Mar 25, 2022 Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee on 2022-03-25 1:00 PM

All right hello everyone welcome to our sustainability framework advisory committee we are in the City Council work session room today Friday March 25th 2022 and it is 1 p.m. we will begin with our first item for individual consideration consider approval of the February 25th 2022 minutes it looks like they have been corrected does everyone have a chance to review those any comments on anything all right I will accept a motion Ed a second Brent all right all in favor say aye aye all right so we will move on to our second item for individual consideration receive a report call the discussion and give staff feedback on regional greenhouse gas inventory update and greenhouse gas inventory methods comparison we missed you last time JT happy to be here this time so good afternoon committee members my name is James Douglas I'm the conservation programs coordinator and as you stated today we will be talking about the greenhouse gas inventory specifically with some methods comparison and some methods updates for you and so today we will go over the background as a way of refresher we will talk about the North Central Texas Council of Governments regional cohort for greenhouse gas inventories we'll go over that methodology comparison talk about where we're at with our current methodology and our current progress on that cohort and then we will go over some options that staff is considering and some potential next steps so just by way of reminder the greenhouse gas inventory process began in 2011 and during that year a baseline was retroactively calculated for the year 2006 in the year 2015 staff began calculating the greenhouse gas inventory annually and just as a reminder we can think of the greenhouse gas inventory as an analysis of the city's carbon footprint we do that in two scopes we do that at the community level so that includes residents all transportation within the city and then we do that at the level of just municipal operations to get a sense of what the city's carbon footprint is this aids in conservation efforts so through the inventory data collection process we look at energy we look at water we look at natural gas and so all of these things help in our conservation efforts of those natural resources we also report those results annually through the city's sustainability reporting to CDP which was formerly the carbon disclosure project moving now into the North Central Texas Council of Governments cohort this is a regional collaboration of 12 cities plus the cog and it started in 2020 with the goal of creating a 2019 greenhouse gas inventory for all 12 of those cities plus the 16 county region this is one of only a handful of projects in the United States that is looking at greenhouse gas inventories on a regional level as well as all of those cities that are encompassed within it one benefit of this is it standardizes regional methods across the board so prior to this only three cities in the North Texas region had inventories that was Denton Dallas and Plano and so this helps all 12 of those cities kind of compare apples to apples we're all operating off of the same playbook it also increases awareness of greenhouse gas emissions in the area and as far as the North Central Texas Council of Governments is concerned this helps them with their regional planning efforts around transportation and air quality and there are many many air pollutants that are co-emitted with greenhouse gas emissions some of those are ozone precursors particular matter things like that and so from from that stance that's something that the the region is looking at that relationship and this cohort was introduced by the regional integration of sustainability efforts or rise which is a collaboration of North Texas cities that is hosted at them at the cog so the methodology changes are that best described in the table in exhibit 2 that's included in your backup a brief summary of that the original methodology that the city of Denton has used from 2006 up until present is related to the equally US community protocols this covers five basic categories of metrics to complete an inventory that includes 18 unique metrics that sustainability staff goes out collects analyzes and produces that annual report the regional methodology has expanded that scope so the North Central Texas Council of Governments they have additional staff and additional access to different data sets that exist at the regional level that might not exist at the city level and for that reason that that scope is able to be expanded a little bit so between the two methodologies we're moving from 18 individual metrics to 33 individual metrics and so that's an example is expanded transportation so previously those models were available for on-road transportation those models have been expanded and so additional off-road transportation things like aviation will now be included in this expanded scope and the as I said the Council of Governments and those 12 cities are looking at a 2019 baseline this is the most comparable year for for future inventories that isn't going to be impacted by the data changes due to COVID-19 so 2020 and 2021 are going to be you know not the ones that we want to compare to when we're talking about sort of the standard operations so this is the current progress based on that 2019 baseline so this is for both the city of Denton and for the regional inventory the COG has been collecting data at the regional level and then parsing it out into the individual cities which helps a lot for some of these larger data sets some of the remaining metrics that we still have are that off-road transportation piece and some of the metrics related to water and wastewater this is once again at a regional level collection things like nitrogen discharge or something that isn't quite readily available and so the COG is going out and looking for those data sets with each individual water and wastewater treatment plan the expected date for all of that data is June 2022 and staff will be turning around that 2019 report in association with the regional cohort as quickly as possible following that data acquisition the regional inventory will also have its own report associated with it for the 16 County region that will be done as as soon as the COG staff is able there's going to be a little bit more data analysis with those larger data sets and then for each individual city they will be producing their reports on their own timelines so these are the options that staff is considering moving forward so we have our previous methodology that we've used up into 2019 so we do have a 2019 inventory that is based on the previous methodology we'll have a 2019 inventory based on new methodology so we'll have a nice comparison there to look at but moving forward the previous methodology offers a smaller scope but a faster turnaround time so that's something that could be done hypothetically on an annual basis as we've been doing some of those inputs will be estimated and not actual because data sets are not generated necessarily on an annual basis for some of those larger data sets when we're talking about the new methodology obviously it's a larger scope a little bit more intensive for that and so that can be calculated on a two to three year basis depending on where we get the maximum overlap of data availability actual data availability as I said that's an expanded scope 33 individual metrics and the as we're creating sort of these connections through the COG and as they reach out for this data the idea is that the next collection of that data will go a little bit more smoothly once those connections have been established and then with the new methodology of course that will be in line with regional estimates for cities that continue to pursue the greenhouse gas inventory on a on a biannual basis so these are the next steps that we're looking at we will be completing the 2019 inventory with the new methodology June 2022 and however long the analysis takes after that should be within the summer and those results and the comparison to the old methodology will be presented to this body with that we will begin work on the 2021 inventory following the new methodology and continuing with that expanded scope we expect that that many of those data sources for example the new transportation model that the COG was able to create specifically for this project will continue to be available and so we'll be able to do that that same methodology for 2021 and then we will be considering updating the 2018 inventory which is the current baseline and if we will continue with this new methodology we will want either the 2018 inventory to be brought up to that same scope or the 2019 inventory to be labeled as the new baseline for future comparison and so that is currently where we stand and I will take any questions that you have anybody have questions I'd like more if you can give me some more information between the advantage of collecting every two to three years so you're saying that that rather than then doing it annually we'll do it over a two year or three year window and you say the advantages of that one of them is that it's a wider scope and so can you explain what that wider scope is sure so if you take a look at exhibit two you'll see those individual metrics are listed there so the wider scope includes every single one of those metrics are you talking about this yes yep so those emission metrics on the right-hand side the wider scope includes all of those metrics the previous scope is going to be the metrics that are listed in the black font and so those are the ones that we have been able to find on an annual basis to complete the annual inventory so those those will still be included in the absolutely okay thank you thanks JT because as always really good stuff strikes me sustainability is just understaffed for all the huge things we're taking on so I appreciate it so my question is how does this relate to our current efforts for a climate action plan on the city level and it's kind of like there's little pieces to that question for example I mean the big picture is this helping or distracting from that effort or or neither and I'm also just confused about these methods talk about previous method in a new method is there a third method which is what we're using for our climate action plan because I know it's inventory goal setting and then action steps right so our is this standardized method the same one we're using for our efforts here I guess put it as a concrete question yeah so let me I'll take that one step backwards so this is just for the inventory itself so the collection of data to generate a value for a carbon footprint for the community and so the methodology that sort of rolls into the larger climate action plan is going to be separate from this so this is really just that first piece that that quantitative metric of where we at with our current carbon emissions so the inventory that we've been using previously has been in line with the US the equally US community protocols and so those protocols say you have to have these metrics under these five basic categories and so those 18 metrics that we've generated they round out that that five basic categories so that we can produce that inventory what we're looking at here is closer to what organizations report to along the lines of the global protocols and a city like the city of Dallas has sort of that larger scope built in and so when you go to report to some different organizations CDP is one of them that you can say okay we're reporting with the the global protocols and sort of that larger so that we're taking a look at here and so this this puts Denton the region sort of those cities more along that path than just the US a community protocols now those protocols do the the a community protocols are accepted you know through our annual reporting with the carbon disclosure project and so we still have all of that historical data okay do you so I'm just asking you this regional effort which I think is great is it sounds like it can be synergistic and even improve what we're doing in a more local level that's kind of the message yes and some of the data sets sort of come in a little bit cleaner at the regional level transportation being a great example of one so when you're talking about the city boundary of incoming traffic outbound traffic and so when you look at the region as a whole you're going to get a little bit more accurate number of some of that transportation and so when they're able to to divvy up those vehicle miles traveling for example that's that's one benefit that we get a little bit cleaner value there we have one more question that for because we're going to have we are going to be proposing these goals eventually net zero by 2050 is the region also going to have that aspect or that is I mean collectively as a region or is this more just inventory so my understanding currently is that it is more of a fact-finding mission at this time for transportation planning and for air quality planning there's just such a large overlap with something like a greenhouse gas inventory that it's a great metric to put to you know help analyze both of those things I'm just a few questions comments so this relates back to our simply sustainable framework with chapter 2 so this is something that that we're working on this is our chapter so my question is how does this moving from annually to two to three years affect that like our goals how do we keep up with the things that we we we state that we want to do we want to be better if we're not getting that annual input every year for this committee or council to review yep and so it would basically be a check-in every two years now some of these metrics things like electricity use by the community that's something that we can pull sort of the average residential usage you know we've got that value we can do a check-in on that annual water usage by the community we can do a check-in on that in terms of just compiling all 33 of those metrics into one report that is the greenhouse gas inventory when we go into sort of that level of analysis that's something that on a two-year cycle is a little bit more manageable than on a one-year cycle okay so you kind of answered my question I was wondering if we could do both but I guess for the things that directly affect the decisions that council makes regarding utilities and things like that for greenhouse emissions that data you could get annually if you needed to some of the relevant metric level data can be pulled on an annual basis things like the vehicle modeling the transportation modeling is going to be a little bit more difficult to do on an annual basis okay so my next question is are the resources and data sources that you referred to from cog and regional are they easily accessible to to you guys to our staff for those metrics I mean is the communication well can you can you access that pretty easily so those are connections that we've been establishing through this whole process especially for the metrics that haven't been calculated in the past so through our annual dentin specific inventory we've been able to build those relationships establish those connections for those data sources and on those metrics those are a relatively quick turnaround when it becomes available some some things it takes a while to calculate on you know whoever is housing the data and so some of those new metrics have been a little bit slow going but once this process is complete we've got a list of where that data lives what is the analysis that has to take place between the raw data and the data that we report once all of that is figured out you know the next round should be more seamless one more question pertaining to this and then just one other question I'm curious about in regards to the benefits of going to two to three or are there any chances that we would lose out on grants if we didn't have annual data on greenhouse emissions that we apply for if we weren't to get updated information as frequently I will say that for organizations that require these have a greenhouse gas inventory most of those organizations require at a minimum on a bi-annual basis and so a lot of the cities that are our members of those are producing these every other year and so that should be sufficient for the grant funding okay I just want to make sure we're not losing opportunities so could we say two years and not three years because the option is two to three I mean how do we make sure that it stays right and the two to three year window is more so if we you know say for 2021 we've got a lot of data that has been produced for that year that would be a great year to do that inventory if we're looking at a comparison between 2021 and 2022 if we know those data sets aren't going to be available specifically for 2022 or if they're going to be estimates we want to take as much actual data as we can to get that the the best number that we can generate for that sorry just my last question so you mentioned water and wastewater and when you were talking about it I just I became curious do you the local entities or cities have different water requirements that say regional the regional requirements as far as like chemical runoff and things like that so how do you get regional information if each city has different restrictions it's complicated and this is one of the the benefits of sort of doing it at the regional level so the cog is able to collect that data on on a large scale from all of the different water and wastewater producers here within North Texas what they're able to do from there is divvy it up based on usage to each of the individual entities those 12 entities that are a part of the cohort and they'll be able to say from and it may be within a city that you're pulling from two different water plants let's say for your drinking water they're able to take the metrics from both of those water plants and basically ratio that out to each of those individual entities where that may be more difficult for them to do on their own okay but say for that that's something separate than what our water and wastewater does they they're monitoring our water system all the time that's definitely one of the benefits and as we're producing those annual inventories historically that's one of the things that sort of allowed us to do that as a full-service city having access to that data okay okay just a couple questions on these new metrics and we're just curious how the data is actually collected or partitioned to individual cities so for aviation for example obviously is a huge regional issue because of our large airports and then communities line either the north or south of DSW for example might experience a heavier deposition of aviation driven missions than say communities like Plano where cities to the west of here so is that as a regional estimate or is that also partitioned out to cities as ownership of that emission itself right so it will be partitioned out a good example to aviation's a little bit more difficult to kind of you know picture in your head so you can think about railways has another one and so they will be partitioning that out based on the number of miles that exist within a city or a jurisdiction and so they will be able to separate out that data and deliver that information to the cities and then on a regional level you know they'll be able to to capture all of that so it's yeah and then for instance we have a local airport as well it is it also considered locally generated emissions say like from takeoffs or landings yes as compared to like these larger transportation into DFW that are just flying overhead is there a separation there yes there is and so yep so they'll be looking at kind of similar to how transportation is you know if you're taking a trip within just that jurisdiction or you have the outbound in the inbound they'll be taking a look at that on all of those um and then I see that non-utility fuel estimates are also added in under residential energy is that including things like lawn equipment or what is factored into that new metric right so those will be things like propane usage and that's going to be something that is based on if not national averages state averages just because that's a really difficult one to measure without sort of getting into the consumption inventory looking at purchases and things like that and so that will be more of an estimate but we'll be able to to add that to the inventory where previously it wasn't lawn equipment specifically or just with like say outboard rails with propane tanks I believe that there is a metric for both of those so it's it's essentially taking a look at what fuels exist that we have data for and then supplementing that information with you know estimates based on population essentially and then just last one the fugitive emissions I know that member so has made a couple questions about our gas leaks emissions and whether those are reported or just estimated is that something too that we have the ability to produce data for is that again just a regional estimate so with the help of the North Central Texas Council of Governments we've been able to get some data in terms of the just like electricity has transmission and distribution losses essentially that information so production versus what was actually used in the in the home or you know at a partial facility what have you and so those values in the difference between those two values we have and so that's what's going to be going into that that fugitive emission that would that include things just like pipeline emissions as well as things like flaring from well heads the latter one I would have to double check on and we are working with IGLI on that one but it you can really think of it as losses from transmission and distribution essentially for natural gas. Thank you. Go ahead. This may be too far down the line to even consider the gathering of the data. We're going to compare it against some standards that are already established. Maybe I should say the headline of this question is human health, the impact on human health. Will that data provide information to us and even more on an annual basis if there is a major pollutant that leads to immediate discussion concerns. Will that be part of our plan? Is that part of your scope of work? To produce even information that could help us from a human health perspective. That's why we measure everything that we're measuring and doing the work that we're doing. We're concerned about the human health factor in this thing. So is that to be part of this total programming? This definitely gets the ball rolling for that. So just as the COG is doing this partially from an air quality perspective because of the amount of air pollutants that are co-emitted with greenhouse gases, they come from the same sources. This is a really good metric for them to get that started and also through the climate planning process. This is sort of that first step and as we get into the scope of that climate plan public health will absolutely be something that we take a look at and this will give us a good starting point for that. Thank you. I appreciate that question on public health, human health because that's the reason why we're here. Exactly. So thank you. You're welcome. Are we good? Alright, we look forward to bringing those results back to you this summer and that is all I have. Thank you, JT. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Alright, so we will move on to item C, staff reports. There are four. Catherine, are you going to take those or do you want to? I will take those and we can start if you have any questions on any of them. We can walk through them a little bit if you'd like to. I have a question about why our bird thing, why we didn't get approved for Bird City. If we know. They did not give us a report of how it was graded. I have to have a call with their coordinator for her to let me know which credits they did not like the information that we provided. So that's something that we'll be working on. And then following back up? Yes, we're applying. And they weren't super enthusiastic about first time applicants being awarded Bird City. So it's a very hard designation according to their coordinator. I'll be working with her next year. Okay. Well I have no doubt that we can achieve it. Did anyone else have a question about that or any other item? Dark skylighting maybe? Brian, did you see that? Yes, I did. Ed? I was looking at the next steps and it's very comprehensive. My question is, is there going to be, I mentioned this at the last meeting, is there going to be any information regarding just basics of climate change to educate people what it is and what causes it? On the website? On the website or as a presentation? We've done some 101 classes in the past, so that's definitely something that we can add. We've been doing some videos. So we can add some videos and let those live out there for people to go and watch. And some, I can say, information on the sustainability website? The website and Facebook and we can share them that way. Good. And even, I've seen some places where they actually explain carbon footprint and how people can take very simple actions to reduce theirs. So I think the more we can approach that from an educational standpoint, the greater the success of what's coming down the road in terms of the climate action plan. And even, I'm sorry, even if we don't make our own, I'm sure there's some pretty great videos out there already that maybe we can link. There's a lot of stuff out there. And Canvas has some great conversations with Denton ISD about their solar and their buses so that we can share that information. So we'll be highlighting that in the publications. And on the recycling, I know that we talked about it here in the background and that before we've had it in a presentation with DISD and their contamination. Is there still outreach with them about that? And I don't know if that's something we can discuss through this topic or not. Maybe we can have, we need an update specifically about that so that we can discuss it a little better. That's one of the things that I wanted to bring back in the next couple of months is we do that monthly with our internal team. So we'll bring that back and share that. It'll be apartment and multi or multifamily recycling and school recycling and then some of our commercial too. So we can let you know what we're doing on all of those fronts to address contamination. Okay. It's probably better on the agenda situation that we do that. Thanks. Anybody else have questions about Matrix, staff reports? I guess this is relevant. I was just curious if we will be kept abreast of process of hiring a consultant for the climate action plan. And what is our role in that? I will have to talk to purchasing about how that will work, but definitely keep you abreast of where we are in the process. We're going to go in two weeks now, two and a half weeks to solicitation review committee on that. Great. Thank you. And I have something to add to the Matrix. So I will go ahead and I don't know if I should do that now or under concluding items. Probably concluding and I thought I saw Adam's hand up down there too. All right, Adam, go ahead. I want to second what Ed said, I'd be nice to kind of get an update on the climate action plan because I'm just, it's probably my fault, but I'm confused on if maybe councils even weighed in on that at all yet to approve anything or we don't need their approval. So some clarification on that. Okay, let me, I think we'll close this item and we'll open concluding items so that you can restate that because I feel like that's probably something that a presentation that we should get. Okay, but before you close it, there was a couple other comments on the matrix. Quick ones. Number one, it says Briggle light covers for new development. I don't know. Did I ask for that? I'm not sure. I must have said something, but I don't know. You said that quite a while back, but yes. Yes. I'm not sure to me that's a priority with all the other things going, so I thought I would just say that. Okay. Yeah. And then on number two, Ed's point on the matrix. I think that's really important and I just wonder if as part of that, given global developments and in particular, Biden's commitment recently to increase export of liquefied natural gas. I'd be kind of curious if our gas will administrator or anybody knows if there's any noise being made about increased production on the Barnett shale. It might be nice to just see if anybody's got their ear to the ground on that. I was at a forum, council forum last night. People are saying it's kind of odd. We don't see more activity around here and I don't know why that is. Anyways, if somebody could include that as part of the gas will presentation. It would be nice to know if we should brace ourselves for increased activity. Does that make sense? Just sort of the status of the current situation with gas drilling. Yeah. May I make a comment on that? Is it about the matrix? What Adam just said. Okay. Yeah. From what I understand, what new drilling there is in the ETJ, and maybe Michael can. So we're not posted to discuss that, so what we'll do is we'll just add that to the matrix so that we can have a full discussion on that. Maybe you can respond to that question when we have it. Just keep it back here. Okay. Well I was suggesting it could be part of what Ed's already on the matrix. Yeah. If that's okay. Yep. And I asked for a presentation on the data centers that are coming, and I don't see it on the matrix. Unless it's there and I'm missing it. But I'd like for this, because of the electricity usage and everything, I would like for us to have some information on. Wow. Well it was in my head that I even needed to do that. But I really thought it was on here. Yes. I think it was. Maybe it just got taken off. We could just add it back. We'll do. Thank you. So then we'll move on to concluding items. If we have anything new that we want to add to the matrix or discuss, we can share that now. Anybody? I'd just like to say that I watched the presentation to city council about the work plan. I was very happy to see that the council was positively affected by that and agrees with everything. Awesome. I think that's really good. That's good to hear. Adam? Yeah, I was thinking, the climate action plan touches on so many things, but it might be nice to have a presentation that updates us on that process. Whenever staff feels like it's a good point to do that. And I'm particularly interested in how that plan's going to gear into all the other plans. I mean it was Tuesday, council just passed the mobility, I think they updated mobility plan on the 2040 plan. There was another smaller thing about, I can't remember, but a lot of plans are kind of coming through the system. And we got another one we think is really important. So maybe the context of that update could be a little bit of how it fits into the bigger planning picture, if possible. So something like that. I would like to add to Adam's comment, I think that we could stand to use an update on the climate action plan process and what our role is in that continuing on as far as city council, if they've been presented on it, if they've agreed since we're not in direct communication with them on that as individuals. And the last thing is an update for us, maybe just a staff report on the Avondale organic gardening, or just the organic gardening in our parks. Maybe we could have parks come and talk to us about that. I know that it's something that we've discussed and it's been on hold for a little bit. So just an update on that. That would be great. All right, well we will conclude at 1.39 for our shortest meeting on record. Thank you everybody. Have a good weekend.