 of the Environment and Infrastructure Committee of the City of Columbia to order. Thank you all for being here. We appreciate you, Dr. Z, for being here. As mentioned earlier this year, we want to keep having quarterly reports so that we can keep moving towards our goals. And certainly with our Ready for 100 pledge, we've got a lot to do in the next 14 years. So we want to make sure that we're on board. So if I will just go ahead and kick it over to you for your update for us. You're all me. I know, I know I have to unmute myself before I full screen myself. So that's why I said to go the order of things here. Okay. So thank you very much for having me for this quarter of the update. Basically for today, I wanted to tell you about some work that we've been doing in terms of energy events and something that's happening in the future, a bit on energy labeling, which is essentially a weatherization project. The meat of this is about a Dominion update that I've been working on with Clint. And then also I have a question for you at the end of all of this. But also to preface this, the next time we meet, we've hired a consultant at CPAC to do some scoping work for Ready for 100. And his report will be coming in the next month or so with many inspirational document or inspirational goal about how to proceed. And so that is likely to be the focus of the next meeting just so you're prepared for that. So last time I sort of gave you this complicated looking layout, essentially, but it was the goals of CPAC of being about reducing greenhouse gas emissions or adapting to climate change. And then how we're going about that and some of the efforts that we're working on. And today I wanted to focus on three of those in particular. And so that is working on some outreach, some energy labeling, and then the work with Dominion. And so there was an event that we had, I didn't actually record what date, I think it was March 18th when it happened. And so there was this Energy 101 event that was organized by CPAC in conjunction with the city. And the goal of the event was to educate people on lowering energy costs and programs to help with energy efficiency, especially for those who were struggling financially. This event was streamed to the city's YouTube page. And there was only 20 live guests when it happened. However, if you've ever looked at the YouTube analytics for your channel, this is actually doing pretty good at 108 views. Because we have to get those committee meetings having a few more views in terms of, but in this time period of since the event has happened, this is a good for the city's YouTube page in terms of viewership. We had guests who came and spoke from Watery Community Actions, the South Carolina Association for Community Action Partnerships, a few people from Dominion, and then a Chesterfield Marlboro Economic Opportunities, and then also people from the State Office of Regulatory Staff. And this was done with the help of Mary Pat and Justin for getting all the technology sorted. And so because one of the efforts of CPAC was to talk to people more, but how to do efforts on things, they want, a lot of CPAC members wanted to basically have another event. So there's a new event planned for June 17th. That's essentially keeping it cool in Columbia, focusing more on the cooling aspects of things. And so the discussions have started with how to do that. But a lot of it will be focusing on trying to figure out how to cool your home and or cool your dwelling essentially and how to make that most affordable. And then there is the energy labeling project. So this has been getting some interest from some community members because they're hearing about in other places. And just so you can recall, if we look at the greenhouse gas emissions for the community at large, so this is not city government, but all of the city, that most of the greenhouse gas emissions are coming from buildings. So both commercial and residential. And when the state energy office recently did its energy roadmap, so that's going to be now showing on the other side of the slide. These are the priorities in terms of recommendations that the the state energy office had come up with in terms of increasing energy efficiency. And I'd like to draw your attention to the red box area that was about building codes and labeling. Now, I don't think we're going to be able to go like muck around in building codes or anything like that anytime soon. However, there is the last line on there was develop a residential labeling slash sticker disclosure pilot. And that is something that members of CPAC has been working on with the state energy office. And so just to give you more context about why that's important, this is data that's pulled from the Compass report in chapter four. And so if we look at the dwellings in Columbia, half of those are by renters. And then if we look at the age of the building stock, much of the building stock is not new. And then let's put a final sort of point to this and looking at the energy costs and how that works for our citizens. And so there's an energy burden in terms of financial that is happening for a lot of people because they're paying sometimes upwards of 20% of their monthly income on energy. So how can we do better in terms of helping increase the build the quality of the buildings. And so one way that we're trying to figure out how to do this is by this by doing an energy labeling program. The US Department of Energy has been working on this energy score project in terms of where you can have an auditor come into your house and score your home and how it's doing. And then also give you an assessment about improvements that could be made. And therefore what savings could happen because of that they would also outline what projects could make that those improvements. Now this has been done in some other cities, maybe not always the same political alignment in terms of where we're at. So this is in Portland, Oregon, they've successfully implemented this for both real estate sales and rentals. However, the state of Missouri is also working on this as a project. And so as part of the labeling effort, we are starting to engage with the state of Missouri understanding how they went about this and how they made that happen. So when I made these slides, I said that we were going to be meeting with the state of Missouri this afternoon. So this is with the state energy office and members of CPAC. However, it was just within the last half hour that this meeting got canceled, so we're going to have to reschedule. But one thing we're working on is trying to figure out a pilot community within Columbia that basically participate in this so we can get some data, understand the nuances of how to go about this, and then work on a voluntary rollout. The whole point of this would be if you're buying a home, you have to know the energy cost beforehand, and then it would become culturally an incentive to have lower energy costs. I know that when I was recently buying that it was disclosed, but that was voluntary based on who the real estate agents were. This is also super important for renters because many renters get in over their heads. So how do we figure out how to make that happen? And I think there's many aspects legal that we need to work out before we can actually just roll this out. So we're taking a slow approach in investigating aspects to this. So that's one aspect of what CPAC is working on. And then just to rewind to where we were last time and talking about the dominion issue. So I showed you this set of boxes in terms of the trying to go to the PSC to basically get a carve out in terms of the voluntary renewable offering that was in at the PSC right now. That is actually going quite slow for various reasons at the PSC. And there's been a bit of a development on that. So I'm going to just put this as a big sticker saying, let's pause on this sort of let's hire legal representation and get a carve out because Clint has been working on a different angle. And I want to basically talk to you about that. So with ready 100, there's basically the goal to have 100% carbon neutrality by 2036. And we also have to have a bit of rate neutrality. It's not like the city is rolling in money. So we have to figure out how do we make it affordable to get to this carbon neutrality. And so there's a few questions that we need to ask in terms of to be carbon neutral, how much do we rely on just dominion to make this happen? And how much does the city need to do in terms of being proactive? And so this is in terms of what we're trying to scope out is understanding what is dominion doing versus what we need to do as the city. And then what are the current emissions for this electricity we're purchasing? You can get some of this data looking at the information, energy EIA website, you can get some of that information, but it's not specific to dominion. But we need to understand for the carbon emission for the electricity we're buying, how much is coming from nuclear, how much is coming from natural gas, how much is coming from hydro, etc. So we understand our carbon emissions and we don't have that data from dominion and Clint has asked for that. But dominion is also going about working on improving its renewable portfolio and that's in their long-term planning, which is called the IRP. And so what are the growth projections in terms of how much energy is going to be produced by 2036 and how much of it will be renewable? Because if you recall, if we're going to electrify transportation and we're going to get hotter, we need more electricity in order to be able to cover all of that. So these are some questions that Clint has basically been posing. But then what has happened over the past month is that dominion has said that they're interested in working out custom deals for their customers, especially public entities. And so rather than going to the PSC and taking legal representation, they're interested in trying to figure out can you do a voluntary renewable offering a custom deal? And so there's basically two avenues besides the PSC route, how this could happen. So one, they propose forming a local coalition. So they're interested, you don't have to be just the city coming to dominion. You can be the city plus the university plus the county, essentially, in terms of trying to work out a deal. And one thing that Clint has been doing when trying to engage with dominion about this is trying to figure out are there projects that are currently in the queue at the PSC? So they've been proposed but not developed or approved yet that could align with this. And the philosophy of how Clint has been approaching this is basically saying, why muck around in one megawatt project? And why not go big? So he's trying to aim for 70 megawatts in terms of thinking about this, like let's go big and have it developed in the midlands. So that's one aspect you could try. Or it's a bit far off but the negotiations have restarted. I think that I would put number two on hold as a backup. And I would suggest that the city works on trying to promote the first option, which is the local coalition. So the recommendation that I'm putting here forth here is basically work on the local coalition deal. So that's about a 70 megawatt installation pros. With more entities, you can increase the size, which could reduce the cost, which slightly reduces the risk. And then this would facilitate community partnerships. Because as I have been trying to engage with some people at the university, understanding if they would be able to go renewable, they're very concerned about the rate neutrality question. And they don't necessarily have a lot of support for getting renewables from upper administration at the moment. And so this may be a way that we could help facilitate the university having more renewable. But if one thing that was very interesting to me was at the Dominion meeting when I first heard about the open about this coalition aspect, is they were talking a lot about grid stabilization because we have to remember solar produces most by about 2pm in the afternoon, but most of the demand of when the general public uses the energy is in the evening or in the morning, not when it's being produced. So that sort of balancing the load is an important aspect of things. So they started talking about grid to vehicle as a way to have that energy load transfer. And Dominion talked about using garbage trucks. Could you have electric garbage trucks as part of that way to have that taking some of that energy during the high points and storing electricity in the garbage trucks? I have to say I was very impressed when Robert Anderson started talking about electric garbage truck the other week. So like this is a good sign. So anyways, I think having also a partnership between the city, the university and the county would really help if you wanted to say help the comet go electric. Because without having such a partnership, it might be more difficult. A con of taking this approach is that relies on Dominion where they're holding all the cards and it's not a legal group per se, it would have to have final approval through the PSE, but it's not hiring a lawyer for taking on Dominion per se. So it's a less aggressive. However, there's less of a guarantee for success because we have to work out a lot of new relationships. Dominion even will admit this. And so I think that it would take a lot of work on our part, but in a good way because we'd be active participants in negotiating such a deal. So it's also important to think about how do we want electric vehicle charging if you want to go electric vehicles, but essentially electric vehicle charging, electric vehicle transfer, transit, and then grid to vehicle storage. So yesterday I met with someone from World Resources Institute, which is getting funding from Bloomberg and some other organizations. And basically they're starting a cohort next month. And so a cohort of entities to work on this type of renewable, this new renewable procurement. So here now I put on here now a list of the workshops that this cohort would participate in. And I want to draw your attention to just some of the topics here in terms of accounting risks and then just different risk mitigation strategies, aligning that there's even individual workshops on the lining procurement deals. But essentially I would like the city to support members of the city, county, and university participating in this cohort because this could give us the education side to speak equally with Dominion about it. This is free. This is World Resources Institute trying to educate people. Zach has worked with Charleston County on Dominion issues before. So he's familiar with Dominion and South Carolina issues. Yes. Do you have a question? Dr. Z, I just wanted to ask the university and spoken to them several probably a year ago at this point about looking at trying to do one of the, a joint project with a massive solar field further out so that we could harvest those credits as a community, but the university as well, because they have the same issue we do. We can have a lot of feel good solar on rooftops, but reality, if we really want to make a dent in our commitment, we got to have something on a larger scale. Is the university willing to try to work further on that? Have you got any further with them on that? So at the university, I have been engaging with Larry who's also been talking to the facilities people and based and their biggest gun shy component is the rate neutrality. And I would say the second component that they're missing is support from upper administration. And I think this is where you could come in because I think that if you came to the university administration and said we would like to do this with you as a partner, that might help have support for those who are on the ground and doing the work, if that makes sense. Yeah, I have a meeting in a couple of weeks with some of the folks at the university about some initiatives like that. So I'll put that on the agenda. Yeah. And so Larry Cook, he's been working on developing a new sustainability plan and I emailed him last night and asked him if he would be willing to participate in this. It is no, there's no obligation to come to a deal at the end according to Zach Green from WRI. This is just educational helping you along the way, becoming educated in it. And so there's not really a risk to participating just your time. Well, I mean, it sounds like to me you're going to have an opportunity to learn more than anything. So I don't know why we wouldn't want to participate in it. Right. So that was actually my thing. But it was like, are you in support of this? And if so, we actually need help also on reaching out to the county. So I say reach out to the union county, but the county doesn't necessarily have a sustainability coordinator at the moment. So it's not clear who would be the contact. I know various council members have expressed more interest in doing things related to climate at the county, but it's not clear there's the organizational structure. So whatever you can do to reach out would also be quite useful. And then I'm also saying for next step, Clint will continue the conversation with Dominion. And then he seems to be the point person for this at the moment. And then I forwarded this information about WRI to Clint last week, but he likely would like to know if you all have that I'm speaking for him at this point saying, you know, can should we all participate in this or not? One other aspect of this that I thought would be useful for you to know about is that WRI is also offering a cohort for EV charging stations. And so starting next week, essentially there's, and this is similar to the cohort for procurement, it's about figuring out how to have electric charging stations. And so this is not something that seatback has gotten ahead of just yet. And I think we've sort of taken a backseat on, but if the city would like to be more proactive on working on the EV charging stations aspect, that could be something I can put you in touch with the WRI people. But I think also Mary Pat has the information and she was going to forward this onto the fleet. This is the time commitment for these and the procurement aspect was an hour and a half once a month, essentially. And they ask that people have at least some sort of appointment in the city because they want to basically have people who have teeth in the organization and not just a bunch of spirited volunteers. One thing, and I don't know if this is on your radar or not, but the state energy office is finalizing a fleet audit for the city and the data should be coming anytime soon. So just as a reminder, what I said before in terms of these were our longer term goals where we were hoping to develop a community wide action plan because a lot of people have visions about what this means for bicycles, development, as well as energy. And then for this ready for 100, we're going to be having the report back from the energy consultant in a few weeks, hopefully. And so I basically told you about the energy events past and future, the energy labeling, dominion update. And then the next time will be the consultants report. And so then I'm going to end with a question for you. And to that end is that basically how can we work together most effectively over the past year? CPAC has really shifted in how we've been doing things. We've been forging new territory, which means we sometimes have a little bit of a bumpy road. But how can we make the most of the limited resources that are available to us? And so this is time, money, people. And so together, how can we have effective communication? How can we work on having collective goals? And so this is just something for you. Like, do you want this to be a report? I talked to you or would you like us to be a discussion in terms of a two-way street in terms of CPAC and the committee interacting with each other? So that's all I've got. Thank you, Dr. Z. Well, I know I speak for all of us that it's a discussion. So we definitely want to have a discussion. Let's see any questions for Dr. Z. Daniel? No, I mean, I had that question earlier. She answered about USC, but I definitely think that's a key partner for some of these larger potential projects that really could have an impact. Do appreciate this report. And I agree with Tamika. I think she's been, you know, clearly for the committee. We want an ongoing discussion, not just a report, and would like to be more engaged as we all committed to a more sustainable community going forward. We all supported the mayor's commitment to 100% renewal. Can we get there? Don't know the answer yet, but I think we ought to keep trying as hard as we can to make that and take advantage of the resources and the abilities that we have moving forward. So I do find these discussions very beneficial. And thank you so much for all your hard work. Yeah, I just want to comment, Dr. Z, that thanks again for this wonderful update and the future updates that we look forward to enjoying and to Mary Pat for bringing this all together. You know, innovation is moving quickly in the world of sustainability. So I think it's important that these discussions continue to happen. And I think the opportunity that you've brought to us with working with Clint at Columbia Water and the possibility of teaming with the county and university and possibly other local governments in the Midlands. You mentioned Comment Comment is a all-encompassing Midlands organization. So look forward to hearing from Clint on his discussions with Dominion. And I really do think this could set off a wonderful accelerated path to meeting these sustainability goals that the mayor has put for. So thanks again, y'all. Definitely. Thank you. Dr. Muzia, just a couple, I guess thoughts are precious. First of all, thank you for the report and thank you for the work that CPAC is doing. I know we have CPAC appointments on today's agenda. So I think we'll have that full compliment of making sure that we have members for you guys to continue this work. And this is exactly what we wanted to see as an opportunity for us to dialogue and have constant communication so that we can move forward towards our Ready for 100 goal as well as just for the sake of doing what is right for our community. One thing that you said, highlighting and a lot of work that we're doing is really interconnected. And I think we have to continue to look at it that way. It's not just sustainability, it's not just affordable housing, it's not just transportation, but this all works together. And looking at my notes from you talking and I will make sure that I pass this on to the affordable housing committee, we would like your thoughts on with the path slightly more than half of our units being rental units. I know some of those would be multifamily, but there's also single family that are rental units. Just how do we incentivize or help home owners, property owners with the energy efficiency behind these units? And I'll just share a personal story. I mean, I have my grandparents house that I inherited and we rent and our tenants are always talking about the high bills. And it's older dwelling and it's not particularly energy efficient, but it's costly to make it energy efficient. And so they just kind of make do. So if there was a way for us to access ability to help landlords make units any more energy efficient, it helps with the affordability of units, but it also helps with our energy goals. So I would love your thoughts on that. So one aspect that the state energy office is working on is a green bank because it would help fund issues like this because traditional lending has a much longer term, less risk associated and doesn't incentivize this type of lending. And so the state energy office has been in discussion for the past year or so. They have some scoping documents about it. And so they're working on a green bank that would help in terms of lending for issues like that, but they also are trying to push out incentivization programs. There's a bit of a disconnect though because some programs that have incentives are linked to the natural gas industry. Like if you ever tried buying a new water heater, you notice that there's more incentives on the natural gas water heaters than the electric water heaters. And that's just based on the industry. And so I think there's ways that we can partner more with the energy office to help promote things. We do worry about a gentrification issue that may happen because as landlords do increase the quality of a rental, could that push out the lower income renters? And so that's something we're trying to sort of be aware of as we but it's going to be a longer term process. So it's on our radar about how people can afford making improvements. So I thought the first step for us is have some data on labeling. And then once we have data on labeling, figure out how to work on the incentivization cost aspect and then figure out how to implement it because really do you do this by ordinances? Like what do you do? How do you actually, how do you get this information out to the renters? Because legally I think it's on the tenant to disclose those. And so we have to figure out many aspects to this. Definitely. Oh, go ahead. One aspect though that might be very relevant that I forgot to include an update that the energy consultant wanted us to bring up was that he noticed that Columbia Housing was going through renovation and he basically wanted us to ask, is it possible to use high energy efficiency if not renewables in that process? I don't know how far along that scoping is, but I think that from a PR standpoint, even thinking about why the deaths occur, at least not having natural gas into that new infrastructure would be useful because that's also helping you towards your ready for a 100 goal, but also providing some inspiration in terms of that type of housing too, in terms of helping promote this, in terms of renewable energy and energy efficiency. Yeah, actually, I just had a meeting yesterday with Ms. Matthews as well as Chairman Cormarty and Commissioner Sinclair to talk about their building plan and kind of what that looks like. One of the assets to us is CPAC was actually started by former Councilwoman Ann Sinclair. And so being on that board sheet, of course, I like those issues. I do know that they're looking at the new construction being, having energy efficiency in it. I don't know as far as some of the rehab, what their plans are with that. I do know one of the things they talked about is just the cost of the rehabilitation of the older units. And as we just talked about it, it's costly to make those upgrades. But, Mary Pat, let's make sure that we send over any information that we can to Ann and others and we can see if they have any response on how that is. But I think they certainly would be open to doing that and being part of our plan, our overall plan here. And then I guess the last thing, it's not a question, it's just a comment, but certainly the important part about having this and having the plan and certainly the consultant, what they bring back for where we are with Ready for 100 and where we are in our transportation audit and everything else that will position us to do lots of things. But I did want to add NLC board. We had a meeting with EPA Administrator Michael Regan about two weeks ago. I was very impressed and inspired by him and his goals. And so, as I've said to everybody regarding the American Rescue Plan and hopefully the infrastructure bill that passes, any and everything, we need to be prepared and have, quote, shovel-ready projects and things that, as things come down the pipe, we're in a position to move forward. Having an action plan that is community-based will help us, I think, align with what federal monies may come to help us reach our goals. But I would like us to keep an eye on that. And I know you do, but if we can kind of keep that on the forefront of CPAC's work as well, because we'll need to be in a position to, if there's any request for funding based on, you know, what our action items are going to be, we need to be in a position to take advantage of that. So I will say that we can, we'll certainly, we can, we'll do our report chart, our council, we as a committee council can't, we can't, we can't say yet, but we can, of course, make a recommendation. But let me just officially ask Daniel and Will, as far as, you know, the question for us about, you know, reaching out to the county and the university to do some kind of join up. I don't want to assume, or the three of us recommending to council that we, we do that and ask council to request that staff reach out and get that done. Yes. Okay. Well, okay. And I know that there is not a sustainability coordinator right now in the county. However, I know Councilor Mataratio and I talked about these issues a lot. And so I do think there is certainly a willingness on their council to do something, but we'll kind of figure out where they are and how, you know, we can bring them along to be partners with us in this. Alrighty. Do you have anything else, Dr. Z? No, nothing else. Thank you very much for your time and attention. Okay, cool. Mary Pat, I want to see number one, if you have anything to add on this report, but also, you know, Earth Day is Thursday, wanted to know, can you just enlighten us on what are the Earth Day activities that are going on or what should we be aware of? I don't know. I mean, I mean, Dr. Z kind of said it all. Thank you, Dr. Z. Earth Day, we are participating in the Earth Day celebration on Saturday at the Boyd Plaza at, during Saturday City from nine to one. And there will be Green Step schools there with education lessons. One of the schools is talking about their monarch butterfly event or the education they do. And then another is going to be selling plants that they propagated for Mother Day. We will be there representing the city and we'll have information on recycling, sustainability, Columbia water, and just be there to talk to people. They always have questions about recycling. And then there will be the Richland Stoll and Water Conservation Commission, the Forestry Commission, and the Wildlife Federation will have tables as well. There will be upcycled items for sale, educational items, for a donation of a dollar, and that money, we're doing this with the EEAC, which is the Environmental Educators Association of South Carolina. And the dollar donation will be going to them. There'll be T-shirt tote bags, recycled paper making kits, soda bottle flip toys, and compost canisters and some other things made from things normally thrown away. So it'll be a great educational event. And we are also using social media to promote all the different events going on in the city and in the region. We're really everywhere. I know we're all tired of this virtual thing, but the great thing about it is we can attend anything pretty much anywhere without having to take the time to drive and go. So we have been promoting some events with South Carolina power, interfaith power, and light. And USC and this club is doing something on Sunday. But we're just trying to get the word out about all these different virtual things people can do. The pandemic is making us get creative. But if y'all are at Soda City Saturday, please stop by. Awesome. Thank you, Mary Pat, and thank you for what you do. Got an unrelated question for Robert, but do you guys have any questions for Mary Pat? Yeah, Chairman Devine, or Chairman Devine, I have one last question for Dr. Z, actually. Dr. Z, could you please keep us updated on the Green Bank conversation at the state level and how we as a local municipality and our representation at the State House and through the delegation can help craft that wonderful idea. Okay, I'll let you know. Awesome. Robert, the thought of where the count not having a sustainability person just reminded as well as hearing the yard people outside. Did the county, did their conversations around a bagging ordinance to stop? Because I know we were kind of waiting to see what they might do before we renewed any conversations on that. And I just hadn't heard anything in over a year. Do we know? I think you're talking about the renewable or getting rid of the plastic bags. Mary Pat, if I remember right, they put it to committee and I don't think the committee met after COVID. Am I correct? That is correct. They did a big survey and got some information from residents, but they haven't moved forward. Okay. Yeah, that's what we were monitoring. Didn't they talk one time before about requiring the bagging of leaves and stuff too? If they did, it's been years. I know we talked about it years ago also, probably seven or eight years ago. Yeah. I just, I was driving down Assembly Street last week and I saw a commercial property owner and I started to video it, but their yard person was just blowing leaves into the street and the drain. Every church, everybody does that. That's been the discussion for years that we're clogging up that storm water. Yeah. At some point we need to revisit the bag. We really do. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So maybe that is a discussion for this committee to talk about that because it has been a while and it's just, it's a problem. So okay. Well, if we don't have anything else, I think that we are adjourned. Dr. Z, thank you very much for your leadership and for your help and the great report. Clint, Robert, Mary Pat, y'all, thank y'all for everything. We appreciate it. And if anybody doesn't have anything else, I think we're done. Thank you. All right. See y'all later. Thank you.