Randy Manion:           Hi. Good morning or good afternoon, wherever you may be, and welcome to the first webinar of the 2016 DOE Tribal Renewable Energy Webinar Series, "Energy Planning for Tribal Economic Development. I'm Randy Manion, today's webinar chair, and manager of Western Area Power Administration's Renewable Resource Program.

So let's go over some event details first. Today's webinar is being recorded, and will be made available on Western's website, along with copies of today's PowerPoint presentations, in about one week. Everyone will receive a post-webinar email with a link to the page where the slides and recording will be located. Because we are recording this webinar, all phones have been muted for this purpose. We'll answer your questions at the end of all the presentations. However, you can submit a question at any time by clicking on the question button located in the webinar control box on your screen, and type in your question.

If you entered an audio PIN when you joined, at the end of the webinar, if you raise your hand by clicking the raise your hand icon, I will unmute you so you can ask our panel your question directly. We'll try to keep the webinar to no more than 90 minutes. And we have several speakers, so let's get started.

Our first is Sarai Geary. Sarai is a member of the Muskogee Creek Nation, and a program manager in the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs. And as program manager, she designs and implements technical assistance and educational programs that positively impact Indian energy development and promotes energy education for Indian tribes. Sarai, it's a pleasure to have you provide the opening remarks, and the virtual floor is now yours.

Sarai Geary:               Thank you, Randy, and hello, everyone. I join Randy in welcoming you to the inaugural webinar of the 2016 series. This webinar series is sponsored by two US Department of Energy organizations, the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, and the Western Area Power Administration. The series is designed to promote tribal energy sufficiency and to foster economic development and employment on tribal lands using renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.

The Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs directs, fosters, coordinates, and implements energy planning, education, management, and programs that assist tribes with energy development, capacity building, energy infrastructure, energy costs, and electrification on Indian lands and homes. To provide this assistance, we work within the Department of Energy, across government agencies, and with tribes and organizations to promote Indian energy policies and initiatives, and help tribes overcome the barriers to more energy independence.

To help tribes overcome the barriers, the Office of Indian Energy has developed several programmatic initiatives and partnerships. This Tribal Renewable Energy Webinar series is an example of the type of education and capacity building efforts we have developed with our DOE partners.

We have another excellent webinar series of the next 11 months which builds upon the foundation of strategic energy planning and the often undervalued or overlooked benefit of economic development in the strategic planning process. In each of the 2016 monthly webinars, we will try to include tribal case studies and information and hands on tools that you can use to progress towards self-determination and energy independence.

So let us get started with today's webinar. I will now turn the virtual floor back over to Randy, and he will introduce our panelists for the day.

 

Randy Manion:           Thanks, Sarai. And our next speakers today include Alex Dane, Leslie Kabotie, Karen Derry, and John Hendrix. And I'm going to provide a brief bio for each of these folks up front, and then we'll get started.

So Alex Dane is a certified urban planner and project leader at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, where he specializes in strategic energy planning and sustainable community development solutions for local governments. With graduate degrees in urban planning and public administration and a portfolio of working with cities and tribes nationwide, he brings a comprehensive perspective to clean energy program design and project development.

Following Alex will be Lesley Kabotie. She is president of Indigenous Collaboration Incorporated, a 100 percent native-owned enterprise. A member of the Crow Tribe of Montana, she received her undergraduate degree from Stanford, and a master's in nonprofit management from Regis University. She brings 24 years' experience working with tribal governments, tribal communities, federal agencies and departments, and other organizations and entities working with native people to align resources, develop skills, discern interests, and develop opportunities that benefit native populations. Lesley's experience in Indian country spans education, health, culture, enterprise, business, technology, energy, environment, and community development. Lesley has extensive experience with large group and conference facilitation, and is a master trainer and mentor in facilitation.

Then following Lesley will be Karen Derry. She is with the – a Karuk tribal member and an economic developer and operations manager for the Karuk Community Development Corporation, located in rural Northern California. Karuk is a tribally chartered corporation, and is the economic development arm of the Karuk tribe. Karen has served two terms on the tribal council for the past 16 years, was executive director for a small nonprofit organization. In September of 2014, she was hired at Karuk, and is responsible for the day to day management of the corporation. She's – the successful of the programs, and serves – services offered through Karuk, expanding current enterprises and researching and developing new business opportunities for the benefit of tribal and other community members. She is new to the green energy field, and has been on a fast track for learning. Under her leadership, Karuk has moved forward and completed a strategic energy plan, is in the early stages of feasibility study for a small biomass plant, and next month will be meeting with another tribe to see how they can work together to develop commercially scaled green energy projects in their local area.

And then closing it off will be John Hendrix. He is the economic development developer for Mississippi Choctaws. He has 22 years of experience in all facets of tribal economic and community development. Currently, John coordinates the tribe's strategic planning efforts, energy development, industrial recruiting, real estate development, and investment analysis, among others. John has participated in the development of many tribally owned businesses, representing investment of more than $500 million, involving several financing methods, such as traditional loans, loan guarantees, grants, and new market tax credits. He earned his MBA from Duke, which included residencies in Asia, Europe, and South America. And John lives in Madison, Mississippi, with his wife and two children.

And so with that, give me a moment, Alex, to get your slide deck teed up, and we'll get started. All right, Alex, it's all yours.

 

Alex Dane:                  Great. Thanks. You can go ahead to the next slide. Hi, there. This is Alex Dane from NREL, and thank you for that introduction there.

Well, Lesley and I, we are fortunate enough to be in the same room, so we're going to be coordinated on this today, which is a benefit. But we're going to be talking through essentially what is strategic energy planning, some of the benefits of it, a little bit on the process, what that looks like, and we're going to be touching on some of the resources that are out there as well. So not just the process or framework, but some actionable things that will probably be helpful, useful to most of the folks who are on the webinar today. So looking to help out there. Let's go to the next slide.

At this point, I'm actually going to throw it over to Lesley Kabotie, who's going to go through the next few slides and give us some context of what we're talking about today.

 

Lesley Kabotie:          Great. Thanks, Alex. So we want to talk about what is strategic energy planning and what does it do for you. Basically, strategic energy planning creates an opportunity for tribes to engage communities, programs, and development stakeholders in a process to define how energy development can catalyze or _____ the growth and development vision the community has for itself.

Strategic energy planning asks participants to claim the specific spot on the horizon that is desirable to them, and pinpoint what energy will be doing for the community, how it will be used, what industry will be served, how the needs of the community are addressed in a manner that allows session participants to paint the picture of the future that energy development is out to achieve in service to the developmental needs of the tribe and the future wellbeing of all of its communities, industries, and energy use priorities of the future.

Strategic energy planning engages participants in a long range view of the future and planning to achieve the long range priorities for the future of the community, rather than thinking about energy development in short term cycles of funding, grant, and priorities. In a nutshell, strategic energy planning brings desired energy future into the clear focus. It considered current reality and leverages local resources. It considers hurdles and challenges before you reach them. It maps out an efficient path to achieve your desired energy future, clarifies progress indicators, and documents the game plan for short and long term success. Next slide.

So what makes energy planning strategic? Oftentimes, tribal energy development is misinterpreted as being undertaken for its value as a commodity to be traded rather than a resource to be used to address the basic needs of the community. In fact, energy development can stimulate opportunities that serve all of the sectors of the tribe, if it is inclusive in its planning. The future of the tribes resides within the imagination, ownership, and participation of its members and constituents. Tribes work continuously to assemble the framework for healthy, self-sustaining economics that can support viable, active community in every aspect.

Strategic energy planning is an excellent opportunity to lay the foundation for stimulating and mobilizing the growth and viability of the tribal economy if the right people are at the table during planning. To address what makes energy planning strategic, let's start at the beginning and review the fundamental basis for a healthy economy for tribes in the US. And if this is common knowledge or old hat for you, please humor my value to always start at the beginning.

So what you see here basically is a graphic that shows that our US economy is made up of three sectors. The first sector is the public sector, or the governmental sector, and this includes the tribal administration, the county, state, and federal government. The job of the public sector is to provide the infrastructure that allows us to live as communities: roads, water, power lines, schools, etcetera.

Below that, the private sector concerns itself with the sale of goods and services, and the strength and prominence of our private sector is a hallmark of the American economy. The third sector there on the right, or the nonprofit sector, is common around the world now, but it got its start in America, and concerns itself with all of the other needs of the community that fall outside the interest and abilities of the government and the private sector, things like children's activities, young parent programs, veterans' programs, cultural programs, etcetera.

So the IRS created tax exempt status to stimulate economic flow into American communities through the nonprofit sector. In the last 20 years, the flow of – the money flowing through American communities through the third sector has reached the multi-billion mark annually, so that should – this segment of the economy has warranted its own notation as the third sector.

So the triangulation of economic flow through these three sectors makes our economy strong in America, and it's the strongest in the world. Even when we waste a ton of money in one sector, the economy still stands because of the strength and viability of the other sectors.

In Indian country, our economy looks like this. If you do the animation – oops, I guess it already did. If you look at the blue lines that are on that triangle, this is the representation of what the economy looks like in Indian country. If you look at the bottom lines, the private sector is only marginally developed. This line, if we're being really liberal, says that our economies may be developed to a full 50 percent capacity, which we know in many areas they are not. And this line only extends halfway.

I am Crow, and on my reservation, the only tax we collect on the tribe is the TERO tax, TERO qualified projects, and those that are federally funded projects. We exercise a nominal tax rate that feeds a few tax dollars back into the tribal public sector.

The tribal public sector on the left, which is the tribal administration on my reservation, is largely financed through the sale of tribal resources, primarily non-renewable resources. On my reservation, we have coal sales that finance our tribal administration's capacity to care for all of the needs on the reservation. And let's say that our tribal sector is financed to a full 30 percent of what it needs.

The nonprofit sector, on the other hand, is only marginally developed, with a few nonprofits operating here and there. There is a significant misunderstanding that nonprofits compete with tribal government access to funding, but the reality is nonprofits are largely funded by monies from private individuals, individuals who will never write a donation check to the tribal government. On my reservation, there have been 35 or so nonprofits organized in the last 50 years. There's only a handful operating today, maybe a dozen or so.

So the third sector is wholly undeveloped in the reservation economy. But when we look at and are talking about our tribal economies being vulnerable and on the verge of collapse or at risk, the status of each of these sectors in the local tribal economy is what's being talked about. And whether an individual agrees with it or not, as sovereign nations operating within the US economy, tribal participation and capacity to engage this economic model has a direct influence on tribal viability.

So tribal strategic energy planning presents an opportunity to engage stakeholders from each of these three dimensions or sectors of the community economy in a dialogue to envision a future where each of these sectors is energized and fully activated for the benefit and wellbeing of the community. Tribal strategic energy planning also presents an opportunity to mobilize the long term support necessary for energy project development that goes beyond the scale of one political administration or another. When a broad cross-section of the community can see and understand what energy development does for the wellbeing of everyone, how energy development meets the needs of the individual as well as the community, the likelihood of success goes up because of the widespread base of support that exists for the plan.

This level of inclusiveness in the planning process, engaging the participation and imagination of stakeholders from each of these segments of the community interest, is what makes energy planning strategic. What that does for you is to achieve stakeholder buy-in to the long term vision, political commitment to mobile authority and resources, and identifies energy uses and future needs as a baseline.

So in the next slide, the strategic energy planning, the leadership team. One thing to keep in mind is that larger scale energy projects take a long time to develop, anywhere from two to three years on the quick end to 20 to 50 years on the long end, depending on the type of energy development that is right for your nation. The key to effectively formulating a leadership team for the plan is to consider longevity and durability of ownership of the plan to keep the ideas, the enthusiasm, and commitment to persevere alive within the community and within the administration and technical team tasked with implementing the strategic energy plan.

So who's on the team is important, and should be carefully considered. You want to seed your planning leadership team with innovators and deep thinkers from each sector of your emerging or existing tribal economy, those who have staying power in the community and can carry on the story, context, and framework for the strategic energy plan. Some participants may be new or emerging leaders in the community. You want to have not just people with the right idea, but those who are committed to the long term results, who have enduring personal and political influence in the community. You want to include in your leadership planning team individuals with authority to direct resources, individuals with a passion for the destination the community is out achieve, individuals with influence in the community and administrative abilities to keep the project alive, individuals with technical abilities, and individuals who can tell the story of what you're trying to accomplish.

In creating your leadership planning team, you want to try to avoid overpopulating your leadership planning team with exclusively political appointees, exclusively technical staff, and exclusively implementers. Next slide.

Planning is coordinated and collective action. Achieving tribal development priorities is a complex, multi-dimensional task that involves many players working through, resolving issues, and activating many different assets, resources, and opportunities along the way. Strategic energy planning is the vehicle that promotes and paves the way for coordinated action among all of the key players, stakeholders, and influencers in the energy project development process.

A good strategic energy plan puts tribal leadership in the driver's seat, and provides the means for everyone else to synch up to the project effort in a timely, coordinated fashion. Proper planning and strategic energy planning development helps direct action, sustain momentum, motivate involvement, and reduce or minimize reactive decision making, and ultimately go the distance. Next slide.

 

Alex Dane:                  Go back one.

 

Lesley Kabotie:          So why does strategic energy planning fail? Through hundreds of strategic plans there are many shining examples of radical success. Among those that fail, there are some common predictable elements that can be avoided or minimized if they're understood and accounted for from the outside. It's not surprising that the reasons plans fail is largely because of the way people engage leadership, each other, and the community in the various and ongoing and stages of implementation.

When strategic energy plans fail, they do because of shortsighted prediction of the situation or the timeline, unrealistic predictions of resources, uncoordinated implementation, narrow ownership, failure to follow the plans, and significantly, poor or casual communication. Back to you, Alex.

 

Alex Dane:                  Great. Thanks, Lesley. Go on to the next slide here. So we're going to illustrate a planning process for strategic energy planning that's been used by the Office of Indian Energy and a number of strategic energy planning workshops on the ground, some that Lesley here has done with a number of tribes. And working through this process, to echo what Lesley said, it's a comprehensive and long range process, and the steps in the process are at its core very inclusive and drawing from the participatory engagement of the right people in the community, so you have the nonprofits, the public and the private sector, all being engaged and walking through – walking through this process itself. And that's essentially what helps to ensure the success of the plan and the process itself. So let's go to the next slide.

Speaking on the first steps of strategic energy planning, Lesley did a great job in introducing the common elements of the first two, identifying and convening the right stakeholders, and then who essentially should be on the leadership team. Let's go to the next slide.

A little bit more in depth on what Lesley was talking about, including the right number of stakeholders across the community when we're starting to get the process started, and having a champion on board who will shepherd the process through. So maybe not an elected member of the tribe, but leadership within one of the departments who's there for the long haul, through changes in administration, and who will be the shepherd of the process and the plan itself.

There's a good resource out there. Since this is a webinar on resources that are available, we can send these out as we go or at the end. There's the Tribal Strategic NGO Planning Handbook, which is available online. That has a good worksheet on stakeholder engagement. And then there's also some nonprofit resources out there that include the Orton Family Foundation, and they have a resource called the Heart and Soul Community Planning Process, and they have a number of different worksheets that you can use when you get and tick off the stakeholder engagement process, to keep track of who should be engaged and at what point in the process. Go to the next slide, please.

And again, from that leadership team, across the community, including electives, people from different departments, different folks from enterprises or the private sector. Even to add on to the list, housing authorities, tribal housing authorities are leaders within the community, and have a lasting presence in the community for implementing different projects and programs, and also including leadership from different tribal utilities would be effective for the leadership team as well. Next slide.

So if the first two – we can imagine that identifying who are the right people to invite and who will be the champion and then who will be the leadership team that gets behind the planning process, those are things that can be done over telephone, through email, lining up the process. But getting the community and the stakeholders in the room to develop an energy vision is something that is done in person. This is – could be part of a workshop or an event held by the community. But when there's interest in crafting an overarching strategic energy plan for a community, it's a consensus-based process, and to get there, you need to have the right people within the room.

And getting to an energy vision is absolutely critical in painting a picture of what is the long term goal, what is the long term vision for the community that guides the goals that the community has, and guides the priorities it places in different projects and programs. This is a unifying element to what a strategic energy plan is. And the common objectives to the left here, this list, are good goals within a community, but a vision can be a two to three or four sentence statement that captures at a higher level what is important and where their values are within a community.

You can view it as an introduction to what the strategic energy plan is. And it's an important first step in the planning process or planning workshop to get the community buy-in to what it is that's going on. Let's go to the next slide.

So again, the priorities and decision making, if we've gathered remotely a leadership team and we've engaged the stakeholders and we've sat down and we're starting the workshop process of going down and working through what a vision is, there is – there's more beyond the vision. And as far as strategic energy planning goes, the elements that need to be addressed are assessing the current and future energy needs of the community, and the existing energy resources that are on hand. That is a good foundational baseline for understanding where it is at this time a community is.

But from there, you have the context and the ability to shape and develop specific energy goals that move a community from their current situation and towards that vision more effectively. With that information in hand, the goals that you develop can be more tangible, more real, grounded in truth to move forward. And that provides the framework for developing various projects, programs that are aligned with the goals, aligned with the vision, grounded in the reality of the current energy needs, and then moving from there, figuring out how to pay for it, and moving those projects and programs forward. Next slide, please.

So let's go to the first step in the process. So as a community moves forward beyond the energy vision, it's important to assess what the current energy needs are in the community and what the current energy resources are in the community. And when we're looking at the current energy needs, that's across each sector in the community. Each service, each activity has its own inherent energy consumption. So that's across government, the offices, the operations, the households within the community, schools, and any businesses that are there.

And then thinking into the future about will there be new development, new housing, are there new government facilities on the horizon, are there new tribal enterprises that will have their own energy consumption as well?

So some great resources for thinking about this is to document where you are, to essentially get a baseline of what the current energy profile is. Within that strategic energy planning handbook, there's a nice worksheet on different aspects of the community and what the energy consumption is, and what that looks like. It's a good tool for documenting what's going on there. So utility bills are really helpful for documenting that, as are energy audits and any information, if your community is already using EPA Portfolio Manager, which is a piece of software that combines and visualizes the energy consumption across a number of buildings. So if you have an interest in documenting your offices, health clinics, school, and seeing what that energy consumption is, EPA Portfolio Manager is a really effective tool for that.

When we're thinking about forecasting future energy load, that's a good time to have discussions with the housing authority to know if there's any projects in the works, if there's projects that are happening through community development block grants that are on the rise, or if there's projects that a community development finance institution or a CDFI is working on in your community. These are all forward-looking entities that are tasked with identifying certain projects, and again, each of these projects will have an energy load.

And when we're thinking about the community as a whole in a broader sense, to get a pulse on population and number of households, whether they're rising or falling, there's the American Fact Finder on the US Census website, and that you can look up by zip code where you are, and look up your community, and you can see different demographic and population changes over time. So you can project a little bit and get a better understanding and granularity on some of the different factors that are affecting the energy profile in the community.

Another resource out there, there's a subscription fee for it, but it's called Policy Map, PolicyMap.com, and that is – if you don't have a large GIS department, this is kind of an online GIS tool that displays all of these types of census information, participation in different community development block grant programs, to kind of paint a more nuanced landscape of what's going on, and it's kind of that bird's eye camera looking down on your community, and it gives different factors that impact the community.

Also, moving on to assessing the energy, so we have energy needs. the energy consumption that's happening in your community. There's also identify what are the energy resources. What's available to the tribe that can be used? And in that sense, how do you identify how strong is your solar or wind or geothermal resource? If you go to NREL.gov, there's a number of different interactive maps and resource maps on there for each of these different technologies where you can look in and find the different levels of solar or wind or geothermal resources that you have available.

So it's the combinations of thinking about where is the energy being used right now, what's happening on the horizon that's going to impact sort of a rising need for energy, and then what do we have available by way of current energy resources. So I think at the end of this, we can send out some of the links to those energy resource pages. Next slide.

So developing specific goals. And we look at these examples and say, reduce electricity use by X percent by 2022. Getting to that goal is really difficult if you haven't gone through this assessment of what your current energy consumption is and what your available resources are. And that's why this step follows for that contextual understanding of what's happening in your community.

And why that's important is you can get to pretty specific goals of saying X percentage of electricity, or reducing energy cost by X within five years. Without that foundational understanding, these types of goals aren't grounded, but with that information in hand, you're able to craft tangible goals that directly relate to the current information that you have, and paint a tangible pathway forward. Okay. Let's go to the next slide.

So after you've had a foundational understanding of what's happening on the ground, you have goals in hand, identifying the right projects and programs is the next step in the planning process. And here, you have guiding principles of goals shaping how different projects can be ranked, or what their cost effectiveness is, and what's out there. So there's different ways of measuring and prioritizing different projects and programs. Some of the ones that we use are total resource cost and the levelized cost of energy. So that's essentially if there's a higher cost for renewable energy technology today for the initial investment, we like to think about it as a life cycle cost. So over the span of the entire project, that cost is actually lower than some of the traditional technologies out there.

So again, some of the prioritization and ranking methods that we use are tied to that long range thinking, so that comprehensive and systems-thinking approach. And it allows for the group, for the leadership team, to move forward with confidence that the projects that they're choosing are the right ones, and that they're aligned with the values of the community.

Some of the resources that we have, as well, again, on NREL.gov, include different system analysis tools. So if we're trying to identify what's the right renewable energy technology for us, there's tools such as PVWatts, which identifies kind of the size – if you draw a polygon on your rooftop, you can see the return on your investment if you put solar on top of your tribal office, or on top of your casino, and you can see specifically where you are, a bird's eye camera of what that would look like.

There's also the Jobs and Economic Development Index, which is if we installed this project here at this size, what are the direct and indirect job creation implications of that project? So you can connect these renewable energies with a broader narrative of economic development, and that's a tool that's available.

And then there's the system advisor model as well. So if you have an area and you want to determine between wind or solar what's the best choice, there's tools out there that can help get to the right answer, and there's technical assistance available to help do that. Let's go to the next slide.

Then how do we fund it? The million dollar question. There are a number of different resources out there, and I'm sure a lot of the people on the webinar today are familiar with accessing a number of these. There's tribal energy program grants that comes through the Department of Energy. Understanding what different incentive programs are out there nationwide, the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency, or DSIREUSA, is available. To think through more at a project level of what you're going through, you can always access the Department of Energy technical assistance program. And then there's a whole slew of other federal agencies, technical assistance, and grant programs.

If you want a great snapshot or resource to understand what's out there across the federal agency landscape, go to the Partnership for Sustainable Communities website, which is a combination of the Department of Transportation, EPA, and HUD, and they have a resource that is federal funding for rural communities, which includes tribal, and it's a great PDF document where you can go through and look program by program across the federal government on what's available.

Also, the Office of Native American Programs through HUD does a great job in combining and aggregating different funding resources that are out there, and those are updated. And the Department of Energy does that as well. So if you want to get on a couple of different effective listservs, the Office of Indian Energy has one, as does the Office of Native American Programs through HUD, and that'll keep you up to date pretty well.

And then there's non-governmental organizations, and increasingly, foundations are playing a huge role in getting engaged on the ground. There's foundations such as the Kresge Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, _____ Foundation. All these ones have nuanced, maybe theme-based funding that is available to tribes. So resiliency or clean energy, that would be the avenue they might be funding some of these projects here. Let's go to the next slide.

And then after going through the whole process on the ground with the community, it's important to document the plan itself into something that is formalized. And Lesley said why do plans fail? Sometimes it's that informal conversation where things can just fall apart, and not last across administrations, and it's not institutionalized. So capturing everything in a plan is essential. Ideally, it's something that goes before tribal council for a resolution, and something that becomes a formal document, and something that can be adjusted over time. So that's the measurement and verification and plan alterations to keep it a living document. Go to the next slide.

So again, the purpose of the plan is to document what's happened. And the function of it is a roadmap for aligning a vision, goals, current energy needs and resources, and then a prioritized list of projects that are out there, and some potential funders to create a roadmap of getting from here to there. Next slide.

And again, when you're writing the energy plan, you can use these common elements as an outline for what should be included in that, and these are the elements essentially of the planning process. So as that's happening on the ground during a workshop or a meeting, this provides the content for the plan itself. Next slide.

To get the ball rolling there are two resources out there, one targeted towards Alaska, one for the lower 48 tribes. And this is the Strategic Energy Plan and Planning Handbook. So for each step in the process that we discussed here today, there's different worksheets and activities that can guide that discussion on the ground when your community wants to go through this process. And the Alaska version addresses the challenges and opportunities that often native villages face, and are able to move forward with. And then the Strategic Energy Planning Handbook, the one for the lower 48, just directs I think some of the funding resources towards lower 48 specific sources there. So the process is the same, but some of the content within each is different. Next slide.

And again, other resources to consider out there when we're going through the planning process. Community Greening is a great eight to ten page document that just goes through this process, and any community can use that, tribal or not. The Community Energy Strategic Planning Guide, that was through I believe DOE's Office of Weatherization and Intergovernmental Programs, and that is another robust document that has a number of different appendices and worksheets that can be used when you go through this planning process on the ground.

And then DOE also has a broader guide on Strategic – Community Energy Strategic Planning, and within that, there's a number of resources, again, on how do you identify your current energy needs? What are the resources? And worksheets in there as well.

So a lot of content out there, and you might ask, well, how do we sort through all this? And what's a good first step? Go to the next slide.

And the answer is there's on demand technical assistance. So through the Department of Energy Office of Indian Energy, feel free to reach out to the expertise that is available for free to talk through strategic energy planning, where you are in the process, if you're interested in doing a workshop itself, or just need help navigating all the resources that our there. That's one type of technical assistance that's available.

And then there's project specific support that can be accessed, too. So when we're looking through third party reviews of different studies or finance structures or agreements, that's available, as well as some of this deeper dive on modeling and analysis of specific projects or energy resources as well. So there's resources out there, but also stand at the ready to help understand those resources a little bit better. And that's it for me.

 

Randy Manion:           Great. Thanks, Alex, and thanks, Lesley. Next up will be Karen Derry, the economic development and operations manager for Karuk Community Development Corporation. And Karen, just give me a moment while I pull your slide deck up. Okay, Karen, it's all yours.

 

Karen Derry:              Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. We are relatively new to the energy process, so what I'm going to go over is the steps that we took to get our strategic energy planning ball rolling. And I have Journey to Success on the first slide with a question mark because we're not sure yet. We are successful in starting the ball rolling. That's a good thing. So the first – the first slide – go ahead and change to the next slide, please. Thank you.

I put the five Ps of success, the first one being partners. When we started out in the process, our first thought was who are we going to involve. What do we need – who do we need to have involved? Who do we need to bring to the table? And so local agencies, we have a community services district here where we are. Perhaps you have a utility company or a parks and rec district. Tribal and community members. Is there someone in your tribal departments who already has the knowledge or experience with green energy? And the tribal councils, of course, are critical partners to have on your team.

Board members, we have a situation where we are, we have the Karuk Community Development Corporation, and we are chartered by the tribe. So we have a separate board for our community development corporation, and then we also have the tribal council. And so in our process, it was important to involve both of those.

Tribal departments, and again, I'm speaking from our experience. We have a Department of Natural Resources, and then we have our Economic Development Board. And so one of the questions that we had is where does this fit? Does it fit with natural resources? Does it fit with economic development? Does it fit with both? And then how do we do that?

Local utility companies. Are they willing to partner, and how can they help? And perhaps they have some avenues that they can help with. Perhaps they have a technical assistance program, or they can give you information that you're going to need to even get your strategic plan going and on track. Next slide, please.

Politics. In tribal politics, we – it's always challenging. So one of the things that we had to look at is are they favorable? Is this something that the council is interested in pursuing? Is it something that they don't want to talk about? Is it something they've done in the past? And so we had to learn all of those things when we started the strategic planning process.

And then is there opposition? If so, from whom? And then you need to find out why are they opposed. Is it territorial from another department, or is it just a lack of understanding or a lack of communication as to why they're opposed? Is it the council members? Is it community members? Again, those questions all need to be answered.

And then how do we bring them on board? Again, it's a strategic plan, so how do we bring them on board? And I loved what Lesley said, is you need – it's critical to get individuals who can tell the story. And so in order to bring people on board, it is critical to have somebody who can tell the story, what you want to do, what you want to accomplish, and how it fits in with the tribe. So those are all critical.

And if the politics are unfav – you know, not favorable, can you find a champion? And I know that was mentioned earlier also. Can you find a champion at the council level, at the community level, or at your organizational level? So it's important that you do find a champion that can assist you in moving the process forward.

And then again, what category? We talked about that already. Is it natural resources? Is it community development? Is it both? Or does it belong elsewhere in your tribal organization altogether?

And then again, the utility company. Are they approachable, or do they have no interest at all in working with you? And that's a question that we are still in the process of answering. We've heard rumor, but until we talk to themselves, we're not sure how they can fit into our picture.

Our tribal territory is located – it's very spread out. We're located in far Northern California, clear up by the Oregon border, and we have a wide distance that we have to travel on narrow roads, as I'm sure a lot of reservations do. So it's two different utility companies that we would be – we will be working with. And so we are working on how to figure that out, and how they best fit into our strategic plan. Next slide, please. Thank you.

What is a strategic energy plan? When we started the process of determining whether or not to do green energy and exactly what green energy was, what it involved, we didn't know anything. And so what we did find out when we started asking around to different departments within the tribe, and actually, with our conversation with NREL, we did find out that the tribe already had a strategic energy plan, and it had been completed in 2008. So when I tried to find the plan, nobody seemed to know where it was. I had to do a lot of digging, and finally found out where the plan was, and asked them to send it to me. It's a 632 page document, and I received 26 pages.

So I managed to get – find out who did the original plan. They sent me a copy. And so we were fortunate there, because now we need to update the strategic energy plan, because one was already done. But unfortunately, when they did the strategic energy plan, they just kind of did it, set it on a shelf, and that was it.

And so it's very critical, and again, what Lesley said, that a strategic energy plan fails due to narrow ownership, failure to follow the plan, and poor communication. And so those things need to be looked at when you're developing a strategic energy plan. You need to make sure that everybody has ownership of the whole project, and not just one entity or one or two people. So you need to make sure that everybody in the whole organization has ownership of the plan.

And where do we start? Why do we need one? Who needs to be involved, and how comprehensive does the plan need to be? Those are questions that you need to ask.

The expertise. When we started looking around, we were trying to determine who would have the expertise to assist us with a plan, and fortunately, after a lot of digging and research, we did find of course the Department of Energy and Indian Energy, and were referred several places. And that really put us on the right track as to where we need to go. And going to training and then networking with other tribes and other individuals at the training is critical to success also.

So the scope of our plan outlines current energy usage, the cost, documents all the future energy needs that you can anticipate, and then what type of projects. Do you want commercial or community scale projects? Do you want biomass, wind, solar? Or even possibly hydro? So – and what will we use the plan for, or will it be set on a shelf? Again, that's critical. And finding a champion or making sure that everyone has ownership of a plan.

And one of the things when we were starting, and especially me being new to the entire field, the acronyms. What do they all mean? I was kind of in a daze for a while when we started working on the plan and going to some of the training and thinking, oh, my gosh, what is all of this? So that is one of the things that you will learn throughout the process. What's a PPA? What's a megawatt? What's a kilowatt? Sure, I've heard of some of those, but what they were I really had no idea. So that's something that you have to learn in order to develop your strategic plan in a positive manner. And next slide, please. Thank you.

And the place. What are the energy needs for your tribe? Where do you – would you like to do it just community scale, commercial scale? And again, as Lesley said earlier, it's going to take years. Maybe perhaps what you want to do first is solar street lights for your reservation or for your tribal property. We have a challenge here because we don't really have a reservation. We have trust property. We have trust land and fee land. So – and we're checkboard. So we are working on a lot of different things.

So again, you know, what is it? You want to start small. Do you – how do you want to do it? So those are some questions that you're going to need to be answered.

And what's the proximity to an existing power plant? These are some of the things that we've learned just in the early stages of what we're doing. And again, we are very new to this process. So we have a long ways to go. And it's an interesting ride so far. So next slide, please.

And on this one, of course, I couldn't think of another P. So funding. How much does it cost for a comprehensive strategic energy plan? Can you get it done for free? Who provides the funding for those? And some of those questions have been answered here. But when we started, we knew nothing. So we did a lot of research, asked a lot of questions, and we were very fortunate to network, like I said earlier, at some of the trainings that we attended. The networking is critical to finding out what you want to do. So talk to other tribes. See what they've done. See if they're doing something similar to what you would like to do, and then move forward from there.

The Department of Energy was very, very helpful in what we – what we are doing, and will continue to do. And NREL has been wonderful in helping us with our strategic plan. It's in the final stages of being finalized. We're doing the – it's in a draft form right now, finalizing everything on it.

When we – one of the challenges that we had with our strategic plan is our council is so busy with other things that we had only two council members attend. So we had a very small group to start with for the original strategic plan. And when we take it for final approval before our board and the council, you know, that may present some problems. We don't know. We're not anticipating any. But it's critical to get as many people as possible involved in the process so that when it does go to be approved, that there are no stumbling blocks along at that point. Next slide, please. Thank you.

And in conclusion, nothing happens fast, we've learned, and that's probably a good thing, because, like I said, we're green at this. We're trying to figure everything out. And we really don't want it to happen fast. We want it to happen right.

So as we move forward, we have a lot of questions, and we're getting those answered as we move along, and hopefully in your process, if you're at the same level that we were, or if you're considering that you will just take your time, move as you see fit, but there's going to be a lot of questions come up as you move forward. And having a plan is critical to success. You need to have that story to follow. You need to read along and know that you're doing the right thing, and you're following along on the path that you have set for yourself or for your organization.

And never be afraid to ask for help. If we were afraid to ask for help, we would still be sitting here trying to figure out where we needed to go next. So don't be afraid to pick up a phone and say, "Hey, here's where we're at. What do we need to do next? How do we do this?" Utilize your partners that you do have. We're fortunate enough to have Blue Lake Rancheria very close. They're about three and a half hours from us. And Jana Ganion is just a wonderful support. She's been through the process with her tribe. And we're meeting with them next month, actually. So we're very excited about that, and we're very fortunate to have them close. So find a champion that you can work with, that you can ask questions of, that can help guide you along through the entire process.

And again, like I said, we're new to this process, we have a lot to learn, but I wish all of you the best of luck in what you're doing, and I hope that some of what we have gone through that we can share is helpful to some of you. And like I said, all we can do is let you know what we've gone through in the process and where we are in the process, and I hope it's helped. Thank you.

 

Randy Manion:           Thank you, Karen. And Jana's on our tribal webinar planning team, and she is an invaluable asset, so I'll echo that.

 

Karen Derry:              She is wonderful.

 

Randy Manion:           So John Hendrix is next. He's the economic developer for Mississippi Chowtaw's. And John, just give me a moment to get your slide deck up. Okay, John. All yours.

 

John Hendrix:             Well, Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be with you today. Mississippi Choctaw recently went through a formal strategic energy planning process, so I was asked to kind of share our lessons learned. So I hope some of this information will be helpful to you. Next slide.

So a little bit about Mississippi Choctaw. It's the only federally recognized tribe in the State of Mississippi. There's about 10,500 members on 35,000 acres of land, and the land is checkboard as well. So we're scattered over probably 100 miles between the communities in some locations. Democratic form of government.

So we do have a lot of buildings. We've got six different elementary schools, two middle schools, and a high school. We've got a 100,000 square foot justice complex. We've got about 150,000 square foot hospital, and multiple clinics, about 700,000 square feet of manufacturing space, and three casinos. So we have a lot of buildings that are energy consumers. We've got a large vehicle fleet, with over 450 vehicles, lots of those being school buses. So Mississippi Choctaw, we are a major energy user, and it represents several million dollars a year in the tribal budget. Next slide, please.

So we spent about three months putting a formal strategic energy plan together, which included a two day intensive workshop that was run by the NREL staff. So the topics that I'm going to cover today is just to kind of talk about why we decided we needed a plan, how long it took us, the data that we pulled together before our workshop, how we put together our stakeholders team, how we structured our two day meetings, and I'll kind of go through the highlights of the plan that we developed and give you a few times from – based on our experience. Next slide, please.

So to start with, why we decided we needed one, first is that we were missing some opportunities. We spend, as I said, millions of dollars a year on energy, and that includes electricity, heat, and fuel. And we really didn't have anybody solely responsible for saving money on energy. So there were lots of energy efficiency opportunities that were not being pursued for a variety of reasons.

We also had a lot of different opinions being thrown around about renewable energy versus the cheap natural gas energy. So in our economic development deals, we were getting different proposals for solar projects and wood pellet projects and natural gas extension service. So it was really just a need for us to kind of get everybody on the same page and kind of harness our resources and energy.

So the last step to this was that we needed to streamline our process. Every time a project came to us, it was kind of like starting from scratch, to put the different departments together that needed to look at the project. So if it was a solar project or a wood pellet project, it would involve multiple departments, and it just took a long time for us to get through the decision making process.

So just a small group within the tribal administration felt like it was time for us to come up with a formal strategic energy plan to get everybody on the same page, to kind of raise awareness among all the different stakeholders at the reservation, and to just get general buy-in from our group. Next slide.

So for us, the actual putting the plan together came together fairly quickly. I was at the National Tribal Energy Summit in Washington in September, and through just networking and making contacts and asking how we could go about getting a plan at Choctaw, I was led to Liz Doris at NREL, and my first call to her was in October – on October the 12th. And she confirmed, yes, they will come in and do a two or three day workshop, and help Choctaw develop its own custom energy plan. So she sent us a list of the data that we needed to gather. So we gathered that through the month of November, got our stakeholders together December 1st and 2nd. So we did a two-day session at Choctaw. They came to us.

The day after that, so I assume they wrote it on their flight back home to Colorado, but we got a two page summary that basically summarized the plan that we had come up with during our two-day workshop. And then about a month later, we got our full strategic energy plan draft, which is about a 20 page document. And we were able to get it adopted by the tribal council January the 15th. So in our situation, it was about a three month process from the first call till we got the plan adopted, and that was during the Christmas holidays. So we were – I was impressed that the tribe was able to get the resources together, and NREL was so helpful in us getting this process done. Next slide.

So the data gathering process for us, this is to establish our baseline. So we – it's basically looking at all of your energy consumption under tribal land. So we gathered 12 months of electrical usage, kilowatt hours for our major energy or electricity facilities, with sample bills in some cases. We got copies of our electrical contracts for our big facilities. We got propane usage, gallons and price paid for a 12 month period. We collected all of our energy audits that had been done by different departments, whether it was the schools or public works, and just consolidated those.

We got maps of all of our tribal housing to show how everything was dispersed and the quantity by community, gathered fleet vehicles for our tribal fleet, and it included the list of the cars, the make, model, year, and the type of fuel that they use. And we had already been working on a natural gas project, so we just dumped that – the financial analysis that had been done with that into our – into kind of our baseline data. So we used just a file sharing program called DropBox so we could put all of these big data sets and files in there, and everybody had access that needed it during our process.

So it's – it was very helpful for us just to understand the scope of our energy costs, and it's key in helping us figure out where our priorities are. So next slide, please.

So the group that we put together to put our plan in place, the coordinator, I was – I'm the director of economic development. I just was the coordinator for our project. And we put together a core team which had about six people on it. That's our chief of staff for administration, the director of development, myself, our public works director. We own an electrical subcontracting business, and it's run by a electrical engineer, he was involved, and our housing development coordinator as well.

So this core team was involved in planning our workshop, gathering our baseline data, and after the workshop, they were involved in kind of helping make sure that the plan got finished and was consistent with the workshop results.

We also included elected officials. So we've got 18 – 17 members of the tribal council and a tribal chief. So we got participation from them as well, and that is key when you want to implement your plan. Once you figure out what it is you want to do, it's very helpful to have the elected officials on board with you.

And then the key stakeholders, we had about 30 different representatives from the different key departments and enterprises. So kind of the two categories that we put into that was any department head or enterprise that represented a large energy user, so we had our schools and our hospitals and our casinos and manufacturing businesses represented, or anyone that would be heavily involved in a development project. So if we were to do a solar project or a wood pellet project, which different departments would need to be involved in that planning process for development?

So one of the things that we did do was got the chief to actually send the invitation letter, which just gave some formality to it, and some credibility to the planning exercise, because it's not easy to get the 40 people or so, plus the tribal council, to attend a meeting. So we felt like that was helpful in our exercise. Let's see. Go to the next slide, please.

So the way that we structured our meeting, NREL has a formal workshop agenda. It's a two or three day workshop, depending on what the tribe feels like it needs. So our job at Choctaw was to gather all of our baseline data and to get all of our key stakeholders to show up to this workshop. The NREL staff actually coordinated the workshop and had the agenda set.

So the way that we structured it was that day one, we got the key stakeholders group, which was about 25 to 30 different people, plus our core team, and we spent all day going through the agenda, basically gathering all the ideas, putting all the ideas on the wall, getting all the projects identified, raising awareness, raising – hearing all the concerns and issues. But that gave all of the key stakeholders the opportunity through a formal review process to put their items on the agenda.

We did start the day with a welcome and introductions by the tribal chief, which, again, just gave some credibility to the – to the planning exercise, and reminded everybody that this was key to the tribe, and important to the tribal administration, to make sure that we stuck through it and got through the two-day session and came up with a good plan.

Day two, we started in the morning with the tribal council. So we spent about three hours with them, and it included our core team of six of us. But we consciously chose to separate the tribal council session from the key stakeholder session. We shared the input that we got from our constituents with the tribal council. We asked for their input. We asked for their priorities. And so that – that worked well for us. So we spend the morning with them.

And then the afternoon was just with the core team of six, plus the NREL staff, and trying to bring it all together into a draft plan outline. So this meeting structure worked really well for us in our situation. Next slide, please.

So here is our 20 page plan that I've boiled down to one slide. So you start with the – your group develops a vision statement. So before you leave on the – at the end of the second day, there is a one or two sentence vision statement. In our situation, it was to maximize economic benefits and quality of life for the tribe through responsible, efficient, and strategic energy development and use.

And then we prioritized our activities. So in our situation, as I said, we are a very large – energy is a big part of our budget. We have lots of facilities and vehicles. So energy efficiency is one of our main focuses to start. So we're going to complete audits to all of our facilities over 5,000 feet, 5,000 square feet. We own an electrical subcontracting business, and we want to make sure our employees are trained to do all of the energy efficiency retrofits. We developed a replacement plan that says we're not going to go replace all light bulbs with LED lighting, but as they burn out, we will replace them with energy efficient lighting. It's just a more affordable way for us to proceed.

And then begin to draft some new building code. So as new facilities and homes are built, we want to develop our own energy code. So we have a – that's on our to do list, is to come up with that code.

For our transit authority, we have – we just tend to not ever dispose of a vehicle, so we have a more formal replacement plan in place now to kind of retire the vehicles that are old and energy inefficient with more energy efficient vehicles. And we're also doing a study to see if we can convert some of our vehicle fleet over to compressed natural gas.

On the renewable energy side, our situation is that we have very cheap and reliable power supplied by TVA, so we've always had a challenge figuring out which renewable energy project made financial sense. So we have just decided to find one and do it just to kind of get our feet wet and get renewable energy experience. So we don't know exactly what that is yet. We're working with NREL staff to look at some different community scale solar projects and other things. So we're – within the first two years, we want to have a renewable energy pilot project completed.

On the heating side, we do have natural gas coming to some of our community, and we want to explore the possibility to extend that. that's a big cost savings to our residents, when you compare the price of natural gas versus propane. Then operationally, it was a challenge to get all of our utility bills together. So we realized the need to have a consolidated energy usage database, because we were spending millions of dollars, but it was being in $100.00 increments at thousands of different meters located in 8 different communities and paid out of hundreds of different budgets, so it never really sunk in about how much energy was to the reservation.

And we also realized that we need to hire an energy manager. It was – the reason we were missing some opportunities is because it really wasn't any sole person's job to pursue energy efficiency or renewable energy. So it just kind of fell through the cracks. So once we realized the scale of our energy consumption and needs and opportunities, we realized that it was worth pursuing – hiring somebody or assigning somebody full-time to manage the energy projects. Then other was just kind of reviewing some of the contracts that we have in place for our large facilities with our utility companies.

So a few examples that came out of our exercise was that there was a disconnect between let's say our maintenance crew that was actually the ones replacing light bulbs. Well, they have a fixed maintenance budget, so their incentive is to get as much as they can out of their maintenance budget. LED lighting is a lot more expensive than regular lighting. So we realized that we needed some way to incentivize our maintenance crew to use energy efficient lighting. And same thing with our housing authority. They have a fixed budget to build housing, and there's a shortage of housing, but it costs a lot more to build a really energy efficient home, and the housing authority is not paying the electrical bill. So the tenant was paying that. So there was a disconnect in incentives between the people who were actually designing and building the homes and the person who was using and paying for the energy.

So we've – through the exercise, we've kind of all realized that – where the gaps were, where the silos were. Every tribe is going to have a unique situation. Your plan is going to be very different from ours, I'm sure. As you saw earlier, some tribes are focused on carbon footprint and environmental issues. Some are focused on resiliency, being off grid. Some have fossil fuels, and they're pursuing the development of that.

Our situation, we had millions of square feet of buildings. We had very low and reliable energy at $0.07 or $0.08 a kilowatt hour. So energy efficiency just ended up being the most logical first step for us. Go to the next slide, please.

 So just to wrap up, tips for success, and I think this has been said fairly consistently, but whoever becomes the coordinator for your project, just it will be helpful, I think, if it's a senior level person that can get the meeting actually on the tribe's agenda to gather the data, to – has the authority to request the data, and to get people to participate and show up to your meetings.

If you have a core team, it's very helpful for that group to be knowledgeable, to represent different aspects of the energy at your community. And actually, enthusiasm is always helpful, that they actually want to participate and want to see a good energy plan as a result. Involving elected officials is obviously key, especially when you get to the implementation phase of your plan. Involving key stakeholders that represent all the different components. It's kind of like a recipe. If you don't have that group at the table, that idea or concept will not end up in your plan. So if it's energy efficiency or environmental or workforce training or student education, you need to make sure that the – do a little thinking in advance of who needs to be at the table to make sure that that component gets represented in your plan.

I think it helps to have a sense of urgency. It's easy to put off data gathering. I mean, that could have taken us months. We kind of worked hard and got it done in one month. The workshop could have been delayed. We got that done in a few weeks. Putting the written plan together, we got that done in 30 days. That could have easily drug on for several months. And the getting it adopted by the council, we had a – kind of a – that was our – that became our deadline, was we have to have this done by the council meeting in order to get it completed. So that became our end goal, to kind of get this done for us in 90 days.

I do think it helps to get it adopted by the council formally. It shows their buy-in. When you're getting into implementation phase of your plan, it helps to speed that along. And then if you plan to apply for any grant funding, I think having this formal plan shows that this was a community-driven plan, it was adopted by the council, and it just shows support at the tribal level for any grant funding that you're going after. Next slide, please.

So that's it. I'm happy to share our process with you, our lessons learned. You're welcome to ask questions or send me an email or call, and I'll be happy to help you with anything you're thinking through. Thank you.

 

 Randy Manion:          Thanks, John. And we're going to go into Q&A now with the remaining time that we have. We'll probably go about to about 12:45 mountain time. So with that, let's get right into the questions. First question, how many attendees for this webinar? We had almost 300 folks register for this webinar, which I think is a more accurate figure, because a lot of folks who weren't able to join us today will watch it on a recording.

Also, next question, what is the percentage of good strategic plans that are developed but not implemented? Don't be bashful.

 

Alex Dane:                  This is Alex Dane from NREL. That is a great question, and I don't have a percentage or a range. But I think that is a challenge, and a pitfall to be avoided. And going back to Lesley's presentation, you know, when things fall short is when things aren't formalized or aren't – are not implemented. So it's a insightful question that leads us to say, you know, that's what should be avoided.

 

Randy Manion:           Great. Thanks, Alex. Are there any ESCOs or government programs that offer free energy audits to tribes or tribal NGOs?

 

Alex Dane:                  We can look into that. This is Alex again from NREL. And looking up if there are just general ESCOs or even a – I would submit that question even to the technical assistance on the tribal energy program. And if you have an interest in identifying an ESCO, that's something that the Office of Indian Energy could help with.

And also, this is when a company would come in and provide no up-front cost energy efficiency retrofits for different facilities within a community, and over time, the energy that you're saving from paying the utility goes to paying that company that came in and did the retrofit. So it's a nice option to do kind of a broader energy efficiency community-wide retrofit program, and to not have to pay the up-front cost for it. Technical assistance could shape – let's say you're putting that out for RFP – different elements that could be in the RFP, different types of retrofits that you would like to see, and what those look like. So there's technical assistance that could be provided even during the procurement and contracting bid process for that type of thing.

 

Randy Manion:           Okay. Great. Next question is also for you, Alex, and then the following one will be for Karen. Alex, what was the name of that GIS tool?

 

Alex Dane:                  So I named a couple. On NREL.gov, there's the tools and resources, and then there's a map section. Under the tools and resources, there are Geothermal Prospector and PVWatts, as well as the System Advisor model, which is more computational. So those are good about selecting technology.

But if we're looking at just mapping things, using the resource – the US Census, the American Fact Finder is good for information, and then the subscription service was through PolicyMap.com, and that's a – like a GIS platform that lives online, so you don't need to have a in-house GIS specialist for it.

 

Randy Manion:           Okay. Great. Thanks. Karen, question for you. It sounds like your strategic plan may be looking at taking over the utility assets. If so, could you please give us a general budget figure for that?

 

Karen Derry:              We haven't even gotten that far yet. We're still in that process. We haven't even begun to look at numbers yet. Basically, what we're doing right now is trying to get all of the information, what we have, what we need, and so our next step will be looking at budgets.

 

Randy Manion:           Okay. Great. And then someone wanted the website repeated for HUD and Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, etcetera. Just for everyone's information, the webinar and the slides will be posted at Western's website, and we'll send out a link to that website, and Alex's and Lesley's presentation did have some links. Also, Shawn Easterly will be sending out some links while we're going through the Q&A. So Shawn, if you could get some of those HUD and Office of Indian Energy links out to the group, that would be great.

Let me go to the next question here. Karen, one more question for you. What types of training did your team access?

 

Karen Derry:              We did – we actually, when we first started, we did a lot of the webinars on the NREL site to learn kind of about green energy, and they were really helpful. The other trainings that we accessed were the Department of Energy training. I was able to go to the training at NREL that the Department of Energy sponsored, and that was extremely helpful.

 

Randy Manion:           Okay. Great. John, question for you. How did you select your contractors to implement the energy efficiency projects?

 

John Hendrix:             They were selected by the different enterprises. So the – and the – we're in the Tennessee Valley Authority, and they have some preferred providers that they will reimburse part of the study for. So like our casinos contacted the Tennessee Valley Authority and selected the energy audit groups. Our public works program did the same thing when they were looking at their wastewater treatment facilities. And the tribal schools went through that program as well.

 

Randy Manion:           Okay. Great. We're going to go to the – to those attendees that have a hand raised. And if you raised your hand to ask our panel a question, I'm going to unmute you. So if you could just bear with me a moment while I go to that section. And the first hand raised here is Nabala Haku, and Nabala, I'm going to unmute you so you can ask your question. You're unmuted. Nabala, you're unmuted, if you want to ask a question. Okay. Let's go to the next hand that is raised here. We have Chitanya Kalakuri. I'm going to unmute you, and you can ask our panel your question now.

 

Audience:                    Hi, everyone. Thanks for a great presentation. That was really helpful. Thanks, Alex and John, for answering my questions. I am asking this next question on behalf of a nonprofit that has a bit of funding, a small amount, to start their first energy related project, whether it's renewable energy or energy efficiency in their community. And because it's a very small amount, they don't know where to start and how to go about it. And I think once they implement this, then they will be – then they'll be more open to thinking about a strategic energy management plan. But initially, they are just looking at retrofitting maybe the tribal center and museum.

So I was wondering if they could find additional grants, because they only have some funding. They could probably find additional grants that match these – match their – the funding that they already have, or try to get the most out of the money that they already have. So I was wondering where should they first start, and partly that was answered by applying for technical assistance. But if there's anything else that you guys would like to let me know, that would be great.

 

John Hendrix:             This is John. There are several different agencies that have funding for either energy efficiency or renewable development projects. So obviously, Department of Energy is one. The Department of Agriculture has energy efficiency and community upgrade funds. If it's housing related, Housing and Urban Development, the HUD program has energy efficiency and weatherization funds. The Bureau of Indian Affairs also has funding through some energy mineral development grants, as well as capacity building grants. So – and Bureau of Indian Education. So those are the five agencies that I'm aware of.

Audience:                    Great. Thank you. Do you know what the average time for this whole process, from applying for funding to turnaround time, would be, on an average?

John Hendrix:             The one – the only ones that we've applied for that are energy related was from the BIA, and that took about – I would say three to four months to get verbal approval, and then probably it took a full six months to actually get the paperwork completed. So from the time we submitted till the time the funding was there, it was about six months.

Audience:                    Great. Thank you so much.

Randy Manion:           Anyone else have anything to add? Okay. Great. Catherine Brokenleg, you did not put your audio PIN in, so I'm not going to be able to unmute you. Let's see here. Bear with me while I scroll through these names one more time. Grace Tyler, you did not put your audio PIN in. I won't be able to unmute you. Griffin Hagel, I'm going to unmute you so you can ask the panel your question. Go ahead.

Audience:                    All right, thanks, everybody. This has been a really helpful presentation. I was curious, in the process of energy planning, if anybody discovered tools for managing residential energy usage that were roughly analogous to commercial _____ EPA Portfolio Manager.

Randy Manion:           Well, I know Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has a website dedicated to helping residences with their energy use, so you may check that out. I think it's on the electricity markets website.

Alex Dane:                  This is Alex here, and that's a good question. That's always a hard nut to crack. And sometimes it comes down just from the requesting as much as you can from your utility provider, and cross-walking that with the number of households that are in the community. That's one method, kind of a top down approach. And then the other would be working bottom up and trying to get participation in – from households in the community on tracking utility bills and energy consumption. That's – that's a challenge, but it's a – an approach to getting at that.

And then sometimes just accessing the data through a housing authority and getting the numbers through that type of sort of at scale organization is helping for getting a whole number of different households, whether that's single family or multi-family. So –

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Alex Dane:                  – that's a couple of approaches there.

Audience:                    Okay. Thanks.

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Randy Manion:           Okay. Indiria Mandahara, I'm going to unmute you so you can ask your question.

Audience:                    Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for the great presentation. And _____ and wondering about how it works, and the level of _____ any future projects _____ in the transportation and housing sector. Do they coordinate with each other before they do – regarding how much the energy is available, and being more efficient on that? I'm just wondering in general. Thank you.

Randy Manion:           Alex, did you – oh, go ahead.

Lesley Kabotie:          This is Lesley. So one thought I have on that is that oftentimes, the conversation that we find communities and their tribes are having is a little different from what you might expect in that when the community talks about what its values and priorities are for what energy development accomplishes for them, that becomes a filter that also overlays the assessment of what the right or most appropriate or suitable energy resource development access is that a nation may want to develop.

So for example, if a community sits in the center of an abundant wind resource, but there are other – there are other – and it would make – it would seem that by the nature of the resource and its durability, that that would be the most logical development priority for the nation, the nation may say, that – developing that particular asset is in conflict with a long-standing cultural value that we have. Therefore, we choose not to develop that resource.

So sometimes, the assessment of the resource doesn't necessarily equate to the game plan that the tribe undertakes to develop what it has available to it.

Randy Manion:           Thank you, Lesley. Next question, Sarah Eastbourne, you have your hand raised. I'm going to unmute you. You're unmuted now to ask the panel your question.

Audience:                    Hi. I – thank you so much for this seminar. It's been really informative. I just had a question regarding renewable energy firms that are interested in working with American Indian tribes, and what you – how we can work together to help work through this process.

Alex Dane:                  Well, this is Alex. NREL – the Office of Indian Energy has a number of training workshops for project development and finance. I think they're targeted towards the sort of tribal decision maker audience, but I think they're open to all. So I think if you want to gain a insightful understanding of the tribal development process, there's those opportunities. There might be opportunities to even meet with tribes that are interested in projects themselves.

Audience:                    Thank you.

Randy Manion:           All right. Let's just see if there are any other hands raised here. It doesn't look like it. Just give me one – well, there may be a few more here. Let's see. No, there aren't. No, it doesn't look like it. So with that, let's conclude today's webinar. I want to go to the next slide. This is a link where the recordings will be held – or posted. We'll send that out to everyone.

These are the upcoming webinars. Next one is "Exploring Your Energy Markets." We have some professional energy marketers to talk about how electricity is traded on the wholesale market. And then following that, we'll have understanding – or "Transmission and Grid Basics for Tribal Economic Energy Development," talking about how the transmission grid works, how transmission planning is conducted, how interconnection requests are processed, and then you can see the other webinars for the remaining part of the year.

I want to thank our speakers, Sarai, Alex, Lesley, Karen, and John, for great presentations. And with that, do any of the panelists have anything else they want to add or say before we conclude? Okay.

Karen Derry:              Thanks.

Randy Manion:           You're very welcome. Have a great day, everyone.

John Hendrix:             Thank you.

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