2023 Year in Review: Energy and Environmental Policy, with Karen Palmer and Joseph Majkut

Notable Quotes

• Reforms could help energy projects get built faster: “The policy development that stands out the most for me is a thing that didn’t happen in 2023—or maybe it’s better to say it didn’t happen yet—and that’s legislation to address the various regulatory or permitting or, maybe, other barriers to investment in energy infrastructure.” —Karen Palmer (3:52)
• The European Union has begun implementing a major climate policy in international trade: “In October of 2023, Europe officially started enforcing its carbon border adjustment mechanism. This is a policy which is meant to harmonize EU imports with its domestic carbon pricing system. So, domestic manufacturers in Europe pay a carbon price for their greenhouse gas emissions, and now, imports into Europe are going to have to do the same. This is a shift from previous policies … It has caused a lot of … political introspection here in the United States about, How do we want our relationship with the trade system to work in a world that is trying to decarbonize?” —Joseph Majkut (8:05)
• New federal recommendations could strengthen arguments for climate-friendly regulations: “The recommendations lean toward putting more weight on future benefits from regulations, and that’s something that’s particularly important for evaluating climate benefits from a whole host of regulations, which, as we know, unfold over time, given the nature of greenhouse gas emissions impacts.” —Karen Palmer (15:20)
• Nations increasingly want to move up the supply chain of value: “One of the things we’ve seen come over the last few years is a rising trend where resource-rich countries … are expressing a new resource nationalism … The whole world is moving toward decarbonization. So, if you can add more value and build manufacturing facilities in your country, then you get a bigger slice of this new economic pie.” —Joseph Majkut (17:07)

Top of the Stack

• How to Know a Person by David Brooks
• The Big Dig podcast

The Full Transcript

Daniel Raimi: Hello, and welcome to Resources Radio, a weekly podcast from Resources for the Future (RFF). I'm your host, Daniel Raimi.

Today, it's our annual end-of-the-year episode, featuring Karen Palmer, a senior fellow here at RFF, and Joseph Majkut, director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Like every year, I'll ask our fantastic guests to highlight the developments in energy and environmental policy that they thought were particularly interesting or important in 2023, and what important issues flew under the radar this year and what they're going to be watching closely in 2024. It's a fun and fast-paced discussion, so stay with us.

Joseph Majkut and Karen Palmer from CSIS and RFF. It's wonderful to have you both on our special end-of-the-year podcast. Welcome to both of you to the show.

Karen Palmer: Thanks, Daniel. It's great to be here.

Joseph Majkut: Yep, I second that.

Daniel Raimi: Right. Karen's been on the show before, and our audience knows her a little bit, but Joseph, it's your first time, so welcome. We always ask our guests how they ended up working on energy or environmental issues—if you had early-in-life inspiration, or you got into this stuff later in your life. What drew you into the field?

Joseph Majkut: You come right out of the gate. Daniel, thank you for having me. I'd love to give you an answer like, I spent a lot of time when I was a kid hiking and fly-fishing, both of which are true, but lots of mergers-and-acquisitions attorneys do that stuff, too. I think I'm principally motivated and have been motivated for a long time trying to … What I came to learn was that our environmental externalities were very morally offensive to me, even when I was young. I remember reading about the hole in the ozone layer in elementary school and being just morally aghast. So, I think I've always tried to find ways to work on those challenges, and then my academic career took me through engineering, mathematics, and toward public policy over its full expression. But I would say, if you're looking for the principal motivation, it's trying to understand: How do we have a more fair and just world?

Daniel Raimi: Yeah, that's great. You also have academic training as a climate scientist, right?

Joseph Majkut: Yeah, that's right. I started in engineering and mathematics, and then I was really interested in questions of decision theory and uncertainty analysis. And this was in about 2007 when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report number four came out, and they do such a horrific job—or they did such a horrific job at that time—working with uncertainty that I thought, Well, this is a really cool important area in which I can provide some additional expertise. Much of my climate science research was focused on bringing mathematical tools that climate scientists weren't always using to that body of research.

Daniel Raimi: I see. That's really interesting.

Today, Joseph, we're going to ask you and Karen to talk about from your perspective of policy. What have been some of the most interesting developments this year, and what are you going to be thinking about next year, as 2024 rolls into view?

I'm going to direct this first question to Karen. 2023 has been another really interesting year for energy policy. At the federal level, I'm curious what you would think to be the most significant or interesting new development in terms of energy or climate policy? It doesn't have to be a policy; it could be a law, it could be implementation of an existing law, it could be a Supreme Court ruling. What have you found particularly compelling this year?

Karen Palmer: Daniel, I think the way I would answer that question is that the policy development that stands out the most for me is a thing that didn't happen in 2023—or maybe it's better to say it didn't happen yet—that's legislation to address the various regulatory or permitting or, maybe, other barriers to investment in energy infrastructure.

We all know that addressing climate change is going to require massive and unprecedented investment in clean sources of energy, like renewables, the grid, hydrogen production, and pipelines, among other types of facilities. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides important economic incentives in the form of tax credits for many of these crucial investments. But achieving all the investments needed to meet our national climate goals in a timely fashion is going to require overcoming various obstacles: supply-chain cost increases, lengthy interconnection queues for new generation, and, in several cases, streamlining federal permitting-approval processes.

As a part of the political negotiations that went into passing the IRA in 2022, there was an agreement between the Biden administration and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) to consider, in advance, legislation that would accelerate permitting of energy infrastructure. One of the aspects of that proposal was a special focus on 25 priority energy projects designated by the president. There were other aspects, as well.

That bill didn't pass the Senate, and there were many other bills that were designed to address similar issues that were introduced in 2023, but none has made it over the finish line. This policy discussion is not over, but the lack of progress this year is probably slowing the pace at which the promises of the IRA are going to be delivered.

Daniel Raimi: That's a really great answer. Joseph, how about you?

Joseph Majkut: I have to say that Karen's answer is spectacular, right? The absence of permitting reform is a huge and growing story.

For me, this is the year where we watched the IRA start to take effect. The Inflation Reduction Act is this massive basket of subsidies meant to support clean energy production, manufacturing, and clean energy supply chains here in the United States. This was our first full-calendar year to watch to see if this would do anything.

It passed in summer 2022, and I think that that story has been relatively mixed. We see a lot of really big announcements for battery-manufacturing facilities for electric vehicles. We've seen pretty major announcements in terms of the assembly of solar panel modules here in the United States. There is a growing sense that the IRA, particularly on the manufacturing side of things, is working. Yet we've seen incredible political tensions in the United States about how it is working, right?

Right now, the United States and China are in a new era of geo-economic or geopolitical competition. These technologies are viewed on both sides of the Pacific Ocean as strategic and important for both climate goals and long-term energy security. The United States is facing deep questions about, How much do we want to integrate this supply chain with technology from Chinese firms?, which are often state-backed, but often are better than what US firms can produce—cheaper, more reliable, higher-capacity batteries, etc.

We've also started to see some fractures around the good news of the IRA working, and I think we're going to continue to see a lot of political contests and, maybe, some tough decisions about how we want decarbonization in the United States to look.

Daniel Raimi: That's another great answer.

Now, I'd love to ask each of you the same question. What's something that you found particularly interesting that happened in the world of energy or environmental policy this year, or something that didn't happen—but, this time, outside of the United States. Joseph, let's start with you for this one.

Joseph Majkut: I have to go to Europe and say that, in October of 2023, Europe officially started enforcing its carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). This is a policy which is meant to harmonize EU imports with its domestic carbon pricing system. So, domestic manufacturers in Europe pay a carbon price for their greenhouse gas emissions, and now, imports into Europe are going to have to do the same.

This is a shift from previous policies, but I think it's really important on a few different axes. One, it moves the EU carbon pricing model more toward the textbook climate policies that we talk about. We get a chance to see, Is this really going to work? Two, it has caused a lot of, I would say, political introspection here in the United States about, How do we want our relationship with the trade system to work in a world that is trying to decarbonize?

There's been some pretty fervent opposition coming from emerging markets and large manufacturing countries. China, India, and even Brazil are looking to oppose that tool at the World Trade Organization. Brazil brought it up at the Conference of the Parties and tried to raise holy hell about it there.

So, what we think about is that these economically good tools to use do have to work in the political world. Europe is taking a pretty big step forward in a way that appears to me to be completely justifiable from a policy standpoint and from a domestic-politics standpoint. Now, we need to see how they're going to manage it internationally.

I've written a little bit on the CSIS website about how I think the United States should try and engage with the CBAM and think about it as a model for our own future climate policies. But I'd love to see the United States be pretty supportive of Europe in this regard, because it's a tool I think we're going to need in the toolbox as we look at global decarbonization.

Daniel Raimi: It has been proposed in the United States, as well. There was a bill—Senator Kramer (R-ND), and I'm blanking on the other senator … But is that right, Joseph?

Joseph Majkut: Yeah. I think there's sort of residual interest in the United States on linking carbon and trade. I wouldn't say that every bill we see is technically a carbon border adjustment. I would say there's a spectrum of policies. There's carbon tariffs, which is just saying, "We don't want to import carbon-intense goods, and we're going to raise a tariff on those." Sometimes, that bothers the more economically minded folks in the audience and is pretty inconsistent with World Trade Organization practices.

You've got border adjustments, where there's some domestic policy that is driving decarbonization, whether that's regulatory or a carbon price or a cap-and-trade system, and you just need to harmonize that domestic tax with your import policies. Countries do this all the time with value-added taxes and other things; so, moving it to carbon is a new thing, but it's not completely unrecognizable.

Then, the other thing we see proposed is climate clubs, right? Countries working together on decarbonization and sanctioning out members of the club with various kinds of trade sanctions. These are all tools of varying severity, legality, and political possibility.

Daniel Raimi: Great.

So, Joseph took us to Europe. Karen, where would you like to take us?

Karen Palmer: One answer I could give to this question is what Joseph said, because I was also focused on Europe. Most of my work at RFF is domestic. So, I was talking to some of my colleagues, and there was kind of uniformity that the implementation of the CBAM is the biggest thing.

To go just a little bit deeper on elements of that policy—my understanding is in the initial transitional phase, which I believe lasts until the end of 2025, the focus is on reporting emissions intensity. Eventually, there'll be the requirement of a payment, like surrender of CBAM certificates that would be priced in line with the allowances. But, during this reporting phase, it's an opportunity to gather information, develop baselines, and learn a bit about how to go about implementing this policy. I think that's important for understanding across the globe.

I think it has triggered many other countries to think about things not just in the trade-policy context, but also in terms of considering, “Well, maybe we should do something domestically to address greenhouse gas emissions that would get us more in line with what this policy's going to eventually look like.” But even if they aren't doing carbon pricing themselves, the existence of this policy is going to lead to better measurement of greenhouse gases associated with particular sectors. These energy-intensive sectors like cement, iron and steel, aluminum, fertilizers, electricity, hydrogen, and those broader discussions are important to making global progress.

Joseph Majkut: That's a great point, right? That the administrative task that firms and importers now face is, as I understand it, pretty significant. The first couple of years of figuring out how the accounting works are going to be really, really important. That is one of the places where I think the US government could be particularly helpful to our own firms in thinking through the standards that we should have here that make it pretty easy to then bring a piece of paper that the Europeans trust when you're importing steel, hydrogen, chemical products, or whatever it may be.

Daniel Raimi: Great. So, each of you have given us really great answers on big headline topics here in the United States and in Europe. I'm curious, now, if each of you could identify something that you think might have flown a little bit under the radar—something that may have been under-discussed this year that you think is really interesting or important related to energy or environmental policy? Let's start with Karen this time.

Karen Palmer: Perhaps one of the most enduring and important developments that's under the radar this year is the issuance of the new benefit-cost guidelines from the US Office of Management and Budget in a document known as Circular A-4. This document provides guidance to the agencies as they develop regulatory impact analyses of significant regulations. This new guidance, which comes something like 20 years after the last update, contains new recommendations on things like discount rates that the agencies should use to align with the best practices in economics which have been evolving over that time period.

Generally, the recommendations lean toward putting more weight on future benefits from regulations, and that's something that's particularly important for evaluating climate benefits from a whole host of regulations, which, as we know, unfold over time, given the nature of greenhouse gas emissions impacts.

Another thing that this guidance does is direct agencies to use population-specific epidemiology when measuring the health benefits of a regulation. In general, it places more emphasis on the consideration of distributional impacts of policies. In that spirit, the guidance supports agencies that choose to experiment, for example, with weights in social welfare calculations to reflect differential impacts of certain policies on populations with different income profiles. So, it will be interesting to see how that plays out in the future, but I think it's really important.

Daniel Raimi: Absolutely. Yeah, that Circular A-4 is so important. We actually touched on topics related to that just recently in the podcast we had Ann Wolverton from the US Environmental Protection Agency on the show, and we talked about how the agency is now incorporating environmental justice considerations into its benefit-cost analysis, and Circular A-4 is certainly part of that.

Joseph, how about you? What's something that you think is really interesting, but that's been a little bit under the radar?

Joseph Majkut: First of all, it's an incredible question. One thing I've been looking at with colleagues here at CSIS is this rise of a new resource nationalism. When we think about the energy transition, we're all now sort of familiar with the idea of, Okay, you move from a system that's really heavy in oil, coal, and natural gas to one where we're going to need to produce a lot of lithium, nickel, and cobalt, and those supply chains are really different. One of the things we've seen come over the last few years is a rising trend where resource-rich countries—Indonesia is the highlight example—are expressing a new resource nationalism. They're saying, "We don't want to just be an extraction hub and sell raw ore to processors and manufacturers abroad. We want to move up the supply chain of value here, right?"

The whole world is moving toward decarbonization. So, if you can add more value and build manufacturing facilities in your country, then you get a bigger slice of this new economic pie.

Counterintuitively, this is something that the United States is trying to capture, because our challenge, when you think from an energy security or geopolitical frame, is all those mineral supply chains are almost wholly dominated by China. So, resource nationalism is not necessarily our worst enemy at the moment, if we're trying to think through, How do we diversify and support the efforts of countries that want to have first-step or second-step manufacturing in their country? Does that create a more diversified supply chain for the United States and its allies to draw upon, and one that will just be frankly more resilient and able to grow faster to meet decarbonization needs? That's been a really interesting under-the-radar trend that we might see more of going forward—how these resource-rich countries want to capture value from the resources that they have and that they know that the world needs going forward.

Daniel Raimi: That's such an interesting answer, and I'm also going to be watching that closely here in the United States, because there's interest, of course, in extracting lithium here, processing lithium here, and finding other critical minerals through waste streams for coal, for example. I am really interested in how that is going to affect communities, because in the United States, just like many other parts of the world, the places where extraction occurs—extraction of oil, gas, and coal—those are not necessarily the places that benefit the most from the use of those commodities. It'll be interesting to see if a similar dynamic emerges in the era of more mineral-intensive energy system.

Joseph Majkut: I completely agree. It's highly tied to questions of just transition, and how do you look at, Are we selling hot air, or can you really create transitions that involve employment, jobs, and local economic benefit in this new economy? I think it's very, very interesting.

Daniel Raimi: And now a word from our sponsor.

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We've been talking about the past year over the last 20 minutes or so. Let's look ahead. 2024 is right around the corner. Listeners, by the time you're listening to this, it probably is 2024. I should note that today is December 20 when we're recording this. If anything really exciting happens in the next couple of weeks, it's not our fault!

Looking to the future—Joseph, let's start with you. Can you pick one energy or environmental topic that you're going to be watching really closely this year? Help us understand its significance and, if you wish, feel free to prognosticate.

Joseph Majkut: Yeah, sure. I'm actually going to ask for two?

Daniel Raimi: Okay.

Joseph Majkut: They’re related. The central thing I want to spend a lot of time looking at and working on over the next year is the implications for US energy policy of our—I'll just say in shorthand—a successful Inflation Reduction Act.

We're in this era where there's sort of a bipartisan consensus. We want to move manufacturing back into the United States. We want to be at the technological frontier for chips, for clean energy goods, for pharmaceuticals. Because of the energy crisis in Europe, we're seeing massive manufacturing investment figures in the United States. The reality of that is that making a lot of stuff requires a lot of energy. So, how much this renaissance of manufacturing is going to change our energy forecasts and our needs, how it's going to affect our plans for decarbonization, and how much it's going to affect fundamental reliability, I think is really, really interesting.

If you look at the case of Texas from the last couple years—because of population trends, because of economic growth there, you've seen that electricity and the power system there has gotten strained. It's failed at different times, it's still at fairly high risk, and that can become the story for a lot of the United States, and I think that's going to be an important thing for all of us to watch. How do we actually meet the needs of this renaissance on the energy side while still achieving climate goals?

Relatedly, we need to think carefully about the role that the United States plays in the global energy system. Here, I'm thinking particularly about expanding liquefied natural gas export capacity, which is both going to be a big political debate over the coming years, because in the aftermath of the European energy crisis we're seeing a huge expansion of that capacity. The United States plays a really significant role in global energy security, yet there are climate implications to this and, potentially, domestic market implications.

People can make a lot of money selling liquefied natural gas outside the United States, but how is that going to play with this sort of new sense of demand and manufacturing of important goods? I think that's going to be a really rich conversation, and we'll see kind of different dynamics arise over time, and I think that's the thing to watch next year.

Daniel Raimi: I'm also really interested to see in the liquefied natural gas space, whether political pressure from climate advocates starts to affect the way that the Biden administration is permitting these facilities. I think they're getting a lot of pressure on it right now and, given the way poll numbers are looking, I'm curious to see if there's any political response to that.

Joseph Majkut: You'll note that I skirted the fact that we have an election upcoming, which I'm sure is going to invoke energy issues at all times. But we don't want to be just in the business of fact-checking all of the campaigning.

Daniel Raimi: You don't think, Joseph, that the energy debate on the political stage is going to be as nuanced as our conversation today?

Joseph Majkut: I don't think so, but I do expect that it'll reveal significant differences in priorities.

Daniel Raimi: Seems plausible.

Karen, how about you? What are you going to be watching this year?

Karen Palmer: I'm also going to pick two, but I'll try to be quick about them.

The first one is the US Environmental Protection Agency’s final rule under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act that specifies emission guidelines for various categories of coal and natural gas generators. That would put into motion a process where states would be required to develop compliance plans for achieving those guidelines. I think this is important, because it's a complement to the tax incentives for clean energy that were included in the IRA, and because it addresses emissions directly. This is also the third attempt by an administration to do this. Prior attempts in this space, which were both very different, have faced court challenges. I think the language of those decisions have had important impacts on the shape of this rule. But I'm interested in seeing how the various provisions—like to include special exemptions for rarely operated plants to keep online for reliability purposes—evolve, and really just what the final rule and the final deadlines look like.

The other thing that I am going to be watching is to see what the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission includes in its final intraregional transmission planning rule that's expected from the agency sometime early in 2024. This is another example of progressive rulemaking. There've been rules in the past, and they haven't had the desired effect. Frankly, long-distance transmission planning has been a really tough nut to crack, and there's a variety of reasons for this: cost allocation of those new lines; threats, perhaps, to the profits of incumbent generators in certain areas; and, more generally, the decentralized jurisdictional planning and permitting over electricity. For natural gas pipelines, this is more centralized federally, but for transmission it's decentralized. So, this rule is much awaited and will hopefully pave the way for greater investment in new transmission lines, and for improving incentives for low-cost approaches to increasing the power throughput on the existing grid through certain types of investments and technological improvements and information-gathering that can happen there. Those are two things I'm watching for.

Daniel Raimi: Excellent, really great answers. We just have a little bit of time left, but I'd love to ask you now, before we go to our Top of the Stack segment, to each reflect on something that maybe has happened at the state or local level that you think is particularly important that either happened last year, or maybe it's going to happen in 2024. We've been talking mostly at the federal US level and at the EU level, but what's something that's more localized that you think is really important? Karen, let's start with you.

Karen Palmer: I want to mention two things. One is the rules and regulations to implement the New York cap-and-invest program, which is also known as the NYCI program. This is one of several policies and programs that the state is developing to achieve the goals of its landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act that was signed into law in 2019.

These rules are important not only for what they'll mean for New York State, but they also could be a model for future carbon pricing regimes in other states in the East. Where in the East there is carbon pricing that goes on, it's mainly focused on electricity generators. This would be going broader in different directions.

The second thing I do want to mention is relevant to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and that is that I'm looking to see what the agreement looks like that comes out of the ongoing program review for this program with regard to both future caps in the program and future design elements.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative—or RGGI, as it's affectionately known—has historically been at the forefront of innovations in cap-and-trade policy design. It pioneered features, like using auctions to distribute allowances, using price floors in those auctions, and introducing price steps in the allowance supply curve, which is important, because it makes the program impactful and helps it work well and continue to have robust prices when there's other state policies to advance decarbonization, as well.

What we've seen in RGGI in the recent allowance auctions is a steady increase in the allowance prices, and that suggests that the market is believing that the program's going to continue to be important as several states that are participating have very ambitious decarbonization targets going forward. They definitely see RGGI playing a role, but I look forward to seeing how the program evolves in the next round with respect to program-design decisions.

Daniel Raimi: Excellent. Thanks, Karen. Joseph, how about you?

Joseph Majkut: I am very interested to learn more about what states are doing on electric vehicle deployment. One of the biggest uncertainties we have in the medium term for climate and energy issues is, How quickly does the American consumer embrace electric vehicles—everything from e-bikes to the Cybertruck?

I don't personally feel like I have a good handle on how different states are acting, what they can do to accelerate uptake, what consumers really need to see, how they deal with the grid-balancing issues and charging stations, and all the other things that have to be financed to make that a full ecosystem. That is a place where I think states have a lot of authority. There's clearly states that want to have leadership position in that space, and so I'm looking to watch that in the coming year.

Daniel Raimi: That will be really fascinating to watch. As someone who is in the market for a new vehicle myself, I've been thinking about it a lot; and Michigan, it turns out, doesn't have a whole lot in the way of incentives.

Let's go, now, Joseph and Karen, to our Top of the Stack segment, where we ask you to recommend something that you think is really great. It can be related to the environment and energy or not. We're not that picky.

Joseph, let's start with you. What's at the top of your literal or your metaphorical reading stack?

Joseph Majkut: I have been reading David Brooks's new book, How to Know a Person, and why I think it's relevant to this conversation is it's about restoring our personal ability to hear another person's perspective without being actively threatened—to try and understand the world from their perspective a little bit better in a patient and inquisitive way.

We danced around it earlier, but it's no secret that energy and climate issues in the United States are hotly polarized. People have very, very strong feelings on any axis of debate, and I think, for those of us in the analytical community, it's really important to be able to listen intently and understand the perspective of the person on the other side of the table or chirping at you on X, formerly Twitter. I think that that's a good time to be a little bit reflective, look carefully at your own practices, and see if you can become a slightly better person in 2024.

Daniel Raimi: I love that answer, and just one second—I haven't read that book, but I've read several of his other books and always find them insightful, especially during the holidays. It's a nice time when we can all be patient with perspectives that may be different from ours.

Karen, how about you? What's at the top of your stack?

Karen Palmer: Well, first let me say that's a great recommendation, Joseph, and when my kid who gets home today from grad school asks, "What do you want for Christmas, mom?" That's when I'm going to tell him, because he can get it overnight.

Joseph Majkut: Better gift for you than a college kid! “Got you that new David Brooks, son.”

Karen Palmer: Exactly, exactly.

Well, I'm going to suggest a podcast. Over the past few weeks, I've been listening to The Big Dig, which is a nine-episode podcast produced by WGBH, a public media company in Boston, about the project to bury the Central Artery, which was formerly an elevated section of Interstate 93 that cut through downtown Boston. The project took roughly 25 years to plan and complete—I guess they started planning in 1982, which is the year after I graduated from college.

The podcast producers look at the project as an embodiment of broader US cynicism, about our inability to build large infrastructure projects. I think it's an important listen for this time. It looks at the role of politics, communities, contractors, and personalities in the planning and execution of this massive public works project.

I have a connection to Boston, having lived just outside in the city of Brookline during the project-planning phase and being a frequent visitor during the construction phase, where you had to get from the airport to other places while this was going on. Now, I really enjoy the results, but I do think that there are some important lessons from this experience that are featured in the podcast. I'd invite your listeners to check it out.

Daniel Raimi: That sounds fantastic.

Well, Karen and Joseph, like we were saying before we started taping, we could talk about this stuff for hours and hours, and it certainly wouldn't get old, but I hope our listeners have enjoyed at least a brief conversation of some of the most important trends over the last year and some interesting stuff we'll be watching.

Joseph and Karen, thank you so much for coming on the show. Happy New Year to both of you. Happy holidays. Thanks so much for joining us.

Karen Palmer: Thanks.

Joseph Majkut: Thank you, Daniel. Happy New Year.

Karen Palmer: Yeah, same. Happy New Year to everyone.

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