Hello everybody, welcome to the Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee.
It is one o'clock and we are going to get started today, Friday January 27th, and we
do have a quorum here in the newly designed City Council Work Session Room.
We will begin our first item for individual consideration, receive nominations and elect
a Chair and Vice Chair.
I'll open it up for nominations.
Oh, I do want to welcome our new member, Mr. Paul Meltzer.
Go ahead.
I'm pleased to be here.
I recall sitting in this room with you and we urged the creation of this body, and that
we ended up sitting on it together.
If you want to continue serving, I would nominate you for Chair.
Okay.
I'll be happy to.
So we have one second, all those in favor of nominating myself, Keely Graves as Chair?
Aye.
Say aye.
Aye.
Thank you.
So we'll move on to Vice Chair.
I'd like to open that up for nominations.
I'd like to nominate Paul.
Paul?
Okay.
We have a second.
I'm willing to do it.
Having no subject matter expertise, just being able to like fill in the gavel is something
I could do.
So I'm willing to accept the nomination.
I'll second it.
All right.
We have a second.
All in favor?
Say aye.
Aye.
All right.
It's unanimous.
So I will sit proudly in this chair and continue as the Chair and welcome you to be back up
if need be.
So we will move on to Item B, consider approval, October 28, 2022 minutes.
It's been a bit since we've been here.
Did everybody have a chance to look over those and are there any corrections?
Everybody okay with the minutes?
Yeah.
Move approval.
Move approval?
Second.
All right.
We're in second.
All in favor?
Aye.
All right.
So we will move on to Item C, receive and discuss proposed meeting calendar for 2023
calendar year.
And do you have the draft calendar in your backup?
Mm-hmm.
I don't think it has a slider.
Those are just our proposed dates.
We may ask to shift a little bit during the spring as we work through the Climate Action
and Adaptation Plan.
That will be on an as-needed basis just to try to combine trips for 20 years.
So we will move on to Item C, receive and discuss proposed meeting calendar for 2023
calendar year.
And do you have the draft calendar in your backup?
Mm-hmm.
Those are just our proposed dates.
We may ask to shift a little bit during the spring as we work through the Climate Action
and Adaptation Plan.
That will be on an as-needed basis just to try to combine trips for 20 years.
So we may ask to shift a little bit during the spring as we work through the Climate
Action and Adaptation Plan.
That will be on an as-needed basis just to try to combine trips for travel for our consultant.
Okay.
Maybe a workshop here or there.
Okay.
So generally it's kind of keeping the meetings same Friday at 1.
Is that worked out for everyone?
Okay.
All right.
Do we need to vote on this or is it?
I think we just have consensus to move forward.
I think we have consensus to continue.
Great.
Thank you.
So moving right along, we have Item D here, a follow-up presentation on the current status
of the Greensense Energy Efficiency and Solar Rebate Programs and discuss and consider various
options to bring more effective programs to our DME customers.
And I just want to remind everyone that we are using the mics above us and not the mics
in front of us today.
So kind of speak.
Is that me, too?
That's you, too.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Hold up here.
Does everyone remember Bill from our last presentation?
All right.
Good afternoon, Madam Chair, committee members, Bill Sheppard, DME.
Thanks for having me back again as a follow-up to our presentation and conversation that
we had back in August.
Hopefully everybody got a chance to read the memo as well that addressed some of the questions
that were posed during that meeting.
So if you have any questions that -- lingering questions that came up from that, please feel
free to ask me.
So just as a review, and again, this is going to be a relatively short presentation because
I want to leave time for us just to have another discussion, but in review, these are the program
cost comparisons between the Greensense programs on the left and the solar program on the right.
Just a couple things I want to point out is the relative impact per dollar spent for Greensense,
which is about three times as much impact as the solar rebates on the right.
That's that bottom bullet there, 19 kilowatt hours per dollar spent versus three kilowatt
hours.
Also, I wanted to make note on this slide, too, that the 41 million kilowatt hours that
are reduced from the Greensense programs are actually reductions, whereas the 11 million
is an offset, so we're offsetting one form of energy for another.
Sorry, the point of clarification was like, on your CO2 number on the previous slide,
is this a number -- can you explain what that value is?
So the CO2 number we used is an all-in ERCOT cost per ton emitted through generation on
the ERCOT grid.
So it's a blended number as an example, because quite honestly, anything that we purchase
for our load is renewable fully, 100 percent.
So we thought an ERCOT example would be the best way to show that CO2.
So this is a reduction equivalent?
Yes.
Thanks.
Sorry.
It's okay.
Ed?
Do we know how many of the Greensense rebates, or the systems that were put in through Greensense,
also have battery storage?
So the programs on the left you're talking about?
No, I'm talking about solar.
On the right.
Okay.
Yeah, so the solar rebate program.
I have that number, I can get that number, I do not have it in front of me now.
Okay.
And these are just -- how many other installations are there?
We're just over 1,000 now.
Including the 605?
Right.
The 605 are the ones that received the rebate.
Okay.
Do we have any idea of the total capacity, generation capacity, of those 1,000?
In other words, adding up, say, so-and-so has a 3 kilowatt installation, some of the
year has larger?
We do, and if I had it in my computer, I could get to that pretty quick, and the number is
escaping me.
I will let you know that number, but we do track that.
Okay.
I'd love to be curious.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I have just another, back to Grant's question.
So on both sides, all the way down until the CO2, all of that other stuff is local, and
then the CO2, you used air-cot?
Correct.
Yeah, just a blended amount.
It's the best I could do to get somewhat of a relative comparison of kilowatt for kilowatt
between the two.
Okay.
Thanks.
I'm sorry.
I do not know what you mean by blended.
So when you're looking at air-cot, it's all the transmission or generation sources.
So you have natural gas, you have coal, you have some nuclear.
So the blended reduction that you get for a kilowatt hour is the total tonnage of those
resources across that system.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
So this is not exclusively a Denton-generated number?
No.
No, no, no.
Is there a Denton-generated number?
Well, the Denton-generated number is, again, we offset everything that we have with 100%
renewable.
So it's zero.
I have a question on that.
So on our community greenhouse numbers that we have, that's for Denton, is there a way
to use those, or no, does that not?
So you're talking about the carbon emission study right now that's going on?
I mean, I don't know if-
You're talking about our greenhouse gas inventory?
Yeah.
Isn't there a localized number there?
I'm just curious why it was-
So we use market mix, and blended is the same as what we call market mix in the greenhouse
gas inventory.
Okay.
And then we have the DME emissions factor, and we have the market emissions factor, which
is what we apply to co-serve and encore in the city of Denton, those meters in the city
of Denton, which we get that from those providers.
So the Denton is zero, and the others use the same kind of blended market mix that Bill's
talking about.
So that's how we apply it.
Bill, her cut's 28% renewable.
Thank you.
So the rest is fossil fuel, or nuclear.
You want to repeat what you just said into the mic, please?
Yes.
So her cut is 28% renewable across the entire grid, so the rest is fossil fuel.
Okay.
Or nuclear.
Correct.
Does anyone else have a question on this slide before we move on?
All right.
Thank you.
All right.
So it looks pretty small up there, but I'll just walk through the big components.
So we thought it would be a little bit informative for us to actually go through the components
of our bill.
So there's three primary components.
There's a facility cost or charge.
There's the energy charge, and then there's also the usage charge.
So that first one there, facility charge, that's a fixed cost per month, and that recovers
a lot of our fixed costs, like customer service, billing, meter reading, those kind of things,
programs that we offer to customers.
And then you have the usage charge, which also recovers fixed costs from our customers,
and that goes towards the lines and the wires and the distribution system that we're required
to have in place to provide services to those customers, no matter what they use.
Then the third component is the energy charge, which is the energy cost adjustment, or ECA.
And that's really a pass-through cost of the energy that we purchase to provide our customers.
And then the last component, which sort of falls in that same category, is the renewable
cost adjustment, RCA.
And that's the premium that we pay for a generation coming back from our customers.
So right now, with our ECA essentially being 100% renewable, we feel that that's the more
appropriate right now, is the 3.4 cents for a premium to customers for a generation of
solar.
Paul?
Yeah, maybe not the key focus here, but if the usage charge is mostly reflecting fixed
costs, why is it charged per kilowatt hour?
So that's a great question.
That's part of rate making.
So there's a science that goes into rate making and a little bit of art, too.
So we're assuming that most residential customers have a similar load factor.
We don't register their demand like we do for a commercial customer.
So we don't know how much energy they need at a certain time.
So we look at that entire base of customers collectively, and we apply a certain amount
of recovery for lines, and wires, and poles, and we base that on a kilowatt hour basis.
I see you base it on a kilowatt hour basis, but why if you don't do more of it because
people use more, if it is truly fixed, why do you do a kilowatt hour?
Back to the art piece of rate making, if the nirvana for a rate maker, the utility is to
charge fixed costs in a fixed way, and that would make that facility charge $62 a month.
So instead of recovering all of it through there, we put a lot of it in the usage amount
so we can recover more from some customers who use a lot of energy, and we can recover
less from the ones that use less.
So it's just, again, it's an art.
It's a cross-subsidy.
Yes, within that residential class.
Okay.
Yep.
Can I just ask, there's a rate study that goes into it, correct, and it's done, it's
updated every so often?
Yeah, every few years we'll do a cost of service study, and that gives us an idea of what that
looks like from a subsidization standpoint as well as a recovery.
Sometimes we're not recovering all those costs right now, the business customers are subsidizing
the residential customers to an extent.
So the reason why I put it up here is because, again, it's the fixed costs that we're really
concerned with on the solar programs moving forward.
So as more and more folks are putting in generation, that problem is going to compound itself and
get more serious for us.
So the charges that we're looking at, the ones that we're worried about are those fixed
cost recovery charges.
And we'll get a little bit more into detail in the next slide when we compare the two.
Somebody have a question?
No.
Okay.
All right, so here's a bill breakdown using those components that we just talked about.
The customer on the left is a non-solar customer using 1,000 kilowatt hours, and the customer
on the right is a residential customer that has solar that also uses 1,000 kilowatt hours
from us.
So as far as the system impact, they're identical.
We need the same type of resources and equipment to feed the one on the left as we do on the
right.
Now, the one on the left, they're paying a normal bill, so they're paying their facility
charge, they're paying their usage charge, and they're paying their energy charge, and
it's about $111 a month that that customer's paying.
Above that $111 a month, over 50% of that is really used for fixed cost recovery.
So keep that in mind.
Customer on the right, same type of deal, facility charge, 867, you see all their identical
on the left column there.
On the right side, though, they're sending 1,000 kilowatt hours back to us, and that
1,000 kilowatt hours we credit at a full retail rate of the usage charge, which is the 6,840,
but we also apply that RCA premium on top of that.
So their net bill is just under $5.
Same impact to the system, but now we're shorting ourselves that fixed cost recovery that we're
really looking for for our residential customers.
So that is the problem we're trying to address, and the way to address that is through two
different ways.
One is to address it through the facility charge and making that a more appropriate
charge.
The other way to address it is through paying a more appropriate rate for the energy coming
back to us.
So instead of that 6,840 plus the 3,810, place something in the 3.4 cents per kilowatt hour,
or the ECA equivalent, if that makes sense.
So those are the two ways that you can address the problem that we see moving forward, and
we'll get into a little bit more detail on that when we go into the options.
So these might look a little familiar to you.
The first three options are the ones that we discussed in August.
First option is really just do nothing and keep status quo.
We feel that that's not a sustainable option, but that is doing nothing.
The second option, if you also recall from our conversation last August, we talked about
the solar rebate itself as well.
So options two, three, and four sunset that solar rebate and channel those dollars to
the green sense programs to have a little bit more effective use of those funds.
Option two does just that, like I said, sunsets the rebates, but it leaves everything else
the same.
So that in and of itself is not going to fix our fixed cost issue that we're having, but
it does make a better use of the funds.
Option three is the one that we discussed in August.
So that's the one where we pay the appropriate rate for the energy coming back to us at 3.4
cents versus the 10.6 cents, which is a full retail amount.
It does a lot to help us with getting some of those fixed cost recovery back, especially
when the amount of energy that is flowing to us is almost doubling every year.
Option four is an option that we came up with after talking to you all and after having
some internal discussions.
Option four addresses that problem a different way.
What it does is addresses it through facility costs.
So it sunsets the rebate like we mentioned, channels those dollars to green sense, but
instead of getting rid of the amount that we're paying for solar coming back to us,
we're keeping that the same other than the fact that we will drop the RCA or the premium
and make it equivalent to the ECA.
But what we will do, say that fast five times, is start ratcheting up the facility charge
over the next five years to start recovering the full amount of the fixed costs associated
with that customer.
So I'll put it a little bit more detail with this slide here and it is our recommendation
moving forward, but you can see the phased in steps for the facility charge FY24 or next
October.
It would go from the 867 to the 1945 and then we will continue to bump that up until FY28,
which is when we'll have the full cost recovery for solar customers on our system.
Incidentally, we gave the same presentation to PUB just this past Monday.
They were favorable towards option three or option four, but they were leaning towards
option four.
So that's the, when we talked to you all last time, you were concerned about ripping the
Band-Aid off.
So we felt that this was a little bit more stepping into it as far as making some corrections
in the system.
So what we'd love to get from you all today along with another good discussion is really
here where you all are standing with respect to which option that you would support moving
forward.
And with that.
Okay.
So we'll open it up for discussion.
I'm going to go first.
Can I start with a question of clarification?
Yes, please.
On your second to last slide, if we can go back.
Just to be clear, the higher facility charges are for solar customers.
Right.
And what you're doing in effect then with them, back to Paul's point, is that usage
charge, if I remember what you're saying, you're actually making a fixed, over time
you're making that into one fixed charge for those customers.
Correct.
Okay.
All right.
That was my question.
Thanks.
For clarification, from what I just heard, the higher facility charge is just for solar
customers?
Yes.
Now what it does not do, however, is reflect on whatever changes that we might need to
make for the overall customer base as well.
As a result of a cost of service study or whatnot, because right now I can tell you
that our facility charge is a little light, and you know, it might need to be looked at
to go up.
But as of right now, this is just looking at solar customers.
Paul?
I need a little help.
There are a lot of sort of equity issues here and economic issues that are important to
be sorted out, and ultimately we have to counsel to do that.
The job of this group is, as I understand it, is how to maximize the sustainability
impact that we have in the community.
There's a side of the argument I've just never really heard completely, but I feel like it's
kind of missing here.
This side, I understand completely, and it's crystal clear as presented that we're already
providing energy that's offset by renewables.
Why would we be subsidizing creation of different renewables, especially at a higher rate?
The part that keeps itching my brain is, don't we ultimately need, I mean we, you know, broadly
collectively, not just Denton, don't we ultimately need to bring much more renewable capture
online?
You know, sort of as a society, we know we need that.
It's hard for me to connect the dots, but I'm just putting this out there in the hope that
somebody in the room will be able to say, what is the, if there is one, what is the
environmental benefit of subsidizing more rooftop solar that reduces our demand to ERCOT,
but it's solar for wind or solar for solar, but it is bringing more renewable capacity
into existence, and is there any benefit to that or not?
I have kind of a hard time thinking it through, and I'd love to hear thoughts on that.
There's certainly an environmental benefit, looks like Mr. Nolte wants to mention something
too, but I did want to also mention that, you know, this doesn't preclude customers
from tying onto our system.
It's just bringing that amount that we're paying back to them more in line with not
subsidizing the rest of the system.
Hey, I can figure that part out with you all day, that's a different question.
But is there a reason why we're getting rid of the rebate?
Is it that, I mean, like why don't we want to still allow rebates for solar if we figure
out the cost adjustment?
Like just getting rid of them totally for solar is, you know, when we're talking about
the benefit and the capacity and going back and having more rooftop.
It's really based on the effectiveness of that dollar spent and we feel that it can
be spent better for greensense programs that actually reduce usage versus offset usage
that we're already providing renewable energy for, but the cost of solar has gone down tremendously
and we don't feel that it's no longer necessary for us to incentivize it because it's already,
the systems are already cheaper, as well as the federal government's providing a 30% tax
credit on top of that system cost too.
So I feel that if we're trying to spend our dollars the best we can and get the most bang
for the buck, it's better to channel those back to the greensense program.
That's what we feel.
Terry, if you want to address.
So I think that the recommendation on the rebate is really focused on what this committee
is about, which is sustainability.
And the biggest sustainability bang for the buck that you're going to achieve is to take
these funds and spend them on other greensense programs because they provide more overall
sustainability benefit to the community.
We're already providing 100% renewable energy to the community.
And so if we can divert those dollars into energy efficiency, that demand never even
shows up, for example.
And that energy efficiency benefit is zero carbon and goes to offset other sources of
emissions that may be taking place in the community.
So that's kind of the rationale from a pure sustainability.
I think Bill's arguments are valid.
They address kind of the economics, the financial impacts of this to the utility, because obviously
that money that we spend and the higher rate that we compensate for the pushback of energy
to our system creates additional rate pressure.
And it also creates cross-subsidies within the residential rate class, for example, from
those customers who don't have rooftop solar.
They're effectively subsidizing that under recovery of fixed cost that we're not getting
from the customers who do have rooftop solar.
To Mr. Meltzer's question, there is a benefit to continue to build renewable rooftop solar
in our community, and you've correctly identified it.
It's the reduction in demand.
It's not the power supply cost that it offsets directly, because a rooftop solar facility
that's put onto our system, we cannot rateably guarantee when that energy is going to be
delivered, and so from an overall portfolio management perspective, we have to procure
that energy anyway.
In real time, if the solar generators on top of rooftops do in fact generate, it reduces
our demand, but because we don't know when that's going to happen, when exactly they're
going to be pushing energy back to us, and it's randomness because of the use by the
household, so during those hours when that energy has the most value to us, it's also
the point in time in which the household is consuming more energy.
It's during the heat of the summer and the afternoon, and that's when power prices are
the highest.
So I'm having to buy that really high-priced energy to effectively offset what would theoretically
could have been sort of provided by the rooftop solar.
We would prefer, and it's more economic for the old tire rate base, to buy that from a
utility-scale solar facility, which ends up being 90% less costly than the energy that
would be generated from rooftop solar.
It does reduce demand, and as the market is being redesigned, that may have more value
to us in the future.
It doesn't have a lot of value to us today because of the randomness of this, the uncertainty
of when it's going to show up.
If it doesn't show up during four particular hours of the year, which happen to be correlated
very, very tightly with the highest temperatures and the highest energy consumption, then it
really has no value to us.
Does that make sense to you?
In general, renewables have a lack of predictability, but you manage to model them.
If you're modeling for one household, the randomness would be really hard to deal with.
But you have an installed base, and just to be a little snarky, I hear extra lines on
the sheets are going at a good price these days.
So why would that be intrinsically not modelable?
It is, if we had access to the data, but we don't have the granularity of the data from
our metering system to be able to actually quantify what that is.
Because we have no way to capture, for each rooftop solar facility, with the 15-minute,
or five-minute incremental balances with the demand of the house.
That's a technology limitation that we have in our metering system.
Did you miss me?
I do.
I certainly do.
I enjoy your questions always.
Go ahead, Adam.
Well, they're asking for our feedback where we stand on it, so I want to just share my
opinion on this, if I can.
Yeah, sure.
I have a couple questions, too.
Well, it may come packaged with a question, but when I was reading through this, I thought
there's two ways to read this.
One, it seems pretty clear if we state the big picture.
And two, you can fall into a rabbit hole with a lot of details and it gets murky.
And I don't know how much time to spend on each one, but to me, on the big picture, it's
clear, at least with the rebates, that we get more bang for our buck spending our money
elsewhere.
The restructuring of the billing, I don't know how to do it, but it seems clear that
we've got to either do option three or four.
So I just think we could sit here and debate the finer points of all of this.
But to me, just laying it out there, it's clear the numbers speak for themselves about
how we spend that rebate.
And I'm less steady on the net billing stuff, but it sounds like that needs to get solved.
And I kind of like this phasing in.
That's what we had asked for, and if that's the way it could be done.
So that's just kind of where I stand on it.
Option four?
Mm-hmm.
All right.
If I may add one more thing, one more point that I forgot to mention is I think it was
Mr. Sofe that was talking about batteries.
So as the battery costs get cheaper, we're going to see more battery systems come on
with new and existing systems.
So another argument for option four is that would take that into effect and still recover
our fixed costs.
Because if we go to a -- or if we stick with a -- just a cost base and the energy flowing
back to us and paying a smaller amount, well, when somebody has a battery, we're not going
to see anything flow back to us.
So that customer is going to be stuck paying or not stuck, but that customer will be paying
that small facility charge, and we won't be able to recover it all through any kind of
reduction in the amount of energy coming back to us, if that makes sense.
So option four really brings that charge into where it needs to be, which is the facility
charge.
Yeah, I was asking about the batteries because there's a new program, which I'm sure you're
aware of, that ERCOT has just issued a pilot program on virtual power plants and the idea
of -- it's like a community solar grid.
And I could see how, with greater growth in batteries and, of course, solar systems, how
the load could be made more reliable.
And to me, when I look ahead, I understand the -- well, sort of understand the economics
of it, but when I look at ERCOT and the fragility of the grid, I'm also concerned about doing
whatever the city can to ensure the reliability of its -- for its customers by utilizing whatever
alternative energy techniques or facilities that they can to -- when the grid gets funny,
you know, DME can come to the rescue.
But you know what I'm talking about?
Not particularly.
It's your main language.
But I'm looking -- I'm looking further in that -- to further -- because that would truly
further the sustainability character of our community.
Yeah.
I mean, you're always -- you're always current on what's happening, and I appreciate that.
And within the ERCOT market, the distributed energy resource initiative that's ongoing
won't mainly be pushed by Tesla because of their battery business.
It's in its infancy.
And really, there's a lot of uncertainty about the rules yet.
There's a proceeding before the PUCT right now on it.
And as it's currently structured, while this may not be germane to what the strategy and
policy issues are for the city, municipals will likely -- are most likely exempt from
those rules because of statutory limitations.
So what we decide to do as a community with respect to batteries and distributed energy
resources will be a policy decision that the council will ultimately have to make.
Right.
Will it be significant is the real question.
And you know, I think the number, Bill, is we have about two megawatts of installed rooftop
solar capacity now.
And we serve, you know, about 400 megawatts of peak demand.
So that two megawatts because of that uncertainty about when it's delivered and the fact that
if we were able to access the data, we would find out that it's not coincident with the
peak demand, that 400 megawatts of peak demand.
So unless it becomes a significantly larger component of the overall supply portfolio
that we have, it's really not going to move the needle in terms of reliability and resiliency.
It could if there's a high penetration within a community, you know, a microgrid, if you
would, within the community.
But right now we don't see that happening.
And I would say that it's many years away from being a reality.
So I think as you guys debate this and try to figure out what you're going to do, you
know, just remember that you've got plenty of time as you see that develop to amend whatever
policy and plan to put in place now.
I would hate to see you, you know, make a recommendation or the council make a recommendation
based upon something that may happen in the future.
And count on it to have some either sustainability benefit or some financial benefit.
I think it's important to begin the discussion now because there's not that much time left.
According to, you know, getting ahead of this and remaining, being able to adapt to what's
coming down the pipe, if the scientific projections are correct.
Yeah.
My point simply is that if we were to come up with a component of this that dealt with
distributed energy resources, premised upon a certain assumption about how economics are
going to work and what the impact is, and then two years from now when they do finalize
the regulations, it's completely different.
We'd have to come back and redo it.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Mr. Holti, while you're up here, I have a question maybe better directed at you because
we keep talking about 100% renewable and the solar isn't necessarily as needed.
But for me, that's actual physical energy.
And we know that population is increasing significantly, especially in the city of Denton
and in DMV customers.
So are we prepared for future growth and the demand increase for capacity on the 100% renewable?
I mean, are we planning for that?
We are.
I mean, because for me, the rooftop solar is a physical energy and it helps offset demand.
And so the more we have in the city, the better it just seems like.
I know you're familiar with the Denton renewable resource plan.
Right.
And so later this year, we'll be bringing a new version, a proposed new version that
will take into account the contribution from rooftop solar because it now is two megawatts
and it's going to grow.
And with batteries, as Bill said, it will continue to grow.
So how do we recognize that in the accounting of our 100% renewable?
Because if you're correct, that's physical energy that's actually being generated in
the community.
That is 100% renewable.
Right.
And so we will take that into account.
Okay.
And of course, we'll be back in front of this board with that Denton renewable resource
plan rewrite for your input and comments.
Okay.
Thank you.
And on that note, Catherine, do we feel like if these rebates disappear completely that
the solar roof top generation will decline?
I mean, like are the rebates not being used or do we not have enough people signing up
for it?
The solar rebate is being used and Bill, if I'm remembering the numbers correctly, the
last two years we've had as many installed without a rebate as were installed with a
rebate.
More.
More now.
Okay.
I think the doors that three years ago in the last two years we've really moved into
that isn't the deciding factor for a lot of folks that are installing it.
Okay.
And out of our peer compares, only us in Austin are still rebating our systems and Austin
has reduced it.
CoServe recently stopped paying a rebate as well.
Okay.
And just one more question on the rebates as we talk about, I think in there the money
would go to other rebates for sustainability.
Is there a possibility, and it may not be okay to talk about that at this point on the
agenda, but for rebates to go to battery systems instead of the actual solar systems?
Has that been discussed or?
I mean, the slate is clear and we can continue to work with the sustainability folks to figure
out where the best place is for those dollars.
So, yeah, that can certainly be an option.
Okay.
All right.
Ed, did you have anything?
No.
I got it.
Okay.
All right.
Brent?
Yeah, I'd like to vocalize a little direction as well, kind of along the same lines as Adam.
Phase four, or option four, is along the lines of what we had asked for at your last presentation,
so I appreciate your packaging something together that reflects a lot of the feedback that you
received from that last presentation.
We spoke a lot as well about the grandfathering and these legacy solar users, and I'm just
wondering, and this is just my only question, do you envision any means or mechanism that
we have in the interest of protecting those customers who a decade ago we said, "This
was something we as a city want to incentivize within the community.
Here's the pocket of money that we're going to direct toward this," and those residents
that said, "You know what, I think I'd like to do this.
I'd like to adopt that incentive.
I'd like to install this system," and you profiled that as being a near 20-year commitment
on the financing of those systems at the last presentation, and here we are about halfway
through that financing period and saying we're going to cut the tap off for what we're assisting
them in doing of what we asked of them a decade ago, and so I don't see any protections built
into option four, and I'm just wondering if you envision any mechanism whatsoever in which
that could be incorporated for those legacy users, but protecting the financial sustainability
of DME in the long term by phasing off that pot of money that we're allocating because
it no longer makes the most bang for a buck in reducing that demand, as you said, instead
of just offsetting.
That's a great question, and grandfathering is an option, albeit it be a very difficult
option with our current billing system, so you have two things there.
You have a technical -- I don't want to stay constrained, but challenge from a billing
system standpoint, and then you also have an administrative challenge from trying to
track these systems through whatever period we make that grandfathering period at, whether
it's 5, 10, or 15 years or forever.
It's just going to continue to be a challenge to manage as we move forward, but it's certainly
something that I anticipate is going to come up in the city council conversations as well,
so I think the jury's still out on that, but yes, it is something that is top on our minds
because there are going to be a lot of customers out there that aren't going to be happy when
we change the program.
Ed has another question.
Yeah, on the California plan that was recently passed, grandfather's existing -- and people,
the California plan removed that majoring, and the people who -- what they've done is
they've put in a grandfathering of people who already have their systems.
They give them 20 years from the date of their installation as a grandfather's period before
their net metering is taken away from them, and if California, which has over a million
solar installations, can work out a program like that, I would think that we could find
ways to do that as well.
As a solar owner, I'm thinking for other people that they're going to be severely shocked
when they learn this, especially those of us who took advantage, although I didn't take
advantage of the program, the program is the result of our solar system being put in almost
17 years ago, and I know a lot of people who have obviously made use of these rebates and
incentives, and to just pull this out from under their feet is not good, basically, and
one can make whatever excuses they want, you can juggle numbers any way you want, but that's
just bad business, and I say that as a vested interest as a solar owner.
So I would really appreciate it if you would really look into some sort of grandfathering
policy, or at least something that does it gradually rather than these huge amounts year
by year.
I mean, my child, you should have heard what my wife said.
Are you not in favor of any of the options?
I'm in favor of option four if there is a grandfather.
And the point you make is a very valid one, and that is why we're here in front of you
now, before it becomes a huge issue.
We're talking about 605 systems that have gotten the rebate, but overall we're talking
about a little over 1,000 systems that have benefited by our rate structure so far.
So we will certainly have those conversations, have a deeper dive with customer service from
the billing standpoint, those technical constraints.
But again, I fully anticipate that being a big talking point in city council as well.
So I have two members, option four is for grandfathering discussions.
Adam, just option four, or are you interested in also the grandfathering?
I'm also interested in the grandfathering if it's possible.
Paul?
Yeah, my starting point, just based on the presentation, was four.
It's crystal clear.
The point of my inquiry before was to make sure I was hearing whether there was an opposing
case that wasn't in there, and the fact that you all found that persuasive was meaningful
to me.
And the grandfathering, I think, makes sense in terms of keeping faith with people who
took a deal based on a set of assumptions.
The one thing that's not that is intriguing to me, Kelly, was your comment about what
if the subsidy was strictly for battery?
And I wonder if we might hear in the future, or if it's not possible to hear now, if the
calculation is different in terms of the benefit for the dollar if it was just subsidizing
the battery.
Well, and I don't want to speak for sustainability because we certainly have to have some conversations
around that, but at the point that a customer installs a battery, now they can impact their
peak demand on our system.
So it's certainly something worth looking at.
Go ahead.
So back to the, I mean, the way I understand the big picture is that we have 100% renewable
coming in now.
So this pot of money, the rebates, where we're still-- so if you put this in line of our
climate action plan, we want to get to net zero by 2050, none of this-- well, this sort
of touches transportation in an interesting way.
But what this really touches is the housing sector, right, building sector, where we directly
are consuming fossil fuels, right?
So it seems like this-- I think the main point is that money for any program that makes us
consume fewer fossil fuels directly is just making more of a bank for a buck, right?
That's the main point.
I just don't want to lose sight of that.
So batteries are great in Denton, but a battery is still-- it's already in this loop of 100%
renewables, so I don't see how it's-- that's why I haven't put rooftops over on mine.
In fact, it was your question.
Like, well, there's maybe some-- but I don't know.
I feel like we could spend that money on insulation.
And then we're just sort of scaling that logic up to a whole city.
Yeah.
Unless there's gas conversions and things like that.
Yeah.
So I think you have option four here with just the conversations of grandfathering to
continue on that if possible.
OK.
And just to correct the record, it's about 7 megawatts that we have right now for residential
rooftops over.
Not two?
Not two.
Seven?
The last couple years have been exponential, which, again, while in front of you.
Right.
That's-- I mean, maybe not on the DME.
Billing might not be great, but for us and demand and usage and renewables and reduced
greenhouse, that's great.
And it's going to continue.
Yeah.
And the customers will still put it on.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
I appreciate you coming back with option four for us.
No problem.
Have I answered all your questions?
I think we're good.
All right.
Thank you.
All right.
So we will move on to item E, receive a report, hold the discussion, and provide feedback
regarding the climate action and adaptation plan development.
Okay.
And we had our first town hall last night.
About 40 people came out to the Civic Center for our town hall.
So I remember you're there.
Thank you all.
And we have Carol Fraser with us today.
We're going to walk through similar presentation to last night, and you'll be able to discuss.
Okay.
Great.
Welcome back.
Hey, all.
Good to be back.
So I'm Carol Fraser.
I'm with SSG.
And I'm here to talk about climate change.
And for those of you at the town hall last night, this is pretty similar to what you saw
there.
So apologies for that.
But I'm going to get to more of a discussion.
So she said around 40.
Is that typically what you see?
And you're around 40 people?
Yeah.
You know what?
With the pandemic, we've been doing more of those online, and that's been usually about
the turnout for those online.
And so in person, I think it's still people are still getting used to coming back to that
kind of thing.
But we felt like it was a really good turnout in terms of, you know, we were standing room
only at one point, I think.
And it was really engaged, letting the discussion.
Great.
Thanks.
Sorry.
Were you able to profile the demographics of who attended?
I'm not sure if we can capture that on the sign-in sheet or anything like that.
No.
So we didn't do it systematically in that way.
But we did ask where people came from in the city on our interactive screen.
And we did have people from all different parts of the city showing up.
I think that was kind of the main factor that we captured there.
I know.
We're about to dig into it more.
But in going forward, once we do these directed community outreach events, could it be possible
to capture more of those metrics just to ensure we're reaching those communities that you
have the intention of meeting?
I know you did a lot of early kind of discovery about what would be important stakeholders.
It would just be good to try to capture who's actually participating in the process.
Yeah, sure.
We always do an evaluation form after a session so we can add those kind of questions in there.
And then we also will be doing a survey.
And we'll have those kind of demographic questions on the survey as well.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
All right.
Good?
Yeah.
Okay.
So briefly, the overview for today, we'll just remind you of the project overview as
a whole.
We'll go over the inventory report, look at those projections, get into some of our significant
findings, and then really we want to present to you some initial real carbon action ideas
and then get your feedback on those ideas, what excites you, concerns you about them,
and other ideas you may have.
So as I'll show in a moment where we are at in the project timeline.
So we've spent the fall, as you know, we were here presenting to you all about the local
context, understanding, working with sustainability staff, what the current energy use profile
is, and then we're using that to develop those business plan projections.
Right now we're beginning the process of developing the low carbon pathway.
So that is really the meat of it around the low carbon actions.
That's what we'll go into the pathway.
And then further on in the spring we'll be doing an analysis on those final selected
actions around what the costs associated with them would be, what the co-benefits, co-harms,
equity implications would be, et cetera, with the draft coming in May and the final presentation
in Council of Change.
And as a reminder of the way that our process works in terms of climate action planning
in general.
So on the top line here, we collect a lot of data.
It's very much a data driven process, including data from engagement, engagement input.
And that is going into the business as usual modeling, which we're presenting today, shows
you the future emissions production, and then very important to the low carbon modeling
and developing that pathway.
It's an iterative process, so we are constantly refining based on what we hear.
In terms of y'all's involvement in this process, so we anticipate three more times that we'd
come here for you and present and ask for your feedback.
So the next time would be in March.
We do a workshop around the actions that we've identified and also suggestions around the
targets that you all would be wanting to achieve with this plan.
We already have targets, but potentially we could refine them.
In April, we would want to get a little bit more into the details of the actions and really
prioritizing among them, which are more important based on criteria that we would collect from
you all.
And then finally in May, we review the draft plan.
So, so far we've developed that baseline greenhouse gas inventory and developed the projection
to 2050 under a business as usual or business as planned scenario, and then we'll be working
on developing this pathway.
So this inventory report is measuring the emissions that are generated within the city
of Denton.
That's a geographic emission profile, and it provides a snapshot of the baseline emissions
for 2019.
That's the base year that we're using.
It's the year that we have the best data available for.
And it really helps hone in on opportunities where you can use energy more efficiently
or reduce emissions and manage waste.
So this is an overall picture of the emissions, again, in that territorial calculation for
the community of Denton.
And as you can see here, the transportation emissions, especially within scope one and
scope two, and those are the ones that we've focused on, scope one and scope two, that's
generated from the activities occurring in Denton, as well as the electricity that you're
procuring.
Again, this is 2019, so it doesn't reflect the 100% DME renewable generation quite yet,
but you will see that in the projections.
So transportation is really where bulk of your emissions are coming from, and to a lesser
extent, waste and stationary energy.
So that's all the buildings, residential, commercial, industrial facilities, et cetera.
So we just want to show you all that our model, the way that we're populating our computer
model to look at these projections, is very closely calibrated with the inventories that
the building staff have already been doing.
So we directly align the activities in our model to the inventory, as you can see here.
There's just a few changes in terms of categorization of some of the emissions between the T&D
losses, we put those into process and fugitive, and there's an extra residential column here
that's just the same as the first one, that's just an error.
So looking at the 2006 inventory to 2019, you can get a sense of how Denton's emissions
have changed over time.
So the really good news there is that due to more and more renewable electricity being
procured, the residential and commercial sector emissions have gone down quite dramatically,
and your overall emissions have gone down as a result as well.
So from close to 2 million tons of CO2 equivalent per year, or in that year, 2006, you're down
to 1.3 million, and also your emissions per capita have gone down.
What hasn't gone down, as you can see, is transportation emissions.
There have been fuel efficiency increases in vehicles, that kind of thing, but you have
an increase in population at the same time.
So you have about the same amount of emissions there, and then with those increases in population,
you do have an increase in waste and wastewater-related emissions, and those TND losses in fugitive
emissions.
So now I'm going to the business plan projections.
So we incorporate demographic trends, that's population increases, expected new employment
growth, business growth, and then any plans, policies, or programs that are either already
in place and expected to continue, or that are planned for, funded, it's going to happen.
It's a fairly conservative kind of projection.
So first of all, we incorporate changes in the climate, expected changes based on the
latest science.
So we're expecting heating degree days to decrease, so it's going to be warmer in the
winter.
You're going to have to heat your homes in this less, and conversely, cooling degree
days increase in the summer, it's getting hotter.
We're also projecting a 67% population growth between now and 2050.
This is based on current trends and really what's kind of understood about the trajectory
that that is on in general.
And then a really big increase in employment growth, and again, based on current trends
around new businesses that are opening here in Denver.
We are assuming that DME will continue to meet its renewable electricity goal, sounds
like that's their plan too, and that 91% of Denton residents will be using DME for electricity.
There is a remaining 10% served by the two other utilities.
We're also projecting that natural grass growth, the growth of that use of that fuel, because
people are still going to be using it to heat their homes, would be kind of offset by the
increase in the number of pumps that are being used, and that we would see potentially an
increase in rooftop solar of 2% annually.
It sounds like it's been maybe increasing at a faster rate than that, from what I heard
today.
So again, this is somewhat of a conservative projection of that.
We're also keeping, apologies, we're projecting that there's going to be more residences,
more homes, so there will be about 90,000 residences in the future by 2050.
That the average home size would remain the same at 2,000 square feet.
That there would be a significant amount of new commercial, so non-residential building
space, 2.6 million square feet.
And that the trends in how these buildings are heated would remain the same.
So right now it's about 45% gas, 55% electricity.
Ben?
Does the total residences include multi-family?
Yes.
I believe these are housing units.
This number is housing units, not single family homes.
Thank you.
And then we're also assuming that the majority of homes will have air conditioning units,
not necessarily heat pumps, so that trend would continue.
In terms of transportation, we're not projecting any pattern mode shifts, so the assumption
that would be most people are still driving to get around, rather than biking, walking,
or taking transit.
We're incorporating some of the national fuel efficiency improvements in new vehicles
that extend out to about 2030.
We're projecting that municipal vehicles, so city-of-tem vehicles, would gradually electrify
in the next few years, as well as personal vehicles.
And it would be based on these projections from NCT Hub around adoption rates.
For waste, we're keeping the current diversion rate constant, assuming that there aren't
major changes in recycling or composting, and that waste would increase with the population
growth.
For waste and wastewater, we're projecting that there would be slight decreases in water
use, due to some of the programs we have going on right now.
But that wastewater emissions would continue to grow in the population.
I have a question.
I know that there was a solid waste study being done.
Is that something that you all have looked at to get these numbers?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So this 24% diversion rate is based on that comprehensive waste audit?
Yeah.
Okay.
The most recent one.
And just to add to that, the programs that we will implement through the comprehensive
solid waste management strategy could increase this diversion number.
So as we get more of those programs on the ground, we can reevaluate the diversion and
increase this percentage.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah.
It can be tricky to set a specific number on that, so we do try to err on what do we
know about the waste diversion rate right now and just put that on the board.
So in terms of our projections, this is our business as planned energy use by the fuel
type.
A couple things stand out.
We do have a small dip around 2023, when those fuel efficiency standards are starting to
happen this year, and that does help with the gasoline use, but beyond a few years, that
takes back up with the number of people who are driving for work or for personal errands.
And then you also have a huge increase in the amount of electricity that's being used,
and really that's being driven by a lot of that commercial floor space that's coming
online.
And then again, that's based on your current mix of building types, so all the types of
businesses that you've seen popping up recently, just kind of projecting those trends.
You are having an increased population as well, and that's a major driver here.
So we are projecting that the per capita energy use would be going up, but the clarification
is there is residential energy use, like the average energy that a person or household
uses in their home would be going down, but because of that increase in commercial and
industrial activity, the overall energy use within the city going up, and you do have
a slight population increase.
So it's not necessarily something where it's reflecting individual users, the more the
profile of the city is pulled.
When we're looking at the sector base, so this is just breaking down with the graph
from two slides ago, really we're not seeing a lot of that growth in the residential sector
with electricity and energy use.
You'll see some small increases in gas use as well, but really we're seeing again that
electricity is going up in the industrial sector, primarily, and transportation, some
retail electricity going towards electrified vehicles that we're expecting, but primarily
the fuel there would be gasoline and diesel.
And the municipalities are very small in comparison, so they're not really showing up here.
In terms of the emissions that are associated with those energy uses, so starting in 2022
that's when we have the DME supply at 100% renewable, so that's really reducing the
emissions for most of the electricity being used.
The remaining emissions there are associated with those 10% of other customers not using
DME.
And then you also have that gasoline and diesel for the transportation uses, causing a lot
of the emissions going forward, as well as some gas use in buildings still.
So on the natural gas, is the DME gas generation plant, is that gas built into this business
as usual?
So that is associated with essentially, it's out of scope for this inventory, because that
gas that's being burned at the Denton Energy Center is going back, the electricity is going
back into the grid.
So it's associated with the overall emissions factor for aircraft, but since you all are
not using that electricity directly, you're contracted to get renewable electricity from
other wind farms primarily, that's what's reflected in this analysis.
Okay, so I was just talking about specifically, not the electricity part, but the natural
gas use that's being used.
To fire the electricity plant?
Yeah.
Yeah, so that wouldn't be in here either.
Okay.
I don't understand that, that a local source would not be included in the local inventory.
So it has to do with the way that our scoping works for this inventory.
It's certainly occurring in Denton of course, but it's part of what we call the Scope 3
emissions scope, which is things that tend to cross the boundaries of a municipality.
So we're doing a geographic inventory, so that effectively is being accounted for somewhere
else, namely in the communities that are using grid electricity, which you all are a small
percentage of, but mostly your electricity is considerably more.
Okay, thanks.
Brandon?
And this is maybe more to Catherine, and mind me, it's something like 20% of our total emissions
is municipally sourced, or municipally based.
Okay, it's okay if we're not right there.
Hold on one second.
I don't know.
I think it's quite a bit smaller than that.
You're talking about the city of Denton.
Correct.
It's kind of municipal operations in the entire community.
Yes.
A little bitty portion of it.
It's between 10 and 20.
Okay.
So should that then be reflected in the previous graph you showed, that bar graph?
Yes.
Yeah, you know what, maybe we're just missing it now that I've looked at it more closely.
We can update this for you to get that in there.
And then if I was remembering right, and I know we're pulling back a little far in history,
we were accounting DEC emissions in that municipal operations.
Correct.
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe that's part of what we're pulling out here.
So essentially it would be in this, sorry it's back a ways.
Yeah, it would fall into this part here.
This is a separate line.
Yeah, because I don't think we were doing it in 2019.
We just started doing it.
Yeah, and we do have this figure, I think it's 117,000.
I drew it into this presentation, but in terms of the emissions, yeah.
Can I ask a question?
On this too, this is a good question because the risk is double counting.
You know, because that little bar we have some non-DME customers,
that's reflecting them buying stuff off the grid,
which is where the DEC emissions would show.
So if we count it here and as our, you see what I'm saying?
Yes, we just account for it as going into the grid in general,
and then we use a general grid emissions factor for your product.
So we're not tying that electricity use and emissions specifically to DEC.
It's just based on what the aircraft can see.
And then I have one other question on a slide that you were on before you started.
And I pulled this way back.
I just missed it.
What is non-energy?
So that has to do with process emissions.
I'm looking at this right.
Yeah, so in industrial processes, that's the kind of emissions that come out when you,
I'm not sure if there's a lot of steel manufacturing here,
but that's kind of an example of those kinds of things.
When you're doing chemistry, essentially chemical processes,
there are emissions that are associated with that.
It's like a byproduct.
So it's not from using electricity or burning that as a fuel source.
It's about when we look at the mix of building types that are in industrial use.
Part of that is probably going to be some of the fracking operations as well.
Fracking and drilling, yeah.
So it says ton of CO2 equivalent.
So these are not CO2 emissions.
These are some sort of greenhouse gas.
So most of them are CO2, but we do convert methane and NO2,
that kind of thing, into a CO2 equivalent just so we can lump it all together
and look at it in one picture.
I just want to comment, I'm glad to see that the non-energy,
the actual process is counted because that's pretty important to keep in there.
So thanks.
And this is the same thing, so emissions broken down by sector,
and then we're showing the fuel type that's leading to those emissions.
So I don't think -- oh, okay, yeah.
So fugitive, I think we've kind of pulled out into the non-energy sector.
I'm associating with industrial as well,
but there's also little leaks in the distribution system,
the natural gas distribution system,
so that's where some of that non-energy would come from as well.
And then waste, that's what's coming out of landfill,
not being used as an energy source.
But yeah, as you can see here, the kind of main takeaway as well
is around transportation and gasoline use.
That's your biggest fuel source in terms of the emissions being produced.
So some of the significant findings,
and we think of these as challenges and opportunities,
there's just going to be a lot more demand for electricity
that's really being driven by, again, that commercial energy use,
so businesses are coming and done, that's awesome.
A lot of them are coming in maybe because of the renewable electricity
that you have here,
and that may help you remain competitive in that way.
You also have an opportunity to shake the kinds of distances
that might want to come here with that on your side.
So looking at -- just electricity is going to be such a big part of your energy mix,
even if you don't change anything from its best quote.
It's also getting cleaner and cleaner, which you all know already,
it's just going to be a lot less the part of your energy use
that's driving your emissions.
That's really going to come from your transportation sector
and the fuels being used there.
I've mentioned these fuel efficiency improvements,
so they are helping you out from a national level,
but with that population growth, you will see that take right back up again
in terms of the emissions associated with vehicles.
And we do have a bit of those EVs factored in as well,
so you can see the kind of comparative contribution that they make.
The emissions here are just from the percentage of customers
who would be using non-DME electricity to power their EVs.
Is that your question?
Yes, thank you.
I'm sorry?
Yes.
Oh, good. Okay.
We've said it once and before, but this is really, I think,
the biggest opportunity for Denton to think about how can emissions
in the transportation sector be avoided and reduced in a variety of ways.
It's your biggest contributing sector in terms of emissions.
So we've put together some initial ideas for how Denton can meet its net zero targets
and reduce in these key sectors based on our planning philosophy.
We really like to focus on avoiding, you know,
recommending activities that can avoid emissions being produced,
whether that's through electricity that's needed to supply that energy
or just the direct use of fuels, reducing energy, energy efficiency,
the home retrofits and insulation that were mentioned in the previous presentation
can really help with that, and then switching to renewables.
So you reduce your demand as much as possible.
It's a lot easier to find that renewable electricity
other than letting it kind of grow and grow and become a really difficult link to source.
And then finally, considering, again, to meet those net zero goals,
where can you use nature, technology, to sequester emissions or offset
when you really can't find a way to reduce or replace or avoid them yourself?
So some ideas are to implement a planning paradigm called 15-minute neighborhoods
or 20-minute neighborhoods.
This is kind of a holistic way of looking at city planning within a city.
And really this just means that you would allow residents or enable residents
to access pretty much all their daily needs within a 10 or 15-minute walk from their house.
It's about a half a mile or so.
And there's a whole bunch of co-benefits to doing this,
in addition to the emissions reductions.
I really would like to think with this lens from the beginning,
what are kind of the other benefits that could come from this economic development,
mental and physical health, the air pollution, that kind of thing.
So this is kind of in the avoid category.
Paul has a question. Oh, I'm sorry.
Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm coming in, you know, when you're sort of deep in the process,
but is this sort of high-level concept or is this something that, you know,
has been implemented where there's a body of work like specific zoning recommendations?
You know, is there a kind of toolkit that would ultimately be the recommendation?
For sure, for sure, yeah.
So there would be a whole bunch of steps that we would recommend to them to take,
among them looking at zoning, parking requirements, lot size,
like these kinds of things where, you know, how do you build communities that are more compact
and then maybe allowing with the zoning thing like certain kinds of uses in more areas.
Those would be the kind of recommendations that we might make under this kind of framework.
There's a lot, so, you know, there could be bike lanes, there could be lots of stuff, yeah.
On a similar note, considering making places that are pedestrian only or kind of low traffic,
giving a different feel that could have benefits in terms of economic development,
where people want to gather, where they want to shop,
and that could be in specific areas of town.
Lots of cities are looking into this or planning this.
Around university campuses, you have a downtown Denny plan that's about to kick off.
That could be something to look into there. And you also have master plan communities.
Consider how you can integrate these kinds of things into new places that haven't been built.
And also slow, healthy streets, something coming out of the pandemic in a lot of places
where there's just traffic calming that really helps people want to choose more active modes of transportation.
You also have a lot of assets already here in Denton around low carbon transportation in an economic development sense.
You have Peterbilt Motors, they're building electric trucks right here in town.
You have Cargo Bikes Manufacturing.
You could really leverage that in terms of business to business relationships
or becoming a kind of hub of, you know, hub of the planes around low carbon transportation.
So thinking about it holistically can be a useful framework.
And that would involve setting up economic development incentives for certain kinds of businesses
or for businesses to use certain kinds of practices that are low carbon ways of getting their goods shipped around.
Renewable energy, so hot topic of the day.
So there may be a variety of ways to think about how you could add more renewable energy here in town.
I had a question, oh I think he's gone now, but there's residential solar incentives.
You could also think about commercial, what kind of commercial solar incentives.
I can't think off the top of my head if you already have that.
Or around battery storage, that kind of thing.
It can increase your resilience locally.
Another kind of consideration around sustainability of that is you have what's called transmission line losses
on power that's coming to you from far away.
It can be as high as seven or eight percent of the electricity.
It can be just kind of lost because it has to travel a long distance.
So the more that you have kind of here locally, you're actually kind of getting more electricity potentially out of the farms that are here.
So it's something to consider in terms of adding it more locally.
You also have the jobs that come along with that.
So we think about sustainability and climate action pretty holistically as I said,
and all the co-benefits that come along with some of these actions.
So that's another consideration.
Paul?
You must have been jumping out of your seat during the earlier discussion.
What do you make of the argument that was shown to be persuasive that you're not changing the sustainability profile then
by adding more because it's already being supplied by renewable sources?
And I get the transmission point, although we're not actually bringing the atoms from the wind farm in Munster.
We're taking the electrons from the near end of the grid.
So we are more at the first point.
What do you make of that argument that doesn't add to the sustainability profile because we're already out of our holes?
Well, I think someone brought up that there's going to be more demand.
So it's another way of adding that to your system, but may not be at the lowest cost.
So it may be at the direct cost of paying for those resources.
But there may be the co-benefits economically for the city of Denton having more solar installation jobs, for example,
and having the economic activity and the tax revenue that comes along with that.
Thinking about it, not just the electricity that you're procuring and the cost of that, but what are the other benefits?
That's what I would recommend in terms of what was presented to you all today.
The thing that makes sense is really investments in energy efficiency, insulation, retrofits.
That's really key. That's avoiding energy use in the first place.
If that's what's more cost effective for your municipal utility, it makes a lot of sense because switching, that's the third step.
Avoiding is the first step.
You might want to consider there are the federal incentives for solar installations.
I don't think they're necessarily tied to income.
I'm not sure off the top of my head, but maybe thinking about lower income households versus higher income households,
like helping some of them have more of an incentive to install solar based on income could be another way of thinking about the equity implications of what's being presented
and how you want to go forward with solar remakes or battery remakes, any kind of thing.
What is the picture down here? Is that a battery?
Yeah, this is a battery. This is just a company called Sunbridge Energy.
I don't know anything about them, but they have a single family home cell battery that I think could be disconnected.
In terms of actions in the building sector, thinking about what kind of standards you could have for new construction, net zero building standards.
This is kind of in line with what we were just talking about. You have low income weatherization programs already to look at expanding those,
changing them to really drive significant reductions in energy use.
Rebates for the heat pumps and more efficient appliances. I think this is something else that the utility is putting forward.
That's really a great way to save energy use.
And then looking at big users of energy, these big larger commercial multifamily buildings, existing and new ones,
to look at the energy that they're currently using and think about how to reduce that over time through benchmarking programs.
Finally, with waste and wastewater, there are examples of communities really using education to reduce food waste specifically.
So investing in that can really change your diversion rate and drive down your landfill emissions.
Also things like diverting compost. You have your own trash collection, so you can consider having a composting facility and collecting those as a separate product.
You could expand some of the electricity production that is going on with landfill gas already.
And then consider how your wastewater treatment can become more energy efficient using some of the heat that's being generated in those processes to actually drive the electricity that's being used.
Again, initial ideas, so we'd love to know what you think.
I'll just quickly give you a sense of the upcoming public engagement opportunities.
So we did have the town hall last night. We're going to have another community workshop on the actions coming up, I think in March.
And then we're developing a meeting in a box. This is like a toolkit that community groups can use or staff can be invited out to community groups to go through some of these ideas and more depth and collect feedback from a wide variety of people.
So we'll have that ready in the next few weeks.
We're going to have specific focus groups to go into some of the kind of implementation questions and the equity implications of these actions.
And we'll also be putting out a survey sometime in February. This one survey will begin and will be open for a good period, probably about a month.
And that's going to allow us to collect a lot of input on the actions and all the implications of them. So we're keeping up to date on the website here.
Will the survey be on the city of Denton website or will it be like something separate or will it be accessible easily?
I don't know who's going to host the survey, but we'll have links on our website and then we'll of course share it social media and ask everyone to share about it as widely as possible.
And we're putting something in the flyer too, right? Is that related to the survey or?
In the bill stuffer.
Yeah, in the bill stuffer, yes.
Why not in the bill stuffer? That's what it is.
Yeah, so that'll get a wide distribution.
And this is just to reiterate who we're considering that are interested in effective parties, sometimes known as stakeholders.
So this is who we're engaging with via the focus groups, specific community and sector representatives.
Engaging with you all and then city staff and project team. We're meeting every other week, if not more often sometimes, and community members in general for all those other channels.
Everything that's going into this will ultimately be put into that draft plan and then going up to city council for their final approval.
We'll be developing this wedge diagram specifically for the community vendors.
So each action that we put into the model will be reflected here in terms of the emissions reduction potential over time.
So each colored wedge is kind of one action or however we define one action can sometimes be a bundle of them.
And then we'll also show you that in relation to what I just showed you, the business client projections.
We'll also have other kind of outputs in the draft plan.
We do have spatially based models, so you'll be able to see the projected emissions in each scenario by zone of the city.
This is based on traffic zone or transportation zone from NCTCOG, the way that they do their modeling.
And we can produce other kind of analysis like you see here.
And yeah, we're really in the, as you saw this one earlier, but we're really in the thick of getting input on the actions,
putting that into our model and then developing the wedge diagram that I just showed you there.
So at this point, I'd really like to know, in the time that we have, any other thoughts on the actions I presented?
If you have other ideas that you'd like us to consider modeling?
Yeah, I have just kind of process thoughts about how you attended the workshop last night.
You know, it's all good and interesting, but from this perspective,
with most value members of the general public getting to spend time on is hearing more about the ideas.
Like I almost, to be a little prescriptive, start on slide 40, like we're here, we've got to get to here.
Here are different ways we might do it.
And I would like to know what people find acceptable, imaginable, what questions, what concerns they have on each,
you know, what they really get behind out of those ideas.
That's my main feedback.
The other one's just a process question, and the answer may be, yeah, we totally already done that, Paul.
Which is, was there a stage where, you know, looked at what are the best ideas in place anywhere in the world
that may not directly apply to them, but maybe looked at sideways could, you know, just,
is this the boil out of, you know, kind of the state of sustainability in the world today that could be relevant?
For sure. Yeah, so in terms of your first question, that's exactly what we'll be doing in our next public workshop,
is getting more into the actions.
There won't be the presentation of the projections beyond probably one slide.
And then we will get into, you know, the specifics of what do folks find acceptable,
and that's where the prioritization comes in as well.
Like if you had to choose between the city doing this and the city doing this,
what are your priorities, what are they based on? We'll be getting a sense of that.
With your second question, that is exactly the phase that we're in right now.
So, you know, our initial ideas are based on what we're finding in the business' plan projections.
This is where you'd want to concentrate, transportation, buildings, that kind of thing.
But we are developing what we call an actions catalog that we're working with the city staff on.
We'll be reviewing that really carefully and then taking that and saying,
here are the recommended actions based on the best practices from around the world.
We've worked with over 100 communities doing this kind of thing.
Do you want to complete that phase and then bring that to the general public to say,
you know, here's kind of outside of the box, but proven things beyond what you've already got?
Yeah, that's what we'll be doing in the next phase of the engagement.
Brian?
It was kind of two thoughts here and you were first in and you first presented yourself
and the outline of what this would follow.
I made a note that I know this is a really technocratic space and it's difficult,
especially for people in your position, and I know the sustainability office is familiar with this too,
but to interpret the really technocratic expertise you have down to a common level of understanding.
And so I appreciated the step-by-step that you had last night.
Two thoughts that I kind of reflected on was even looking at this again,
I know if you weren't here in front of me on some of these things explaining scope one, scope two admissions,
that would be something I would have to look up regardless.
And maybe building in like a glossary of terms and definitions into these types of presentations might make them,
I know this is now on public record because it's in our backup,
but make this a lot more digestible to people who might not have the same level of access to this one-on-one that we get with you.
But then, too, and on Paul's thought, when you are in this position of really idiosyncratic and technical capacity,
that detangling these really complex problems is a huge challenge,
and I know you know this because you've done this, as you said, a hundred different times,
but given that there are evidence-based best practices that have been adopted both in the local context
and the national and global context that I'm sure you're familiar with,
and folks like Ed who are deep in the weeds know a lot of these different models and practices that other communities have adopted,
beyond getting just prescriptive about it, I would really like to see in these upcoming workshops just, again,
really honing in on that base level of understanding about here's what's been done, how it could impact your community,
but bringing that down to that base level of understanding that there are recommendations you're going to make,
but it still has to be uptaped by our community, you know, with the specific backgrounds and experiences that we have as residents,
and so I hope that can be navigated well, but it's something that I'm really looking forward to seeing in these future workshops.
Yeah, I really appreciate that. I think we can definitely include, as you say, some more classrooms and that kind of thing in our presentations.
I think the meeting in a box will also help, I think, with some of the things you're bringing up.
It's going to be a pretty accessible thing, because we're not going to be there to deliver something that people can do themselves,
so it will kind of break things down in that way, and then I think, you know, it is kind of a dance or a balance between,
we don't want to prescribe to you all, you know, specific actions.
We really want to know, from a community, what are people passionate about and what's kind of already being worked on, you know, what's out in the ether.
So last night was kind of that, like, let's gather the initial thoughts, and then, yeah, going forward, I think we can really break in on the table.
You know, here are the things that work elsewhere, based on what you told us, what you're excited about,
because I think at the end of the day, you know, we help you make the plan, and then, you know, we kind of leave it in to you all to implement it,
and so it's really important to have that community excitement and enthusiasm.
But I really appreciate that, and I'm going to take that back and incorporate your feedback.
So I enjoyed the feedback and discussion so far.
My question is, and this may be more to the city, is there any possible way it can be recorded or, like, live-streamed or anything, the meetings?
I mean, because 40 people is great, but we have 30, you know, we have thousands and thousands of people in our city,
and there's just no way of going back, you know, like, for those who can't make it.
So I'm just curious if that's at all possible.
It gets a little bit difficult with the interactive part of the meeting.
We can probably stream a presentation portion, but when we're all up moving around and talking in small groups, it gets a little bit difficult.
But I can talk to Billy about, you know, maybe we could do a Zoom link for the presentation portion.
I think there's ways that we can, yeah, make it interactive.
Brave combo plays. They close the meetings. You'll have thousands of people.
Is that a band? All right, that sounds great. Yeah.
I think, yeah, like what Catherine said, but I think we can look into it.
Like, when we had our webinar, I don't know if any of y'all were on that, we have ways that we can use to make those interactive.
Maybe we can do some kind of parallel activity.
I think with reporting, we would probably need the permission of folks there, you know, if there's that element.
But we do want to make it accessible to people who can't make it out there physically.
It's definitely a consideration, so we can work on that.
And my other question is, will you be coming back to present to this committee after each community meeting, or is that not?
Let me find the, in general, yes, I think that's the answer.
We are kind of time number two. Yeah, this one here.
So we will have other kind of community meetings in March and April, and we'll be presenting to you all around the same time.
Okay, sounds good. Adam?
Yeah, I missed a couple meetings. I was out of the country.
So I don't know if this is to you or to the committee.
Why or when did this become the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan?
Is that what it's being called now?
Can you explain? I thought we were just calling it Climate Action Plan.
So I don't know who to direct this question to, sorry.
It's always been Action and Adaptation.
It has?
That's a, that's what our committee responded to.
That's the term of art. Would you say?
It really varies. You know, some communities, it's a Climate Action Plan.
Some communities, it's Climate Action and Adaptation.
Some communities, it's Community Energy and Climate Action Plan.
I've seen all sorts of them.
Community, Climate Action and Resilience Plan.
So, you know, what you call it is one thing. What's in it is probably the more important part.
So, yeah, that's the framework we're going to, but it's kind of the same idea.
So I'm asking now because it's, maybe it's too late, but it's kind of a conceptual question.
So it makes it sound like adaptation isn't an action.
And it sort of pulls out adaptation as something special when the presentation doesn't mention adaptation.
It's all mitigation, as far as I can tell.
So if we're going to pinch it as a Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, we ought to talk about adaptation more.
I know some of those actions that are adaptation overlap with mitigation actions, like weatherizing homes and such.
But some of them do not.
And so I would prefer, just because it's simpler and I think it's more representative, to just call it a Climate Action Plan.
And that would include everything.
Or if we're going to continue to call it this, we ought to emphasize more one of the words that's in it.
Mitigation is super important, but right now it seems like that's, we start with, OK, here's our zero carbon goal.
And here's all the sectors of emissions and stuff.
But we don't really talk about how you build a city that's more resilient to the weather changes that we know are coming.
So either I think we need to emphasize that more or change the name or both is my suggestion.
Maybe it's too late.
I think as we get into the actions, we're going to see more of the adaptation piece.
Because when we start talking about planning and how we're developing different areas of the city,
if we're making them more walkable, then we start to encompass that.
That's certainly our focus is working to maximize both with a bit more emphasis on the mitigation due to your net zero goals.
That's within the scope of what we're developing.
I think there is an opportunity to look more at resilience and adaptation, perhaps kind of outside of the work that we're doing specifically.
But there's a lot that can be done there.
And our focus is going to be more on where do those things overlap and the mitigation.
But yeah, I understand what you're saying because this committee talked about more resilience with the climate crisis coming.
And that was one of the reasons why we approved this and discussed this.
And so it's not just about reducing emissions for us.
There's more to it.
And so that's where the conversation is coming from.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, I think it will come out in the actions.
Oh, I was going to say I can understand completely what Adam's saying because I'm talking to people about adaptation.
It really removes the urgency of what the actual problem is.
And oh, if we can adapt, everything will be fine.
And I know that your presentations do not say that.
And so I think the more we stay on the path that we're on with the idea of reducing, the adaptation comes in reducing the emissions basically.
Yeah, I'd also say a lot of the actions are going to increase resilience to extreme weather around the buildings especially.
And resilience kind of in a larger sense around fuel prices.
That's a huge uncertainty in climate change as well.
So I think that will come out more in that.
Yeah, and just in talking to people, there's some people in this town who think this is a bunch of baloney.
I talk to people and they say, oh, you can't fix your roads.
How are you going to do this?
So there's something where the more practical, pragmatic, this will help this, this will help that, this will ensure a healthier future.
All positives because all you get from the other side are negatives.
For sure.
I think our financial analysis in later stages will also help to demonstrate some of that.
Where you'll be saving money ultimately while you're reducing emissions.
All right.
Paul, you have something else or?
Yeah, well, you had asked whether there are other things that you're interested in.
Go ahead.
So I didn't see anything about the climate action impacts of preserving green space, adding to tree canopy, that whole area.
Environmental aspects.
Yeah, we typically include that as part of the carbon sequestration options for residual emissions that couldn't be reduced or avoided somehow.
Many communities, that's the case where then you're looking at how many trees could be planted or how could we change agricultural practices within the city.
So yeah, we can definitely do this.
This is kind of my point.
This is a good illustration.
That's one framing of it, but it's maybe too narrow.
I like your talk about co-benefits and all of that.
So planting trees, if we want to get people to walk more, it will be nice if it was shadier.
And it helps with air quality and it helps with a whole bunch of other things, including resilience if we can reduce heat island effects.
So I think it will be important as we move forward, just echoing Ed, that we talk about all the co-benefits of this, of every action that we're talking about.
Because to me this is the most ambitious thing the city is doing.
It's just, I think it's really amazing.
And it will be, there's going to be folks who are skeptical, but if we can learn to talk in different ways about all the benefits of this.
And even if we don't hit our targets that are really quantified, if we make steps towards it, it has all of these co-benefits.
It's a good framework to talk about all of the ways we can improve.
That's really helpful. I appreciate that.
I think at the end of the day so many of these actions are going to make Benton a better place to live.
That can be the overall takeaway for sure.
Cleaner air, lower energy bills, better jobs, all of those things.
I think that builds on Adam's comment.
It's a bit anecdotal, but I would say it's still true.
That possibly the most popular grand plan that the city has presented to the public in the last several years is the trails plan.
When Parks and Rec was asked, asked the public in many workshop type settings, what do they want, what do they want? Trails, trails, trails.
Just in terms of building a case that people could latch onto.
It's linear parks, it's trees.
Also, incidentally, when you talk about light paths, that conversation migrated toward the desire for off-road paths.
So I'm just kind of indicating there's, as you've talked about, preserving green space and kind of ancillary benefits.
I can put it on, you put it very well.
The trails business is the hook.
That would be in the next meeting, targets, and you took the slide.
I'm trying to find the co-benefits.
So the discussions that this group is talking about interested in would be in the discussion for March or April.
These are all meetings that we would have.
Sorry, what's your question?
The discussions that we're having now, like in the actions, would that come in March or April?
More specific.
More specific recommended actions.
That's going to start in March and then continue into the April meeting where we can have a whole suite of ones that would be considered.
But we want to prioritize, we want to understand the city's not going to be able to do everything at once or has limited resources.
So which one's the most important? That will be in the April discussion.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
But we're open to your input from now until through April, so if you've got other thoughts.
Well, thank you so much.
Thank you.
So we will move on to our last item or to item F, staff reports.
There is the February engagement and then the matrix.
And February engagement was just an update of what we have coming up.
And then if we have any questions to the matrix, I'm going to have it pulled up over here so I can hear you guys.
I am curious, there are a couple of items on tree canopy.
Ed has one for carbon sequestration.
Say that really fast too.
And I asked for like the tree canopy goals for the future.
So we will have Haywood come back.
If we could just mesh everything that says tree canopy together and knock some of these off.
Is that one presentation?
We'll do that.
Okay.
All right.
Thanks.
Are we putting things on the matrix yet?
We can.
Do you want to do that now?
Yeah, go ahead.
I have two, possibly three things.
And I probably should have asked this when DNE was here, but the status is commercial and industrial.
Solar installations, how are they going to be impacted by this new policy, or if the policy even applies to them?
And I'm assuming that, or I don't even know if there are incentives for industrial.
That's what I'm not sure about.
I don't know if it applies to industrial.
Yeah, so that would, I think that should be part of the conversation.
Schools, DISD, would they be impacted by this?
The other thing is, there's a thing called islanding, which is a process where a grid-tied solar system, when the grid goes down, the system can continue to work.
As it is right now in Denton, any grid-tied PV system goes down when the grid goes down.
But there are ways that the generator, the PV system, can remain on even when the grid goes down.
From what I've been told, it's largely a matter of safety protocols, so if guys have to go out and work on the lines, they're not going to get executed, electrocuted.
There was a little discussion about this a number of years ago, and I just wondered if there had been any development with that.
And then one last question, the rates, if you use more power in the winter months, November through April, you get a discount. First 600 kilowatt hours are .0684, and any additional kilowatt hours after that are .0455.
And I wondered if the rationale for that is still germane to the situation, seeing as how we've just seen how we're going to have more hot days and less cold days.
Assuming that winter months are because people jacked up their thermostats because of cold.
So Ed, would you like just a staff report on this last one, or do you want a presentation to this? Well, whatever form it takes, the most official way.
So the rationale for the winter? Yeah, why the winter rates, why there's a discount in the rate after the first 600 kilowatt hours.
And it's not that way in the summer. Summer months are .0684. There's no reduction if you use more power in the summer.
And it seems like that's sort of the catch-22 for the rate payer, the way things are coming up.
I need to look at the rate structure, but I'm wondering if they're thinking that the lower usage, that you're using less electricity in the winter, based on more houses having natural gas.
It could be. And that a lot of our multifamily and several of our lower-- Yeah, this is a discussion. Yeah, sorry. Thank you.
We can save it for the staff report, but if we need to, if they would like to have it more discussion-based, you can do it in a presentation.
I was getting a little bit, yeah. So is that all for the matrix? Yeah, thank you. Okay, Brian?
Items number two and four. I know Matt had a request of one, and we did half of item number four that I-- What are you saying? I don't know.
Okay. So item two was requested by member Frey, transportation overview, new transportation standards, broader mobility plan, bike program, vehicle idling standards, sidewalks, infrastructure.
Item four was something that Keely and I put on together, request and review of development codes, parking minimums, on-street parking, and then we covered the tree code in a separate presentation.
Those two items feel substantively very similar, and I feel like they're going to come up quite a bit as we work through the climate action plan.
I just wonder if there's a way we could-- I'm not sure if it would be more beneficial for our committee's understanding to hear that sort of information possibly from development services prior to discussion about some of those adaptation and the climate action items, or perhaps something we can evaluate after.
I'm just wondering if those two items could be combined and then the scheduling of those. I'm not clear on when it would be most effective for us to hear that information.
Probably sooner than later, right, as we're working through this.
It would cover-- I would hope it would cover currently our operative norms in development services, particularly around a lot of these transportation issues.
I'm just curious if we might be able to provide more direction to staff whenever we hear more from our climate action plan and the recommendations out of that.
So two and four?
Correct.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's still on.
Anybody else?
Just wanted to second that. I was going to say, I didn't know if I missed it, but a transportation-focused discussion, given that that's the gorilla in the room for it.
Okay.
Yeah.
Would our new member like to add anything to the matrix, or would you look over?
I'd add my support to the items.
Okay.
All right. So that-- do you have that, Catherine?
I do.
All right.
So I think we kind of covered concluding items a little bit, but does anybody have anything extra they want to add that's not on the matrix that they would like to see?
Or any other thing?
All right. I think we are good. We will conclude the meeting at 2.54. Thank you, everybody.