Latest / Clean Power Hour / Navigating IRA Incentives and Rebates with Jamie Skaar | EP187

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Navigating IRA Incentives and Rebates with Jamie Skaar | EP187 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Jamie Skaar: One area that I think especially since we are talking about contractors, you know, a couple areas to really kind of pay attention to are going to be certainly with the eligibility for braiding certain rebate programs together. This is a huge opportunity to make your business highly highly competitive, especially if you figure this out and somebody else does it. Things like walk the Weatherization Assistance Program read for rural communities. Watch specifically like coupling that with Hira opens up the avenue to be able to work with low income communities in a way that doesn't make a ton of sense.
• 1:22
  Jamie Skaar: With with here only are you
• 1:26
  intro: speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week, I want to go deeper into decarbonisation, we do too, we're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get together we can speed the energy transition.
• 1:54
  Tim Montague: Today on the Clean Power Hour implementing the IRA, what energy professionals need to know, you know, the inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is a major shot in the arm it includes $400 billion of incentives for the energy transition. And that's a wonderful thing. But implementing it is another matter entirely. So I'm going to be doing a series this year on implementing the IRA. And today we're joined by Jamie SCOR, founder and CEO of Luna energy, when we're going to break down what energy professionals need to know about the IRA. Welcome to the show, Jamie.
• 2:30
  Jamie Skaar: Thanks for having me. This is a really interesting time for us to be diving in this topic. So so happy to share some experience. And hopefully it's helpful for everybody. You
• 2:37
  Tim Montague: know, in my, in my preparation for this, I was just reviewing some of the stories from this year about the IRA, one of the standouts is that this has now spurred the expansion or development of over 100 factories, including solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, and racking products, like torque tubes for large scale solar. So, I mean, this is really a huge industrial policy for the United States. And it's not a question of if we're going to make the energy transition, it's a question of when how fast are we going to make the energy transition? And will we do it fast enough to save our butts?
• 3:20
  Tim Montague: So give our listeners a little bit of background on yourself, Jamie? How did you get interested in the built environment and energy?
• 3:27
  Unknown: Yeah, I'll give some context there. Also, just a tiny bit later on to the point that you just made as far as factories, and it'd be, you know, a matter of when not if you don't handle all the areas that are really exciting right now, in addition to, you know, the factories that are being built. There's also the amount of grant money that the federal government set aside for the deployment of new technology, like heat pumps, like virtual power plants, storage, things like that, that are actually opening up the scope for new players to come into the market with new solutions that weren't there. So I think the exciting part right now is that it's not even just a for a win. But we're actually now starting to get in the conversation of how are we going to deploy this? And what is this going to look like? And so that I think it makes it an especially exciting time for us to be talking about this,
• 4:13
  Tim Montague: well said,
• 4:14
  Unknown: but you're asking me about my background, specifically, I've been in the clean energy industry for about a decade now, really, I've just kind of had an opportunity to see the industry grow and mature from a number of different perspectives, really started off in the startup space, working in the built environment, retrofits energy efficiency, and had the benefit of that taking me throughout the entire west coast, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Northern California and Southern California. And just seeing from the ground level, what it takes for consumers to adopt these types of technology solutions, what it takes for for contractors to install them, how businesses need to grow and adapt to these environments and these incentives. So it's been a great ride and position be really willing to offer some insight on kind of where we're at now.
• 5:00
  Tim Montague: It's kind of the best of times and the worst of times for some solar professionals because in 2023, we're here we are recording in December of 2023. residential solar had a rough year. When when you look at places like California, there's a major decline in residential solar for a variety of reasons. Part of it is inflation. So interest rates went up. So consumers are less inspired to borrow money to do a solar project. And net metering rules changed. We got nem 3.0, which devalues solar electrons by 75% or more. And so what's happening is residential solar companies are having to innovate their way and grab onto a bridge to the next version of themselves, which certainly include includes batteries, but probably also, Evie infrastructure, heat pumps, heat pump furnaces, and electrification of everything, so to speak. So what else are where should we start? When you think about, you know, my audience, energy professionals, this includes residential, commercial and utility solar developers and installers. And then service providers like financiers. And then ultimately, the folks that also make the equipment, the OEMs. But when you think about my audience of energy professionals, what is the conversation that you want to have about the IRA and implementing it?
• 6:34
  Unknown: There's a lot of directions to go with that one.
• 6:37
  Unknown: To me, I look at so I've been following the IRA since build back better when a person was trying to get elected on the platform. And to me when I was looking at it, and realizing the scope and breadth of of the bill and what they're trying to accomplish with it, I realized that it was a game changer in the way that we were conducting and doing business. In in the energy market. You know, for a long time, I feel like the challenge that we've had is as an industry is that we've always been kept by this this efficiency conversation, like we can only get the market to make an investment or do a solution up to the level that we can give them a cheaper alternative than them just continuing to pay utility bill. What I find interesting about where we are with the current funding and grants and rebates and incentives is that it really allows for us to open the conversation up and do a lot more than what we were doing in the past. I think this is actually a really uniquely point point that is uniquely illustrated in California specifically. So we talked about kind of the extra challenges in the market right now, with the implementation of nem three, which happened in the last April, from April to now.
• 7:38
  Unknown: They're projecting something about 70,000 lost jobs in the California market. So I'm gonna get to April, June next year, that number could be as high as 23 25,000 jobs that have been lost. And so what I think we're seeing in California is this kind of acceleration of an issue that we're going to see across the nation where the ability to just focus on one individual service isn't going to cut it anymore, with how the incentive structure is set up, those are not going to be the jobs that are going to get the most amount of incentive dollars. And also with how consumers are looking at the space and looking for more value impact with the money that they're investing, they're going to want more done for the dollars that is that they're putting into our project. And the IRA has really opened up the ability to have that conversation, whether as a builder, looking at 45 l or 179 D, and some of the extra funds that are there, or whether that is working with a homeowner and a retrofit. And we're talking about you know, tax credits with 25 C 25. D, Hero homes, or even like the ability to breed in some of these existing programs like watch and read. It drastically opens up the conversation to where now we're not just talking about energy efficiency, we're talking about building longevity, decarbonisation, we're talking about smart functions. And so that I think is where we're gonna see the industry move. And that's, that's really where the where the opportunities are gonna be. So
• 9:05
  Tim Montague: as solar installers have become solar and storage professionals, I mean, truly, if you're a solar professional, you have to see yourself as a solar and battery professional, at the very least.
• 9:15
  Tim Montague: Now, there is this, there are additional incentives, basically market forces that are asking you as an installer or developer to consider expanding that portfolio. But let's talk about, you know, for example, distributed generation, rooftop solar and batteries, these projects reduce your energy bill. And then there's a stack of value depending on the market, maybe there's a battery incentive, a cash incentive, ways to monetize that infrastructure, so to speak. And we have things like the investment tax credit, okay, we have a 30% in ITC up to 60%, depending on the market and the equipment used, right. There's incentives for energy communities, there's incentives for made in America equipment, and for low and middle income communities. But if you're an installer, doing distributed generation projects today, and then trying to figure out where I need to go, where do I need to sharpen my saw? What are the types of services I need to offer? There are some obvious places to go but for but but they need ideas, I think. So what are those places? And why is the market pushing this transition, so to speak? So
• 10:44
  Unknown: this is a very nuanced conversation and this is actually what's making right now really exciting because we're we're getting away from Just the awareness of Oh, there's the IRA that's out there, we're maturing from the conversation of, I'm going to implement the IRA.
• 10:57
  Unknown: Here's kind of the positives and negatives from our business. And now we're getting more into deployment, and really figuring out the nuance and detail. To me, I think the nuance and detail is the most important part. So sometimes we have contractors that are, Hey, I've heard of this new heat pump incentive, I'm gonna build my business around the heat pump incentive, there's actually a lot more to it than that, especially as we kind of look and break down these different different tiers of incentives that are available. And they're not even in the distributed. And as far as what the what the value or potential is for them.
• 11:31
  Unknown: As an example, let's say that I am a Residential Contractor. And I'm doing commercial projects that I'm sorry, I'm doing solar projects with storage, right?
• 11:39
  Unknown: Okay, I need to make my business more competitive. Moving into the future, especially as the interest rates are higher, I need to be able to deliver more impact offset more project costs with these incentives, what we're going to decide to focus on is going to have a lot to do with the location of your company. So when we look at, for instance, like the state rebates here or walk, we have three different tiers of customers, we have below 80% of median income, we have 80 to 130% of median income, we have over 130% of median income, in each of those buckets is going to determine how much money someone's able to get. And what what we're going to do on a particular project based on who it is that they're actually going after to try to serve a residential commercial solar, I'm sorry, a residential solar installer, like their strategy for someone in the tax credit, only incentive bucket is going to be radically different than someone that's in the low income below 8% threshold. And we really want to start aligning our strategies and what we're doing around that specifically, to determine, you know, how we're going to jump into this.
• 12:47
  Unknown: So let's say California, for instance, first thing I'm going to do is an audit, right? We know that California, I believe is eligible for something like 280 to $300 million. Okay, so we want to get an idea how many households? Are we going to get with that available funding before that depletes? And then we want to know, all right, in our particular zone of where we're working, whatever our zip code or radius is, like, what percentage of people do we have that actually fit that template, and who can actually get access to, because for some of these incentives, like we're talking about the federal credit, so those are locked in, we're talking about state rebates, that's based on a certain font of money, in which case, once that funding runs out, that that program is not going to be active until it's refunded. So kind of understanding the specifics of someone's actual market, I think is really, really, really important right now. Because there are a lot of a lot of developers, a lot of builders, a lot of contractors that are actually leaping without looking if rebates and incentives sound good upfront, but if they're just not widely available in our area, you know, that can create some some issues downstream. So
• 13:54
  Tim Montague: I get that. And I mean, solar is largely a local or regional phenomenon. You're a solar installer, you've got a service area, there are some national players, but for the most part, solar installers are regional operators, let's say, Southern California or San Diego. And, okay, historically, maybe they were focused more on upper income, an upper income demographic, right? Family, I mean, single family, homeowners who could afford to install a 25 to $40,000 infrastructure project on their home. Now, as you know, as rates have gone up, and those projects are, are dying on the vine, as rates went up, and M 3.0 was implemented.
• 14:43
  Tim Montague: Okay, now, there's incentives for low and middle income that installers need to really drill down on and understand because that can sweeten the deal. Is that what you're suggesting?
• 14:57
  Unknown: Depending upon where they're located, yes, 100%. So if I'm looking at it, and I'm a, let's say, I'm in Southern California, so that's where I'm at right now. So if I'm a solar contractor, one, I am the best position out of virtually all the trades to be able to take point on an energy position.
• 15:12
  Unknown: Right? Because with the driving force behind a lot of the a lot of the financing that is available is actually solar. So we have the ability as solar contractors to be able to extend the financing to an entire project. Well, once I'm working with a homeowner for issue, let's just solve more problems while we're on site. Right? If we understand the fact that the signaling from you know, these three bills between bi l chips and IRA, that $1.2 trillion of investment is about switching us over from gas and carbon fuels into into electric and renewables. Well, I mean, it's something like 174 124 million people that need to switch from gas to electric Rick? And again, we were just saying that's not if that's a win. So how do we now take our business to support? You know, over that, over that longer duration of time realizing that all these people are gonna participate?
• 16:53
  Unknown: When we're looking at it? Why do people even come to a solar contract to begin with? Largely, they're looking to save on the utility bills, right? Where are they looking to save on utility bills, their homes, probably inefficient, and their bills are above average in the amount of their pain. So they're coming with this pain of high bills without understanding why bill isn't, it's like, well, you're building actually is is not performing at the level that it should. If your building is not performing at the level, it should, there's probably other issues that you're experiencing, whether that's in the efficiency, performance of H vac system, whether that's in ventilation, and air flow, weatherization, whether that's in your ability to monitor and respond to your home, like all of that becomes part of the conversation.
• 17:37
  Tim Montague: I think this is kind of a big deal, Jamie, because, you know, solar equipment is pretty simple.
• 17:44
  Tim Montague: You've got solar modules, racking inverters. It's electricity, it plugs into the panel. Yeah, maybe you need to upgrade the panel. Okay. It's more complicated with solar and batteries. But when you start talking about, you know, building envelope, an HVAC? Boy, that's a whole other thing. And it's not that people can't learn that stuff. But how does this play out? Because, I mean, let's face it, a lot of these solar companies are very specialized.
• 18:12
  Tim Montague: And now they're having to become more generalist. So do you see this happening through just training? Or are they going to do mergers and acquisitions, or some combination thereof?
• 18:28
  Unknown: It could be a combination. Right now, what we're really finding is that there is no, there is no one size fits all approach. Again, a lot of this stuff is very, very market specific, right? What do you even have access to? And that's it, regardless of the scale of the project, we could even be talking about you to scale micro grids, like what workers do you have available, like a lot of these things starts becoming part of the conversation. For the solar industry as a whole, we've just seen, regardless of where you're at, you have to have multiple avenues of value that you're providing to the end consumer, otherwise changes in regulations, changes in the market, put large percentages of these companies out of business.
• 19:06
  Unknown: So to me, there's kind of an adapter di function to this right. Even aside from the marketing changes, the challenges that are taking place, it's also just the amount of money that's being given out, especially in the consumer space, like if we are heading into a more challenging economic environment, where rates and everything are still high. As a person who's been in this for over a decade, and has been in the industry, when we've had good economic times, bad economic times, incentives and incentives, when we're in those challenging times people buy on value. And so what kind of value is it that you can deliver?
• 19:42
  Unknown: Certainly, as we see more extreme weather events, but last year, we had, we set the record for most billion dollar event for extreme weather in the US, I think was something like 50 over$50 billion that we had in in, in damaged from extreme weather.
• 19:57
  Unknown: These are things that consumers are thinking about. And so can we come to the table with more solutions than just you're gonna have a lower bill than the utility company than what you would have with a utility company into well, what's your air quality? Like when there's a wildfire? What's your resiliency plan for if our were to go out or if there was a natural disaster is your home set up for extreme weather events? There's really interesting study going out right now on the changing of dew points throughout the entire nation because of the changing climate and how that's actually impacting things like mold and mildew growth inside of buildings. So we have a whole new wave that we're going to have to address here with ventilation and air flow home health. And so there's a lot of potential for us to open up this conversation. The
• 20:40
  Tim Montague: Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America. The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 252 75, is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 250 to 75 pairs well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions. Go to chin power systems.com To find out more. You know, I work with a solar company in Northern Illinois company called greenlink. Who their bread and butter is doing, for example, upgrades to multifamily facilities improving the installation and the envelope tightness in multifamily buildings in the incentives from the IRA and the state of Illinois. There's there's some incentives in Are both at the federal and state level, basically pay for these upgrades for the facility owner, the facility owner isn't paying anything. And yet, the installer has a line of business doing these installations. And then there's separate, you know, incentives for solar. And historically, tackling multifamily with solar has been challenging, right, because the tenants are paying the electricity bill. And, and the and so the building owner isn't incentivized to install solar on that apartment building. You know, to attack the loads of, of their tenants. Now we do have services like energy 311, which allows the landlord to become the energy company for their tenants. And this is allowed in, I don't know, a handful of markets around 16 to 20 markets across the US, including Illinois, I think California is in that category, Colorado is in that category. And this is, you know, opening up the multifamily. And the warehouse, markets, this is, you know, 90% of commercial real estate is third party owned real estate, meaning the tenant, the company occupying the real estate is not the owner of the facility. And so if we can find ways to incentivize facility owners of multifamily and warehouses, we want to do that, and that, and that is happening. So reach out to me if you don't know about these, these opportunities, and these ways of skinning that cat, so to speak. But back to our question, Jamie, you know, how to implement the IRA, or how to take advantage of the IRA?
• 23:28
  Tim Montague: There's kind of, we've touched on some kind of long term planning strategies, okay. Yeah, you, it's no longer enough to just be a solar or solar and battery company. And that's a great theme. I love that theme.
• 23:38
  Tim Montague: And that's certainly a drum that I beat with my clients. But when you think about, you know, just the short term, 2024 to 2025, residential and commercial solar companies, you know, that's kind of still harkening back to, it's a heavy lift that just bolt on these additional services.
• 24:05
  Tim Montague: Certainly, over time, they're going to be able to do that. I guess, one alternative is to consider moving to other markets, like you mentioned, the California crisis. And, you know, these resi companies are shrinking, and, and shedding labor. Well, those people are gonna go somewhere, they're gonna go where the opportunity is, and there's good opportunities in other markets, California is certainly leading the way with the future of net metering, and we have to be vigilant, but there are plenty of other places where those people are needed for one thing.
• 24:37
  Tim Montague: But you know, how do you see this unfolding? And, and I guess, what do installers need to be thinking about in your mind in the near term?
• 24:51
  Unknown: I'll start off first with I think California is the best opportunity in the market right now. Because the reshuffling I think is literally put a an exclamation point on the fact that business as usual, and the way that we were doing it is not going to be the most profitable way moving forward.
• 25:05
  Unknown: And I think that even though this is a very painful environment for a lot of solar operators and companies out there, the back end opportunity in every which way it is that I've been able to measure this and look at it is significantly higher than it would be if we were still on him, too. So I would say first step for a lot of contractors is actually just open themselves up to that possibility. There's a lot of people that are still kind of stuck in that in the past of like, Hey, this is the tough, tough situation that I'm experiencing right now. But once you get through that, and start looking at what's going on in electrification and decarbonization, you realize that the ceiling is so much higher now. And the floor is also higher, too. I think what we're gonna really see here over the next 1224 months, we're gonna see really a lot of that people that are making quick move or that are moving accelerated li we're going to see them get really big returns here and the first 1224 months, coming through 24 and 25. We're going to see them take, we're going to start to see the rise of what I'm gonna call electrification brands, pull companies that is that people go to to solve their electrification solutions and help them navigate the energy transition. The markets changed so much because of this legislation. Not even just the amount of funds that are available, which in itself is staggering at 1.2 trillion.
• 26:22
  Unknown: Also, you just have the amount of time the fact that we're we've got well, they say 10 years, but realistically, this is all aligned to us hitting our ICC IPCC climate targets. So until we hit those, those targets this funding is locked in so we have a really long runway here and just these three bills are not done, like it's already acknowledged within the market that more money is going to be needed in order for us to continue to hit these goals. So the runway, the ceiling, the floor, all of that as much higher now than it was before the IRA, even if there's some market payments going on. To me, that's now where we get to start talking about long term vision and what this is going to look like as we move into the future.
• 27:00
  Unknown: So for right now, how can contract store contractors immediately start to make the pivot, you've got to know about the IRA, and you got to know about the landscape of the energy transition. And what it is that we're going to that's period, because at the end of the day, what you're really going to be getting paid for what your company is going to exist for is to help to make that transition into these new energy services more efficient.
• 27:26
  Unknown: That's, that's going to be the reason for being there. How can we do it is going to change and mature as we go through different technologies coming online, and a different adoption, all of that remains to be seen. But fundamentally, what we're going to be doing is helping to accelerate that transition, I think there's some really cool places where we're going to be able to kind of lead the conversation going forward.
• 27:47
  Unknown: So I did a I actually wrote a kind of an article on this on LinkedIn not too long ago, talking about the emergence of new technologies like ESA energy storage appliances. So what we're seeing now, manufacturers suppliers to actually start to integrate energy storage into major appliances, so stoves, or induction stoves are kind of that first wave. But you know, my argument is in the next, you know, 2436 months, we might, we'll probably see that shift into heat pumps, dryers, heat pump water heaters. And now imagine you've got three to seven appliances in your house all with three to eight kilowatt storage. You don't need to make an investment in own battery storage anymore. And when you factor that on with things like energy management systems, virtual power plants, and the ability to start transacting energy, now I think we have a whole few new future for how energy usage looks. That is something that we can bring to market that's exciting, and gets people wanting to buy it.
• 28:50
  Tim Montague: Okay. Energy storage appliances make sense?
• 28:54
  Tim Montague: On some level? I think there's a major double edge there, which is, things get expensive when you start adding batteries to them. Yes, in 10 years, everyone's going to have a battery in their garage, or built into some other appliance in their home. Okay. But if you're if you're a contractor, how do you strategically kind of approach this problem of, where's the best way to segue into because I see this as kind of there's a fork here. Of Okay, installing heat pumps, and you know, electric stoves, okay, fine. That's one niche, installing electrification appliances or evey infrastructure and electrification, that's cool.
• 29:41
  Tim Montague: But then there's the envelope.
• 29:41
  Tim Montague: And that's a whole other thing, you know, insulation, the tightness of the envelope, ventilation systems, windows and doors. That's a whole other thing. Is there an obvious stepstone approach to this?
• 30:00
  Tim Montague: Like, yeah, go after heat pumps first, and then get into building upgrades? Or is it a both? And? Yeah,
• 30:08
  Unknown: actually, to your point, the way that you just structure that is how I'm talking to contractors about it, where it's not, don't just come in and say, Hey, we're going to do a heat pump? Because that's where the incentive is, no, let's use the market that you're operating in to dictate how it is that we're going to deploy in that market. So I mean, there's a lot of moving pieces with that. So on the supply side, like right now, we're seeing manufacturing go through a whole shift with the new regulations on refrigerators, with the new efficiency measures. And I mean, there's right now for companies that are have already started to make investments for trying to align their business around the IRA in 23. There's a lot of instances where equipment that qualified and 23 isn't gonna qualify at 24. All right, so we're needing to figure out, you know, resupply and everything as well to be able to, to kind of address these things. To me, and when I'm breaking it down for people I'm looking at, what markets are we operating in?
• 31:02
  Unknown: What are the income levels of those markets, that way, we have an idea of how much how much incentive money is going to be available in the market that we're working in. I don't want to deploy a low income strategy in a market where everybody's fluent, and everybody's over median income, right? Like, that's not gonna make a ton of sense. The equipment that we're using for low income might not be the same that we're using for tax credit only customer. So there's some nuance into looking at, like, what's the specific market? Where do we have a competitive advantage? In some cases, you know, if you look at the current distribution of funds, or the IRA, and where's money going? A lot of it's not going to the places that we would naturally assume like most of its been disproportionately allocated in rural communities and Midwest etc. And that's actually because of the braiding aspect that's involved involved with the IRA, the ability to combine these incentives, some of the best opportunities are actually out in these rural markets, which is why we're seeing that kind of first tranche of funds going there. So all that to really say that it is a bit of a unique answer for each individual company. And, you know, they do want to talk to people that are not just educated in the IRA, but actually know what's going on in the market overall, so that we can talk about like your unique standpoint, and where it is that that your company has the opportunity to thrive. But overall, I would say let's focus on which market it is that we want to address as far as you know, kind of income level. And then what can we do within those, each each of those particular tiers, to best position the business. And one last piece that I'll add to that is what makes things really exciting. Right now, if you think about the the solar contractor model, the H bat contractor model is largely built on you sell an item once and then you don't talk to that homeowner again for another 510 plus years. This is completely different. Where Luna, when we're doing home improvement projects, this is a three five year strategy. So we're coming through with here's your recommendations for weatherization airflow, getting your your smart systems in year one, year two, we're coming back to address things like heat pump, water heater, maybe sciences, year three, we're looking at wiring, we're looking at weatherization. So you can start to structure a lot of these deals very differently to I would
• 33:20
  Tim Montague: point my listeners to Episode 151. From earlier this year with Jeff Coleman, the title of that show is digital infrastructure for decarbonizing the built environment. Jeff is developing a platform called Eli Eli dot build is the URL. And this is a platform that utilities primarily and jurisdictions can embrace. And then it allows business owners, consumers and contractors to be able to quickly identify Well, in any particular zip code, what are the incentives going on?
• 33:56
  Tim Montague: What are the incentives and programs, this is a major challenge. So I'm a huge fan of these digital platforms. I don't know if you know, Jamie, of others that are doing this. But that's kind of where we need to go here to make it easier for consumers and installers in my mind.
• 34:14
  Unknown: Yeah, I would say a large portion of the conversations that I'm having right now are with startups that are coming up with solutions for the space. You know, those solutions learn depending upon, you know, whether we're talking to contractors, builders, developers, I would say at the developer level, a lot of the conversations have been driven around legal compliance, you know, especially with the transfer of these credit, switching cases, some cases can be millions, 10s of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, just really making sure that the deal is set up to be able to protect everybody. Now, we're kind of moving a little bit into the insurance aspect of it and just figuring out where the where the edges of liability are depending upon the project. But, you know, really the biggest area that people are having the most anxiety around, it's the compliance aspect. So, you know, how do we manage this on a on a daily monthly annual basis to make sure that we're within compliance and protecting ourselves from from the clawback nature of some of these incentives to one area that I think especially since we are talking about contractors, you know, a couple areas to really kind of pay attention to are going to be certainly with the eligibility for braiding certain rebate programs together this as a huge opportunity to make your business highly, highly competitive, especially if you figure this out and somebody else doesn't things like walk the Weatherization Assistance Program read for rural communities watch specifically like coupling that with Hira opens up the avenue to be able to work with low income communities in a way that doesn't make a ton of sense with with here only making sure that we understand not only what the legislation says right now, but also like what are the realities of what this may look like in the future as it deploys. Really talking about this in the kind of next 12 and 24 months.
• 35:57
  Unknown: There's some aspects though, that are not defined yet that are being, you know, kind of developed at the state level that are really, really important to make sure the contractor is understanding one, the bonding and capital limits on the state rebates really, really important for you to make sure that you know that because you redesign your entire business around state rebates that in a lot of cases will only fund about 1% of eligible projects before it's out. And you're banking on that 234 years in the future. You know, you can be doing yourself a disservice or putting yourself in a tough position, understanding some aspects of like the homes rebate, the the aggregation market that's being created out of that, and the liabilities and potentials for clawbacks that are potentially very similar in the state as they are to the federal credit. There's gonna be another really, really important area for contractors to make sure that they understand. So I was gonna put a couple of those areas out there is just kind of pulse check temperature check.
• 36:51
  Unknown: But you know, make sure that you're having conversations about this with with people that are integrated in the market on the on the compliance and deployment side for the NRA, just to make sure you're protected. All
• 37:00
  Tim Montague: right, well, we're gonna end there, I want to thank Jamie score for coming on the show, please check out all of our content at Clean Power hour.com. Give us a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. And please tell a friend about the show. There are many, many energy professionals or aspiring energy professionals who don't know about the Clean Power Hour, reach out to me on LinkedIn or on the website. And Jamie, how can our listeners find you?
• 37:22
  Unknown: Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, I try to make sure that I share kind of updates based on conversations that are that I'm having you're going on throughout the space. You can email me directly as well, Jamie, Luna energy.co. Also, I'll have some, some events coming up with rewiring America Clean Energy for America. I will be jumping into webinars to explore some of these conversations and topics in more depth to
• 37:45
  Tim Montague: very good. Well, thank you so much. I'm Tim Montague. Let's go solar and storage. Hey, listeners. This is Tim, I want to give a shout out to all of you. I do this for you twice a week. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving us your time. I really appreciate you and what you're all about. You are part and parcel of the energy transition, whether you're an energy professional today, or an aspiring energy professional. So thank you, I want to let you know that the Clean Power Hour has launched a listener survey.
• 38:24
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• 38:24
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• 39:18
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• 39:58
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