Indian Energy Purchase Preference Listening Session

WAHLEAH JOHNS: Good afternoon, good morning from wherever you're calling from. My name is Wahleah Johns. I'm the Director of the Office of Indian Energy at Department of Energy. I want to welcome you all for joining all the tribal leaders, and then also all of the tribally-owned enterprises and companies that have been doing this work in our tribal communities. And just a little bit about myself, I'm from Northeastern Arizona. I'm Diné Navajo.

And it's been a pleasure to be a part of this administration. And we are gathered today to talk and discuss and listen from all of you about the tribal power preference. The federal government is the largest single energy consumer in the world. And fossil fuels account for a lot of that energy-powered-- powering our homes and our communities. And this administration has been really committed to ensuring that everyone participates in the clean energy economy and also reaching 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2030.

And through these initiatives with this administration and to help address the climate crisis that we're in, we have been listening and hearing a lot of discussion in Indian country regarding the challenges around tribes selling or wanting to sell clean power to the market. And so fortunately, many years back, there was the Indian power preference that was created to prioritize federal agencies, federal departments to purchase power from tribes. And so that's why we're here today to talk about this.

And we have Department of Energy, Department of Defense, GSA and FEMP who will be on shortly. Many of us who have been working towards this goal, and I'm going to be introducing the White House council on Native American Affairs, Executive Director Morgan, who will be talking about this preference and how we got to this place of this listening session. And I'm going to hand it over to Morgan Rodman who's, again, the director of the White House Council on Native American Affairs. Morgan?

MORGAN RODMAN: Hey. Thank you, Wahleah. And good afternoon, good morning to all the attendees and people who tuned in. Again, I'm Morgan Rodman. I serve as Executive Director of the White House Council on Native American Affairs. I am Cherokee and Osage from Oklahoma. And just briefly, the White House Council on Native American Affairs is an interagency body that is co-chaired by Secretary Haaland of Department of Interior and Ambassador Susan Rice-- the Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

And the other council members are the secretaries and heads of agencies and offices. And one of those committees or focus areas is the Economic Development Energy and Infrastructure Committee. And again, the other council members are the secretaries, and some of the secretaries took a leadership position for this committee, including Secretary Granholm from Energy, Secretary Buttigieg from Department of Transportation, the Small Business Administrator Isabel Guzman, and then Secretary Raimondo from Department of Commerce.

And within that larger committee, again, there's a focus on energy, which is where the Indian Energy Purchase Preference idea came from. And to really implement the Indian Energy Purchase Preference through the White House council on Native American Affairs. At the principal committee meeting, those principals I just mentioned got together and decided to really explore the implementation of this Indian Energy purchase preference, which comes from the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

So the first step to this initiative is to have-- one of the first steps is to have this listening session today to hear from you all on the current landscape for Indian energy needs. And how this Indian energy purchase preference could really benefit-- again, if you have questions after this, we'll have contact information. You can also go to the White House Council on Native American Affairs website that has all this information as well. You can reach out to me. So thank you all so much for taking part in this discussion today. And I'd now like to turn it to Mary Sotos.

MARY SOTOS: Hi. Thank you very much, and thank you for having my office participate. So I am the Director of the Federal Energy Management Program. We are an office that sits within DOE, but we serve as a technical advisor and partner to all federal agencies. So these agencies have buildings, electricity load, and vehicle fleets throughout the US. So it makes sense that we focus our solutions around those three energy areas. Around facilities fleet and electricity purchasing.

And we help energy managers by providing five things. We provide tools, training, technical assistance, agency recognition and communities of practice, as well as grant funding. We have a wealth of energy-related resources online that are available to the public. So we would always encourage you to explore those.

But today, we are really committed to strengthening the uptake of the tribal preference policy, as our agencies are seeking to acquire large amounts of carbon pollution-free electricity to meet their policy requirements. You'll be hearing from one of our team members here at FEMP Tracy Niro, our technical expert on both the policy itself, the tribal preference policy, as well as the specifics of carbon pollution-free electricity.

So on the agency side, we are looking to improve awareness of this preference so that agencies can be aware of what their options are. We, obviously, are not doing this alone. We partner closely with our colleagues at GSA and DOD, who you'll be hearing from in a moment. But our goal is really to craft and offer training and resources for tribes and tribal majority-owned businesses to really have to add technical expertise to develop projects and products that agencies could procure.

So we are very interested in understanding what training needs you have, and we are very appreciative of this opportunity to hear from you. And we welcome your input and feedback. And so with that, I will turn it over to Tracy Marcinowski at GSA.

WAHLEAH JOHNS: Tracy, I'm sorry. I'm having trouble hearing you. I don't know if you might be on mute or maybe it's on my end.

TRACY MARCINOWSKI: No. I'm on mute. I had to be the first one. So thank you. Thank you all for joining us today for this important listening session. I am Tracy Marcinowski. I'm the Assistant Commissioner for Acquisitions at the Public Building Service within the General Services Administration, otherwise known as GSA.

PBS oversees an extensive portfolio of both owned and leased real estate. We are one of the largest buyers of energy on behalf of our federal clients. We want to make sure that our collaborative efforts have positive outcomes that are good for everyone. And the only way to ensure that it is to work together and make this a cooperative relationship built on trust and consensus building.

GSA is furthering the administration's commitment to ensuring that investments in the clean energy economy reach tribal lands. To that end, GSA will be leading a pilot focused on tribal energy production to develop procurement strategies, implementing the tribal preferences established in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 while reaching the goals established in the Executive Order 14057, which that goal is to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030.

GSA procuring qualifying CFE generated on tribal lands would be an example of a viable pilot. However, the most appropriate mechanism for the pilot and future projects will depend on market availability and the individual circumstances of each project. PBS is currently conducting market research to identify the most appropriate market to conduct this pilot. And this is one of those events.

This is an important starting point for continued discussion, and the entire GSA team wants to hear what you have to share with us. What we discuss today will drive our strategic engagements and plans going forward. Now, I'll turn it over to Susan Call. Susan's the Director of Installation Clean Energy and Energy Efficiency in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. Susan?

SUSAN CALL: Hi. Thank you, Tracy. Good afternoon. I support energy resilience for the DOD. And my main areas are the carbon-free electricity and third party financing. So as the largest consumer of electricity in the federal governments, the department is fully committed to leveraging the purchasing power to achieve this administration's goals, as you've heard, 100% CFE by 2030. We seek to achieve this goal in a manner that builds energy resilience in our installations.

And that advance key climate and environmental justice initiatives. One initiative that DOD intends to focus on is this Indian Energy purchase preference, which allows agencies to give preferences, as you've heard, before and aware. While we haven't been successful in the past in implementing this provision, we believe that we have the opportunity to change that now due to the actions and the policies of this administration, market conditions, and the changing-- new opportunities are being created.

Thanks to DOE Federal Energy Management Program, we now have a clear path forward to take advantage of these opportunities. The Department of Defense will now incorporate language into our CFE procurement activities that should give the tribes, particularly, tribal-owned business increased opportunity to either partner with utilities to build new generation capacity on Indian islands to serve as key or lead member of the project development team for projects on our military bases.

Specifically, this strategy will be built in our request for proposals. It will integrate the Energy Policy Act preference and DOD electric procurement strategies by giving preference to tribal majority-owned business organizations when purchasing electricity, energy products, and energy byproducts. By linking implementation of these Indian energy purchase preference to our procurement of CFE, we believe that we are now well positioned to achieve these outcomes. Thank you. I'm turning it over to Tracy Niro to have the presentation. Thank you.

TRACY NIRO: Thanks so much, Susan. Hi, everybody. My name is Tracy Niro. I work in the Federal Energy Management Program at the US Department of Energy. I think you've heard from a number of the principals today that are committed to supporting the successful employment of this preference policy.

But I'm here today so-- you can go to the next slide, to talk a bit about some of the context, provide a little bit of insight and explanation of what exactly it is that we're talking about today. Next slide. So what I'm going to cover is four key points. What is the purchase preference that you've heard people refer to?

And once you understand what the preference is, in order to understand how your work could fit into it, you need to understand how federal agencies buy electricity. So we'll cover market types, and then the types of purchases the government makes in the electricity space. Then I'll get into why is the government focused on this?

You heard a bit of a preview from the principals mentioning the executive order. And we'll just touch upon a few of those issues. And then lastly, we'll have a short summary to try to recap what is a fairly complex subject that I'm going to do my best to try to make as understandable as possible so that we can get the most input from you in order to best design resources and support to make this work for the government and tribal majority-owned businesses. Next slide.

So let's start with the overview of the Indian Energy Purchase Preference and what it actually is. Next slide. So I'm going to put a law on the screen, and no one really loves to read laws, but it's important to take a look at what is actually enacted by Congress. Next? You can see in the top portion, there's two pieces of it.

The top portion talks about purchasing electricity or any other energy product or byproduct. So we're talking about when the government is buying these specific things. So electricity, energy products, or byproducts. You'll note that there's no definition anywhere of what this is. So it's up to agencies to interpret what that means.

So the second part of it allows you to see that there's a preference that a procuring organization in the government can give to a tribal majority-owned business as described. Production enterprise, partnership, consortium, there's a lot of things. So I'm collectively just referring to it as tribal majority-owned business. And you'll see the acronym TMOB sometimes. Next?

So that's the first piece of it. The second piece is in carrying out this subsection, there are a few requirements the government has to adhere to. So it has to play the market price, and they have to have prevailing market terms and conditions. I do want to point out one other note. Projects can be located anywhere. There's nothing specific in this law that says that the projects have to be located in Indian country or on tribal lands.

So this is tribal majority-owned businesses that could operate in any location. Next slide. So I mentioned that the interpretation of the words that you just saw on the screen can vary by department. So I thought I would give you an example of how the US Department of Energy interpreted this law in 2012. Our then secretary Chu issued guidance, and it specifically explained that the focus would be to give this preference to purchase of electricity energy products and byproducts produced by renewable resources.

So I have some examples listed here. Renewable resources. The traditional ones you understand when solar, geothermal. Renewable products, fuel, feed sources, and then renewable byproducts, which are the environmental attributes generated by renewable energy. And ordinarily sold as separate items apart from the electricity known as renewable energy certificates or you'll see the acronym, environmental attributes certificate. Next slide.

So that quickly told you what the policy is. So what do you need to in order to understand how the work that you're doing or considering doing could fit into this. So next slide, we'll talk about how the federal government purchases electricity. So there's a lot going on in this slide. But it's important for you to understand that the options available for you to sell electricity or byproducts or products to the government depends on what market you're in and what type of purchase is being made.

So we'll start by looking at the types of markets. And there are three of them. Retail choice vertically integrated and mixed. Don't worry about the names of them. They sound very complicated. But we'll go to the next slide, and the easiest thing to do is look at the map and understand where you are located. Where you would be doing business.

So you can see that the orange is the vertically integrated market, yellow is mixed, and green is retail choice. Now, I'm going to go through each of these markets, but I'll just pause for a moment so you can, in your mind, just correlate the associated color of the state that you would be doing business in with what we're going to talk about next. Next slide.

So starting with the retail choice market. So what this means is that in these states, you are-- as a electricity purchaser, anyone is able to go out and purchase electricity from the open market. From whoever they want. This is a common type of electric contract in the federal government. And it is ordinarily done as a commodity type arrangement facilitated by our friends at GSA or DLA energy. Competition is required in this scenario. Contracts are typically up to five years.

And next, I want to highlight that this is one of the scenarios where I think you heard from the Department of Defense that they are looking to include this in their procurement actions going forward. This is a location where they could be considering including that. So it would be open market competed commodity contracts for supply in the states that you are seeing here. Next slide.

So we're still in the retail choice market. And what I'd like you to focus on next is the left side where you have the independently owned generators. So that's where a tribal majority-owned business that generates electricity would be competing with other independently-owned generators to sell commodity, electricity to the government through one of those contracts facilitated by the two organizations that I mentioned.

So in retail choice markets, just highlighting in the corner, it's not just commodity electricity in the retail choice markets, although that is the primary way that we purchase. But off-site purchases are available on-site purchase are available. And the purchase of RECs or environmental attribute credits, I mentioned earlier. Next slide.

So we're back to our big map again. We covered the green states, which were retail choice. And now we're into vertically integrated markets. And what that means is that, in general, if you were located in one of these states, you were probably only going to have a single option to purchase electricity from. Your service provider provides you the commodity that is purchased separately in what we just cover, the retail choice markets.

But in vertically integrated your commodity, your distribution and your transmission are all provided by the same organization. This, in the federal government, is actually the most common type of arrangement. How the government purchases electricity. As I mentioned, it's a contract between the utility and the federal government. And that's because no competition is allowed by state law.

So there is a single provider, because that's what the state requires. So in this case, there's no competition, which is important. Because if we're going to implement the preference, there's a very small subset of opportunities where a tribal majority-owned business could, perhaps, sell electricity to the federal government through the serving utility, but it would require a partnership or a special tariff for that.

Just real quick, contracts are generally limited up to 10 years in this scenario, and DOD also has a 30-year authority that they use on occasion. Next slide. So vertically integrated market, I just describe to you how, in general, you've got one utility owning the generation and one same utility doing transmission and distribution.

However, next, there is an opportunity in certain circumstances, as I mentioned for the tribal majority-owned generator, to possibly sell directly to the federal government through that utility. So covering options in the vertically integrated market, the box on the right at the bottom, off-site electricity purchases are a possibility. It's worth looking into, but may or may not be allowed, depending on what the laws are in the area. On-Site electricity purchases may be limited, depending on the regulations.

But purchases of RECs or energy attribute certificates are available. Next slide. Last but not least, is mixed markets. And all this means is that, for example, in the state of Texas, the North part of Texas is in what's called a ERCOT where it's a balancing area that has different rules than the bottom part of Texas, for example.

So you do just need to know what the rules are in the market where you're located. Next slide. So just to recap, we've covered a lot of ground. We talked about the types of markets-- retail choice, vertically integrated, and mixed. That's kind of your first step and understanding what options are available to sell to the government.

Types of purchases is the next part we're going to get into, which is the commodity that I touched on. Off-site, I briefly mentioned, on-site, and the RECs or EACs. Next slide. So commodity electricity contracts. I mentioned them before. We talked about them being available in those green states for the retail choice market.

So again, I mentioned before tribal majority-owned business was the acronym I was going to use, the TMOB, just because it was too many words to try to fit in the box. This is a scenario where the tribal majority-owned business might resell purchased electricity or own generation that is then sold as commodity. And there may be some tax incentives available based upon the type of carbon pollution-free electricity generation constructed.

The agency's role is to buy the electricity for a specified term. Ordinarily, it's five years or less. And I mentioned that these contracts are facilitated ordinarily through GSA and DLA energy. In some cases, the format for the actual procurement can be a reverse auction or there's an RFP request for proposals-type approach. Next.

All right. So that's the first one. We've got three more. So we talked about commodity, now we're talking about off-site power contracts. And what I mean in this scenario is where you have a tribal majority-owned generator that is located at some distance from the site and wants to sell power to you. So it constructs, it owns, and operates, and maintains the generator. And then provides what's called delivered power to the agency that wants to buy the power.

Ordinarily, this means the electricity and the environmental attributes are traveling together. So that it's not just the electricity that is taken, but also the attributes. There may be some tax advantages to this, depending on available incentives. The role of the agency in this scenario is to buy electricity for a specified term.

And that's generally going to be 10 years for civilian agencies, although there's a possibility for a 10-year with a 10-year option scenario. And I mentioned, DOD has 30-year contract authority that they use on occasion. So key considerations for off-site. An entity other than the utility selling electricity in the state must be legal. In some cases, it's not. So you're going to find that this is, maybe, a bit more difficult in the orange states that were the vertically integrated ones. We are only supposed to have a single utility supplying electricity.

In the retail choice markets, you're going to find that this is more readily available. One key thing to remember is that you can be very excited about a project. But for some reason, you can't actually get the power to be delivered to your customer. Whether it's because there's insufficient transmission capability or capacity or there's some physical land mountains in the way or something.

So in that scenario, I'd encourage you to think about selling just the energy attributes instead of trying to deliver the power. Next slide. So we're halfway done with the four options. We covered commodity, we covered off-site, and now let's talk about on-site. When I'm talking about on-site, I'm really envisioning a tribal majority-owned business coming on to the federal agency's land to construct, own, operate, maintain the generator on the agency site.

I'm with tribal majority owned business ownership of that. There may also be tax advantages. The agency is going to host that generation and buy the electricity for specified terms. This is similar authority to the one I mentioned previously. So you've got 10 years or possibly a 10 plus 10-year option. And DOD has 30 year and they occasionally use that.

So one key consideration is similar to the off-site, there may be certain limitations related to net metering or other issues surrounding third party sales of electricity. So you'll find more liberal opportunities in the green states and the mixed markets versus the orange states, which were the vertically integrated. Next slide.

OK. The last one is the renewable energy certificates and environmental attributes. So these are a bit like stock certificates. So when you have a solar power generated, it generates electrons and the environmental attributes that are actually able to be split off-- use your imagination and then sold separately from them.

So a tribal majority-owned business, that I mentioned before, has generation but just can't get the power delivered to the customer could choose to sell the environmental attributes of that generation. The agency would then buy those attributes for a specified time, ordinarily, contract, five years or less. And just a reminder, that there's no electricity associated with that when you're just selling the RECs.

So the tribal majority-owned business would need to find a customer in that scenario for the electricity and then separately sell the RECs to the federal government. So this is a great option, if you have delivery issues. And there's insufficient transmission capacity or other challenges with delivering the power. Maybe you're just too far away from-- it could be anything. But RECs are fungible, and they're a better option in that scenario. Next slide.

So I'd like to point out a website called SAM.gov, which is where the government lists majority of its procurement actions. And is worth taking a look at in order to find opportunities to sell to the federal government. There's a NAICS code, the North American Industry Classification System for various types of generations.

So I've listed them here. They're like keywords that you could put into the search and look and just see. And if you happen to be considering developing a solar project, maybe you kind of throw that NAICS code in to see if there's any opportunities at that time. I'd also encourage you to talk to the serving utilities. And if you have points of contact at the facilities themselves that you might want to sell to, it doesn't hurt to reach out and have a conversation. Next slide.

So policies. These are key drivers of why the federal government is focused on this. Next slide? I'll cover two main ones and mention a couple of others. So the Energy Policy Act of 2005 is when the tribal preference policy was actually put into law. You saw me mention that earlier. But in addition to that, there was also a policy preference for agencies that were purchasing electricity, renewable electricity from Indian land.

And in that case, the government is able to actually count whatever they purchase in renewable energy from Indian land or renewable energy certificates double. So it doesn't mean that two are generated. It just means that for our internal accounting purposes, the federal government has an incentive to purchase from Indian land, because it counts double for what the goal that they are trying to meet. Next slide.

So this next slide lists four major policies. But I'll just focus on one, the Executive Order 14057 that was mentioned. This is the government's aggressive 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2030 goal. So the entire federal government at this point is looking to make this major transition over the next several years. And I think we're looking for partners to do that. Next slide?

So recapping. We've refocused, us being the federal government and purchasing carbon pollution-free electricity. Tribal majority-owned businesses will be provided a preference when it is included in the procurement for these types of products. The market type-- retail choice, vertically integrated, or mixed will dictate what the options are for the purchase and you have commodity on-site, off-site and RECs or EAC. It's the broad category of ways that the government procures electricity. Next slide.

So I'm very happy that you listened to me for the 18 minutes. So I hopefully provide some context. We're eager to understand what issues you may see. So we're happy to listen to what you have to say today. And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. And Thank you very much.

TOMMY JONES: Thank you, Tracy. And we're going to go into a few polling questions now so that we can get some conversations started and get the ball rolling on the listening session, which is a majority of the time here. So we can go ahead and go into those questions. And I think we're going to give you a little bit of guidance on how to submit a question or to raise your hand with the dialog box.

Typically, on the upper right-hand side, you can expand that to see where you can either raise your hand or submit a question. And so this will be using polling, and polls will go up in your GoToWebinar Viewer. If you're using a phone, you probably-- if you're just calling in, you probably won't be able to see this, but this should come up automatically on your screen.

And so with this, you can also-- if there's a question that asks other that's not listed as a response, feel free to add that into the question comment. And add a number next to it so we make sure we can know which question it was related to. And if you have any troubles with this, please send questions to [email protected], and we'll have someone respond back.

So our polling questions and some acronyms in here. TMOB, that's going to be Tribal Majority Owned Business, and CFE-- Carbon Pollution-Free Energy. So the first question is, is there a tribal majority-owned business in your community that develops electricity generation? Please select either yes, no, or don't know.

We'll give folks just a little bit more time here. All righty. And if you don't get to any of these, you can respond to our email as well with the number of questions. So we'll go on to the next question. Has the potential for wind, solar, hydrow, or other carbon pollution-free energy generation by tribal majority-owned businesses been quantified? Please select one. Yes, no, you don't know, or not applicable.

OK. Great. Thank you all for those who have responded. We'll continue on to question number 3. Do tribal majority-owned businesses in your community currently own any electricity generation? Please select one. Yes, no, or don't know. OK. Thank you for those who responded.

Our next question is, what types of electricity generation do tribal majority-owned businesses currently own in your community? Please select one. Carbon pollution-free electricity-- for example, solar, wind, or hydrogen; conventional energy such as coal, oil, or gas; a mix of both; or not applicable. Thank you all for answering.

Next question. Was any tribal majority-owned business CFE generation placed into service since October 1 2021? Including new resources or added capacity. Please select one. Yes, no, don't know, or not applicable. Thank you for those who have responded.

Do any tribal majority-owned businesses plan to build new CFE projects in your community? Please select one. Yes, no, don't know, or not applicable. Our next question. What kind of new energy projects are tribal majority-owned business is planning to build in your community? Please select one. Carbon pollution-free electricity such as solar, wind, hydrow; conventional electricity like coal, oil, or gas; a mix of both; or not applicable.

All righty. Our next question, question 8. If there are no tribal majority-owned businesses in your community that develop electricity generation, is there any interest in doing so? Please select one. Yes, no, don't know, or not applicable.

Question 9. Are there any programs or policies that exist in your community that support the deployment of CFE? Please select one. Yes, no, or don't know. Moving on to next question. What types of programs and/or policies exist locally that support the deployment of CFE technologies? Again, CFE is carbon pollution-free energy. Please select all that apply. Net metering, financial, such as rebates or tax credits, third party ownership, education and/or training, or other. And please clarify that in the question box, if you have a comment.

Great. Our next question. What resources would help tribal majority-owned businesses sell electricity to the government? Please select all that apply. Training on specific topics, mentor protege support, incubator program, or other. And again, please clarify in the questions box, if you have a comment.

Our next question is, are you aware of the electricity purchase preference? Please select one. Yes or no. Our next question. Does your community have the interest in and capability to sell carbon pollution-free energy to the federal government? Please select one. Interested but doesn't currently have the capability, both interested and have the capability, or not interested and does not have the capability.

Our next question. If so, in relation to the past question about capability and desire to sell, how much power would your community want to sell? Please select one. Less than 1 megawatt, between 1 megawatt and 10 megawatts, between 10 megawatt and 100 megawatts, or greater than 100 megawatts. And if it's not applicable, you can select that as well.

Next question. Would you be interested in participating in a pilot to exercise the power purchase preference? Please select one, Yes or no. Our next question. Which types of contracts is your community most familiar with for selling power to the federal government? Please select one. Off-site special contracts for new construction generation, or off-site special contracts for existing generation, or commodity purchases through the GSA or DLA, or other. And please clarify in the questions box.

Our next question. Are there tribal members in your community that are directly a part of the energy job sector? Please select one, Yes or no. Nearing the end of questions here. Is training and/or education needed to develop capacity for jobs in the energy sector? Please select one. Yes or no.

What training and/or education format would be helpful to support these types of jobs for tribal members? And these are energy sector jobs. Please select one. Webinars, in-person training, online, or printed resources, or other. And you can please clarify in the questions box.

And our final question. Does your community organize into unions or apprenticeship programs to train their workforce? Please select one. Unions, apprenticeship programs, or other. Great. Thank you all for participating in the polling questions. We are going to open it up to a listing session where we can unmute people to ask questions or to provide comments.

And there's also-- in the Questions tab on the application here, you can include additional comments. You can include additional responses to the questions. But we'll go ahead and get started with folks who have their hands raised. We do have a number of questions submitted already. And I'll just go through this.

We do have a priority for tribal leadership and folks who are affiliated with tribal majority-owned businesses. But I think that we should have a time to get folks through here. And so the first person I see on this list is Dennis Miotla. And so I'm going to unmute you to ask your question or provide your comment. And I believe you are self-muted.

OK we will move on to the next hand that is raised, which is Margie Scheff. We will unmute you now, and I think you should be ready to go.

AUDIENCE: Hello. Can you hear me?

TOMMY JONES: Yes, we can.

AUDIENCE: OK. Just a couple of things. First of all, I think that there are some, maybe, inaccuracies in some of the presentation, meaning that I don't think all tribes would agree that the state rules always govern whether or not you can purchase electricity from a tribe. If it's a wholesale activity, then the state rules simply don't apply on most reservations. So I think there is some legal gray area in a lot of that discussion. So I just want to point that out.

I also wanted to mention that there are some other authorities out there to buy power from tribal projects, including 25 USC 3505, which authorizes Bonneville Power Administration and WAPA to buy power from tribal projects. So that's a big one. I think there's also a Department of Defense rule that provides a 5% Indian incentive program for purchase of power by the Department of Defense.

I'm not sure if there are funds authorized or appropriated for that at this time. But I know it's in law. And then there also is the Buy Indian Act, which designates contracts that are solicited by federal agencies that were established for the benefit of tribes. Must provide a preference to Native-owned firms in the fulfillment of their contracts.

So there are quite a lot of other legal authorities out there for these types of purchases. And I don't think I've ever seen them all put together in one place. So I think it would be helpful to have that done. So thank you.

TOMMY JONES: Thank you, Margie. And we will go to the next hand raised, which is Patrick Stansbury. And I believe you're self-muted.

AUDIENCE: OK. My apologies. This is Patrick Stansbury with Seminole Energy. We're doing several things. We are interested to sell hydrogen. So we're developing a hydrogen project on Seminole Nation in Oklahoma. And we're just trying to find how we might work our way through the federal government to try and sell hydrogen to the federal government.

And so anything along that helps tribes and all of us in the tribal business world to reach in and find opportunities to deliver things. Whether they're going to be all on the .gov Procurement Act and things like that or procurement availability. We can look for that. But that's one thing that's always helpful. At Cannon Air Force base, to give a real specific, we're trying to sell solar power to Cannon Air Force base.

We have land contiguous to Cannon and New Mexico. And we're 1,200 feet from their switching station. But what's the proper way to approach someone like Cannon or approach the government for a hydrogen offtake as tribes start to move into some of those types of activities?

TOMMY JONES: Thank you, Patrick. And any sort of follow-up that folks would like to have, the contacts for the office will be sent out as well. The next hand raise I see is Ray Wiseman. You are unmuted-- and you can unmute yourself and be ready to speak.

AUDIENCE: There you go. All right. Thank you. Yakama Power is a tribal utility. We serve on the Yakama Reservation, and we have several federal agencies that are on the reservation that purchase power from us. And we have tried to sell our renewables or provide renewables to those entities, whether it be Indian Health or whoever.

And instead of purchasing from the utility, they're more interested in trying to put their own solar panels on their buildings that actually hurt the utilities, because we've purchased power under 20-year contracts to serve these facilities. And they turn around and are trying to meet their mandates on a global scale, instead of at a local level. And so I guess, I've always wondered how we're supposed to compete when we can't get the local folks to even take a look. It seems like they're hamstrung at a national level.

TOMMY JONES: Thank you, sir. And if there's any comments from the team online that want to address anything right away, you're more than free to do that. But we can go on to the next comment, which will be by Tom Harris.

AUDIENCE: Yes. Thank you. We are an organization here in Alaska where we've made several attempts to bring hydro-power to a local utility and only to be rejected, even if there's no additional funding needed by them, offering them lower than their avoided rate. It would be helpful to have some guidance on how to work with the recalcitrant utility in which carbon-based legacy generation is preferred over hydro-power. I'll look for guidance offline. Thank you.

TOMMY JONES: Thank you, Tom. There's been a lot of comments submitted as well. I will go through these here. The first is in the opinion regarding definition of renewable resources, nuclear energy was not mentioned. Is this purposeful?

BONNIE BUETER: This is Bonnie of GSA. Can everyone hear me?

SPEAKER: Yeah.

BONNIE BUETER: Hi. I am happy to answer that question if we have just a moment. So nuclear is considered a carbon pollution-free resource under the Executive Order 14057. However, if you read the implementing instructions, you'll notice that there is a COD date, which means the generation resource must be put online on or after October 1 2021.

So that does tend to eliminate some nuclear, because we do not have new nuclear projects that we're aware of at this time. However, we are counting the nuclear that is currently on the grid towards our goals under our grid supplied power. And that is also defined in the implementing instructions of that executive order.

I would also like to offer up my email address to anyone who might be interested in getting-- if they think they have a good pilot. I would love to hear from you. The tribes that have mentioned themselves today. Like seminal energy, I would love to hear from you and Yakama. My email address is-- I'll put it in the chat, actually. But it's [email protected]. And I'll put it in the chat for everyone.

TOMMY JONES: Thank you all.

SPEAKER: Thank you, Bonnie. Yeah. I just want to add to that. So if you're referring to the presentation where you saw renewable energy, that was talking about the goal that is required under EPAct for the government to meet 7.5% of their electricity consumption with renewable energy. And renewable energy is defined in law.

And in law, it doesn't include nuclear. It doesn't include traditional hydro-power, either only incremental, but under the executive order goal. Any carbon pollution-free electricity generation does count. So even if you have fossil fuel generation but you capture the carbon and sequester it permanently, that can be considered carbon pollution-free electricity. I hope that helps.

TOMMY JONES: Thank you for your responses. We do have another hand raised. Kevin Blazer. You are unmuted.

AUDIENCE: Yes. Thank you. I had just a couple of questions on how we could potentially sell power to GSA. And I've had some brief conversations with Bonnie in the last couple of weeks. But we've got a unique situation here at Saginaw Chippewa tribe, and we've established a tribal utility, and we are interconnected within the MISO system, but we're only interconnected at load at the moment.

So we're trying to build out some solar resources so we can have some generation that we can inject back to the grid. But in the meantime, in order to generate some revenue and participate in some of these projects, we also have an ADA entity that we've stood up. And we're trying to, basically, create a power marketing company within that ADA entity.

So if we could roll up power from other generators that aren't tribally-owned because we're in the MISO footprint and I can buy from anybody in the MISO footprint very easily as a market participant. If we could roll up those renewable resources, because there's bits and pieces and odds and ends that are out there from all these projects within the footprint, that if we could buy those and then sell those to the GSA as an entity through that program, would that be possible?

And that would help us do a couple of things. It would understand how we could create these systems to allow tribal entities to sell power that they don't necessarily generate. But also generate some income to allow us to reinvest that into renewable projects. Is that something that could work on this program, or is that just a little bit too far reaching for where we're at right now?

TOMMY JONES: Do we have a response to that? And if we don't, we can get back to you.

SPEAKER: Yeah. I think we'll have to double check on the legal language there and get back to you. But we'll follow up with you, Kevin.

AUDIENCE: OK. Thanks.

TOMMY JONES: OK. Great. Next question. If a tribal government, not a business, wholly owns a source of carbon pollution-free electricity, can they participate directly as a seller? So we have any folks that can respond to that? I think that might be another one that we'll have to get back to you on. And we will take that into consideration. Thank you.

The next question is are REC and EAQs purchased by federal agencies be from outside the local re-market region of the agency? For example, can a tribal majority-owned business in New York sell an attribute in California?

TRACY NIRO: This is Tracy. Right now, the implementing instructions for what will count towards Executive Order 14057, it's not completely clear just yet if a wreck is generated outside of the balancing area of the agency that is claiming it. Whether that will count or not. However, RECs anywhere in the country will count towards that 7.5% renewable goal.

TOMMY JONES: Thank you. Next question, for a solar RFP, what is the typical timeline from award to delivery? Is there enough time from award to delivery for procurement and construction? It is difficult to fund these types of projects without knowing sales.

BONNIE BUETER: This is Bonnie. I would say that the typical time-- we're still figuring that out. And that's why the things we're looking at in the pilot. But it can be a very lengthy process, which I'm sure most of you all are aware. I will say that if you have a project that is viable and that you have started or that you're planning but you have not broken ground or you don't feel like you're very far along in the process, that would not necessarily eliminate you from being considered a pilot.

So I would go ahead and-- email me or set up a time that we can talk about your project and where you are in the process. And I can help set some of those expectations.

TOMMY JONES: Great. Next question. Any easy way to find available contracts without daily, weekly monitoring of SAM.gov. I'm not sure if we have a response to that. And we have a lot of comments related to polling questions. Here is a comment I will read out loud. It would be helpful if the DOD understood more about working to purchase power from tribal companies.

Next comment. We are a tribally-owned ADA corporation trying to sell power to Cannon Air Force base. We have land contiguous to the base, 1,200 feet from the switching station. How should we approach the base? That may be a question related to how will this program facilitate these sorts of transactions? And more information will be forthcoming related to this program.

TRACY NIRO: Right. Agree. Tom, I think that this feedback is really helpful, because it helps us understand agencies have different preferences in terms of how they interact with their local communities. So we don't have the answer to that. But we can investigate what agencies would like to see as a process for outreach and communication on these topics. Thank you.

TOMMY JONES: And I do believe a similar question was from Seminole Energy. And so we'll, hopefully, be able to answer that shortly as well. The presentation. There's questions about getting the presentation. The goal is to provide it-- it is being recorded. And so that it should be available. Here's another comment. For training and workforce, could there be a priority for the communities with former or existing coal communities?

SPEAKER: That's definitely helpful feedback. We'll consider that. And I'm going to drop-- I'm sure some of you are already aware of this, but I'm going to drop a link to the energy communities interagency working group's website. They have a whole bunch of programs that are specifically for those communities. Both tribal and non-tribal. So I'll drop that chat.

TOMMY JONES: And we do have another hand raised. Leland McGee. So I'll unmute you now. And you are self-muted, Leland.

AUDIENCE: How's that? Better?

TOMMY JONES: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Calling from a tribe in Central Valley of California. We own lands, both trust and fee. We own enough trust land to develop a utility scale solar project. We're 8 miles from NAS Lemoore. We have countless entities that want to partner with us. We even have financiers that are willing to help us in financing such a large scale endeavor.

We've been to DC, we've been to Sacramento, we've been everywhere. The issue we face is what so many tribes in California face. Pacific Gas and Electric. The grid is antiquated at best. Whenever we try and come up with a feasibility on how much kilowatt hours we can generate on a per annum basis, we're always stymied with being able to transmit that power.

Obviously, we do not have the capacity to buy up our own lands to put our own transmission grid in place, nor do we have the money to do that. Nobody seems to have an answer on how tribes, like this tribe, can begin developing what's being developed all around this tribe. Solar scale utility power.

They have to get their power through PG&E to get it distributed. We're even working on developing our own public utility. We're doing everything that we feel we need to do to get to the point of generating utility scale electricity in a state that's called for the elimination of hydrocarbon electricity within the next 12 years. So at what point do we tackle the big problem in the state? And that's a very large transmitter of power that doesn't have any answers for us.

TOMMY JONES: Thank you for your comments Leland. I think that it's important to look into those kinds of things going forward with this program. So that's great feedback. And there have been other comments submitted in the question box that relate to other developments going around in their community as well.

I do want to suggest for a lot of folks that the Office of Indian Energy website is a great resource for technical assistance and funding opportunities. And that we're always here to help. There's questions about relating to non-tribal entities working with tribes. The feedback, I think, that would be useful in that is to begin relationships with tribes and start working with them in your area and create a relationship there to move forward.

Here's a comment. Any guidance on SMR technology partnerships. I am not sure what SMR is, but if there's anyone that has a comment related to that, please respond.

SPEAKER: Small modular reactors.

TOMMY JONES: OK. I don't know if we have any guidance on those partnerships. Again, making contact with the folks who do those sort of things is most likely imperative.

AUDIENCE: Hey, Tommy.

TOMMY JONES: Yes.

AUDIENCE: This is Matt Dannenberg. I'm the Tribal Liaison in our Congressional Intergovernmental Affairs team. And yeah. I can drop my email in the chat. And please reach out. I'd be happy to connect you to the folks in office of nuclear energy, your inquiry.

TOMMY JONES: There are questions about technical assistance related to energy planning and the related. The Office of Indian Energy does provide opportunities like that, which is free and on a rolling basis. Authorized representative from the tribe can submit that request to our office. We do have a Technical Assistance tab on our website, and it's an easy form to complete.

So a question. Would only existing projects and capacity be considered for the pilot program? Or would new projects be considered knowing that the availability of carbon pollution-free energy for consumption would not be available until the project is constructed?

BONNIE BUETER: Hi. This is Bonnie again. I can answer that. If you look at the executive order that implementing instructions, specifically, for executive order 14057, it has a provision in there. In order to qualify as CFE, the generation resource has to be producing as of October 1 2021 or sooner. So there is definitely, a need for new energy projects. In fact, that COD requirement eliminates a lot of projects that are currently producing.

So not only would it not eliminate you from being a pilot, but it might be attractive to the government. And I would encourage you to reach out.

TOMMY JONES: Had a hand that was raised for a few minutes and just realized. Thank you, Pilar Thomas. You are now unmuted.

AUDIENCE: Hi, thanks. And good afternoon. Thanks for having this listening session. It's much appreciated. A couple of questions and points of follow-up from Margie's comments about WAPA. As I'm sure, GSA and the DOD know, WAPA supplies many federal facilities as preference customers and has longer term contracting authority. At least 25 years contracting authority.

So kind of a follow up to Margie's point and question, what if anything-- in the original purchase guidance that we developed when I was at the DOE, we did this. One of the issues that we had was with WAPA and Bonneville Power. They wanted to be excluded, but would be willing to facilitate the sale of power. So as an example, all of the Naval facilities in San Diego get their power from WAPA.

And they we had identified some opportunities for WAPA to buy power from tribal projects for sale to the Navy. Now, there's a competition requirement in some regard. And so one of the other aspects of the guidance is the ability to run limited competitions for tribal-only power.

And so in that case, is DOE still intending to keep that policy guidance that, where you can run competitions or where competitions are run-- whether it's the Navy, asking WAPA to go out and get it, more power or cheaper power and WAPA then runs a limited competition for tribal power to do that.

Or whether it's GSA in the retail choice states where you can go out and run competitions for power and running limited competitions that look for tribal power first before you open it up, that's another tool in that guidance that's never been leveraged. The third opportunity in that limited competition is where folks like the National Labs, so after DOD, DOE is the second largest user of power on the planet.

And their national labs are the largest user of that power. Many of them are, and, especially, in places where you can get net metering and some offsets, go out and look for solar development on or near the National Lab. So the limited competition should also apply to the example Yakima Power talked about.

If IHS wants to put some rooftop solar on their rooftop, they have to run a competition for that, it should be a limited competition for tribes to compete first with fulfilling that on-site requirement, if it's even a requirement. So my only point, I guess, is this. The limited competition can be just as powerful, especially now, for promoting the purchase of tribal power. When you have to compete, give us the first shot.

And so it would be helpful to know, if there's an intent to keep that limited competition guidance to expand that from DOE to GSA and to DOD so that we get the first shot at whatever competition you've got to run to get whatever power you've got to buy. So that's my comment/question. Thank you.

TOMMY JONES: Thank you, Pilar. And we will definitely take note of that. We have another question that was submitted. Is does this process help build your own substation? Would a substation that I assume provide electricity to the community be a part of this? And that would-- we'll take that comment, and I will have to-- I imagine that depends on the type of agreement that you have for development.

TOMMY JONES: We have a question. I think that a lot of the comments that have been submitted so far have been-- they're comments not questions. Are there any other folks that are interested in being unmuted and providing comment that way? I'm not seeing any additional hands being raised. We do have a lot of comments and questions that we received.

This is all very valuable information that we can use to make this program the best possible for Indian country and the nation. And so we are thankful for the comments and questions that we have received. And if there's anyone else that has any further comments on the DOE side, please feel free to make them.

SPEAKER: Just thank you for your time. And we'll be-- I've put a bunch of email addresses in the chat, including mine and the tribal liaisons for both DOE and DOD. Bonnie has also provided her email address. Please feel free to reach out to any of us and we'll be following up with a bunch of you who had questions that we did not answer today.

WAHLEAH JOHNS: Yep. This is Wahleah Johns with Office of Indian Energy. I want to also say thank you all for joining today. And we will make sure to get the presentation up and running for you, all two of you again today. And then also after this, we're going to be-- I think the next step is to do an RFI and compile more information that you all are sharing.

The idea is to really strengthen this preference to make it work for tribes and tribally-owned businesses that have the potential to really develop clean energy. And that to me, really speaks to the economic development, the workforce creation, jobs, and sustaining power for nations and also regional and communities nationwide.

So this is really important. And I'm really happy that many of you have joined today and offered insight and even just shared challenges and even the frustration within different states, and then also the policies. But I just want to say thank you for you all joining us today. And I'm not sure if there's anyone else from DOE or other agencies who like to say anything, any closing remarks. Tommy, I'll hand it back to you.

TOMMY JONES: OK. Great. Again, thank you everyone for being here. If you think of something additional comment-wise or suggestion-wise or the realities are on the ground in your community, that's what we want to hear. We want to make this work best for everyone. And so please reach out to us. This conversation can still continue. And thank you all for being here. And have a good rest of your week.