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DAN ESTY Good morning and thank you all for coming. I am Dan Esty, Commissioner of Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental
Protection, and it is a great pleasure to welcome you all here today to what promises to be a very important effort on this department's behalf but
really on behalf of all of the citizens of Connecticut of positioning our State as one of the places in the Country where there is a commitment to a
clean fuels and clean vehicles future that assures every citizen and every business that they will have choices when it comes to their vehicles out
over the next few years and over the next few decades. And Connecticut is part of an 8-State effort to ensure that we are expanding the availability
of alternative-fuel vehicles, particularly electric vehicles, and we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with other States, led by California,
in this regard. And I just want to review a little bit about what that means, then I will pause and go around the room so we can all know who's
here, and then Anne Gobin, who is leading the charge and is our Air Bureau Chief in the department will walk through the action plan we've developed
to try to move this program, to move this initiative forward. First, let me say that Connecticut has in place today, thanks to Governor Malloy's
leadership, a comprehensive energy strategy, a strategy that lays out a pathway to a cheaper, cleaner, more reliable energy future that really will
position Connecticut as a better place to live and to work. That strategy has been robustly debated over the last 18 months. It was put forward in
draft last year at about this time. The legislature was given a chance to enact and did enact the pieces of it that required legislative support, so
we now have a very well-established game plan. One of the five chapters of that plan is transportation, and at the heart of that transportation
chapter is this commitment to clean fuels and clean vehicles. So this is a carefully thought-through piece of a broader agenda and one that I think
the governor feels very good about and, certainly, the feedback we've gotten out across the State is very positive, very strong. There are some
principals to this initiative and principals to that broader strategy that I think are important for all of us to be clear on, and, again, the
cornerstone is the governor's commitment to delivering cheaper, cleaner, more reliable energy for the State of Connecticut and improving the
competitiveness of our businesses and reducing the energy budget pain that Connecticut citizens have felt in the past. A second principal is that
the government does not tell you what your choice should be. To the contrary, we are really seeking to provide consumers and businesses with choices
that they can then match against their own needs. What this entails, then, is that we want to build out the basic infrastructure to ensure that if
someone wants to think about an electric car, they do so with confidence that there will be a publicly available charging station where they need it
when the need it. Likewise, if there's a business owner that runs a deliver fleet, that business owner should think about and be free to choose a
natural gas fleet for the future, which may be lower cost and cleaner in terms of its availability. In addition to that, we imagine that some number
of long-haul truckers are going to be thinking about CNG -- as well as potentially LNG in a number or circumstances, and we want to have the basic
fueling infrastructure for both CNG and LNG available. And for those who are watching the market space closely, you will know that a number of
automakers are looking at the fuel of the future being hydrogen. So we want to ensure that there's a hydrogen fueling station option as well. All
of which is designed to keep options on the table and choice in the hands of our consumers and businesses. So we're very excited to be doing this
not alone but as part of an 8-State commitment to zero emissions vehicles, as part of a regional effort more broadly. Connecticut has been a leader
in this regard and our EVConnecticut brand, that some of you have seen, I think is really starting to catch on and signals our commitment to this
agenda. There is, in fact, an important connection between our State effort and the Federal Department of Transportation, so I want to thank our
federal partners for being here. This is something we're doing in collaboration with the Federal Department of Transportation as well as our State
Department of Transportation where Commissioner Redeker has been very supportive of this and really helped push us forward. So, thank you all again
for being here. You represent a lot of different interests that are important to the process that we're unfolding, and it really is a process. What
we have to launch today is a draft of our plan for moving this clean fuels, clean vehicles infrastructure and build-out forward. It is very much a
draft, and we're opening, we hope, today a dialogue that we'd like you all to be part of. We're eager to position Connecticut as a leader on this,
and I'm going to invite Anne Gobin at this point to walk through our initial thoughts represented in this draft, and this is now a chance to start a
conversation. For those who have thoughts today, we'd welcome them. For those to want to reflect on it and come back to us, that's fine as well.
We are eager to develop a package of initiatives and a package of action items that allow us to move forward over the coming months that in a way
will ensure not only the success of the broader initiative, but your success, many of you who are in this field, in helping us deliver this
infrastructure for alternative vehicles in Connecticut.