 I'm Marcia Martin and this is the 2021 series of Capital Conversations and I am here with regular Sonia Hock as Lewis this year a member of the state senate and she is still working hard to improve Colorado and this first session is going to be about energy and environment and the bills that she is sponsoring or preparing to sponsor in the legislature and you know we all are interested about that because you know Longmont is working hard to be a leader in clean energy so Sonia could you please give us a good summary of what you're working on. Absolutely well Marcia City Council woman Martin thank you so much for having me back so proud to be a Longmont resident and starting into my very first session as a state senator you know our senate district is Longmont Lafayette Lewisville and the Boulder County side of Erie and our district is a leader in wanting to encourage sustainable energy promote everything we can do for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to obviously try to control climate change and I think we have some bills coming up in this session that will address some of that so I'm so glad that we have a moment to talk about it. We have not started the session we'll be back on February 16th we took a pause for COVID and to allow our hospitalization numbers to come down we think that was a smart thing to do because as anticipated we are positivity rate is looking much better and we're hoping we can address some of the urgent needs from the COVID pandemic at the same time as addressing our progressive issues like green energy so one of the areas that I'm going to be very involved in and that you'll see coming out of the session I hope is a effort to increase energy storage in Colorado so one of the proposals that's coming is actually from the Colorado energy office so they did a report that we need to set a storage target for the state and the way to do that is to direct the PUC the public utilities commission to value the contributions of all energy storage in our energy resource plans and to strike a better balance for all utilities but really a better balance in sustainable energy and that could be realigning our distribution grid it could be looking at our transportation grid so let me stop there and see if I've sparked any conversation with that Marsha what do you think? Well I think that that's a good focus area and it brings to mind some of the things that we are working on here in Longmont we have just funded a project to put solar arrays on or associated with three public buildings in Longmont large ones you know public utility buildings the waste management plan and that installation does have utility scale battery storage associated with it. Fantastic that that's that's exactly what we need more municipalities and local governments to do. Good good and that's you know that's a start this is three megawatts which is not nothing but it's you know it's it's just a start so what I would like to ask is are you expecting that the legislature would come out with forms of assistance for projects like that as a result of what you're working on? I really hope so I know there is going to be some legislation either budgetary or in statute to create some incentives for renewable energy storage projects in particular so the one way we could do that is to provide parity in the way that tax assessments are done for projects because obviously you have tax assessments on electrical and and other forms of more conventional fossil fuels but what what we really need are incentives for our sustainable and green energy sources and if we can strike a balance in that I think that there might be a way for us to increase these incentives for the renewable energy when it comes to storage projects and I'll be actually really transparent about something else I hope we can address which is we really need to look at PUC reform so the public utilities commission reform because in the past it's really been focused on what I would say is not the green energy sources not sustainable and we can advance the way the PUC assesses energy projects but I'm hoping that that might be something that we can take a look at I know that the governor has appointed some new commission members and and that certainly is a great start and but I again I think we can do much more and Marcia if you don't mind one more one more minute on especially on solar you know there's an issue going on with local communities if you look at the permitting process in say Boulder County or even other local municipalities it's pretty straightforward there's an assessment done of your property you pay a permitting fee what we've learned in looking at solar projects across the state is that there is a huge range of what happens with those permitting costs I'm not going to name any names here but there are municipalities that are charging thousands of dollars for solar permits for residential and then there are other municipalities that are in hundreds hundred 200 300 and that's to cover some of the cost of the permitting and the inspectors and all of that why would there be such a huge difference there so you know I think that might be an area that that you'll see some work in that a leveling of that would be really good because I know from my personal experience on the city council that depending who is in charge of the distribution utility there are lots of ways to look at that and I hadn't that's that's really good for me because I hadn't even considered our local permitting costs but now I will yeah there you go yeah and we can get you some of that data because really when you think about it front range municipalities should have fairly similar cost I would think yeah because you some of the same infrastructure but you know you're seeing quite a cost differential so we'd love to see if we can even that out and maybe there's even informational ways that we can share between one county's permitting and another you know it to me it just makes common sense it certainly it certainly does especially with you know the new data that comes out Longmont has a rate disincentive to install solar you know it's not a big one and it was designed in the name of social equity because the data at the time indicated that that people who couldn't afford to put solar panels on their roof and get net metering going we're subsidizing the people who could afford it which normally we're you know richer than the people who couldn't but with between losing the cost of transmission when you generate locally and between that and putting energy back on the grid that lowers the demand for electricity at the most expensive times of day and with the way demand charges are structured even more so by then really it's starting to work out now that it's the other way around and that solar generators are subsidizing everybody else great yeah and I was taught to tell people that you know investing in solar means you're investing in the planet it doesn't mean you're investing in your own personal economy but that too is turning around both because of the rate advantages and because of the dropping cost of domestic solar so now we're looking at ways to make it so that everybody can get on this train and and profit from the opportunities of local generation and storage one way or the other so I hope that's being considered but can you tell me about it yeah no that's exactly because if we can even out the tax assessment between the energy the forms of energy creation you even if you're not able to put solar on your dwelling your home you could invest in it because if the tax assessments are not more incentivized for our sustainable energy then how are investors going to choose to invest more in solar and wind and all of our you know hydrogen all of our greener energy sources so you're getting at the heart of how can we make those energy sources able so that everyone can participate in one way or another so yeah that's exactly the direction we're going if you don't mind I'll spend another minute on another type of solar energy we are a leader in the state here in long months in senate district 17 we have and many many of your viewers may know about jack solar garden which is a wonderful facility right off of 95 that facility is doing what we call agra voltaics and that is another source of combining two industries one is solar energy because they are a solar farm a solar community garden but they're also a farm a you know regular farm that produces all kinds of plants and vegetables and and importantly because it's one of my big areas pollinator plants so it's yes exactly you know i'm a bee lover and a and a butterfly lover and a bird lover for sure so we got to protect our pollinators and what jack's is doing with agra voltaics is basically creating a solar generation form it's solar panels that are high enough off the ground that byron who's the owner is they're able to plant plants underneath the solar panels and then they can tilt them so that the plants are able to get the sun and the light that they need to grow and we we i mean this just makes sense it helps farmers have an another source of of income so that they're not relying on selling off their water rights or having to to do things with fracking which event those are all uh you know non-sustainable resources whereas if we can do more of this agra voltaics and have farming and solar generation at the same time to me that's that's the direction we need to be heading we're not doing enough promotion of that in my opinion we have to create an opening for those types of energy sources to have a fair playing field with other utility utilities so there's so much more that we can do and i can't wait until we can tackle that you know we really uh need to do more to help that kind of industry because you're doing two things at one time and and it makes it and it's sustainable it just makes sense yeah you know that is a wonderful idea and um i am it's put the idea into my head that that that agrovoltaic aspect of it may expand the sort of longmont public land that can be used that way yes yes there's other communities uh in the state looking at doing exactly that it's a great way to put some of the public lands that we want to keep but at the same time have functionality create sustainable energy there's a whole division at csu that is working with jack's solar garden there's uh there's researchers um out of state that are working and boulder county of course leading the way again has been working with byron at at jack's solar garden so i'm hoping that we can get some wonderful data out of that and i'm hoping that we can save the bees because we're we're definitely losing our pollinators at an alarming rate well that's a wonderful idea and i just have to put in one last plug for longmont which is thank you to longmont's voters um in the last election we um arranged our public land use so that we could have long-term leases for investments just like what you are describing so maybe we have opened the door for some of these opportunities between what the state does and and what the city does and uh i would like to thank you senator hakez lewis for giving us this kind of preview of of coming attractions um about clean energy in colorado and um i hope that when the legislature is farther advanced uh and we know more about how these are going to shake out then you can come back and talk to us about it again because it's one of the top topics on everybody's mind in longmont i agree we we need to do more and if you don't mind i'll just even share my email if folks want to get involved or help out it's so easy senator sonia sonia withawai at uh sd17 at gmail.com so senator sonia sd17 gmail.com we we would love people to get more involved that's wonderful and i will put that on the bottom of the screen before this goes public all right so thank you senator hakez lewis once again thank you so much for having me