in terms of decarbonizing organic wastewater and waste treatment, which is highly emissions-intensive, both in terms of the energy that is currently used for—that is primarily used for aeration to oxidize the organic wastes in those waters, but is also a significant source of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions as well, of course, particularly methane, as well as nitrous oxide that are both extremely potent greenhouse gases. 

And so we're developing a number of exciting technologies there to significantly reduce or eliminate methane and nitrous oxide release. Next slide, please. 

I want to give just a couple of examples of the specific projects or funding. Of course, I don't have time to go through all 16 of them. But just to give a little bit of a flavor of what we're funding. So, this is a project led by WPI, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, that is building off of previous funding that we have provided to WPI, to really set up a test capability for validating at a subscale novel, low-temperature heating and drying technologies. 

So, we previously funded them to develop this capability. You can see it in the background of that picture. Not a very illustrative picture. Looks like a steel box. But within that steel box are a number of… 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Technology. 

AVI SCHULTZ: Exactly. It's technology. Exactly. Our number of modular components that they can switch in and out to essentially have a line that can mimic, of course, a manufacturing process line and actually validate in situ the performance of experimental technologies. And so in particular with this new project, we're funding for them to install new capabilities. 

It was specifically focused on new laser heating technologies, as well as ultrasound and infrared drying technologies that they're going to be using to focus specifically on drying for the food and pulp and paper industry. So, I'm really excited to launch that next step of this work with WPI. Next slide, please. 

Another example from the work that I talked about in terms of membrane development. So, this is an exciting project being led by Georgia Tech. Some of you may be familiar with graphene oxide, which is a really interesting material that's been developed—it's been in research for a number of years now. We're starting to see some companies actually commercialize tech membrane technologies based on graphene oxide, as we may be familiar—in particular, is one that's received funding from a number of offices in DOE. 

And the really exciting thing about graphene oxide is that it can be extremely chemically stable and robust, as well as giving you the really fine control that you need for advanced membranes. That makes it really exciting to apply to technologies like the pulp and paper industry, where you have significant challenges around, trying to concentrate—or if you're able to concentrate highly corrosive liquid solutions like, what comes out of kraft process, in paper, in pulping. 

Then you can substantially reduce the need for downstream drying and essentially make much higher solid fraction materials coming out of that process, which can have pretty dramatic impacts on the total energy need for the holistically, the total paper pulping process. So, we're really excited to fund this. So, Georgia Tech is working on really a next-generation version of these graphene oxide membranes that we think is really—really has the potential to push this technology substantially forward. 

And if successful, hopefully get adopted by some communities that are working on visualizing these types of things. Next slide, please. Also wanted to emphasize—so you've heard before about RAPID, which is a manufacturing USA institute that was originally launched under our predecessor office, the Advanced Manufacturing Office. 

As IEDO, about a year ago now, at this point, we were able to announce a renewal of RAPID for a 5-year $40 million DOE investment to continue to drive their work forward and extend their really successful work in mobilizing and uniting the chemical and process industries around our goals of decarbonization. We announced that renewal, again, about a year ago. Since we last met, we've been able to negotiate what that relaunch looks like. 

We've been able to actually kick off this second phase of RAPID, and they've been holding a number of roadmapping workshops over the last several months, that—some of those strategies, as well as, of course, starting to see the projects that are going to be selecting to work on their RFP. Next slide, please. 

Also, of course, want to emphasize EPIXC, our second manufacturing USA institute. I believe when we last met, they had been successfully launched and kicked off. They have been very active in their work. We were just able to announce again a couple of weeks ago that their initial selection of jumpstart projects, probably they're not called out on this slide, but we have five projects that we were able to announce over about $5 million in funding. 

That's really going to get them moving on, addressing their goals of uniting the process. Excuse me, the electrified heating communities around five specific technical projects across industrial sectors. Next slide, please. 

So let me now shift a little bit to the industrial energy storage system. So, as we think about our goals around of course decarbonizing industrial heating, there are—I've talked in the past about the Industrial Heat Energy Earthshot, which is a uniting effort across DOE to work on decarbonizing, of course, industrial heating across temperature ranges. Two of the three thrusts in the Industrial Heat Shot. One is focused on, of course, replacing fossil-fuel combustion heating with electrified heating using clean sources of electricity. 

But of course, we are either—that are not as flexible as conventional electric generators in terms of a time domain. And the second thrust is integrating clean heat sources. So, whether that's direct integration of nuclear heat, solar thermal, geothermal, again, with the same challenges of either intermittency or inflexibility in terms of when those resources are going to be available. 

So, for both of those thrusts, we see it as a critical part of our technology development strategy to decouple the availability of those clean resources from the utilization of that energy, that heat energy in the industrial facility. We know that we will not be successful if this transformation to decarbonize industrial heating requires significant process changes or operational changes in the industrial facility. 

We can't ask people to not operate high CapEx equipment 24 hours a day. We can't ask facilities to go from—to change their structure for their workforce. It is critical that we decouple, again, that energy from when it's being used, which is why we see energy storage and particularly thermal energy storage in the industrial heating space as a key enabling technology. 

We've made investments in our RD&D and thermal energy storage previously, but what we're really focused on here in this new energy storage system prize that we're announcing is the integration—is advancing the integration of those energy storage concepts with actual facilities. And so we're going to be asking for innovative ideas in three particular categories.

The first one is specifically focused on industrial cooling. 

And this is in response to of course, a lot of the challenges that we're all familiar with in terms of low growth around things like data centers, where we know that the cooling load is going to be, is a significant driver, of course, of that growth. The second category we're going to be asking for innovations in is high-temperature industrial energy storage. So how do we integrate… 

So of course, there are a number of really exciting high-temperature thermal systems—thermal storage systems out there. We know that it's not going to be trivial to integrate those with actual industrial processes. So, that's what we're going to be asking applicants to focus on. And then finally, we're going to be asking for hybrid solutions that can integrate thermal storage with basically a full facility looking at the range of cooling, heating, and power demand at a single facility. 

And how do we integrate novel thermal storage technologies with that actual facility operation. So, we're really excited about this prize. We've announced that it's coming. We're hoping to release the detailed rules and start doing some engagement to get applicants for this in the next couple of months. So, hope to share more details on that when we're able to. Next slide, please. 

I mentioned previously, this ISEED workforce initiative. So, this is a $3 million effort. Again, we're using this innovative PIA, partnership intermediary agreement mechanism. And really one of the reasons we think this is so appropriate to use this novel mechanism to lower the barrier of application is because what we really want to do here in this initiative is bring together all of the educational resources and curricula that we know are out there. 

So, I want to emphasize, we are not using this funding to recreate training curricula and stand up our own training programs that we know already exist through workforce organizations, through community colleges, through unions, that may exist in industry associations. We're not trying to replicate any of that, but what we're trying to do is bring all of those resources together in a single collaborative. 

As I said, collaborative to make them easily accessible to the folks and the companies and to the organizations that are looking to use those resources. So, because of course, we're trying to reach so many of these, I'll call them unconventional partners for typical DOE programs, that's why we're really excited about this PIA where we're essentially contracting with a third party to run the RFP. 

And they have a very, very simple application process, where essentially asking for the technical details of what these partners have in their training curriculum. So, we have applications due actually just this week, on Friday. We're excited to see what comes in and help bring all of these resources together to create a really exciting workforce. Next slide, please. 
Cement and Concrete Center of Excellence. So again, this is where we're trying to be a little bit more innovative with what we can do with the national laboratories. So, I mentioned earlier that what this is really focused on is bringing together the technical resources and organizations that are needed to really enable performance-based standards for novel cement, concrete materials. 

So, we know that there's lots of new materials development happening in the cement and concrete space. We're funding a fair bit of it through our conventional technology development projects. Other organizations are working on that. There are a number, of course, startup companies, established companies that are putting investment in that space. 

We also know that there is large-scale demonstration and field testing happening, that's happening—we hear that's happening, and we've talked to folks doing that in NIST, in the Army Corps of Engineers, in state departments of transportation that are standing up regional field testing, field test capabilities to validate the performance of these new materials in realistic, regionally specific conditions. 

What we have heard loud and clear from stakeholders—and actually, the White House led a convening specifically on this topic a few months ago that we were able to participate in. What we are hearing loud and clear from stakeholders is there is a gap here in terms of getting the community to essentially agree on what the data needs are, in terms of what needs to be transparent, what data needs to be collected, and what the actual success metrics are going to be for the end users of these novel cement and concrete materials to actually agree to use them based on the results of that demonstration and field testing. 

So, we're trying to be with this center of excellence very, I'll say, targeted and high leverage with our funding, where we're not going to try to replicate any of these new test facilities that are being stood up. But we're trying to use the national laboratories as a way to do the convening with, again, all of those these technical experts, with the companies that are developing the new materials, with the end users, and really focus on getting consensus around what's highlighted in blue on this slide around what are the measurements, modeling, and test methods that we need to focus on. 

What are the processes around data collection and monitoring that we need to agree on. What are the carbon accounting metrics that we need to use, so that when we do utilize those demonstration and field testing resources, we have confidence and hopefully, potentially even commitment from the end users with those performance-based tests, those performance-based standards that hopefully come out of this work will actually allow the adoption of new lower-carbon-footprint terms materials. Next slide, please. 

Shifting topics a little bit. So, I've already talked a little bit about—and of course I probably don't need to emphasize too much with this audience, the growing focus on data center efficiency and carbon footprint and load growth in the U.S. Of course, we've been hearing a lot—there's been a lot in the news about the increasing demands on regional grids and utilities due to increasing development of data centers specifically focused on AI as a particular driver of marked increase in data center energy demand. 

And we're really happy to—we're really proud to be able to say that from the beginning point in terms of data transparency. We have been leading the effort for that. We understand what that looks like. So, funding has been supporting Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that is responsible really in the U.S. for coming up with these objective analysis of what actual load growth looks like. 

They're hoping to come out with that final report by the end of this calendar year. I believe tentatively, December is when the numbers—we'll be able to release. But the short answer is that we are expecting significant amounts of load growth being driven by AI. And there are reasons why we hope that growth of AI technology, of course, happens in the U.S. 
So, what we've been thinking about in IEDO is developing a suite of approaches to address that. So, both certainly in IEDO, but also helping to lead that effort across DOE as well. If you go to the next slide, please. A few things that I want to emphasize—and DOE. So of course, we've been starting to publish resources, preliminary resources around this load growth. 

We've been working closely with the White House, with other offices in DOE, with the Department of Commerce and developing convenings on critical AI infrastructure, and making sure that prioritizing AI data centers in that discussion, the energy of that discussion is very much front and center in any discussions about how AI fits into U.S. national priorities. 

We've been doing a huge amount of stakeholder engagement directly with hyperscalers that, of course, the Metas, the Amazons, the Alphabets of the world, and understanding their roadmaps, as well as working directly with data center operators, utilities, state officials, individuals, and communities. So, to make sure that we understand—where are our near-term investments have been. 

So, we've certainly been making sure that we're leveraging the resources we have in IEDO, and in particular—and I'll talk about that in the next slide, but first, I want to emphasize that one of the things we've done, just as a first step in DOE, is to create essentially a front door for all of DOE. Sometimes seems like a little bit of a small thing, but we think it's been really helpful for our stakeholder engagement that we have set up and assigned a data center engagement team with a single website and email where folks can come in and access the resources across DOE from a single point. 

Go to the next slide, please. We've been really organizing a lot of our RD&D technical assistance. So, on the RD&D side, we've of course been working closely with our sister offices, and the Advanced Materials Manufacturing Technology Office has recently stood up an initiative they call Energy Efficiency Scaling for Two Decades, EES2, where they've had a number of those key hyperscalers sign on. 

And that effort is really focused on the RD&D roadmap for substantially improving the efficiency of the chip technology being used in next-generation data centers. Of course, working closely with our Buildings Technology Office, which has worked on a lot of the HVAC and cooling technologies that are driving the demand, as well as of course, working with ARPA-E, which conveniently has just been running—has been running a solicitation called COOLERCHIPS on developing really innovative technologies around data center cooling. 

We've been taking the lead on coordinating these efforts in IEDO because we see our role in the ecosystem as being that core technical office focused on the overall facility-level energy consumption from data centers. So again, working with all those other offices to bring all those technologies together at the facility level to really address that high-level demand on the grid in our cross-sector technologies team, where a lot of this work really is going to live. 

We've been developing strategies, which we haven't released any funding of. We're developing strategies around thermal management to focus on innovative, next-generation cooling technologies as well as energy systems integration. So, certainly part of that is the energy storage prize as previously talked about. And then, of course, we're also looking at utilizing that center of expertise for energy efficiency and data centers in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and particularly through that technical assistance front door that I was talking about. 

We've been working to make sure that those resources building up as integrity—directly to data center developers to ensure that we're getting the most advanced technology can into those systems. Next slide, please. 

Another growing focus area in our office, which we haven't yet released any direct funding around, but are is a emerging area of emphasis, is in supporting industrial electrification through industry integration. This is something that I want to say you will very much expect to see, particularly through our cross-sector technologies team, a very growing emphasis on the technologies, particularly around storage, communications, control systems, to enable the—to enable the seamless connection of these growing industrial loads with utility planning processes and utility operations. 

So, specifically through our technical—so this is actually something that's going to be cross-cutting across our office, where our cross-sector technologies team is going to be taking the lead on the RD&D, but utilizing a lot of the expertise and connections that we have with utility operators through our technical assistance workforce development team. And if you go to the next slide, Carolyn. 

I believe—yeah, a lot of that expertise really lives within Onsite Energy Program. I believe this is something that I might have talked a little bit about the last time we met. This is a program that we launched, again, about—we announced them a little bit more than a year ago that we were able to completely launch earlier this calendar year, that this is a program that is specifically focused on ensuring that we are engaging and developing resources for the effective deployment of on-site clean energy resources at industrial facilities, including data centers. 

This program has a few different pieces to it. There is a national laboratory piece where we support the development of tools and technical resources at the labs, which we then utilize through, what we call our Technical Assistance Partnership, or APS, which are a series of regional organizations that have the regional expertise and connection to vendors, to state energy offices, to utilities in each of there—in each of the regions across the country, so that they can be a central contact point for facilities and companies that are looking to understand how to accelerate the deployment of these on-site energy resources at their facility. 

So again, this is a key part of again, what we're trying—especially in the data center and industrial area, where we're utilizing this expertise and these networks to help make those connections as quickly as we can. Next slide, please. I think this is the last content piece I'll say here. 

So just we've had continued work and development in our office to advance the sophistication and utilization of what we call our community benefit plans, which specifically in our RD&D are really focused on assuring that as we develop these next-generation decarbonization technologies that we are engaging with local communities, with local community colleges, particularly to ensure that we're getting feedback from communities, as well as figuring out how to leverage conventionally underrepresented communities in these technology development spaces, so that they will have the opportunity and the expertise to participate in these new markets that we're hoping to help them develop through this technology development. 

We've written, releasing material through websites, web pages on our website, holding workshops on really helping to train, particularly applicants on what we think strong community benefit plans particularly look like, to make sure that we're getting the most out of this tool. Next slide, please. So yeah. Sorry, sorry. 

So, this is just what I was just saying. So, we've been developing a number of new resources that is really centered around creating comprehensive guidance on strengthening the community benefit plan. So, we know that this is a relatively new feature of what we're asking for in our RD&D work. And so we've been doing a lot of high-level guidance trying to give examples—that specific examples of what we believe weak, strong, or excellent community benefit plans look like to really help improve the quality of what we're getting through this process. 

And again, the bottom of this slide here just emphasizes the webinar that I mentioned, where we featured expert panelists to help give a little bit more flavor on what we're looking to achieve with these plans. We're in the process of planning a second webinar follow-up on that. Next slide, please. 

The last thing I'll mention a new initiative. And I flagged this specifically for our committee members to disseminate through all of your networks as well. We are looking for photos of industrial technologies that really can help send out the message of what industrial, what this future looks like to our stakeholders. We are—this is the prize that we've set up. We will give people money for—literal money. 

We will give you money for the best photos that you submit to us. And not only will you get money by submitting photos that we think represent this vision, you will get free advertising from us. We will use these photos in all of our material as much as possible to advertise, again, what we think this future is. 

So, it seems a little small, but I wanted to emphasize it here because this is, I'll say, actually really an important part of our communication strategy, to collect a really wide resource of exciting imagery that we can use to sell this vision that we're working on. Next slide, please. 

That's all I have. Great. Thank you very much. 

SHARON NOLEN: All right. I think we have almost 15 minutes for questions, so questions for Avi. Oh, I already started on it. Neal, that's all yours first. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah. Thank you. Excellent presentation. And I will say, pleased to see where you have come since you joined IEDO some time ago. So, I wanted to go back. The data center is certainly something of significant interest area, which you may be aware of… 

One of the challenges as we begin to look at—and this applies, I think, also to industrial-grade integration, but particularly with honors. One of the biggest challenges that we see folks encountering is interfacing, not on the technology side, but on the regulatory environment side. And I'm going to meet with Jeanne Rodriguez this afternoon. But curious how you are coordinating with OEE and other groups may route folks like that on the regulatory interface issues, which have actually thwarted many of the efforts out there. 

AVI SCHULTZ: Yeah. So, we're certainly—we're certainly talking and engaged with them. You may be familiar that there's a initiative, the next step following on with what we've previously been leading in ERE called the grid modernization initiative. We followed that up with the next step, which we've been calling our supercharge initiative. 

That's really been taking the lead across the area on a lot of exactly these challenges, across the ERE technologies. We've been engaged in that. There's a number of different thrusts to that, some of which I can talk about and some of which are still in the planning and development stages. 

One in particular that we've been engaged in is the Clean Energy Innovator Network, where essentially what we've been doing in ERE is helping to fund staff, essentially fellowships at organizations to help— essentially provide capacity at organizations, particularly focused on utilities and state energy offices to ensure that they have folks who are thinking only about integration of clean energy resources and clean demand. 

We've engaged in that. We've been helping folks that are part of that program is specifically focused on the industrial sector. Our engagement with that has still been relatively new. So that's still a developing program. We're looking potentially extend that in the future. But that's been one example. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: What's the lead office on that, the DOE or is it [inaudible]? 

AVI SCHULTZ: Yeah, I believe—I need to double check on that. I believe that's primarily being led out of the Integrated Strategy Office, which is essentially the front office. They've been—they've been coordinating the funding that's been coming from a number of different offices to coordinate that. But I may be wrong about that. Thank you. 

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Thanks, Avi. And wow, what a lot of progress and amazing work, even just since the last presentation to the committee. So, thank you for your leadership on this and all the amazing initiatives. My question is about load growth. You mentioned data centers, but—of course, which are very important. Of course, direct industrial electrification, slow growth, green electricity to make green hydrogen is load growth. 

And even in other sectors like electric vehicles could be major drivers. So, we're seeing a lot of potential sources of load growth. So, I guess I'm wondering how you envision, which of these drivers are—do you see them all as being balanced, or do you think data centers are the most important? 

And given that the U.S. has made a commitment to try for a net-zero grid by 2035, and I think some utilities are concerned when they look at these four or more sources of load growth that they say, well, I'm not sure we can accommodate that while also reaching net zero by 2035. So, your new initiative about industrial industry grid integration is right on point for that. So, I guess I'm wondering if any of the work helps to assuage the utility's concerns and say, we can hit our 2035 target and meet load growth? 

AVI SCHULTZ: Yeah, that's a great question, Jeff. I think—and this is something that I hope will come out very clearly in our pathways work is that we're not necessarily going to try to overly predict the future in terms of which pathways are going to be more dominant than others. And what that means, we want to set ourselves up to be capable of response to all those different pathways. 

So, in the near term—I mean, that's why in some ways the excitement over center load growth is very helpful because it gives us a very near term, I don't know, mechanism learning opportunity to understand how to work with utilities, what the real challenges are. And I'll emphasize that—I mean, in some ways the data center load growth challenge is critically important for that reason because it gives us that really good learning opportunity. 

It's also—well, in the longer, medium and longer term, there's significant growth we expect. In the shorter term this is something that we expect. While there's lots of excitement across the U.S. because a lot of these companies are still trying to decide where to site these data centers. So, there's engagement with a lot of different utilities. In the end, it's going to be of course, a small subset of those that actually have the data center construction happening in their service areas. 

And so it's going to be, especially in the short term, a much more contained and smaller challenge, which of course, is not to minimize the challenge of those utilities are going to have and managing it, but it gives us the opportunity to learn from it. And so that's really how we're thinking about that challenge, to of course, work with it, provide the technical assistance and the resources we can, but make sure that we're using this as an opportunity to learn about what we think is going to happen 10‒15 years down the road with all these other sources. 

SHARON NOLEN: Cathy, you're next. 

CATHY CHOI: Thank you, Avi. Yesterday, we had a really good presentation about the hydrogen hub, $7 billion invested in that area along those lines. Can you elaborate how your work expands on the hydrogen hub through efficiency or new technology? 

AVI SCHULTZ: Yeah. I would say the way I think about that is very similar to the way I think largely about the asset portfolio, which is that this is going to be the first time we're deploying or constructing a lot of this…

So yes, as it gets stood up, we are involved in providing input on the technical challenges and providing technical expertise where it's helpful to help develop and stand it up. Or also we have some level of engagement with some of the—particularly some of the clubs that are focused more on the industrial space where we're providing input and we have some other of our initiatives that are working with some of those organizations already to help develop their thinking around how to engage with us. 

But the way we really think about this is as this gets developed, there are going to be huge portions of this where things don't work the way they're expected. We're going to understand where infrastructure is going to get developed and where it's not going to get developed either planned to get developed right now. We're going to understand where—as it gets rolled out and facilities actually start getting integrated, we're going to understand what the facility level challenges are. 

We're going to understand where end-use technologies are not as mature as we thought they are or we thought they were. Where are there opportunities for improvement. So, what we're going to be doing is we're going to be learning for that, and that's going to be directly fed into our new programs and initiatives. So, as we see those gaps, that's where we can step in and say, OK, there's a need here for RD&D to help advance those technologies or for those gaps. 

So that's really, I would say, the main way in which we're working with the hydrogen hubs and as well as the broader industrial administration. 

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: This is super helpful since I'm just coming back from 6 months of leave. So, this is like a great update for me personally as well on just what's going on. I have several questions that I'm just going to say that I don't think you'll probably have time to answer, but they'll just be in the record. So, first on the first topic you covered on funding. I think it's really exciting that you all are trying to use new types of funding mechanisms for that flexibility. 

One question I had that kind of also relates to Cathy's question there is, as you're starting to think about the learnings from some of the other offices, like the bigger projects and the projects that is funding are starting to mature and getting ready for that next bigger stage, is there going to be more of an opportunity to shepherd certain projects? Because you have the experience working with them and you know that you have a good inkling that they would be good projects to move forward for larger sums of money. 

And is there currently, I guess, authorization to do that within DOE? If there's not, if that's something that we can be thinking about as we think the recommendations. Then smaller question. One of the things that I think the community has appreciated on with announcements of projects and funding is they've really highlighted too how many applications they received versus the amount of funding that they had. 

Is that something that is able to do more of just so that the outside world has an understanding of just the scale of actually good projects that meet all the selection criteria that you would love to fund versus the pot of money you have to spend? So that's kind of funding question. 

And then another question that kind of links to things on the cement and concrete center of excellence, which I'm super excited about and need to dive in more on all of that now that I'm back. And everyone's favorite topic of data centers, which is specifically like, the hyperscalers. Obviously, they're thinking about the energy piece, but there are also some of the biggest companies thinking about building the data center and really making sure that when it gets built, fully decarbonized, including embodied carbon of the materials that they're using. 

So, since this is a place that kind of is looking at both of these pieces, have you thought about the opportunity to bring those things together really holistically? And with the Center of Excellence specifically, I think these are—the hyperscalers are some of companies who are wanting to be involved in demonstrations and things like that and learnings and on performance specifications specifically that can then be shareable. 

So just wondering where you see potential synergies there. 

AVI SCHULTZ: Yeah. 

SHARON NOLEN: It was lot of questions. It's with—fairly short reply. It comes to this question again because our time is up. 

AVI SCHULTZ: Got it. Yes, and I can—thanks for the questions, Abigail. I can fairly quickly, just very quickly to your question about the center cement and concrete Center of Excellence. We're thinking about that. We're probably not as engaged as we need to be on specifically that opportunity. But as we stand up the Center of Excellence, I think that's a good flag for something we can engage in terms of convening. 

On your other questions about funding, I can answer that very quickly. In terms of number of applications and being public about the level of interest, that is a discussion we are having with our general counsel. And we are—so I can't share that information at the moment, but I can certainly qualitatively say that your instinct is right, we are getting a huge response from the community in all of our meetings, and we are really only able to fund a fraction of the ideas. 

Again, in terms of the relationship with OSA, I'll say the challenge there is I think while we have the authorization to continue to shepherd those projects into demonstration, the appropriations for, I'll call it the next set of industrial demonstration program isn't there yet. So, we're certainly working closely with them. And as they develop their technologies, we will be working internally on project review teams, making sure we're getting all that impact, but they don't have appropriations to do another round right now. 

SHARON NOLEN: Good job. OK, we'll end with comments and questions. 

SPEAKER: OK, again, very good presentation. That's why—like Abigail, I got a challenge with one of—I'll throw a few to you. But I understand time may not permit all of them. I'm going to start off with the biggest one that hopefully can get to and mention the other two if you can. So, it's been timely— 

I'm actually glad you're presenting this today, but it's just I don't think I've had these questions. Data centers—data centers. So, they want a handful of your slides. And even when you mention Onsite Energy, you made a special call out on data centers. So, it's—I'm sensing that you all are really tracking this—in fact, you confirmed you're tracking that sector, if you will, as a very important near-term point of attention within IEDO, I mean, without a doubt. 

AVI SCHULTZ: Absolutely. And I'll say there are really two reasons for that. There's one, which is the reason I emphasized the last question, which is that we see this as really—as a test case for a lot of the load growth that we anticipate happening now, happening in the future due to other technologies we're developing. It's also the broader AI conversation, is a national priority, a national security question for the U.S. 

So, to be perfectly frank, there's been a lot of engagement with the White House and the administration around ensuring that we have a holistic AI strategy for the U.S. Certainly a lot of that is focused on uses of AI. But again, we can't separate that utilization of AI from the energy demand. So, part of that strategy needs to be making sure that we have a strategy for a robust energy supply for data centers. 

So again, and in terms of our mission, we see that as a useful mechanism to ensure that we have the appropriate focus on developing strategies around low growth requirements. 

SPEAKER: Great, thanks. One real quick on just—on the CBP. You also gave a presentation on yesterday. I understand you all have respective ways you handle it, although there is some attempt at trying to cross-pollinate. Do you all close the loop on that? What I mean by that is put out there maybe best practices, but you all have some kind of evaluation of just the efficacy of CBP. 

How are they doing? How are they being? And if so, is it too early to tell yet as far as feedback received on that? 

AVI SCHULTZ: Yeah, that's a great question. The short answer is that we don't have any data yet. I mean, we've just started deploying these most of the projects using CBPs haven't—I mean, most of them have either just started and have we finished contracting or we're still in negotiations. So, we don't yet have any data. But that's a great flag. So, we haven't really—I'll say frankly, we haven't really developed a strategy around evaluation of CBPs yet, but that's a great flag and we agree that we should develop that strategy. 

SPEAKER: OK, Thank you. 

SHARON NOLEN: All right, Avi, we really appreciate your presentation. It's great to see the good work IEDO is doing. Thank you for being here. I don't know if you're going to be able to continue with us. 

AVI SCHULTZ: Unfortunately, I need to jump to another meeting. So sorry. Apologies that I can't stay. 

SHARON NOLEN: Well, thank you for being here. 

AVI SCHULTZ: Thank you so much for having me. 

SHARON NOLEN: With that, we're going to have a little deviation from the agenda. And we're going to talk about a few slides I put together last night. So, Carolyn, if you could bring those up. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: It's just a performance, but it's that… 

SHARON NOLEN: She used a different background, or somebody changed the background. OK, that is fine. Sorry about that. 

OK, so what I'm showing here is something we use within my company and maybe others use it. I don't know where we got it. We may have gotten it from a consultant, but we talk about situation and then what are the options for addressing the situation and what's the recommendation. 

And so I really tried to just take what I heard yesterday and put it this in that format. And so a couple of disclaimers, I guess. One is this is a draft. This is just something intended to help us gather our thoughts and hopefully come to a conclusion. And then also, I don't want it in any way to be negatively perceived about work any of the subcommittees have been doing. 

I think it's been very valuable for us to come together as a team and be able to talk about what we want the report to look like. We haven't been able to do that, since the first meeting. And so I think it's significant and something we want to take advantage of today. So again, I'm just trying to put back out there what I heard, but in a format that we can use for discussion. 

So please, say whatever you want. I have no personal feelings about it. It's just what I heard. The situation is we need to produce a report for Congress. And so the desired aspects, as I heard, are we want it to be meaningful. We want it to be impactful. 

We think it needs to be shorter rather than longer. And yeah, I noted the maximum pages for a similar report was about 65 pages. So, I think that gives us some idea of what it should be. It could be longer if we wanted to add appendices to include all subjects. That's something I think we need to talk about. And then there was also a lot of talk about recommendations. And so that will be reported on the number adopted in future years. 

I think Zach was telling us that only means they need to be numbered, so that's a pretty easy lift for us. We thought they should be listed early in the report with the executive summary, so they're easy to see and they should be listed. And I don't think—anyway, we want to focus on the vital few. I think what I heard yesterday is people don't want a huge number. 

We don't want to hinder recommendations. We want some smaller number that are really significant. And then we also want to prioritize them. So that we say the most important thing first. Something Zach added, which I appreciated, is it could include funding. There may be conclusions that we draw that we want to share that don't really have a recommendation associated with them, and there's no need for us to repeat information already in the public domain. 

And there's a lot of good information here. So let me just invite discussion questions, comments to this summary. OK. 

SPEAKER: 65 pages, that kind of sets a standard that we are expecting to have 65 pages. Why say? That's too long a report not to exceed. 

SHARON NOLEN: Not to exceed. It says maximum pages. I don't know. Does that answer your question or… 

SPEAKER: I mean, I would have, say 20 pages. That's what we should target, not 65. Nobody will read it. I'm sorry. 

SHARON NOLEN: OK. Well… 

SPEAKER: I think it's useful just having written a 674-pager. It really does help set the frame for what level of detail you're looking for. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, and it says maximum. That was intended to say not to exceed…

SPEAKER: I don't see the word "maximum" in there. 

SHARON NOLEN: Max pages, I was brief there. OK. 

SPEAKER: Under my findings, could it be other things that we consider just as a mention? 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, I mean, I think that the key thing I would say is that a recommendation or a finding is going to be something that the committee votes on and like, meaningfully approves. 

SPEAKER: I just didn't know that finding is a lesser than a recommendation. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Oh. I guess to Sharon's point, I would say it's like—it's a conclusion that the committee is drawing more so than a recommendation. But a finding might be that the industrial decarbonization roadmap is a good summation of the pathways needed to decarbonize the industrial sector. And then that gets you off the hook from having to describe everything in there. 

SPEAKER: That's fine. That's a good idea. 

SPEAKER: So, I'm being a little—I'm being a little playful with the word were recommendations. So, because one of a—situational point is a recommendation that maybe comes up is that we were—I forget who, but somebody recommended that we take a step back and look at the charter that we have, a summary of the duties. 

So, I don't know if that's going to be a natural part of what we're about to do anyway, but I actually appreciated that. It kind of sent me on some things. So that I would just say that's a part of the situation as well, is that we need to benchmark against what we were charged to do. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, that's definitely a good addition. And you did say everybody should have at their place today the summary of the deed. And so that is something to be looking at. But thanks for calling that out. 

SPEAKER: I do have one other question. Who is the audience of the 65-page report? 

SHARON NOLEN: So that covers—that it's the secretary. We're giving it to the secretary of the Department of Energy, and it is also going to Congress. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: I mean, the formal audience for this is the secretary of energy. The committee might have a broader, I think, readership than just the secretary, I should think, but… 

SPEAKER: You think they will read 65 pages of a report? 

SPEAKER: These secretaries will for this county. 

SPEAKER: We have somebody [inaudible]. 

SPEAKER: [INAUDIBLE] the three pages. 

[LAUGHTER] 

SPEAKER: On the nexus of the potential broader audience that we might want to be strategically speaking to and this introduction of including findings. So, I think it would be great if, as Zach said, like we complement the things that we think are good. 

But like beyond that, I think we could think about saying, like with more resources—a finding could be that with different or more resources, like DOE could do this thing that we think is really important. And that might be something that we want to—just thinking about, especially Congress. Jeff? 

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah, in terms of our first focus area, identifying and evaluate technologies being developed by the private sector, you may need to discuss that in some detail about the difference between academic premise and what's really in the development. Or one could readily exceed 65 pages with all the ideas and opportunities for development. I think keying on what's meant by—what qualifies as in development would be [inaudible]. 

SHARON NOLEN: So, one comment I wanted to make—and Zach, again, clarify this. But as I remember it, when we had our first meeting and we talked about these technology focus areas, one thing I think we heard is we can make changes to this. I mean, we should generally be guided by this, but it doesn't mean we have to exactly follow this. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, that's right. 

SHARON NOLEN: Maybe not. OK. Sorry. Oh, Sunday, sorry. I was looking at it from this. 

SPEAKER: All right, there was one thing that you mentioned yesterday that there are a lot of reports out there already, ideally on many technologies that we should not be what is there, but we can reference them. But I also want to mention that it is important that when we're putting this report together, that we have our own take and distinguish ourselves from the reports that are out there already. 

SPEAKER: Exactly [inaudible]. 

SPEAKER: Thank you. 

SPEAKER: [inaudible] And to the point of findings, not to make this worse, but this committee doesn't end after 2:00, after this report comes out. It has a future. So, I would suggest that the findings also include other areas where we might go next or areas that aren't old enough for this particular report. To Sasha's point, there will be some anticipatory work going forward. All I have to say. 

SHARON NOLEN: It seems to me that we have fairly good consensus on what we want to report today. So…

SPEAKER: Do you want to motion to concur? 

SHARON NOLEN: Do we need that? I think so. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: We can do that. But I think that means you need to make a true statement of what the report should be. So, everybody is not agreeing with what's in their head. [CHUCKLES] 

SHARON NOLEN: Preliminary [inaudible]. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: It's OK. 

SHARON NOLEN: But yeah. OK. So, let's go ahead and go to the options, which are on the next slide. So again, this is just a format we use within my company. But I like it. So, I used it. So, here's what I see these options. And I have a number four that's on the next slide that I didn't put them all on here. So, you can happily read it. 

So, first one is just continue with the report outline. And one thing we talked about yesterday, if we want to limit the pages, we could assign pages so that would be one option. 

And so we always just list out advantages and disadvantages. And so feel free to critique or add to these. But one advantage is the structures already developed. So, some people may feel ownership of what we've already done and want to stick with that. 

I think a disadvantage is as we're going through the report outline yesterday, it's very thorough, but I think it could result in developing a more lengthy document, because if we try to talk about all those things, it's probably repeating some information that's already available. And I think it just lends itself to being long because there's a lot in the outline. So, any comments on that one? 

The second thing that was talked about—and Joe Cresko, I'm glad you're here because I couldn't remember what you said. But consider main areas to focus on. And the examples I heard—you said something about data. Can you remember what you said? 

JOE CRESKO: As we were going through the day yesterday, I noticed in different sections, for example, the importance of data showed up in multiple places. It was just one example. For example, the idea or the questions about or the points about things like embodied carbon need to be able to measure it, understand it. It has impacts for climate and trade. It has lots of impacts. 

It has impacts for understanding actually where the emissions are coming from and really being about that. And we saw that as we worked on the roadmap, the DOE data that the Energy Information Administration has, it's very straightforward for DOE to take energy times emissions intensity to get your CO or CO2 emissions. 

But when you look at, for example, the EPA data, it gets more complicated. So just that alone, I noticed—we noticed this in multiple places. So, the idea of still having that framework and that structure that replicates or what was asked for, but then pulls out those important things to highlight them where they have—where their core issues that show up in more than one place. 

SHARON NOLEN: And the other example I thought of was recycling. We heard about recycling associated with plastic, aluminum, scrap steel. So yeah, that was another place we—or another thing, it seemed like we talked about a lot. And there may be others. Those were two examples. 

And so the advantages I thought of that kind of approach is—I think it lends itself to a shorter document because you have a limited number of main areas to focus on. And I think it also minimizes potential for duplication. I think one thing we struggle with the current outline is we worry about duplication. And I think this would sort things out and make it less likely we would have that. 

And then cons—and I do have something about the charter here, Joe, but thanks for reminding us, is first coming through [inaudible]. The concept, it could be seen as incomplete. So, we would have to try to check that against the charter and make sure we're not selling that short in terms of what we have. So let me pause and see comments on that approach. Jeff. 

JEFFREY RISSMAN: The one—if we were to go this route, which area to focus on would become very [? antithetical ?] to the debate, for instance, to me, something like direct electrification of industrial process heat would rise to the top as one of the main line—if we're going to zoom in on one thing. Data availability and modeling is also of interest, but someone else might think some other topic is the one we should focus on. So, I don't know if that's a con or not, but it would open up a debate about which thing to cover. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah. I think that's great. Neal? 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah. 

SHARON NOLEN: Oh, you're just… 

NEAL ELLIOTT: No. Abigail. 

SHARON NOLEN: I'm sorry. Abigail. Sorry. You were just rattling around there. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: No, I was racing, but I don't want to preempt. 

SHARON NOLEN: OK. Sorry, Abigail. 

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: So, I do think there might be—I agree this con that this might be incomplete if this is the only way that we write the report with these main focus areas. But I do like the idea of highlighting them. 

And so maybe now that we're talking about findings, this is how a finding would be used rather than structuring the report based on the focus on some main focus areas. But having all the things we need to have in the report, but then pulling these out as findings, and those existing in like the executive summary, and things like that. 

JOE CRESKO: I think that's a really important point. It was not one or the other, is that given this here's things that we're seeing and you're distilling that and the reader, I think, doesn't need to see how it is being defended because… 

SHARON NOLEN: Right. 

JOE CRESKO: These things show up in multiple places. That's why they're important. So, I think it is like the defense of the findings. 

SHARON NOLEN: Neal. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: I mean, I think looking at this and to this discussion that Joe contributed to just now, I think this is really doing a materiality assessment and picking the most material things. 

And part of this is what's the direction to IEDA, to the secretary, to Congress, that these are the priority focus areas that the department and the IEDO should be looking at or—and we can to the point that Betsy made, we can time limit this.

This is the current priority that we suggest DOE to focus on, and then we can add a future directions to [inaudible] on Avi's comments earlier, how will this evolve? Because there are—we need some agility in the department to deal with changes in [inaudible], changes and evolution of technology [inaudible]. 

SPEAKER: Yeah. I think my slight concern about number three is that it could be viewed as incomplete. And actually something I was literally just thinking about. And even what Neal ended on made me think all the more about it. When I look at the summary of ITIAC the duties. 

Maybe the paradigm shift for me is how much of the purpose that we're charged with are we trying to accomplish in this first report. Because if you look at it, I'm just going to quickly say, proposed missions and goals, and then it goes to focus areas. You also give a state of the art on technologies at least being developed by private sector. 

I won't go through all of them, but even in one key bullet, develop a strategic plan for the program. It's actually quite a charge. And I can see why it's a continual committee. So maybe we need to just reconcile. What portion of this are we really trying to accomplish in this first of multiple reports. 

SHARON NOLEN: OK. Jim? 

JIM: Yeah, I guess I had a question for Joe because you already considered this in terms of the industrial decarbonization roadmap, and you pretty much just chose to start with the sectors, and then look at the cross-cutting and the different approaches. I see some substantial differences within the sector as opposed to the generics of electrification of heat. And so your comments on what your committee had thought going into the roadmap would help us out. 

JOE CRESKO: A couple of points—one, we actually did have—the roadmap became bigger than its initial request. The initial request that some people might need, that some reports to Congress, and it asked for a few things. And we took the opportunity to go beyond a typical report to Congress, 30 or 40 pages, and do something that was much more substantial because it felt it was needed. 

It was like a door was opened to be able to do more than just check a box and send it up, send the check in. So given a classic engineering, here's the big things. Here's where the emissions are. Kind lay that out in just a first pass. It was the more obvious maybe approach. 

More nuanced approaches require you to look more deeply at those connections and those issues and a lot of those [inaudible] to get there. So that's how we got to part of the answer to how we got to where we did with the initial roadmap and that the pathways work that we're doing now. Avi mentioned, and I talked about it a bit yesterday, there is going to be an expansion on that, but there still is the fact that the large amounts of emissions come from some of the most [inaudible]. It's still a highlight on those, but trying to [inaudible] capture more of the root causes of emissions. 

SPEAKER: I really like number two, but I'm thinking about it a little bit differently than I think what's on the slide because I keep thinking about, how can our report be materially different from the reports that have existed before and additive to it. So, the roadmap looked at the sectors. And then the pathways is looking at the specific technologies that are needed for the sectors. 

And I, just yesterday and today, have been jotting down for myself like where I would—and I didn't plan to share it, but I'll just share it for the good of the order, where I would like to see this land. And I have three things. 

So, the first is to focus on what are the ways that DOE can flex its authorities, and be creative, and use a flexible suite of policy tools to achieve goals. Number two is how can DOE enhance coordination internally within the agency and with other federal agencies to achieve the goals. 

And number 3 is how can we optimize DOE programs. So, expand the areas need to be expanded, what maybe needs to be like right-sized down, and optimize DOE programs to achieve the goals. So that's a way of framing, I think, your number two, Sharon, which is like those are the main in my mind areas to focus on. 

And within that, we will see where the conversation takes us. But that, I think, would be substantially different from an additive to the main reports that have come to date. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Could you repeat number two? 

SPEAKER: Sure. My handwriting is very bad, and my notes are very messy here. OK. So, the first is Lexus authorities be creative with a suite of policy tools. Second is enhanced coordination within intra DOE and then interagency within the federal government. And number 3 is optimize programs, by which, I mean, expand and contract to right size for the goals. 

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: I'm going to expound on what Thomas was asking because this essentially the four underlying—so I'm looking at the summary. That's what we've been working towards, I think, as a group. And even though the first number one is the least efficient approach and the [inaudible] and all that. But it encompasses all of these. 

So, it's like your tactic of how you write it. You put everything in and then you pull out the stuff you don't want to depopulate or depopulate while you're going forward. So, I think the scope—I'm essentially seconding what Thomas was saying, what is the scope that we want for this. 

Because we went through—last time, we pretty much went through the scope of the second page. And we eliminated—we don't need to talk about transportation. That's what we were trying to scope. I'm just, I guess, furthering the axis. I understand [inaudible]. 

SPEAKER: I would maybe suggest that we focus on the last slide, actually, for that, which is the [inaudible] of the report. The first is more general duties, which could be things that happen separately. So, you could do a deep dive on the technology area. 

Now half of this list is still technology assessment, but this is the specific content. 

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Could we see option 4? 

[LAUGHTER] 

SHARON NOLEN: [inaudible] So OK, so one that was also mentioned is to use recommendations as the focus. So, you would have a recommendation, and then you would kind of defend the recommendation. And you could include background on it. But it would really lay it out in terms of recommendations. 

And I guess one I had not thought about before, but someone made the comment that maybe it was you that you don't—it doesn't have to be the whole report. So maybe you do recommendations like that, but you have other sections for other things. So those were the four. I thought I heard some semblance of yesterday, just trying to put it out there. 

I'm thinking, where do we go from here? And Joe raised his hand. Go ahead, Joe. 

JOE CRESKO: So, is it just recommendations or is it findings [inaudible]? 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, it certainly could be. So, I mean, these four options, I put out could be combined or some of both, or multiple ones could be selected. OK. Joe, or Neal, sorry. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Just to pick up on Jeff. I mean, I do think it would be beneficial to the secretary and to Congress to indicate findings of where are things OK now that don't need attention. And then the recommendations are where there should be additionality or something that changes. But I think the finding gives us the opportunity to say, yeah, OK, this is OK. 

SPEAKER: I think sometimes you need a finding to make a recommendation. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah. 

SHARON NOLEN: [inaudible] 

SPEAKER: Going back to this purpose to advise on technologies and proposed missions and goals. So here, we have its mission and it has its goals already. So, we need to acknowledge what those are. If we think they're in the right area, that's a quick… 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Finding. 

SPEAKER: We're done. We're good. You got the right thing, right? Those are easy to say or not, depending on how much comment you have on them, on advising and technologies in these focus areas. They're all listed here. 

Do we know and do we think—I don't think from what we did yesterday that I could say from some of the committees that we know these things yet, or that we have taken the next thought step to say, yes, this is where it leads me. I heard a lot of good comments, but I—and we still have some committees to report yet, so that's incomplete. 

Develop a strategic plan for the program. That worries me. [LAUGHS] That's the long term—I mean, that's the long-term view of this. And I think back to the first meeting we had where we had the new manufacturing part of DOE mask and all of that come in. And how many times did we hear carbon capture and storage projects discussed? 

So, can any one of us go back and say that all those pieces that I have that together in my head, and that I feel like they've got the right approach on that technology? I think we have to go back and do our homework on that, just as one example. And then we think about the sectors we want to look at. And then it says produce reports with an “S” on it, and on findings, and evaluation. 

So that's why I keep saying take what you can do now, come up with your first report. You don't have to eat the whole—an elephant is a bite at a time, right? That's what the old saying is, how you eat it. So, what is—I would figure out what is manageable for this first report and what would be the most benefit, and then come up with a schedule of next activities moving forward. That's just my basic suggestion. 

SHARON NOLEN: All right. So, in terms of where we go from here, I guess one other comment I'd like to make is, I think regardless of which one of these we choose, I think that the committee work is so valuable, each of the subcommittees, because whether we choose to come up with recommendations, or findings, or whatever, I mean, those subcommittees can work toward that. 

So, what I would like to accomplish today is some decision on what the report's going to look like and what the subcommittees need to do going forward. So, I guess we've heard—I mean, I've listed a few things, so I should put out a proposal. Are we—I'm trying to figure out how to get consensus or agreement on where we go from here. Comments. 

SPEAKER: Yeah, [inaudible] I know Zach wants to [inaudible]. I'm going to pick up actually where Zach, I think, left off. Zach, you said the third page, which has the title reports is really kind of a very crisp guide for us, right? 

So as a starting point, Sharon, I'm thinking if we look at the first report, I think naturally advise on technologies, maybe in a findings and recommendation type of tone, or flavor, or format, it seems like that could be fitting for it. And it's not to exclude them. 

Maybe some of the other points, but to me, even looking at the list and what was stated, it seems like maybe the findings and recommendations type of, again, tone, if you will, could achieve that. 

The program evaluation piece, I don't know if that's something that we should just completely omit from the first report, but it does—to me, it seems like right now, naturally, we're very equipped as far as our phrasing or framing, to make traction on advising regarding technologies. I do think we need to resolve how much of at least preliminary program evaluation we [inaudible] we can do. 

Grant, given a number of these initiatives are still kind of early on as far as some of the projects still haven't been awarded yet. So, it's kind of almost being fair to the program as far as giving it time to mature. 

SPEAKER: [inaudible] I'm going to—let's draw. I'll let Neal [inaudible]. 

SHARON NOLEN: OK, Neal. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: I just wanted to—I think comments make a very good point. And I would say the program evaluation aspect, I mean, what I think we should say is it does it look like it's on the right track or not, and that it is not mature, and we will meet in the committee needs to look at that as it matures. 

I would also note that we will have another meeting, full meeting in person, or at least one in-person meeting, and probably two virtual meetings between now and when we submit the reports. So, we can make some comments. But it doesn't have to be a detailed that isn't directionally this or is it directionally, yeah, it's off track. And… 

SPEAKER: I'll just say maybe it depends on how you define program evaluation. But I would say that a lot of the topics that are currently being considered by the DOE current work assessment and gaps subcommittee and the workforce and social subcommittee. I would consider under that bucket. So, I just want to put that out there explicitly. 

I don't think you're suggesting that we eliminate those work streams, but maybe you are. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yes. 

SPEAKER: So at least nominally, the assessment of DOE programs and gaps is under the—has been under the current outline structure, the subcommittee Sasha and I are chairing. And one thing I did was try to just list what they all are and what their funding levels are in a factual way, and there's probably five dozen. I mean, just to evaluate each one, and its funding level, is this appropriate? Is this targeted? I mean, it's that would already fill the whole report page count. 

So, I think I might lean away from a system. If we want to keep length and detail down, I might lean away from a systematic evaluation of each program. 

And maybe something—maybe the recommendation focus thing where if we can agree on a set of recommendations, a top five or six that we really care about, and then back each one of those up with the facts, analysis, and findings, that would be a way to make it very impactful because we have this top line message. Here are the five things DOE should do and here's why. 

SHARON NOLEN: So [inaudible]. OK, it feels like to me that we're headed toward if we look at the report structure—I'm sorry. One other thing we have to remind ourselves of is the timing of all this. Because my understanding is this was developed before AMO was, I guess, split. It was developed before the roadmap was out. And so funding…

SPEAKER: Funding came in. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah. So, a lot of things have changed since this came out. But… 
SPEAKER: It might be the first thing. 

[LAUGHTER] 

SHARON NOLEN: We should talk about that. Yes, we should. OK. But anyway, so keeping that in mind, maybe we could use the reports. And I kind of liked—I keep forgetting who said what. 

Sorry, but the technology, we could take, I think, the cross-cutting technologies and the subsectors and combine that into findings and recommendations from those two, and then we talked about a couple of these other things that we want to continue, like the workforce and the current work assessment. 

And so maybe we have two big topics and one is technologies and one is program evaluation. We just structure it a little bit differently. But it would keep most of the subcommittees we have that will—I don't know what we do with economic competitiveness. That is one where we have lost the lead [inaudible] it like that, but just putting something out there for comments. 

SPEAKER: So just so I understand—sorry. The number one—where we were right now, the current state of the report structure in my view, was a little bit structured around the first page if I'm picking pages. 

What you're suggesting is to structure it differently based on the last page. The committees might stay the same and how they populate it. But am I [inaudible]? 

SHARON NOLEN: And I think the other difference is, rather than going through every technology, like we were talking about, to just focus on what are our findings and recommendations related to technology. And so that might eliminate some technologies altogether that we don't talk about. We don't have findings or recommendations. 

SPEAKER: So, it's kind of a number four-ish. OK. I just wanted to make sure. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, that's a good clarification. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: And I will mention structurally, we would need multiple subcommittees still under these levels unless the committee just completely divided itself in half, which I don't know that people have the appetite for. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah. I agree with that. Well, and then also meetings have to become public, right? And that is more challenging to arrange than [inaudible]. OK. So, I thought would be—we could go on now into the subcommittee reports, and then come back to this at the end of that. 

What do you all think about doing that? And then it gets a little bit more information before we decide. OK. [inaudible] 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Should we go ahead and take our break now? Or do we want [inaudible]? 

SHARON NOLEN: When was our break scheduled? 

ZACH PRITCHARD: 11:00. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah. I would say… 

ZACH PRITCHARD: There is only one break today. 

SHARON NOLEN: OK. 

[GIGGLES] 

OK. I think that's a great idea. So, let's take a 15-minute break now and come back. And then we'll go through the submeetings. And we'll have some time at the end of the day or end of the session to talk about where do we go from here. But hopefully, this gives everybody a little bit of vote time to think and [inaudible]. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Thanks. Let's resume at 11:00 AM. Thanks. 

All right, thanks and welcome back, everybody. We will hand it back to Sharon to kick off our next round of subcommittee reports. 

SHARON NOLEN: So, we have 30 minutes allocated for the subcommittees. But if they could stick to about 20 to make sure that we have time at the end for further discussion on the report structure, that'd be great. Jeff, you're first up to talk about the daily work, current work, and gaps in the [inaudible]. 

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Sure. So, this is the subcommittee hearing with Sasha. And I mentioned—I went through some of this. There are some slides, but we'll see if we can get those pulled up or not. But they're not strictly necessary. 

I went over some of this with the current—when doing this section of the outline, but the idea here was to focus on what DOE specifically can do, for instance, address the barriers, raised in earlier chapters, seize the opportunities addressed in earlier chapters, et cetera. 

Maybe if we restructure the report in one of the ways Sharon outlined, we'll see how that fits. But we've done some background research already characterizing what are the existing DOE offices and what programs within those offices are focused on industrial decarbonization, and what is the funding level of every program where available within every office, or in some cases, the finest grain public available is at the office level, not the program within the office. 

So that's useful background information. I don't know if you still have your handout in the outline from yesterday. Let me also—I'm going to glance at the slides even if they're not up just to remind myself. Coverage. 

So apart from that—so I guess progress to date, we've had, I think, three or four subcommittee meetings since our last full virtual meeting 3 months ago. We gathered the data I just mentioned. We got some initial recommendations bulleted out for a subsection of our content. 

Even beyond what's in this outline, we have some more detailed ideas for some of these points and worked. OK. So, you've got—so worked with the outlining subcommittee to ensure that the outline section reflects what we had been doing. 

So broadly, there are, I think, six, seven general areas we were thinking of focusing on, data and computer modeling. You can go—yeah, thank you. So, data and computer modeling, which was one of the ideas for how to structure recommendation around this. How could DOE be better providing data to assist where we are on the U.S. industrial decarbonization journey. 

Does that look like an improved, manufacturing energy consumption survey, et cetera. The number B here, B, letter B here is optimizing DOE programs and technology choices. 

That was the idea of not going through all five dozen programs line by line, but basically saying what can you learn from this, where if—three dozen of them are all focused on one topic and all the rest of the topics are spread across the last bit, how can we rebalance and make sure that the efforts are going towards the highest impact areas and the areas of greatest need. 

So, I think we should just try to synthesize that information and come up with some summary recommendations that could be in a paragraph or two. Then ways to seize opportunities or overcome barriers I mentioned earlier. And it depends on the bullets that have been identified in by those other subcommittees. Neal and Cathy's subcommittees. 

Then coordination role. So, there are multiple federal agencies, national labs, academia, and private industry, and understanding all of these perspectives is important for identifying the best pathways forward and how DOE can support industry in getting there. So, DOE can use its status and funding as a means of being convener and coordinator. 
Other helpful policy tools, the way in which DOE does project selection to administer tax credits, energy efficiency standards, demand-side support measures, which are like what Ramsey yesterday spoke to us about with the hydrogen program, but not limited to hydrogen, we want demand-side support, maybe in a technology-agnostic way, for any way to make clean steel, clean chemicals, clean cement, and concrete, cetera. 

And then we discussed a bit about advising other agencies. There's FERC. There's the Department of Commerce, which was mentioned yesterday, ways that DOE since this is really unique, what IEDO and what other programs here have built is this center of expertise on what it takes to transition to clean manufacturing. 

And it's great if other agencies, including FERC, to understand that industry grid integration and needs commerce. Another one would be treasury or IRS to understand when they're writing the guidance documents about tax credits, how to write those in a way that makes sense from a technical perspective. 

And then I guess this is similar to being a coordinator D, the idea of partnering with industry on—and making sure—also getting input from industry and understanding their needs, their challenges, and so on. You can go to the next slide. 
So, we had written down these next steps. Although we—as I mentioned, we've already collected data. We've devised some preliminary bullets for some of these recommendations. 

But I think once we, as a committee, decide what is the high-level report structure going to look like and minor things like how to handle references with reference management software or whatnot, we're ready to start drafting. We've assigned people to each topic within our section. And we're kind of waiting for a final structure and a green light, and then we're ready to go. 

And we started to think about doing reviews of first drafts, and comments, and all that. But that's getting a little bit further down the road. So, I don't need the full 30 or even 15 minutes, but happy to do any address, any questions, or any conversation now in my 15-minute block. 

SHARON NOLEN: Neal. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Great job, guys. I think it's very much on target. In terms of other agencies to coordinate with, I just want to mention Department of Defense, which is the other primary federal agency that had in addition to the ones he listed, that is currently engaged in manufacturing, and procurement, and is also actively working on many of the same agenda issues, but from a national security perspective rather than an economic perspective. 

JEFFREY RISSMAN: That's a good point. And yeah, procurement isn't something I guess we've talked much about at this meeting yet. But Buy Clean public procurement is a broader topic that is useful for our goals of transitioning to clean industry and DOD could be a part of that. 

SPEAKER: And I'll just say, since we've all been—a bunch of us here have been involved, including Joe Cresko—there is a whole group across the federal government that's been set up to work. And there is a Buy Clean task force. So, they meet regularly. It's all of these agencies you talked about. 

I think Neal's point about DOD is a little there is a part of DOD that's in the bike lane, but there's probably also security interests that are not talked about in Buy Clean. So there's a reason for them separate from Buy Clean. But there is already a group. 

So, if you're going to make recommendations about this, I think you could easily just say work within the structure that the federal government has or may be evolving versus having to recommend that some group be set up, which does exist. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: In addition to the Buy Clean task force this spring, what year is this? '23. 

[INTERPOSING VOICES] 

No, we're in '24. I forgot. 

[LAUGHTER] 

SPEAKER: I thought you were being funny. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: I think, in the spring of '24, a climate and trade task force was also set up. So, there are two. And within the climate and trade task force, there's a kind of a data-focused subgroup. 

So many of the same folks from different across the agencies are working on those. So, there is, in fact, some coordinating between coordinating groups that's existing. So, there are things I think it's just worth knowing in… 

SPEAKER: Yeah, the federal family has been polled, so to speak. [inaudible] That helps you with some of your recommendations. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: The other piece I just would add, because this is who pulled me into the defense work, is actually OMB in their attempts to coordinate across agencies. This was the deputy director [inaudible]. 

Anyway, but OMB is potentially a collaborator in this, or could be a collaborator in this process. So that change in administration or administrations? 

SPEAKER: I would say recommendations. We don't need to get into the business of how this agency talks to that one. It's more just knowing that these things are happening. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah. 

SPEAKER: So it might save you some space in your write up. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah, definitely. 

SPEAKER: You're very thorough. I've gathered. [LAUGHS] You've done more than probably anybody else. So, I'm trying to save you some time here. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Great ideas. Definitely happy to reference these existing task forces and list these agencies as some of the top ones to collaborate with and not get into the nuts and bolts of how. 

SHARON NOLEN: Anything else for Jeff and Sasha? 

Right. Well, we're moving quickly then. So, I think that brings us to the next subcommittee, which is barriers [inaudible]. 

CATHY CHOI: OK. Thanks. You made the slides nice for me. [LAUGHS] I was very boring. Next slide. So, these are the subcommittee members. Get excellent input from them. Betsy, Sue, Abigail, Sasha, Neal, and myself. 

Next slide, please. I'm going to try to canter. So, I just want to remind everyone, the last time we had the report out, there was an ask of what success looks like for the subcommittee. 

So, barriers identified and prioritized. And I bolded prioritized because the last few meetings that we had within the subcommittee was how do you actually do that. Identified entities that are in position to take action. So those are the actors and potentially departments that could help overcome the barriers, get facts, data, and analysis techniques to determine the extent, and impact of the barrier. And then recommendations like we've been talking all morning. Next slide. 

All right. This is just the project plan. We do have a gap when it comes to technology. And I'm going to talk about that in a bit. Our tasks or our barriers have changed a little bit since the outline. So, I'm going to go through that, which is why most of the year is yellow through to 2025. But let's get into the nuts and bolts. Next slide, please. 

So, when we went through the outline, what we have here are some rearrangement of just headings. But it tries to include everything that was in there. What you see in red are questions to this committee as we're here on specific topics. 

So, we had always electricity costs as a barrier to adoption, embedded in there was actually electricity and low-carbon costs. But we split those out based on some of the input that was coming from the outline. 

Sasha is leading that. What we rearranged is now a header associated with access to low-carbon fuels and feedstocks. And there is discussion of should hydrogen be included and how should it be included. So that's the red here. 

Should this group address hydrogen as a fuel. Because there's many other offices within DOE addressing it as a fuel, or should we focus on industrial applications of hydrogen as a barrier of sourcing hydrogen or maybe any other suggestions there. 

And then if we include this, are there any existing members or connections that have expertise in this space. Because currently, it's a gap in terms of lead. 

SPEAKER: Hydrogen? 

CATHY CHOI: Industrial applications of hydrogen and as a barrier of sourcing hydrogen. 

SPEAKER: Expertise. 

CATHY CHOI: Would you like to lead it if we decide to include it? 

SPEAKER: I'm not sure how many things I can lead in this report, [inaudible] I'll be happy to…

CATHY CHOI: Or a connection. So, it could be a leader, a connection to help us because we weren't really—the existing members of the subcommittee weren't as confident to be able to and meaningful recommendations in this space. 

SPEAKER: And I could assist. I mean, if you wanted me to partner on that. I could. 

SPEAKER: I [inaudible] the advisory to the DOE for a number of years. It's a topic that we can continue. 

CATHY CHOI: OK. I appreciate that. I [inaudible] appreciates that. Maybe go back to the first question. Do we include it with that specific focus area? 

NEAL ELLIOTT: I mean, I think…

CATHY CHOI: The order is some barrier of sourcing hydrogen for industrial applications. That's the barrier. That's why it would be in this subcommittee. 

SHARON NOLEN: You said barrier of sourcing. Does that include transportation, distribution systems? Are you thinking about that sort of thing? 

CATHY CHOI: It could be pricing. It could be access. Is there enough for the amount that the cement industry might need. Or—yeah. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: You have to—it's the supply chain and could write a book on that one. But yeah. 

[GIGGLES] 

[inaudible] First. 

SPEAKER: Actually, I was about to look at the same time. So, as Neal knows, there is a low greenhouse gas hydrogen component to the cross-cutting one. And it really, Neal, I was going to ask, do we think that in general with the tone of those different lanes, would it match with the barriers aspect that would naturally come out or is it more so—I'm still thinking through that. 

The way that being cast in that particular chapter might have addressed what the barriers committee is trying to get out of it here. Or is it—or if the focal point is again, barrier sourcing hydrogen, do we think it should have its own existence in this particular chapter? 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Well, I think it's—we were looking at it not just as the barriers to sourcing it, but understanding how it's used within as part of the decarbonization technology pyramid. I'm thinking, Joe, back to the roadmap as we were developing that and what's the appropriate roles for that. 

Adequate access to it is certainly one. And there's the but then there's the question of what are the appropriate applications of it that the department should be prioritizing. So, I think we got some of that with the whole question about combustion as a powergen fuel versus hydrogen as a reagent or reactant. 

So, there are certain things that we don't have a path to right now, if we get a hydrogen [? DRI, ?] you gotta have hydrogen. So, it's the availability, but then it's a critical path element in that in order for that technology to advance. 

SPEAKER: May I just restate what I think you're saying? 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Sure. 

SPEAKER: If you were to say the recommendation out of this group would be—you got to have a recommendation according to the way we're going to write this report. So, the recommendation would be DOE secretary, you need to decide the proper uses of hydrogen within the industrial sector and prioritize who gets what. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: I wouldn't say… 

SPEAKER: Or…

NEAL ELLIOTT: Maybe not proper. 

SPEAKER: Well, I mean… 

NEAL ELLIOTT: The priority is the priority uses. 

SPEAKER: So basically, you're asking her to create—or whoever it is at this point, create a hierarchy of use of hydrogen. It's this is our create that structure versus… 

SPEAKER: Price incentives. And then industry gets to pick which ones are going to go after. 

SPEAKER: Well, that's another approach. Yeah. 

SPEAKER: That's already been done. And that's… 

JEFFREY RISSMAN: I mean, that's the [inaudible]… 

SPEAKER: That's the only item of business that's well-documented out there. 

SPEAKER: But we just heard about all these hubs yesterday. So, there's going to be more coming on. So given that all of them if they're successful, and suddenly, we have this new volume, if you let that play itself out, who gets what or who should be taking part or partaking this sort of the… 

SPEAKER: Volumes created outside of the hubs as well by industry, given the policy, not just in the U.S., but also globally. 

SPEAKER: I'm just asking what the recommendation is. I don't know what the recommendation is. 

CATHY CHOI: Or the potential recommendations…

SPEAKER: Yeah. 

CATHY CHOI: If we add this as a barrier. 

SPEAKER: Known barriers to the hydrogen economy, both from the technical and also the economic side. 

SPEAKER: I'm just playing it through to what's the recommendation in a report if it stays for the… 

CATHY CHOI: So, we're going to assume that the technology subcommittee or the industry that they deal with the technology side of that. But this is as a barrier. And we whittled it down, may not be the right whittling down, focus, but we whittled it down to the sourcing of hydrogen, or the availability of hydrogen would be the barrier. It's the one idea we would suggest in the subcommittee if we want to include it. SHARON NOLEN: So, are you saying there's no economic barrier? 

SPEAKER: There's a lot of economic barriers and a lot of technical barriers. And there's things like safety. 

SHARON NOLEN: Oh, I thought [inaudible]… 

SPEAKER: And competition with other low-carbon sources. So yeah, there's a huge—I mean, McKinsey is writing reports on those barriers. Hydrogen Fuel Cells Technology Office has a whole deal list on that. And I'm in the middle of all of that. So yeah, it's… 

SHARON NOLEN: So, we have talked about the need for coordination among subcommittees. So maybe this is one of those. So, I don't remember who's leading the hydrogen is designated as [inaudible] hydrogen. Do you, Neal? 

NEAL ELLIOTT: I think I am. I can't remember anymore. 

SHARON NOLEN: So, can we ask that that conversation maybe take place offline? 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah. Yeah. Happy to do that. If Zach, you, and Caroline, and Selena can coordinate that and figure out who's the right people on the hydrogen. And so whatever it is, I think it probably is me. It's probably—it's definitely Joe. I don't know who else. 

CATHY CHOI: So, the outcome of that meeting would be should we include it in within the subcommittee as a specific barrier or is it embedded in other areas. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: And I think the answer is we could do it several different ways. And I think we just have to get a consensus among the possible outcomes. So maybe Thomas wants to join that. 

THOMAS: Yeah, I should be on that call. So… 

SHARON NOLEN: OK. 

THOMAS: Let's take that offline and look into it. 

SHARON NOLEN: So, Thomas, that's all you—you had your hand up, but that's all you wanted to say. 

THOMAS: I was going to try to give him a preliminary answer [inaudible]. 

SHARON NOLEN: OK. 

[? THOMAS: ?] Real quickly, my take is that for what I think we're going to establish in the subcommittee that Neal is leading, the starting point for us might be OK, let's say you have the hydrogen, whether you prioritize applications for it. I think you're upstream of that. You're saying, what does it take to have the hydrogen? Is it really available? 

So, it seems like it might be a bit of a baton effect and maybe a touch point. But if you're talking the sourcing aspect, we're talking more, so the application aspect. I think there's safe ground for it to exist, that hydrogen to exist in both chapters. That was just my quick take, but we can certainly talk about it further. 

But of course, with Joe included to really hash that out. But I was trying to give you a [inaudible] answer to your question. 

CATHY CHOI: OK. Thank you. So, we'll have an action on that. There's another—it's a relatively new ad here, and it was addressing industries that burn their own byproducts as fuel. So, a bit of a circular process that currently occurs because that fuel is free today. Are there—this is kind of a bigger topic that we weren't this—the individuals on the subcommittee were not real sure. 

It was added as a barrier. Again, another ask, do we folks who have expertise in this space with these in situ byproducts that are used as fuel, that are used as energy? OK. [inaudible] [LAUGHS] 

SPEAKER: Yeah, that's a big in chemicals and refining. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: It's huge in wood products. It's huge in the food products industry. 

CATHY CHOI: So, it may be it's the same discussion we have with the other one, is it efficient and effective to split them out for the barriers? There's going to be technology, all that…

NEAL ELLIOTT: There's also the cross-cutting aspect of it. And I'll take in particular bio waste streams. The bio waste streams have a cost associated with disposal and potential greenhouse gas emissions as a result of degradation of the products. And so the question—there's also a regulatory element to this in that how do you treat them. Are they treated as renewable or are they treated as… 

And this is a huge issue in the tax community right now, that the tax credits is our waste fuels treated as a renewable asset. Therefore, get the tax credit. Or are they considered to be something different? And unfortunately, we have, not just federal, but also state regulations that also come into play. 

Massachusetts, for example, extends that in consideration. 

SHARON NOLEN: So what is… 

SPEAKER: It's also an opportunity with 45Q. And so it enables—it may be a challenge for electrification, but it's an opportunity for hydrogen and carbon capture and storage as an opportunity… 

SPEAKER: Is the barrier the uncertain policy treatment? 

NEAL ELLIOTT: In some cases, it's explicit prohibition against use. 

CATHY CHOI: Or the heterogeneity in the policy treatment. So that it's like… 

NEAL ELLIOTT: The answer is——yeah, I mean…

SPEAKER: You got the barrier? 

NEAL ELLIOTT: I think there's not consistent guidance. And the barrier may be, in some cases, they are actually prescribed and others that are included. 

SPEAKER: Do you have a 45Q incentives to make the clean hydrogen out of those fuels. You can't stack them with the 45V. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: No, you can't stack them. But the question is treasury, there's a lot of people on some of the bio streams. It's unclear what the guidance of the treatment of it is. 

SPEAKER: That goes across the board for all of the incentives. And so that's a barrier to everything. 

CATHY CHOI: Yeah. That's what I was just about to say. Like it's just for consideration, like uncertainty about where policy is going to go on something is applicable to… 

NEAL ELLIOTT: But I think this one is very specifically unique. And this is something that Onsite taps have been dealing with since they were created. And it has to do with how do you treat waste biomass? Is it renewables or not? How do you account for it? And it's… 

And the idea that I think the major issue is in this case that it's not a zero-sum game by just saying exclude it, you exclude it. There's a cost to the company by you no longer have a valid use for a product, and so you incur a disposal cost. 

And that disposal actually results in significant GHG emissions occurring because you basically substitute methane for what would otherwise be a carbon-dioxide emission. So, it's in some ways, it's a sort of philosophical accounting issue, but it's a pretty complex. And it's one that our friends over at the impact I was talking to Patty Berlin yesterday about this exact issue because she's struggling. 

SPEAKER: It's also broader than just DOE. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: It's EPA is… 

SPEAKER: It goes back to the '90s when we talked about carbon. And it's all that stuff. I mean, it goes— it's not been solved. I mean, that's broader than DOE. 

CATHY CHOI: So… 

SPEAKER: That particular issue. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah, but I'm just… 

SPEAKER: The costs, what happens if—yeah. 

CATHY CHOI: It does have a role to play in this that we might want to advocate for. 

SPEAKER: Well, I'm just—I'm reading that and I understand the whole conversation. But what barrier? 

CATHY CHOI: OK. So, by process, let's go back to—what we do is we define each of what the potential barriers are, and then come up with—so that this requires definition first if we add it as a barrier. And so the issue we have with the ones that we're asking help on is we haven't defined them yet. 

All the other ones we've defined, the ones that were green in the previous project plan. So that's where we are. We need to define what it is if we believe it's a barrier. And then how do you overcome it? What's the recommendations? And who are the players? So, our definition stage on this one, I think. 

SPEAKER: One thing is overcome it. But there's another thing is to figure out what is really sustainable in the bio domain, which is a big global discussion right now. And so yeah, we would need to get some real good assessment in terms of not just carbon, but the whole sustainability picture of a bio-based feedstocks. [inaudible] 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Just a very quick maybe point of clarification on the second bullet point under electricity, jumping off to recognize the value of flexibility, is that barrier—I mean, recognize the potential value. I mean, that lack of clarity, there may or may not be something—is that the implication or is it that—it is unknown whether there would be value for flexibility? 

CATHY CHOI: I showed you under electricity costs. He's asking about the second bullet under electricity cost. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: I mean, the way it's written, it sounds like if they don't recognize the value with the supposition that there will be value. But I think maybe one of the barriers is that it's unclear whether there will be value. There might be value for the first player in the market or something. But you could saturate that out possibly. It's unclear what that is. If you look at what Ryan Wiser, those guys at Berkeley have that looked at this and—anyway… 

SPEAKER: Yeah. I suppose. It's not really like apples to apples because I think under electricity cost, at least the way it's on the slide, where it's like already asserting a thing. Whereas for the other ones, we're not doing that yet. It's a question mark for me around this section, Cathy. I guess it's the conversation is like, is the point here to just describe a barrier or to talk about what's needed to. 

CATHY CHOI: Yeah. So, it's the recommendation and who are the actors, too. 

SPEAKER: Yeah. 

CATHY CHOI: Overcome the barrier. 

SPEAKER: Yeah. So, I guess to your point, it's like to the extent that there is value or whatever, like understanding of the value amongst key stakeholders in the market. Yeah, it's about value it to the extent that it exists. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: So, I think this is something that I've been working on with some of the Berkeley folks over the years. The regulatory framework creates or does not create the value the way the market is structured in PJM interconnect. 

There is clearly—it actually does create value, but it's created value because of the regulatory structure. In SPP, Southwest Power Pool, it does not because of the regulatory structure. And it's not clear what the value of the regulatory of—what the value is in [? ERCOT?] because there is no it's as though the entire structure of the market. 

And I think there is also the question of what's the value to the customer versus what's the value to the grid. And that's a huge dispute right now within the neighborhood. 

I mean, this was a big topic in the neighborhood summer meeting this year as they try to understand what…

CATHY CHOI: As I wrote this, I meant value to the grid. I mean… 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Yeah, but maybe that's something we need to be explicit is how is the value to the grid reflected in to the industrial customer. 

SPEAKER: Absolutely. I mean, that's the key because if a technology costs more to be flexible and you can't monetize that flexibility… 

NEAL ELLIOTT: You're not going to do it. And it's possible that some actors that are first in could monetize that. But if that smooths it out… 

SPEAKER: And they cannibalize it. 

SPEAKER: Right. And then others don't get that value—that inconsistency, that's the point, which is, it is super unclear what that—[inaudible] invest if they don't have some clarity there. 

CATHY CHOI: [inaudible] move faster. [LAUGHS] 

NEAL ELLIOTT: So maybe this is a discussion that we should take offline and make a recommendation to this subcommittee. 

SPEAKER: So, it sounds like, to me, we resolved the electricity question, correct? OK. So that was going to be my suggestion, Neal, is, it sounds like Kathy, you had the same people who had opinions on the byproducts as fuel, as hydrogen. So, if that discussion for both of those could… 

CATHY CHOI: We'll combine those both afterwards and figure out if they're better—OK. If we could— there's some—I'm going to try to get us moving here. So, technology gaps, this was one, if you saw on the super small slide that you can read this font on. This is an area where we're actually very behind. We don't have a definition for it. 

I'm going to make a suggestion here. Can we leverage the cross-cutting technologies and opportunities committee? Because when we saw that presentation had a similar—what we would call a definition that we would probably apply. And actors, it didn't have barriers explicitly laid out. 

SPEAKER: We haven't gotten to the point yet. 

CATHY CHOI: Yeah. 

SPEAKER: That's next. 

CATHY CHOI: Is that something we can leverage? 

SPEAKER: Sure, OK. All right. 

SPEAKER: I mean, when you say leverage, I would think barrier—or I'm sorry. Cross-cutting should just take on that. And if it ends up being a barrier we want to put in barrier section, we can move it over there. But would we just be responsible, Neal? 

NEAL ELLIOTT: That'll work for me. 

SPEAKER: OK. Is that OK, Kathy? 

CATHY CHOI: Yeah, that's good. So, this is another—we can take this out. There was under infrastructure permitting and policy support, there's a lot of information there. But there was a discussion within the team of should we include the carbon management infrastructure—the storage, transportation, all that kind of stuff—potential barriers to that within our subcommittee. 

It was the big topic. So, we thought we would bring it forward here. We don't have a lot of time. We might need to… 

NEAL ELLIOTT: And I would just note, that also is one of the things we've identified as an overlap with the cross-cutting committee. So again, I don't know. If you go one place with the other, probably going to be the exact same people working on it, whether it's in your committee. And I'm happy to give it to you. 

[LAUGHTER] 

CATHY CHOI: OK. We have three actions in one meeting coming up, [LAUGHS] taking offline. And then the last one, if you try to move past. The one here is, there's been a lot of talk about this, another area of overlap and a lot of subcommittees talking about it, about data access modeling. 

Where's the availability? How do we do this? So, is it the same folks that we now have four actions in another offline meeting? That's fine. But yours was also, Jeff. You also brought this up. 

JEFFREY RISSMAN: Yeah, I was about to say, I'm happy to discuss offline. I have thoughts on what additional data could be helpful. 

CATHY CHOI: OK. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: And I'm happy—I think maybe this is an offline discussion. And I know Jeff and Eric Massenet and I had this discussion before Eric left the committee. And I think Eric was kind of leading that. And then with his departure, it may have gotten—the discussion may have gotten strained. 

JEFFREY RISSMAN: So, I think I roughly know the sorts of data Eric was looking at stuff like industrial energy use by industrial process, by temperature level, by NAICS code, that sort of thing. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: And Joe, can—or I guess Zach, could we actually pull in Dr. Makris again to participate in a discussion of this topic, since he's… 

SPEAKER: Sorry, I missed the… 

NEAL ELLIOTT: So, we are just saying, Eric had been leading this discussion internally within the subcommittee. And so Jeff and I are asking if we could maybe request that he would caucus with us. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: I think he probably could have a conversation. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Can you check that? 

ZACH PRITCHARD: But I'll need to check. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: And then we should do it offline and decide where it goes. 

CATHY CHOI: And just to wrap up—you don't have to bring up the slide. But we had an internal brainstorm of how we would prioritize. We didn't come up with an actual plan, but we had two brainstorming sessions on how we would prioritize the need to figure out which ones are going to be in our subcommittee and then execute on those. 

SHARON NOLEN: Very good. Any last comments for Cathy first? All right. With that, we'll move to workforce. And Comas, I think you're covering that. Is that correct? 

COMAS HAYNES: OK, all right, so you see our committee members—Anna, myself, Sue, Abigail, and Sridhar. I will just want to quickly say that Anna definitely has been a strong lead. She had international travel, but she was definitely remiss about not being able to join us. 

I also want wanted to say a couple of things on context. So, we're definitely in a framing stage more so than findings stage. We're still framing some things. But we are beginning to get some findings that will be relevant. And also, carving out the right domain for what we do in this subcommittee is important. 

Wow, wasn't that quite the ambitious schedule? That was our proposed time frame at our first full committee meeting, give or take one or two orders. But we are going through those steps, including, again, the fact-finding piece. And even this meeting is a big part of us getting through some key fact finding and finding out about some resources, such as the ISEED report and another report that was mentioned on yesterday. OK, next slide. 

Yeah, so as far as a few categories of what I'm going to speak to—framing of our intent. Again, that's really been the key part of framing our intent—what is our statement of success? Kind of some precursors, as far as prior progress to really this meeting, as far as some fact finding that's been underway and how currently it's social and workforce considerations are being addressed. 

And then just some initial, again, clarification, especially on scoping of the contributions to the report. OK, so if you go to the next slide and then click one button. So that that's our would-be success statement that we can incorporate within the report—critical workforce and social considerations and recommendations that will be necessary to increase the technological and economic competitiveness of industry in the United States. 

That would be a good thing, as well as achieve emissions reduction in industrial sectors. It's kind of a catch-all phrase. So, what's hopefully implicitly implied within that was something I still explicitly brought up—if you click another time—is that we want to make sure that in these considerations and recommendations that we do include attention upon equitable means of community engagement and pathways for diverse workforce talent to either enter or upskill, cross skill, whatever the right verb might be, into related careers. 

So again, we hope that kind of would go without saying. But we want to just go ahead and say it, to make sure that it's clearly understood that's the premise of what we're doing, or part of the premise of what we're doing. OK. As far as the next slide, one of the things too, actually, about the framing piece that I want to bring up is, again—and this kind of goes to the fact finding, maybe even before that. 

We're really finding there's going to be important for us to just scope out and carve out what our domain is. So, one thing—for the sake of time, I didn't ask this earlier with the IEDO presentation. But in general, even when we say "workforce," "carving out," what are we really focusing on there? 

In theory, it could be P to P. It could be precollege to Ph.D. Some mentioned even yesterday about some efforts that are going on pre-college. College could mean technical vocational college or university, graduate studies. So even that definition of workforce is something that we want to be clear about. 

And just making sure that we don't make it too narrow, but also maybe don't make it too broad, or at least prioritize certain portions of the workforce that we want to really highlight in this report. And so again, with that, though, we have some precursors. So, we did have a presentation even just last week regarding some initial considerations about key premises, like community benefits plans. 

We're still fact finding, even in this meeting and beyond, as you even heard me ask during a couple of the presentations. We're trying to get a feel for what's the understood efficacy of these community benefit plans now. And understandably, it's early on to really close the loop, or begin to close the loop to find out, are these effective? Are they really engaged in the community in proper manner? 

So that's still forthcoming. And it's probably going to evolve as this report evolves. But if we can get some kind of measure of how effective these community benefits plans are, that would, of course, be a good finding, and help us with any appropriate recommendation. 

If you go to the next slide, this is something that also is very important. We want to make sure that we fully acknowledge and base recommendations on preexisting structures. There's no way that we can reinvent the wheel, so to speak, or propose to invent the wheel, as far as this massive two areas of social and workforce considerations. They do have some overlap, but there are really two areas. 

So really finding out what the Department of Energy is doing, as far as different initiatives like again, ISEED, which you just heard about today. I think that's going to be tremendous to help, to understand what's going on agencywide, in this type of domain. 

But not even just limiting it to the DOE, also being mindful of what other agencies are doing that could be compatible or complement these efforts. So even yesterday when Neal mentioned the precollege programs where you develop the STEM talent early on, and then allow them to have multiple pathways, that's very important to do. 

And one of the subtleties I will mention about also being fully cognizant is that in a lot of ways, the reality check is that we want to make sure that the Department of Energy can complement and minimize inadvertent competition with other initiatives. A very vivid example for me is, again, with the CHIPS Act. 

To a lesser extent, I get notices and indications about a lot of the progressive things that are going on with CHIPS. And they're saying the same thing. They're saying there's a major workforce deficit. We need talent, we need talent, we need talent. At some point, you're going to have the same prospective talent being courted by different major critical themes here—CHIPS manufacturing, decarbonize, industrial emissions. 

So, at some point, we've got to be mindful of one another and realize that we want to try to maximize complimenting and minimize competing. But there is a kind of a reality check about this. So even somewhat delving into that, it's going to be, I think, an important part of our report out. 

So next slide, that is just a recap of the chapter 7 as it stands right now, our workforce and social considerations chapters. I just put in certain next-level ingredients that have been set up as far as our lanes of development. I won't go through them line by line. 

I will say that one of the items there that, in particular, we may need some help with, just to populate the right way or speak to the right way, write to the right way, is regarding national labs and their help with workforce development. I think we're probably going to need a little bit more—we are going to need some input on that. 

And even with that, I'm letting Zach and Selena know, that's probably going to be an area of appreciated contribution, even if it means bringing in a noncommittee member or the like, if necessary, to help us to really fill out how that connection can—the potency of national labs helping out with workforce development. 

One other thing too that I'll bring up is, if you were to look at this chapter in isolation—you didn't see any of the other chapters, you just saw this chapter—in and of itself, the way it's spelled out right now, it would overstate what we're intending to do. So, we want to address these lanes, but again, my being mindful of preexisting structures. 

We want to address them in ways that are distinctively relevant to reduced industrial emissions. Because these are general catchall phrasings right now. But they're certainly meant to be in the context that what we want to bring out as value added is not just being unnecessarily redundant, or what are certain key activities or gaps or needs that are distinctive to reduce industrial emissions. 

These topics may have a lot of good relevance in other areas, too—let's say CHIPS manufacturing again. But we really want to sharpen the point on what is lacking and needful, as far as reducing industrial emissions are concerned. That's just our chapter. As I think we've all heard, this workforce and social consideration point will come up in other chapters. 

By way of one of the latest, if not the latest, outline review, it was last year specifically called out in chapter 3 on cross-cutting technologies. There was a workforce point made there that Sridhar helped us to see. But we think it's going to come up in other chapters as well. So, we'll, of course, just look to be in tune with other subcommittees and make sure that we're complementing. 

I think there is good redundancy, maybe reiterating that point. We just want to make sure that that's the flow of our chapter, with regard to enterprises that touch on workforce and social consideration. Next slide. OK. So, as we're in the midst of doing right now as far as goals, agreeing on an outline for the workforce and social considerations chapter, and yet at the same time having some room for this to still be somewhat of a living document. 

I know we have to, obviously, set lanes and directions here. But I think there's going to be a natural understanding that some of these directions may need a little wiggle room to just try to cultivate the best chapter. So that's obviously important. Again, discussing topical overlap with other subcommittees and suggestions. 

One nice thing is that through, I think we call it the crosswalk, we see that our subcommittee, as it stands, does have representatives on every other subcommittee. So that will help us to track with other subcommittees, as well. And drafting, within a subcommittee, taking initial assignments for drafting. And then the next slide, actually, Sridhar, this is the one that I think you can speak well to, some ideas that you have. 

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Yeah, I think you kind of covered all of the things there, pretty much. But one of the things was, if things come up on workforce training in any of the other committees, then I guess just send us a note so we can expand on those things. 

I'm assuming that workforce can also be considered to be a cross-cutting thing or a barrier, or any of those things. So, if items come up, then just keep us informed, and we can incorporate that. And a couple of other few things was, did we have somebody from IBEW part of ITIAC? 

ZACH PRITCHARD: [inaudible] 

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: But maybe I remembered. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: So, his affiliation has changed. But yeah, we have Sergio. 

SRIDHAR SEETHARAMAN: Oh, OK. I just thought he might—if it's possible to recruit him to this committee. Because I think electrical workers and electricians is something that may come up as an important workforce training for all of these technologies. So, this would be a great addition, if he's interested. 

The other thing I wanted to ask is, roughly 6 or 7 months ago when the manufacturing council met in D.C., Department of Labor presented this. Sorry for the spelling. I kind of made this last second. [CHUCKLES] A lady from there made this presentation about their efforts on manufacturing. And they had this manufacturing strategy report and gaps in manufacturing. 

And I don't know how much of it was clean technology. But it would be cool to get that report, or even maybe some input from somebody who manages that. So, I don't know if DOE has contact with a person there. Otherwise, I can go and go back to our list and see if they have a roster or something. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, we can probably get in touch with someone in [inaudible]. 

COMAS HAYNES: Great. Thanks, Sridhar. And then just one more slide, and that's what we're terming to be barriers. That's part of the work, right? But this is about the subcommittees, just what we need to work through. 

Scheduling—again, internally and externally, we have some delays on that. But we have gotten into another gear on that. In fact, we're scheduled to have a subcommittee meeting right in the middle of this quarter in two and a half weeks from now. 

This full committee meeting is going to be a big help to our subcommittee meeting. So, it's a nice boost. And again, just trying to make sure we safeguard against inefficient, ineffective overlap with other subcommittees. We'll try to keep an eye on this. I don't think it's really a big issue at present. But we just want to make sure that we're mindful of that. And so again, we do, as it stands right now, have representation in all the other subcommittees. So that will help us as well. And I think that is it. 

SHARON NOLEN: All right. I guess the next item on our agenda was the economic competitiveness and competitiveness subcommittee that we don't have Akshay here. Is there anyone on that subcommittee that can [inaudible]? I'm not even sure if they've met. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: They had one meeting very early on. They have not met recently. I did paste onto the slide the information in the outline. I raised the issue yesterday that I think a couple of these things. 

SPEAKER: [inaudible] 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, get into issues that are not within the scope of the committee. So, I think the question on the table would be, is there someone who wants to revitalize this subcommittee? And/or are these issues things that can be divided among other subcommittees, or assigned to other subcommittees instead? 

NEAL ELLIOTT: And you mentioned yesterday that some of the issues might be cut if they're not within our mandate, like need for a carbon border adjustment mechanism or GHG-based border fee really requires an act of Congress. I mean, we know this report will go to Congress. But if we think that it's really meant to be a DOE thing, maybe we don't want to discuss that very much. 

SHARON NOLEN: Do we have any interest in—oh, we have some more questions. Abigail, go ahead. 

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Well, I'll just say that I do think that some of these topics will be worth the committee addressing. And yeah, I guess we'll need to decide what's in and out of scope. But I think broadly, if it's an issue that's important enough that overarching, how are we going to decarbonize industry, and it's something that needs to be addressed in order to achieve that goal, I think it's worth the committee saying something about it. 

And then saying, whether you can explicitly say, we may understand this is out of DOE scope, or we could say, this is an area where we recommend DOE work with whoever other agency is actually more appropriate. But I think that it would be important if there are issues that need to be addressed to get to net-zero industry, that we should cover that. 

And then we can talk about how much more to say, based on the ability of DOE to do anything about the particular issue. And so we can, I think, probably still think about whether to drop things or not. Based on that, I will raise my hand to take over this subcommittee, if that's helpful. 

And just as a anecdote to the CBAM conversation, of course, that will require an act of Congress, most likely. And it would not be DOE addressing that particular—the actual tariff or anything like that. But there's a bill in Congress now that puts DOE in charge of the data piece of this. 

And so there's certainly a role, I think, for DOE to play. And I think it makes sense for us, as a committee, to strengthen DOE's role as this very topical political conversation is happening. 

SHARON NOLEN: Thank you very much for offering to take that on. Comas, did you have something? 

COMAS HAYNES: Yeah. I mean, just first of all, thank you again. Because actually, what I was about to say—and Abigail has already addressed it—is, fundamentally if part of the question was, do we need this subcommittee, I definitely say yes. I don't know how you broach reducing industrial emissions without bringing economics into play. So, I appreciate that. It definitely is a critical [inaudible]. 

SHARON NOLEN: Good. OK, so thank you for the heads forward on that. Can we go to your next? 

ZACH PRITCHARD: I think we can go to the next slide. So, this is more open discussion. I tried to compile some points here. There are things that I heard might have had some agreement. The highlighted ones are totally open things that I wasn't sure about where it fits within this framework. 

So, everything on this slide, "open for discussion" equals deleted, added, changed, et cetera. But to have general agreement on what we're doing, going from here is kind of [inaudible]. So, one thing that came up towards the end of our discussion this morning was the idea of organizing the report around the two major areas that are in the report requirements—so advising on technologies and program evaluation. 

Some of the existing subcommittees, I think, clearly fit into those categories, which I have included there. Barriers to me is less clear. Economic competitiveness is less clear. So—I was thinking about this after I made this slide. I'm not sure that a subcommittee has to cleanly fit into one of those categories. I think they could contribute recommendations and findings into multiple sections. But just an open question for you to think about. 

A couple bullets here on the approach to the report. I feel like we were coalescing around this idea of addressing the report requirements through recommendations and findings. The findings might be a formal acknowledgment, for example, of industry trends, of ways that DOE is already successful, of DOE's strategic approach being appropriate, for the most part, in certain areas. 

Recommendations are the clear, actionable recommendations, actions that DOE can take to advance industrial decarbonization through our programs. As we have continued on from—if we agree on that general approach, I would suggest that the subcommittees need to revisit their outline topic areas to make sure that they can imagine a clear recommendation or finding related to that area that they could build evidence for and could be voted on by the whole committee. 

SHARON NOLEN: We also say to also review the document to make sure there's not something missing we think should include, they should [inaudible]. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: And point from Sharon's slide that I just copied over, don't duplicate information that's already publicly available. Those are the things that can be pointed to with a finding or something else. The rest of the things are totally open and I would say we can set this next goal or not. 

But do we want to set out from this point and say, there's maximum page limit, or there is a maximum number of recommendations that the committee is making? No? I think we want to have a concrete goal for the next full committee meeting. This will be a virtual meeting at the beginning of next year. 

So, what will the subcommittees have by that point? If we agreed with everything above, my thought is that, that is possible recommendations and findings. So, they don't have to be fully detailed. They don't have to have all of your supporting evidence and research done at this point. But basically, what are the things that you are looking into? 

How are you going to validate those recommendations or findings and start doing that research, having conversations as needed? And then the last thing on here that occurred to me is, is the work of the outline subcommittee done? Or is there work that they need to continue with? That's everything on the slide. Feel free to comment on any or all of them. 

And again, the goal would be that we edit this slide during the meeting and end up with a list of bullets that everyone agrees on, leaving the room. That's the goal. 

CATHY CHOI: Leaving the room today. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yes. 

SHARON NOLEN: Can we just take it a bite-sized chunk at a time? So—sorry, Neal. Let's just talk about the organized part first. Does anybody want to comment on that? I'm afraid if we try to take it all at once, it'll be confusing. OK. So, it looks like generally OK. OK, the second bullet—oh, sorry Abigail. Oh, sorry. I wasn't looking if you had a comment first. 

SPEAKER: I'm confused about the organization. And so we have recommendations and findings. But if you're looking at the cross-cuttings, is it going to be sectors or is it going to be a technology toolkit, such as electrification, hydrogen?

Because you could organize those either way. 

And what I'm hearing is, we're tending to drift away from sectors talking about what that technology toolkit would be, in terms of types of applications, and then providing generic recommendations and findings around electrification or hydrogen as the solution to decarbonization. 

SHARON NOLEN: I guess that was not what I was thinking. What I was thinking is we would still talk about the cross-cutting technologies, just like you said. But then within the subsectors, if there are specific recommendations within the subsector, or findings, they would still be part of that. But they would just be grouped together under technology. 
SPEAKER: OK. So, we almost have three of those four options combined, with findings and recommendations as the highest level of organization, where we're combining three of the elements out of the four that we had talked about, in terms of the options. 

SHARON NOLEN: That was my thought. But… 

SPEAKER: OK. I just—so that I understand where this is heading. 

SHARON NOLEN: OK. Abigail. 

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Yeah, I think this is all getting very jumbled. I think as we're also just talking through and realizing the overlap in many expertise and technologies and things. And so in my head, the way that if we're going with findings, recommendations as the ultimate way that we're going to organize and give our thoughts, I don't think it's as clean to split, necessarily, the subcommittees into this way. 

And I think this is probably something we had discussed earlier. But even just looking at, what's some of the pieces in the current gaps and assessment subcommittee, for example, the optimizing existing DOE programs, technology choices, what should be prioritized, funding, things like that. 

It seems to me that, for example, the cross-cutting technologies and the subsector subcommittees and what they would discuss, the recommendation that would come out of that basically fits into this bullet that's in the current gaps and assessment subcommittee. 

Because otherwise, I don't know that there's an actionable DOE recommendation coming out of the cross-cutting technologies or sector subcommittees that isn't just talking specifically about the DOE programs, what should be prioritized, what's missing funding. 

And so it feels more like a baton handoff situation, maybe, rather than completely separating these two things. Where maybe my suggestion of organization is—at the highest level, what is important to consider? So, for the cross-cutting technology subcommittee, what are the key cross-cutting technologies that are going to be needed? 

And I don't think there needs to be a lot of writing on this. Because I think this is where there's a lot of existing resources, and where there can be a lot of pointing to those existing resources. But just at least laying that out so that people just have the sense of, OK, what is important? What are the main things that I should be thinking about under these categories? 

For sectors, it would be, what are the main priority sectors that we should be thinking about here? And then the next level down is, how does that map onto the DOE current programs? And where we can do a finding of, check mark, this is good.

This is covered. This makes sense. 

But then that's where if there is anything that isn't covered, would come out there. So, if the cross-cutting technology subcommittee comes up with whatever their technologies are that are important, then these technologies clearly map onto what DOE has been working on—great. 

But then, hey, here are the places that there's actually a gap. And that can be more of where the meat of the report lies, and where the committee can really dig in and create some new ideas. And then that would follow through to the recommendation of, well, given these gaps, DOE should create some new program or make sure that this is a priority under this existing program or whatever. I don't know. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah. I mean, one thing that occurs to me, as you're saying that is, one option would be just to continue with the current report structure, but then when it comes together to do that kind of integration like you're talking about, but with the additional recommendation for each subcommittee to really try to focus on the vital few and not cover the whole map. And that might be an easy way to incorporate some of this and make it work. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: And I also just want to raise the issue, though, are we—I feel like we're creating a dependency then, where they're doing work that has to be [inaudible]. But that means you can't substantively start on that work until they've done the research first. So, I just wonder if it makes more sense for the technical subcommittees to handle that whole problem. 

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: I think there's in some cases where there's going to be a baton pass and some cases where there might not be. I think it will depend on what the piece is. But for example, Jeff and his team already did great work of just, what is the lay of the land, what's like the status quo, basically, that then the technology and subsector committees can input into, so that they don't have to go and figure out, OK, what are the DOE programs.

And there's a coming together, I guess, at some point of the people that make sense. So maybe it's like more of a collaboration once you get down to the actual recommendation piece. But some of the work before that, the subcommittees could still do a little bit separately. 

And again, I think it'll depend on exactly where the connections are or not. And I think also, if all the overlap that I come up with the barriers subcommittee, then some of those may just naturally fall in and not necessarily have to be its own bullet in a barriers chapter.

Or we may find that actually it makes sense to fold in most of those things in other places. And it'll be a little messier on subcommittee chapters and how it's organized and people doing the work. But I think the work that people are doing now is still important and makes sense. 

And then we might just have to do a bit of reorganizing at the end to make everything kind of organized more and flow better. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: And just sort of somewhat going back to your final bullet down there, Zach, role for the outline subcommittee. I think maybe what I'm hearing is, they're still going to be a need for somebody within the committee to integrate and coordinate across all of these pieces. 

And I'm wondering if we repurpose the outline committee to be that integrator, which makes complete sense, with Sharon as the chair of that subcommittee, to basically be the report coordination committee, rather than the outline committee. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Based on these comments, what I'm going to suggest is that—Selena's editing the text here, so [inaudible]. 

[LAUGHTER] 

I think we delete the sub-bullets under the first top bullet. So, we're not assigning subcommittees to specific sections. How do people feel? I actually don't know if we have to decide on the overall organization as a category at this point, even.

We can keep the first bullet or delete it. 

[LAUGHTER] 

COMAS HAYNES: Control. 

SPEAKER: Yeah. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah, there we go. 

SPEAKER: I guess, building off of what people were saying, in particular Abigail—and then Cathy, you made a point earlier today about, let's get all the fodder in, and then we can depopulate it or—I forget the language you used, I liked the words you used. But synthesize, and I think it's OK actually, to have these three as the fodder buckets. Because they are. 

I guess just maybe to Abigail's point, or building on what you said, if the subcommittee's approach these with a view towards not discursively going back over a lot of things that already exist in the public domain, but essentially surfacing, given what's available in the public domain and our expertise, what are the key findings coming out of that? 

And they put that as the fodder for each of these three. I actually think that's a lot to work with. And then together as a group, we have these findings. And then the implications of the findings are what we base our recommendations on. And so we can—it does provide us the fertile ground, I think, for making the recommendations. 

And I would keep—Zach, you put it in yellow. But the barriers and economic competitiveness, I actually think that is the third bucket of fodder that we want to include. And some of these economic competitiveness issues, maybe they're a barrier. 

The fact that you have energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries with margins to consider and global competition and so on, that is a barrier to a lot of the investments that we want to make in some of these technologies and so on. I think we can maybe put that to—maybe you can join our barriers group, and we can have it as…

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Yeah. Maybe it's just we need a surface. Like, what are some of the—yeah. It'll just end up being barriers. Or I guess for… 

SPEAKER: Barriers and opportunities. 

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: Yeah, opportunities, barriers. 

SPEAKER: Yeah. So, I actually think that those are the three areas of fodder where we want to surface key findings, and then, given our findings as a committee, figure out what do we want to recommend that DOE do next. 

SHARON NOLEN: I think that's very similar to what I was thinking is, you keep working with the subcommittee with the general outline, but with the idea that each subcommittee would start narrowing down within that outline. 

SPEAKER: And here, what's nice, I think, is that six subcommittees maybe become three. 

SHARON NOLEN: Well, we have to think about numbers. 

SPEAKER: Oh, right. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah. 

SPEAKER: Oh, sorry. I wasn't thinking about that. But at least in terms of, they're aware that that's what they're working towards. 

SHARON NOLEN: I mean, maybe the leaders could [inaudible]. 

SPEAKER: Yes. 

SHARON NOLEN: Any dissent—oh, Comas has a comment. 

COMAS HAYNES: Right, but it's not dissent. Actually, I think it's building on what… 

SHARON NOLEN: You raised your hand before I said "dissent." 

COMAS HAYNES: Right. And I think it was leading up to something I was thinking about. So, the understanding I have is very high level, in large part, letting the subcommittees continue to do what they're doing, maybe with some tweaking and some consolidation, but for the most part, what they're doing, and then get the material and then integrate and work through integration at the end. 

I'm wondering if it might be appropriate—and this is a very open forum, I'm not trying to lead. It's really a genuine question—if it might be appropriate to have some kind of intermediate? And I think that's what you all are kind of hitting on.

Because right now, the crosswalk says that we try to have—for my subcommittee, we'll try to have different subcommittee members at least on every other subcommittee. 

But what if instead, each subcommittee had at least one person who had periodically a global view of what's going on, that could come and just keep us informed? That way, what I don't want is, at an extreme, each subcommittee gets the information, and then you have to try to integrate at the end. But then find out, well, you know what? Had we known, if we had some prior knowledge, it might have actually tweaked what we did upstream of this point. 

We might have fashioned our subcommittee's findings in a certain way that actually makes it easier to integrate at the end. In other words, you're not waiting until the end to try to hash things out, but along the way. That might still be a major task. It probably will be. 

But you have some upstream information where each subcommittee at least has somebody that periodically had a global view of how things were coming about. And they could just kind of advise us and keep us informed in that regard. It might make the end critical stage a little less taxing, so to speak, in not having to kind of unwind or revise upstream some things. 

I think when you said, what if we had the leaders meet periodically, maybe it's even something like that. But something that just keeps us in tune. But I think when you have five or six people trying to tell you, hey, here are the other things going on in the other committees, it's a little bit more piecemeal than if you had one person that just got a global view and can give you that vision. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah. And to some extent, Selena and Zach, I think, can provide some of that. Because you're attending [inaudible], correct? Yeah. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Correct. 

[LAUGHTER] 

SHARON NOLEN: And you look very excited about that. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: I'm not sure how to read [inaudible] right now, but. 

COMAS HAYNES: Maybe it's making room, to make sure we make room for them to give us that in our different subcommittee members [inaudible]. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah. OK. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: We can—I guess we can ask that, as the committee, that we ask that they assist us by doing that. 

SHARON NOLEN: So, I apologize that I feel like we've kind of gone round and round on this a little bit. But it's hard with a group like this to reach consensus and not to marinate. So, I'm going to say it one more time. Each subcommittee continues meeting. Use the outline that has been developed. Use this packet of information that we have about our charters. 

Start to hone in on what you think the most important things are. Don't feel like you have to cover the whole waterfront. And start thinking about it, in terms of findings and recommendations. And when we come back in January, we will have some possible recommendations and findings. I think what Zach has there looks good. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: A request to Zack and Selena—another request to Zach and Selena. Based on what we've talked about, can you guys go through the outline and make the updates that were discussed during the meeting today so that we have a current outline that we can all work through? 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yes. 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Thank you. 

SHARON NOLEN: All right. Oh, Abigail, sorry. 

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: One final thing, not to totally open this up again. But just going back to the outline, and based on the conversation that you have progressed on what we want the report to look like, looking specifically at the industrial subsector section, I think it might be worth taking another look at this. 

And especially if we're going in with the intent that we're not trying to recreate anything, the bullet for each covered subsector, I feel like a lot of that information probably does exist. And so maybe that doesn't need to be the focus of that subcommittee. 

And where the areas that I think could make more sense of focus is the criteria for selection, especially in terms of giving DOE advice on what kind of criteria should be used in programs. And then saying based on the criteria that the committee decided, then these are the sectors that we determine are important. 

And then you could point, here are existing information, telling you more information about those subsectors and pulling out the key pieces that you want to exist in the report as needed, but not writing paragraphs about each specific subsector chosen, except in the case where maybe nobody's written about a subsector that you think is important. 

Then that maybe is worthwhile, as well as the section D on other sectors to consider, maybe not consider in the report, but important things to call out, I think. And then the other piece that doesn't appear here, but I think maybe we had assumed is, specific technologies relevant to each subsector. 

And there, again, can have the look of where are those technologies being covered already by DOE. But then really, I think the key piece there could be, what are the technologies that aren't being looked at as that other kind of, where the recommendation might start coming out of. So that's my, I guess, suggestion on that particular subcommittee outline amendments, based on our discussion. 

SHARON NOLEN: All right, I think we have a path forward. We have a couple other things that I need to mention. And then we have the public comment period. So, I guess—well, I'm sorry. One thing we didn't cover was the length of the report. 

SPEAKER: Can we table that until January? 

SHARON NOLEN: OK, that's fine. 

SPEAKER: What does this look like? We're just dropping things into the box, and Zach's going to weave it into a report? Or do we have a shared doc? Or what are we going to do? 

SHARON NOLEN: No. Each subcommittee is going to work independently. But you do have a box. 

SPEAKER: Right. So it's going to be no interaction between the subcommittees using any of these… 

ABIGAIL REGITSKY: We're going to have to have an integrator. 

SHARON NOLEN: Yeah, I think that's going to come past January. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: That won't happen by January, right? I think the subcommittees are working on their individual recommendations and findings. [inaudible] 

SPEAKER: Are we going to have a template? I mean, we will work on our subcommittee. So, if we can get some templates, some format as to here's the recommendations, that's how we write, and the recommendations will come to include these things, or here's a finding, I think it will be good, at least from my end—I'll let [inaudible] speak for themselves. It would be good to have some kind of template, some kind of guideline. 

SHARON NOLEN: So, I think it was Joe. Did you have that report [inaudible] where you made the recommendation? 

JOE CRESKA: And that was just another [inaudible]. 

SPEAKER: We can share some more examples. 

SPEAKER: I'm happier to have a low number of pages than long. So, a template will help. 

SHARON NOLEN: All right. All right. We're going to move on. So, one thing I would like to ask everyone to do is to look at the subcommittee membership. So those are all included on the upper right hand of the Miro board. And so if there's any subcommittee you're not currently a part of but would like to be, I would encourage you to take opportunity to add to that. 

If you don't want to do that right now, just let Zach and Selena know, and we'll be glad to add you to a subcommittee. And then as far as subcommittee coordination, we've talked about several different things. So, I think one idea we should consider is that [inaudible], Selena and I meet regularly. So, at the next meeting, maybe we could talk a little about maybe getting the leaders together. [inaudible] 

I think that might be a good thing to do. And I would encourage each subcommittee to look at who on their subcommittee is on these other subcommittees, so that if you have questions about something, use the people who are on multiple subcommittees to provide some of that coordination. So, you have that in your report. OK. 

So, we are going to plan to have a virtual meeting in January. So soon we'll be getting some kind of poll [inaudible] people accountable for that. And then—OK, do we also want to talk about the March meeting, is that right? 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yeah. So, in the logistics emails for this meeting, we did include a poll for the March meeting, since that will be the next in-person meeting. We want to get that on the calendar as soon as we can. Please fill that out. If you haven't, then we'll include that link again in the follow-up email from this meeting. But yeah, [inaudible] to say about that. 

SHARON NOLEN: Do you have anything else to say about how the drafts will be reviewed across the subcommittee? Because we have a bullet, but I'm not sure how to address that. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: No, I don't have anything to say about that. 

SHARON NOLEN: OK, so maybe that's something we'll talk more about in January, about how to review across the board.

OK. So, I think that's everything I have. Any last thoughts or questions about next steps? Let me turn it over to Zach then. I think this—were you going to talk more about how the public comment period works? Or have you already taken care of that. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: So, we are a little bit ahead of when it's scheduled to start. But I think the public comment period is online. I don't know if—Simone, if you can give them permission to unmute, and if they're ready, then we can do that now. If not, we can take a short break and then come back at 12:15. OK, I see you. 

MIRIAM ROTKIN-ELLMAN: Hi there. Can you hear me? 

ZACH PRITCHARD: Yes, we can. Thank you so much. OK, so thank you for requesting to submit a public comment. You have about 5 minutes, so that'll be about 12:40 Eastern. I'll hand the floor over to you. Thank you. 

MIRIAM ROTKIN-ELLMAN: Thanks so much. So, I can't really see you all. So, if for some reason I'm running over, just wave something. Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today, and your service to this committee. My name is Miriam Rotkin-Ellman and I'm a public health scientist working as a technical advisor for the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for chemical policy reform, known as EJHA. 

EJHA is a national network of environmental and economic justice organizations in communities that are disproportionately harmed by toxic chemicals and legacy pollution. I work with communities living at the front lines of toxic exposures, choking air pollution, elevated cancer rates, sick kids, and all too frequent explosions, fires, and black plumes that darken their skies for days. 

These communities are fighting hard to survive the consequences of industrial policies that have not prioritized their health and safety. I'm here in front of you, hoping that the recommendations this committee makes does not repeat this legacy. 

I found this advisory committee because the communities I work with are seeing new and expanded chemical plants in their neighborhoods, funded with taxpayer monies as part of industrial decarbonization initiatives. And on their behalf, I went looking for who or what entity was evaluating these programs, and how communities most impacted by industrial decarbonization initiatives were being included in discussions of technologies that could impact them. 

Since these opportunities have been limited, and the feedback not posted on public dockets, I thought I would bring to your attention the comments I submitted on behalf of almost 40 grassroots and national organizations—I'll submit those comments by email, you'll have them for reference—and uplift the following two asks. 

Number one, industrial decarbonization technologies and pathways must be assessed for environmental justice and public health impacts. Community benefit plans and agreements are not a substitute for rigorous evaluation and response. Number two, chemical sector decarbonization pathways should include demand reduction, such that there is a decrease in the production of toxic chemicals and plastic. 

So-called decarbonized ammonia, benzene, methanol, and ethylene oxide are still toxic and threaten the health and safety of fence line and EJ communities. Reducing the production of single-use plastic has many environmental and public health benefits. 

Thank you again for this opportunity to bring the concerns of environmental justice communities to your committee and conversation. Combating environmental injustices and racialized health disparities requires climate solutions that reduce toxic exposures, especially in fence line communities. I'd be happy to answer any questions. 

SHARON NOLEN: Any questions? All right. Well, we thank you very much for your comments and appreciate you taking the time to share those with us. And we will certainly take these into consideration as we move forward. So, thank you very much. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: And I'll just add, thanks for your flexibility in speaking a little earlier than scheduled. And also, yes, if you submit the written comments that you mentioned, we'll share those among the committee, as well. Thank you very much. 

SHARON NOLEN: So, is there anything else before we conclude today? All right, I just want to thank everyone for being very engaged in these conversations and for taking the time out of everyone's busy schedule to be here. I think it's really nice to be here in person when we can. I think it helps us continue to improve our working relationships and to have very open communication. So thank you all for your time to be here. 

[VARIOUS MEMBERS EXPRESS THANKS] 

NEAL ELLIOTT: Thank you, and thanks particularly to Zach, Selena, Simone, and Caroline for their support. 

SPEAKER: Thank you very much. 

ZACH PRITCHARD: All right, with that, we are adjourned. Thank you. 

[End of audio]