This webinar focused on national and international priorities, entry points for tackling climate issues in power sector programming, and resources and tools to address these challenges.

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Climate Change Mitigation in the Power Sector

Session are to number 1-- better understand current US and international climate change policies and the relevance of these to USAID's mission and programming. Number 2-- to recognize how the power sector fits into the broader climate change picture and opportunities for climate change mitigation. And then number 3-- how in award that we manage in the energy division called the Strengthening Utilities and Promoting Energy Sector Reform or SUPER Task Order can help your mission to address power sector climate change priorities. I want to emphasize that the session is not meant to provide insight on the implications of recent executive orders and an announcement from the White House on the internal USAID strategy development process for climate change, which some folks may have heard about. We're not going to touch on that it's outside of the remit of the Deloitte team that's going to be presenting today. Instead, we're going to use this session to try to connect recent statements and the renewed focus on climate change to practical steps that we can take in our work with our partners, specifically in the power sector, how we can help to translate higher level concepts about climate change mitigation into practice, linking progress on climate action with the critical goals of providing energy for development in our partner countries. So we're thinking about what is going to resonate with our partners as climate change increases in visibility as a policy priority. And how can we help guide resources to encourage the greatest progress on climate change mitigation issues? And then, how do we tie those actions back to the fundamental goals of energy for development? There are a lot of discussions that are happening at AID and that are going to be taking place over the next few months. We hope that this session is informative. But we are also eager to learn what you already been doing in this area, and understand where you have more questions or would like to see more discussions in the future. In terms of logistics for the session, here's the agenda. We'll hold the Q&A at the end, please feel free to put any questions or comments you have in the chat throughout the session. And we'll try to get to as many of those as we can towards the end. I'd also like to introduce our speakers. First we have Hoai Huynh, who is a specialist leader at Deloitte Consulting in its International Energy practice. He has over 20 years of experience in the energy, water, environmental, climate change, and engineering spaces, working with the US government, consulting aerospace and defense industries, and non-profit sectors. He has extensive experience in developing countries, managing and implementing programs in power sector pollution technologies, clean energy, climate change, mitigation and adaptation, environmental and water and infrastructure programs. He has served as an environmental enforcement officer in the US EPA'S air division and manager for Europe Eurasia in the US EPA's Office of International Affairs, designing and managing portfolios on environment and energy in Central Asia, the Caucasus, Ukraine, and Moldova. He has managed USAID, World Bank, and Asian Development programs in the power sector. We also have Sophia Peters, who is a senior manager at Deloitte Consulting in the public sector practice. She is the Chief of Party for our SUPER Task Order, with a background in clean energy and energy efficiency policy, electricity markets and supply chain, and power utility operations. She has worked in a number of emerging markets on UN and UNFCCC policy as conference of the parties participant, and a federal level US domestic policy for the EPA and DOE. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Hoai to get us started. Thank you very much, Tom. And thank you for everyone, for joining. Good morning. Good afternoon. I see some folks, so good evening to you as well. And it's nice to see some familiar faces or names on the participation list. We're going to jump right into it. I think hopefully well, this will be a good session, and informative for us. As we discussed, we're very excited to have the call, and especially right after a very exciting Earth Day week last week, in the Climate Leaders Summit, where there were some terrific discussions and announcements that are made. And I think this is a good time to start helping us set a path towards working a little more with you and USAID being the kind of vector. So the next few slides I just go into a quick overview of some of the context that, well for climate change policies in the US and then get into a little bit of how the impacts and opportunities for climate change mitigation within the power sector and how we support, then how USA can support the objectives and goals of the administration. As you know the climate change urgency is at the highest priority for the present administration both domestically and abroad. Administration has set a variety of climate change goals that affect all US government agencies. And then this slide here we're going to discuss a few of the executive orders that were released over the past few months right off the bat that pertain to our sector, looking at the decarbonization of the power sector, executive order, [INAUDIBLE] energy innovation and research and development climate change and the foreign policy. Executive Order 13990 is a focus on protecting the public health and the environment and restoring science and tackling climate change crisis. Within that scope, the order directs all the executive departments agencies to review existing programs and public regulations policies to address the current crisis. Included within the provisions of the are interim social policy and social cost of carbon and methane and nitrous oxide. And as well as discussions are developing innovative financing mechanisms to leverage private sector engagement dollars to maximize investments in clean energy revolution that will move forward towards, Executive 14,007 is the president's Council of Advisors of Science and Technology which creates a [INAUDIBLE] to help accelerate innovation and supply change resilience including issues related to reliability, coal supply chain, disaster response, risk management, energy storage and large capacity batteries for example that's relevant to the energy sector. Under the climate change in foreign policy Executive Order for 2008 of climate change at the center at the forefront of foreign policy and national security planning and with Executive 14,008 agencies are involved in international work to submit plans so that incorporate climate change interventions and to their program missions and activities. For example, the secretary of defence is to lead the development of the climate risk analysis to complete international security analysis and simulations within their programs. That's a key Executive Order that we're working under especially for USAID missions abroad. And there are a variety of memos that have been published and released as well that the administration including the memo of restoring trust in government, insights of integrity and evidence based policy-making. There is much emphasis within the administration on placing priority on scientific integrity policy and evidence based work. OK? Next slide please. At this slide here there's a brief overview of some of the emissions targets and gaps that have been released. The figure on the left is from the climate action tracker, gives you a sense of the climate policies and the emissions targets, the gaps that we're working under within the framework of global climate change emissions. For the general context as many of you know that UN Framework Convention on Climate Change the UNFCCC and the Paris Accord, we are excited to see last week that as part of the US re-entry into the Paris Agreement that the US government released the US is all nationally determined contributions as part of the Paris Agreement. There are several countries under the UN climate change convention who signed a pact to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, ideally 1.5 degrees Celsius. 2 degrees Celsius for those of you converting is right around 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or so, relative to pre-industrial levels. This requires about roughly a 7.6 cut in greenhouse gas reduction emissions each year from 2022 to 2030. And the US for example our target and our legacy NDC is targeting around a 50% to 52% reduction by 2030. And within our own national state determined contributions report we outlined our priorities and opportunities for us to seek to achieve that target by 2030. Similarly, within the UN framework other countries have signed on and have also submitted that determined contributions. Within the target decarbonization of the power sector has been cited as crucial to this goal. The emissions from the power sector represent about 2/3 of emissions of the greenhouse gas reduction. So this sector is key and core to countries achieving their targets for greenhouse gas reductions. Just for context, each country as I mentioned proposed a nationally determined contributions NDCs and reports on how they will tackle the greenhouse gas emissions and address climate adaptation measures. To date as of 2019, 184 countries have submitted the National contributions report to the UN. And within that about 103 or so have two specific private sector targets, as I mentioned that's a key sector within that contributes the most to greenhouse gas reduction emissions. Then they see themselves body efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to climate change impacts. Asia and Africa according to most of the reports need the most support for developing carbon markets and economics instruments and mitigation action. USAID has invested significant amount of support to Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, especially for through the Power Africa initiative to achieve global GHG emissions reduction goals, annual NG CO2 emissions needs to decline by about 70% of today's levels by 2050 according to the International Energy Agency. OK? Next slide. Within this context what's the policy relevance to USAID and partner countries on climate change? What USAID emissions do to get more engaged in climate change? But the fact is the USAID has been doing already very much engaged in climate change in the power sector over the years but the opportunities are most of the opportunities that we've been in invention is focused on supporting national ministries and energy agencies on helping with the National country's commitments to within their respective and national contributions and disease and assisting with updating, supporting respective countries development or implementation of their NAMAs. NAMAs are Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions and they represent action to reduce emissions in developing countries and within the sustainable development goals of each of the countries there. The NAMAs can represent the people at the National level as well as at the local levels and project level as they work towards contributions to reduce greenhouse gas reduction and as part of their plans to achieve the NDC targets for their countries. In addition to building capacity at national ministries and helping them to achieve targets for the NDCs through opportunities for USAID to focus on expanding, engaging the private sector and the importance of working with the private sector to be part of the solutions for greenhouse gas reductions. Expanding access to finance, increasing ability to leverage the Green Climate Fund for example to finance projects, helping with national budgeting and climate mainstreaming for greenhouse gas reduction, creating a clean energy export and private investment initiatives and there has been some really good examples of how USAID has supported private sector engagement and de-risking a private sector engagement, the ability to look at developing countries. On the technical side there are opportunities to work and modify program designed, prioritized decarbonization, key energy technology deployment and helping the countries shift to focus away from coal and natural gas in some place, some instances and aligning that sector realities with counterparts. That the work that the USAID has done on low emissions development strategies within Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America have all come back to the Gottfredson power sector of greenhouse gas reductions but economic development and the sustainable development goals the countries. And that's an area that's important focus of the work that we're not just working with just reducing greenhouse gas reduction but all of those efforts are targets on development goals the countries making sure that integration mainstreaming of climate change mitigation efforts are aligned with the economic goals of those countries as well. OK. And mitigating climate change and the power sector there, our next few slides is going through some of the general categories of activities that the USAID has been involved with and we're looking to continue to be engaging to help mitigate climate change emissions. And power such as mentioned is inextricably tied to global emissions reductions goals. As I mentioned 2/3 of global emissions of CO2 are coming from the energy sector and within this sector coal represents 30% of the global energy related to CO2 emissions. And the figure on the right and actually you can see the numbers but I guess they're quite overview where NDC power targets are. And typically an indication that of the need to be more expansive than simply increasing renewable energy targets. At the top line of the 100 countries green NDCs, 92 of them will have renewable energy targets relative to solar and wind, the top four, solar wind and hydropower opportunities for greenhouse gas reduction, renewable energy and towards the lower end we're looking at a modest gas to power projects, fuel switching, electricity storage and rural electrification. So I think they are the opportunities to help them meet their mitigation targets by expanding beyond renewable energy integration and then everyone up to USAID projects. OK? And how do we help the power sector reduce greenhouse gas emissions? There are three types, these are not comprehensive but most of the types of activities with USAID and others engage in focus on climate change and finance investments, improving the regulatory policy environment and governance and looking at innovation and deployment of energy, supply chain infrastructure initiatives in countries. So next few slide will go over these three areas. And briefly, in terms of investments this has been a great emphasis of USAID over the years in Asia and elsewhere and as well as many of the developing countries in terms of the points of access to finance and the recognition that substantial investment is required for the power sector to meet climate change mitigation targets. Over $1.7 trillion coins arena is needed by 2030 to implement the RA targets alone contained within the NDCs have been submitted to UNFCCC. And then the graphic on the right is very quick indication of where some of the needs are on finance but combining both traditional contributions and unconditional contribution to [INAUDIBLE] the young coalition contributions what the countries are allocating or could implement without any support from the local conditions, that is from their own resources and capabilities. And the condition contributions in blue and red actually are relative to working with donor organizations and financiers who have conditions on the use of the funds that are similar to ISL, even the Thai date support. Asia has the largest investment needs, as you can see over $1.1 trillion relative to the other regions in Africa. We're looking at $226 billion and even in the Middle East about $30 billion and the small island states or the developing countries about $15 billion in investment needs for to meet climate change mitigation targets, yeah. There's a bit of relative the USAID program on finance where there were some great examples of successful private financial support that USAID has provided over the years. The P-farm project for example in Asia got the financial networks for example where USAID has supported projects to increase private sector engagement in clean energy programs and linking that to GHG reduction targets as well. Next slide. Relative to the other components looking at the unique environment around greenhouse gas emissions reductions, the power sector improving regulations and policies and the governance structure within the developed countries that the USAID works in is another opportunities for support and improving the ability of the countries to achieve NDC targets. Within these countries there are many overlapping layers of regulation that govern the power sector, the countries have NDCs and legislative mandates, the Chinese have their own approach and planning a new way to resource plans IRPs. USAID for example has really spearheaded the IRP work by adding another R into the process of integrating resource and resilience planning, so the climate change is integral to the energy planning process though. And regulators are tariffs and incentives and in many of the countries with the USAID works and as you know the energy sector has a political context as well so the political economy of these countries that have played a part in both the governance and the regulatory environment that we work in terms of helping them achieve GHG emissions targets. The regulation these countries need to be aligned and streamlined to meet climate change goals. The figure on the right other than the other 97 countries within the Cs only 94 countries have included renewable energy power targets in both NDC and the National plants where the NAMAs of the sector. Oftentimes many of these countries have sector specific NAMAs and the energy sector in particular, as data, for example, it does. Next slide. And then the third opportunity category so looking at innovations and technology innovation deployment and opportunities for engagement at the technical level and the energy supply chain infrastructure from generation, transmission, distribution to end users and the customers within their opportunities to engage in supporting the addition of a new generation. Next is critical but also addressing coal assets and has a great flexibility, making use of sectors and proven energy, reduce energy consumption and supporting initiatives that are less energy intensive. And incorporating digital technology, smart metering and other things and the similar opportunities to help towards achieve reductions, and I'm making sure I'm working with the time-- within generation, transmission, distribution, and customer service thereafter to prioritize more i.e in clean energy generation, low emissions in fossil fuel generations technology. For example, a transmission the speed opt-in to accommodate a wider range of climate scenarios with the transmission work. In distribution side for example there's an opportunity to deploy smart meters, improving transparency and the work and improving customer choice to reach climate change goals. And at the customer end user level the opportunity to prioritize energy efficient appliances, accommodating in future electric vehicles and flins for example and open that opportunity for more customer choice climate change preferences into that. OK, the next slide. So with that I'm going to transfer over to Sophia [INAUDIBLE]. Hi, everyone. OK. So I'm here to introduce SUPER, the strengthening utilities and promoting energy reform task order which besides having an excellent acronym, the most important thing to note about it is that it is as you can tell from the title squarely focused on the power sector and the utility as the linchpin of that sector. And the health of the electricity sector as a whole. So given that, the tools and the specialists and the methodologies and the approaches that are available to mobilize under SUPER are exactly the types of things that missions need to look at to help advance these types of low emission development activities related to the power sector. As what I mentioned making changes in power sector reform will be integral for all of the partner countries in the next five to 10 years to meet their NDC targets, those nationally determined contributions. But doing those have really serious implications for the power sector, how the power sector is operated and how it can be integrated into power sector planning in a healthy and sustainable way. So incorporating new types of generation, adopting older types of generation, managing the impact of that has the cost of electricity supply chain. Those are the basic tools and methodologies that are available under SUPER because we have a plethora of electricity related projects that we're moving forward. So these are the initial steps and ways that we think would be a good place for emissions to start understanding the implications of power sector reform as it relates to low emissions development strategies and as it relates to emission reductions goals. And the other important thing to note about SUPER is that it's a relatively flexible mechanism. It's a task order under the energy to IDAQ and accommodate all sorts of buyins from partner emissions so that we can really work with you all on these three types of activities wherever your mission is in the journey and more importantly wherever the partner country that you're working with is on this journey. So we can help set the agenda, we can help plan the intervention and we can help mobilize some of the activities. So I'm going to just talk about those three areas now and then Tom will circulate the deck so you can have some examples of what some of this might look like. So if you want to work to set the climate change agenda to understand what the implications are for the power sector, you've got to start with both the mission strategy, which is the CDCS and in the country's strategy for how it's going to meet those nationally determined contributions and what role the electricity sector will play in that. The important thing to note that NDCs like the US's NDC are normally set by policy and higher level political bodies. So those emission reduction goals that are to come from the electricity sector, either the increased amount of renewable energy and renewable energy generation and/or increased energy efficiency standards. Those need to be translated and walked back into those key power sector documents. They may not have been developed with by the people who are running and operating the power sector and keeping it stable. So part of setting the agenda is expanding the NDCs and then understanding how those NDCs relate to the actual power sector, plans to the IRPs to the capital investment planning and we can help you all look through those goals and understand where the reasonable, what country should start with in order to keep a balanced and healthy electricity sector. OK next slide. We can also work with the mission. So if the country has a relatively robust set of emission reduction goals from power sector reforms, we can help engage with counterparts to plan those interventions. They may say, we want to increase the amount of renewable energy generation on the grid or we want to expand renewable energy options and in rural electrification areas. We can help design those interventions such that they make sense and can be instituted within the power sector itself. I think one of the important things to note here is that a lot of countries may see the, I mean and we've all read it in the news that charting these emission reductions from their electricity sector growth may be seen as mitigating their potential or being a challenge for them to meet but actually we can work with them to plan the interventions such that there are economic and job growth potentials that come out of them. In those interventions big plans such that they're mobilizing clean technology to create new jobs or to open up new segments of the economy. So really working with their counterparts to understand what the NDCs look like, what those interventions can look like and how they can advance not only power sector goals but other development objectives I think is a real area where USAID chines in relation to other development partners and where SUPER can help with the basic blocking and tackling of what these interventions and activities can look like. All right, next slide. Finally SUPER can help the mission take action. So if there are a relatively robust set of activities and interventions already in flight as we mentioned a lot of country almost all countries submitted NDCs in 2015. So there are a number of activities that are already moving forward. So if those are already moving forward, one of the areas where USAID can help and SUPER can help specifically is understanding the landscape of climate finance and of other investment opportunities that can accelerate some of those emission reduction activities that can accelerate and help bring to fruition a number of renewable energy opportunities coming on the grid, or a lot has been made about how many of the Fortune 500 companies, I think it's 30%, have corporate commitments to take on climate change activity and goals. So there's a lot of pent up demand from corporations to help accelerate projects. So where can we help match those corporate commitments to activities on the ground? We can cross do that and help counterparts understand that. And then finally, another thing that I think is really interesting is that since a lot of countries are already taking forward these power sector reforms, they're already implementing grid stabilization technologies, so they're already implementing increased amounts of renewable or increased energy efficiency standards. But they need to sort of systematize and track those actions such that they relate back to their country's nationally determined contributions so that those activities that they're taking and moving forward are being tracked at the National level. And sometimes the power utilities, the system operators, the generation companies don't speak the same language and don't really want to speak the same language as the UNCCC in terms of tracking that work and then tracking that work in a way that relates to its emissions reductions potential and what's been actualized. So those are ways that we can help sort of with missions move forward, continue to move forward things that are being taken forward in the power sector. And then here there are a couple of illustrative ways and examples that we can help your mission around setting the agenda of brainstorming how to help on climate change, coming up with a set of activities that might make the most sense. So if it's sort of reengaging in the sector, what are ways that USAID can help? What are the viable power sector projects that can be taken on? What we can rank those according to emission reductions impact or economic impact and then most importantly according to how USAID can help? And we can sort of help the mission, look at the field of viable opportunities for the power sector and then move those forward in the way that is the most apt for USAID. I'll [AUDIO OUT] up there-- there are a couple other examples of how we can help but Tom's going to share these slides and I definitely want to move and save the last 10 minutes for a question and answer. So I guess my first question to all of you on the field would be, what are you seeing from counterparts? Are they asking USAID for help with emission reduction activities or meeting those targets? Are those specifically related to the power sector? What are you'll seeing in the field in terms of priorities from utility companies and how they're passing through those? Does anybody want to come up with me? Maybe I could raise something that I'm hearing and which I am hearing from missions in the chat, I've had questions about and this goes back to a point that I made. I think one thing that people are saying to me when they're asking what do all these policies mean for us, is we are already doing a lot of renewable energy work, we don't want to do more renewable energy work. Isn't climate change mitigation and the power sector just about renewable energy. And so I wanted to give you a chance to talk a bit more about where some of those opportunities might be outside of the renewable energy sphere in the countries that we're operating in. Maybe particularly where as I see Mark's comment here about adequacy reliability where those are still a challenge. What are some other opportunities beyond renewable energy only that we should be thinking about? Why do you want to take on? Mark's question? Tom's question. I think some of the opportunities fall for engagement of the attain levels. So we're seeing a lot of work on the power Africa programs and efforts in Asia as well in terms of improvement where both do the uptake of GHG emissions calculations as well. For example, the Saudi question that the UPA and Ghana may re-examine it for the emissions calculations tools, make sure they're reporting correctly on the NDCs as well and there are opportunities to improve the enabling environment for the sector and the governance structures or so. And I'll address any questions there. Thanks yeah. And Mark I appreciate your comment on the fact that the utilities are focused more on affordability, adequacy and reliability for economic growth. And one question I think is how we are communicating the benefits of some of the climate change mitigation steps than a country might take and their linkages to those points. Sophia Huei, do you want to talk it all about what sorts of tools or metrics or other benefits that are more linked to the points that Mark states, affordability, adequacy, reliability. How can we integrate certain points and the benefits around the steps we might take to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions with those points as well? Yeah. And I think a little bit of this in terms of the economic growth linkage as we mentioned earlier, much of the work that under the enormous of the countries involved and especially in the power sector is the combination of helping them address the customer side of the issues as well as the industry side in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. So that they're looking at the willingness and ability of customers to pay for energy services and emphasizing programs such as productive use of energy and really linking the energy sector work the impacts with the economic context in the country is the one of the economic sectors that are most affected by the changes in the power sector services that are affected by climate change. And efforts to reduce consumption have to be very closely tied to economic development. So with globally there are efforts by USAID in other words over the years on low emission development strategies to help them with national policies to help to adjust to develop plans for energy sector reform within the context of economic plans. And especially now with more emphasis on the impacts on the bottom of populations and issues of equity and inclusion come up within the context of climate change emissions reduction efforts abrupt change there to really make a close connection between the technical work of the power sector reform effort with social impacts and issues related to equity inclusion and affordability of energy services. And [INAUDIBLE]. And Sophia. Yeah, I think utilities talk about climate change a lot of this has been needs to be top of mind for them to well it feels like climate change targets may be imposed on these utility companies but they're sort of scrambling to meet their adequacy and reliability targets while getting these increasingly challenging renewable energy procurement mandates. They need help around balancing that and understanding what goes first and then understanding how, what systems, what transmission operation and transmission systems and controls they need to put in place to meet those targets. I mean that's something not only in our partner countries but in the US that that's critical as we saw in Texas. Understanding the broad range of impacts that climate change are going to have on the grid and how they can balance that reliability and even the initial sort of scenario planning that utilities are using is not adequate enough now. So helping them translate those climate change impacts into something that's not just mandated on them, but something that they need to do to ensure their adequacy and reliability, and to ensure their resiliency is a real big area of study, and a lot of opportunities that we've investigated in the US and in some developed countries can be translated to utilities that are just putting in place those systems. So there's a lot of opportunity for that I think. Thanks and I think that [AUDIO OUT] you're raising that point because it is something where as climate change mitigation becomes sort of a major message from the US government we're also going to have to work to translate it in a way that suggests that there are, it's not just about reducing emissions there are benefits that can be gained and people should be as focused on those as on the emissions part of it in the countries where we work. I see a memo regarding sort of the limited uptake in energy efficiency because it's not a quote unquote sexy activity. And she's asking about the movement towards EE work more broadly. We're looking at the calculations of greenhouse gas emissions that are avoided and linkages to other economic growth opportunities. I think this is a very good one because I think it is a push to make energy efficiency more prominent but we are still I think trying to figure out how to integrate it into our programs. So Paul, do you have any thoughts on that? No, I think the efficiency question is interesting, it hasn't been agreed as high profile enough but there's been a lot of talk on energy efficiency and the experience in Asia has been I would like to say on the commercial side of energy efficiency as part of the contribution to achieving GHG targets. The USAID has actually done a lot of work under those with a sources of work on energy efficiency clean development that was a big improvement for five years where we looked at industrial energy opportunities in Bangladesh and elsewhere energy efficiency benchmarking efforts and focusing on more on support for facilities and buildings and political structures and improving energy consumption efforts there. And these energy efficiency efforts are very attractive to the private sector engagement more easily quantify the cost benefits of having more energy efficient production and processes within the industry. So I think there are a lot more opportunities for increasing and spending energy efficiency efforts as part of the contribution for NDC target achievements there. Yeah. One thing I would add too is this goes to sort of measuring and tracking what countries are actually doing and then translating that into the mechanisms that need to be included in the NDCs and the UNFCCC. Countries are putting in energy efficiency mandates that are helping mainstream like helping implement standards for appliances, for industrial companies but oftentimes what's lost is translating that progress up into the what needs to be reported out at a national level because those two different types of entities aren't speaking the same language. So that's where I think we can really help record, translate, track that information, provide that documentation to counterparts so that they're able and equipped to do it and to report on their bit work. I do want to respond quickly on the coal flexing and sort of how we can adapt the current generation stock to understand, to accommodate more intermittent grid. There's been a lot of some of the National laboratories in the United States are doing quite a bit of research around that. The National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh it's doing a lot of studies in terms of different technologies that can be implemented that at transmission level and then at the generation site to help hold coal existing coal stock ramp up and down more appropriately with a more intermittent grid. So a lot of that can be-- there's a lot of learning on that in sort of older, countries with older generation infrastructure that can be brought to some of the partner countries that may not be able to bring on or want to bring on a whole slew of renewable energy generation but want to maybe adapt its current stock to take on a more intermittent grid. So I definitely think there's a lot of technology innovation that can be adopted there and that can be taken forth with partner countries and be a great thing to explore. And India rise has done a really good job of promoting that innovation and seeking innovation from within the country to help with some of the core flexing needs, it's really grateful. Thanks Sophia. And Mark I see your question and that is probably a question that goes sort of to the internal dialogue and so I may let Deloitte off the hook about the impact on the Clean Energy Framework. But I think the broader point and Sophia I appreciate you raising that. There are so many countries where the transition is going to have to consider the existing stock of generation plants and the prospects for eliminating everything that's thermal in the next couple of in the next 10 years or so is probably low. There are maybe opportunities to think about what could be done in a flexible operation as well as potential financial solutions. The USAID I think you're looking at, sort of the early closure of coal plants and securitization of the remaining debt to try to bring down emissions more quickly, is that an option in some of our partner countries? Probably not but looking at other opportunities is certainly something we should be doing. So I appreciate that you raise that would deal with that. Maybe we can take this last question from Mohamed and then we'll close out. Sophia the question is, will people have the opportunity to look into energy utilization? And Mohamed I'm going to try to expand. Well, I think you're saying I'm assuming this means sort of end use of electricity and things of that nature but please correct me if I'm wrong or if there's something else you'd like them to touch on. Yeah so I think if I'm understanding that question correctly it's around productive use and around the use of electricity. So, that would go back to the different sector pathways that NDCs have for emission reductions. If there are emission reductions and use or from a big industrial customers, reducing their load or residential customers reducing their load certainly SUPER has done quite a bit of work and its predecessor contract truck has done quite a bit of work on helping end users, customers utilize electricity more efficiently, utilized less electricity and do sort of take the electricity that's being produced by the sector and making sure that it's being tracked and monitored and reduced in the right way. There is a whole component of that where we can work with sort of the end customer and the end user depending on what class of customer that is, industrial, residential, commercial and helping them utilize that electricity more efficiently. And that will be critical for meeting a lot of the emission reduction targets for our partner countries. I think electrification of the fleet goes in there as well. There's a lot to be done there. Thanks Sophia. With that, I'm going to wrap this up. I want to thank everybody for joining us today and hope this was informative. As I mentioned at the beginning of the call we do view this as a sort of a discussion amongst many that are happening at 8:00 and if there are things that you'd like to hear further about in future webinars or other methods of communication, please let me know. At the energy division we're always looking for opportunities to expand sort of access to information for our colleagues in the field and beyond. So if there's anything we can do to help out please let us know. I will be sharing the recording of this webinar later and I will also share a fact sheet on SUPER if you have a desire to hear more about that mechanism or you're looking to get some work going we're certainly happy to engage with you on that front. And I want to say thanks again for the initial thinking and discussion, I thought there were a lot of interesting ideas. And one thing that strikes me is there are the challenges of linking our power sector work with broader issues, economic growth with regards to end use of technologies, energy efficiency, I think a big problem there is that sometimes there's no logical or clear home for energy efficiency work in the countries that we're working in, and it's hard to even figure out where to start from. And so I think that looking at that as an issue is something we can start to do as well. So I came away from this with some ideas and some additional questions of my own. So thanks again, and we look forward to talking with you all the future, and thanks to the Deloitte team for their presentation, and have a great Tuesday. Thanks a lot.

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Strengthening Utilities and Promoting Energy Reform (SUPER)

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USAID’s SUPER program supports partner country counterparts with priority projects to improve energy sector utility performance.

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Through its established field presence, global and country-level industry networks, and long-standing relationships with government and private sector partners, USAID embraces an integrated approach to energy sector reform to reduce barriers to private investment and open clean energy markets, strengthen governing institutions, reduce air pollution and emissions, and develop resilient and financially viable power systems.