Aug 23, 2024 Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee on 2024-08-23 1:30 PM

Everybody speak up because we will be going back to work at the table for interesting. All right everyone welcome to the sustainability framework advisory committee. We do have a quorum. It is Friday August 23rd 2024 at 1 30 and we are in the city council work session room. We will go ahead and begin our item for individual consideration. A consider approval of June 7 2024 minutes. Anybody have any clarification or questions about those? No I approve. Okay so we have a motion to approve from Ed. I'll second. Item second. All in favor? Aye. Okay so we will move on to B receive a report and hold a discussion regarding Greensense incentive program expenditures updates and next steps. So just wanted to give you an update on Greensense. It's been going very quickly. Very well received. So we have some of the just a reminder about what revisions we made for 24. Where the expenditures are falling out this year and then what our next steps are. Just the background began in 2009. We haven't done a good update on it since fiscal year 18. That was less than every day about some change so we were due for some updates. It's funded through DME and only DME customers are eligible but we do manage that funding. Still comes out of the DME budget but sustainability is responsible for management. We have energy efficiency focused building envelope and building systems. This is kind of where the two categories for how the revakes fall out most in line with what we've been talking about with the climate plan and sustainability framework. And just a reminder we had one million approved for fiscal year 2024. So this is just a reminder of how we increase the rebates to make them more substantial. With the rising cost of everything it makes sense to go ahead and increase those rebates make it a little bit more meaningful. So as of 8/16 we have about 10 percent a little bit less than 10 percent of the funding remaining and it was broken up about 57 percent went to HVAC and smart thermostat. The building envelope the insulation weatherization type projects had about 19 percent of the funding. Transportation the e-bike and the EV which we did halt those in the spring because we already exceeded what we were planning to spend for those. That took about 13 percent of the funding and then the annual fan giveaway we did the thousand fans again and that's about 3.5 percent of the budget. So just some adjustments from running the program and running about 900 applications through the program this year. We have some lessons learned. We want to change that time frame after installation or purchase from 180 days to 90 days. So just within 90 days you need to submit all your information if you're going to apply for a rebate. A little bit more outreach to installers. We're having quite a few new installers and just need to have a better communication with them about invoicing and documentation. It requires multiple phone calls between the homeowner, the installer, building inspection sometimes to get all of the information that we need to process the rebate so if they could include everything on the invoice it makes it easier for the homeowner, makes it easier for them. With us going to the more substantial rebates we moved from all of them being a bring sense credit on the bill to issuing checks. If we have customers who say landlords who may get more than one rebate in a year we want an option to have the electronic funds transfer so that we don't have to kind of check every time and then we want to talk about shifting the e-bike and the ev off of the bring sense fund maybe to the sustainability framework fund. So this was the amount remaining on this was on 86. I think this was 16 actually. So you can see we have about 101,000 remaining. I think we've processed about 48,000 last week and another 40,000 this week so we are right at the edge of that. So on the electric vehicle and the electric bike we adjusted those from 45,000 for ev. We planned on 45 we adjusted it up with the things that trickled through how the payments come through. We ended up spending 87,000 out of the bring sense fund for those and just under 50,000 for the e-bike. We took that kind of out of the multifamily. We were rolling it forward quarter by quarter to see if anybody had taken advantage of the multifamily and knew that there was a cushion we could use for it. So that's how that worked out and we also didn't want it to start biting away at our energy efficiency. So it was time to, they're well received. Makes sense to try to continue them but not at the expense of energy efficiency. So yes. So Katherine, can you go back to the, so you want to in this discussion now discuss the shift or would that be, do you want to talk about that in our next discussion? I think we could talk about it a little bit now and then, yeah. So I do, I'm curious, so if we, if the multifamily is not being used and it was okay to take out and adjust, fund the electric bike and vehicles, but we're going to move the propositions to move the EV and e-bike out of this fund to the other fund, does that keep multifamily in there not being used or, no, we would keep multifamily in there, but we need to do a better job of speaking to our landlords and management companies about upgrading their property and just making them aware of the program. This was such a big shift that it kind of overwhelmed our office of processing them. Yeah, so it's something that we know we need to do. We're starting to make those inroads with landlords right now, but we need to do it on a larger scale. Anybody have a question? Just some questions. Do we know who buys e-bikes? Is there a, has there been a study done on who buys income? We haven't done a study, we haven't done a study on that. I do, been working on a bike survey to go out to everybody who received a rebate just to try to get a little bit of that demographic information. I can tell you that the total amount paid for e-bikes swings by very widely. It could be a $700, a $400 e-bike, up to a $9,000 e-bike. So we do, this is just for me looking at the rebates as they come in. Some of the addresses that are around campus, I think that's probably more students that are using the bike as opposed to somebody who's using it maybe for recreation or replace trips. We had somebody come out to pick up a fan in our office on Bay Hill on his e-bike that he'd gotten the rebate for. And he came from north of, got the program at University. So they're getting used. So is this a situation where if I were to apply for an incentive to get an e-bike, I would receive them as incentive money after I purchased it. Is that correct? Okay, well here's where I have a problem. What about lower income households who can't afford to put that money out or down out front? Is there any way that, well I think there should be a policy based upon, you know, you set the level. But for people who can't afford to put out whatever they need to put out to get the incentive, I think there should be some sort of procedure where they can get what they want and pay for it upon completion of the project. Or even in some cases a payment program if we're really serious about energy equity in the community. I think we have to look at some aspect of that. And I understand. I think discussing it further than that is getting us outside of what it's posted for. It doesn't change how much is in the program on the health program. It's about how it's used though, right? So, well, expenditures, updates, and next steps. So I just think discussing on changing a program is not what it's posted for. Fair enough. Still got my message, right? I guess in the end we can ask for a discussion on equality. Any other questions? I have a short question on more of a clarification. You mentioned that you reduced the deadline from 180 days to 90. What's the story there? Why did you do that? It's a very long look back for people to turn things in and it's harder to get the information the further away you get. We've had some that we're kind of struggling with and they're going back and forth with installers and they can't get the information and we don't want to reject them because it should qualify that they don't have the documentation to support it. We're hoping that the 90 days helps people focus on getting that in and getting it complete. Okay, so you're just starting the 90 days deadline. You don't have experience with that yet? Don't have experience with that yet. That's what we're proposing. Adam, do you have any questions? I do have a question pertaining to the Green Sense program and the use of the money. It might not because there's not a bullet point in it, but as far as how you use it in availability for multi-family and landlords, do we have a how-to video posted on like D&E website or our sustainability site where somebody like you walk them through the process because it could be kind of complicated for just anyone to try to figure out? We could definitely look at that as part of our education about the program. We're moving towards trying to do more videos. I mean, very fortunate, Marcom is very supportive of the educational pieces. I think we could probably come up with something like that and then our social media folks are great with fun little videos. Okay, all right, thank you. So I guess is that it for this? Do y'all have any ideas? Are you happy with the rebates that we have in here? Anything else you'd like to add? I hope at some point that something can be worked out again for residential rooftop solar and battery storage especially. And as the summers get hotter, I mean it's, we've got to act. It's not going to get better. We need to get ahead of things. So I hope there will be a discussion regarding that coming up when the physical year starts in October. Adam, I think you had a comment or question? I was just going to say I was kind of waiting because I'm looking at our next item coming up and one of the proposals was shifting one of these items to there. So I thought I would hold that conversation to that because then we'll have a more comprehensive sense. But in general, if you're just asking for feedback, I think these categories are great. It's my understanding, but correct me if I'm wrong, that the especially like the HVAC and the building envelope things have some empirical studies behind it in terms of bang for the buck, energy savings and CO2 reduction. That's a smart way to invest our money, right? And that hasn't changed. We don't have the data or anything about that. No, we actually need to get some updated estimates and then we'll do it after the end of this fiscal year when we have the whole program we ever would have. Okay. Thank you, Catherine. So we will move on to IMC, receive a report and hold the discussion regarding the sustainability framework fund. So sustainability framework fund. So just a little bit of background, the funding, the estimates and the actual, the projects that we have undertaken and then we want to talk about the prioritization and adjustments that we might make to the framework fund work plan. The next steps. Before I move off this one, sorry, just a reminder, we have the four million projection for '22, '23 and so we program for up to four million. Whenever that wasn't realized, we took that same work plan and carried it forward through '23, '24 while we saw what the revenue was actually going to come in and saw what we would actually have available. So we had the five hundred thousand dollars with the seed money whenever the sustainability framework fund was launched and then we got the four million that came in at five hundred thousand. The budget for '24 was adopted for seven hundred and fifty thousand. We don't have the actual budget but the projected revenue is eight hundred and ten thousand for the fund and then they're planning eight hundred thousand for 2025. So any planning that we do and anything that we want to add to the work plan, those are just the numbers we're reporting right now. Just some of the projects that we have underway are completed and the costs for those we just got our second round of air quality monitors and we'll be installing those and hope to launch something soon on the dashboard so we can start sharing that data. We have been working with the departments to try to support electric vehicle adoption. That was one of the things that we were really interested in trying to get that adoption level up and let folks maybe some early adopters see how they work and you know if they have an EP and if they don't have a bad experience with it you know them they can they can show it to others in the in the city that it can't work. We're supporting an electric fire engine that will be at station one and then we're working with PD for therapy bikes this year. They purchased some last year PD parts and fire have them and the bike officers love them. They're much more in the mix. They're not in the car. If they're on the bike it's a lot easier for folks to talk to them and have better interactions with the public. They use them around the square a lot during events. They're great. We don't have another vehicle going through the item. So just a reminder we did just move forward with that work plan. These are the budget members that we're working with. And then we want to work on the prioritization. So just some ideas. Transportation shift EV and EV right to the framework plan. Consider that and then energy conservation efficiency, water conservation strategies, and then the privet restoration projects that we're working on with parks where we're going to go back and replant. We'll continue that so that we see that through in the end. And this is what we talked about about a year ago. So what we're trying to do now is start to develop our 2025 work plan. We'd like the committee to identify the priorities and then we will work with the team to develop the scope and cost and see what that might look like when we build it into the plan. And then we'll bring that back to the committee for review and then consideration for presentation council action. Does anybody have any questions or comments? Adam would you like to share your comments with this item? First of all just a question. Can you tell us what is the source of the revenue for this fund? It is earmarked. The city council earmarked funds for the sustainability framework fund and a couple of other funds whenever it was created in 2021. So I think our plan is to have a discussion where we're going to talk about priorities. I'll just kick the ball off, use that metaphor. Do we have criteria in mind for how we would prioritize things? For example a couple things that come to my mind is we just have the climate action plan which meshes with other plans so we can look to those plans to identify what are our priority areas right. Built into those plans I also would imagine is some data some empirical studies about where we would get the most benefit different kinds of benefits from spending money in different markets so that that may be how we want to frame the discussion I don't know generally. And then specifically I kind of liked your idea but I guess I want to hear more about it of moving the EV and e-bike funding over here. It seems like it's kind of swapping some other priorities in the other fund and we already are doing some electric vehicle work here so consolidating that just as a first blush makes some sense to me so those are just my kind of initial thoughts about how to go about doing this. If we did though would the process change because this sustainability the framework fund isn't necessarily a rebate fund. It's not a rebate fund but we would only be changing the funding source for the program. I mean we would have to work through that with financing and just make sure that that all works. My concern would just be that it would just stick out like it would be different and then okay so you have one that you're taking money you're rebating from this bulk of money. Does it switch back and forth or are we pulling other things out of green sense because you know what I'm saying like I don't know I mean it's a topic for discussion but that's just one of my would be one of my concerns because of that. Well and it was a great way to pilot the e-bike and the e-B but it's not necessarily an energy efficiency program so it does make sense to move it off of DME and onto another sustainable source of funding but we could we could air market of course we have to adopt a work plan and discuss that first but we can figure out how to put something else on that. So we're saying because it's clean air it it more satisfies I mean it's over here in this fund. It doesn't reduce energy pollution it can reduce pollution absolutely. Right yeah yeah reduce vehicle almost travel and reduce trips so. Adam I saw your hand up. Yeah I mean I don't know how we're approaching it maybe we're just throwing stuff out there and we'll see. Another question I had was the air quality monitors you had mentioned something I didn't quite catch it we had that down for two hundred thousand dollars is that a program where we it was kind of a one-time thing where we're getting some infrastructure in place and then that money could be available the next year to do something else or is that going to be an ongoing expense? There is an ongoing expense for the data but the initial cost the initial outlay for the monitors was one time and then there's recurring cost and I think it's $28,000 I don't know don't quote me on that one but I'll look that out the money now. Okay so because that's the follow-up then if there's some things we do with this fund that are initial costs but then there's a follow-up cost we need to be sure to budget that in right maybe this was 200,000 last year but this year it only needs to be 20 right but it does need to be something. It does need to be something. Okay and we're trying to look over one-time purchases so that we don't have that right. Right okay tell me if I get out of balance yeah I'd just like to throw out an idea for a priority is that acceptable now? Absolutely. Yeah I would like it if we looked into community solar as a project which has obvious benefits in reducing pollution also feeds into the equity issue feeds into people who have trees and can't have solar panels feeds into economic issues keeping keeping the prices down. There's really no downside to community solar so I would definitely like to see that included as a priority. And can you tell me a little bit more about I mean I have to do some research on that to put us together so are you thinking what pieces of community solar are you thinking that this fund should go to to purchase of land to installation to? Yes I mean there are models already Austin has a community solar program so does San Antonio and run by the utilities so it would be a matter of I guess DME stepping up to the plate and working on this it's to their advantage as well because it reduces transmission costs infrastructure costs but there are models available both in Austin and San Antonio and I'm sure other places too but those are the two that I found and as I say it's something that is set up by by the utility because as you know Austin San Antonio both have their own utilities just like we do so there's there's a model for it. I believe Austin San Antonio has a third party that they work with on that yeah they do and it's pretty far outside of San Antonio at least the most recent one was yeah well there was there was just another aspect of this when when the DEC was being discussed and approved eventually their DME spoke about having the possibility of putting in community solar or a solar field out by the DEC on the land there so there is land available evidently for for this sort of thing so I'd like it to be looked into as a priority. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Yeah I have a question about the pre-beat removal and restoration so is this one time how many times a year you do that and what do you mean by restoration? So we did one larger project over all the building green and we have to go through a two year growing cycle approximately what best practices is two to three years of remove mechanical removal and some treatment and then after we get past that growing cycle where we don't see a lot of it coming back then we go in and do the restoration with the native plants, pollinated plants. So how do you remove it chemically or goats? They've tried parses use goats on that site we they did the mechanical removal with the forestry mulcher. Yeah so if you remove the roots then we use less chemicals to kill and they were doing this but we we worked with parks to develop SOP for the removal to make sure that it was the most effective means possible so that we could get them. So you plan to do it every two years? The first pass is the hardest and the most labor intensive so there's been a little bit of maintenance but not as much as we thought we would. We've done a couple of different sites and used different methods to see what works best. So it grows fast. It grows fast. Yes. It does grow fast. There's one on Spencer poster breaker where they cleared between Spencer and DCTA. That one they treated a little bit differently and it came back a lot shorter so trial and error but we're working on the parks properties. If we have an opportunity to remove it before it gets out of control then they're going to take that but we're working with them to help get that taken care of and then actually do the restoration afterwards. So $48,000 do you think is enough? I can talk to parks so if we think maybe more on that we can talk to parks and see what they have coming up this year where we may need to do some of that and we can build that in. I can go do that. Adam go ahead. So a couple of like process questions. One is in the process of setting this fund I think I saw a flow chart you're talking to us and to council. Is there a public input or I don't know how far this goes in terms of. No we have worked with the committee to develop a recommendation for council and that's how we did the first two rounds so this would be the third week. We don't have a community input per se on the prioritization. That's okay I just kind of want to know because then a little more responsibility for us to try to think about all the interests and things we can represent here on this committee. Which brings me to my next question was this is a fund we've got eight hundred something ten thousand dollars I would say which probably in the city's scheme of things not very much money and there's other funds out there that do some things so for example I would love to spend eight hundred thousand dollars planting trees okay but I don't know if that like isn't there there's other programs like KDB has its tree giveaway and there's other things and parks has their tree planting parks has things so I'd love to spend eight hundred thousand dollars buying up green space to preserve land but that gets rolled there's other mechanisms that that gets funded through so when I look at this list it seems like part of what's going on here is these are worthy things that doesn't have another home to get funded through is that fair to say like nobody else was going to electrify a fire engine that's a cool thing to do I think that's probably very accurate statement okay and then we've got this other fund which is doing a lot of the energy efficiency stuff but it seems like there's such a demand for that that you could look at this fund in that like too and there'd be a demand for more of that would you say like if we added we're not going to do another climate action plan right so let's say there's 140,000 we could add more building envelope help or not we could good so if we're looking at the so if we look at the 750 or the 810 from this year you think about planning for that and maybe 25 percent more programs I think that that's a good number so so we can just kind of take a fresh start going forward looking at the 810 and with everything being one times for the most part we can build in that continuing cost for the monitors but everything else is kind of a one-time or is a one-time so well I guess what I'm asking is we could add different kinds of things yes because interview efficiency not necessarily reflected here okay right right this could be something that we haven't identified another source exactly for funding for that and we have a crosswalk that would probably help kind of see where the other departments are doing things we it was presented with the climate action plan but we could do a little bit deeper data on that and how they're funding and what they're working on okay all of that is a setup thank you my own sense of what I would prioritize would be things in the transportation sector so these vehicles the bikes and the reason for that is because I think one of our big problems that we've discussed through the climate action plan on other discussions is a local air quality and I feel like here's a place where we could make headway on that so that would be a priority for me I also second ed's idea that sounds pretty cool too yeah sorry okay oh yeah I was just going to say that anytime say we discussed this here anytime an item gets to council there will be public input for people to speak on it before they vote on something right so that's there's always that just answer the question thank you well I feel like we've got a pretty good start here and some places to go for priorities I think that if whenever it comes back maybe have a better idea of what was one time what's reoccurring what will fall off you know like you know maybe if there's maybe if parks can pick up the restoration or the privet or whatever out of some of their fund I don't know necessarily how why that would keep ending up in ours I think maybe if they have the word for it that would just be my my suggestion there on that reducing reducing the pollution and making our air quality better is a goal here so whatever priorities we can move over to this fund to do those things for the health of our residents the better that that would just be my idea I think I think we're good you have another comment I have only one concern about I agree with the transportation completely but I my wildest dreams I can't see people riding e-bikes when it's 105 106 107 degrees out so I think there's we we have to look at not only clearing the air but we also have to look at initiatives that fight climate change in other ways too and that's why I'm quite adamant about things like renewable energy that's a given I don't see EVs or electric bikes as being practical in some ways but in others you know what's amazing I don't know if you saw the saw the article in the newspaper but last week at Nettie Schultz elementary school is this on topic yes it's on topic it's about the heat the the kids came out to get on their bikes after school and all their tires were flat because the heat had melted the inner tubes I know I'm pushing it here but I mean that's what that's what the earth it's it's urgent it is really urgent and the more we can do to get ahead of the eight ball on this the better so risk my risk my case thank you and then on the priorities for us too since we're in a drought too for our water conservation because of certain issues I would say maybe move that up because that's going to be more likely every summer a thing that we're you know experiencing and I know that we have the warnings and the requests for people but I see water going off every day all times a day no matter what we say with our you know only water once if you're odd or even nobody's paying attention so you know if we're going to run out of water there should be some other kind of notification system for the threat for the people and along adam's comment we're working closely with water and they just brought someone in to work on the enforcement so education first a lot of folks just don't understand what it means or didn't get the message so I feel I didn't know that so we do have tools to use there and water's proposing some other things in the next budget year that I think will complement what we do and I also don't think they know the seriousness of it you know I mean because we've always had well it's it's you know well they see the legs full yeah um yeah just to follow up because on both of these comments I'm glad you said something about water because I had been wondering but I just didn't know what we could do in the budget so it's glad that I'm glad to hear there's some ideas coming out there so maybe in addition to enforcement and notification if there are some technologies or something for increased efficiency and we can identify big users where we could put something in place that really gives a lot of reduced use without hurting whatever they're doing in their operations that would be really cool I just don't know enough and then on ed's point that's interesting about the bikes I think the bikes still should be in there but I also when I said electrification and transportation I am talking about vehicles as well I mean I know plenty of folks who want to get an electric vehicle but they're just worried about the infrastructure to charge it and I know with our little bucket of money we can't maybe do much but maybe we could strike a blow in that direction to build some more infrastructure to help this nation technology get off the ground so that's kind of what I meant that in addition just some things about water water efficiency I think the the way we do irrigation now is not sustainable first of all and then second let's give up on this green lawn that we have a passion for let's go native let's go plant native plants which do not require fertilizers and lots of water that's my day and we need to rethink the irrigation I mean people need to rethink the irrigation not spraying in the air just dripping those native plants that then use mulch around them on our on this fund underwater I don't did we talk about rebates for smart watering systems in this fund under that conservation I mean if we're talking about having money left over so maybe maybe just add that to some priorities I mean if we're going to start rebating people maybe adding water conservation under some of those rebates we did call out irrigation incentives I wanted to double check so we got irrigation incentives smart controllers trip and then the workshops that we put on so okay okay so adding that maybe even the irrigation tune-up incentive like we do for the HVAC tune-ups we have the infrastructure here to process it so okay well I think that's all for this item if you have enough to kind of go on we will move on to our next item staff reports we have the green sense business program and the matrix does anybody have comments about either one of those I have some stuff for the matrix okay I want to go Catherine get situated thank you you have some questions about it you want to add to it I'd like to add to it okay yeah all right so we're not going to have the other presentation what's the other presentation that you did both oh you did the green business oh well that's under staff reports do you have questions about the green business that's not a presentation it's not a presentation okay if you have a question about it at this point you can ask oh yeah I have a question about it is the chamber of commerce involved in it too we presented to the economic development partnership born last week and we got feedback from businesses and requested feedback from businesses in the chamber and our economic development folks are they positive yes it was good thank you okay let's move down to the matrix okay thank you since we've adopted a climate action plan I'd appreciate a presentation on the priorities and timelines for adopting those priority policies in other words I'd like to see whatever blueprint is being put together to enact ordinances supporting what is presented in the climate action plan then I'd like to go have a discussion of equity issues and solutions for low-income homeowners who cannot afford to pay out front for incentivized improvements I'd like a discussion about the benefits of community solar especially for lower-income households have there been any links to the inflation reduction reduction act website regarding the the sustainability initiatives that are listed there not yet okay but will that happen do you think okay thank you and I think one last thing oh if could we get a report on if or what the city if if the city has applied for and received any IRA grants and finally I'd like a progress report on the status of the dent and renewable resource plan the revision of that see how that's coming along thank you and I think that one's on our matrix to be scheduled it is on the matrix but I've been received information that well I'd like to find out if it's on track I mean I just second Ed's first proposal because that's what I was going to suggest is now that we have this climate action plan has been approved I'd love to have a discussion about how we can start implementing it and we will move to number two concluding items I would I do have something this is my very last meeting today and so I would like to thank the members board members and staff for all your work this last few years I had the time of my life serving on this board so thank you all thank you thank you thank you very much all right and with that we will close the meeting at 2 14 thank you