 Good evening folks and welcome to the September meeting of the NPA, words four and seven. So my name is Jeff Comstock I'm a member of the word the four and seven steering committee and I will be your moderator for this evening. So, the first order of business is like to cover the ground rules so we are doing a sort of a pro and con presentation on district energy proposal this evening so. Having attended the city council forum earlier in the, in the summer. I, we're going to work on being particularly civil this evening and listen to each other speaking. We're going to respect the agenda and the process. We are going to share opinions and pointed opinions are more than welcome but we're going to do that respectfully and politely. We are going to, we're going to treat each other with respect during this process and hopefully make this a learning experience while we do it. So, the other thing that practice that we try to incorporate at our NPA meetings is we, we've stopped doing round robin introductions at the beginning because that just uses up way too much time so as we get into the question and answer period in the in later on in the discussion. So, we do have two mics that will go around the room so if you do have a question or a comment, then go ahead and introduce yourself at that point. Thank you for the record and yes our meeting is being recorded by Channel 17 and will be posted on their YouTube website. Some days after the meeting. Let's see. Another thing I want to do as part of our community introductions and announcements is make you aware that all of the NPAs across the city participated in a project or collaborated in a project to make a little graphic comment to explain to people what, what the NPAs are, how they operate. And so there's a stack of these on the back table and I hope you take one with you share it with people. You can actually share, take extras and share it with your neighbors, and we will be working on distributing these around the new north end as time goes on to get more folks engaged in the NPA. There's a poster that you can put up in your local store. Oh, yes. So there's also a, yeah, a large poster and I think this material is also posted on the CDO webpage. Let's see. So, as before we get into the topic of the district energy project conversation. Does anybody have any particular community announcements or comments that they would like to make at this time. Thank you. Carol Odie and I'm a state rep for Chittenden 18 and I was bored for and glad to be here tonight and going for looking forward to being on a subsequent agenda on another night where we can do a presentation and answer questions but always contact me and Bob introduce himself. If you've got any questions about the legislature. I'm going to introduce myself. Basically what they're also. I'm Gordon dragon literally moved here this week. People have already left back to my doorstep. This word seems cool. I am part of the Burlington walking bike council this October 4 will be discussing changes to the greenway and changes to mainstream coming up and we'd all be happy to have you there in October. Welcome. Do you want any other announcements. Yeah, hi Sarah carpenter city councilor word for. I just want to let you all know that we're kicking off work on the so called neighborhood code program, which will deal with zoning changes that will allow more housing options in what are have been formerly single family home lots. So as that progresses, I encourage you to contact me but I just want to make sure you know that AARP is having a series of workshops. There's one at the bagel on. I think it's the third at nine o'clock. So if you're interested you should stop by then there's another one in the south end I think a little bit later in the month. Sarah, when is that. Let me just look here and I will get it do you know calm. And that's, and that's talking specifically about. Yes, I mean the the op the, we want feedback but the potential options of allowing more than one home on a lot. So I just want to make sure basically change that substantially anyway so it's really work we've got to continue to look at and computers being very slow but I will get it in one second. So while Sarah is looking. This housing code development code is a topic that the steering committee has started to discuss and I can assure you that that will be on a future agenda. Okay, so yeah actually we talked about housing issues for the October agenda so we'll be getting back in touch with you Sarah to follow up on. Okay, this will be a fall process and so I think I think the October agenda sounds great. And but if you want more information more specifically on the brilliant and codes, it's on Tuesday the third at nine o'clock at the bagel. Thank you. All right so with that I think we will begin right into the substance of our agenda this evening and to begin with we're going to start with Phil Merrick, who is a resident award for and joining him at the table is Steve good kind who is a resident award seven. And they have a colleague, Pike Porter who is on the zoom feed. And so Phil is a, you know, his presentation is going to focus on his perspective on climate and energy related concerns. It's going to take me a minute here to get my slides up I've never done this, not my profession, Baker by profession so it can. How do I share my screen. Yeah. So people online at home, can you hear us here in Miller Center. Yes, yeah. I'm here but I did the share screen but it's not coming up. Okay, like the window. Yeah, if up on this. Are we coming up there. Yes, I guess I mean that I've got it online. Oh, here it comes. All right, now I can just page up got on my screen but it's not. Okay. Yeah, it's okay if I stand. So, where I want to get started here is tonight we're going to be talking about carbon global warming. So I thought I'd start with this. As you can see, this is a graph that shows where carbon has been for about 800,000 years. Generally running between about 180 parts per million up to about 300 parts per million. Starting in the 20th century it started to rise out of that. Well, we're going to forget about technology and fill we're just going to go without the slides. But currently, we are sitting on 420 parts per million which is way beyond anything that is now living on the planet is adapted to, in terms of what may happen to the climate we don't know what will happen, we have no idea. And it's a, it's a crisis. We do know that we're getting more storms now we know that we are heating up and that is what we predict. And so, without my slides I'm just going to wing it. It's now widely accepted that the climate crisis is a result of greenhouse gas we know that. And that the carbon concentration at over 420 parts per million and rising rapidly. And so what we grew up is over what we believe as our climate what we've experienced as our climate, it has changed, and will continue to change. We're discussing McNeil now, because McNeil emits a lot of carbon dioxide. There's a slide if it was up there is a slide that tells you that McNeil image about 400,000 tons of carbon every year. And those 400,000 tons of carbon are more than all your cars, all my cars, all of our gas fired furnaces in the city of Burlington. And that's right on the city's website. And nobody seems to know it. It's amazing. So, here we are, we've got this this plant that's producing about a third of our electricity, which means that my refrigerator is emitting more carbon than my car. That's scary. So, this is something that has been glossed over by saying that that that those carbon emissions. Without my slides, I am lost. Sorry guys. Oh no, that's the battery died. So, the real life, the way they gloss over this is the biogenic carbon. They talk about biogenic carbon and the trees reabsorbing it. And, you know, we cut down the trees they grow back. And we absorbed that carbon, which is fine if if we were in equilibrium with we were back down below 300 parts per million. The problem is the line has gotten too long. So imagine now if you were at the post office and it's Christmas time, and you walk in with your little package of biomass. And you're taking your biomass up and just as you're walking in the door, a van full of seniors pulls up right in front of you. They're both people and they each have packages. And not only that, as you get in line you notice that two of the three clerks have gone on lunch break. That's where we're at right now. This is a line that's getting longer and longer and longer. NASA, which is on my third slide predicts that new carbon entering the atmosphere today is going to take 300 to 1000 years to recycle. So it doesn't matter if those trees are absorbing carbon that we cut down and burn, because 300 years from now when they finally reabsorb that new carbon. That's the real life cycle of carbon right now. It's not going out the stack being reabsorbed by trees cutting it down again and going out the stack again. That is not what's happening. We're way beyond that. Yeah, then one last thing I wanted to tell you about because I'm not the main presenter tonight. Pike Porter will be presenting this side of the discussion mainly. The other thing I really want to talk about is when it comes down to it. These are difficult topics. They're difficult topics for all of us. There's a lot of information here. I was working until a year and a half ago. Well, I never gave McNeil second thought, you know, they told me it was biogenic that it was part of the carbon cycle. Sure, whatever, you know, wishful thinking I'm busy. The truth of it is, it's complicated stuff sometimes, and we rely on experts. I mean, we line up the lexperts we say well, which experts do we believe we believe experts from the utility industry. Forestry industry we believe politicians. Or do we believe climate scientists. Concerned citizens who've gone out of their way to research the heck out of this stuff. IPCC which is the UN international panel on climate change. We go to NASA and believe NASA the people who put people on the moon. I think I would trust them before I would trust some foresters. It's just the way I am, you know, it's up to you who you trust on this. But the truth of it is, McNeil is producing a lot of greenhouse gas. The capita greenhouse gas coming out of McNeil is greater than anything that we individually do in this town. And if we are going to fight climate change, we need to start with the biggest polluters first. That is our responsibility. That is what we need to do. When we talk about expanding McNeil for another 20 years. I'm just saying in a project that will keep us in this for another 20 years. I'm just, I got to say no, I hope you do too. I am going to pass this on to pike and let you, he will talk a little bit more about this project. All right. Thank you, Phil. So pike, are you ready online to share your slides and your screen, please? I believe I am. You need to give me access. And then I have to mute myself so you don't get that feedback. So I need to, I need a button that says share screen. And that button has to come from your end. We are working on it. I think you should be good to go. All right, pike, can you hit the share screen button at the bottom of the screen? There's my screen shared. We're not seeing it yet. You're in business. All right, again, thanks for having me. I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person, but I have a cold. I didn't want to walk into a public space with the cold. Before I start, others have referenced this symposium in June, like to just take a moment to encourage folks to go back and see the symposium where two respected climate scientists spoke about the burning wood and the science behind burning wood and spoke briefly about the district energy program. So this QR code will take you there or this website and touch base with me later and I can send this to you. So I am here tonight. Because I believe in science and I believe the scientists. The science is clear. That we are in a climate crisis. McNeil is a Burlington's wood powered electricity plant and it emits on average about 404,000 tons of CO2 annually. We're not here to talk about shutting down McNeil, although some of us would like to see it phased down eventually. Tonight we're talking about the district energy plan, which is going to pump steam almost two miles up to the hospital at the cost of $42 million and it will increase the wood burned at McNeil, which is the big problem here. And it prolongs our reliance on McNeil. So I'm here because we need to drastically reduce our greenhouse gases in order to avoid warming the planet another 1.5 degrees celsius. And that's the key and that's the problem with burning wood. We need to stop increasing the heat in our atmosphere. We have about seven years to cut the emissions in half and we have about 27 years to become net zero. This past year might be the coolest driest year of the rest of our lives. When I was running this through with my wife, I used a lot of acronyms and I hoped to try not to do that. But if I do, DES means the district energy system. VGS is Ramon Gas and BED is Burlington Electric. So I think I and others and the folks at Burlington Electric can agree on certain things that we all need to stop burning fossil fuels, that Burlington Electric's logging practices are generally sustainable and that we need to look at a complete life cycle of all current and potential emission reduction strategies. I think we might also agree that McNeil is currently 25% efficient so that for every four trees that are burned, three are wasted right out the stack without doing anything. The proposed district energy system will make it 29% still well below industry standards. I think we might also be able to agree that burning wood emits more CO2 per unit energy than fossil fuels, including natural gas or fossil gas. And now I think this is where we're having our conversation. I think these are the points that we do not agree on. When we talk about a life cycle basis, we need to talk about a timeframe. We need to avoid tipping points that are going to occur in 2030 and 2050. And we need to reduce our emissions now so that we don't hit those tipping points. I don't think we agree that the proposed district energy system increases greenhouse gases. I believe it does. I think the science does. I think the studies that BED and Vermont gas have done demonstrate that it does increase our gas, greenhouse gases. You're going to hear otherwise. I think it does. I think it does. And I believe that we need, we cannot replace fossil fuels with wood. So. I am relying on several studies that were commissioned by Vermont gas and Burlington electric department. Evergreen energy is one of the companies, the company that will be running the district energy project. If indeed it sees the light of day. The district energy is going to displace 13,000 tons of CO2 from burning natural gas at the hospital. First environment study commissioned by Vermont gas. Found that the district energy system is going to increase fuel and that's a pollution by 8%. EPA records show that. McNeil. Amidst over 400,000 tons of CO2 annually. And using this numbers. The district energy system will create 32,000 tons. 19,000 tons more than the gas system it displaces. And that is at the heart of why so many of us are opposed to it. It does not reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. It increases them. So again, in June, we had two notable clients. Climate scientists here. The only two climate scientists that recognize that burning wood for fuel. For energy is, is not. What we need to do to get out of the climate crisis. The Woodwell climate research center. Sent out this letter. It's now signed by over 500 notable climate scientists from around the world. These are for respected individuals in their fields. And they have signed on a letter that includes. These statements. I can't read them all. Sorry about that. Because. Zoom is in some of my way, but I'll let you read there. But the short story is that burning wood they claim. Is not going to help us get out of the climate crisis. And this is true even. For sustainable standards. For sustainable sustainability standards for forest management cannot alter these results. Sustainable management is what now allows wood harvest, eventually payback the carbon debt, but it cannot alter these decades or even centuries of increased warming. I'll leave that up for another second or two for folks to read it. Again, I would read it, but stuff is in my way. So burning wood is not carbon neutral and it's not climate neutral. Emissions of CO2 begins an irreversible warning process. And subsequent CO2 removal from the atmosphere does not stop that process. You cannot unfry an egg. The sustainability and renewability of wood burn does not change the fact that wood burning worsens the climate crisis. Scientific studies indicate that the life cycle of burning trees is decades to centuries. So we are trying to curb our emissions in seven and 27 years. Wood burning has a life cycle of decades to centuries. So this is just a headline that kind of explains it well from one science article. Maximum warming occurs after one decade of carbon dioxide emission. I'll put that up there because the slide from the presentation in June, Professor Rooney Varga presented this slide. And I think some people find it a bit confusing, but I'm going to try and decipher it. This upper section here shows what would happen if you sent a pulse of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for 20 years and then it's able to resequestor it or take it back out of the atmosphere for 20 years. So you see that the carbon goes up and then eventually comes down, but damage is done. This lower box here, this lower graph here, shows that the heat does not come down like the carbon does. So it's something of a one-way process. Once we've put the carbon in the atmosphere, we've increased the heat. I know it can be confusing and I'll try and answer that if there are questions later, but I'm going to move on for now. So I think you're going to hear later because we've done this at other NPA meetings, and I've heard what Mr. Springer has to say, but you're going to hear about several studies, including a Vermont gas study by First Environment. All the studies that Burlington Electric has done and Vermont gas have done have four things in common. They assume that burning wood is carbon neutral. They don't include or account the 404,000 tons emitted annually by McNeil. They don't consider the timeframe in which we must reduce our emissions, and they disagree with the climate scientists and the climate science. So in graph form, this is another slide from Professor Rooney Varga. The wood-colored, the brown area, represents about 453,000 tons of CO2. That was about how much McNeil emitted in 2021. The black line down below is the tier two or scope two, scope three emissions. This is emissions from processing and transportation, the fuel for the trucks that drive it, the chain saws, et cetera, et cetera. So this black area is what Burlington Electric counts in their studies, and this gray area, this brown area, is what they choose to ignore. So none of those studies include the stack emissions. So I'm sorry, I can't read everything here. All right. Why district energy now after 40 years of talking about it? Well, I think the answer comes down to the recently passed State Affordable Heat Act, which requires fuel dealers, including Vermont gas, to acquire clean heat credits. And the district energy system will provide Vermont gas with these credits. Now, I think it should be pointed out that Neil Lunderville, the president of Vermont gas was also the principal architect of the Affordable Heat Cap. So there's no coincidence there. Here is a letter to Gene Tierney, director of Department of Public Service, and it's a copy, Darren Springer's copy to it. And Mr. Lunderville says, I'd love to explain our innovative concept. In a nutshell, our working concept has Vermont gas for purchasing the entire output of the district energy system, both the thermal energy and then the renewable credits. And it goes on to talk about it, but that's in a nutshell, as he says, that's what the story is. This was submitted as a part of a A&R jurisdictional opinion, requesting that this project would not fall under Act 250. And this shows in diagram form what Neil Lunderville is describing. And I've kind of summarized it here. So Berlin Electric will sell the steam to the BDES, the Burlington District Energy System Inc. at cost. District Energy Inc. will sell the steam at cost to Vermont gas. Vermont gas sells the steam to the hospital at the price that would pay for fossil gas. Vermont gas walks away with a boatload of clean heat credits or REX that allows it to sell more gas elsewhere. Everyone can claim that the scheme helps the environment, but in reality, 19,000 tons of additional CO2 is put into the air over the baseline. Now, REX are a renewable energy credits, especially unbundled renewable energy credits are a controversial topic. 16, I think 15 or 16, attorneys general plus the attorney general of the District of Columbia in April of this year, signed a letter to the Federal Trade Commission. And this is what they had to say about REX. The attorneys general found that selling unbundled REX deceives consumers who believe they are supporting renewable energies with their purchases when in fact they are not. Because REX alone do not support renewable energy and instead can harm the renewable energy industry. Vermont is the outlier in the region. All our other states are moving away from using biomass. Just in May of this year, a biomass plant in Fort Drum was shut down in New York. Massachusetts is moving away from it. Vermont has to get on the train and follow everyone else, and do the right thing here. So we're going to hear that McNeil burns only residuals, tops and limbs, right? The answer is really irrelevant because the science is clear that burning anything creates that pulse of CO2 that leads to atmospheric warming. It doesn't matter if it's sustainable. But since you asked, let's look at a little bit about the McNeil forestry. McNeil burns about 300 to 400,000 tons of green wood each year. Homes that heat with wood use about 8 to 12 quarts of wood annually. McNeil burns about 30 quarts of wood an hour. 88% of McNeils wood are whole tree chips. So here's the front page of the Burlington Electric Department harvesting policy for whole tree chipping operations. It was probably written in 1985 on state-of-the-art IBM's electric typewriter. And it hasn't been updated since then. It references the Fish and Game Department, which changed its name in 1986, the Fish and Wildlife. It references nine books that were published in the 70s and 80s. It doesn't represent Kermit climate science. Mike, you have about five more minutes, okay? Okay. So if we managed our forest differently, we could store twice as much carbon in our forests. Now our forests are the most efficient, most effective, cheapest carbon-stored systems we have. There are companies spending billions trying to reproduce what our forests do naturally. Managing sustainably keeps our forest trees young and keeps them relatively small. I thought it would be interesting to look at just one of the harvest notifications. Burlington Electric has to submit these to the Fish and Wildlife Department. I picked Senator Patrick Leahy's harvest notification. They were out there last year, I believe. And I just want to point out some of the language in there. A thinning targeting poorly-formed white pine and low-quality hardwoods with a target basal, blah, blah, blah. That's stand one. Stand two. In some areas, this may include removing less desirable trees, overtopping more desirable regeneration. Stand four. A strip cut will occur along a historic field boundaries to remove poor quality, open growth, and more likely to form white pine, hemlock, and other mixed woods. Let's see. Other group will focus on low land areas that lack adequate or primarily consist of poor quality regeneration, which largely includes split stem, red maple, and other poorly-formed stems. At the aim of initiating better quality regeneration, improving the ratio of acceptable growth stock to unacceptable growth stock. In other areas, the growth rate of the stem may increase, and other groups may occur in the northern western slopes to improve the growing conditions for residual stems along the stand boundary and promote shade-tolerant regeneration by removing mature at-risk or low-quality hemlock and mixed hardwoods. So when we hear that they only burn tops and stems, remember that these are whole trees that we're talking about in this harvest. This graph to demonstrate what we could do if we just let our forests grow. So 150-year-old oak is equivalent in the amount of carbon it stores as 465 10-year-old trees, 35 29-year-old trees. A university professor, William Keaton, has studied logging and harvesting in Vermont. And this graph represents well what happens if we do not manage our forests. That's this black line. Imagine all the carbon underneath this is carbon that we could save in our forest through sequestration. So this is a no-harvest policy. And then the various lines down below are different harvesting methods for biomass. This blue line is harvesting without biomass involved. So under all the... I'm going to encourage you to wrap up your argument. You have two more minutes, please. Stored in our forests. As I mentioned earlier, McNeil will be 29% efficient if district energy goes through. Effective efficiency standards are 60 to 65%. And in fact, we find this on the McNeil website, touting district energy systems. Now generally there's nothing wrong with district energy systems. This particular district energy system running a pipe two miles to create an efficiency of 29% is not the way to go. It would be smarter if we have to burn wood. And then we're going to have to build a plant for them to build a plant right at the university or right at the hospital. Anyway, back to this. Department of Energy finds that combined heating and power can deliver electricity and thermal energy services with efficiencies of 65% to 80%. Not here though. This is a graphic that shows the relative carbon and thermal energy of the plant. And this is a graphic that shows the relative carbon and thermal energy of the plant. So on the right-hand side, we have wood. And on the left-hand side, we have natural gas, which the wood would be replacing. So two, two and a half times the amount. We hear in numerous studies commissioned by Burlington Electric and one of the studies has this nice graphic with a colorful closed loop here and the dirty fossil fuels going up into the atmosphere. Evergreen Energy in another study says this is based on the commonly accepted approach that the combustion of biofuels does not contribute to the net addition of CO2 in the atmosphere. The biomass cycle is a closed loop over the 60-year growing and harvest cycle. This has thoroughly been debunked by climate scientists. This is a good place to wrap up, okay? One of our friends drafted this graph to show a little bit more realistically what happens. So both McNeil pollution and fossil fuel pollution go up into the atmosphere, which can be stored by our trees. However, when we're cutting our trees, it's a double kick in the gut because all that wood is now going straight up into the atmosphere. And now we have less forest that helps us store future carbon. Can you hear me? Bill McKibbin. Hello, Mike. Can you send him a chat? Bill McKibbin weighed into this back in the spring. Like Phil and like myself, Bill McKibbin also used to be pro biomass. He thought it was a good idea until he understood the science. And he had this to say, I will leave it there. I have other slides and other documents I can show if people want to see it. All right. Thank you very much. And please stick around for the discussion session of the meeting, okay? So with that, we will move to the Burlington, the BED presentations and Darren, you can share this sort of 30 minute time segment with your staff as you see fit. I noticed in the Q and A, somebody said we're muted in the room. They couldn't hear us online. Is that right? Somebody mentioned that in the Q and A. I just wanted to call it to your attention. Oh, okay. But the rest of the folks can hear us. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Got it. Okay. Okay. Great. Thanks. Good to see everybody. Good to see folks online. I'm going to go ahead and pull up my slides here, make sure we can see them. Give it just a second. While we do that, let me introduce myself. I'm Darren Springer, General Manager with Burlington Electric Department, joined by my colleagues, Betsy Lesnickoski, Chief Forester at the McNeil Station, and Jennifer Green, Sustainability Director for the City of Burlington. We're really glad to be here with you. We've been at MPAs throughout the course of the last month or so. I think I'm a Ward 7 resident by the way, it's my MPA. I'm glad to be here for that reason as well. I think we have Ward 8 tomorrow night, and then we'll have been to all the MPAs over the last month or so on this topic. So we're here from Burlington Electric, Municipal Bowl Public Power Utility, over 100 years old, 118 employees, including the McNeil Station. And I put on our website here at the bottom, BurlingtonElectric.com slash McNeil. There's a variety of resources on that site, including a video from a recent webinar that we hosted that has communities from around the world, Sweden, Canada, St. Paul, Minnesota, talking about how they're using biomass district heat as part of their own local climate solutions. I encourage folks to log on to the website, check out the webinar, check out some of our materials, reports. Let us know if you have questions. Of course, we're proud to be 100% renewable since 2014. We want to mention McNeil. We get half of the electricity from McNeil. It's jointly owned with two other utilities, Green Mountain Power and VEPSA. So it provides a third of our electricity from that half of the power that we get. I think the carbon numbers that were presented were for the whole plant, but we get half the output. What motivates us, what drives us every day at Burlington Electric, what our main goal is, is to move the city away from fossil fuels in the thermal sector and the ground transportation sector now that we're 100% renewable with electricity. That was a goal that was set net zero 2030 back in 2019 timeframe. We've been tracking our progress. This data is from a roadmap that we work on with a company called Synapse Energy Economics out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. They developed the roadmap for us, which included district energy as one of four key pillars for how we reduce and eventually eliminate fossil fuel use in those sectors in Burlington. What you can see here is particularly with the commercial sector, natural gas use. We were on a path that wasn't totally off of where we need to be, the dotted line. That's the dotted line is the roadmap path that we want to be on. And we've seen a rebound. We've seen a rebound kind of broadly nationally in emissions as the economy's reopened post COVID, of course, but most pronounced in Burlington has been the rebound in commercial sector emissions. And what we're talking about tonight is an effort to address in part the commercial sector, natural gas use in the city. This is the total roadmap, both ground transportation and thermal. And you can see we were on pace briefly there as an overall effort. That was around 2020, obviously, when we had a reduced vehicle miles traveled reduced economic activity. We've kind of flatlined since then very modest rebound much better than the national picture, but still off from where we want to be for our city's climate goal. I wanted to touch on this. This is, we're going to talk a lot about the IPCC intergovernmental panel on climate change. BED and the state of Vermont is guided by the IPCC's guidelines when it comes to how do we account for emissions? How do we account for emissions from biomass and all other resources? As you see here in this, and this is from the energy action network. This is not a BED report. Energy action network is a statewide organization that does work on energy. And this is from their recently released progress report. And you can see the links here at the bottom of the total anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the last decade anthropogenic meaning human caused 81 to 91% are coming from fossil fuels. And I believe cement production is the other piece of that. You know, land use change has a role here as well. But the dominant driver of the CO2 that's coming from human activity is the burning of fossil fuels. And the IPCC sites this in many different reports. This is just a current figure. The energy action network also references in a section on how to account for biomass, these two carbon cycles, one where we're taking geologically stored carbon from underground that's not been part of the atmospheric concentration for many millions of years, burning it and emitting it. That's what's called the slow domain carbon addition on the right hand side there. And then the fast domain where we're using biogenic resources that have been part of the above ground carbon cycle in recent years where carbon is both absorbed and emitted by forests both naturally. And when we use forest products, including for energy. So this here is from the IPCC AR six, the most recent report summary for policymakers. And what you see here are mitigation options that the IPCC is modeling for how we can address climate change. And as you see the ones that I've highlighted are actually bio electricity. This is the role that the IPCC sees for bio electricity relative to some other resources. You can see solar and wind have a bigger role to play in the IPCC analysis bio electricity has a role to play hydropower, geothermal and in their estimation nuclear carbon capture and some other practices as well. The IPCC said in the long term sustainable forage management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fiber or energy from the forest will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit. Again, we're guided by the IPCC and their thinking on this. Climate and forestry at McNeil. We have four professional foresters, one of whom is here with us tonight. The one with the decades of experience Betsy Lesnikowski. And here you can see some of her colleagues as well. This is fairly unique for a wood energy plant in the United States to have professional foresters who are managing harvesting and making sure it's done sustainably helping to support working lands staying as working lands. There was some discussion earlier in the presentation about our wood contracts and that they haven't been updated since the 1980s and the language and the IBM typewriter. Well, they've been updated and this is the updated version right here. You can't see it on the screen I think because of the zoom. I don't know if we can even move the or maybe I can do that. I'm not sure if I moved this well that now. I don't know if we can move the zoom kind of piece down there a little bit because we're missing a little bit of the slide. But there are two conditions that are highlighted. The first is it's a I'll read it for everybody because it's a little bit small type. The seller will sort forest products and market them to the highest and best economic use before selling residues tops and limbs damaged or disease trees otherwise non-commercial wood to the McNeil Station. Burlington Electric is only interested in purchasing forest residues. Therefore Burlington Electric will not accept deliveries from sites where the only prescription is solely for energy production. We don't cut trees. We are working with lands that are already harvesting for other higher value purposes for timber for furniture for you know firewood whatever it might be. We're able to take the leftover wood from those harvest is the residues and use those for energy and that has a very different carbon profile than if you were going and cutting trees for wood just for energy production solely. And I'll talk about that a little bit more. This is a study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory which is from the Department of Energy. And it looks it was a harmonization study of 3,000 different climate studies and energy studies and it created a median lifecycle emissions value for each of these different resources on an apples to apples basis using accepted protocols. And as you can see biomass at the top and this is in a carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt hour. So per unit of energy biomass at the top with a value of 52. Now you can see that's not quite as good as photo voltaic solar or even you know hydropower wind nuclear but it's a lot better than the values at the bottom for fossil fuels 486 for natural gas 840 for oil 1001 for coal. Again this is not a Burlington Electric study this National Renewable Energy Lab harmonization of 3,000 different studies that they reviewed. So when we talk about the IPCC guidelines. This is an important point and I've got the link here from the Energy Information Administration but the basics of it are as follows the IPCC says we account for the carbon in a tree when the tree is cut which means it gets accounted for in the land use sector. And it makes sense because the regrowth of a tree and any sequestration that happens as part of that also takes place in the land use sector. And you can't count emissions twice that's a fundamental carbon accounting rule. So for counting the emissions in the land use sector when the trees cut and counting it again when the trees burned we counted the same ton of carbon twice. The IPCC says count it in the land use sector. So that's why when we talk about the emissions at the same time the protocol says you count the emissions in the land use sector and we have data that I'll share in a moment of how land use carbon is working in the areas where we harvest. But I wanted to make that fundamental point and then this is just from the agency and natural resources here in Vermont making the exact same point that per IPCC guidelines they do not include biogenic CO2 in Vermont's field. So one of the common accounting practices for biogenic CO2 is that carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels are coming from a geologic source which is on a significantly longer time scale than carbon in the much faster carbon cycle which moves between pools on the order of months to centuries which means combusting fossil fuels adds more carbon that was in long-term storage and effectively out of circulation into the transition of biogenic materials which are part of the faster carbon cycle are assumed to be sequestered by the regrowth of biogenic material that produced them and are captured in the flux from land use change as described above. So they're agreeing with the IPCC we account for this carbon in the land use sector not the energy sector but in the land use sector how are we doing this data is from a report that we commissioned from a company called innovative private timber lands in Vermont and upstate New York where we harvest we're not the only entity that gets wood from this area but this is a holistic look and as you can see it's trending upward which in this case a good thing means we have more carbon stored than we are losing even as we harvest so the data shows that between 2007 and 2020 over 24 million tons of additional forest CO2 is being stored in the lands where we harvest now we can also talk about it in a different way we can talk about you know the residues this quote here is from a study called the manumet study now I think it was referenced earlier that all the states in New England are phasing out biomass that's not accurate every single state in New England still allows biomass to count in its renewable energy standard except for Massachusetts which allows it to count in its alternative energy standard which is a different program they did phase it out of their renewable energy standard but biomass remains eligible in every single other state in New England now the manumet study was issued in 2010 in Massachusetts and was the justifying study I believe for the move away from supporting wood in the renewable energy standard in Massachusetts and it's been cited favorably by professor Mooma who was one of the two professors that was at the two forum referenced earlier but this quote is really interesting from that study page 109 through 110 it's interesting to consider the harvest and use of just tops and limbs while this may not be directly applicable to forest management in Massachusetts but this is me moving away from the quote it is in Vermont because we have that but back to the quote it may be representative situations involving non-forest biomass sources such as tree trimming landscaping or land clearing that's what they were looking at in Massachusetts to complete the quote the results in this case indicate rapid recovery with nearly 70% of the carbon losses recovered in one decade thus all bioenergy technologies even biomass electric power compared to natural gas electric look favorable when biomassed waste would is compared to fossil fuel alternatives now on the right hand side here is our fuel supply and as you can see the majority of our wood about 88.4% as of 2022 comes from the in would chips residues which is the tops and limbs the damaged disease trees the leftover non-commercial would from commercial harvests another nearly 10% from mill residues so this is wood waste that's left over in sawmills for example that's not going to be utilized otherwise 1.6% from the wastewood yard anybody been to the wastewood yard dropped off clean untreated would we've got one so if you have clean untreated would you can bring it to McNeil drop it off at the wastewood yard instead of sending it to a landfill where it might decompose and it could emit methane we can use it for energy at McNeil and then lastly 0.3% so less than 0.5% of our wood in 2022 came from what's called low value roundwood so if you see logs stacked at McNeil like I think we saw in that picture earlier we keep a little bit of low value non-commercial roundwood on site for those periods of time where it's hard to get in the woods mud season you can't get in you can't get any wood we need that for fuel security but that's wood that can't go to another commercial purpose so that's our fuel supply and I would argue based on this standard that it's fairly doable from a carbon standpoint so let's get into district heat which is why we're actually here but I wanted to provide that that preface the district heat project is the single biggest step we can take to make progress in the commercial sector in particular but really as a whole city on our net zero energy 2030 goal this one project would cut commercial sector natural gas use by 16% in the city for a load and that is really hard to decarbonize I hear different things like why don't we do geothermal at the hospital I love geothermal we're the electric company so we're all about geothermal we support it we have incentives we help the hula building and we're trying to help the high school actually go with geothermal for the new high school building geothermal is a heat pump system that transfers air just like an air source heat pump maybe some folks have an air source heat pump in their homes and can take warm air and you'll move it inside during the winter or cold air during the summer as air and then reverse during the heating season it doesn't create high pressure high temperature steam that's the system that's in use at the hospital it's not a viable option with today's technology unfortunately because I'd be all about it if it was it's a good idea so district heat is taking a combination of sources it's taking some waste heat from McNeil capturing that it's taking some additional steam out of our generator at McNeil and it's piping that up to the hospital to displace natural gas there also would be an electric boiler that would run during low cost times of the year to supplement when McNeil is offline and provide 100% renewable electric steam generation from an electric boiler that combined with the efficiency savings at the hospital from not having to use gas in a boiler that's not 100% efficient you get some efficiency out of that you reduced about 225,000 mmbtu a year of natural gas of fossil fuel and here you can see the route that it would take from the McNeil plant up to the hospital there's potential for interconnecting with University of Vermont buildings in several cases there's potential to interconnect with other buildings along the route as well but the primary goal for the moment is to be able to get to the hospital where we can get the biggest fossil fuel reduction from the project and then lastly this may have been referenced earlier there was analysis done that's consistent with the type of analysis that was called for the heat standard that was just passed using the GREET model which is in apples to apples life cycle emissions accounting process to compare carbon from one type of energy source to another and that analysis which was done by a company called First Environment found that the McNeil based district heating system would reduce emissions compared to natural gas by over 95% so I wanted to reference that there's a link here to our website with that as well that was the set of slides that we had I'm going to stop sharing there obviously we're glad to answer your questions and thank you for having us here Jeff appreciate it appreciate the MPA you're welcome alright now we're going to get to the important part here where hopefully all of our panelists can respond to our our questions and our concerns and kind of help us to me sort of the goal is to help us appreciate or understand you know how we make this decision as a city going forward you know specifically related to the issues around district heat so yes but you said that I have a minute to respond I'm going to get it right now oh okay okay Brigitte coordinated the presentation so what we'll do is you can have five minutes response and then if we have an exchange we can do that and then we're going to go to our audience I think the one thing I do want to mention is that again it's going to depend on who you believe every as pike mentioned every one of the studies that was presented did not include the stack emissions now whether those emissions are counted in the forest or whether counted at the stack they're not counted they weren't counted in any of those studies that's an important thing so all of those efficiencies that Darren just spoke about did not include any emissions for the burning of the biomass because they're claiming that biomass emissions don't count so now let's go to the IPCC because this seems to be a real bone of contention is that they keep saying they're following the IPCC but I will say there is one graph which specifically IPCAR5WG3 11.13.4 greenhouse gas emissions estimates of bioenergy production at systems the combustion of biomass generates gross greenhouse gas emissions roughly equivalent to the combustion of fossil fuels if bioenergy production is to generate a net reduction in emissions it must do so by offsetting oh we have to offset the emissions those through increased this is a very important word increased because when you cut trees down you don't increase offsets by increased net carbon uptake of biota and soils meaning that yeah the IPCC says biomass is great as long as when you burn it you offset it not by the trees that are already growing not by the trees that are growing back but trees that grow back faster because you burnt the biomass you see you've put extra CO2 into the air right those trees are growing whether you burnt that CO2 or not so in order to offset the stuff that you burned you have to have trees that grow faster that's what it means by increased net so the appropriate and this is all here this is the method for figuring out if your biomass is net zero or not the appropriate comparison is then between the net biosphere flux in the absence of bioenergy compared to the net biosphere flux in the presence of bioenergy production we're talking about the forest when you harvest that tree right you're harvesting a tree you take out a log for lumber okay you take that log out for lumber that lumber is actually some of that is actually going to be stored you take some out for paper pulp you take some out what's left they burn right so that forest where they took that stuff out to burn they have to grow faster to replace those emissions then one where they left those stems and sticks in the woods now here's the thing they'll tell you that those stems and sticks are going to emit no we have to count the growth of the forest and that is exactly what one of the things that Pike put up here showed which was that harvest where bioenergy is taken out that forest always grows slower sorry guys no offset so we are calling this carbon neutral when it absolutely is not thank you that's all I have to say would any of the BED staff like a couple of minutes once they add anything first of all if you go to our website burlingtonelectric.com and you scroll down the first report we have there 2023 report and you open it up it looks at our stack emissions so nobody is ignoring the stack emissions we understand where the stack emissions are we also understand the point in the IPCC which is why I presented the slide that shows that we actually in the areas where we're harvesting among others that we are actually adding net co2 in the forest we're not losing it we're not staying neutral we've been adding net co2 storage as well the IPCC continues to offer bioelectricity done properly as a mitigation option in the AR6 report I think we were talking about AR5 a minute ago AR6 most recent report that was the chart that I mentioned there so I think these are really in the weeds discussions and I appreciate the complexity of it I appreciate the nuance of it I don't personally believe that biomass is a perfect resource in fact I think there are examples where it's done in terms of the negative carbon impact and it's important that we acknowledge that I also understand that when we use McNeil 92 to 98% of the time on the ISO New England grid the resource we would be using if we didn't have McNeil is natural gas fossil fuel so if we could switch from McNeil to solar and wind instead of fossil fuel that'd be an interesting conversation and maybe that's the long-term conversation in the near and medium term we need this plant not only for our rates but because it's a better resource from a carbon standpoint than burning fossil fuels and I don't think this community wants to go backwards and start burning fossil fuels for electricity generation so while we work as a region as a state and as Burlington Electric I'm procuring even more renewables which we're always all about doing in fact we issued an RFP relatively recently to see what's out there on the market we're always looking for additional renewables McNeil is going to be important resource for us we'd like to use it more efficiently with district heat we have other ideas for how to use it more efficiently and I think it's a realistic thing to think we're going to need it for a period of time in fact I heard in the presentation we're not calling to shut it down I appreciate that we can't shut it down we can't afford to do that so if we're going to use it let's use it well let's use it efficiently and let's take advantage of the benefit of local renewable energy I don't bet you want to add anything to Jim I will say yeah let's say perhaps your staff can engage in perhaps your staff can engage in answering some of the questions answering some of the questions so let's do that because this is an important part of the conversation so Frank it looks like you're poised with the microphone so you're first yeah Frank Bozik I just wanted a clarification I may have misunderstood but I understand that you said that closer? okay I understand that you said you don't cut any trees is that correct? I thought that's what you said you don't do any Burlington Electric does not harvest trees we work with private foresters who are licensed foresters who are working with private landowners who have a forestry operation and we take the wood waste essentially okay because then you went on to say that you do harvest up in New York you use the word harvest a lot and that's what confused me I think I was using the word we in kind of the broader sense so it's someone else who harvest the trees yes and then you just pick up the scraps and burn them that's correct okay thank you I have a question so I don't understand when you harvest trees you say that you count it only once you're not when you take it out of the woods burning the trees so you're creating CO2 so in my opinion it should be counted twice because you're taking a tree that produces oxygen out of the environment and then you're burning it so you're creating CO2 so I don't understand why and then Mr. Merrick said that you're not counting stack emissions well stack emissions contribute to the climate crisis so I think the fundamental point thank you for the question is the carbon in the tree can only be counted in an emissions inventory one time that's the fundamental point if we're looking at a systems wide approach that carbon if that tree is cut then carbon is going to come into the atmosphere now it may come slowly and it may come fast it'll come a little faster if you burn it if it decomposes it might be a little slower and if you put it into a wood product it's going to decompose for a period of time now like I said we don't harvest we take the wastewood essentially that's left over so some of the harvest activity is going to lock up some of that carbon for a period of time and that's a benefit I think broadly speaking but that carbon can only be accounted for once and what the IPCC says not Burlington Electric the IPCC says you account for that carbon right when that tree is cut and I think there's wisdom in their approach as I've tried to grapple with it and think about it there's nothing to do to just look at it at the stack but the wisdom of the IPCC approach is both the carbon emissions and the carbon sequestration from a forest cycle are being accounted for in the same sector I think if you oppose wood energy you try to push the emissions to the end user like Burlington Electric McNeil and you keep the benefit the sequestration in different sector and that's not really an apples to apples comparison we don't get the emissions accounted at our stack but we also don't get the carbon offset or sequestration accounted that's all accounted for in the land use sector essentially inner governmental panel on climate change so he's correct you know that's the issue we only talk about stack emissions as a way of counting see we can count them we don't necessarily count them but we're not counting those emissions in the woods what they're doing is they're saying look the trees are growing faster than we're cutting them down that's all and so they don't count them but there's another way of saying that so in the state of Vermont they say that trees are sequestering twice as much new carbon a year as the forestry industry that's one way of saying it another way of saying it is that the forestry industry is taking one third of our new carbon sequestration every year and we're not we don't give the same free hand to a dairy farmer we say no his cows burp and that's carbon but that's coming from the corn you know the whole thing is I don't want to confuse it too much but we are giving the forestry industry in the state of Vermont a free free reign on all of this carbon that's being sequestered by our forest the carbon that's being sequestered by a corn field nope you don't get that dairy farmer doesn't get that so it's a really bizarre thing you know it's like we're sequestering all this carbon we give a third of it every year to the forestry industry and say because the nature is giving us more than you're taking you get it Birgit and then Birgit and then I'm going to go to the zoom okay I have a headache I was trying to follow this panel and so I'm not going to ask a question about the science of it because I am not well enough educated on this topic but just in terms of what makes common sense I have two questions one, am I correct that the wood is going to be lumbered anyways trees are going to have been felled there's a commercial business around this forestry okay so the trees are going to go we get the leftovers or BED gets okay which we would get anyways I mean the trees are fall that was my first question and number two is Mr. Springer you mentioned yourself that burning biomass is in itself not the best solution but it's just better than and you've listed a number when are we going to devolve from burning to solar and all other good things sure thank you for the question we have a really small amount of wind and solar on the New England grid Burlington actually has the most per capita solar of any community east of the Mississippi according to environment America they do a report each year so we're we're actually punching well above our weight with solar we actually have three wind contracts two in Vermont one in Maine the state of Vermont has essentially shut down the idea of building any new wind in the state for the time being which we don't agree with that but that's the reality right now in the southern part of the state there's a proposal to build a 20 megawatt solar farm and it's being opposed vigorously by the community there there's a lot of these ideas that in isolation sound like they're good and then when they actually get proposed near a community opposition comes so we need not only in Vermont but in the New England region just magnitudes more solar and wind plus battery storage to get to a point where you could reliably operate the grid without any type of combustion resource and that doesn't even get to whether we're okay with nuclear or not because that's a whole other topic but you know so I think we're growing exponentially from a very very small base the biggest variable in my view is what happens with offshore wind if offshore wind can come on in a really big and not that there's not opposition to that too we hear about that but if that comes on in a big way that could really be an injection of renewables that could be useful to the grid so to kind of zero back in on our project here nothing that we will bring forward with district energy requires us to run McNeil for next 20 years we won't make that commitment I think we're going to need it but if we find that there's a better technology we'll have the ability to upgrade or repower or move off of McNeil to some other alternative district energy is infrastructure district energy is thermal infrastructure if we find other ways to use that thermal infrastructure that's good too but I just think for the time being we're going to need McNeil and all of that and we can use it better than we're using it now thank you I want to go to zoom and I know that Deb Bowton you've had your hand up there for a while so Deb can you give us your question please yeah hi I've been trying all of this as much as I can I've been really trying to absorb it all and I I didn't know if my picture was up here anyway so it's very interesting to me but I was very involved in the nuclear stuff decades ago literally and I really do believe that science all the scientists it comes down honestly to a lot of common sense and I go back to Monica what you had to say I you know whatever the commission is or the scientific group that says you only count the emissions one time and that's okay when you cut the tree down I'm sorry I don't buy that you you count them then and then you've got to haul them and you should count those emissions as you haul the trees to McNeil and certainly when they're burned and they are emitting the carbon into the atmosphere that should be counted so I whatever this I apologize I don't recall what the acronym stands for I don't buy it frankly I don't buy it at all and I think that the emissions are way more than you know where you cut down the tree and what you remove at that point and I think that is the big issue here so in a way that McNeil has you know what we do you know with the steam and all of that has not been a good thing but it is really time to really question that right now and to move on to other things and start really winding down from that that's my view from what I've heard tonight and I came into this honestly not knowing anything and anyway that's my observation from what I've heard thank you so that sort of comes across more as a statement so if you shall we go to another question sorry about that if that was right yeah some more engagement thank you we do have only about 6 more minutes for questions so if you have any questions and I guess I would say following up on that that if nobody runs away and the school board folks finish up early I'd be more than happy to come back to this conversation so Sarah thank you has anyone studied what it looks like if you count the emissions at the stack not when it's in the forest and compared that to the use of gas because that's one question the other thing is McNeil expanding in any way to create the district energy system sure thanks in terms of McNeil expanding no there's no change in the boiler there's no change in the electric output it's the same plant we're literally connecting a steam pipe to it to be able to transport thermal energy other than connecting to that pipe if we want to get away from the whole idea of like cutting versus the stack and stick with the stack for a minute I'd go back to the Manomet study which was looking at the stack and using what's called the carbon dividend approach which says that when you emit how long does it take to pay back essentially against using fossil fuels and using that approach as well you can take that approach it says biomass electricity is better than natural gas and that's again it's a study that's not particularly favorable for biomass overall but using the fuel types that we use it says that and I would maybe compare it this may not be an apt or perfect analogy but if you think about an electric vehicle I think most of us hopefully would agree that electric vehicles are better than fossil fuel combustion vehicles right but they have a footprint too from mining from batteries from production if you look at it 5000 miles in you can make a really compelling argument that a gas vehicle is better than an EV cycle you say no no EV is better we have a similar kind of situation here where if you look only at the stack you can make one set of arguments if you broaden out to the life cycle you make a different set of arguments so I understand that there's you know different ways to view it I would like to respond to that so yeah the the stack the life cycle which is what I was talking about before our life cycle now is 300 to 1000 years on new according to NASA and that goes back to what I was saying if you're standing in line and it's Christmas time you have packages at the post office and two of those two of the postal agents go on lunch break all of a sudden that line is a lot longer right so when we cut down trees the line gets longer to bring in carbon dioxide all this fossil fuel that we've been burning is going out into the atmosphere faster than we can take it back so the line keeps getting longer and longer and longer so it doesn't matter whether it's coming from wood it doesn't matter if it's coming from natural gas all of those emissions whether you're mining to make solar panels whether you're all of these emissions are taking longer and the only way you could say that biomass would be emissions wouldn't be just as bad is if you could actually absorb them better for some reason but you're not at this stage I don't think we should be burning natural gas but let me just say CO2 is CO2 so when that CO2 goes out into the atmosphere because of the line because how much is out there and because of how small our capacity to reabsorb it is that's if we stop so when you get into this situation the only way that by burning biomass would be better is if the trees actually grew faster because we burnt the biomass but they don't so you think burning natural gas is better no I'm not saying burning anything is better I'm just saying let's be honest about biomass because if we're not going to say that it's more efficient than natural gas we have to prove it and we're not proving it we have to be honest about it so that we can find new solutions as long as we keep saying okay my time's up thanks we're all together okay all right we're going to try to be disciplined about this so thank you very much it's very engaging I know there's a lot more people have a lot more to say about this so if I can invite you to stick around until after the school board then I think we'll get back to it I will see so with that I'd like to invite Kendra and Monica so I can okay all right there we go you don't have to run away thank you thank you thank you bye actually Monica and Kendra you pull it far pull it right up here you got it jump on Okay, just trying to stand by. Okay, just trying to stand by. Okay, just trying to stand by. Hi, I'm Kendra Sowers. I'm also a ward for resident and the North district school commissioner. And I'm Monica Ivancic. Ward seven school commissioner. And glad to see everyone here tonight. So we want to go through this handout. I want to do it quickly because I know we all have questions for you guys. Still sitting at the table. So it's a really weird. It's a weird mix here, but you all I'm sure living in the new North side and have seen the construction site at the high school. So it's pretty exciting. It's coming along. Buildings A and B are down completely. And the site is ready to go for a building. And we're working and seeing dear, almost ready to go. The site is not quite ready. Right. Yeah. So it's coming along. And we just wanted to give you an update because as the project, as you know, it's a huge project and things are always constantly changing. We're getting new bids. We just got. The guaranteed maximum price bid, which was the final one that we're looking for, for the whole project. So we wanted to kind of give you a project overview of where we are now. Okay. So I never, I never like to read because you guys can read along. But this past week, the school board did pass the guaranteed maximum price for the, for the, the basically the last part of this project. So that's kind of nice because we did it in phases and this was the last and biggest one. So it came out a little more money than we expected. And we had some options with that. And we have chosen to do some value engineering and reduce the costs just a little bit, but I do want to stress that we are not asking for any more bonding money. So we are working really hard to keep it in the, the original bond that we asked for. And so I wanted to kind of go through the numbers. We want to go through the timeframe and what's going on. Okay. So our current project cost is higher than estimated. And that we estimated in May, but we are still project projecting a $3.2 million budget cushion because we have brought funding to the project. And we are going to talk about that a little bit more, but we brought $16 million to this project already from the state, which was supposed to be used for remediation. And we are using it for remediation. We also have been awarded. We're in a position to be awarded about a million dollars from the federal delegation to support stormwater work. We've, we are putting out our feelers everywhere to try to bring in money. So this is another one that is looking very good for us. And this session in the legislature, we are going to be advocating for the tech center. This is a regional tech center. And so we really do expect that we should have some money from the state of Vermont to help us with this. We are going to be asking for a lot of you also. We're going to need outreach. We're going to talk to the legislature and really try to say the reasons why Burlington should not have the full funding of a tech center. In addition to a high school on Berlin Tonians. So we're going to work hard. That's what we're working hard on in the legislature this year. Demolition was slowed a little bit this summer after we found asbestos and PCBs in the building foundations and surrounding soils. So what happened is we found it underneath the foundation. So you can't test for that ahead of time. And so. That for us, not under the foundation, you can't. So it. No, not under the foundation of a school that's there. So that was, that was my question too is like, why wasn't that found originally? And they couldn't. And so for us that, that raises the red flags, the environmental people come in and they're like, stop, we need to look at this. We need to send it to labs. That's not us. We are following all the environmental regulations and it's highly regulated as it should be. These are PCBs. These are asbestos. We don't want this in the air, the soil, the water. And we also had the glue the dots in the foundation cemented in. Yeah. So that kind of slowed the demolition of building and B. Yep. So that. That is changed the timeline and also changed some of the cost. And so that's what we're doing. We're moving into the building project. And so that's what we're doing. And so that's what we're doing. We were not happy with that either, but it is what it is with the building project. So. And so currently. Estee Ireland, who is a subcontractor to whiting and turning who's white and turning, who's doing this building project. Has moved into the footprint of where the A and B buildings were. So they're starting that work already, which is great. And we're having another subcontractor. And they're going to begin to look at the removal of the rock ledge. So that is big because as you probably all know, but high school is built on this ledge. And so they're doing some drilling and blasting and getting it ready for the next, the next footprint of the right footprint of the new school, which is exciting. And the city issued a zoning permit amendment, which we'll allow the project team to submit the full building permit application. So they had to wait for the design to be done and, and the pricing all to be, to be in. So all of that is now finished, which is exciting. Right. I know one other issue was they didn't have enough truckers to truck the debris off the grounds as it was, you know, being torn down. So I think that they solved that, but still that added a little bit of delay. There are labor sort shortages and everything's expensive as we all know. So our subcontractors are experiencing the same thing that if you were to do something in your house right now, you're also experiencing. So, but the good news is, is that now we have all the subcontractors we have put in their bids. We have our numbers and we're working from there. So that's really great. So I wanted to, we wanted to talk about the full project cost to just give you an understanding of that. So our updated project budget is $203.8 million. That still includes though $11 million in contingency funds, which we feel like is really smart when you're doing a building size of this magnitude. We still don't, we still haven't taken down some of the buildings. So it's still there. We don't want you to feel that we have, we were over budget in that way. And our funding sources, we want to look at where we're coming up with the money. Just as a reminder for you. So underfunding sources, we have $207 million in funding sources. Hence why we still have that over $3 million cushion right now. So our capital plan incorporates basically 20 million of that. It's $10 million of Essar funds, which are our federal funds that we got during COVID. And $10 is $10 million is from our capital plan fund that we had already set aside to be used for things like. Building renovations. And then 5 million of that, of the 25 is surplus funds from the past couple of years. Because we have been looking ahead and trying to save any surplus funds that we had. And we have some surplus funds basically due to. Some vacancies that we haven't been able to fill. And some things we did get with Essar funding. We were nice. It was great to get that, that funding. So we had some surplus that we're using. And so we have. The state PCB cleanup funds of 16 million. And we have the federal stormwater, which I also told you is almost, almost there. It's still pending, but that is revenue that we expect to come in. So we have that $3.2 million cushion. Sure. So I think Whiting Turner has, you probably all saw the summer, they put up the fencing. Now they put up, I'm a little annoyed because I can't see through. They put the big black blanket that says Whiting Turner. And let's see, looks like the ledge removal is supposed to happen this coming month. With the wrap up of the demolition happening sometime this winter. Bearing any further, you know, like Kendra mentioned, they can't test off the soils underneath the foundations. I believe the company that's doing our removal and buyer. And our advantage is they're contracted to remove PCBs, but not other contaminants. So, of course, all these complications led to time delays. And I must say that I'm particularly chagrined to hear it because when this started, we were supposed to be done in summer 2025. Remember BHSBTC 2025, which meant that my daughter would be a senior there. And then next thing you know, it was delayed till December. And now looks like it's actually delayed until April with final completion of June 2026. So some of our kids are not going to be a senior there, even though that's the closest school to my house. Murphy's Law. So let's hope that this stays on time. And that will actually be completed in June 2026. And that we don't find any more surprises between now and then. So we're open to. Yeah, and I just want to say, keep our website is being updated regularly. And we do, if you look under district overview and then you go to BHSBTC, you'll see all of the updates. You'll see everything that's happening. And we were trying to have that be updated real time. So if you have questions and we're not scheduled to talk at NPA, you can get your questions answered, but always reach out to us as well. If you have questions and we're happy to answer them. In addition to tonight. So. Anyone have questions. And there's all sorts of download videos. I Kendra and Monica. So you, you talked about advocating with the legislature for state money for the technical center. So is, is the tech center currently in this budget? Okay. So that if you did get additional funding, it would sort of help your. Your balance and any future, any future cost overruns. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So we, we are definitely. We actually asked for it last year and we were fighting for it last year, but it was that did not end up happening. So we're still looking at it. And we're still looking at it. We're still looking at it. Let's go for the 16 million and we got that. And so this year we're, we're heads down, getting. Looking into that. And I think. I think we're going to try to get a coalition like we did for pupil weights. Because there's tech centers and places all over Vermont that also need money. And we think the best strategy is, is really like. To have all tech centers be fully funded. So we're going to try to get that done. And we're going to try to get that done. And we're going to try to get that done. I think we can do guys about that. How many trees are you cutting down? No, I'm just kidding. Um, My question was, uh, where are things on the Monsanto suit? Um, In process and it will be for a while. Yeah. We did have to promise to the state that the money we got. The 16 million. If we win this wonderful lawsuit, it's going to be done. So it is in process. It's going to be a long. It's going to be a long haul with those lawsuits, but. Coming along. You have a construction manager, I think, is giving you a guaranteed maximum price. How can there be overruns? Unless you change the project, but how else can there be? So what's the guarantee maximum price now? Except the same price. We're seeing in the news or is it something different? Price that is now. So that is on here. So that, that price though should not. Seven million dollars is the last of the. That should not be. Unless the project changes. That should not be exceeded. I was like, guarantee maximum price. Tell me what it means. Right? The only way that that can change now is that they find something that we don't know about. Yes. But otherwise, if the project goes forward as conceived. Correct. That's our backstop that price. It could come in less if we're lucky. Shouldn't come in more. That's exactly right. That should not be. Unless the project changes. That should not be exceeded. I was like, guaranteed maximum price. Tell me what it means, right? That's exactly right. Thank you. And I just want to, we really want to make sure we're not on a time delay. Cause if we have an, even like a three month or. Especially like a year time delay. You know, when we saw this guarantee, maximum price was going up, one option was to stop and try to raise funds. But we can't, we want to, we want to start this construction season with, you know, building the foundation or starting the foundation. For the school delaying was just going to cost money. And so we can't delay. That's not an option. Deb. Deb. I see on zoom. Deb, do you have a question? Yeah. Hi. Thanks. Actually, Jeff, you asked me a question that I had, but I didn't have a suggestion. Is that allowed. To do. Okay. So first of all, I want to say thanks to you guys. School board for really. It's a lot of work and I know a lot of stuff you're dealing with, but I have a couple of suggestions and one is doing everything you can during this process to, you know, public relations type things you can do to make people feel. A part of this process, which I know you've done to some extent, but I'm thinking of. To the extent that it is safe. Like it was blocked from people parking. The summer to go to the beach to walk down to the beach. If there's any way you can open up farther, you know, closer to the fields for people to park in the summer. To walk down to the beach. I think that would be a good thing. And the other thought I've really been thinking about is, why is the road named Institute road? And I think it, I've been thinking it would be awesome to. Maybe have the students, you know, having a group of people, you know, come up with some parameters about what the road name could be and have the students come up with a new name. And maybe the voters weigh in on it or something so that the taxpayers could have a say and come up with a new name that's inclusive, but not through, through, and it would be, you know, you know, long, long term and just ways to kind of build some more excitement and enthusiasm in the community. That that's just some ideas I have. I want, I want to throw out there. Thanks Deb. I like your idea of changing the road name. Yeah. Why was it ever called Institute road? Rock Point Institute. There was an Institute back a long time ago. Okay. And it burned down. Oh, okay. All right. Do we have any more questions for the school board folks? Yes. Get you a microphone. Hello. Is this on. Okay, perfect. So I think one of my questions is like climate change. We expect that things will be very different in the future. And I'm sort of wondering about the role of remote learning or like, I don't know, smaller learning environments and like one big district high school building. I'm just curious if that's been baked into the planet and I'm sorry, this is way after you guys already finalized everything, but is there something online that I can look at that would give me more information about that or. No, it's interesting because we looked at a lot of different scenarios of learning obviously because of COVID and we did the online learning situation. So I think we're going to have a lot of work there. I think the new high school, first of all, we are working with the city of Berlin to try to make this net zero. We are, I mean, we're testing it for geothermal thermal. We are having, we want it to be lead certified. So we're on the environmental side. I think we're doing what we can. I think it's going to be solar panel ready. So I, we're working on that. So I think the next thing we're going to do is look at the old school is that we'll have expandable classrooms. And we've thought about the importance of natural light and we thought about the outdoor class space and we've thought about the ways that people learn differently than in a traditional classroom. So I think those ideas have been thought about a lot. having public spaces this is a this is a high school that the public should have access to so we've thought a lot about the public spaces like the library and the gyms and you know that when you want to go see concerts and musicals is it accessible to the public so they we've done a lot of talking with stakeholders and people with you know different needs and disabilities as well and so it's it's been a it's been a really interesting process um and I think nowhere in Vermont are we gonna have a high school that looks like ours like we have old buildings and old schools and you go to these some other states and you're like this is what a school is supposed to look like Burlington we're gonna have this we're gonna have this amazing school here and I think that when you have the space too that is for learning you're gonna those ideas for innovation continue to be to be driven and I I feel like we want to listen to you and we want to hear what your ideas are because sky's the limit like it you know education is super important and so if we can make it better we should make it better I just wanted to add also for environmental causes you know we all need to think about our transportation and how we're getting from point a to point b but we're adding there's going to be a lot of bicycle parking and there's going to be covered bicycle parking and the parking lot's not as big as some people had hoped for but the wave of the future is to get away from driving around in a car to tie into our other Nancy can you give Charlie the microphone you have a question from one of our other oh one of our other npa colleagues okay so I'm Charlie so I even just like the vast majority of people in Burlington I'm really not following this very closely in all the numbers but my general impression is making me very nervous that what we're doing is we're draining the last possible federal dollar the last possible state dollar the last possible local dollar and all the the bonding capacity for this one school when you've got two more middle schools you got what six or more elementary schools that are probably going to need some work in the next one year five years ten years thank you it's a really really good question and it's one that we have talked about a lot and we have a capital we have capital funds and we have a plan for our other schools as well we are not going to just put all of our eggs into the high school in fact we are it's on our last school board meeting we're talking about the work that is needed at IAA we're doing a lot of HVAC work and other things that needs needs to be done and maybe moving some of the school to St. Mark's church so we are talking a lot about the high school because it's going to impact your your taxes the bonds we don't have a high school it's everyone on everyone's mind but we do have other schools and we are they're not being forgotten and in fact we go through and a lot of you look through our minutes and things we talk about all the maintenance that we're doing at the other schools and you know how middle school has been redone their auditorium they're getting new chairs we're looking at redoing their fields and their tracks so there's a lot to be done and you're right everything costs money but and we're we're trying not to leave any stone unturned money-wise so we are we're doing our best the best we can but we're not ignoring the other schools and a great concern and questions are concerns as well I just wanted to add that IAA is has been suffering for that that's been on the docket for five to ten years with the ATRAC and the kids will need to be so we're actually looking at that for next school year housing some of the kids up here in the new north end because the the project will take more than the summer so and we already have ten million dollars towards that project that's not part of the capital funds so I I can remember not too many years ago when they wanted to close IAA should we go down that road again do is that school not needed I know you're personally attached to that school but if it's not something we don't need then why are we keeping it I think IAA has great attendance that it serves a lot of new American families in the communities and as you know as a magnet school also middle class families so it's a great mix it's one of the larger elementary schools I would say I'm not sure why we were going to close it then because 12 years ago it was 98 percent free and reduced lunch children and so in my opinion we do need it that's a huge that's a huge topic that we could get into in a different it's it's always looking at schools and closing schools is a huge thing and so we don't think that we need to close it at the moment based on enrollment enrollment actually looks pretty flat we've just got our enrollment numbers from last year um but obviously if our enrollment dips a lot that would be something that we had to we have to look at so and one great thing this year is that we have pre-kindergarten classrooms at every single school in the district so probably a lot of you remember we had pre-k up at central office on co-tester av which is not necessarily in any community and so now and before this I think it was SA and IAA were the only two that had pre-k um perhaps pre-k was added at Edmunds last year two years ago but this school year I think for the first time all six elementary schools have a pre-k class room or two anything else online I would be remiss if I didn't say that we will be collecting private donations as well for the high school so you know like when I say no stone unturned it is true so if you know some great philanthropy the right philanthropists in the area please you know talk up the high school or send them our way I know I feel like a radio commercial but we have to okay yes thank you Kendra and Monica thank you very much okay we're gonna try to squeeze in maybe one or two more questions on district energy I have a question I have a question Steve all right Steve it goes to the heart of all the debate you mentioned and really didn't follow up on it that this steam pipe doesn't commit going to the electric to any future promise to provide steam to the hospital to the pipe you said that earlier right no what did you say it doesn't commit us to run McNeil for 20 years so the people that are going to build the pipe are going to do it without a commitment to run McNeil at all I mean you're saying 20 years is it 10 years is there any commitment to provide steam to this pipe that goes beyond tomorrow so the commitment is if McNeil's running we're going to provide the steam through McNeil we're also going to have an electric boiler that's the backup supplement and if for some reason the community decided or we had a catastrophe or something and we couldn't have McNeil we would have to provide the ability for the district energy nonprofit to be able to power that steam for the remainder of that time but you could use any number of different resources to do it provided they're renewable and low carbon so that's what I'm saying is if there's a better option or if there's a you know god forbid there's a catastrophe and we don't have a decision but something is forced upon us we'll work with them to make sure they have the ability to provide the renewable steam and pay off that infrastructure my personal view is we need McNeil over that period of time but nothing is going to bind the community to any particular outcome there this decision doesn't bind us to that decision except that we it doesn't sound quite that simple you're if we decided to close McNeil say the steam pipe is built next year and we close McNeil the day after it opens we're not free of this thing right we have an obligation of some sort well we would first of all we'd probably have an obligation to provide reasonable notice not one day's notice but whatever it took to close it so you'd have a probably a few years wind down in any scenario like that and then you would want to make the infrastructure available to the nonprofit to be able to power that with some type of renewable what if we couldn't source and we're stuck with it with what with keeping the run McNeil to keep running the steam pipe no no that's not what I'm saying I'm literally not saying that I don't want to I don't want to get it too much into the hypothetical scenario of like 20 years but I do think it's important so if we are able to transition away from McNeil towards a renewable energy source but we're still trying to provide steam to the pipe a wind and solar power plan is does not have waste heat in the way that McNeil does so wouldn't we be essentially wasting additional renewable energy to produce steam heat for the pipe it's a little bit apples and oranges so you know wind and solar provide electricity the grid McNeil's providing steam thermal steam not electricity to the the district energy system I think a scenario like what you're talking about would be like what if in 10 years geothermal can produce the steam that we want could you move that in and make that part of the system or even the primary part of the system yes you could but I don't think wind and solar in any scenario will be providing steam in any in any kind of 20-year scenario yeah so then I guess my concern with the project is we don't really have a long-term plan for transitioning away from McNeil I understand that BED's view is that we will need it for the next 20 years or beyond I don't want to dispute that we're just yeah I'm hoping to be here at some point in 2050 yeah and I would like to not have McNeil operating at that point yeah my view is McNeil is a renewable plant it's part of our renewable portfolio we are one of the first communities in the entire country to transition off of fossil fuels for our electricity like we're early in this game a lot of folks are trying to catch up to us we're trying to go to some next steps and I do think there will come a time where we won't need it anymore but I don't think we advance off of McNeil to fossil fuel we don't want to go backward we need a better solution and I think it's going to take time to have something like that in place and if you said to me today well we want you to close it tomorrow what's going to happen is we're simply going to rely on the regional grid the volatile fossil fuel market on the regional grid that's not a good solution so we'll continue to have to look at this over time as a community and keep evaluating we evaluate every three years our entire power portfolio in a PUC process so we're always looking at it but I wouldn't be able to offer you any really good solutions today okay thank you I have one final question and this is sort of for a counselor carpenter and a director Springer is so for everybody else's benefit what is the future timetable for this conversation and decision making uh with the city council so people can sort of refocus their interest and attention so what's the schedule going forward um Derek and correctly but our next step is to have a work session which I think is set for October 10th right um so that's the next step from that we'll need to decide what the following step are um and ultimately I believe we're going to be asked to vote on a proposal that will be presented to the city council from Berlin to electric and the hospital and Vermont gas so be mindful that um the hospital has not agreed to this yet um and so we need to understand if they're gonna buy into this or not and that has not absolutely occurred I don't believe there's a district energy proposal if they choose not to go forward then then there's no decision on the part of the council um I agree with everything you said all right well thank you all for attending this evening I um we as our entire neighborhood you know not just the steering committee and you know the mpa we appreciate your engagement and so this doesn't happen without you so please continue to show up and engage because you you help make it happen so thank you all and have a safe trip home tonight