Meisha Baylor: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the 100% Clean: How DOE Solar Investment Will Help to Achieve Ambitious Decarbonization Goals. And I'm here to introduce Rebecca Jones-Albertus. Becca Jones-Albertus: Hello and welcome everyone to our virtual event. Before we dive in Just a few housekeeping items. We're recording this meeting, so your name may be recorded. We ask you to please stay muted with your camera off, and we will be answering questions that have already been submitted at the end of the event. If you have new questions, you can submit those to solar@ee.doe.gov and we will do our best to answer all of them. If you have any technical difficulties, please use the chat feature or you can email Meisha Baylor, who is the organizer of our Zoom invitation. So with that, let's jump in. So my name is Becca Jones-Albertus. I'm the Director of the US. Department of Energy, Solar Energy Technologies Office. And welcome to our stakeholder Webinar. I'm thrilled to be joined today by US. Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Acting Assistant Secretary of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Kelly Speakes-Backman. To Start things off It's my honor to introduce the Secretary of the US. Department of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, who is leading our agency as we tackle the global threat of climate change and create opportunities for this country to lead in developing new clean energy technologies. With her deep background and expertise and clean energy policy and industry, Secretary Granholm is going to be focused on stimulating the US. Economy, creating good paying jobs, and positioning the United States to be a global leader in clean energy. Secretary Granholm, I'm so glad you're here with us today to share this exciting news from the Solar office and I'll turn it over to you. Secretary Jennifer Granholm: Great! Thank you, Becca! And stay tuned, everybody, because there will be some great news coming! So I cannot tell you how excited I am to have joined, first of all, the Department of Energy at this incredibly exciting time and this urgent moment in the clean energy revolution. It is a moment, as you all know, that is rife, replete with opportunity. It's obviously the opportunity to finally wage a full out war on the climate crisis. It is an opportunity to claim America's share of that global clean energy market. It is an opportunity to create millions of jobs for our workers and to direct the benefits of that opportunity into communities that have been left behind. So President Biden is all in on this fight, which is why he has laid out these ambitious clean energy goals; 100% clean energy by 2035 net zero carbon emissions by 2050. And, of course, one of the fastest and the easiest, really, paths to these goals is through solar. It's already affordable. But in order to seize its full potential, we need to grow its capacity by hundreds and hundreds of gigawatts in America on the grid. And since a single gigawatt equals 200,000 solar equipped homes, we're talking millions of solar panels. And to do that, of course, we need to make solar even cheaper. So luckily, dont knows a thing or two about how to get this done. In 2011, for those of you who were around and we're watching this are Solar office launched the Sunshot initiative, which aimed to aggressively drive down the cost of solar by 2020. And thanks in part to those investments, the cost of utility scale solar has fallen now by more than 80%. So since we were ready to achieve our cost target three years early, we then set a new goal. And that goal was to cut the current cost in half by 2030 which at that time meant by 2030 we would have to get to three cents per kilowatt hour. But we're just moving so fast. So right now we're on track to reach that three cents per kilowatt hour goal by 2025. So maybe it's time to lay down an even better marker. So today, [imitates drum roll] I'm thrilled to announce the newest goal, which is to get to two cents a kilowatt hour by 2030. And that goal would cut the current cost of solar by more than half within this decade. It would make solar the cheapest source of electricity generation in all of the land in America. It would set the stage for solar to supply 30 to 50% of our nation's electricity. It would allow us to reach the president's ambitious goals even faster. It will accelerate that fight against climate change. Super exciting! So to tell us "how" we have a message for the group from none other than Gina McCarthy, who is President Biden's national climate adviser. Gina! Gina McCarthy: Hi, everyone. And thanks, Secretary Granholm for that terrific introduction. And for all the energy and excitement you bring to your work every day, you are just amazing. And I'm lucky to be with all of you to confirm what you already know. President Biden gets it! He knows this pandemic has been horrible, and with the American rescue plan in hand, we can begin to feel a sense of not just relief but real hope again. So now it's time to turn our attention to the task of rebuilding our country again, putting the millions of people back to work who have lost their jobs. We need to invest in our infrastructure again, bring back manufacturing in our country and grab back the supply chain that we've offshored for far too long. So it's time to open up opportunities for good paying union jobs and invest in the environmental justice communities across our country that have been left behind. So how? You're it! Clean energy is our future. It's how we will grow jobs, raise all of our communities and beat this climate crisis. That's why President Biden is calling for a net zero economy by 2050 and over the next decade we have to get moving, because it's time that we shot that path forward together. And we all can get there. We know that American innovators, like all of you at this meeting today, are already hard at work building that future. Solar has been playing a major role in rebuilding our country's energy infrastructure for the past decade. In fact, solar represented 40% of the power that came online in 2020. Because it's not just cost competitive and less expensive, it is our future. And if we think about working together with more ambitious goals in constant with $125 million in investments announced today, we can win the future for our country. So thank you for everything you're doing. I'm excited about what the future is going to bring. Secretary Jennifer Granholm: I just love her so much. It's so great. So we know why this work is so important. But don't just take it from me. Don't just take it from Gina. We want you to see it for yourself. So we're going to do a little bit something different today. We're going to take you on some virtual tours of the places where cutting edge solar work is already underway. So first up, we're heading to one of the sunniest states in the country: Arizona. We're going to see a solar cell manufacturing facility at Arizona State University. Hit it! I think. Working on it. There we go. [Video playing] Christiana Honsberg, Ph.D.: Arizona State University's Solar Power Laboratory has a Silicon Pilot Line Production Facility. This means that we can test out to see how the solar cells will perform in a commercial environment. The pilot line consists of the equipment that's used to make a PV module. So we start out with a silicon wafer. We then put some kind of junction on the silicon wafer. Then we do metalization on the solar cell by a screen printing. It's actually very similar to t-shirt screen printing, except, of course, we're printing metal instead of dyes. Then we put them together into a module. So we can do the entire fabrication process here. We started the pilot line in 2009. So it's been going now for about 11 years or so. We started out making the solar cells that were typical of the time and got state of the art solar cells at about 19%. In the last decade, the solar industry has made amazing advances. And so the Pilot Production Facility has kept up with these. We now make silicon hetero junction cells, and we've gotten some of the highest voltages of any silicon solar cells. All the equipment is the same as what's used in industry. So this gives us a good idea on how they'll perform on an industrial scale production facility. [Video ends] Secretary Jennifer Granholm: Okay, so great! Fantastic! Those silicon cells that they're working on at ASU have brought us so far over the past decade, obviously making solar easier and cheaper. And as we pursue this cost goal of two cents by 2030, the next decade of solar innovation is - we're just going to have to figure out how to bring these new solutions online. So we are backing up this two cent goal with some major investments, and Gina sort of previewed it. Today we're announcing the first of them $128 million for the research and deployment of new solar materials; like technologies and projects that we have not seen before. The funding is going to help us unlock cutting edge solutions that drive down costs even further. It's going to create new opportunities for American companies to lead the clean energy revolution. $128 million is a lot of money. So let's break it down. So first, we're going to dive into photovoltaic solar technology what most people think of when they picture solar panels on roofs and buildings or in fields along the highway. So this is where we're exploring other efficient and affordable ways to make and deploy solar panels, because more options mean more opportunities for American workers in this $60 billion global solar manufacturing sector. So one option uses a material that many of you may know about called cadmium telluride or Cad-Tel. So Cad-Tel modules were first developed right here in the US, and today they make up more than 20% of solar modules that you see installed across the country, and the emerging industry employs about 13,000 people. But with some more R&D, we can figure out how to scale them up faster and cheaper. We can make sure American companies and workers keep leading the charge. So $20 million of this funding is going to go to the National Renewable Energy Lab - NREL, where they are going to set up a consortium of researchers and universities and industry to advance this Cad-Tel technology. The second material that we're going to focus on is perovskite. So unlike Cad-Tel, perovskite is new. It can only be found in the lab, but it holds so much promise. So not only can perovskite cells convert sunlight into energy as efficiently as silicon cells, we should be able to manufacture them using this roll to roll technology - roll to roll printers. The same ones that we've used like for newspapers or for camera film. So for our first tour of this, we're going to go to - it's really probably the second, because we're sort of a tour at ASU - but anyway, the bottom line is we're going to go to another place - Rochester, New York, where the CEO of Energy Materials Corporation, Stephan DeLuca. He's going to show us how they're working with Kodak to do just that to do this roll to roll process. So let's watch. [Video playing] Stephan DeLuca: Our concept is the manufacturer perovskite based solar panels, complete solar panels made in line roll to roll. And what that means is that we are printing all of the layers of the perovskite device in line all processes happening at the same speed. What that allows you to do is get to the lowest possible manufacturing costs and also the lowest capital cost to build manufacturing assets. The basic difference with perovskite is that they are solution processable. You can make an ink out of perovskite and you can print it. So that enables high speed, high throughput manufacturing. But in the end, what this technology allows you to do is get to very low cost and very low capital cost to build factories, because all you're doing is building a printing press, basically, instead of five different factories, you need to make silicon solar panels. One in line production tool. We're running at our target speed of 100 ft per minute. That is a four gigawatt per year production tool. So it's a very different scale than what most people talk about when we're thinking about PV production lines. We're in a process called, Scale-Up, right now. And that Scale-Up is going from little lab devices to making high speed roll to roll devices. The really hard part is the speed getting all of the layers to print at the same speed. So that tool that we're working on now is a real industrial tool that was built by Kodak as a pilot production line. If we want to get to the targets that have been set out for renewable energy, we have to have a drastic expansion of manufacturing capability for solar panels. And what's really exciting is we have a way to do that with an order of magnitude less capital cost to build factories with a product that has less than half the manufactured cost of existing solar panels. [Video ends] Secretary Jennifer Granholm: Okay. I love this. Alright. So, Stephan, that was awesome. If you're still there, tell us a little bit about some of the challenges you're facing as you try to bring this technology to market. You got to unmute. Can I see? I think he's muted. Do you see him? I can't hear him. Let him in! Stephan DeLuca: Okay, I'm in. Secretary Jennifer Granholm: There we go! Stephan DeLuca: Okay. Yes. So thank you for the opportunity here. Just for some context, we have significant advantages when we get to manufacturing scale. When we get to gigawatt scale, our economics win. But our near term goal is getting out into the field and with new product, off of that pilot line you just saw, in 2022 and getting our four gigawatt factory up and running by 2023. So it's a very quick timeline to get to manufacturing and our main challenge and our focus right now is about getting through that manufacturing ramp up. So even though our capital requirements are an order of magnitude less, we still need significant capital to bridge the time from manufacturing start up through initial deployments and bankability. Right? And we need to do that in a market with highly subsidized foreign competition. I think everybody knows. So that's the challenge. And what we're hoping and what we've just heard today is that there's a robust public private collaboration in process now that can reduce those financial barriers and help enable the deployment of US made product at massive scale. Secretary Jennifer Granholm: Awesome. Yep, we want to keep this help coming. Appreciate that. Thanks so much, Stephan. So let me keep this moving, because a couple of years ago, our Solar office awarded EMC $4 million to help them take this work to the next level. So it's really cool to see them in action. And it's a perfect example as he suggests, of what's to come. Because 40 million of this funding will go to 22 new projects, including universities and private sector players spread out across the country for R&D in perovskite technology and manufacturing. And an additional 14 million will go to Sandia National Labs and to NREL for an independent validation center where any company can come and measure the performance of their perovskite panels, and they can attract investors and prove out the concept. So here, to tell us more, is Joe Berry. Joe, wave. He heads up our perovskite research at NREL. Joe, thanks for being with us. First, can you tell us just a little bit more about what's so special about perovskite and what makes them so promising for solar technologies? Joe Berry: Yeah, again. Thanks for the opportunity. You know, these are really a kind of fabulous semiconductor materials and the thing that makes them - they're great for all kinds of optoelectronic. But for solar in particular, the thing that's really compelling is kind of what Steve just showed in the video. The ability to handle the materials in a way that enables scalability and manufactureability to really kind of hit the targets that we have for energy, the environment, and indeed, equity - right - in terms of jobs and other things. So the if you look at the details of the material, the other thing that's kind of compelling is perovskite by themselves are really great absorbers, but we can also pair them with those silicon solar cells that we saw earlier, so we don't have to jettison all the other technologies that we have. Steve could print a semi-transparent kind of device, pair that with a silicon solar cell to make the silicon better than it would be otherwise. So it really is additive in that way. And that really is kind of different than what we have opportunities to do with a lot of other technologies. Secretary Jennifer Granholm: So in addition to that pairing and sort of the flexibility and the manufacturing process, are there other things that we should be doing to make the technology commercially successful? Joe Berry: Well - we're trying to do this faster than we've ever done for any PV technology. So it really is kind of an all-of-the-above approach. And I think Steve hit on it - right. We need essentially these partnerships - between universities, national labs with an eye on exactly what problems are for industry - so that we can make sure that we have kind of a forward looking kind of way to identify problems before we hit them in the field and we can overcome them more rapidly. So that obviously requires a lot of leadership from people like yourself and the SETO team in terms of sustained research efforts and R&D. So, yeah. But I think if we do that, we'll be able to be successful. Secretary Jennifer Granholm: We have this united sense of urgency. Joe, thank you so much for your contribution. But I'm telling you, as I keep saying, "Our hair is on fire. We only have a short amount of time to get this done". So, you know, with their help, we're going to see some of these perovskite technologies become available. Which is why we are also putting out a $3 million prize for startups that can also help to get this research out of the lab and into the market. So perovskite, remember that. Alright, now we're going to shift gears for a minute. We're going to talk about the other technology we're going to focus on, which is concentrating solar thermal power, or CSP. As many of you know it. And for those of you who don't know it, CSP plants, they're built in some of the sunniest parts of the country. They use huge groups of these giant mirrors to reflect the sun's rays onto a receiver and the receiver than takes all of that heat, which is hotter than like, 800 degrees Celsius. And it turns that heat into energy that can spin a turbine or power and engine to generate electricity, which can also be stored for use when the sun isn't shining. So CSP has the potential to be this very cheap on demand source of renewable power, and it could also provide clean power or heat for big industrial processes that currently produced 20% of America's carbon emissions. So, first though, we need to figure out how to make these projects more efficient and more reliable. So that's why we are investing 25 million with Sandia National Lab in Albuquerque to plant and build a demonstration facility for these cutting edge gen 3 plants. So for our next tour, let's check in with Cliff Ho at Sandia's test facility, which you really need to see from above. [Video playing] Cliff Ho, Ph.D.: Trading Solar Thermal Power uses a large array of mirrors to focus and concentrate the sunlight onto a receiver that conventionally has a heat transfer fluid molten nitrate salt flowing through tubes that gets heated to just under 600 degrees Celsius. And once that's hot, it can be stored for use even when the sun is not shining to spin a turban and generator for large scale electricity production. Now the challenge has been that molten nitrate salts can decompose at about 600 degrees Celsius, and the Department of Energy is looking at advanced next generation power cycles that require temperatures of 700 degrees Celsius or higher. So we need to look for new materials and new media to get to these more efficient and more cost effective power cycles. So with the gen 3 technology that we're developing, it uses falling particles through the receiver. Instead of liquids or gases flowing through tubes, we drop particles through the receiver and the concentrated sunlight strikes and radiates the particles directly, which is much more efficient than having to heat tubes and then the heat transfer fluid indirectly. I like to call this technology particle power. Solid particles have a number of advantages over conventional heat transfer fluids used in concentrating solar-thermal power. The particles can achieve much higher temperatures well over 1000 degrees Celsius, and they don't freeze. I think what's exciting is that the use of particles opens up a whole new world beyond his power production. The particles can also be used for high temperature process, heat in manufacturing material synthesis, cement making the future of CSP and gen 3 using solid particles is really exciting. [Video ends] Secretary Jennifer Granholm: Okay, Cliff, you're with us, right? Wave your hand. Cliff Ho, Ph.D.: Yeah. Secretary Jennifer Granholm: So, Cliff, I mean particle power. Love this. But this this kind of CSP technology, it seems like it might be a way off. What is the pitch for developing this technology now? Cliff Ho, Ph.D.: Well, I think it's important to realize that CSP technology has been around and there's actually nearly 10 gigawatts of CSP either operational or underdevelopment throughout the world. I think the pitch, though, for now, is that up until now, when states have been trying to fulfill their renewable portfolio standards, they've just been going with the low bid, which has been, as you said, photovoltaics really cheap. Photovoltaics and wind. But as we get greater and greater penetrations of that intermittent renewable power, we're going to need larger and longer duration energy storage. And that's what CSP really has to offer. Is that inherent ability to provide inexpensive, reliable, long duration energy storage. So as we get to more and more penetrations of renewables, I think CSP is an attractive option to provide that needed storage. Secretary Jennifer Granholm: All right! We're going to do this! Hair on fire! Thanks so much, Cliff. And thank you again to Joe and to Stephan for sharing your incredible work as well. It is amazing to see these projects coming to life all across the country. And to all of the innovators out there, this is your chance to get in the game, because 40 million of this funding is now available for your best solar technology, R&D. And there's going to be more where that came from, because the further that we advance solar, the faster we can reach this new cost goal. The faster we can get this power onto the grid into people's lives while they lighten their own wallets, the faster we can create jobs for American workers that will be in demand for decades to come. The faster we can launch communities that have been left behind into a greener future. And that is what President Biden means when he says, "We're going to build back better." So this is our time to get-r-done. So because with all of us together and a whole lot of sunshine, anything is possible. Back to you Becca. Becca Jones-Albertus: Thank you so much, Secretary Granholm for being with us today and highlighting this groundbreaking work of our awardees. I know I speak for so many of us that are on the call, who are all working together on this fight, to say we couldn't be more excited to be working with you to advance these technologies towards these ambitious goals. I now want to hand the mic over to Kelly Speaks-Backman the Acting Assistant Secretary, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable energy or EERE - which is where DOE Solar office sits. Kelly has deep experience leading energy and environmental work expanding the public, private and non-profit sectors. Most recently, she was CEO of the Energy Storage Association. Thanks so much for being here, Kelly. We've been talking about Dewey Solar Technology Investments, but I'm hoping you can spend a little time telling us how solar fits into the broader set of EERE priorities that span renewables, vehicles, fuel cells, even energy efficient light bulbs. So, Kelly... Kelly Speakes-Backman: Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much, Becca. And, thanks to Secretary Granholm for her support and enthusiasm for solar technologies. You can feel like the hair on fire like feeling when she talks. It's really exciting and I have to say I was watching some of the chat while she was talking and you know, I am so lucky I get to work in an industry where somebody types out, "Yay, CSP rocks!" I mean, that's so fun. So thank you all for coming here. I'm going to talk a little bit about President Biden's Clean Energy Plan which he's laid out a framework to really address the climate crisis and to put America on an irreversible path to achieve carbon free electricity sector by 2035 and a 100% clean energy economy with net zero emissions not later than 2050. Our mission here at EERE is to drive the research, the development and I will underscore right now, we are focused on the demonstration and the deployment of innovative technologies and systems and practices that are going to: 1) Transition Americans to the 100% clean energy, economy and 2) Ensure that the clean energy economy benefits all Americans. This transition is going to create millions of jobs. As the secretary said, good paying middle class jobs, and it's going to ensure our clean, affordable and reliable energy future for all Americans. It's important that the work that we do will build this clean energy economy for all Americans and that our workforce and our industries look like America. So we have a lot of work to do, and I'm really excited to be joining Becca here in the EERE family to get that done. To execute these energy goals, we're going to need to coordinate closely with the National Labs, with other DOE offices, with federal agencies, with state agencies all across the country, both government and non government partners. And I'm excited here to talk about our programmatic and our diversity and our inclusion goals today and talk to you a little bit about how solar fits into that equation. So we're conducting research and analysis to establish these viable pathways to 2035 and 2050 and we've identified five programmatic priorities across the offices, three pillars of efficiency, renewable power and sustainable transportation. They're going to guide this research and development is going to guide our programs and our funding and even our policies as we transition. These five programmatic priorities include decarbonizing electricity, decarbonizing transportation, decarbonizing energy intensive industries, reducing the carbon footprint of buildings, and enabling net zero agricultural sector. It's a little different than some of the priorities you may have heard of EERE talking about in the past. It doesn't mean that we're not really focused on that two cents a kilowatt hour target. It means that what we do and how we measure our progress has to be measured in how we impact Americans. So I'll talk a little bit about each of these priorities as we move forward. The first is to generate all of our electricity from clean, renewable sources by 2035. And to get to this transition, we're going to need to continue to make major strides to integrate more renewable energy generation into the grid, ensuring it's reliable and secure and resilient as it evolves. So to accomplish this, we're going to need to: number 1, drive down the cost of large scale renewables like wind and solar and geothermal. We're going to proactively support the permitting and the deployment of renewable generation. We're going to ensure renewables are integrated into a resilient power system with enough flexibility that includes generation demand and energy storage technologies. And we're going to reduce our dependence on critical materials so you can see how this is really addressing the workforce and how we're going to be needing to pull that in. But it's also going to take a combined effort of grid analysis and technical assistance across all the Department of Energy offices, so that includes the Office of Electricity, our Office of EERE and the Fossil Office. And it's going to take our National Labs to support the decisions that are going to be made by system planners by regulators and policymakers to accelerate to this decarbonized grid. You heard earlier from Secretary Granholm today that our goal is to cut the cost of solar electricity in half over the next five years, and down to two cents is the most immediate. That's going to make solar the lowest cost source of new electricity generation in the country. So solar has a huge role to play in this first goal of the carbon izing the US electricity system. Second programmatic priority is to decarbonize transportation across all modes. That's air, sea, rail and road. Our team is working to set ambitious goals in each of these modes. For sustainable EVs in particular, the president's vision is to deploy 500,000 new public charging points by 2030. And for that to happen, we have to address the technical and across industry coordination needs for a national EV charging infrastructure that's going to align with this move to a high renewables grid. And so there's no doubt solar is going to be a playing a big role in this. Priority three is to dig carbonized the energy intensive and high greenhouse gas industries. These processes currently contribute as much as 20% of the nation's carbon emissions, and we're going to develop specific road maps to guide the research and the development activities across the department. To be able to phase out these greenhouse gases. We're going to rely on renewable energy like concentrated solar thermal power to in order to power industrial processes in that case. Priority four is decarbonizing buildings. Reducing the carbon footprint of the US building stock can really make a big difference. Right now, it accounts for over 35% of US carbon emissions. And despite the fact that we have 125 million residential and commercial buildings using about 40% of the nation's energy buildings waste at least 30% of the energy they consume. Improving building efficiency is going to be essential to decarbonizing the grid by 2035 so that we need less generation sources. If we use less, we need to make less. And that's going to save all Americans money. The fifth priority is to enable a net zero agriculture sector. We can't transition to this clean energy economy by 2050 without assuming a whole of government approach. And since the agriculture and energy industries overlap, we're going to work closely with our partners at the US Department of Agriculture and we're going to work to promote rural energy and to fund pilot and demonstration technologies that advance decarbonization of the agricultural sector, including full photovoltaics and including bioenergy. The co-location of solar with crop or livestock production or pollinator habitats can help to optimize both energy and agricultural production and may offer some opportunities for us to increase the overall value of solar energy. So I just went through the five programmatic priorities, and I just want to also mention that we're determined to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the STEM and across the entire clean energy workforce. We all know that the pandemic destroyed millions of jobs, including hundreds of thousands in this clean energy industry. As President Biden Biden says his Climate Plan is actually a jobs plan. So we're going to be at the forefront in DOE to scale up the emerging technologies that are going to put Americans into construction and the skilled trades and into engineering to work towards building that new American infrastructure and the clean energy economy while supporting workers affected by this energy transition. We're going to increase outreach, and we're going to raise the awareness of clean energy research, and we're going to raise awareness of the job opportunities that are there at minority serving institutions and minority professional organizations. One of the ways we already do this is through our funding opportunities. We have the chance, right now already, to ensure that organizations receiving EERE's funding are thinking through their diversity and equity in their own work, and we're going to call them on it in our funding opportunities. We're also committed to funding workforce training opportunities and collegiate competitions that are so much fun. In order to prepare that new future clean energy workforce, it's more important than ever because we need to create these jobs. And as Secretary Granholm says, she's obsessed with new jobs. Also, important is that the work we're doing to build the clean energy economy is benefiting all Americans. Some of you may have heard already about what we talk about is the Justice40 initiative across DOE. We're working to ensure that 40% of the overall benefits of all of our relevant investments are delivered to disadvantaged communities. We're going to consider the environmental justice and the equity impacts in the development and execution of all EERE projects across research, demonstration, development, and deployment. This means not only who we're funding and who these dollars are going to, but who the projects are impacting and who these benefits go to. You're going to hear more about our environmental justice and equity work from Becca later in this webinar. And I'm really excited to hear from her about that. So just in closing, we have a ton of work to do to meet this goal. As you can see, this is a very high energy leadership, and I am so, so privileged to be a part of it. And to be able to join Becca and her team in making sure that we are working to achieve this carbon free electricity sector by 2035 and 100% clean energy economy by 2050. Can't do it alone. We need all the help we can get. And we're excited to take on this challenge with you all. So thank you very much for your time and I'm happy to answer any questions if you might have them. Becca Jones-Albertus: Thank you so much, Kelly. Uh, we're really excited to be working with you on these incredibly important and meaningful goals. Decarbonization, environmental justice and equity. I'm going to take a few minutes now to talk a little bit more about the Solar Energy Technologies Office, our priorities under the Biden administration. And we'll go over, again, today's announcements. Secretary Granholm covered them so well, but there's so many of them that we think it's worth going through those just one more time so you don't miss them. So DOE's Solar Energy Technologies Office. Our mission is to accelerate the advancement and deployment of solar technology. We're doing this to support an equitable transition to decarbonize energy system by 2050 starting with the power sector by 2035; these are the President's goals. How we do this is advancing PV and CSP technology through research, development, demonstration and also driving soft cost reduction with the goals of making solar energy not just affordable but accessible to all Americans. We're working hard to enable solar to support the reliability and the security of the grid and to pair with energy storage to provide new options for community resilience. And we do all of that work in close collaboration with other DOE offices through DOE's Grid Modernization Initiative. And while we're trying to grow solar deployment, it's critical that we look at the other benefits that can come from that work. So we're looking at how solar can support growth of jobs, manufacturing and also addressing end of life considerations. As we look at solar in a wide range of applications. I want to highlight 4 priorities for our office. First, realizing a carbon free electricity supply requires a big role from solar energy. Solar is likely to need to supply 30 to 50% of our electricity, meaning we're going to need to deploy solar 2 to 5 times faster than we're deploying solar today. Enabling this acceleration by opening new markets for solar. Kelly mentioned work we're doing to co-locate solar and agriculture, for example, is one of these exciting new markets. Speeding, permitting and interconnection processes, reducing environmental impacts associated with solar installations and decommissioning. Those are all critical, and it's also critical that we bring energy justice to the poor front. We look at how this growth and clean energy deployment can benefit those who have suffered the most from the pollution caused by our energy sector to date. We're doing this by focusing on how we can increase access to the benefits of rooftop and community solar and under resourced communities, including through innovative financing methods, data collection and technical assistance. As solar deployment grows, so do opportunities to create jobs - growing well above the 250,000 workers that are employed by the solar industry today. And we're going to be working to provide training and support so that we have a well supported and well skilled workforce to meet these opportunities for growth. Second, a grid running on clean energy, will be a grid that relies heavily on inverter-based technologies. Those inverters are connecting our solar, most of our wind and our battery storage technologies into the grid. And these inverters will be required to provide essential grid services and black start capability so that our grid will stay as reliable, resilient, and secure as it is today and hopefully even improve. We know these technologies can provide these functions, but we need to continue to learn how to do this most effectively. Third, as you heard from Secretary Granholm so well earlier, we have to continue to reduce the cost of solar electricity. We're doing this to unlock solar deployment with our new cost target of two cents a kilowatt hour for large scale PV installations by 2030. And we have targets of five cents a kilowatt hour for concentrating solar thermal and rooftop solar. This is going to require technology innovation, longer system, life times and lower soft costs. And last, we're looking beyond electricity to how solar technologies can help directly with the needs for renewable process, heat and fuels that will be required to decarbonize the industrial sector. So here, again, Secretary Granholm covered These so well. But we have so much exciting work to talk about here that we're going to go through our announcements again and starting with our new 2030 cost target two cents a kilowatt hour for large scale PV systems. And just saying a little bit about how we do our cost targets and our cost benchmarking, we look at numbers for unsubsidized systems that are in average locations in the country. So you may hear about PPA's first solar systems that are already close to two cents a kilowatt hour. But that's including incentives and in very sunny locations. And we're targeting solar to be the least cost source of electricity across America. So today we're benchmarking those costs at 4.6 cents a kilowatt hour. And I want to talk about one pathway to get there. What does that look like? So it looks like in this first bucket the red bucket here that's focused on improvements to the modules themselves. We want to make modules more efficient and continue to reduce costs, moving efficiencies from about 19% to 25% getting costs down to 15 to 17 cents a lot. The second bucket here is focused on reducing the balance of system costs. These are the other hardware and the soft costs. So streamlining, citing permitting and interconnection, efficiency improvements help here and continuing to reduce costs of the power electronics and the other elements of the system are critical to that - that yellow bucket there. And the third bucket is really focused on performance over the lifetime of the system. Here, we're looking to drive system lifetimes from around 30 years today to 50 years, increase the performance that comes out of those systems throughout the year and throughout the lifetime, and to look for automation and improved predictability to reduce operations and maintenance costs. So that's our two cents a kilowatt hour target for utility scale PV, which couples with our five cent target for rooftop PV and our five cent 2030 target for concentrating solar thermal. And as I talked about at the end there, lifetime improvements are so important for getting to this cost target. And so when the funding opportunity that we're releasing today, one of the two PV topics is specifically dedicating funding to improve the lifetimes towards a 50-Year Service Life for PV Systems. Our second funding topic is focused - is again our annual topic called Small Innovative Projects in Solar or SIPS, which provides small focused funding for really innovative projects that can get key results in about a year's time. This funding opportunity will have an informational webinar in a couple weeks on April 12 at 2:00pm, so we hope those of you interested will attend and letters of intent will be due about two weeks later, on April 25th. Before talking about our next three PV announcements. Just stepping back a bit. Our office focuses both on advancing commercial solar cell materials - so that's silicon PV and Cad-Tel that you see on the left here. So we work to improve efficiencies, lifetimes, reduce costs while also supporting emerging materials like perovskites, building-integrated PV, and studying performance impacts of our advanced module designs like bifacial modules. So we're focusing today on Cadmium Telluride and perovskites, as you heard already. So both advancing technologies on the market and looking to the future. So on perovskites, we are announcing today $40 million for 22 projects through the funding opportunity that will be released in August of 2020. These projects are including three thrusts. The first is core research and development efforts to continue to improve the efficiency and stability of perovskite devices. Second, is a manufacturing topic where we're looking to accelerate commercialization of perovskite technologies by looking today at how we can do advancing research on manufacturing focused on meaningful sizes and throughput. And the last topic which you heard from the Secretary and Joe earlier, this is where Sandia and NREL are going to be working together on a bankability center that's focused on establishing standard test protocols and accelerated life testing as well as field validation to really improve our confidence in the performance of perovskite technologies and increased confidence in investors in those technologies. We're also, today, looking to accelerate the growth of perovskite industry through the Perovskite Startup Prize, which is the latest in the American-Made Challenges prize network. Here we're going to reward established researchers as they form new companies and hit key milestones. We have an informational webinar if you want to learn more about this $3 million prize competition, that'll be on April 13th at 1 p.m. Eastern. And third, you heard earlier is our Cadmium Telluride PV Accelerator Consortium where we are awarding National Renewable Energy Laboratory $20 million to continue world leading Cad-Tel research and coordinated consortium focused on enhancing US's leadership and competitiveness in cadmium telluride research. In a little over a month, NREL is going to release the competitive solicitation to select the leadership for this consortium, which will then be working together with the broader research community to achieve 2030 goals of increasing US. Cad-Tel PV production reaching PV cell efficiencies 26% and helping to support a decrease in Cad-Tel module costs down to 15 cents a lot. NREL - at the link you'll have here if you check the slides afterwards, there's a link where you can sign up to get the latest email updates from NREL about the consortium. Moving now to Concentrating Solar-Thermal power. Where our research in this space really focuses on integrating CSP technology with thermal energy storage so that we can have solar power on demand - not just when the sun is shining. You see in the middle here our cost target for CSP, as I mentioned before, five cents a kilowatt hour, which is about a 50% reduction from today's costs. And these are targets for CSP plants that have at least 12 hours of storage. To get to this cost target, we have several priority areas. One - which we'll talk more about in just a moment you've heard already, is improving the efficiency of the systems by driving towards higher temperatures above 700 degrees C. Second, is enhancing CSP plant performance and reliability as a lowering installation costs and developing... those are for electricity and then we're also looking at how we can develop systems and components to allow solar-thermal heat to support industrial processes. So as you heard earlier today, we selected Sandia National Laboratories and it's falling-particle receiver project to be the most promising pathway to getting to 700 degrees C heat transfer for CSP. This is such an important and exciting problem to be solving. So Sandia is getting $25 million to build the next generation multi-megawatt CSP plant that'll really test out this technology at scale and get it one step closer to market. Our second CSP announcement is our open founding opportunity, which is a joint funding opportunity. The PV and CSP topics we're talking about are part of the same funding opportunity, so it's our same informational Webinar, April 12th at 2 p.m. Our CSP topic areas have four topics. The first topic, Solar R&R, is focused on funding novel receivers and reactors that can enable new applications for concentrating solar thermal systems. Second topic is Advancing Key Components for Pumped Thermal Energy Storage Technologies that can use electricity to charge thermal energy storage either a standalone systems or integrated with CSP plants. And our last two topics, Advance the technologies training and standards to reduce the cost of parabolic trough and power CSP plants. Focusing on both process and equipment improvements. I should say not last too, but the CSP Perform and Reform. And the last topic area is Small Innovative Projects and solar CSP focused. So again, these are smaller, innovative, high risk projects that can get results in 1 to 2 years. So we hope those of you who are interested will join us for our informational webinar. And we have something new that's part of this FOA that we're really excited about. We're requiring applicants to submit a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan, which is going to explain how their work - either through their research and through dissemination of results - can support inclusion of underrepresented groups, advanced equity, and promote inclusion. We also are strongly encouraging minority serving institutions, minority women and veteran owned businesses and entities from disadvantaged communities to apply for our funding. And it's not just in this funding opportunity where we're emphasizing diversity, equity, and inclusion. As you heard from Kelly earlier, this is a priority for all of our work at the EERE. And Kelly, could you talk a little bit more about how EERE is going to be focused on advancing diversity and equity across our work across technologies? Kelly Speakes-Backman: Yeah, exactly. Thanks. It starts, Becca, with the work that you've done to include this consideration both as a policy consideration, but as a grading consideration in the funding opportunities. So that's where we started just in the first two months of the administration, but it's going to be throughout the entire, um, lifespan of technology development. So - are the National Renewable Energy Lab has already done quite a bit of work on diversity/inclusion on social equity, energy equity and environmental equity. And bringing that into how we actually develop the technologies from the very beginning has shown to be more equitable in the deployment of those technologies themselves. So we are infusing considerations or sort of metrics around how we're helping people at the endgame of deployment at the very, very beginning of ideation of technologies. So that means not just measuring where our dollars are going but to whom those dollars are going to, right? So we're taking a look at the communities and this is a little bit why we shifted our priorities to be in sectors rather than just technologies. Because we're looking at who we are trying to impact, not just what we're trying to do, right? Bringing humanity into our technologies. -------------------------------------- BEGIN HERE 54:32 Becca Jones-Albertus: Thanks so much. At least I think we're just ending with a fun collage that's just illustrating the diverse set of opportunities for Solar to help us drive toward our clean energy future - to help inspire you. New technologies, new applications. There's so many ways in which we can have ... solar going forward. I think before we dive into some questions, we went through a lot of topics, a lot of new opportunities, and I'm sure many of you are interested in learning more. You can find more information on all of these at our website, which is the bottom of every slide energy.gov/solar-office. I also very much encourage you to sign up for our newsletter if you're not already so that you don't miss updates in the future. There are links here that will be in the presentation for those of you who downloaded afterwards. But again, you can find all of this information on our website. So I think now, we're going to move into some questions. We have questions that were submitted ahead of time that we'll start with. And if you have additional questions, I know there's been posted in the chat. you can send them to solar@ee.doe.gov and we'll try to respond to as many as we can by email that we can't get to you today. So starting... Kelly Speakes-Backman: You have a super active audience here. I can't even keep up with all that have been posted here, man. Becca Jones-Albertus: Yes. So, we will do the best we can. But you're right. We will... [laughter]. We will see what we can do. There's so many amazing questions here, and we're we are super excited about all of your energy and enthusiasm and engagement. Let me start with the first question for you, Kelly, which is... we actually have two different questions kind of in the same vein. And it's, How do you see the Solar Offices and solar priorities interacting with goals for building decarbonization and decarbonization efforts in the transportation sector?" Kelly Speakes-Backman: Right. I love that question, because it's really about integrating toward whom we're trying to impact. So taking buildings as an example of the question that you asked. Looking at buildings, buildings can be... we typically think of buildings. It sits in our Energy Efficiency Office, right? But if we stop the navel gazing and we look at what people in buildings want out of this, they want an efficient building that's healthy. That's attractive. That doesn't cost a lot to run and that people want to go to, right? So that means you want to have solar on your roof in order to be good to the environment and to cut down on your utility bills. But first you want to make sure that you're building is healthy and that it doesn't leak so much that you're wasting all that energy that you have to put on in into dollars into the capacity of the solar on your roof. And then on top of that, your commercial building, you're going to want to see what you can do to integrate charging - electric vehicle charging not just for electric vehicles, which are coming up and being an increasing in popularity so much, but also that if buildings can be, you know, if interactive buildings can be a part of the grid itself, then you integrate the solar into the demand response and the other distributed energy, resources and even storage, so that buildings can be its own standalone or it can be a support to the grid, not just to draw from the grid. And vehicles are all a part of that. So that's why it's so exciting to have these three pillars and the way we're looking at this now and the way we're kind of focusing is really, "How can we impact the end use?" It's the same with agriculture, right? You think about agriculture and yes, you can do the co-location of solar. But what is the energy/water nexus there? And what can we do with efficiency for agricultural processes? And then we bring in our... the Advanced Manufacturing Operating Office and just - there's so much collaboration that can be had. And I'm so excited to bring that to bear. Having worked with the Energy Storage Association just previously we had to bring all of these parts together to talk to people about why storage can be helpful. And I feel like that's the gig here now it's like we as DOE - specifically in EERE - can kind of put it all together and tell people how we can be helpful to them. Becca Jones-Albertus: Kelly it's so much fun to think about all of the work at these intersections for so long in Solar, our goals were focused on, "How do we get the cost down so we can unlock deployment?" And now that we've started an unlocked deployment, we see how many more challenges there are. As we see what happens, when we integrate solar with other technologies and both challenges and just tremendous opportunities. We have another question. Maybe a dear to your heart. Which is, "Where do you see the most energy storage potential besides batteries?" Kelly Speakes-Backman: "Where do I not see energy storage potential?," is more of a question. No, more seriously. So it's so interesting, because even as demand is changing and is becoming more and more granularly fluctuating, energy storage has the opportunity to fill in that fluctuation, right? So sort of the mortar in between the tiles - I'm doing some DIY myself right now -, but sort of that mortar in between the tiles to really even out demand. Which makes the grid even more efficient. So I really do see the opportunity for energy storage pretty much everywhere at the transmission level, at the distribution level, to be able to be supportive in areas of high congestion to be able to suppress those costs, but also, as the costs come down for residential and commercial behind the meter storage, - which we still have a little bit to go -, but that storage area is growing quite a bit as well. I can see that sort of integrating into these buildings as a power source as well. So there's a lot of different ways, and I would say also that it's not just about batteries, the storage work that we do within EERE and across DOE really in the Office of Electricity, really it's pumped storage, hydropower. It is a longer duration storage like CSP. It is across all the different technologies that storage can offer, because it's more than just one application of, like filling in the ancillary services of battery storage. It's got to be thinking about even seasonal storage in places like the Northeastern US, where you have a real issue of gas constraints up there in the Northeast. Becca Jones-Albertus: Yeah. Kelly Speakes-Backman: It's all over the place. It's going to be fun. Becca Jones-Albertus: That's one of the best parts I think about the work that we do. Is that we don't have to pick and focus on one area, in fact, that we don't want to put all of our eggs in one basket - to over use that metaphor. We do want to find the diversity of technologies and then see what applications result from those and which ones make the most progress. Kelly Speakes-Backman: Yeah, absolutely. Becca Jones-Albertus: Our next question's kind of along along these lines. We've somewhat answered it already, but, "Distributed wind compliments distributed solar with production at night and higher productivity in the winter. Will DOE do more in the future to promote hybrid solar/wind behind the meter solutions for beneficial electrification, EV charging, etc.?" And so I say, we've partially answered that when we've been talking a lot about the importance of looking at how all these technologies work together. But anything you want to you want to add to that Kelly? Kelly Speakes-Backman: Yeah, just a big part of that first programmatic priority for us is grid analysis and integration of systems. Not just at the bulk power system, but also at the distribution level and behind the meter. So absolutely, we're looking at that through, you know, I mean, pretty much every lab that we participate with has modeling, and they all have modeling in different ways. So we're trying to figure out how to best integrate even all of those different models to be able to go out to communities and help them to get themselves at a city level, at a municipal level, or even at a building level, to get to decarbonization both. Becca Jones-Albertus: OK. I see. So our next question, I'll jump in first, because this is one of my favorite topics. But the question is, "Given the recent grid outages that we have seen in California and Texas does DOE envision opportunities to leverage the grid transition that can also improve community emergency preparedness? And are these complementary or separate issues?" And I say that one of the reasons that I get excited about this topic is, I think there's just tremendous potential with what's happening as we go through the energy transition on the distribution system. We now have 2.5 million solar energy generation systems on the distribution system, growing numbers of energy storage systems, and this is more generation connected on the distribution system that we've ever seen before. It's changing how the distribution system needs to operate. That comes with its own set of challenges. But it also comes with tremendous opportunities, and we're thinking a lot in the Solar Office, working with the Office of Electricity and other offices across DOE, about how we can harness those technologies that are on the grid in really innovative ways. When there are outages to provide power to critical load centres. So DOE several years back as part of the Grid Modernization Lab Consortium funded resilient distribution systems funding, which is a set of projects that are all looking at innovative ways that the grid can transition can provide opportunities for resilience centered around the distribution system. This is something where our office and other offices continue to focus and look. So, yes, we think that these are very complementary issues where all the work we're doing can be leveraged to really create new opportunities for resilience. We're not there yet. Most of the solar energy systems on the grid today are not paired with energy storage. And so they're not very helpful to homeowners in the event of an outage yet. But but we have the technology. So we know how to get there. Anything you want to add to that Kelly? Kelly Speakes-Backman: Yeah, I would just say that at the distribution level that the advent of energy storage onto the grid and in people's homes is super helpful for resilience. But I would say also there's a lot of work to be done at the state level as well. Really, To help utilities to be able to invest in resilience and not just reliability. If we think about the difference between resilience and reliability, sort of, you know, Blue Sky days versus what is an externally forced outage through either weather or physical or cyber interruptions? There's really a difference in the measurement in how utilities can invest in resilience versus reliability. I think there's a lot of work to be done there, and I'm looking forward to working with organizations like ... to help continue that work. I know they've been looking at it, but it's not quite there yet. I think there's a lot of work that can be done at the distribution level through state commissions. Becca Jones-Albertus: Yeah. So our next question here is, "Does DOE continue to see soft cost reduction as a priority to advance solar? Given the progress made to reduce soft costs through past DOE initiatives, as DOE identified new soft cost priorities. We can start there. So soft. Costs remain 70% of rooftop solar costs. So while soft costs have certainly been coming down over the last decade. They have not been coming down as fast as hardware costs. And if we want to achieve our cost targets, especially for rooftop and commercial solar, we really need to continue to drive down soft costs. So the priorities are not necessarily new, but we need to move faster and faster than ever before. If we're going to unlock the levels of deployment that we need to hit the President's decarbonization goals. That's citing and land use conflicts as we start to deploy more and more solar. We're going to run into more challenges with where that solar is being cited. But that's where really exciting work on things like - as we talked about a few times now - co-location, solar and agriculture showing that it doesn't have to be a trade off. But there are some situations where there's real synergies. They're looking at how we can deploy solar more effectively on brownfields. We're going to continue to work on streamlining and speeding, permitting and interconnection, training a well supported workforce to meet growing demands. And then critically important as you've heard today, and I'll let Kelly add on, is continuing to work hard to ensure the benefits of solar are accessible to all Americans. This is not necessarily about reducing costs. This is about equitable access and reducing costs for folks who don't necessarily have access to low cost financing of their own. Kelly Speakes-Backman: You said it well. I don't have anything add. Becca Jones-Albertus: So big priority are is a lot of really important work and certainly going to continue to be a focus of our's. Next question I have here is, "What is the plan for solar panels once they've reached the end of their life? Are there going to be recycling programs set up or will they be disposed of in a certain way?" So I'll say, before we get to end of life and recycling one of our priorities is extending the lifetime systems from, you know, the average kind of 30 years to 50 years. If we make systems last almost twice as long as they do today, we'll have substantially less waste. That's a really important strategy where we're doing a lot of work. Today the industry knows how to recycle panels. And we're going to continue to support government and research efforts to make them more effective where we see roles. But what happens as we get to end of life issues? Some of that is going to be very likely shaped by policy requirements. And we've seen recycling programs I think set up to a greater extent in Europe than in the US due to different policies that they have there today. Next question we have here is, "Will DOE's priorities include a focus on solar development on federal or tribal lands?" Kelly, you have any comments you want to make there? Kelly Speakes-Backman: Yeah! Yeah! I'll not be flippant about it. President Biden has laid out an executive order that has us taking a look at how we use federal lands for renewable energy. And that includes not just solar, but and not just federal lands, but federal property. So that includes also offshore wind and where we can go in getting additional lease land out for out in the water for offshore wind. This is an all in clean energy push, and this is all in for deployment, and absolutely we are working on these issues in our first couple of months here in the administration? Becca Jones-Albertus: Yeah. And we do in the Solar office have... are currently funding a project that is looking at workforce training for Native Americans and another project working with Native American tribes to overcome interconnection and other barriers to solar development on tribal lands and we're continuing to work with DOE's office and Indian Energy on those topics going forward. Let's see. I think... 2 more questions here. One is, "How is the United States going to achieve 100% clean grid without mass deployment of a firm renewable, like concentrating solar power that provides near 24/7 capability?" So I'll say that the answer is to get to 100% decarbonized grid, we do need firm renewable capacity and/or long duration storage. One thing that's exciting is that we have a lot of technologies, concentrating solar-thermal, geothermal. Variety of long duration energy storage technologies that hydrogen... that are all working to provide options for that firm capacity. And I think we need to see cost reductions in all of those to be able to do that effectively. But we have a wide range of technologies that DOE is investing in to get us there. Anything you want to add Kelly? Kelly Speakes-Backman: No, absolutely. You're working as if you are a collaborative entity within the EERE. And it's pretty awesome! Yeah, absolutely. It's going to take more than just simple PV solar and land-based wind. It's going to take a lot of different technologies that need to be applied and integrated. And that's why it's so important that we have the labs working with us to help us through what that's going to take in terms of integration. It's important that we develop as quickly as we can. Some of the newer technologies on energy storage, especially long duration energy storage. And improve upon the some of the more traditional renewable sources like pump storage hydro. That's a great resource that we have that is a long duration storage. Technology that we can bring to bear as well. Becca Jones-Albertus: Last question I have here is, "In developing smarter electric grids. And microgrids is the DOE working with community stakeholders, like local governments, businesses, hospitals, and universities to maximize their used and optimize their interactions?" And I think the answer - the short answer is yes. But we want to do so much more than we have been doing historically. Kelly Speakes-Backman: Yeah, we have great examples of work that we do with the states through our State Energy Program. We have intergovernmental programs. We have also our Federal Energy Management Program, where we help even federal facilities to do that work. We have a lot of community outreach. I've found in my first few months here, we we have a lot of different community programs among each of the offices and what we're really trying to do, what Becca was alluding to, is pull those together so that we're focused on the community first and the community itself. And then we bring the tools to bear that can help those communities rather than each of the, you know, the Solar Office and then the Efficiency Office, all coming into the same community without coordination. So we do have a lot more work to do. But we are doing some really good stuff with a lot of the programs that we have already going. Becca Jones-Albertus: Thank you, Kelly. I just realized I can call on my other panelists here. So, Cliff, next question. Why don't I let you take this? It's, "Solar-thermal technologies beyond CSP have applications for air, water and other fluid heating, in particular, industrial and agricultural applications are significantly underdeveloped. What I want to say about how we can advance this technology for things other than select electricity generation? Cliff Ho, Ph.D.: Thanks, Becca. Yeah, that's a great question. And I did touch upon that in the interview. I really think one of the exciting things this particle power for CSP is that it can really address all three of our energy needs. You know, we talked a lot about electricity, but as you mentioned, there's also industrial process heat and transportation fuels, even. So using reactive particles, you can create hydrogen. There are redox looping process. And then, of course, we're generating heat. So industrial process heat is a significant contributor to carbon emissions over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions is from industrial process heat, and I think DOE has been making a lot of investments in this. My colleague Andrea Ambrosini is working on ammonia production, key ingredient to fertilizers for food production. Tony McDaniel and his team over in California have been working on hydrogen production and generation using these redox reactions and concentrating solar power. So there's been a lot of investments by DOE. I think we're getting there and I think the key is that we can achieve all decarbonization in all three of our energy needs. Electricity, heating, and transportation. Becca Jones-Albertus: Thank you, Cliff. And yes, as I said, when I went through the priorities earlier, really looking at how solar technologies, especially the CSP side, can help supply needs for other segments outside of electricity is an area of growing priority for us at DOE as we really think about driving toward a net zero economy by 2050. So I think... the question I have here, I'll take this one is, "If you have an innovative idea that doesn't fall into these programs that support the goals. Are there other funding programs that could support?" And glad this question came, because while we have six announcements here today that are all showcasing really exciting aspects of our portfolio, they just barely touched on the breath of the work that our office covers, much less what we're doing in the EERE. And so we have many other funding opportunities that will be coming out this year, and certainly in future years, we've only talked about PV and CSP today. But we have work - really exciting work - in soft costs, in grid and systems integration, in supporting US businesses who are working across the spectrum to bring new products to market. So please subscribe to our newsletter. It's the best way to stay up to date, to the next set of opportunities that are coming out. We don't talk about them much in advance, so getting onto our newsletter is really the best way to find out about those and then to see where your idea fits in. And I think this can be our last question. Last one I have. And thanks to all of you, I'll say who submitted questions. I know our team is swamped so they've been sending me a few of the ones that have come in. And as we said, we will try to get back to as many as we can by email. But I know we haven't been able to handle the floods coming in. So this is the last one that I have here. "As a solar farm developer, the permitting process at the local level is chaotic at best. Some localities have implemented forward thinking policies, while others have put up roadblocks. As the full transition to a renewable grid is a national security issue, what role can the federal government play in ensuring that the building of solar farms do not get caught up in local zoning politics?" So I will say we certainly recognize those challenges, and helping with zoning and permitting is one of the priority areas in our soft cost portfolio, right now. One of our programs that is working in this space is our Sol Smart program that's providing technical assistance to local governments across the country that are looking to implement processes to make it easier and faster to go solar. That program provides technical assistance and then recognition, and these topics are a part of that technical assistance. But we're looking across other soft cost programs to address these more broadly. I will say they were very, always very interested in hearing from those of you who are on the ground about your specific challenges to make sure that our programs are targeting ways that we're addressing all the challenges that are out there. So please do feel free to reach out and follow up. We'd love to hear more from you as we design the next set of programs in the space. So with that, I'll ask Christie to just put up the slide with links again for any of... I know I saw that in the chat. More requests to see these links again. So with this, I think we will close here. I really want to thank all of our Panelists. Secretary Granholm, Kelly Speakes-Backman our Acting Assistant Secretary. Joe and Cliff, thank you so much for being part of this really amazing event. We hope that all of you who joined us today we're able to hear and learn about some of the exciting work. And we hope many of you will consider applying for the open funding opportunities we announced today. You can see the links here and again on our website. You'll be able to find all this information following up. So I really appreciate all of you being with us today. And look forward to working with many of you in the future. Kelly Speakes-Backman Thank you so much, Becca. Take care, everybody.