 Alright, so first, we'll start by introducing ourselves. I was thinking that my team could introduce ourselves and then each one of you could give like a short name, pronouns, and like why you're here today or just any short introduction. So my name is Ayano Ishimura. I'm a senior at Mount Desert Island High School in Bar Harbor, Maine and the co-president of the eco team here. I was also one of the summer interns for Climate to Thrive this past summer, which I'll talk about more later. I've been on the eco team for the past four years. So since I was a freshman and it has drastically changed my life. I grew up learning about deforestation and climate change through my grandmother. So I've always been passionate about the environment, but being a part of a community like my eco team and Climate to Thrive has given me a lot of confidence and hope in my actions and it's also taught me how important it is to really connect, communicate, collaborate with so many people to combat the climate crisis. So I'm so excited to be able to connect with all of you today and thank you so much for being here. I'll pass it on to Ruby. Hi, I'm Ruby and my pronouns are she, her and I'm a junior at MDI High School and I am also a member of the eco team and I was an intern at the Climate to Thrive this summer. And I've worked with various local and national political and climate justice organizations, including the Sunrise Movement. And I was a volunteer for the re-election campaign of the co-author of the Free New Deal Ed Markey in 2020 and yeah, climate action is very important to me and it's a super integral part of what I do and I'm super psyched to be here with all of you today. And should I pass to someone? Is Joe here or? So Joe lost power and he was calling in, but it looks like he just dropped off. So maybe we can all, all just go around and introduce ourselves quickly while we wait for him to rejoin. I'm Gary Friedman in Bar Harbor and I'm one of the co-founders of the Climate to Thrive and it's helped start the internship program at MDI High School. So I'm really excited about the work that Ayano and Ruby and others at the High School have done and looking forward to hearing your presentation. Thanks Gary. Mark, do you want to introduce yourself next? Mark Connolly, he, him, and I've lived here in Blue Hill for a couple of years now. I got sort of caught by the virus, Corona, and I was going to live seasonally between here and Portsmouth, Virginia. I've been a Sierra Club member since 73, a life member since 75, and I thought that I'd try to find out more about the solar issue here in Maine, which I think is an interesting issue for us to all be concerned about. And renewables, the accessibility of renewables for our energy consumption and that sort of thing. So it's, so now I can move interest for me while passing. Thank you so much Mark. Do you want to pass it on to someone or does anyone want to volunteer to go next? Nancy, it looks like you're unmuted. I'm Nancy Chandler, currently a school board member in MSAD 75 Topsum. We have a new high school with solar and geothermal and we're trying to persuade them to, I'm on the energy team for a committee for Topsum. We're trying to persuade them to use the current 45% grants for electric school buses to go ahead and invest and start investing in the fleet of the future. So I've been a Sierra Club member also since 73 and been doing things with the climate action teams, weatherizing houses in Fipsburg. So looking forward to hearing what you young people have been up to. And I'm the other Nancy, Nancy Anderson, she and her and I am a grandma, very concerned about climate change, have been involved with a number of organizations and political campaigns. Excited about what you all have done and excited about decentralized generation of power, want to learn more about what you're doing. I am Rachel Grady. I am a social studies teacher at Grom High School and we were so fortunate to meet Joe and Ayano and other students who spoke about their solar experiences as Gorham is trying to move in that direction. So I am at school and we are fairly, you know, at school with the number of quarantining days that have hit us. So forgive the math, but anyway, it's good to be safe. So thank you all for for putting this on. And also, I have to log by 1240 because I have students coming in. So just to let you know in advance. Go ahead, Ellen. Thank you. Hi, I'm Ellen DeCotez. And right now I'm on the school board. Which is the Buxton, Dandish area. And we've been talking a little bit about trying to reduce the cost of heating for the building with all the budget cuts that are happening. And, you know, so they're not interested in the solar panels because they're indicating that there's a problem with the PFAS that are coming from the solar panels. So I wanted to come today to hear what your presentation is and hopefully bring back some new information to the school board and see if we can put these on some of our school building. Thank you. Hi, go. Hi, I'm Samantha. So I live in Camden and much like Mark was a vacation place that has turned into our forever home thanks to COVID and of all the things that came out of the past year. I'm very, very, very happy to be here. We were living in New York before I have two children in the Camden Rockport Elementary School. And I always have been, but largely now because of them, I'm very passionate about climate change and renewable energy. And I'm just excited to hear what you've done at Mount Desert Island. And I have no idea what they're doing in Camden. I feel like it's a fairly forward thinking community in climate regards, but I don't know what's going on here. Like I said, I'm new. So I'm just information gathering. Thank you for putting this on. I guess I can go next. My name is Mike Schremeier. I'm a Sierra Club member as of Friday, so new to this. I'm a mechanical engineer working at IDEX. So I'm definitely a pretty big nerd about anything technology related. Thanks. I'm an Eagle Scout. So that's kind of where I became really passionate about the environment and enjoying nature and wanting to preserve it. The first job I had out of college, I was working at a company that made semiconductor manufacturing equipment. And we made instrument or tools that couldn't make solar panels. So I'm somewhat familiar with the construction of solar panels from like a very detailed technical standpoint. My wife and I bought a house in Portland about three years ago. And like the first thing we did was have solar panels put up on our roof. So we're excited to have that and a all electric Nissan Leaf and trying to reduce our carbon footprint. So this the title of this talk kind of piqued my interest. Joe, I think you might be the last one if you can be able to talk. Sure, I am. I've been listening. I had cut out at one point. I'm in Bernard. My name is Joe Blotnick. I was the co-coordinator of a climate to thrive a nonprofit on MDI that set a goal five years ago of energy independence by 2030. And since then, that's become a very important date for many other places. And I am currently without power, so I'm on the phone. The I'll say a little bit more after the rest of my team here with the students introduce themselves. Yeah, Joe, we already introduced ourselves, but I would just like to say we also have one other member who is a very new member to our team, and she will probably join later on for the Q&A for questions. Her name is Austria, but she'll also be here. Yeah. OK. Yeah, do you think you could share your screen again? Yeah, I think, Joe, you're the next slide. OK, I can't see the slides because they have no internet access. You can just tell me where I'm at. Yeah, so go ahead. We're at the 76 solar installs doubling MDI capacity. Great. Yeah, let me OK. Great. Let me just say a little bit more. I, you know, we're talking about telling short stories of how we got involved in all of this. And it occurred to me just before the call that back in 1970, the very first Earth Day, I was a junior in high school and our teacher science teacher said, oh, today is the birthday. And we're all, you know, what's Earth Day? You know, what's that? And she says, well, I'm like, I lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And she said, well, it's about pollution and all this kind of stuff and we're like, what's pollution? And and she says, well, if you look out the window and we were up on a hill in this high school, you could see that we're having an inversion today and the air is very brown. And I looked and I saw the brown air and I hadn't really realized that our sky is often brown because Pittsburgh was a very polluted place at the time and prior to that, it was horrible. But the good news is that got me into the environment and I ended up studying the environment as director of environmental aid centers and been working with the environment all my life. And back then we weren't thinking about climate change. We're just talking about pollution. The good news is during the 70s, our country made a tremendous strides in reducing pollution, such that there's probably less pollution in a lot of ways today than or they are not in all cases. Of course, there's a lot of toxic out there. But and so I'm hopeful about climate change is so awesome to be working with young people in high school that see that, yes, we can do this too. We can make a change. So a climate to try began just five years ago and we one of the first things we wanted to do is increase the solar on the island. So we did a solarized program where we worked with revision energy and we offered a little bit of a discount to homeowners and businesses that wanted to go solar. And on the next slide there, you could see that we had 76 installs all around the island. 76 people signed up to put solar on, including ourselves. And we doubled the amount of solar capacity on the island in that one summer there or summer and fall. And that was really great because, you know, people have been putting solar panels on intermittently here and there for like 25 years. Well, we doubled it. And just to say that somebody mentioned heating the solar panels on our roof are heating our house through heat pumps, heating our hot water through a hot water heater, providing all of our electricity. And we have access to generate extra power for my son's home in Southwest Harbor. So it's amazing to be able to do that. So the next step for kind of thrive is we wanted to double the energy again. So the solar energy on the island. And so we looked at bigger projects and we found a a septic system, a landfill in Tremont that was capped and everything. It wasn't going to be used for anything else. There's a bench up there that you can walk up to and sit in the sun. And so we ended up getting a working to get a solar array put on that landfill about half of the space there. And it provides the power to the elementary school in Tremont and all of the town buildings. And currently we're working on putting a community solar farm on the other half. And then after that, we looked at the high school and both the principal and the superintendent were very open to solar and they wanted to do it. But as you know, administrators in schools are extremely busy. They've got so many other things to do. So as a nonprofit, I was able to devote my time and a few others and our volunteers and our energy committee and so forth and our board to work with the high school to actually just basically do the process of figuring out how much energy they used, doing requests for proposals, selecting a vendor and so forth and making the recommendations to the board of trustees. And so we were able to go 100% solar. At the time, it was going to save the high school projected to save the high school $250,000 over 25 years. The panels will probably last for more than 25 years, but that's what you're looking at. And you didn't know that's not a lot of money if you divide at $10,000 a year. That's not a lot of money. But when the new legislation that came in with the Mills administration, which we helped as an organization to envision and to get passage of that number, that number of net metering change so that now it's estimated that we're going to save $1.5 million. And I'd say that's a low estimate. And that is significant money that the school can use to educate people, which is what they're all about. So there you go. And if you let me know what other slide I'm on, I could talk more. Yeah, so the next one is on the 2019 interns. Yes, the 2019 interns. One of the things that we did is we started an internship program in the summer for high school students and or college students that had graduated from MDI High. We had two the first year, then three, then five. And I think in 2019, we had five. And we did a lot of things around solar energy, including going down to the State House and talking to the Senate president and Sarah Gideon about, you know, climate change and so forth. We've done that a number of years. And the interns got to go over to, I think it's Pittsfield where there's a really large solar array where Janet Mills signed in the legislation and three new solar bills that we're going to really greatly expand solar, as you know, in the state. And the, a couple of those people that are young folks that are jumping up in front of the State House are Thomas Corsan, Hey, and Soroki Kumar. And those two got really excited about the solar project going on at the high school and ended up writing a white paper that we can provide to everybody here about the project so that they could share it with other schools around the state and country. Actually, it was they got a $500 grant to write this paper in the following year. And then I think we could go on to the next slide where I believe Ayano is going to speak about this project. I think this is the ribbon cutting side. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, that would be. Yes. So once, once we had the solar panels installed, and they were all ready to go, there was a ribbon tying ceremony that was organized by former, a climate to drive interns and members of the eco team at the I and local and statewide press was invited and Sarah Gideon made a lovely speech. And after the presentation, the press was super focused on the kids, all of the former interns and the eco team members. And so Thomas, who like Joe said was one of the former interns. He actually a couple of days later as he was driving to school, he turned on his car radio and he's able to hear his own voice because the main public radio had done a four minute segment on the project and that was super cool. And then I think we can go to the next slide. And so also as Joe mentioned, so he and Thomas wrote a white paper that has all sorts of really great information. But some of the highlights are that MBI will save $1.5 million over the next 25 years. We'll reduce our carbon emission by 252 tons. We were able to install almost 1500 solar panels, which is super awesome. Next, please. And another great feature of having solar is the output monitor that displays the power generated every day, month, et cetera. And we have saved over 865,000 pounds of CO2. From entering the atmosphere, which is the equivalent of planting 6,500 trees, which is super cool. Sorry, yes. Sorry, I thought Joe said something. That's it. Next slide. Ruby, did you want me to show the video on the last slide showing like the overall project? Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot about that. No, no, you're all set. Yeah. So here's just a drone footage of all the solar panels installed. Those solar panels are what cover 100% of our school's electricity, which is awesome. So up until now it's mostly been about how MDI and like our specific high school went solar. And as mentioned before, I had the pleasure of being an act intern this past summer along with Ruby and it was a truly amazing experience. Like even through like wearing masks and screens and even though it was all virtual, we were still able to work on many exciting and incredible projects. One of them being of course, one of the biggest projects Ruby and I worked on, which was promoting solar energy to schools across the state. So the former act interns, Thomas and Sirohi, they worked on the solar white paper and pushing solar for our school at MDI. But this project last summer that Ruby and I worked on was more we emailed, we reached out to schools across Maine and urged them to consider benefits of solar and those benefits including like environmental benefits, as well as financial benefits for the schools, especially considering like the effects of COVID and how COVID has financially affected and impacted a lot of schools in Maine. So because as Ruby mentioned, the process of going 100% solar was relatively easy, straightforward and cost effective for our school. We thought why not replicate the process for other schools? So we started out by finding all the high schools in Maine, which turned out to be around like 180 schools. And we emailed each of their principals with some info about our work and the benefits of solar. And then from the schools that replied, we scheduled Zoom meetings with them and met with each of the schools that showed interest. And honestly, it was handy that everything was being done virtually over Zoom because that allowed us to connect with so many people from across the state. And if you go on the next slide, you can see the impact we had. So we contacted 180 schools across the state and then received emails from around 2021-ish schools. And then right now, currently, there are 13 schools that are seriously considering solar energy and that we've met and zoomed with and talked about how to lead their process on. And although like 13 schools doesn't seem like a lot compared to 180 schools, that would be like a ballpark equivalent to like 3,250 metric tons of reduction and carbon emissions, which is amazing. And that estimate just comes from how much our school saved. I just thought that was interesting to throw in. And if you go on the next slide, here's just a map of the schools that we have been working closely with since the summer, since our internship in the summer, including Gorham High School, which Rachel, we've been working with Rachel with that, who's here today. And yeah, this just shows how we've been connecting with schools from all over the state. It's really cool. And ever since the summer, our eco team at MDI has taken this project on because we, since our internship ended, we knew that this project would be like a large scale, long-term project. So we wanted to keep it going somehow and Ruby and I are kind of the leaders of that for our eco team right now. Next slide, please. So this last part of our presentation is about how your school can go solar. And, or like if you have friends or family who may be interested in leading this, you could relay this information or contact us. And I just wanted to share with you like the four basic first steps that you can take. And I'll talk about the first two steps and then Ruby can talk about the third one. And then Joe can talk about the fourth one. So the first step is getting an approval from the school, either the school principal, school board, or superintendent. So this is a really important step because without like a general approval of solar energy from an authority, it'd be really difficult to move a process, this process along. But I think like what we've found is like the most effective argument is the financial benefits of solar because like I feel like like school principals and the school board really cares about budget. And when people hear about solar in their head, they're like, oh, that's like a huge upfront cost. But at MDI, we were able to do a no upfront cost. So that's how we've been urging different schools to go about it. And the second step is to create a team of interested teachers or other people in the school. And one thing that our school did was we had help from a climate to thrive, which is an outside organization. So if there's an organization near your school that you think may be helpful for this, that would also be an approach to this. But creating a team is also a really important step because this is just a big project and having more people would make it easier and having more support as well. And Ruby, if you want to talk about the third step. Yeah, so it's also really important to find out how much your school is currently paying for electricity every year for a couple of reasons, but mainly it's another really good way to convince people that solar is a really good project to undertake. Because you can say like, this is how much we're paying every year. And it's usually a lot more than you think. And so if people hear that number, then they're like, whoa, that's crazy. Why are we spending that much money? Like we need new textbooks. And so you can make the argument that solar is going to actually save you a lot of money. Finding out how much you consume is also really important because then you can get an estimate of how many solar panels don't need and what type of help you're going to need to get those. Yeah, and adding on like the physical way to do that is looking at your annual electricity bills. And you can access that. There's usually like a person who's in charge of that in your school and you can either go to your principal and ask who's in charge of all the electric utility bills. And they're usually monthly. So you'll need around 12, at least 12 of them and look through them and get like a ballpark estimate and kill a lot of hours. And Joe, if you could talk about identifying and talking with solar companies. Yes. The there's the landscape of solar in Maine has changed has been changing so rapidly, especially with the onset of these kind of newer, more pro solar legislation that that happened in 2019 2019 and 2020. Because there, there were some players in the solar field right here. They're really good companies that do really great work and they work throughout the state, a lot of them. And then when all of this kind of new incentives for solar came in, there's big companies that are that operate nationally that are coming in to build larger arrays and find customers for them and everything. So there's a whole mix of companies out there that either develop sites or put the panels on your roof or on your grounds. And, and then there's other ones that are just trying to find customers for existing community solar farms. Those of you, I've seen here, everybody probably knows what a community solar farm is. It's not a farm. Sometimes it's on farmland and that's not good. But the, it's a, it's a large space that is covered with solar panels. And that is one of the options. And the, I'll just say that on the month is our island high school, there was a student before all of this that we've been talking about it took place said that we could power this school with solar energy, but it turned out that going rooftop solar panels at that time was too expensive. But a few years later it got cheaper and then suddenly it was, it was totally competitive. So putting panels on your roof is great. If you have a good roof that doesn't need to be refinished in, in replaced in the next 25 years. And we were fortunate at the high school that they had just done a lot of refinishing of the roof and all that kind of stuff. There's a section that we, they're going to do in another five years. So we did not put panels on that owning your own panels is, is a good thing. Because the powers is generated right there. And it's used right there during the, during the school year. And in the summertime it's excess power is generated and it's sent out and you're going to get credits for all of those. So the, and with. There's what there's government incentives, of course, to, to buy and use solar energy. See, right now it's a 26% tax credit when we did it for the high school, the 30% tax credit. But since the school doesn't pay taxes, you go through what's called a power purchase agreement. And with that, it means that there's outside investors that actually own the system and they sell the power back to you at a discount. So, so that's how we do not have to put any money up. We just work with a company who found investors investors own the system company builds the system and we pay. We got about a third off of our electric bill for the first six years. And then after that, and this is a contract for 25 years, this power purchase agreement, but they, there's an opt the investors make their money by getting that tax credit themselves because they're a nonprofit. I mean, they're for profit. And so they really don't need to hold on to that contract for 25 years. And as a result, they let you buy it at less than half the price after just six years. And this is a system that's going to last for 25 years. Once the high school then buys the system, they'll get a bond for that. And they'll pay monthly payments on that. And those monthly payments will be far less than the electric bills that they were paying for that amount, which is about $100,000 a year. So we were able to save a lot of money that way, probably in the range of 25 to 30%, with no money up, down. Now a slightly more extensive thing if your roof doesn't work is you could do a ground mounted system. If you have land around your school that isn't being used for sports fields and other kinds of things and parking and everything. You could do a ground array that supports the school. And that's also a great option. It's probably going to be a little bit less savings because of the structures that build to ground mountain. And then the third option is a community solar farm. And community solar farm is where, like in Tremont, we use a cap landfill and we built it there. That's how we get the permission to do that because they're benefiting from it. And we put the array on there and that's providing electricity to the school. We're generating electricity that the school gets credited for. Today there's a lot of large five megawatt solar farms going up that already exist or are existing. And there's companies that are looking for customers and schools as well as individuals and businesses can buy in to one of these solar farms. And after they could buy power from it. And the power that they buy from it is generated by that solar, of course. And you get generally speaking about a 10 to 15% discount. Not quite as much savings as we're getting on the high school with owning our own panels after six years. But still, it's a significant difference at our high school that would have been 10 to $15,000 a year savings. And again, with no upfront cost. And the good news there is you don't have to worry about the roof leaking. You know, go bad and the maintenance of them and everything. It's all built in your contract that you just get the reduction in power. So those are the three ways that schools and or businesses and or individuals can get solar in this state. And you could go to the next slide. There is one. Yeah, thank you so much, Joe. We have two resources that will be extremely helpful. If you are interested in taking this on at your school. And that is a solar white paper that Thomas and Sirohi previous act interns wrote and this solar white paper basically outlines the process that I went through to go 100% solar and it's really detailed and there's just a lot of information there, but it's not too long. Super easy to read. And the other resource we have is our solar road map. Which a climate to thrive also put together for us. And that's more general. It has general steps that any school could follow and also includes templates for request for proposal and other things. And they're both really helpful. And if you're interested in this, I'll put my email in the chat and we can email you these resources and also I believe they're on solarhighschool.com if you look that up online. And I think next slide. And yeah, so other than that, we hope to spend the last 20ish minutes just doing Q&A. If you guys have any questions and again, like feel free to, if you guys have any questions after this presentation, feel free to email me, Ruby or Joe. Okay, so we'll take questions. You sure to unmute yourself? I have one question for Ayano and Ruby. I'm curious what else MDI ECO team is working on now, especially since you had this big win with solar at MDI. Just besides solar, what are you working on? Yeah, I don't know if I'll be able to name all of the projects. So Ayano can correct me and add. But one that I do know that's happening right now is MDI has gone back and forth with having a compost bin and compost system. And so right now we don't have any composting ability. And so there's a committee that's trying to bring that back and maybe have a composting facility like on campus. So we can deal with our own compost and not have to figure out a place to outsource it to. There's project legacy too. Which was started last year by some outgoing seniors. And it's basically an agreement I think with, I haven't worked on this as much. So it's an agreement with the school where they promise to consider the climate ramifications of every decision that they make going forward. As well as have more information on climate change in science classes and more climate education. And so I think that's one of the things that we're going to be talking about as well as maybe other things. Ayano, do you know more about that? Yeah. So that, yeah, Ruby, you basically summed it up for me. Thank you. But I would say project legacy is like one of the biggest projects our eco team is taking up right now. And like most of the team is part of that. Whereas like only some members are a part of our project. So I think that's one of the things that we're going to be talking about. I think that's one of the things that we're going to be talking about is the climate emergency declaration. But for the school, it's like a commitment that the school will sign into. To commit to make every decision. Like environmentally to make environmentally conscious decisions. When they're passing things in the school board. Or just trying to move towards carbon. So I think that's one of the things that we're going to be talking about. I think that's one of the things that we're going to be talking about in 2020. 2030, I believe. But that's like an ongoing project that we're working with a principle on. And I believe we're presenting that in March to the school board. So this month to the school board, which is exciting. Thank you, Anya for the question. And also thank you so much, Mike. I'm very excited about how where this project will go to. I think you can just feel free to unmute. Or type your question in the chat. How do you find the flat solar panels deal with snow in the winter. Joe, do you want to take this one on? Sure, I can. That's a very interesting question. Very good question. Which I had at 1.2, and I was at a conference. I was talking to a solar engineering company and they had a big display up and it showed a building in New England with, you know, flat roof panels all over the place. We say flat roof panels. What they're really at a very minor slight. You know, like, I don't know, 5% or something. They're, they're slanted just enough to let water run off with them. But of course you have snow. So how do you do this exactly the question that you had? And they said solar energy is so cheap that when we calculate how much it's going to cost for the year, we just block out December, January and February and pretend that it's just covered with snow the whole time. And it still is going to save a lot of money. So that's how they do it. The panels do get snow on, they're very tough. And they're, you know, the snow melts a little bit faster on those panels and it does on some things because they're black underneath. And once that melting process happens, it goes and they generate a little kind of heat in there too, but not much. But it, they, they might sit covered, you know, after a foot snowstorm for several days. And when you, when they are covered, you get hardly any power from them. But the way the price and calculate whether solar works is based on no look at the whole year cycle. And you're going to generate a lot of extra energy in the summertime, especially in a school, because it's not being used much. And all of that energy in name goes back into the grid and you get credit, a one-on-one credit, one-to-one credit for that energy or nearly a one-to-one credit. And in the wintertime, when your panels are not producing as much, you get to use all those credits up and it's designed, you know, figured so that it'll balance itself over the year. That's it. Other questions? Yeah, thanks, Joe. John asked in the chat if there were any plans for recycling or repurposing our solar panels after 25 years. And I actually don't know the answer to that question. Do either of you guys. Yes. I can speak to that too. There was a good article that just came out a couple of weeks ago how that doesn't seem to be an issue because we live on a planet with 8 billion people. And, you know, people, if you take a typical panel, the size has stayed the same for the last 10 or 15 years, the physical inch by inch size of a panel. But the output of that panel just keeps getting better and better when we put our panels on, they were around 300 kilowatts rated to produce 300 kilowatts of power when the sun's hitting them. That same size panel right now would probably go on our roof at 400 kilowatts. So already our system, which does more than we need, is, we could have done with a quarter or less panels with new panels today. So at some point a business or a homeowner or a school might decide, you know, these panels are kind of really inefficient compared to what we have today. So why don't we, and they're so cheap to buy new ones, why don't we just replace them? Well, they're going to last for 40 years. The 25 years is just the absolute warranty that they guarantee, you know, guarantee that they're going to be significant amount of power. So if they're not good for you, they're good for somebody who doesn't have as much money as you, that could buy these, use panels and put them up and still generate a lot of power for themselves. And that goes all the way down the line to, you know, sending them over to third world countries that can't afford to buy brand new panels. And so what they're finding is there's a big market for panels right now. So then this is the question, what happens after 40 years? They can be recycled just like electronics are. And it's very, there's already people doing that by, you know, removing some of the heavy metals in there and things like that. But that's going to grow because solar, the amount of solar panels is huge. So like aluminum cans, you've got a good recycling program for that because it's, it's, you know, that's all going to depend on people making sure they get it to the right place. That's all. Another question. Thank you, John, for asking that question and Joe for answering it. And Mark, you made a comment about seeing GSA as an interested school on our list. And GSA was one of like the first schools that we got in contact with. And I remember working, I remember GSA, I don't remember all working with all of the schools just because there's a lot. But there's this one student, her name is Magnolia Vandiver. And I believe that's how to pronounce it. But she was like the leader in bringing solar to her school. And they're actually really far along in the process right now. We met with them a couple of times and like shared resources, gave guidance, and I believe they're at the stage where they're bringing it to the school board now, which is awesome. Yeah. Yeah, GSA has been great to work with. Yeah. I'm really excited to hear how that's going to, I think I'll reach out pretty soon and see if they have yet or and how, if so, how it went. But yeah. And that's like one of the best parts. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead. I was just going to add like that's one of the best parts about like this project is connecting with so many schools. I've met like so many other students who are also passionate about like renewable energy and the climate crisis and dealing with it. And again, like it's kind of funny because if the pandemic didn't happen, this wouldn't be such an easy project to do because like now that everything's over zoom, like we're able to connect with all these schools super easily. And I'm able to meet so many youth across the state and hear about what their ego team is doing and how things are going with their team. And so that's like really encouraging and cool. Joe, sorry. I think. Oh, sorry. Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say that I saw Samantha, the racer hand, but I'm not sure. Yeah, no, that was an accidental hand raised. Okay. I just wanted to check in. Yeah, Joe, what were you going to say? Oh, I was just going to say, are there any thoughts? It doesn't have to be a question. It could just be thoughts about how solar is progressing. Because as I said, it is the landscape is changing tremendously. Some of you probably see them in the paper about how CMP was having difficulty because the grid isn't really up to 100 years ago. It's not going hugely. It's an old grid that was, you know, built 100 years ago and upgraded in 1970 or something, but it's, there's so much work that needs to be done. So the state is grappling with exactly who's going to pay for that, how that's going to get done right now. And we have to kind of move cautiously towards full expansion. Because without the grid, we would just go nuts with solar right now because it is the cheapest way to produce energy. But anybody have any thoughts or other questions along these lines about solar or the high school project? I'm sorry. I was just going to say John asked another question in the chat. Joe, if you want to answer it, he says, how much more expensive is covering parking lots with solar? Oh, okay. If any of you have ever been down to Brooklyn Whole Foods in New York, you'll see that their parking lot is covered with these nice solar panels and it also provides weather protection from the snow and rain for the cars underneath. And I love that idea. And I thought that was really great. The solar energy is the cheapest form of energy, but if you have to build these large steel or aluminum frames to hold the panel up that high, that adds a lot of cost per kilowatt to it. And so far that, you know, that has not been cost productive. A ground mount, a typical ground mount where they're closer to the ground and there's a, a steel or aluminum framing structure that holds the panels is much smaller. And that works in a Tremont landfill has that, but it's a lot more expensive to do a parking lot. If it's, you know, a private home or a small business or something like that, you might do that just for the, you know, to be able to assist. But wow, look at this. We've got our panels and they're protecting us from the rain and snow. So I was just going to chime in that in the middle of this presentation, I got a breaking news alert that, or what are they called summit, the natural gas company that was looking to do the natural gas pipeline along the mid coast has pulled their plans for that, which I think is good news as a, as a new energy consumer and I'm getting ready to renovate my house. So I was actually excited when I first heard about summit coming because I thought, Oh, natural gas, it's cleaner than those disgusting fuel oil tanks. And that would be great. And then the more I learned about it, I realized some of the issues with natural gas. So we're actually looking at putting so we have to replace the roof on our house anyway. So we're going to do solar and switch to heat pumps and all that, which I'm very excited about just on a personal level, but little breaking news. That's, that's great heat pumps. That is a really big thing. You know, solar is great and it's kind of, you know, sexy in a way, you know, like what, I'm making energy for us. But energy efficiency is really number one and heating with electricity is a really big trend in something that's needed. So efficiency main offers great rebates right now on heat pumps and, and so forth. Then also on electric vehicles. And so really the future for most people that are trying to get away from fossil fuels is electricity. It's electricity to run your car, electricity to heat your home, et cetera. And main is the number one state in the union that's most oil dependent for home heating. And so there's a big push to turn everybody over to heat pumps. We love our pumps. It's been really great. Yeah, I'm excited to try it out. We have an electric vehicle as well. And I just, you know, part of what I'm thinking is if we can get the solar on our house and set up the heat pumps and we've got our nice electric vehicle parked out front. I'm hoping that the neighbors will follow suit too and see, you know, lead by example. Yeah, absolutely. We have people stop by all the time and ask about the panel. Samantha, I'm just linking in the chat, a link to a one pager that Sierra club did on that practice pipeline. And it also has some more info about. Practice and natural gas in general, and also some alternatives. And great. Yeah. I may have read about it and read that in the past week, I've been doing a lot of reading since I first saw a summit and then, you know, saw the local response to it. So thank you. I'll look at it. All right. I'm, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to cut this. Good conversation off, but it is past one o'clock. And I know everyone has places to go. Well, and I just want to say thank you again so much for coming today and listening to our presentation. Thank you so much for being so much to have this support. And again, if you have any questions, please feel free to email me. I put my email in the chat or Joe or Ruby. Thank you guys. Yeah, thank you guys so much. This has been great.