 Thank you all for joining us. I see City Councilor Gene Bergman has joined us. Welcome, Gene. And we've got some great guests here who you'll be hearing from. And Darren will introduce everyone in a moment. I'll just kick things off with a few remarks. We are here to talk about our NetZero Energy City Roadmap and to share with you what has become an annual event. We're gonna share, we're sharing today this report which gives an update on how we're doing it with respect to this plan. The city, in doing this, we're trying to continue what has been a proud 40-year legacy of climate leadership by the city of Burlington. And it's been a major goal of this administration for the last decade, a few examples of that. In 2012, Burlington had fewer than 25 solar installations. Today, we have almost 385 solar arrays generating well over nine megawatts of deployed photovoltaic capacity, which is the most per capita of any city east of the Mississippi. And this has been consistent for years now. In 2014, we became the first city in the country to achieve the threshold of sourcing 100% of our energy from renewable sources. And through these and other actions, what we really have learned as a city, as a community, is that through innovation and action, we can realize here at the local level progress towards a greener, safer, more just and vibrant future. It was from that observation, that belief that we decided to create in 2019 a roadmap to achieve this net zero energy by 2030, which is, we believe, the most ambitious local climate goal in the country. So in today's update, you're going to see a couple big things in the data that we're sharing today. One is that clearly our incentives and our other efforts to electrify vehicles and homes are working and having an impact on putting Burlington on a different trajectory, a better trajectory, than the rest of the country with respect to carbon emissions. In particular, you're going to see that progress in the gasoline and diesel consumption, where for the third year in a row, we are below the ambitious targets that we have set for decarbonizing that part of the community. You're also going to see is that we are starting to slip behind our goals for reducing natural gas consumption. And to me, what that means is we need to continue to take forceful, decisive investment and regulatory action to get back on track. So let me say a little bit more about each of those two areas. Incentives have been a big part of our strategy for years now. In 2020, we took a big step forward towards the net zero goals by launching the first green stimulus incentives. Right in the early months of the pandemic, we came out with these green stimulus incentives to boost the city's economic recovery from the pandemic and to ensure that as the economy was recovering, that we were doing everything we could to transition to electric vehicles, heat pumps, bikes, lawn mowers, and more. There are, how many is it now, Darren? It's like, how many different incentives do we have up on the? Dozens and dozens. It is literally dozens of different incentives for just about everything you can imagine. Electrifying BED can help. Right now is a really good time to do this. It's truly never been easier or more affordable for BED customers to make the leap to electric. And this is true because not only have we continued to make these local investments and to expand these local incentives, you can now combine the local incentives with state and brand new federal incentives when buying a car or buying a car, buying an electric bike, buying a cold climate heat pump, and again, numerous different interventions that local businesses and individuals can do to reduce their carbon impact. What you're gonna see in the data, again, is the real impact of these incentives and the collaborations that we are setting up in parallel with those incentives with organizations like the partners here today, Car Share, Vermont, Champlain Housing Trust, and V-Lite. This combination of partnerships and incentives is having a major impact, as Darren will walk you through in a moment. But from the start of this effort, from the writing of the roadmap, we believe that we need to do more than simply offer these incentives. And we, in parallel, have sought, as a city, new regulatory authority and passed new ordinances aimed at reducing fossil fuel use for building heat, building heat, which is the biggest single driver of Burlington's carbon emissions. Just to recap some of those steps, Burlington voters took a very strong stand on climate action on Town Meeting Day this year, again, with their second vote and over two-thirds voting this time to create the first carbon pollution impact fee in the state. The voter-approved proposal will require all new construction to be fully renewable, and it will also have new rules for large existing buildings and city buildings that will require the replacement or set up significant rules about the replacement of old systems with renewable technologies once those systems reach the end of life in existing buildings. Once implemented, and we are looking to the city council for partnership in getting this implemented, there's a committee that is actively working on this proposal right now, and we're hopeful for action soon. Once implemented, Burlington will join a short list of US cities regulating the use of fossil fuels for thermal energy and heating. It's really just a handful of other municipalities that do this. Another important step that is very much in our sites and we're actively working on, and that will go straight to the areas of challenge that you're gonna see here, in that we are particularly having challenge in the commercial sector with increased natural gas consumption. We are nearing a go-no-go decision that have committed to a go-no-go decision after many years of work on the creation of a new system to capture waste heat and renewable steam from the McNeil plant and use that captured heat to heat buildings at the UVM medical center and possibly the UVM campus as well. We are within months of getting to this key threshold and if there's a way to do it, given its impact on our climate challenges, it's certainly something that we're committed to getting done if it's possible to get it done. It's through fiscally responsible, innovative and aggressive tactics like these that Burlington has become national leader in climate action and it's how we're gonna achieve the rest of our goals on the roadmap. Again, what this third annual net zero report shows is that local action matters on energy policy and that we still have more work to do to electrify everything and decarbonize our society. And when we do that, when we get that done, we will realize a cleaner, more affordable and a more vibrant future. So now, see we're gonna hear from Darren Springer who's really in charge of much of this effort for the city as well as some of our key partners in this effort. So, Darren. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Morning, everybody. We're first of all very excited to be here at this facility with the car share EV here and the charging station and the new station that's available through the Champlain Housing Trust for folks here in the Old North End to charge their vehicles. This is a partnership between Car Share, V-Lite, BED and Champlain Housing Trust that you're gonna hear more about in just a few minutes. What we're sharing today, we've got a few charts here to illustrate is our 2022 roadmap update as the mayor mentioned. We partnered with Synapse Energy Economics which helped us with the roadmap back in 2019 and we've updated it every year since. And again, our focus is the ground transportation sector and then the building sector. And that's where we're focused on reducing and eventually eliminating fossil fuel use for the city of Burlington and helping to use our 100% renewable electricity to get the job done. So starting with some exciting news which is on this chart here, you can see that gasoline and diesel consumption, the ground transportation sector had a significant drop during the pandemic and that we've essentially been able to hold that level even as we've come out of the pandemic, we've reopened, we're seeing more economic activity. The reason for that is a few different things. One is we are seeing more EVs and plug-in hybrids being registered in Burlington. We are incentivizing more of those vehicles through Burlington Electric. Number two and very relevant to the partnership here with Car Share, we are seeing fewer car registrations in Burlington relative to prior years. So there are less Burlingtonians who are owning a vehicle and maybe they're using Car Share, maybe they're taking the bus or using walk bike to help get around. And we are seeing less vehicle miles traveled relative to the pre-pandemic timeframe. So that combination has been very powerful and has led us to be ahead of the ambitious pace that we have with the NetZero Roadmap when it comes to the ground transportation sector. So that's exciting progress, that's important progress. Transportation remains one of the top two sectors in Vermont and nationally in terms of emissions and we've made some good headway there. I'm gonna ask my colleague, Mike, to change over to our next chart which is gonna look at by residential and commercial sector our natural gas use in the city of Burlington. And this really speaks to the building sector fossil fuel use because the vast, vast majority of Burlingtonians are connected to natural gas. And what you can see in both the residential and the commercial sector but more pronounced in the commercial sector was we were sort of on pace, we had a bit of a dip over a few years and then we had a flattening and then a rebound and it's a mild rebound relatively but it's still something that we're looking at here particularly in the commercial sector. And there are a few different factors that can be a play. One is this is not weather normalized data. So to the extent that the 2022 early part of the winter not this most recent winter but the winter prior was colder than normal, you would see more use of natural gas. So that's one potential driver. Also we know as the mayor mentioned we have a lot of policy that's in place and more coming affecting new buildings making sure they're using renewable heating sources but there may have been buildings that were permitted prior to that that may have come online that could be a part of this as well. And then lastly it's possible that buildings are using their ventilation systems more post COVID than they were pre COVID so there could be a change in building ventilation use. The exciting thing though out of this data is we have ready made solutions to some of this challenge as the mayor mentioned having the carbon pricing policy go into effect where all new buildings will be 100% renewable and where large existing buildings can also play a role when they change out their heating systems and city buildings that will make a dent particularly here in the commercial natural gas use. So if that gets into place that will begin to have an impact. We know our rental weatherization standards were just rolling out for the first time in 2022 and we know there's a backlog of weatherization contractors. So as that ordinance takes effect and as more weatherization jobs get done that's gonna impact on this chart as well. And then last but not least actually the single biggest step we can take in any sector to reduce fossil fuel use is gonna be in the commercial sector where we can get a 16% reduction in commercial sector natural gas use by moving forward with the district heat system that would bring steam renewable steam from McNeil to decarbonize large customers such as the hospital and possibly the university some of their buildings as well. So if you look at this here, 16% reduction just from that single step alone if we can move that forward. And then lastly as we change out this chart we'll kind of zoom out to the bigger picture with total emissions from the ground transportation sector and the building sector in Burlington. And what we see here is again a significant drop overall during the pandemic. And then we've seen a very mild rebound overall in Burlington. We between 2020 and 2022 saw about a 3.2% rebound in emissions. We are still 11.2% lower today in 2022 than we were in 2018 when we started with the roadmap. That's our baseline year is 2018. So Burlington is still 11.2% lower in greenhouse gas emissions in these sectors than we were in 2018. And nationally we saw a 6.5% jump in 2020 to 2021 and then another 1.3% from 21 to 22. So we're I think less than half what the rebound has been nationally here in Burlington. So we are not resting on any of that progress. We have a lot more work we wanna do to help customers switch over to EVs and heat pumps to put in place the policies and the projects that will help kind of further bend this curve back down to the roadmap trajectory. So we're gonna hear now, speaking of that transportation success from Annie Borden from Car Share who we've partnered with on this and many other EVs and plug-in hybrids around the community. And we're so excited to be here at the Old North End Community Center with Annie. So, Annie, please. Thank you, thanks Darren. So I'd like to introduce you to Fabio which is our fifth all electric vehicle in our fleet of 25. And we're thrilled to be here. We, it would be really difficult to expand access to electric car sharing without creative partnerships like this including CHT making available parking which is a hot commodity here in Burlington. BED with all of the incentives and of course V-Lite for funding our vehicle and the charging station. Car sharing makes vehicles available to hundreds of households in Burlington and now Winooski who either choose not to own vehicles or can't afford to own vehicles. And the vast majority of our 1,000 plus members belong to zero or one car households. And because they own fewer cars they drive a lot less than typical vehicle owners and they therefore make dramatic advancements at reducing their vehicle miles traveled simply by owning fewer cars. If we can make more of those vehicles electric we're further reducing emissions but we're also ensuring that folks who may not otherwise be able to access the EV can experience them and participate in this important transition. So we're thrilled to be here. This is our fifth out of our 25 cars and we hope that we can convert more through creative partnerships like this and ensure that people have affordable access to vehicles when they need them and when they don't they can find other clean ways to get around. So we're very, very happy. Thank you. Thanks, Annie. I also wanna recognize Gabrielle Molina from V-Lite. As Annie mentioned V-Lite is a partner in funding this infrastructure and this electric vehicle with car share. They've been a really important partner. I also wanna recognize other members of the BED team besides Mike. We have sustainability director for the city, Jen Green, energy equity analyst, Itameno. I think they both arrived on bikes. Walk in the walk and bike in the bike and we're really thrilled to have them here. And also we wanna recognize our partner here at Champlain Housing Trust, Michael Mello for making this possible and helping us expand access to charging here in the Old North End. So Michael, if you would. Sure. It's the first time somebody's called me Mello. Oh, sorry. It's all right. It's all right. It's all right. Nobody's ever called me Mello before. Sorry, mayor. It's actually the first time. Well, we're delighted to have partnered on this project with BED and V-Lite and also car share. We've been a long supporter of car share. Certainly we rent to car share down in Burlington. We try to keep the rents low enough so that they can sustain their organization and do their work. Our mission is to develop a low-income affordable housing throughout the Chittenden County, Franklin, and Granddale counties but also to create community assets when necessary and where it's important to do so. We did that here at the Old North End Community Center. We own this property and rent it both to the city, AELV, and a group of other organizations. Happy that CHIP from CHC staff was able to work with car share and with BED on creating these chargers. We're committed to the work. We have 23 charging stations at 11 different multifamily properties throughout the region. We have more multi, more solar hot water arrays now in rows than anyone at this point in many of our properties. We probably, we have two charging stations and two EVs at our headquarters that actually staff use exclusively to get around town with. And we pay our staff $30 a month to walk a bike to work. I don't know if anybody does that, but we are committed to making sure that people use their cars less and use walking and biking more. So we're happy to be able to partner here, looking forward for other opportunities as we continue on our journey and the work we do at CHC. Thank you. Thank you. I think Mayor, we're happy to answer some questions. Great. For the cuts to the grid to make sure we can handle all the electricity. Yeah, this is a big issue. It's certainly a big issue recently nationally and at the local level. We've been trying to get out ahead of this for some time now. And I may remember that the electrification bonds that we went to the voters for approval for in what was in the fall of December, 21. And that passed, there was $20 million and included in that was funds for making investments in the BED infrastructure. And those investments are underway. Do you want to share any detail about that? Absolutely. Yeah, in fact, part of the net zero revenue bond is really at work here with these incentives because by making the bond proposal, we created liquidity to do more with our incentives. But we are focused on making sure we stay out ahead of where customers are in terms of adding electric use. What we've seen is a lot of electrification happening in the residential sector. Folks who are buying EVs or buying heat pumps or electric lawnmowers, we've seen less happening so far in the commercial sector, although we have great examples of ground source heat pump geothermal systems at places like Hula. And we know that the new high school is going to be looking at that as well. So we're expecting more uptake in the commercial sector as well. The good news is we have a grid that was built to accommodate electric resistance heat back in the 1970s and 80s. And we've moved away from that. We're more efficient now. So there's some headroom in our existing system already. And we're taking advantage of that as we move towards electrification. We are making investments as well to take our grid from being a roughly 80 megawatt capacity grid up to an interim step of around 102.3 megawatts and eventually potentially 120 or so megawatts if we fully electrify the entire system. And we are looking at opportunities for a net zero revenue bond 2.0 that could happen when the current iteration expires in the next couple of years. So we're going to continue to want to invest in the system for that reason. They're definitely not only at CHC property. There are five different ones. But go ahead, Annie. Why are you probably? So we have dedicated chargers and public city parking on street parking at two CHT properties at Cathedral Square Corporation. I'm trying to think what others. That soon to be the marketplace garage downtown. And all of our vehicles are parked either on street. Thanks to the city of Burlington or in public garages or thanks to partnerships with housing partners like CHT and other private property owners. So we have all, we're really fortunate that car share has access to very affordable at no cost, there is a cost to the public, to us, to everyone pays for parking. But that's how we access our parking and have dedicated spaces for our vehicles. I think it's important to remember it can be, if you're not a, I've been a car share member just I think since 2007 or 2008. So very early on we're one car household. So I'm always excited to see a new pod opening up. I imagine people are not members, they might see a space being taken up by car share and think of that as somehow a lost space. But I think what's important to remember is that the whole essence of this shared service is that it dramatically reduces the overall parking load when you have instead of 15, 20 households each needing to park their vehicle somewhere when you have that just the occasional use of a shared vehicle, the impact of that household on overall parking is, this is something that really brings down the overall parking pressures dramatically. It's one of the great things about the service. Yeah, one vehicle that we put into service really removes 15 from the road at the rate that our members shed vehicles. Great, I'm glad, I was worried I was making up that 15 out of the thin air, but it sounds like it was in the ballpark. Really pushing EDs for people in general, but people can't support to go buy a new car. Can you talk a bit about the importance of car sharing and the fact that accessibility is important? No, you've got to go first. That's a great point. So car sharing exists to make vehicle access more affordable, that's a huge part of our, we're a non-profit organization that's part of our social mission. And a growing portion of our members, particularly since the start of pandemic, come from households with low or very low incomes. And Car Share Vermont provides free memberships to these households and makes our vehicles available. The minimum reservation is 30 minutes. So people are using our vehicles to access groceries, access medical care, get to appointments, visit family without the high cost and burden of a vehicle that sits parked 98% of the day. This vehicle, Fabio right here, it's pretty new to our fleet and it already last month in the month of May went on 75 unique reservations. That means multiple households every day, we're using it to meet their needs that they may otherwise struggle to without access to a vehicle. And that it's a zero mission vehicle is awesome. So car sharing in general reduces demand for vehicles in VMT and makes them more affordable. But putting EVs in a shared fleet definitely makes access to EVs more affordable because folks may not otherwise, despite the generous rebates, be able to afford a new car. So that's a great point. If you think it's, go ahead, Mike. I was asked to bring up a important point. This particular charging station here is available to folks who work here during the day, but after 5 p.m., anybody in the community can come and charge and use the station. So just said that no, this is a public charging station after hours. I just wanted to also make the point, I think it's important that the media understand, the public understand that the kind of old ideas we have in the head about our heads about the expense of electric vehicles is really changing rapidly. And that has particularly, this happens, this is one of the ways we are going to win this battle against the climate emergency is that the various technologies really get better and more affordable over time. We've seen that happen in the solar space dramatically. I'm part of the reason that we've gone from 25 solar installations to 385 is because we focused on it with local policies and local action, but a big part of it also has been just the dramatic reduction in expense. This expensive installed PV has dropped something like 90 plus percent over 20 years. Yeah. And if you go back a little farther than that, it's come down 99%. So something similar is happening with electric vehicles now. It's happening kind of through the market and on the technology side, and it's certainly also being given a big boost with these incentives. So I think just to use this, I said in my remarks, there's never been a better time for Borlintonians to go all electric just to give an example of that we've used before. Right now with, can you still have the Chevy Bolt math in your head there? Yeah. Is this a Bolt? No. This is a Bolt EUV. So this is a little bit bigger version of the Bolt, but we've got the regular Bolts are over here. And so one of those vehicles is gonna be somewhere in the low $30,000 range. BED offers. Sticker price. That's a sticker price. Yeah, that's just from the manufacturer. BED offers up to $3,000 rebate income qualified for one of those vehicles. And then you add on another 4,000 or so from the state rebate and up to 7,500 from the federal rebate for vehicles that qualify. And you potentially on a vehicle like that might take half of the price. And you might be looking at getting a brand new vehicle that has a 250 plus mile range for $15,000 or $16,000, which is about as good a deal as you'll find for any vehicle anywhere in the market, much less than a vehicle that has zero emissions. Right, and we have charger rebates too as well. So we can help you put in a home charger and there's tax credits for that as well. And I think GM even makes one available for free. So a lot of good options with the charging as well. And then it becomes more affordable once you own it as well because there's far less maintenance in an electric vehicle. And if you sign up for, if you got a BED charger and you sign up for the preferential rate, you can, what is it, up to about 70 cents? About 70 cents a gallon is the equivalent for recharging your vehicle at night. So the economics around electrifying everything are really changing dramatically. And there's similar stories taking place with all of these other products as well. Okay, thank you all for being here. If there's no more questions, I think we'll call it at that. I want to say thanks again to our partners for being here and more of a for the work moving forward. This is something that we shouldn't always keep in mind with this net zero energy goal. This is not just a municipal goal. This is a community wide goal. We're not going to get there without everybody seeing the opportunity, seeing how this is a better future that we can create. And I really appreciate these partners helping us create that future. Thanks everybody.