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(upbeat music).

(bell rings) - Good afternoon, everyone.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, March 18th, and I'm Emily Bacha, vice president of public affairs for the Ohio Environmental Council and proud City Club member.

It is my pleasure to welcome you to the annual Paul A. and Sonja F. Unger International Forum on Cleveland in the World, which is also part of our Sustainable Ohio Northeast Ohio series.

At the Ohio Environmental Council, we work for pragmatic, science-based solutions to secure healthy air, land, and water for all who call Ohio home.

And that includes working with leaders at all levels of government to facilitate bold climate action.

Today, I am honored to welcome Sonia Aggarwal, the senior advisor for climate policy and innovation at the White House of Domestic Climate Policy.

When President Biden began his term, the New York Times commented that the president had entered his office with the largest team ever assembled inside the White House to tackle global warming.

It was a bold move after several years of disruptions and disinvestment throughout multiple federal agencies in the fight against climate change.

Included on this new team in the Office of Domestic Climate Policy is Sonia Aggarwal, who has worked in the energy field for over 15 years.

Sonia grew up here right here in Northeast Ohio, attended Laurel School, and then Hawken School, where she graduated.

She would go on to obtain a BS in astronomy and physics at Haverford College in Pennsylvania.

Sonia was co-founder and vice president at Energy Innovation, a San-Francisco-based, nonpartisan energy and environmental policy firm.

While there, she led America's Power Plan, bringing together 200 electricity policy experts and developed the Energy Policy Simulator that would analyze environmental, economic, and public health impacts of climate and energy policy.

And in January 2021, Sonia was appointed by President Biden to serve on his climate team.

- [Audience Member] Whoo!

- As we head in today's... That's worth an applause.

(audience applauds) - As we head into this forum today, though, it's worth remembering what a recent speaker said on this stage a couple of weeks ago.

Chris Kuhar of the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo reminded us that climate change doesn't care who you voted for in the last election.

And climate change doesn't care whether or not you believe it exists, or if it's anthropomorphic.

It's here and it's happening.

So the question before us is this: What are we going to do about it?

If you have questions for Sonia, you can text them to 330-541-5794.

Again, that's 330-541-5794.

You can also tweet them at the City Club, and we'll try to work them in.

Members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Sonia Aggarwal.

(audience applauds) - Thank you so much.

What a fantastic introduction.

And it's so great to see so many incredible organizations here today and students.

And, I mean, I'm just amazed at all of you who took time out of your day today to come over here and have this conversation.

So thank you so much and to the City Club for hosting such important conversations every single week.

So thanks again.

I just wanna start by saying that, earlier this week, I was sitting at home drinking some coffee and reading the headlines, and I happened to notice that on Wednesday of this week, the forecast for the North Pole was 50 degrees hotter than normal.

That's skirting melting temperatures.

And that's really wild, given that it's currently right now the polar night, which is about six months where the sun doesn't really come up over the horizon, and it's dark, and it's usually extremely cold.

So I'm not telling you about the North Pole because of what's happening in this really cold and inhospitable corner of our world, but I'm telling you because it really struck me, and it really sent tingles up my spine to see that forecast because it's about what that means for people.

And it's about what that means for Americans across this country and for people around the world.

And so I'm gonna start with just a couple of words on what's going on in our atmosphere, the impacts of climate change.

But I really wanna take heart in what was said in the introduction around spending most of our time today on the solutions.

That's what I really love to talk about, and that's what I wake up every day trying to work on.

And I know that many of you in the room are already working on a lot of these issues and helping to ensure that we are all moving in the right direction.

So I'm really looking forward to the discussion that we'll all be able to have in the second part of this hour.

So the reason that wild weather forecast at the North Pole caught my attention was because having a cold North Pole keeps the jet stream strong, and it keeps the jet stream stable.

And also, it keeps the jet stream further north in our hemisphere.

But when the poles get too warm, that can destabilize that jet stream and cause it to start to wobble around and start drawing the cold air down from the poles, drawing the warm wear up from the south in this pattern that kind of flip-flops back and forth between hot and cold.

And that's the kind of effect that I think we've all experienced over recent years, where we get super excited and get out our shorts and our tank tops, and then we only find out the next day we have to get our really big coats back out again because it's cold again.

But when we bounce from one extreme in temperature to the other like that in short periods of time, it has real consequences for our communities.

So last year, four out of every five Americans experienced a heat wave.

And in the '80s, we went almost three months on average between billion dollar weather disasters in the United States, but in the last five years, we've seen billion dollar disasters happening every 18 days on average.

What does that mean?

A billion dollars of destruction.

It means flooding that can spread diseases.

It means power outages that threaten people's lives.

And it means fires.

When I was pregnant back in 2020, I was living in Oakland, California.

And that was a time when record-setting wildfires were burning in every direction from where I was living.

And actually, on my baby's due date, the sun never came out.

It was still dark at noon.

And when I looked at up in the sky, the sun was this dark orange color.

It was totally wild.

I just remember walking into the hospital and coming back out after some tests, and it still was dark out.

And I was like, "Wow."

I thought I was just maybe out of it because I was, you know, close to going into labor, but it was a wild experience.

And by the end of that year, 9,917 fires had burned more than 4 million acres in California alone.

And that destroyed more than 10,000 structures.

Those were people's homes and people's livelihoods.

Just one of those fires burned more than a million acres across an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.

And these are the kind of impacts that cause the United Nations to say that climate change is blinking code red for humanity.

It's really tough.

It's deadly serious, and I feel it, personally.

We had a young activist from Kenya come in and speak with us recently, and he told us how important it is to allow ourselves to feel that pain, and to feel the sadness, and to let it motivate us.

When we tune into the news these days or hear from loved ones across the Atlantic, we feel the weight of our world's dependence on fossil fuels.

In the news of Russia's attacks in Ukraine, that's been devastating.

And watching those images really shakes me, personally, to the core.

And energy is playing a key part in that conflict.

President Biden has said in no uncertain terms that the recent events should motivate us to accelerate our transition to clean energy, not to do more fossil fuels.

The path to energy security runs through clean energy.

Now is the time, and we have to take action, we have to take it at scale, and we have to move with the speed that these interlinked crises demand.

That's why I decided to move my family across the country to work for President Biden, and I joined his team on Inauguration Day, because the president campaigned on a bold vision to tackle the climate crisis with the urgency that science demands, and by seizing the opportunity that lies in meeting this moment to build a strong domestic energy sector.

The American people were inspired by his vision on the campaign, and put him in office with a mandate to deliver on that vision.

And that gives us, his team, a real moment of opportunity right now.

In the challenge of tackling climate change, President Biden sees that we can lower costs for families through clean energy, improve health in our communities, improve equity, and create good-paying jobs and careers for people in every community around America.

And I feel really good about what we've been able to deliver on over the last 14 months, even though I wake up every day knowing that we need to move even more quickly.

This work is really about making life better for people and finding a path forward to a healthier, safer, and more secure future for our kids and grandkids.

So since his first day in office, the president has been working to tackle the climate crisis and deliver all of these benefits.

So I wanna take a little bit of time to just reflect over the past year, and then we can talk about what more we need to do.

So we reentered the Paris Agreement on day one in office.

And within the first week, the president set the first ever targets to reach a carbon-pollution-free electricity sector by 2035.

We also set a target to reach net economy-wide zero greenhouse gas emissions by no later than 2050.

That's the first time we ever had a goal like that in this country.

He appointed the first ever national climate advisor, which is my boss, Gina McCarthy, to coordinate across the entire cabinet and across 30 different departments, agencies, and offices to ensure that climate is factored into every policy-making decision.

And I wanna talk about what that means for a minute because it's a little kind of theoretical, I think, but there are, you know, kind of obvious federal agencies that have always been involved in climate, or for many decades, or have been involved in making energy policy decisions, like the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency.

Those organizations have really been at the forefront of thinking through many of these issues.

But then there are a lot of other federal agencies, a lot of other arms of the federal government, that haven't necessarily thought about how climate change affects their work and what opportunities they may have to reduce emissions.

So for example, the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is OSHA, that's responsible for setting and enforcing standards that ensure safe and healthy working conditions.

Extreme heat, which is exacerbated by climate change, is the nation's leading weather-related killer.

So last year, OSHA launched the first ever standards for workplace heat exposure.

This is really important.

The Department of Health and Human Services, the EPA, and even the Department of Homeland Security also got involved, trying to bring together all of these different aspects of the work going on across the federal government, on behalf of the people, to factor in the way that people's work conditions and living conditions are changing over time.

This is an example of this whole of government approach that the president has brought to the climate question and what our office spends a lot of our time thinking about and trying to help move forward.

So our office is doing a lot of work to build resilience to climate change.

Things like these new heat safety measures and new standards for ensuring that our infrastructure can withstand more extreme weather events.

But my personal focus for my whole career has been on what we can do to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, leveraging technology, business, and policy to shift to cleaner approaches that deliver the same or better service for people without pollution.

So one of my first big projects after I joined on Inauguration Day last year was to bring together the experts from across the whole federal government, as well as independent researchers and thinkers who have been analyzing these same questions for many years, to determine how much could we really realistically reduce our overall economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

So over the rest of this decade.

This means looking at options across each and every economic sector, factoring in costs and availability of the new solutions that we can put in place, thinking about capital stock turnover timelines, the various prices of all of these different options that people may have, how we can start to really drive down those overall emissions, while also simultaneously delivering on the president's vision to support good jobs across all of America and also to reduce energy costs.

So this is a big challenge, right, because, you know, we are she shifting at a fundamental level how we produce, consume, and use energy, while also making sure that we need to do this in a way that lowers costs for people.

Luckily, because technology has improved so much over the past decade or two, we have all of these options now that make this actually possible.

You know, even 10 years ago, it would've been really tough to see a pathway that achieves our pollution reduction goals at the same time as we can reduce costs for people.

So by Earth Day, we set a target to reduce our country's economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52%, below 2005 levels, in 2030.

So that's a real gear shift in the pace of building affordable, clean energy and climate solutions across America.

And the office that I work in at the White House is devoted to delivering on that promise.

So just a little bit more on what does that mean?

How do we think about it?

So I always say, to tackle climate change, you have to follow the tons.

Understanding where the tons of greenhouse gases are being emitted enables us to see what we need to start to do differently.

Transportation is now the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

And that's the cars, the trucks, planes, trains, and ships that move people and goods around our country.

In just recent years, that became the largest source of emissions.

And that's because, you know, in a positive way, electricity had been the highest-emitting sector in our country until recently.

But emissions from our electricity sector have been coming down over the past decade or two.

So that's thanks to the availability of cheaper and cleaner sources of electricity like wind and solar.

And so electricity is no longer the largest source of our greenhouse gas emissions.

In third place in terms of overall emissions is the industrial sector.

And that's stuff like cement, steel, chemicals, plastic, the things that are, you know, used to build our buildings and bridges and roads, and the things that we are all interacting with on a day-to-day basis.

And that sector also includes the potent gases that warm the atmosphere much faster than carbon dioxide.

After that, the remaining emissions come from buildings, agriculture, and land use.

So that's a picture of where are emissions coming from.

If we wanna change how we are impacting the climate, we have to think about how do we shift each and every one of those sectors.

In short, it's about 80% of our emissions coming from energy and the other 20% from lands.

That's kind of an easy way to think about it.

So we're making progress us in each of these sectors.

Over the last year, we finalized the strongest ever standards for cars and trucks, and we jump-started electric transportation.

The president stood beside automakers and auto workers to set our sites on having one out of every two vehicles sold in this country in 2030 being all electric.

And it's fun to hear the president talk about it 'cause he, really, he loves electric vehicles.

And so he'll be like, "Oh, they're quiet and quick."

And he gets very excited, so it's cool.

We had America's 2 millionth electric vehicle hit the road last year, and we sold more EVs than ever before, at about double the rate from the prior year.

Companies invested more than $100 billion in new EV manufacturing in America last year, and companies committed to build 13 new electric vehicle plants in the United States for batteries, which will create more than 17,000 jobs.

One of those battery plants is slated to open later this year and hire about 1,200 people just about an hour south of here.

So that'll be an exciting new development in Northeast Ohio.

The first commercial flight powered by 100% sustainable aviation fuel flew from Chicago to D.C. last year.

And we set a target to reduce aviation emissions by 20% by 2030 with 60 companies committing to use at least 10% sustainable aviation fuel by 2030.

2021 was our biggest year ever for building clean energy.

So shifting to the electricity sector.

We brought out online more solar power last year than ever before, and we're fast-tracking solar projects on public lands and helping local governments advance solar projects and make it easier for people to put solar on their roof.

It was also a record-breaking year for wind power.

We launched the American offshore wind industry with the largest projects beginning to come online.

And we set a target to build 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, creating jobs up and down the supply chain from the factories that make the steel for the turbines to the shipyards that build the vessels to install them.

We also installed more grid batteries than ever before, nine times the amount we had installed the prior year.

And more than 350 electric utilities serving almost 70% of all Americans have now set net zero emissions targets.

That's a huge change from even just a few years ago, and it really speaks to the availability and lower cost of our clean energy solutions that have really changed so rapidly in recent years.

In the industrial sector, we set standards to reduce super pollutants, like hydrofluorocarbons and methane, and the US cement and steel companies began, for the first time, to set targets to reach net zero emissions by no later than 2050, which is aligned with the president's goal.

We kick-started a clean hydrogen future by launching a program at the Department of Energy to support at least four clean hydrogen hubs across America.

And this hydrogen can be used many applications, including for steel making, for all kinds of industrial processes that otherwise can't be decarbonized.

So that's very exciting.

We need to get moving on that now so that we have those options available at scale for later decades.

We also made a public commitment to negotiate the world's first ever carbon-based trade agreement on steel and aluminum with the European Union.

And that's helping us to take advantage of the fact that our steel and aluminum is a little bit cleaner than a lot of the other steel and aluminum produced in other parts of the world.

And so we're creating a trade partnership with the European Union to ensure that we have good markets for that cleaner steel.

We also, in the building sector, we launched a partnership with 33 state and local governments called the Building Performance Standards Coalition to work on policies that reduce emissions from buildings, while also lowering energy bills and creating good jobs in building upgrades.

And we launched an initiative that we call America the Beautiful, where we committed to conserve 30% of all US lands and waters by 2030, and restored three iconic national monuments, launching the US Department of Agriculture initiatives to support climate-smart agriculture and forestry.

And we doubled down on innovation and manufacturing, unveiling ambitious targets to bring down the costs and make available clean hydrogen, carbon removal, and to enable power to be stored for longer amounts of time on the grid, supporting more and more renewable energy.

We also launched the first ever supply chain strategy for our energy sector industrial base, charting a path to build more resilient supply chains for the clean energy technologies we know we will need to deliver a clean economy, and building a strategy to strengthen our manufacturing base for these advanced technologies here in America.

To build them here, to deploy them here, and also to export them.

We passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which makes the largest investments ever in upgrading our power grid and building resilience to extreme weather, and improving public transit, and building a national charging network for electric vehicles, and cleaning up pollution, reducing leaks from abandoned mines and oil and gas wells, and also replacing lead pipes.

We are also demonstrating through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law innovations that will open up new options for us to actually be able to reach net zero by 2050.

So, you know, I'm excited about what we've been able to accomplish in the last 14 months.

And looking ahead, you know, we are really committed to using every tool available to us to make progress.

To meet this moment, though, we do need more tools and we need Congress to act.

And that's why in his State of the Union Address, and again, earlier this week, the president called on Congress to deliver on the historic climate and clean energy investments that we have been discussing with them, enabling us to lead the world on new technologies and rebuild the middle class.

And those investments include clean energy tax credits that will help to move faster on building clean power plants, support for weatherizing homes and making businesses more energy efficient, and lowering the cost of electric vehicles, which gives families the option to just skip the gas pump all together.

So we are really excited about what we can do moving forward, how we can work together with people to hear more about what everyone is doing at the state level, at the local level, in communities, and really start to build that in more and more to the momentum that we want to keep driving also at the federal level.

We're very cognizant that, you know, the federal government just is one actor in a large ecosystem of incredible folks who are really on the ground making this happen.

And so that's a lot of why I'm really happy to be here today to have a conversation with all of you about how we can do this more faster and better together.

So thanks so much for having me, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

(audience applauds) - Just gonna be a second.

Hello, I'm Dan Moulthrop, and I'm with the City Club of Cleveland.

We're about to begin the Q and A with all of you.

We welcome questions from everyone: City Club members, guests, students, and those of you joining us via our livestream at cityclub.org, or the radio broadcast today on 90.3 Ideastream Public Media, but soon to be 89.7.

If you'd like to tweet a question, please tweet it at TheCityClub.

You can also text your questions to 330-541-5794.

Again, that number is 330-541-5794.

And our staff will work it into the program.

As we're getting the mics set up, do we have our first question over here?

Okay, great.

Come on.

Oh.

- Hi, my name is Priscilla Yrad.

I'm a senior at Elyria High School.

As a graduating senior attending university next semester, and having an older sister who is attending University of Michigan's SEAS program, what is your advice to college students and graduated college students for the next steps in climate change and conservatory?

- Yeah.

Thank you so much for that question.

I think I'm just really excited to see folks from, you know, high school coming and also thinking about this so early.

I think it's really amazing.

And I know that, you know, as time goes on, young people have less and less of the luxury not to think about this.

So I know I really appreciate the question and just kind of the involvement of you and your sister and your colleagues.

So I guess, you know, I think one of the things is that just the voice of young people is so critical in this moment because it's you that is going to be feeling these impacts of climate change more and more.

And also just staying curious about the solutions and ensuring that you are asking hard questions of your leaders about, you know, what are they doing?

And what more can they be doing?

And I think, you know, to have an early interest in this subject, just using your college time to think about the way that, you know, climate change may affect different types of subjects.

I think a lot of times we are looking at things in silos, or we're learning about history, or we're learning about, you know, engineering, but we're not really, you know, thinking about it all the time as part of this interconnected system.

And so I think one of the things that's really cool about how some campuses are now bringing new types of programs together that really are cross-disciplinary and think about the overall impacts of climate change, but also what the solutions can be, it's so powerful.

And I think that just bringing that kind of, you know, solution-oriented problem solving kind of mindset to this challenge is gonna be so important because we need more and more people to be working on various aspects of this, whether it's, you know, in engineering or in law or in, you know.

Really, it affects everything.

And so to the extent that we can bring that kind of lens toward thinking about what the solutions are and asking really hard questions of people, I think that's an incredibly important thing to do.

And also, you know, just keep talking about it.

Thanks.

- [Audience Member] Sonia.

- Yes.

- Thank you very much for coming to Cleveland.

When you mentioned that when your child was born, you weren't unable to see the sun, I was reminded that I was living in Brazil for the last six years, or until a year ago, and there were forest fires, as you've heard, in the Amazon region.

And there were few days a week when the sun, again, did not appear in Sao Paulo.

So it's not just a US problem, it's a global problem.

And you mentioned that there are solutions that you're coming up with, and I'm sure there are solutions that are coming up in other parts of the world.

And as you know, you're here today for the annual meeting of CIPUSA in the internet, the largest professional exchange program that was founded in Cleveland almost 75 years ago.

And we are looking forward to setting up a program to share information.

So my question really is, what thought has been given in terms of sharing solutions from abroad here in the US?

And these solutions that you're coming up with, whether it's hydrogen power, whatever, how are you gonna share those with countries abroad?

- Yeah, thank you very much.

And yes, this issue is maybe, you know, many issues affect us all, but this is one that really brings people together from across the whole world.

And, in many cases, you know, while the solutions vary a bit, you know, the sources of greenhouse gas emissions are pretty much the same, and physics works everywhere.

So, you know, I think there's a lot that can be shared between countries on the solutions to climate change.

So we have many programs where we work with our colleagues in other countries to think together about how to solve these problems, as well as what technology solutions are emerging.

And I would say, you know, in general, it's less that we are sort of sitting and coming up with solutions in a vacuum, and much more so that it's this exchange of ideas that's constantly happening.

Whether that's with people who are working in the private sector and coming up with new technology innovations, people who are in the labor movement, who are thinking about how jobs can be improved or created through the deployment of these solutions, or, you know, whether it is with our colleagues in other countries who are grappling with similar policy challenges in many cases, and really looking at a similar landscape of potential solutions.

We're constantly having those kinds of conversations.

I would say on the deforestation and kind of the forest land use challenge, you mentioned Brazil, of course, is incredibly important in that realm.

And Indonesia and the Congo are all incredibly, you know, rich resources of our rainforests.

And so, you know, there's a lot of commonalities there in thinking about how those areas can work to both, you know, mitigate fires, but also just mitigate deforestation generally.

And here in the United States, our issues are slightly different on the forestry front, but certainly thinking together about how the land sector is such an important, you know, part of the solution and also such a risk here when we see such devastating wildfires is something that we spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about with our international colleagues.

The Department of State has incredible programs, too, where people are actually just out in the field really, you know, sharing experiences and learning together about how policies work in some cases and how they don't work in other cases, so that we can bring those lessons back and ensure that we're, you know, designing better policies that will work better to achieve the solutions that they are intended to achieve, and also to help make people's lives better.

So there's a bunch of really exciting work going on in that realm that I'd love to talk more with the folks at CIP about.

Thanks.

- Oh, hi.

- Sonia, thank you so much for your energy, for your wisdom, and for your insight.

My name is SeMia Bray.

I'm co-director of the Black Environmental Leaders Association along with David Wilson and in legacy of Jacqueline Gillon.

In September, the Energy Jobs and Justice Act was introduced in the state of Ohio.

It highlights equity, it highlights carbon waste reduction, and it highlights accountability and transparency.

So my question to you is, what words of wisdom would you share with us in Ohio who are advocating for these types of bold, comprehensive legislation so that we could move forward, similar to what you're doing?

- Thank you for the question.

And also, thank you for the work.

That's incredibly important.

And I'm so happy to know that that is moving forward here in Ohio, and I wish you the very best of luck in getting it across the finish line.

I guess I would just say, these issues are so interconnected, and I think helping people to understand the way that these issues are so interconnected really helps to build understanding in the minds of people who may not come at the question from always the same exact perspective.

So, you know, for example, the last administration had rolled back the mercury and air toxic standards for coal power plants.

And that is just one of those things where it just strikes you.

My goodness, how could you think that relaxing standards for mercury in our air and water is a reasonable direction to be moving at this point?

And I think, you know, finding those kinds of, you know, really visceral things that people can really connect to can help, even though oftentimes these, you know, pieces of legislation or standards, or they can be sort of ethereal, and people don't feel connected to, you know, what the theoretical solutions are.

But this is about people, and this is about communities, and this is about making people's lives better and lowering costs when, you know, you don't wanna spend, you know, the last bit you have on your energy bill and instead need to have money left over for other important things.

So I think, you know, helping people to understand the real life experience that goes along with these decisions, I think, really can help to bridge understanding.

- Hi.

Tristan Rader, Solar United Neighbors.

Just first, thank you so much.

I think you've given a lot of us hope here today in face of a growing crisis around the world.

So thank you for your hard work.

I work for Solar United Neighbors.

We do rooftop solar around the country.

And where do you see distributed energy resources, such as solar, wind, small-scale battery, fitting into your policy vision for the future, both in the near term and the long term?

- Yeah, thank you.

I love that question.

And I would say for distributed resources, it's very cool, I think, the power of distributed resources, in not only helping to bring down our pollution, but also to build resilience.

So I think that both of those aspects of distributed energy resources are incredibly important in our overall system.

You know, I think sometimes there's a false kind of debate of like, "Are you for distributed, or are you four centralized electricity?"

And I think that we have an interconnected system.

We have lots of power lines around.

And I think that, at this point, we need to be moving quickly, we need to be moving, you know, intelligently and practically.

And so we should really be pursuing both.

It's not really a competition between one and the other.

But distributed resources have an incredibly important role to play between whether it's, you know, rooftop solar and storage, and things like demand response, which is like making buildings smarter so that they are using their heat when clean power or low-cost power is available.

All of those things together, and community solar, too, is really just such an incredibly, you know, interesting and important direction that the distributed solar movement has also gone in recent years.

All of those solutions together can be integrated and balanced with our centralized electricity production in ways that helps to deliver, you know, a lower cost overall system, benefits to the individuals who adopt those new kind of distributed energy resource technologies, and also that resilience so that when we have, you know, an outage or a line go down, then we have other resources that we can rely on that are close by.

So I think we finally left behind the world where we need to rely on like diesel gen sets and stuff like that.

And instead, I think even the Department of Defense is really embracing the idea that clean energy with batteries is a really resilient solution that we really need to employ more for our critical loads like hospitals and all kinds of things like that.

So I think, yeah, kudos to you on the work for distributed energy resources.

Such an important part of the solution.

- Hello, Sonia.

I'm an 11th grader from Campus International School.

And I heard earlier how you talk about how it's good for youth to be worrying about these things.

And as somebody who wants to pursue a future career in forestry and conservation, what do you think is like, good steps for those interested in those careers, or just helping the climate in general, to do without like, actually having to be in the job field to help for or with climate change?

- Yeah.

Thank you for that question.

And that's very cool that you're interested in that line of work.

I think, you know, what I would think about doing is just really doing as much reading as possible and asking all the questions about, you know, what's going on today?

What are the issues that people are facing?

What are they grappling with?

Because while, you know, people can stand up and pretend like they have all the solutions and that they're already doing all the things, like, they don't.

A lot of times people really are seeking better answers, and they don't know what to do.

And so I think there's a huge opportunity for being creative and coming up with your own, you know, ideas of how these challenges can be met, and then trying to reach out to people who are already working in this field, or who may, you know, just have an interest in this field to have a conversation about, you know, why something that you're thinking about might work, and just workshop those ideas early.

I think that helps you to make connections with people who are already working in this area.

And it also helps you to sharpen the thinking about what could work to learn about what has been tried, and to think about what hasn't, and what you might be able to really bring forward.

So I'm excited for you to get to have more of those conversations, and I'm excited that you're interested in that.

- [Audience Member] Thank you.

- [Audience Member] Yes, that one over there.

- Sorry.

We have several text questions today.

- Okay.

Good.

- So I wanna read one of these for you.

If we convert to mostly electric vehicles, do you have any concern about the ability of our electrical grid to support the demand?

- Thanks for that question.

Yes, it's a really good one.

So there's been a fair number of analyses of this question, and the answer differs in different places.

For the United States, especially as we're looking forward to 2030, the end of this decade, we've thought a lot about the increased demand from all kinds of electrification.

So we are gonna see a lot more deployment of electric vehicles.

At the same time, we are hoping that we can displace other fossil fuels that are used in end uses.

Like, you know, when natural gas is being burned for heating or clothes drying, there are now options for us to use really efficient heat pumps or something like that to get rid of that fossil fuel burning in buildings.

And then in the industrial sector, there are also opportunities to electrify, especially a lot of low-heat applications in the electricity or in the industrial sector.

And all of those things will demand more electricity.

So even as we are working to try to replace the existing electricity system with a cleaner version, we also need to be planning for that increased demand.

Luckily, over the last 10 or 15 years, 20 years, in fact, probably since the '80s, we've been really driving a lot more efficiency into the economy.

So we were seeing a decoupling of our energy use going up and our GDP going up.

So now we are a lot more productive per dollar of GDP from an energy standpoint.

So we're starting out at a better place than maybe we would've been trying to do this, you know, several decades back.

So between efficiency and also smarter charging and smarter use, the way that I was just talking about distributed energy resources, the heat coming on, when that electricity is lower cost or it's cleaner, or, you know, smart charging where you plug your car in whenever you get home, but then it knows when to charge based on when the grid is cleanest or when the grid is cheapest.

So those types of technologies can really help manage the overall demand, which will go up, but it will also not go up quite as much as it might have otherwise.

So in sort of planning for 2030 in the project I mentioned at the beginning of the talk when we looked at our pathways to 2030 to understand how much we could realistically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, how much could we support electric vehicles, and how much could we support deployment of clean energy, we've factored in all of these kinds of additions in electric demand that might come from decarbonization of some of the other end use sectors.

And while it does increase demand, it's not to a level that we don't think could be met by clean energy sources.

- Speaking of electric capacity and production, in France, 70% of electricity comes from nuclear.

In the United States, I believe there are two nuclear power plants which are scheduled to be completed this year in Georgia.

I'm not aware of any others that are even under construction.

We have a number of small nuclear, basically, small cities that are powered by nuclear.

They're called aircraft carriers.

Is there any program in the government that is actively pursuing the use of nuclear to enhance climate goals?

'Cause after all, it does produce whether the wind is blowing or the sun is not shining.

- Yeah.

Thanks for the question.

So yes, France has a lot of nuclear.

And that is kind of the older, sort of traditional style of nuclear.

As well as the remaining nuclear that we have here in the United States is about 20% of our electricity generation.

And you are right.

Those plants are aging and, you know, there are not a lot of sort of traditional, large-scale nuclear facilities under construction at this time.

And that is really just due to cost challenges.

It's very difficult for those larger facilities to make the economics work out against the kind of other power plant sources that they're competing against.

For small-scale nuclear, we do have quite a number of programs that are focused on helping to bring down the cost and start to get these smaller-scale nuclear facilities demonstrated.

There's one that the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is federal power marketing administration that works in the Tennessee Valley region, they are moving forward with a plan to begin scoping one of these, again, you know, for even small-scale nuclear, which they call small modular nuclear.

And it's this advanced nuclear technology which really brings down the safety concerns and proliferation concerns at the same time as it, you know, aims to bring down costs.

Right now, it is still quite a lot more expensive than other clean energy solutions.

And so people are putting money into, you know, the innovation and research to see if this can be demonstrated and replicated.

But as far as factoring in on the next eight years, it's probably not gonna contribute a great deal to our target in 2030, though, with better innovation, it could contribute to future emission reductions.

- Hello, Sonia.

I am Nathan Wilkins.

I am a 11th grader at Campus International High School, and my general question is related to poverty.

And so a lot of people might not be able to afford to get more sustainable sources, and that can definitely increase things related to climate change.

So generally, what are your thoughts on that?

And how might you approach that?

- Yeah, it's a great question.

So I think a lot of the decisions that can really make an impact on reducing system-wide greenhouse gas emissions can be taken, you know, a little bit upstream.

So for example, when we were talking about the electricity sector, we had a discussion about distributed energy resources and centralized energy resources.

Those centralized ones are typically managed by utilities or by independent power producers who participate in a market.

And they're looking at kind of what is the relative cost?

What is the relative environmental impact of all of these options?

And they often have an opportunity to kind of access financing to make the shift happen at that sort of more centralized scale, while keeping energy bills flat, or even reducing them, for people that are buying that electricity at the end of the line?

So that is one way, I think, that we can move forward, you know, while keeping energy bills the same or lower.

I think the other piece is actually, I can't help myself but talk about the climate and clean energy incentives that we have been working for for the last year or so to get over the line in Congress.

And there's some really exciting incentives in there that really help to bring down the cost of these clean energy solutions for people, and make it a lot easier for families than to, you know, make that jump and buy that electric vehicle or whatever.

And then over the life of an electric vehicle, the National Renewable Energy Lab estimates that people save more than $17,000 by avoiding going to the gas pump all the time.

And that's before even these high gas prices.

So I think, you know, we have an incredible opportunity right in front of us, and now is the time that we need to seize that.

- Thanks for being here.

My name is Jonathan Welle.

And my question is about President Biden's Justice40 initiative.

I work at Cleveland Owns, which is a small nonprofit here locally building community-owned solar cooperatives.

And we're part of the national group, the Energy Democracy Project.

And the EDP is focused on building energy democracy to ensure that we have a just transition to a clean energy economy.

And we define energy democracy as local control and ultimately ownership over the clean energy assets that are gonna make us through this transition.

So what will it take for Biden's plan to implement the J40 initiative?

And if that passes and is fully implemented with full political will from the federal government, what will Northeast Ohio, and particularly historically marginalized communities in Northeast Ohio, black, brown, and low-income communities, see as the benefit.

- Thank you for that question.

So the Justice40 initiative is really, it's incredibly exciting because for the first time at the federal level, we have had a, you know, an advisor in the White House on environmental justice.

We have put together the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, which consists of, you know, about 40 people from communities around the US, including, you know, urban communities, tribal lands, all kinds of different communities to help advise on how we will make that initiative meaningful and actually work for people.

We recently launched this, it's called the EJ screening tool, which you may have found.

But it helps to identify via mapping marginalized communities and disadvantaged communities that will be targeted by the Justice40 initiative.

And the Justice40, just so that in case folks don't know, the idea is that 40% of the benefits will go to disadvantaged communities from these programs.

And what does that mean in practice is what you asked.

And I think that's just really the most important question.

And I think it has to do with ensuring that where there is legacy pollution especially, and people have been facing, you know, heavier health consequences, higher rates of asthma, all kinds of real, very important and, you know, with gravity impacts of pollution over time, that these new programs that are being put into place will be really focused on ensuring that those benefits flow to those communities, and that we break that cycle of, you know, having certain communities be so overburdened.

So that is what we are working to advance.

And we are moving forward with it regardless of further kind of conversations with Congress and even applying it to existing programs now.

So we're very excited about that.

(audience applauds) - We definitely had enough questions to go for another three hours.

Sonia, thank you so much.

Thank you so much for your time.

Today, at the City Club, we've been enjoying the annual Paul A. and Sonja F. Unger International Forum on Cleveland in the World featuring Sonia Aggarwal.

She's with the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy.

Paul and Sonja Unger were renowned civic leaders who developed education and professional development for local elected officials and advocates for Croatia's independence in Yugoslavia in the early nine 1990s.

And they founded the Unger Croatia Institute for Public Administration.

We're very grateful to their family for their supportive civic engagement and democracy here at the City Club.

Our forum today is also part of our Sustainable Northeast Ohio series in partnership with Bank of America.

And big thanks to the Council of International Programs for your partnership on today's program.

We would also like to welcome guests at tables hosted by Bank of America, the Black Environmental Leaders Association, Campus International High School, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law, Council of International Programs, Elyria High School, Hawken School, and the Ohio Environmental Council.

Thank you all for being with us to a day.

We have a few great forums coming up next week, including from two county executive candidates, Lee Weingart on Wednesday, March 23rd, Tariq Shabazz on March 24th.

Tickets are available for those.

And on a related matter, a matter related to today's conversation, we welcome Robert Blue, chair and president and chief executive officer of Dominion Energy next Friday, March 25th.

We'll learn how legacy energy companies like Dominion plan to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Tickets for that one are sold out, but you can catch us on 90.3 Ideastream Public Media or online at cityclub.org.

Which reminds me, and this is especially for our listening audience, be sure to mark your calendars.

Our primary media partner, Ideastream Public Media, is moving news and information programming from 90.3 over to WKSU 89.7.

So starting Friday, April 1st, you'll find our Friday forum broadcast on 89.7 starting 30 minutes earlier at noon.

We're grateful to our partners at Ideastream Public Media for sharing in this 94-year commitment to live radio broadcast of City Club Forums.

- Awesome.

- Props to them.

- Thank you, members and friends of the City Club.

Thank you, Sonia Aggarwal.

Our forum is now adjourned.

(audience applauds) (bell rings) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

(upbeat music) Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.