Video Description:
Sustainability Advisory Board Meeting – March 17, 2021
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
To listen to the meeting alongside a transcript, please visit:
Read along below, or follow along directly here: https://otter.ai/u/S74DK6duvUf54M0PrOsOEzHTdrw
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hey, I would like to now call the march 17 2021 long month sustainability advisory board meeting to order. Can we start with a roll call please?
Unknown Speaker 0:12
Yes, Kate
Unknown Speaker 0:12
collards in present, Mary Lynn.
Unknown Speaker 0:16
Present.
Unknown Speaker 0:17
Adam Reed
Unknown Speaker 0:19
present.
Unknown Speaker 0:20
Jim Metcalf
Unknown Speaker 0:23
Charles Musgrave as it k Valmeyer, President, staff member lisa Knobloch. Andy Noble. I’m here francy Jaffe,
Unknown Speaker 0:41
here,
Unknown Speaker 0:43
Tim Ellis. Heather McIntyre’s here, Susan Bartlett here and lutes and Phil Greenwald. Yeah. And Councilmember Christensen, your
Unknown Speaker 1:03
chair, you have a quorum. Alright. Perfect. Then the next item on the agenda is to approve the minutes of the last meeting. Anybody want to make a motion to approve?
Unknown Speaker 1:16
I move to approve the minutes from February 17.
Unknown Speaker 1:20
I second the approval per second. The motion?
Unknown Speaker 1:26
All in favor? Aye. Aye. Got a unanimous approval there.
Unknown Speaker 1:35
All right.
Unknown Speaker 1:36
So the next item on the agenda is public to invite it to be heard. I will now open it up for the public to be invited to be heard each person wishing to speak will have three minutes for comment. You’ll be unmuted to speak one at a time. When it is your turn to speak. Please state your name and address for the record and I will be timing you. And please do when when you hear the alarm please do. conclude your comments.
Unknown Speaker 2:12
Alright chair we have first up is Joe Kelly.
Unknown Speaker 2:20
Can you hear me? We can. Okay. This is Joe Kelly of barberry drive in Longmont. March 11 2021 letter to the editor Loveland reporter Herald. What happened in Texas can happen here. The power outages in Texas during the recent cold snap can happen here. On Valentine’s Day our power supply or PR pa was faced with a pending power shortage as the demand for electricity reached a new winter peak. Weather conditions had shut down its wind generation snow covered its solar panels and natural gas for its peaking units was in short supply due to home heating demands. Now that was just a short excerpt from the piece but learning that the same thing nearly happened here as in Texas ought to give each of us serious pause. I have an assignment in this life. And I don’t exactly remember taking it on. But as I learned more about my personal Human Design, I come to realize that incarnating at this time has to do with being an alpha leader of my pack, addressing survival issues for the pack and using very specifically my voice in the service of the greater good. Ironically or not, I have a degree in voice performance. I’m a lifelong singer, but a reluctant recent activist. And the human race is my Pac, so I can’t help it if I’m concerned. With all of us surviving the additional microwave assaults we face from ami smart meters in our communities or the advent of 5g fifth generation wireless in neighborhoods, and even from the sky. Getting back to Texas and Colorado on Valentine’s and speaking with my friend Tim shakily, an internationally recognized expert in wired and wireless telecommunications and specialist for many decades in home automation, which includes energy efficiency and management in the home. I’ve come to understand if we were to adopt another model of energy management based on what his joint International Standards Committee has been working on, we would find ourselves on much better and more secure footing while reducing our energy footprints. I took some notes from Dr shakily too many to include, but I will send them to Heather so she might share them to each member of the group. But first two definitions, hems are home energy management systems, and ders or distributed energy resources which are small scale power generation sources located close to where electricity is used. Here are a few of the notes number one doing hams is a much more efficient yet difficult yet efficient mode of energy management than ami number two. To implement hymns Longmont would need to imitate Holy Cross and basalt a pie A program recommended by NRL of golden with a whole lot of technical and possibly government help from NRL, which is the National Renewable Energy labs number three, Tim’s joint standards committee with emphasis on the group is working on the recipe book for building a manufactured mass producible version of the basalt project. They are working feverishly against climate change to publish this cookbook. Number four, this joint International Committee is top of the pile as regards international standards. And my addition to this long month would do could also do a pilot utilizing Tim’s project called Emma, we have choices there’s not just one game in town, and why would we not utilize an experts expert like Tim, who’s here? The newest coming let’s make way for the real energy future in Longmont we citizens deserve and should demand an energy system that doesn’t leave them in the dark and then the cold and I’ll send you the rest by email. Thank you. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 6:03
Next up we have Scott Cunningham.
Unknown Speaker 6:13
Okay, can you hear me?
Unknown Speaker 6:15
We can. Okay, awesome.
Unknown Speaker 6:17
My name is Scott Cunningham I reside at 3771 South Narcissus way in Denver. I’m a practicing integrative internal medicine physician. My purpose in drainie in addressing the sustainability advisory board is to empower the council to launch an effective and safe 100% renewable energy pilot, which will become a template for long months renewable energy infrastructure. This will fulfill the dictates of our 85 of the climate action recommendation report, which requires a small scale, renewable power generation and storage pilot by 2021. Recently Updated to 2022. According to the electrification work plan, I’ll cut to the chase is the wireless advanced metering infrastructure ami truly the cornerstone for long month fulfilling the requirements of rd five distributed energy resources in a timely fashion. Here’s what long was proposed $16 million ami meter purchase will buy. Since ami meters are not designed to distribute or enter or enable storage of solar energy, they will not bring Longmont any closer to its otherwise reasonable goal of a small scale solar generation and storage pilot within the required deadline. So, if if ami meters are not the answer, what is the answer? I suggested? The answer is a comprehensive solar energy generation system with storage capacity and distributive capability, which requires a wired controller that automatically enables houses within the neighborhood to share power in real time, creating reliable energy for everyone within the community. It bears pointing out that the bi directional controllers utilized in this real life system are much different than the proposed ami meters, which provide only a metering function, but no means of distribution or storage. In short, it turns out that ami meters are not the cornerstone feature it’s vendors have promised. I’ve spoken to city council recently about giving council access to a credential group of renewable energy system consultants holding a track record of successful project completions using the exact system I’ve been referring to. Here’s my challenge to you. I suggest that as custodians of long months future city council cannot afford to miss this opportunity to give last month the region’s first 100% renewable pilot, while first mover advantage is still within reach. I invite city council to reach out to me directly and we can arrange a detailed presentation by these exact consultants in the very near future. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 9:17
And last, we
Unknown Speaker 9:18
have Ginni black.
Unknown Speaker 9:26
Hi, can you hear me?
Unknown Speaker 9:28
We can go ahead. Thank
Unknown Speaker 9:29
you. Okay. Um, hi, I’m Jenny black to 609 Elmhurst circle in Longmont speaking today for the Longmont chapter of citizens climate lobby. Good afternoon, members of the sustainability advisory board and Happy St. Patrick’s Day to those who are celebrating. Thank you for considering further our request to forward a resolution of support for the energy innovation and carbon dividend act to the Longmont City Council for their own consideration. We we appreciated the discussion following last month’s presentation. It will help us to better advocate for this policy in our March lobby days, which will be taking place next week. The headlines today under breaking news in the Washington Post read Biden administration to make reckoning with climate risk priority finance factor. carbon pricing is getting increasing attention and we would like to see it included in the backbone of their climate package. The energy innovation and carbon dividend Act is a carbon fee and dividend policy, placing fee a fee on carbon at the source and returning that fee to American residents. This carbon pricing approach has been shown to be fast, effective, good for the economy durable and fair. We believe that such a policy would accelerate long months climate action goals and support its desires for a just transition. supporting it would help to build the political will necessary to pass effective legislation that will drive the transition to renewable energy. Looking forward, we would like to extend an invitation to those in the business sector to attend a virtual business advocates for carbon pricing conference on April 13. And an invitation to all to join us for our virtual CCL conference June 12 and 13th which will precede our June lobby days. Thanks again for your consideration. Thank you. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 11:44
The next item on the agenda is agenda revisions and submission of documents. Does the staff have any revisions or anything to bring up?
Unknown Speaker 11:58
No. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 12:00
We will move on to general business. So I will ask board members to please hold questions and comments until the end of each presentation after staff has finished presenting. So first up is the end of year sustainability climate action progress report. Lisa? floor is yours.
Unknown Speaker 12:24
Thanks everyone. Lisa Knobloch sustainability Program Manager. I’m going to see you all see that okay. That’s all right. knology. For the wind today, hopefully, I apologize, I had hoped to send the progress report out to you all prior to the meeting for you to review. And I think overestimated our ability to as quickly internalize this new format template as I had hoped. So I just finished it up yesterday. So I apologize for that. But it will send it all to you all after this meeting. And we were supposed to go to city council to provide this progress report on March 30. But that’s that got bumped out and waiting to hear back for when that date will be. But what we do want to do today as we go through this is for y’all to be thinking about your feedback. And then Francey is going to be taking some notes that will pull up at the end that you all can approve that we can send as a memo to city council along with this report. So there we go. Okay. So just a reminder for for everyone, we have been doing quarterly reports, which were sustainability reports, which are just big, massive spreadsheets that nobody really utilized that much. And so with the approval of the climate action recommendations report, we suggested moving to a biannual report and incorporating climate action into our sustainability reports. So we’ll be a mid year and an end of your report with a transitional report in the springtime of this year that we can help that we can capture kind of 2021 accomplishments as well as progress to date on the 12 near term climate action recommendations. We are making a more visual report and really focusing more on metrics and highlights rather than every individual strategy that we have been looking at before. And again, just to remind you, all you this group was tasked with review and appraisal of those reports. So we’re gonna run through the report as I mentioned, and then you all will be able to draft a letter of approval or appraisal to send to city council along with the report. So just very high level climate action progress. We’ve met with staff lead staff of all 12 of the near term recommendations and developed high level action plans that cover these primary areas have a timeline of primary activities and milestones, introducing the action process that we’ve talked to you about before with the equity checklists that was developed, based on the recommendations from the just transition plan committee, identifying metrics, and then starting to talk about budget and staffing needs for 2022. and beyond. These are the 12 near term recommendations. Just as a reminder, we went through these at our last meeting as well. So I’m not going to go into them. I do want to note that in the report itself, that I’ll pull up in a minute and run through with you, we don’t show progress on every single one of these, I just tried to, because some of these are existing programs that we’re just continuing and working on expanding or there’s not much happening. So we had limited space to try to not get too text heavy. So I really just tried to pull out some key highlights. But I want to remind you of these, and then I will after we go through the main report, just touch on the progress of the rest of them, just so you all have the full picture of where we’re at with implementation of climate action recommendations. So with that, I’m going to hand it to all stop sharing, and Heather is going to pull up the actual report, and then I’ll jump back to this.
Unknown Speaker 16:18
Great. So this is our new reporting format, I think it came out really nice. We worked with a graphic designer who’s helped us with a lot of our sustainability outreach materials. So this front cover page won’t change too much other than the date at the top, and the report highlights down at the bottom that just kind of show what’s covered in this current report. And this will all be translated into Spanish and then posted on our website after these are completed. Alright, Heather, you can scroll down to the next page. There we go. So we kind of broke it into sort of three conceptual areas around community prosperity, and then a whole focus on climate action. The community page, I’m not going to go into great detail because a lot of these key activities and accomplishments I talked about at the last meeting when we did our kind of 2021 2020 progress. So it’s just showing neighborhood sustainability work, which the achievements that we’ve made in our electric energy savings and our household trash consumption. And then our work around Community Education and Engagement. So that’s our conservation campaign that Francey has been running. And then community resources. This is just information about things like the farmers market, the WIC Farmers Market program that we’ve provided funding for last year. You can scroll to the next page there. The prosperity section is focused mostly on the economic vitality areas, the sustainability program. So we have our members around sustainable business program participants in the support that Bernice has been providing to businesses in COVID recovery. The community grants that were part of the sustainability tax money that we use to support the neighborhood impact granting program in partnership with the Longmont community foundation that we’ve talked to you all about before. And then also this number, I don’t think that we have shown to you but this is pretty significant, almost a million dollars in grant funds that otra Nusrat who’s our grant and Program Coordinator has helped to bring in to support a number of different things such as renewable energy at the wastewater treatment plant, electric vehicle, charging, parks and greenways maintenance and restoration, bicycle Wayfinding and outdoor space for Main Street businesses during the pandemic. So, in the eight months, I guess it’s almost a year now that optra has been with us, it’s a pretty significant amount that she’s been able to support, either write grants herself or support other staff and bring in grant funding and to support sustainability. So I did want to highlight that because I think that’s pretty incredible. Okay, you can scroll to the next page. So this is where we’ll spend the most time around climate action, which has two pages devoted to it. The top two areas, or just the high level aren’t where we’re at with our greenhouse gas emissions and the focus on equity. And then highlights from the topic areas themselves. So as we’ve talked to you about before last year, we completed the update to the greenhouse gas inventory that showed an 8% decrease in our greenhouse gas emissions, which is great, but also due due in part to our activities. So that’s a good thing, but also due in part to changes in the inventory methodology in terms of calculating specifically our missions related to Tia. So that’s a good thing to note, but also there’s kind of an asterisk, so along with that Equity and climate action. As I mentioned, the just transition plan. Committee recommendations have been adapted to equity checklists that we’re using in implementation of our climate action recommendations. we renamed or the group renamed from the just transition planning committee to the equitable Climate Action Team. And they’ve since developed their 2021 objectives, and are continuing to support us in equity and climate action. Scroll down a little bit further to the energy section. So I did end up combining, if y’all remember, in the climate action recommendations report, there was building energy use and renewable energy, I combined both of those into an energy section, because that seemed to make sense. And so we didn’t kind of chop it up as much. Um, I did include our 2020 electricity mix over on the side. And this green checkmark, I do want to just note here actually needs to be modified. This was what we had reported to all at the last meeting, that just over 50% of our energy supply is renewable.
Unknown Speaker 21:07
Um,
Unknown Speaker 21:08
that was a little bit, I just need to clarify that a little bit that that was a projected number based on kind of a snapshot of our 2021 energy mix. Where as the actual numbers now that we’re into 2021, and we have our full 2020 delivered energy mix is actually 43% renewable. So it’s a little bit lower. And we don’t have the full forecast yet for our 2021 numbers. And then if we look at not just the energy that’s delivered to Longmont itself, but ps ps full energy mix, including their surplus sales, that renewable number as it is that 33% so I will make that modification to this report here. But I just wanted to note that clarification for folks. We kicked off the electrification process and Susan Bartlett from LPC is here she’s going to talk to you about that in more detail. Next, we’ve implemented the commercial building benchmarking program. So Debbie Seidman from LPC kicked off that project last year with a demonstration project where they looked at 10 commercial and 10 municipal buildings. And this year, they launched a voluntary program for commercial and industrial buildings greater than 20,000 square feet. And over time, that program will be available to smaller buildings as well. The Doors team, so distributed energy resources has been working in partnership with Platte River in the four member communities. That process launched in 2020. They did some stakeholder outreach through 20, late 20/20 through a community survey, which I believe you all received information about. And they’re about to kick off a second round of stakeholder engagement in April in May, and then they’ll have their final plan in mid May. So we’ll keep you all updated on that process, and how you can scroll to the next page there. In the adaptation and resilience area, we launched the climate risk and vulnerability mapping project. Again, that was one of the projects that supported by the sustainability tax funds for 2021. So we’ve talked to you a little bit about that before. But just to remind you all that I’m looking to create an online tool that will map climate, a number of different indicators to show climate risk and resilience and vulnerability to climate impacts to help us prioritize areas for climate impact mitigation, planning and targeting resources to help build resilience in the education and outreach sector. We’ve launched the big picture climate series that’s going to be a part of Earth week in partnership with the museum and with kgn new and sustainable, resilient long month. So look for information that’s going to be coming out about that it’s going to be a great week of programming. The museum has really done an awesome job pulling a lot of that together. And then also part of Earth week, the E cat is what we call the equitable Climate Action Team is going to be hosting, presentation and panel discussion on a global climate action. And lastly, in the transportation section, the majority of our recommendations are either monitor over time or our midterm strategies. So we didn’t really have anything to report in terms of near term implementation. But I did want to note the completion of the global climate free or carbon free transportation roadmap, which you all are familiar with, because that is a big component of our climate action in the sector of transportation. So that’s the the main report there this is what will go to council again with that one modification To our electric energy mix, and then Heather, you can stop sharing, and I’ll bring my screen back up. And then I’ll just really briefly, whoops,
Unknown Speaker 25:12
there we go. Um,
Unknown Speaker 25:15
go over the remaining strategies that I didn’t cover again, just so you all have the full picture of where we’re at with climate action. And then I’ll have francy, pull up the memo document, and we can take some from some notes on feedback and comments from from you all to share with Council. So in the adaptation and resilience section, the climate risk and vulnerability mapping project is really some pre work to this public health in a warming climate recommendation. And then the plan itself, the public health plan that that recommendation calls for will begin in 2022. The flood mitigation, flooding mitigation and preparedness recommendation was determined to be monitored over time. Sorry, I know this is pretty text, heavy that the building energy use section we right now are the 2021 building codes have been released and staff is reviewing that. And they’re going to be looking at that recommendation of including things like solar and electric vehicle readiness into that process and determining whether or not it makes sense to include that in this cycle. Or in the next code cycle. electrification plan, which again, Susan will be talking about benchmarking, which already mentioned commercial and energy efficiency and energy. Sorry, commercial efficiency and rebates is an existing program that we’re working to increase through marketing efforts in 2021, expanding the low income residential energy efficiency program. So if you recall, this goal was to expand this program from 40 Homes per year, which is about what we’re doing now to 400 homes for you here. Because of COVID, this was pretty, pretty well put on hold for 2020. And so what what we’re doing in 2021, is to just keep that goal, it’s at 40 homes per year, and look at budget and staffing needs for 2022. To start that increase next year. We are hoping that in person visits will begin again sometime in April, in the Climate Action Fund, and staff. We’ve met internally twice now just to start talking about some potential revenue sources for this fund. So we’re just having some brainstorming conversations at this point in time. And then any viable sources will need to be really vetted and then taken to Council for discussion and direction. Education and Outreach, I mentioned the climate lecture series, the sustainability liaison program, we’re really looking right now at how best to integrate this recommendation with existing neighborhood based programs such as soil and sustainable neighborhood solutions. And then really looking to see how we can collaborate with the E cat The equitable Climate Action Team, since they have us budget specific objective focused on community engagement vandusen waste so the one year term recommendation here was commercial and residential composting, we’re going to be looking to incorporate that recommendation into the broader waste diversion work that Council has given us direction on in February. And we’ll update you on that specifically as that work evolves. Renewable Energy smart meters. So they’re currently putting out a request for proposal. And that’ll probably that work will probably start in the second quarter of 2021. And they should have a more definitive timeline later this year. So there’s not there’s some work happening there. But not a whole lot of details yet. The Doors I’ve already talked about. And then in transportation, the electric vehicle charging infrastructure recommendation was determined to be monitored over time. So those are that’s kind of the big picture of where we’re at in terms of climate action work. So I’ll stop sharing the screen. And then francy I’ll have you pull up that memo document.
Unknown Speaker 29:15
Could
Unknown Speaker 29:24
Oh, it didn’t. Did it not pull in the letterhead and everything?
Unknown Speaker 29:31
I think because it’s in the web version, it doesn’t show up in there.
Unknown Speaker 29:36
Oh, okay. Well, this does have the letterhead and it has the sustainability advisory board at the top. But what I did was just essentially draft an opening statement here. It says the sustainability advisory board was tasked with reviewing and appraising progress made on the climate action recommendations developed by the Climate Action Task Force, and the climate action, recommendations report and then Staff reviewed progress to date along with the new reporting format at the march 17. Meeting. Upon review of this information, we find that and then I’ll open it up for you guys to give us some comments. And then we can approve this. And I can send this along with the report to city council if this works for everybody has any questions on any of that?
Unknown Speaker 30:27
history report I go. I’m so open it up for discussion. So what I suppose kind of First and foremost, do how do people feel about kind of I mean, we’re the climate action recommendations report was approved formally and approved in December. So we’re only a couple of months into our implementation of the 12 year term recommendations. So there’s not a whole lot to share yet, although I would say there’s a lot of work happening. But if folks feel like they’re satisfied with that progress, are there any areas where people want to see us put more focus on or people feel kind of good with where things are at? And then we’ll come back for them did your report in probably July and
Unknown Speaker 31:11
francy, can I get you to stop sharing your screen real quick, so
Unknown Speaker 31:14
we can see.
Unknown Speaker 31:17
And Polly has a hand up?
Unknown Speaker 31:18
Oh, great. Okay. Yeah, probably.
Unknown Speaker 31:23
You’re muted.
Unknown Speaker 31:29
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 31:31
So thank you, Lisa. And there’s never a dearth of information. So the more information council gets, the better as far as I’m concerned. But last night, we did get a an update on the beneficial building electrification feasibility committee in planning, which, which gave us a small rundown of the overall progress. And of course, everybody understands that. Nothing has gone as planned this last year, and it’s going to take a while. So we all understand that. And I’m glad you’re just doing this twice a year, because there really isn’t a need to do it within twice a year. So I just wanted to update you on the fact that we have chosen a couple of liaisons for the electric aviation committee last night, and I appreciate that report. Because it also included all the comments that were made by this, the Transportation Committee, the sustainability committee, and one other, I don’t know which one, and that was very helpful. Um, anyway, so the liaisons for that will be Marcia Martin, and john pack, that I would volunteer, but I’m term limited in November. So anyway, I appreciate that, I just wanted to let you know that we already have gotten part of that report.
Unknown Speaker 33:09
Thank you. And yeah, Susan, will, will be up next to talk to this group about that process. Other comments or feedback,
Unknown Speaker 33:21
this might be a thing I missed, maybe last fall. But Sorry, I’m going back to your graph with the PRP. And this probably has little to do with your actual report, which I thought looked fabulous, by the way, I love the format. And that the presentation was easy to follow. And except for when I got distracted by this graph. And I was just gonna know that I saw point 4%, natural gas and 40% coal. And I think it’s great that they’re filling in the rest with solar and wind and such, but I feel like I feel like I had this like side expectation that we were moving away from coal a little more here. And I know that the goal is to also move away from natural gas to more renewables. But the I want to say just, I’m looking I was like googling PRP over here on the site, like Wait, what is rawhide doing? And we’re, I mean, we’re not it looks like they’ve got the natural gas units up and they can kick out the same amount. From my understanding, I Well, I want to say i don’t i don’t think that natural gas price shot through the roof or anything. And I know coal is always cheap, but coal itself is like 30% of the emissions period. You know, when you break it down, and people are like, Alright, you know, oil and gas, bad all this stuff all the time. And I look and you look at the graph, and it’s like no, actually coal. Let’s, let’s let’s go buy coal. is the number one source of emissions then comes your trucks and traffic and then comes the rest everything else. But I just had that question like, I know we’re trying to get to 100%. But are they going to leave the coal online until we get there? Or are they going to pull it and make a transition? And did I might have missed this last fall? Or maybe I just forget things? And I’m reminded, I don’t know. But I just had that I just a question. I see how he’s thinking. I’m like, Yeah, I just anyway, I figured I’d ask and maybe that is something that needs to, maybe that’s a spot where it wouldn’t be bad to put a little push on somebody. Because that’s, yeah, anyway.
Unknown Speaker 35:42
Yeah, yeah. So that’s, and I can share the largest graph, and I can share it to you all, so you can just everyone can see kind of what the current, again, this is 2021 delivered energy. Can you all see? Oh, no, I was, there we go. Um, so this is the current breakdown as of the end of 2020. And I, if you, if you all recall it, I know we’ve talked a lot about and this is kind of one of those things that that that is a complicated subject. But Platte River Power Authority did just approve their most recent iorp, which is their integrated resource plan a couple months ago, and I have it on on the agenda to bring them to this group sometime in the next couple of months to give you all an update on what that irpt says. Because that that is the plan that says what PRP, his plan is to get us to 100% by 2030. And currently, they’re looking at they they feel pretty confident they can get us to at least 90% or above. You know, again, they’re projecting out 10 years, and they, with the caveat that at the next iorp, we should have more information around some of the technological advances that should be able to actually get us to that 100% goal. But they do have a commitment to bring all the coal plants at least offline by 2030. But it probably be best for someone from trpa to come in and speak to you directly about that. Because Yeah, that whole chunk is is a big
Unknown Speaker 37:16
is a big chunk. It is a big chunk. And I even even when I’m saying purchases again, it’s you know, I don’t know that purchases could be gas, they’d be
Unknown Speaker 37:26
variable.
Unknown Speaker 37:27
Yeah, yeah, it’s variable. So I’m going we could technically have close to 50% coming in from coal alone here. And I just I guess I’m like, yeah, and I’ll say for on their on their defense, if you’re making a transition, and you’re going to take everything offline, but renewables eventually, I you know, there is some cost efficiency in it. But it’s also if you’re looking at a long term goal. You know, I’m saying everyone Personally, I’d take the gas for 20 years over the coal for another 10. But that’s, you know, anyway, just thoughts. And I’m looking forward to them coming in sharing the update. So thank you, Lisa.
Unknown Speaker 38:02
Yep, yep. All right.
Unknown Speaker 38:08
Oh, when? When, but please document nice format on the report. And I do think it was well presented, and that it was a good, good, good job.
Unknown Speaker 38:22
Other comments or feedback? I see. I can only use I can’t see everybody, but I see Polly’s hand. So
Unknown Speaker 38:31
Oh, God, why don’t you take Adam first? He’s
Unknown Speaker 38:37
Adam. Sure. Yeah, I’ll just follow up with Kay, I really appreciated the report. And the presentation was really great. One question I had was, did you mention if this addresses any gaps or potential gaps, and areas that might need to be looked at further?
Unknown Speaker 38:54
No, it it doesn’t currently. Oh, there we go. Thanks, Heather. Heather reminded me that I can put it in gallery view. When we switch back. I’m so used to using teams now. Okay. Um, it doesn’t identify gaps. This is really based on the climate action recommendations report and the existing sustainability plan. We as we’ve talked to you about, I think at the last meeting, when we look to do the update to the sustainability plan and envision Longmont that will be part of that process at that point to identify, you know, where where are gaps, and where do we need to increase our focus. So that’s not included in this report. But I can make we can make a note of that on the feedback that want to make sure at least to flag that for the sustainability plan and envision updates. Yeah, Charles?
Unknown Speaker 39:52
Yeah. Two, two points. Again, thank you for that presentation. That was great. Good to see. Even though it’s only been a couple of months. That progress has already been made. A couple quick points related to what Kay was saying, I i’ve, in our energy mix, it’s been kind of challenging to get clarity on exactly what Platt rivers commitment is. For example, if you look at their web page and look at their guiding principles, it says, quote, consider environmentally progressive technologies to meet future generation needs. It doesn’t, it just says consider. And so it would be great. I don’t know how this fits into our progress, you know, the climate action progress report itself. But I think one thing that would be great would to get to get more clarity on exactly what they’re going to do. For a number of reasons. One is, you know, with the investment that’s going to be made and these technologies, you know, they could become stranded assets now, and they’re there, and who’s going to be stuck with the costs of these things. And they’re going to be generating power to the, to the degree that they are used, in a way that’s not climate friendly. And so it’d be great if we get more clarity. I don’t know if there’s something we can do in the report, to or to talk about that. And then one other thing, I had a question, you mentioned something about monitoring, when you’re you said, monitoring, when you’re talking about the think, charging stations for charging stations for EBS. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.
Unknown Speaker 41:31
Yeah. So what’s your first point? I think that, that bringing trpa in to talk about the iorp hopefully will shed some more light on the clarity about what their plan is. But I think we can include something in this memo of that, that the board wants to continue to engage with with Platte River and make sure that they are following the stated goals. So we can include that in in this memo. And then they when staff went through the evaluation process of all of the climate action recommendations to determine, essentially, the implementation timeline, there were a handful of recommendations that due to some, some different either constraints or situations that we identified to monitor of those over time for the feasibility of implementation. And the electric vehicle charging infrastructure was one that was identified to monitor over time, mostly because the Evie market is still developing. And there are a lot of unknowns currently around the impact of downtown charging infrastructure on the adoption of electric vehicles. And so staff really felt like it made sense to just keep an eye on that for right now, rather than jumping to installing paying to install 20 Evie chargers, which is what the recommendation had called for. So that’s
Unknown Speaker 43:02
understood. Thank you very much. Yeah. So when just a little bit of a concern on that, is that? Yeah, so the electrical electric vehicle, adoption curves are growing very quickly. And so we’re going to see exponential growth of that pretty soon. The issue, one issue is that people who can charge at home, who own homes or who rent homes are in pretty good shape in terms of being able to take advantage, both of the advantages of electrical vehicles and the dropping costs and that are much, much cheaper to operate and maintain, etc. But the challenge is when you have people who live in apartment complexes, for example, where they don’t have the ability to charge at home, and so preparing for a future where we can have kind of an equitable access to, to electrical vehicle charging. So those who are on homes are in pretty good shape, but maybe lower income families who actually in the long term would benefit the most from the inexpensive electric vehicle. They’re going to be at a disadvantage if you don’t build that infrastructure. So So anyways, I know we’re in the you mentioned monitoring there, but at some point, it’d be good to get that into, from monitoring to how do we plan implementation? Yep.
Unknown Speaker 44:20
And I think part of that is in the is in the transportation roadmap as well. And I see. So we can add that note in the memo. Very late. I see your hand up, but I think Tim has a response to Charles perhaps. So let me hand it to Tim real quick.
Unknown Speaker 44:35
Yeah, thanks, Lacey. I just wanted to let you know that’s a great question and something we are thinking about and we are actually studying multi dwelling unit programs and project possibilities so that we can get to understand how to promote charging stations at you know, multifamily dwellings because that market is going to be up and running especially as electric vehicles. They The whole electric vehicle progress begins and they come up, they come up for leasing options, and they’re more affordable. Certainly everybody, or a lot more folks from every economic level are going to be able to participate. And we want to make our community ready. So that’s actually something we are looking at currently, that’s part of the monitoring, although the monitoring, as Lisa mentioned, the monitoring for our own installations for the city is around what exactly what Lisa said, we’re really looking at how this whole thing is going to roll out. Because there are a lot of private AV stations and AV companies and TV station companies and also retail stores. And a lot of folks are putting them in and we don’t want to start putting in stations and competing commercially, and putting them in at places that it’s inappropriate. So that’s that’s really the basis of our monitoring is we want to see how this really rolls out commercially for available charging, we want to keep up with the amount of electric vehicles, but we don’t want to be in some kind of competitive situation with other vendors or put them in places where they will be utilized.
Unknown Speaker 46:06
Thanks, Tim. And I do want to say thank you. Um, yeah, just clarify, two things roll really quickly, that the recommendation was very specific in installing 20 charging stations in the downtown area. So so it was very specific. And that’s part of what staff said to monitor over time of does that specific approach in that specific location makes sense. But Tim’s point is, is is great in terms of our overall approach. And then second, just a reminder, if you could physically raise your hand instead of raise the icon, because the icon doesn’t get captured on our recording. That’s great. Malin. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 46:45
Hi. Um, my question is actually follows on Charles, he beat me to the question on stranded assets, and perhaps is a question that Tim Ellis could, could respond to. I have been learning more and more about micro grids and have been reading about the Holy Cross micro grid and Aspen, which I think a couple of people who called in mentioned this, it’s been touted in I triple E spectrum, and PC Magazine as the future of sustainable power. And I know you’ve been doing some experiments to this effect in the city, I think Apollo was behind getting this started or promoting it. And Tim, you’ve been working on that, I would like to see that focused on and addressed, you know, as sort of fronted as being a possible solution, and learn more about what’s being done in that regard. And I also do want to bring up the issue of the hams, since they capture the same information as a smart meter, but it’s customer facing. Why do we need the redundancy of a smart meter? I guess what I should be saying is, I don’t think we do need it if we’re going to be going towards micro grids. So that’s my comment.
Unknown Speaker 48:06
I can address the first part of that initially. I mean, as far as the the project up in Holy Cross, we’re certainly interested in that in that project. In fact, we met with Holy Cross last year to discuss that project specifically. And we tried to bring some of those elements into our Habitat for Humanity project that we are still working on starting up. We’re just waiting for some of the homes to be constructed still, before we run into full implementation, but those are, that program is definitely something we’re interested in and the multiple components in, you know, in an economically affordable way. We certainly want to include all of those when we can so that our startup with that understanding is this habitat project. You know, we’re looking at other Home Solutions, smart thermostats and batteries and that type of thing as well. So certainly, that is a strategy we’re looking very heavily into. We actually as part of that project, we are installing hens in those homes. The only comment I would make is the hens are, as you said, they’re a home a customer facing informational piece. And I don’t think that’s compatible with utility billing. But I won’t talk about the the AMI and all that because that’s not my expertise. But I know the hams are great for a homeowner to get exactly because it’s something the new ham technology is interesting because it it disaggregates loads in its own algorithms and gives a customer an idea of a homeowner idea of how they work where their energy breakdown is and if they can make any improvements, but it really is for a homeowner’s use specifically at least the ones I’ve been looking into. Okay, but it is part of the habitat project.
Unknown Speaker 49:49
Well, they’re their homeowners use but also on a micro grid. And in a micro grid. If it’s balancing its own loads, then the only data that needs to be exported is the billing data is the way that I understand And it. And since the costs of renewables are plummeting so much, the smart meters really seem like overkill, there’s no need to gather that. That extreme amount of data when the people who really need it are the members of a micro grid, the homeowners and the businesses that are within the micro grid. That’s my understanding. And that’s my concern. Looking at this
Unknown Speaker 50:22
with Malin Polly, I saw your hand up. And then Was there somebody else? Thank Polly.
Unknown Speaker 50:31
Yeah, I think it would be useful. But I really do think we need to talk to Platte River Power Authority. And but I think it’s useful for people to know that they their policy is managed by each of the five I believe it’s five members
Unknown Speaker 50:50
of this
Unknown Speaker 50:52
cooperative are represented by the mayor of each city and the only the American come and the head of the public utility. So it would also and we have never, in the last six years gotten a single report on what goes on at on utility from those two entities that go up there. So it might be useful to have either the mayor or David Hornbacher come speak about what goes on there because they set the policy. And I was stunned to see that we’re still operating on 42% coal, so electrification, which, if you look at some of the other things causes something like 35% of the emissions. If we continue, if we’re going to increase electrification, while continuing to use coal, that’s kind of wacky. But of course, it has to be a balance of reducing one while you’re increasing the other because otherwise you have no redundancy, and you can just cut off the call overnight. But um, yeah, I would suggest that we have David Hornbacher come and speak about how the policies being set at Platte River Power Authority. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 52:29
Thanks, Polly. Adam.
Unknown Speaker 52:32
Just really quickly, I’d like to express my support for learning more about the Platte River Power Authority policy. Great.
Unknown Speaker 52:42
Any other back,
Unknown Speaker 52:45
I just want to quickly clarify, after having watched that three hour attended on three hour online, annual meeting from Platte River, it’s very clear to me that we need to bring in professional strategic planning, or they need to bring in professional strategic planning consultants, they the number of questions and responses to questions that amounted to we do need shortening planning, we don’t need short range planning. The next board will do short range planning, we trust that the current staff will do and then they did the same thing about Long Range Planning was very concerning to me. And I would like to focus our questions around having a professionally led strategic planning process that accurately identifies and receives input from stakeholders and builds projects that are appropriately in response to the stakeholders needs and concerns.
Unknown Speaker 53:46
Thanks, Mary Lynn. Yeah, Amy.
Unknown Speaker 53:50
I don’t mean to cut anybody off. I just want to do a time check. Because I know we have a pretty long agenda. And I think we’re just on seven eight. Is that right? This is?
Unknown Speaker 54:03
Yeah, yep.
Unknown Speaker 54:05
And I think this is a great conversation. I think there’s a lot of great things and it sounds like our intention is to bring trpa back and have that conversation. So yeah,
Unknown Speaker 54:16
are there any other final comments I’ll have francy bring up that memo document again and we can read through and if people are good or if they want to add anything?
Unknown Speaker 54:26
Um
Unknown Speaker 54:30
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 54:33
Go
Unknown Speaker 54:35
y’all want to read through that real quick and let me know if that all sounds okay. Jump
Unknown Speaker 54:49
necessary for this version because like we are just a few months in but I think in future versions, it would be very handy if the kind of like, like goal and where we actually Are was, was kind of like, graphically shown a little bit more like, oh, we’re, you know, I mean, you know, I’m envisioning dumb things like we had in school. But I think I don’t think it’s necessary for this one. And I don’t want to include it on this. But I think in the future, as especially as we’re getting more, there would be, it’d be great to have something that’s just a graphical representation of, of how, how close we are to our goal,
Unknown Speaker 55:23
like infographic kind of style. Yep. Yeah, that was my hope with this. But I ran into some timeline issues. So I’ll look to include that later. Yeah. Merlin,
Unknown Speaker 55:35
I would like to see a statement about professional strategic planning with with a very robust program of gathering stakeholder input
Unknown Speaker 55:46
for Platte River.
Unknown Speaker 55:48
Yeah. All right. For an energy planning. Yeah. It might Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 56:06
Well, fancies typing that out. Are there any other comments? Did people feel good with sending this along with counsel with the report to council?
Unknown Speaker 56:16
So So I wonder if because this is a progress report, we might make some comment that in several of the areas or many of the areas that we applaud or praise, the hard work and, and reasonable progress that’s being made in those areas? No, we still leave it. Because there’s so many different areas, and some of these things are not being worked on currently, or we’re not as happy with maybe just just seems like because it’s a progress report, we should mention something about the progress.
Unknown Speaker 56:52
Great. Thanks, Charles. Yeah, Jim.
Unknown Speaker 56:55
I’d second that. I think that’s a great idea to Charles and especially considering I mean, I don’t think we necessarily need to say that, but I think that’s a great idea. And I I support that. Thanks. Francine. Did
Unknown Speaker 57:06
you catch that? All I heard was something about progress, because I was typing something else.
Unknown Speaker 57:13
You’re doing a good job.
Unknown Speaker 57:15
So isn’t happy about current progress?
Unknown Speaker 57:19
Yeah, Charles just said that, just to capture that the board is, is pleased with the progress that staff has made. On overall fleet?
Unknown Speaker 57:31
fleet. Yep. Pleased with the, you know, the, the effort and the progress that the staff has made. And the action items or areas of the Climate Action Plan. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 57:47
inferencing not to be nitpicky. But if you could just say professionally led rather than extensive strategic planning. I’d rather have an efficient short strategic planning than an extensive one.
Unknown Speaker 58:02
All right. Great. Well, we’ll send that off. With the report to Council, I will send you all the final report, as well as the council communication that will go to city council. Oh, Charles, do you have something to add?
Unknown Speaker 58:16
Yeah, one last little quick thing. Could we? Could we move to our bullet point about being pleased with the progress to the to be the first bullet point? I know that’s a minor nitpicky thing. I like it first, maybe, or quarterly.
Unknown Speaker 58:29
That’s nice.
Unknown Speaker 58:32
Thank you. All right. Excellent. Well, thank you all for your for your feedback. I’m excited about the new format. I hope next time it will go a little more smoothly. And I’m going to pass it over to Susan cartlett to give you an update on the electrification plan. And we do, as Danny mentioned, have a number of things still on the agenda. So as a reminder to let Susan gotta get through her presentation, and try to keep questions pretty brief so we can
Unknown Speaker 59:01
get through everything.
Unknown Speaker 59:02
All right. Thanks, Lisa. Again, afternoon, I’m Susan Bartlett. I’m a key account manager with Longmont power and communications. And this is an ideal opportunity for me to let you know where we are on climate action recommendation B two, which is electrification. There’s already been a lot of discussion about that. So I’m kind of excited to hear what you have to say and be incorporating that into our activities. Next slide. So I want to just briefly update you on electrification. It’s, as you know, it’s one of the many climate action recommendations that was approved by city council that least has gone through. Specifically, this recommendation has to do with reducing carbon and greenhouse gas emissions from buildings while keeping housing affordable for our most vulnerable community members. And I want to share where where we are right now. I want to talk about the purpose and the makeup of the electrification feasibility committee want to share a tentative schedule for convening the
Unknown Speaker 1:00:07
phased electrification plan, and then just talk next steps. Next slide, Heather.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:14
So as a reminder, this includes convening that feasibility committee to oversee the planning efforts, conducting appropriate research that becomes necessary as we move through the process, vetting policy and program options with community priorities that have been identified and other work like the sustainability planning and adjust transition. Planning, considering impacts to housing stock, and then developing full and viable building electrification plan that we can phase in over the next few years. And you all have already identified some of the challenges ahead in terms of thinking about electrification and how that relates to our fuel mix. So it’s a it’s a meaty topic, if you will. And I just want to let you know that our work is underway already. And our progress to date includes completing the work plan that was in your packet, working with Fort Collins utilities and a consultant to conduct some early heat pump and hva. See market research in our area. Also identifying some key staff members that are going to support the effort and then developing a scope of work and RFP to solicit a consultant to help with facilitation. Strategies strategy, and also some plan development. And so I want to highlight the feasibility committees role today and then let you know a little bit about recruitment.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:42
Go to the next slide.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:46
So the committee’s primary role is to oversee the planning process. And that’s going to be conducted by staff with consulting support. We hope to have a committee that is has representation from sectors that could be most affected by strategies or policies that evolve as part of the plan, for example, development and new construction, the trades, thing property management, the rental community, we’re also going to include some community members at large. We’re also going to include key city staff from Bill planning from Longmont power and communications from sustainability and also from the Housing Authority. We’re going to have two City Council Committee liaisons Polly mentioned these earlier so Marsha Martin and Joe john pack were selected at last night’s council meeting and they’re on board to help support this work. And we expect committee membership to be about two years and that includes getting through the planning process and also getting us underway with launching activities related to the plan. Next slide. Our current time table is supposed to the RFP for consultants support this month, select committee members by me and we would like to have that committee underway in June. The Work Plan outlines some tenants that the tentative committee meetings to be about every six to eight weeks as needed during this timeframe. Of course it’s flexible, and we’ll adjust as needed depending on the work at hand. We also anticipate developing a communication strategy early in the process, so that we can share and gather information effectively as we go. And we’re also going to be including an engaged Longmont page that will be available soon. As I mentioned, we’ve already got this local market research underway to help inform committee work. Next slide. So we’ve already got the first thing done with our Council Committee liaisons selected. Next we’re going to work on our sector specific committee members and getting them on board. We’re going to post an at large application for two member slots. And we don’t have that ready to post yet it won’t take us long we wanted to get through the council meeting last night and make sure there weren’t any changes that we needed to make to the work plan. And once we know when that’s going to be posted, staff will keep you apprised of the timing on the application in case you’re interested or if you know of others who might want to apply and participate and help us out in this way. And like I said we hope to have the consultants selected by the end of May so that we can get the committee underway in June. And throughout this process. We want to keep the sport and city city council just apprised of progress. And Lisa through her efforts to keep you updated on all of the climate action activities will be included information there. And next slide
Unknown Speaker 1:04:59
Any questions? Yeah, Adam. Yeah, thanks
Unknown Speaker 1:05:07
a lot for the overview. Regarding the committee, is it tasked with focusing on electrification? Or will it consider broader topics like energy efficiency, and also considering how to make buildings interact with the grid?
Unknown Speaker 1:05:20
I’m glad you said the energy efficiency part. I always want to talk about efficiency, but it’s boring. And I find that not many other people want to talk about it very much. So. So yes, energy efficiency, to me is a key component of moving towards electrification. And that, that, to me needs to be part of our work. And you had a second question, I got all excited about energy efficiency. And I don’t remember what the second question was,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:50
I think I was just finding examples, like having two buildings also interact with the grids, I could come up with more like maybe making homes more passive, replacing like conventional h back units with heat pumps, and swamp coolers, like things like that, that would help reduce the carbon footprint as well as the affordability of buildings,
Unknown Speaker 1:06:11
right. So we will be kind of gathering in ideas against kind of what the priorities of the community are, we certainly don’t want to create niches that only people can participate in. We want to be mindful of making things affordable and bringing everyone along. As we electrify, we also want to keep in mind, you know, our current resource mix and how to balance that with what we’re doing with electrification technologies. So to me this first, the first activities of the committee will be exploratory. And we’ll have to kind of shore shore those explorations up with additional information and research that will help us kind of make some make some decisions around priorities, and what are the criteria that we think create the most effective solutions for
Unknown Speaker 1:07:09
long run?
Unknown Speaker 1:07:14
Charles,
Unknown Speaker 1:07:15
can ask questions, says, I’m wondering about the relationship with whoever decides on building codes? Well, we have real influence on them. because much of you, I see new construction all over the place. And it’s really disappointing to see how we’re using technologies that are literally 200 years old, that could be replaced with much more efficient and climate friendly technologies. And, and I think part of it is just be we some of the building codes are maybe too friendly towards old, old, inefficient, polluting technologies.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:58
I think it’s a good question, Charles. And as Lisa kind of reviewed earlier in her presentation, you know, building codes is one of the things that’s part of the effort at hand, we want to collaborate with that review process as they take a look at the new iecc codes coming up, and how to how to incorporate those into our own city codes. And what do we want to encourage that we think will
Unknown Speaker 1:08:25
that will?
Unknown Speaker 1:08:27
Well, it will encourage Better Buildings in our community over time, so. So those are things that are happening kind of simultaneously, and we’re, again, we’re gonna have to balance our work with their work and making make sure that we’re collaborating. But yes, you’re you’re right, there’s the the new construction is a huge opportunity for electrification.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:49
You think of those as 100 year assets, and, you know, they’re gonna be in place for, you know, 100 years, and if they’re using technologies that are not in tune in 2030, if we want to be carbon free, for example, but our houses are being built, that aren’t built to be carbon free, it can be very difficult. So that’d be great. If we have real influence on on how our building codes are modernized.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:17
Well, and just to reiterate, too, we’ll have representation from the planning and building departments on the committee. So you know, we want to stay plugged in with what they’re doing. And we want to be able to have them here and participate in the things that we’re exploring as well. So I hope to have some really good cross pollination there,
Unknown Speaker 1:09:39
if you will.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:41
Perfect. Thank you,
Unknown Speaker 1:09:41
Marilyn.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:44
Um, yeah, I think that this begs the question of when it comes to sustainability when you have to really start looking at things like building codes from multivariate approach from the outset where there’s a representative Who’s talking about the electrification issue. But then there’s also folks who can represent the other better use of resources, like bringing in geothermal having passive solar, having neighborhoods where the homes are oriented in a certain way, as they’re doing in building whole cities and indiano. So that the house can heat and cool itself, by the way that it’s oriented, bringing in all the technologies like hempcrete. And it seems to me that this is a discussion that needs to be happen in a convening. That’s not just in a board that’s talking about the electrification and giving feedback on this. It needs to be a specific convening, to talk about perhaps, innovative building building codes, in the context of innovating, innovative urban planning, towards sustainability. And maybe I should just ask an employee, what do you think about where that what happened?
Unknown Speaker 1:11:04
I think the I know, we’re limited here in time, but so I’ll try to be brief. But I really do think that all this is based upon the idea that people who are building these buildings are building them for the good of humanity. And actually, what they’re doing is building buildings that they will declare distressed in 30 years or less than 50 years. We are rebuilding and rebuilding it and rebuilding things over and over again and wasting materials, it doesn’t matter how good the electrical system is, if we are not building them to last in the first place. And we’re not reusing any of that construction material. It’s all being landfilled. We are not building buildings in the first place that are meant to be meant to last for 500 years. My uncle lived in a building that was 500 years. I, you know, it’s it’s a larger problem. However, we’ll do what we can. But we do need to talk about the sustainability of the whole building process, when we’re building things that are not using very good insulation. And we also also see a problem with an envelope that’s too tight, then you’re not getting any fresh air in at all. And it actually takes more energy to keep the air moving and clean when you actually will. You know, it’s complicated. But I do think that it’s worth exploring with planning and zoning. And certainly, what we’re focusing now is on electrification. So that’s what we’ll focus on. But I think it’s part of a whole larger problem having to do with the way we think about our buildings, we can modify our buildings, we can modify our houses, instead of having them be our homes and being able to pass them out down to our children. It’s a bigger problem. Jim, did you have something that?
Unknown Speaker 1:13:18
Yeah, I was just curious. I mean, I, I agree new building codes for new buildings, whether there’s room there, but it seems like even with one month’s population growth projected into the future. More than half of people who live in Longmont are going to be living in buildings that are already here. And it seems that that making and I know that like the plan that we have for achieving all these things is very holistic, and there’s a million parts, and they all interact with each other. And I’m, I’m not telling anybody, anything that they don’t know already, but it seems like that making sure that that that making sure that we can, you know, take our my case, not very well built housing from 1984 and make it a lot more efficient is going to probably bang for the buck b b give us a lot more of a leap in terms of overall energy efficiency. And in that case, you would have invested homeowners who would see it as as something that homeowners or property owners who would see it as adding value to their to their you know what, what they own as opposed to trying to convince somebody who’s who’s throwing up a condo complex to do something that is just going to cost them money and will make them money. I just I hope that the balance there is I agree new construction. We need to that needs to be topic I’m not saying it’s not but it seems that that gain a lot by making sure that we have we have programs that are helping people with all their you No moderately built houses really take advantage of the energy efficiency leaps that they could make and, and also kind of give them, like, make their investment worth more.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:12
Yeah, I think you make a good point, we have a spectrum of buildings to work with those that haven’t been built yet, and those that we’re living in and working in today, and there are different motivating factors in both of those sectors. And, you know, in some, in some in one sector, we may have more leverage, compulsory leverage, if you will relate it to codes. And in the existing building sector, we need to rely on other motivating factors. And that’s when economics comes into play, and you know, others other other factors that motivate people to do what they do. And, you know, we have, we have homeowners, and we have property owners, and we have people who rent and you know, how do we make sure that the most people have the most access to what’s going to make our community better, and, you know, maintain affordability. So if there was a secret recipe that we could follow, I would be all over it, I think it’s gonna be really challenging. And so we want to have, we want to have good and passionate people at the table to help us we want to reach out for expertise, when we need it, and hopefully leverage that to make some good phased decisions for the community. Because I don’t know if it was Mary Lynn or Polly, you know, we can’t we can’t do it all at once. We can’t shut the coal plants down all at once. We have to do this in a in a stepwise and thoughtful way. And so, for me anyway, that sort of figuring out what the next first best thing is to do, and moving from there.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:01
Yeah, I think that the city has a record of doing this. I feel that everybody who’s involved in this project does this already. And I don’t want to sound condescending about it. Oh, no, I
Unknown Speaker 1:17:11
understood. No, it’s a good point. valances heart.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:17
Okay, thank you for the presentation. And in the interest of time, we need to move on the agenda. But really appreciate that, Susan, thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:26
Um,
Unknown Speaker 1:17:28
francy. Looks like you’re up next with a transportation roadmap update.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:33
Great. Thank you, Chair. So as this is a return item, we presented the transportation roadmap at our last at your last meeting, we sent responses to questions over email, we work to integrate feedback. So instead of walking through, which was in the updated version that was sent out with the packet, so we’re not going to walk through a presentation again, the one items and Phil is here today, he’s going to quickly talk a little bit about transportation planning one on one, which we think will further answer some of the questions. But then right after that, we will go straight to the vote. So again, as a reminder, the vote is recommend it go to city council, as is recommended with some edits or do not go to city council at this time. The roadmap is on the agenda for the April 6 City Council meeting. So I’ll hand it over to Phil.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:30
Great, thank you fancy appreciate it. My name is Phil Greenwald, transportation planning manager with the city of Longmont and Chair, members of board. Thanks for having me today. And I’ll try to explain very quickly, transportation funding. And I think that’s what your question is more about the funding piece than just transportation planning. But the funding piece is very, really starts at the local level, quite frankly. And that’s our three quarter cent sales tax that we have on all on all goods and items with within a certain range. But we we do charge that sales tax at a local level, that gives us a lot of leverage, actually, when we go out to state and federal levels so that we can also get or access those different grants. I think Lisa told you a little bit about some of the grants that we were able to get through to her group that really helps us with the with the grant writing piece of that before we were kind of doing it on our on our own, and that’s a that’s a tough one. So we really appreciate the help on that one. But again, that three quarter cent sales tax gains us about $10 million a year for our streets program. And that’s beyond that’s just the money that kind of goes into prod new projects. There’s a lot of there’s there’s additional money that goes into just trying to maintain our existing system. So I don’t want to get too far in too deep into it. But and I really appreciate the idea that Francine sent out some of your questions to us and we were able to respond and I hope we were able to do that, you know, in a reasonable and and efficient and, and hopefully we got all the information back to you that you needed on that. So I think what we really like to do is just move on to the vote if we can. And if you have any questions, please let me know. But really simplistic view, again of what we do at the funding levels for transportation. And we could go further into what we do for planning. But I think what you see in the in, in the equitable, carbon free transportation roadmap that was presented last month, is that we’ve really taken the equitable the carbon free pieces of those plans, and all the different things that we try to do with our funds. And we try to consolidate them down into what we do are into this roadmap piece. So that gives us a clearer picture of how we move forward and how we do that in a phased manner as well. So with that, I will turn it back over to francy. And hopefully, that helps with any questions you might have. Thank you. Great,
Unknown Speaker 1:21:06
thank you. Kate, would you like to lead the vote process at this time? Or will I need to restate the different options?
Unknown Speaker 1:21:15
Yeah. So let me try to restate them and you can correct me if I get them wrong. Um, so the the options are to to present to counsel as is to present to counsel with modifications, which we would then also provide, or what’s the third one?
Unknown Speaker 1:21:32
To not present
Unknown Speaker 1:21:33
or not present? Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:34
Mmm hmm.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:37
How
Unknown Speaker 1:21:40
does anybody about this? Does anybody not want to present this council? Okay, are how and now? Are we good as is? Anybody? Yes. That anybody like to motion that we presented as it
Unknown Speaker 1:21:59
I will move to present the transportation roadmap as to city council.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:03
Okay. Second.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:09
I’ll second that. Okay. Motion.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:13
All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Looks like unanimous approval. So please present as it’s great. Thank
Unknown Speaker 1:22:25
you.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:25
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:27
No, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:28
And thank you for your hard work.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:31
Yes.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:34
Okay, um, Lisa, looks like you’re going to lead us in the next vote.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:40
Um, yeah, actually,
Unknown Speaker 1:22:42
I can hand that off to you also. Just as a reminder that you all have the presentation from Jenny black, who’s on the call today around the I don’t remember what the acronym is, but the CCL carbon dividend
Unknown Speaker 1:22:59
act.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:01
And she there, you all have sent her some questions that she responded to you. So Kate, I’ll just probably just hand it back to you to call a vote on whether or not you all want to bring that resolution to Council. Yeah. Or or support bringing resolution to council? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:21
Yeah, I was just gonna say, Hey, I’m just gonna remind everyone that I do volunteer for citizens climate lobby, and so I’ll recuse myself from this vote.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:29
Thanks for that reminder item. Okay. Is anybody willing to make that motion to to approve? Well, to send this to council with our endorsement.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:46
And I will I moved to send this to council with our endorsement. I’m glad that I had an extra month to think about it and answer questions, and I support it, and would move to Senate to counsel with our recommendation and blessing.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:00
Whatever else.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:01
Thank you, Jim. I am gonna say I’ve got a hard pass on this one.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:08
Really hard pass really hard path.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:13
So that looks like it’s it’s down to three of us here. And with that being the case, are we are we able to pass this Heather
Unknown Speaker 1:24:24
eight. Did we have a second?
Unknown Speaker 1:24:25
We don’t motion okay. Before you would be able to vote on it. We would need a second but if if majority does vote, it would still pass.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:35
But we don’t we won’t have it’ll just be 5050 because Adams not we’ve got two adults to two. Hmm,
Unknown Speaker 1:24:44
I was thinking it’d be three to two no three
Unknown Speaker 1:24:46
to two. I mean, Charles and and it’s
Unknown Speaker 1:24:50
down Charles and you but someone else’s second. Yeah. So
Unknown Speaker 1:24:54
with with Adam abstaining, there would be five members. So either way Okay, cool.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:01
All right. Charles, are you willing to second?
Unknown Speaker 1:25:08
Interesting? Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this. And I think, yes, the prices of wind and solar weren’t dropping so fast. This would be a fantastic tool and very necessary. But I think that free market forces are probably going to make it unnecessary given the adoption curves that we’re seeing and the price reduction curves. I, I’m still willing to support it. I just don’t think it’s really necessary. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:45
So,
Unknown Speaker 1:25:48
so I will, I will, I will second the motion. Okay. Not with the ton of enthusiasm.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:56
Noted. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:59
So, those of us in favor? Aye. Looks like three of us. Okay. And to those opposed? Please raise your hands. Got it. Thank you. One abstained. All right. Do we need? Are we good there, Heather. We’re good.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:24
Thank you. All right.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:26
Thank you. is when we forward things to council? Is the vote forwarded along with the overall recommendation.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:34
Yeah, we can include that. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:41
Yeah, it makes you document me as a no as a publicly No.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:46
Usually, usually, when we forward these things from other boards, what we do is include in an excerpt of the minutes in the memo, so we could do that this time as well.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:57
So then I would like to put in a comment that I believe others in the board made last time as well. I’m very concerned about the onerous nature of this additional taxed on the small and the specialized business.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:15
I’m in general concern for the general economy.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:22
those notes to the minutes. Thank
Unknown Speaker 1:27:23
you.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:23
Thank you. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:29
The next item on the agenda is Oh, from Tim Alice, electric vehicle charging stations. rate and review, or an rate review. I’m sorry.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:44
Do you have the presentation? Ready? Or am I gonna pull it out? Give
Unknown Speaker 1:27:48
me just one moment. Sure.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:02
Amen. One clarification I’d like to make right off the bat. First of all, thank you for having me come and present on this material trying to give a summary about our city owned Evie stations, as well as those are I put our midterm on there. It’s not really a rate analysis rate has other implications for the utility, which are not a good idea to put on this return as what we’re proposing here. It’s really a service fee analysis. Because for these for the stations that we own, we previously did have a service fee. And we are looking now, we analyze the what the costs are and wanted to implement that fee. And I’ll go into more detail at the end, but just want to make that clarification right up front. So as Lisa mentioned earlier, and you know a bunch of the topics talked about transportation, I was happy to hear some early questions, which are actually part of this presentation about Eb charging stations and our strategy to roll them out. But, but this presentation is really to give a summary on on what happened last year at our stations. This the stations and TVs are obviously an important part of our overall transportation plans. This is for sustainability. We’re looking to reduce emissions and it has played a big role in that for the Climate Action Plan that also reduces greenhouse greenhouse gases and also hopefully will play an important role as we look into the the carbon free equitable transition transportation plan in the future so it really touches on all of those areas. Next slide please. city of La my currently owns five public charging stations that are mapped out here. They’re all manufactured by charge point and they all have the hf two ports. So two points, two cars can charge at the same time so there’s 10 available ports total. We installed these charge point stations in 2019 as replacements stations I’m in the last one was installed at the library last year. And this map obviously shows where these are, there’s one at the memorial building, DSC parking lot between man and kimbark. There’s one over at the library now and one at the museum and at the LPC service center. Next slide, please. Yeah. This chart shows how much how many kilowatt hours were consumed in 2020 at all five stations, and we can see that there’s there’s over 43,000 kilowatt hours used to charge the electric vehicles last year, you can see there was a distinct drop off in April, you know, with the onset of COVID. But stations are recovering and have recovered to the to the most for the most part from that drop off. And obviously, we’ll have more data for the beginning months of this year to see how that’s going. Next slide please. This chart shows the charge point calculation for greenhouse gas emission reductions. There’s several variables that go into this and just want to note upfront that LPC is working with sustainability to get more clarification and calculations around long amount specific emission reductions for vehicles that go from gas to electric in our territory specifically, but this shows that there were over 17 metric tons of carbon dioxide reductions as a result of charging versus driving and standard gasoline with standard standard gasoline cars. Next slide, please. And this is a quick graphic shows a couple of the benefits right off the bat for a standard electric vehicle versus standard gas vehicle for each gallon that you would pay for and the standard gas vehicle, you would get for the same amount of money to get over 90 extra miles of driving for that for that gallon cost. Also, in the year where a vehicle drives over 12,000 miles, there’s over $1,000 of savings in the purchase price of gasoline, electricity versus gasoline. So just a lot of savings around around electric vehicles that are you know, even though they’re they cost more upfront down the line, they’re significant savings for those owners. Next slide, please. This slide shows the number of sessions. A session is defined as each time a car plugs in. So we see that there’s there’s about a 3800 sessions in 2020 for all five stations. And we found that the average charging time per car was was three to four hours, although there were some quicker ones and some that were plugged in longer, but the average time was three to four hours. Next slide.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:53
This pie chart shows a breakdown by station stations of how many unique drivers were at each station. It’s important to note that the library there in dark blue that was installed and operational in late September of 2020. So had a lot less unique drivers. And we’re expecting more this year. But you can clearly see that the memorial and DSC had to have a substantial amount of unique drivers. We did a calculation on unique drivers for all stations. Even if one unique driver used multiple stations, we counted them as one. And we we found that there were 342 different people that were charging at that charge at our stations in 2020. So there were multiple charges by folks, if you look at the sessions versus the unique drivers. Next slide please. And here’s a table of the metrics showing the showing what analysis we considered when we were looking at what the costs were and how we would recoup funds through a service fee. The available hours is simply the available the hours that the staff port a particular port was available, or a station was available for the year so you can see, you know, there’s 8760 hours in a year so the service center station was available all year. So there was a total of 17,520 hours of availability. So that’s all night 24 hours a day. The charging time shows how long a vehicle or vehicles were a plugged in and charging during the year for each station. The time at the station indicates how long the vehicles were plugged in and either charging or not. And we wanted to take a look at that and see what the percentages around how long folks were charging and if they sat there with their cars plugged in after they were done charging. So it would it would hinder others availability to charge it those stations. So the time charging verse available hours pretty wide range Each year. So you’d see the memorial DSC, that’s a really high rate of charging, considering that we’re considering 24 hours a day. So that is 20% 16%. That’s total time of the entire year that that, that folks were charging at those stations pretty high, the library, it does have a gate that closes at night. And also it just opened in September. So we’re expecting higher usability at that one over 2021 and in the future. And that last column charging while plugged in is just looking at the time at station versus charging time to see that try to get understanding if cars were sitting there plugged in and not charging. And we found there, they’re pretty high percentages of charging time. So so people tended to move their vehicles after they were done charging within within an hour or two. So that was good to see. And that’s something we keep our eye on. Because if if cars are sitting at those stations a long time after they’re done charging, you know, we’ll implement the fee, the service charge is going to be as I will cover, charging them for every time all the time they’re plugged in. So even if they’re not charging, they’re getting charged a fee. So that will hopefully motivate people to move their cars after they’re done. It’s Next slide please. And here are the results against that a real analysis service fee analysis, the metrics we use to calculate this fee were the cost of electricity to charge the vehicles average hours of charging, that you know we had last year data. So that is a number that we we needed to understand to in order to recoup the costs. We put in the purchase and installation costs of this station as well as maintenance repair contracts, which we have at all five stations, we have five year maintenance, repair contracts, any wiring and metering that needed to be done to get those stations up and ready to install. And also administrative fees just to keep an eye on and do analyses and keep on top of the stations make sure the repaired inoperable. off of that total cost, we took the rebate that we received from the state of Colorado
Unknown Speaker 1:37:15
grant that that we get which is really substantial, which is for our public station, we get up to $9,000 per station. And so we got a lot of money back. So that went into that cost fee calculation as well. And we determined that to in order to have a self sustaining fee to have at stations $1 an hour was sufficient at this time as a charge, which is exactly what we charged before we change those stations out and stop charging for a year or two. And then and then our nearby cities for Collins, Boulder and Loveland all charge $1 an hour as well. So there’s consistency throughout the region. If people are traveling through the the Front Range, they’re going to understand how to charge and what the fees mean. Because since they’re all pretty consistent. Next slide, please. And so yeah, so Charles, this is what you were talking about this cost curve, pretty steep. This is from the Colorado and Evie plan this graphic and it shows a business as usual. They have three lines in here, hi, their study what the study shows if they implement certain policies, and then a business as usual scenario, but all of them have a pretty steep trajectory for expected IE V’s in Colorado over the next 10 years. So that’s something when we say re monitoring station installations and you know the purchase of TVs, these are the numbers we’re keeping an eye on so that we can keep up with our support of electrical electric vehicle integration into our city. And the Rocky Mountain Institute is an interesting comment that if all the light duty vehicles in the US roads today increase would increase the if all of them were electric, it increased electricity demand by 25%. So that’s something we also talked about earlier is with electrification and of buildings and with transportation, we’re going to see an increase of electric demand and we have to be ready to accommodate that with renewable energy and just being able to have reliable energy on the grid with variable sources of generation. So you V’s are going to play a big part into increasing the electric demand and we’re certainly planning and being able to to keep up our reliability and support the electrical electric vehicle transition in our in our community. I think that’s it for me. Oh, well sorry, next steps. So we’re that this. The council presentation was pushed back a couple of weeks now we’re presenting on April 13. We’re going to present this information to council after that, we’re putting on educating the community community about that rate, and that rate, service fee implementation in the springtime, and we’re looking to implement that service fee sometime this summer, June or after, depending on, on how and how we message that out to the community. And that’s our plan.
Unknown Speaker 1:40:25
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:40:26
Yeah, Charles. And then out of Bari.
Unknown Speaker 1:40:29
I’m sorry, jumping out of turn.
Unknown Speaker 1:40:32
too quick, one
Unknown Speaker 1:40:33
quick question. You didn’t mention what the power was in the Chargers? So you know, is it 150 kilowatt hour? charger?
Unknown Speaker 1:40:42
Oh, I’m sorry. Yes, all of our level two chargers, that’s a great point chose I need to put that in my notes for this presentation. Yeah, we have all the level twos at this point. And that’s they charge at about three point average of 3.5 kw at a time. So yeah, so they’re level twos.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:00
Level Two, Okay, got it. And they don’t. So they’re not shared when, when two cars are plugged into the same charger, they don’t reduce the power to each one.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:07
Actually, right now, that’s another great point is our previously we had single chargers out there. So whenever you replace them with the dual ports, the power share was put on so that they share the 20 amps if there’s two but if one’s there, it’s a 40 amps, service. But we’re actually having our electrician, our contractor go out there and rewire that so that everyone will get that 40 amp charge, at least for the full all those other than the library because the library had some electric panel constraints where we could not accommodate that accommodate that. But we are going to ramp up those that power share to a full charge capability.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:47
Great. And real. one real quick thing of suggest I loved your presentation is great. I wonder if you put that exponential adoption curve that you showed towards the end, I wonder if you put that up early at the front might help in your presentation to counsel.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:02
I can see the urgency, what we’re trying to do.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:05
Right. Thank you, Tim.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:09
I Adam had a question than Polly.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:13
Yeah, same here. I grew. Charles, I really like the presentation, I learned a lot. And I have a question that follows from our earlier discussion on charging stations. And that’s how many private sector charging stations are in the city of Longmont? And do you work with those companies to strategically place your charging stations and like what other sort of collaborations do you have with those groups?
Unknown Speaker 1:42:38
But that’s an excellent question. That’s something we’re going to have to deal with more right now. What we’ve seen, there are dozens of other charging stations in the city, but their most most of them are at retail stores like the Walmart’s and the other large stores that that want to do this, sometimes they charge sometimes they use it as a, you know, a service to their customers. So that market is so new. And it’s important that we do partner with or at least have understandings with those installers as we move forward, because they’re going to have a bigger and bigger impact on our grid. So that’s an excellent question. And something we are going to have to strategize our along with, but there are dozens out there. And you know what, right now the impacts are minimal. But you know, as you see, by the penetration, the expected penetration at UVA is it’s going to ramp up pretty quick. So that’s something we’re looking at. And we’re going to definitely be partnering in many ways to those entities that are installing and there you know, there’s not only the retails in the in the the the stores that are installing these there’s there’s folks making this a commercial business where they they find places to put stations and they want to make this know their business. So we’re we’re kind of seeing who’s going to do what out there. And as they are doing that they are contacting us because they need to get a permit for it. So we’re we’re aware of these installations. And as they are ramping up, we’re definitely going to need to partner with those organizations.
Unknown Speaker 1:44:12
Yeah, probably.
Unknown Speaker 1:44:18
Okay, so I don’t mean to be so great. So I think this is all well and good. But how much disease charging station cost
Unknown Speaker 1:44:32
the stations for the public stations that we’ve been putting in there between 11 and $12,000. And the installation is another couple of 1000 on top of that, but as I mentioned the the rebate that we were getting from Colorado was up to 9000. So the actual end cost to us as a few $1,000 for purchase and installation of those stations so it’s not overly expensive, which is why we can keep it under $1 per hour to charge customers and keep in mind, as more ETS are purchased and more people are using these stations, the available hours will go up. So when we re analyze what kind of fee we’re going to charge that can that is probably going to go down because there’ll be more people charging at $1 per hour, which will bring in more revenue, so on reassess that fee, the can, if more folks are using it, that fee will actually be reduced, and we’ll still recoup our costs.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:29
Okay, but does that pay for how often do these have to be replaced? Because the technology?
Unknown Speaker 1:45:35
Yeah, we built that into our, our cost, our costs, and we assumed a 10. Year lifetime.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:43
So okay, so you’re building that into the cost of maintenance,
Unknown Speaker 1:45:47
maintenance, and then at that, when there’s a need for replacement that that rate will cover the purchase and installation and all the things that were in those metrics?
Unknown Speaker 1:45:56
Okay, but so with gas fees, I mean, right now, I guess my, my worry is that mostly, the only people who can afford electric vehicles are the upper middle class and the wealthy. So we are essentially subsidizing them. And to me, that’s the essence of inequity. I would rather see this done by private companies. However, are there, they do have to because we have our own utilities, they have to get a license from us. But Are any of these private entities that are doing this regulated on the statewide basis? No. Go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:45
I’m not aware of how they’re regulated by other by the state, I think they’re just regulated by the utility and how they hook up electrically to the grid.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:56
Yeah, well see, great, we have been building our roads and financing all of our transportation system with a gas tax, which is going to disappear. And the city, the people of Colorado, do not get reject again, and again, and again, any kind of transportation tax or fee. And we’re not charging anything, and neither are these private entities, we need to be charging a transportation fee on this, because otherwise, we won’t be able to build the roads, to put the electrical vehicles on or maintain the roads for the electrical vehicles. And although Clearly, the future is electrical vehicles, but without Mass Transportation at equal or greater investment in mass transportation. We will never get our way out of this, particularly because Well, I mean, we’re growing and growing and growing. And yet, we’re not putting the money into public mass public transportation, which is what really needs to be happening in order to actually be sustainable. I think that what we’re doing is terrific. But it’s not enough, because it’s not enough, because we were if this were a good idea, the public, the the private entities would be getting into this. And I think they are but right now they’re not regulated. And nobody is, is charging any fees to help us with our transportation problems, which are huge in this state. So does anybody ever talk about charging for transportation tax on this?
Unknown Speaker 1:48:53
Yeah, that’s an important point. And actually, we presented in front of the Transportation Board last week, and they brought up that same point, point. It’s super important, of course, because you know, anyone who knows anybody, anything about the transportation system in the United States is that the federal government and state government fund the infrastructure, and without that gas tax, that money goes away. So certainly is a really crucial point. And I’m hoping, and I believe that folks at the state are thinking heavily about how to do that. But I think it’s such a new, it’s the plans are just to start this market up and going to such a small penetration at this point, that it’s they’re just trying to support the market. And I’m sure they’ll figure out how to tax all of us once it starts up so
Unknown Speaker 1:49:35
well, and on a national basis, they are talking about it. I talked to Joe neguse, about that last week, and we are going to be getting some more public some more transportation funding for all kinds of transportation projects, which is what we’ve needed for the last 50 years. So that’s that’s a good thing and I think this is a good presentation about The issue and about what’s going on in town. I, I wish we knew more about all the private entities. And I think that Jim Metcalf brought up a good point in that. Unless we have some of these charging stations at multifamily units, we’ll never be able to increase the endless we also get more subsidies of people being able to buy electrical vehicles, we’ll never be able to get really that curve up to where we want to have it in a fair way. Anyway, that’s enough for me.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:41
So I’ve got Mary and then Kay, and I just, we have eight minutes left. Just want to have everyone be conscious of that. So Mary,
Unknown Speaker 1:50:49
so my question is simply about the timeline and any demand analysis that’s been done. We’re all assuming that we’re moving towards electric vehicles. There’s lots of data from lots of different areas. However, how many do we actually stations? Do we actually need it this time? How do we know that, and I’m just going to throw it out there would rather than putting these in with our money be better spent doing as Polly has suggested, and recruiting private entities to put in charging stations and to make sure they’re on Google Maps so that when people are driving through town, they they know that they’re going to have to maybe drive out 119 closer to the highway to to charge up? You know, you know, and just get enough of a charge so that they can, you know, keep going or do you know what I’m saying? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:51:42
exactly. No, I think that that is an excellent point. I think it goes into what Lisa was discussing before, initially, we said, okay, let’s put in 20 stations, but then there’s no real heavy data to support that. Right. So we said, let’s Well, let’s take a step back, where that what’s this market going to do? How who’s going to be putting this in. And that’s why we don’t want to just jump forward and start installing stations, when the public market the commercial market may take this over. So that’s I think, what we meant by we’re monitoring how this is rolling out. Colorado has a huge plan going forward as an Excel has this huge plan going forward. So we’re kind of on a wait and see for now we’re doing for the city is we are putting in charging stations and buying fleet vehicles with there’s a whole nother story, which is great. So we have a city and fitness behind our electric vehicle increase. But for the public, it’s like, it’s kind of like, oh, let’s let’s see how this rolls out. So we can make smart decisions and have more data to to back up what we deal with installing stations,
Unknown Speaker 1:52:43
we could do a market demand analysis to get us to the short term. Who in the city would do that?
Unknown Speaker 1:52:51
Um, I don’t know. Maybe we can work with sustainability to do that. I’d have to I’m not gonna throw anybody under the bus.
Unknown Speaker 1:53:00
That’s a piece of research that we need before we spend the money.
Unknown Speaker 1:53:03
Yeah, I think that’s right, we need to know where this market is heading. And Colorado, the state has put out some trajectories, but that’s statewide. So regionally, if we get a better understanding, I think that would help guide our strategy.
Unknown Speaker 1:53:18
Okay, and then, Jim,
Unknown Speaker 1:53:20
I’ll keep it short and sweet. Everything you guys have been saying, Jim, the you know, multifamily housing, Polly the private industry, Mary, everything, you guys are saying exactly what I’m saying I just did the short math and at 13%, which is one of the numbers I saw on your slide there. 13%, at $1 per hour over the course of 10 years. That’s like $11,400. Um, so when you look at 3000 initial cost and maintenance costs, and the land use costs, and the real estate taken up by the parking spot, etc, etc. Yes, just be monitoring it before we’re installing anything. And I do think the idea of private industry in Google Maps and getting whatever, you know, the same company does the electric scooters, let them handle it? Possibly, um, you know, I’m going to say I’m pretty far off from being able to afford an electrical vehicle myself. So I’m going to work from home to reduce my emissions. But you know, I, I think it’s a it’s an industry to it’s, it’s a it’s something to watch, but not jump into until we are really getting there. I want to say so.
Unknown Speaker 1:54:23
That’s all good.
Unknown Speaker 1:54:25
Thank you, Jim.
Unknown Speaker 1:54:27
We very quick as well. The multifamily thing wasn’t my comment, although I’m sorry. I think I think in terms of discussing the market. The reason that we are a car culture is because we subsidize the bejesus out of gas cars. And I think that we did that for decades and decades. And I think that if we want to make the transition to electric cars, we’re also going to have to create it. I am in favor of having publicly run. They don’t have to all be that way. charging stations and helping. helping create the demand. I think If we wanted to analyze all the ways that we subsidize cars, we could and that, for better or for worse, there was a lot of public money that that made our car culture possible. And so I I’m imagining that we’re also going to need a fair amount of, or modest amounts of public money to also make electric vehicles a lot more affordable and pervasive.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:25
That’s a fair point.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:28
Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:30
Um, well, we
Unknown Speaker 1:55:32
have three minutes left, and I don’t see any other comments. But thank you, Tim, for that presentation. That was great. Very informative. Yes, Charles.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:43
I’ll throw in one last comment, then. Two quick ones. One is, almost all car companies or a large number of them now have basically said, they will not be making gas powered cars after 2030. So that’s a pretty good indication that we’re moving towards electric vehicles, it’s going to take time, I think the next couple of years are going to be you’ll see them but it’s not, it’s going to take some time. by about three or four years from now it’s going to explode. And then the final thing is just a real quick note from something earlier, coal is actually not as cheap as people think. And the transition can happen very quickly. The UK went from 60% coal to 10% coal in a matter of five years. And last year, they went for two and a half months, where they use no call at all the month of April, May and part of June. So transitions can happen quickly. Anyway, just a couple quick comments.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:42
Thank you. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:46
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:48
We’ll move on in the agenda to items from the board. Anybody have anything?
Unknown Speaker 1:56:55
I just want to say that, um, some of the resources that I mentioned, when we were talking about D ers and Home Energy Management, I have put them in an email and I sent it to Heather, and so she’s gonna send that to everyone. So you have the resources that I was mentioning.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:11
Perfect. Thank you for that. Mary. Okay, items from Council. Probably nothing. All right.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:20
I’ve talked enough. Okay, thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:24
I will note that there were some items that were attached board correspondence that were attached to the packet. There’s nothing to do there. Just make sure that you’ve read them. And without we’re at the end of the agenda.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:40
Somebody minute the spirit. What’s up,
Unknown Speaker 1:57:44
you have a minute to spare.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:45
With a minute spare. I know. Well, let’s get this done. on time. Yes.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:50
So should we just do a couple verses of a college fight song? No.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:55
I move that we adjourn.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:57
Yes. Second time motion.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:59
All right. Hi.
Unknown Speaker 1:58:04
And that concludes our meeting. Thanks, everyone.
Unknown Speaker 1:58:07
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:58:09
Bye Bye. Take
Unknown Speaker 1:58:10
care. Bye bye.