 Okay, so let's see. Do we have any attendees? Not yet. So welcome to this meeting of the Energy and Climate Action Committee in Amherst. Our mission, as always, is to find ways to advise the town around how they can more quickly and effectively do an energy transition to clean energy. So with that, I have to find a better way to say that. With that, let's move on to the agenda first item on the agenda. It's never on here, but it's always to figure out who's going to be the note taker. So let's see who was the note taker last week. Laura, I think. Okay, so in order the next person would be Jesse. Yay. You okay with taking notes, Jesse? I can, I need to finish. I've got a little bit of overlap in my day right now. I can start taking notes in about five minutes. Okay, how about Don? He's not here. Don's not here. Who's next on the list? Hang on a minute. Back to the agenda. It's always in the minutes. Stella. Sorry, I have Rosalind running around in the background. Okay, so maybe not. Who's next? Hold on. I keep losing it. Michael, you and today are Tony. Feel a little bad sticking Tony with it. Still, still on your third meeting. And I think Michael's not here today. Do we have a volunteer? I can take minutes. All right, Steve, thank you very much. And next time I'll have to try to remember to skip down the list a little bit. Or down. I should. I'm do I'll do next time for sure. With that, it's time to review the minutes from last week. So I have them up here. I can share them. Review and share. Minutes share. Okay. And you can all see that presumably. Yes. Make it a little bigger maybe. Okay. So. I read them very quickly. I've had a lot on my plate this week, but I didn't see any issues. Does anybody. See anything they'd like to have changed. I'm going to go through them pretty quickly because we have a lot to cover today. You want me to go slower or faster, or if you want to just accept the minutes as they are. Please make a motion. Please make a motion to approve the minutes as they were distributed. Second. Wayne seconds. To be okay. Sorry. I just had to hear you. That's okay. Yeah. Laurie, can you stop sharing so we can have everybody on screen? Thank you. Okay. Except that this is the second time today that the share thing has gone off the top of my screen and I can't get to it. So can you just pull it away from me, Stephanie? Try to share. Hold on. Let me, this is the second time today. This has happened on this computer. I can't un-share. It's coming. All right. Now I'm going to stop sharing. There you go. I like those kids. All right. I do too. Okay. So in no particular order. Goldner. Yes. McKelloweth. Sorry. Just have to. Thanks. D. Abstain. Brecker. Yes. Selman. Abstain. Roof. Yes. Drucker. Yes. Okay. And it's approved. Thank you. What was the count on that, Stephanie? That was, let's see. Sorry. One, two. Three, four, five. And two abstentions. Okay. Thank you. You're muted, Lori. Sorry. I'm talking to myself. So the next item on the agenda is really just an announcement because I don't think we have a lot of time to discuss it further today, but we did get a follow up note. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Sarah Ross. Of undaunted K-12, this group that is. Putting together a. Statewide coalition of schools supporting. Climate work. And they had the first meeting on Thursday, February 8th. They're inviting us to spread help spread the word. And maybe even join the Amherst team. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. Pack it right. But were the flyers also in the packet? I, whatever Sarah sent us was forwarded. I was forwarded to everybody. The email itself was forwarded. Okay. So you should all have the, that information. And I think we should probably on a later date. Maybe even at a retreat, which we need to figure out when we're going to do that. Talk about what, if anything we want to, we need to figure out what we're going to do. But I wanted to just bring that to everybody's attention to make sure you all realize that we did get a follow up. Sarah. Any questions or quick discussion about that? I attended the meeting they had. I think it was last week. And there's a lot of people attended. I don't know the count, but it was several dozen, I think a couple dozen off all over Massachusetts. And then we had a short chance for those of us out in Western California. We had a chance to talk for a short bit in a breakout group. And basically we learned about the program, learned about some initiatives, shared our emails and names and contact information. And more to come, I believe. Okay, cool. I'm glad you went, Steve. That's great. Yeah, I'm interested in that. And there were some kids from the sunrise group, I believe from the Amherst area that said they were hoping to reach out to ECAC and I spoke up and encouraged them to do so. I think that was a good idea. I think that was on our agenda for last time. I think that was on our agenda for last time. Too. All right, so let's make sure we pencil that in for future agenda. To follow up on that some more. We could probably get a Sarah Ross to come back and give a better overview for this committee. If we, if we wish. I think that was on our agenda for last time. To invite to invite Sarah and have her come. Yeah, so maybe. Yeah, I would. I think that would be a good next up. Okay. So we'll invite her, you know, at her convenience, but she could even be here at the next meeting if she's free then. That would be great. And we can talk about a little bit more. How we can interact brainstorm a little, how we can interact. Okay. So if there's nothing more on that, I want to move to the town council liaison because we have to actually make sure we talk about that. I have to get back to. The city of the city of Des Moines, which is near the city of Des Moines. And this is the city of Des Moines of Des Moines, which is near Des Moines. And here's my, by Friday. We've been asked in the past, we've had a town council member as a liaison who tends to. Sit in as an attendee at these meetings. Wait a minute. I forgot public comment. You did. Yes. Because at first there was nobody here. So why don't I stop for a minute and go back and see if there's any public comment. My apologies. And if anyone would like to say something. Okay. It's not this time. We visit that at the end of the meeting. Okay. So back to the pretty packed agenda. Okay. So in the past, we've had a town council member who sat in. As an attendee. And who has. Who has, you know, I think we should be able to. I think we should be able to. I think we should be able to. Fill this in on what the council is up to and given the council, some information about what we're thinking. So it's a less. It's actually a formal way for us to communicate to council, which I think is pretty important. So given, given the importance of climate. You know, climate, the climate change, climate change and our response to it. I think this is pretty important. So I think we should just ask Lynn to please provide us with a liaison. I think we should be able to do that. I think we should be able to do that. I think we should be able to do that. I think we should be able to do that. I think it's time to discuss it. I don't think we get to request who is our liaison. Is that right, Stephanie? They're appointed by Lynn, I believe. Yeah. So we just need to let Lynn know that, you know, we're very grateful for having had a liaison in the past. And we would really like to have one again. And maybe Stephanie can speak a little bit to how the liaisons have, have facilitated the work of this committee in the past. Do you want to have Laura. Question first. Yeah, go ahead, Laura. Sure. Okay. So the intent and this actually used to happen even before the council convened when we actually had select board members where a member would attend the other committee town committee meetings. I know when, when we were with, when Stephanie O'Keeffe was chair of the select board, she would often attend the conservation commission meetings. She would sit in the back of the room. She would listen carefully, but if there was some kind of a comment or question about procedure or policy, she was always on her phone and would read off. Regulatory guidance, which was really helpful. And then, you know, moving forward when we then. Convened a town council. And we had liaisons from the council. We've had varying degrees of participation from members. Darcy Dumont was actually our liaison that was actually a member of the committee, a voting member of this committee. And we had, we had two actually that were appointed. And then that evolved into having representation from the council with a liaison that was not a voting member. So that evolved over time. And then last year our liaison. So then we had, I'm sorry, I shouldn't mention that we had. An adepton, Gautier who was very actively engaged and sort of. Worked back and forth with the committee and the council. Just sort of bring initiatives on the committee's behalf to the council. And then last year, we had. Alicia Walker was our representative who, I don't think even attended a single meeting. So. There participation has. You know, it really is very sort of particular to who was the liaison at the time, but there is, I think, a very clear procedural format for what liaisons should and should not be doing. And that is why I think Lynn sent that along with the inquiry as to whether or not we want to liaison and people should pay attention to that because to a larger degree. Some of what Darcy did, some of what Anna did was not necessarily adhering to the guidelines of what liaisons should be doing. So I think that was kind of Lynn's, you know, maybe rational for including that with all of the committees to let people know like if you have a liaison, this is what they should be doing, which is basically mostly to attend and listen and be able to report back to the council, but not necessarily to be as actively engaging in the work of the committee as directly as might have been done in the past. And I have to say, I thought Anna did a very nice job that exactly that. Laura. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm just going to be on my computer and I'm going to tell you back on camera, but I was going to say basically what Stephanie said, I mean, but I think Darcy, I don't think we can lump Darcy into that category because she was not a liaison officially she was an actually member of the council. And there is other members in that regard too. Yeah, I don't think it's a bad idea to have a liaison but like, I don't think we can count on them to always bring stuff back to the council for us if they're not going to be engaged. So I just wanted to flag that. I think it's important for us to continue when we have a particular issue that we want to bring to the attention of the council that we communicate it to them directly. Further discussion. If not, since I think the vote was on the agenda I don't think we actually, well maybe we should just do motion anyway since we usually do stuff that way here is there a motion to go ahead and request a liaison. I'll push that motion. Thank you. Second. I'll second that motion. I Tony, I'm Jesse by the way. Oh, you guys have not met yet. All right. We've done motions together. It's no big deal. All right, and then I'll need a voice vote and please be on camera. Goldner. Yes. McElrath. Yes. Breger. Yes. Selman. Yes. Roof. Yes. Dr. Yes. Okay. Thanks, Laura. Okay. It's approved. Okay, with that. Let's go to updates. Transportation. Stella. Yeah, so I reached out to the pioneer. Sorry, I want to get the name right. The pioneer. The pioneer Valley driving school. And they do. They do include anti idling as part of their curriculum. So that's great. I also contacted the schools. Debbie Westmoreland to see if. There could be some. Discussion of anti idling and or sharing. I mean, I shared the. Op-ed and suggested that that could be shared. In some way that feels appropriate with the school community. And I haven't heard back from that. And. Then the other two places on that list that are on my list to reach out to that I haven't reached out to yet are the athletic department and sunrise. But I thought it was very encouraging with the driving school covers it. She wrote back right away. Yeah. Yeah. And I realized that UMass has an idling problem. A big one actually that the students after hours, especially pull into every spot on campus that has the sign that says they shouldn't be there. And they try to get away with being there by not turning their cars off. Even if they're in the middle of the road. So I was thinking of writing to the parking folks at, at UMass as well. If you want Lori, I can. Attempt to do that. If Stella could provide me with. The op-ed and things that you sent around to. Yeah. I can get you that. Okay. Cool. I'm going to say, I know a few people that work with the transportation department. Higher up. So. Excellent. Okay. I will get you a link to the op-ed. So you can send it to them. Fantastic. Okay. Note there. So I don't forget. Any other updates on transportation? Stella. I think we should be working on next. Well, next I'll be in parental leave. Oh, that's right. I need to kind of think about wrapping things up and passing the baton. Yeah. Who wants to take transportation on next might be a good thing to discuss. That's a good question. So the, so the way this committee often works is since we're not allowed to do things as a group or even as a group of people who are not allowed to do things as a group or even as a group of people who are not allowed to do things as a group. Or even as a group of two. You're not allowed to meet outside of, outside of this committee. We have in the past sort of assigned different people to keep tabs on different issues. And so for example, I do heat pumps and Dwayne has been working on solar and Steve. I think sometimes also does solar. And Stella has been doing transportation. So. Jesse or Tony or Laura, if one of you want to take over the transportation baton. There are several things coming online. There's the new, hopefully bike. Contract right for, for that, that Stephanie is working on getting a new electric bike contractor into town. Working on electrifying the fleet. And then also keeping track of, I think there's already some data on, on that that's been collected. So, you know, there are lots of things around transportation. There's a bike plan. Remember, there's a bike and pedestrian plan in town that. We thought about a little bit last year and tried to encourage the council, I think to go ahead, please and do. So there's a lot that falls under the guise of transportation to keep track of and keep pushing on. If it's in the parameters of how much time I spent here so far, I would actually love to tackle that. It goes well with a lot of the things I've been researching anyway. So it'd be helpful if I could. Cool. All right, Tony. So we can talk. More, more about that, or I think it's okay for. So the way this works is, you know, you can send a. Information to us or we can send information to you, but we can't have a discussion by, by email. So I think probably. What's the best way to pass the baton? Stella, do you want to, do you have information and stuff you'd like to pass? Yeah, I, maybe I can send. Tony a sort of summary of what's been done so far and what I know of that might be good things to take up. And you could do the same. Are we allowed to put you in CC or should I just not put you in CC? I think you can. You can send, you can send information to Tony. You just can't talk about it, but you can just send him that information. Can I send it to Tony with Lori and CC. Tony with you and CC. You don't respond. Then if I missed anything, like, cause I'm definitely, there's definitely stuff that's on your radar. That's not on my radar. You send Tony a separate email without me and CC. Right. Right. Tony doesn't respond to either of us. And you should include me. It feels very strange and antisocial, but yeah, that is how it works. You can include me as well. Stella and Tony, we can talk to, um, you know, if you have questions about some of the things like the bike pedestrian plan, um, you can reach out to me. Um, also the bike share. So if you have any questions, feel free to just reach out email and we'll schedule a time. We can also talk about it. I'll send that before the next meeting and. Probably we'll be at the next meeting. It's like in the realm of uncertainty, but. Might be able to talk about it then too. That sounds great. Any other transportation. Items. I think that's it. Okay. In that case, I'll just say really quickly about heat pumps. The RFP for heat pumps. Stephanie said that to me. Yesterday for comment and it looks good to me. It's finally going out. Maybe Stephanie can just say a word about what you think the timeline for that will be. But I'll add one thing, which is that, you know, Stephanie is now also in training as a, as an energy trend, as a heat pump coach, as an energy transition coach. And I've already done that and, and. I think it's a really, really great thing to do. It's a great thing to be able to. Now to hang that course. So. I'm, I'm rare at the bit to, you know, participate in this program. Part of the program is in training a cohort of people to be able to continue the work of the RF. To some extent that the RFP started at least the outreach part of it. And the, to some extent, the advising part of it, the consulting part of it. So that would be, you know, this is. term plan will be a short term contract, right? But it'll hopefully lead to a long term ability to reach out to people and get them interested and get them to transition their homes to electric. So that's pretty exciting. Can you remind us for the minutes what the RFP is for? It's to hire. Well, Stephanie, why don't I let you speak to that? So we have ARPA funding to launch a heat pump program. And that was to provide incentive funding to low income residents to purchase heat pumps. And there was a lot of legal review that was required of the RFP that we had drafted. We got comments, but the final go ahead, we've only received it maybe like three weeks ago, but there were additional comments from staff that they wanted edits to the RFP, which I've made. I had Lori review them. And now they have to go, well, now that they've been reviewed, they have to go back. The draft has to go back to the procurement officer because it has to be updated because the RFP was completely put together. It was ready to go. And then we kind of got stalled in our tracks because of the legal review. So the date goes back to like July. So unfortunately, it couldn't launch back then. So there have to be new dates added to the RFP, but then it can be released. So I'm hoping, really hoping that next week it will actually get released for real. So that's what I'm thinking for. And this is to hire a consultant to actually do the outreach and figure out a way to get financing to low income and multi-unit housing, right? Low income housing. Right. So we have funding that is going to be provided. So we just have to sort of figure out the logistics of how that's going to work. But we're hoping to work with a vendor who has experience both with MassSafe, but also with heat pump specific technology and programming. So basically the RFP is to hire a vendor. And who will help us develop the program. That's probably the best way to summarize that. Give out money. That's possible. What's the goal in terms of number of heat pumps installed or number of units? I don't, I mean, it depends on how, I think it's going to depend on the time that we have and the vendor. I don't think we have a set goal in mind right now. I think it's just, I mean, we sort of want to get as many as we can, but I think it's more the allocation of funding, how much funding we have and how much we want to allocate to people. So I wouldn't even begin to quote numbers until we have the contractor, the vendor in place. I think that's for the response, right, to the RFP, which will be specific enough, hopefully, to tell us what they're going to actually do and how many. Yeah, there's a request for them to provide information about them launching a program. Right, that's partly how we're going to review them and interview them and understand what they're proposing. So, but I don't, again, I think, you know, sometimes it's easier to quote those numbers, but I think the funding piece is not a small piece. Like this isn't like Solarize where we weren't dealing with providing incentive other than reduced cost for bulk purchasing. There's a similar kind of approach here, but I don't know how that's going to work. It's a little more complicated because we're providing the funding for the purchasing of the equipment. That's pretty cool and very important. And who will that vendor be working for? You said working with the town, working with us, the ECAC? Well, the town. So they, I mean, vendors don't contract with committees. They contract with the town. So they will work with me, but we'll certainly, I mean, Lori is very, this is, Lori's the liaison. This is sort of similar to how Dwayne worked with the solar assessment and mapping tool. Okay. Lori will be the contact for the ECAC, the liaison, and she and I will be working closely together on this program. Right. And then she'll bring the information back to you all. And you all will weigh in. I mean, the RFP, I think, came to you. It's been so long, but I think it did. At some point, you know, you all had a look at it, but it was a while ago. Okay. So that's all pretty exciting. I'm pretty excited. The next thing on the list, if there's nothing more on heat pumps, heat pump program is the sustainability festival. So I think Stephanie, we need to do a little planning, right? We need to at least figure out what the date is so we can mark our calendars and start thinking about who's going to be there when. Well, the date is April 20th. Okay. Let me go make sure I have it on my calendar. Pretty sure I do, but I want to just check. April 20th. And it goes from. So the event itself, it's a Saturday and the event itself is from 10 to 4, but the setup begins, some people arrive at 7, but officially the setup is between 8 and 10. Right. And I think last year we came at 8. There's always like where the tent comes from and who's going to sit at the table when. And I don't think we need to do that right now, but probably at the next meeting because we'll be two months away, we should start thinking about what your time might look like on that day and signing up for slots. But also we need ideas for how we can most effectively participate. So I was hoping to have a little bit of a discussion about that, unless Stephanie, did you have some other idea or? Well, I would just say that we have so many initiatives that are being launched right now. Right. So, you know, we have the, you know, the RFP is going out for the heatpung program. That's going to be one of the biggest things, I think, to really be focused on promoting and educating people about that. And the other thing is the community choice aggregation, Valley Green Energy. That's another program that, you know, those two things are really big initiatives that we want to promote as much as possible. We want to, you know, they require education and outreach and engagement and, you know, at a really high level. So especially the CCA people are automatically opted in. So we need to let people know about that. So everyone's going to get a notification in the mail, but that's not enough. We need to tell them because people need to keep hearing it. So that's big. And then also the opportunity with the heatpump program, I think that's going to be something we need to really get out the word out about. And then also the community dashboard, you know, we want to, I was thinking it would be great to have a computer set up at your table and just like have people go through it and show them the site and, you know, maybe walk them through how to use it and what are the features of that tool as well? So that's another. So those three things I think were probably a lot. And then Tony and Stella will be gone by then, but Tony will probably maybe have some ideas about transportation. And I'm hoping that we will have a vendor by the time the sustainability festival is happening, which we should because we actually want to launch the program again by that date. But I'm hoping that we will be able to have a vendor or the vendor present with information about Valley Bike. But if not, that's another opportunity as well. Well, we just don't have much to talk about, do we? Yeah. So hopefully Valley Bike will be there. I presume that the CCA, some there will probably be a table, but you know, from the CCA itself, right? Representing the CCA, no? I don't know for sure. That's why I'm saying, I mean, the ECAC has been, I think, you know, kind of the conduits really are the primary conduits for that effort. So it is appropriate for you all to have information. And there may be a separate table for it as well, which is fine. I mean, I don't think it's bad to have multiple opportunities for information. No, I agree. I agree. I was just, I'm hoping that we, I would love to see somebody there. What is it called? Valley Green Energy? Valley Green Energy, but Valley Green Energy is essentially the three communities that are the voting members. So it's Northampton, Pelham and Amherst. And then we have some community advocates who have been involved in the process. And whether they want to do that or not, I have no idea. You know, officially Valley Green Energy are the three towns. You know, and there is some community advocacy that's part of that. LEA might want to potentially table and have information about it, but I absolutely think the ECAC should be the ones that are kind of like the official table for that. And there may be, you know, I'm, the town has a table, but when I'm there, I'm usually running around an awful lot. So I'm not at the table the whole time. So I think if you all had information, I think that would be important. Okay, yeah. Sure would be nice to pull someone in who's been involved in the CCA effort from the get-go. But yeah, we can certainly do that. I'm also, I also have this vision of a booth with a, you know, a big sign overhead that says heat pump advice, five cents. And I would be happy to sit there all day and talk to people about heat pumps and give them, you know, the first round of advice on what they should be doing. Mostly it's getting information, you know, talking to people, asking them about their situation, what their interest is, what they're interested in, the four C's they call it in, you know, their comfort costs, what they're interested in in the way of a new heating system. And then try to get them talking a little bit about what might be appropriate and who in the area contractors to call and stuff like that. I'd love to have those sorts of conversations with people. And I think if I put a sign out like that, we probably could. And that would also give us a way of advertising the coming heat pump program. So I could see doing that, for example. So we've got a lot there. We've got the dashboard. We're going to want a computer. I guess we have wireless in the, in the green, right? If it's not reading, having a wireless and also there's access to electricity. Okay. We just need a cord. Stephanie is the, the Valley Queen energy, Valley Green energy, right? Valley Green energy. Green energy. Is, is that going to be the publication, publicity for that? Is that going to be started by April? Like will residents receive stuff in the mail about the program or? All depends on when the DPU approves it. So the application is, let's see, where are we? We're February. It's quite possible it will be approved by then, but you know, but if it hasn't officially launched, we can still just have some basic information about it. You know, we have to be careful about how information is transmitted to the public. The DPU is very particular about what we say and don't say. There are official letters that are included, but right now all of that is being reviewed by the DPU. So until we get the official launch, we could have some general information that it's coming. If it, if it officially launches, then we'll have some very specific formatted letters and things that will be available to use. Well, that's great. That's great news that it's moving along that fast. Yes. Yes. It's exciting. We did not anticipate that they would move as quickly as they are, but we don't, I mean, we don't know yet, but it seems to be that they are moving quickly with ours, which is great. All right. So I think. Sorry, Jesse has to stand up. Yeah, Jesse, go ahead. Sorry. You're muted. Yeah. So I, I could be available to help set up and I have, I have a tent and I could make one of these if you want. And that would be great. That would be great. You could say energy and climate help I've sensed and a little doctors in. Yes. I know. Yes, please. You do have a PhD if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, yeah. That's great. I love it. I would be happy to, to, I can set up the tent in that table and sign to look like that. That would be great. That would be great. Thank you, Jesse. I will take you up on the offer. My pleasure. And everybody younger than you will be going, what's that? Probably true. How many, how many people not, you know, my daughter read, read peanuts, but how many kids do nowadays? I don't know. Oh, well, anyway, it'll still be funny, even if they don't have any idea what it's about. All right. So I think next time we'll try to actually assign. So for next time on the agenda, keep this on the agenda. Let's try to assign spots. So last year, I think we did like, you know, two hour slots of two people each and pretty much filled up the day. And I'm willing to stick around for longer. As long as nothing horrible happens that weekend, that takes me away from town or something like that. But I'm planning on being here the whole day pretty much. All right. Any more discussion about the sustainability festival? Do you want to see us do anything else today, Stephanie? Oh, go ahead, Steve. I was just curious if Stephanie needs more help from ECAC on organizing or running the entire festival. It seems like that's something ECAC could be involved in not just having our own booth but helping organize, run or implement the festival. So so much of it for me is done via email and I've got such a like a rhythm with it, but that's not to say that I couldn't use some help. So I do have two staff members that are going to be doing some, you know, some help with some of the specific details like porta-potties and possibly with the marking of the common and that kind of thing. I might need help in getting some entertainment, maybe coordinating that piece might be helpful. But again, like everything is done by email. So it's really not what takes my time is more like literally the week before the event or the two weeks before the event. That gets a little hairy because people are in and out and dropping out. And it's, you know, in terms of assigning people where they should be and all that can get a little sketchy. So if there's something very specific, I will ask you like, for instance, I often have to reach out to Amherst College about the parking lot, you know, parking for vendors. I might ask for, for that help this year. But I mean, again, it's an email. It doesn't, I look up last year's I send it off again. So I'll let you know, but I think honestly, it's not, it's especially now that it's scaled down so much more. I will let you know though, for sure. Okay. Yeah. I'll put that in a minute so that you and the rest of us will remember we may get called on to help you out. Okay. Thank you, Steve. I appreciate that. I mean, what I might do is just like pick on certain people. If it seems like it's something that they might be able to help with, or they have a connection with a certain person or group. Were they high school students last year who helped with the loading and unloading? They were so great. It was Amherst College and that was the best group of students we have ever had. They were amazing. They were amazing. They were football players because Angela Mills, who is the executive assistant to the town manager's husband, is the coach of the Amherst College football team. And so they, he was there as well and Angela was there and they did an amazing job helping out. And Angela and I spoke already and she's going to get them on it again this year. So incredible. They were incredible. They were amazing. Just amazing. They made everything go so smoothly. It was wonderful. So yeah, and we'll have them back again this year. There were plenty of things out of my trunk before I needed them pulled out. Before I knew I needed them pulled out. Yeah, they were great. They were really great. They were really on the wall. Okay. Next thing on the table. Anything else for this festival for today? Is there anything else we should cover, Stephanie, or? I don't think so. Just the date, which is again April 20th from 10 to 4. Okay. And Don LaRouffe just joined us. Yes. And Adam, they are our presenters from revision, sunbook slash revision. And Adam, there you are. Okay. Good. So let's give that a few more minutes. So Adam and Don, welcome. We're finishing up the ECAC meeting now and you will start right on time at 5.30. So next thing on the agenda, if there's nothing else for the sustainability festival, is the ECAC retreat. There's a lot going on, but there's always the question of what should we focus our efforts on and how we're going to go about doing it. And it's useful now that we have new numbers to plan a retreat sometime. I think maybe for today, we should maybe try to narrow down to a few dates. Are there days that folks would like to propose for doing this? Do we usually do it on a Wednesday at the same time? Well, Stephanie, go ahead. Yeah. Sorry, just one thing I wanted to say is that when you have the retreat technically it's public. It has to be posted publicly. And I'm sort of recalling that the last one we did was actually virtual. I can't recall if anyone else remembers that. But you could do it virtually or you can actually do it physically. It just has to be posted. Okay. So you can meet in person. Is there any difference between a retreat and a regular meeting then? I mean, yes in that it's a very specifically focused on planning. You're not, you know, and there's a, it's can be longer. You know, sometimes it's longer. It's more of a casual. You could have a potluck. It's, you know, it's more of a bonding opportunity. It's different than just a regular meeting. Like, yeah, there isn't public comment. Your agenda is very specific to the work that you all want to sort of focus on. So, but I just wanted to say that up front. So when you're thinking about dates, you also might want to determine whether you want to do it virtually or in person. In which case, then I have to find a room for you to meet in. Right. So are there, go ahead. We did do it one, when you're, we did something one year at the South Amherst. Was it the library? It was in the library. Yeah, that was your, that was when the ECAC very first got together, convened way in the beginning. That's a good, that's a good room, in my opinion, for a group this size. It's plenty of space. Simple. It's easy to get to. It's accessible. Town owns it. But I would make a vote for that, if it's possible. I think it would be nice. That sounds good to me. Any other, I think having something in person would be great. And when you say you have to post it, you mean that people can come and listen to the retreat the same way they would for, okay. And also, you can do it on a week. You know, you could do on a Saturday. You don't have to, it doesn't have to be your regularly scheduled meeting time. In fact, I would recommend against doing it at your regularly scheduled meeting time, or if you do make it in lieu of a regular meeting, obviously. Any thoughts on that, on timing? I would say that it's important that everyone be there. As someone that I'm pretty sure I missed last one. I think if we can have it so that everyone's there, I think that's also really great. And therefore, using that Wednesday slot will potentially increase the chances of everyone being able to be there. Just eliminating a meeting and taking those two hours in a slightly different way. Sorry, I could send a doodle poll? Yeah. That would be great. For upcoming Wednesdays only, what do people think about doing it on a Wednesday evening in lieu of a regular meeting? How about I just put some dates out there? Yeah. I mean, for me, yeah, it's just weekends are harder to know far in advance of whether you're going to be around or not. Yeah, me too. So why don't I just keep it focused to, sorry, go ahead, Laura. Didn't mean to. I would say do a mix of both. Well, I understand the benefit of doing it on Wednesday, and I also find when weekend's hard to plan. I am also tired on Wednesday afternoon, and not in a mindset of forward thinking and being creative about how we want to focus our time. And so I think it would be, I agree with Jesse, we should try to find a time most people would meet. I also would really love for us to meet in person. So. Other thoughts on that? Is it consensus that we meet in person, or would anyone rather meet virtually? I agree. Meeting in person would be a lot nicer. Yeah, fully agree on that. And I think the time when we're not tired would be great too. So I'd like to meet in 1994. Last time I was not even born yet. I was five. And probably wasn't tired. You have plenty of energy. So other than a Wednesday, should we try for earlier on a Wednesday? Are we thinking that? Well, no, definitely no, because we have to work. So why don't we, is there anyone who's still, I mean, obviously, I think I'm always more awake on weekends, but I'm also less likely to be available on weekends. So maybe we can try, do you want to try a mix of, is there anyone interested in us trying a mix of Saturdays and Wednesdays on this dual whole? Yeah, okay. Okay, so I will do a mix of weekend dates, end times, and evenings. Okay. And also. Stick to Wednesday. Time block. Wednesdays, so just Wednesday evenings. All right. And then some weekends. All right. And then timeframe, do we want a three hour meeting, maybe with like a break in between? Yeah, let's schedule for three hours. And then if we need less, we need less. If we, you know, more than that, I don't think anyone's going to be up for. Okay. All right. Do we have a sense of what topics we will want to discuss at such a retreat? You can put this on the agenda for the next, meeting. Okay. I think that's something. You know, continue the planning. All right. Just wanted to get started on it this time. So that's agenda for next time. Okay. And are we thinking March, April, May, or are we thinking farther out than that, or is March too soon? I think why don't I just put dates out and okay, see what happens. See how it falls, people schedules. All right. Dates that work for you, Stephanie. Or in general. All right. Back to, I don't know if you guys can hear what's going on in here, but my little dog, I'm not playing with him. So he's throwing his toy around the room playing by himself, because I won't throw it for him. It's squeaking it. I don't, it's making a really nasty squeaking noise. All right. Back to, okay. So where are we here? We did the retreat. And we're up to the education series now. We have just a few minutes. So why don't we do staff updates, Stephanie, in the next few minutes and then come back at, right at 530 to the education series. Okay. I think most of what I would update you on has been said, but just to recap. So the RFP has been drafted. It will go to the procurement officer to be revised and updated. Hopefully it will be released next week. The CCA, as you know, is still being reviewed. The application is being reviewed by DPU, but it seems to be moving along faster than we anticipated. So we hope that it will be released or approved, possibly within six months or less. So there's that. And then, what was the other thing? I'm sorry. The bike share program, we received some proposals. We've reviewed them. We have made sort of ranked our top provider, but we haven't opened the price proposals yet. Those are being opened this week. The community is going to take a look at those and then have a meeting on Friday and see if the proposals sort of line up with our ranking. We're hoping that our number one choice is not going to price themselves right out of being in the running. So that's moving forward. Let's see. What else? I think those are kind of the big, more major items for right now. Is there a target, Stephanie, on the Valley Bike Share program? Is there like a hope to select a vendor by a certain date in order to get it running for the spring? Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, we would hope to be... So if we select a vendor, then there would have to... We have to... Well, first, we're going to open the price proposals, though it's likely going to be interviews with the top few candidates, prospective vendor candidates. So I would think we're hoping to have things up and running in April. Certainly, the hope is to have the system completely up and running by the end of April. That might be ambitious, but that's the hope. So in any case, the idea is that it will at least have started to launch in April. Now, starting to launch doesn't mean necessarily that every community is all going to start at the same time. They have to phase it, right? So when they launch, they focus on a community at a time. So I'm not sure when that means Amherst would be online again, but the idea is that everybody hopefully should be up and online by the end of April. That's exciting. That's great. It's very exciting. Yes, we've really missed it. But there's so much interest. There's a lot of interest in other communities wanting to join too. So we're excited. We're hopeful. Is the hope that it will use the same hardware that the previous vendor was using, the same bike racks and bikes? Exactly, because we own those. So that was part of the proposal, was that whoever the vendor is would be able to integrate the existing hardware and software, because we have a back-end software program that kind of keeps it all together. So we're hoping that we can use that technology still. Because we do know who the software provider is, and it might be a matter of coordinating with the new vendor to work with them. Okay, that's nice to know. Yes, that's the hope. I mean, again, it might be sort of they start out with what we have, and then there's an evolution to their own material program bikes and hardware. But for right now, we're starting with what we have. Pretty cool. We might have time, that's it for staff updates. We might have time for just one ECAC member update before starting our webinar with Sunbug Solar Revision on Solar Cannabis and EV charging. Anyone want to offer an update? We can come back to it afterwards, if not, and then afterwards we'll continue the agenda with... We've been sort of keeping items for the next meeting agenda as we go, and we'll have public comment after the Sunbug presentation before we return. I do have one thing I want to just bring up as an update. One of the things that's come up here several times is the fact that an awful lot of folks are taking out trees in neighborhoods in Amherst to put up solar, and the question has come up, well, how bad is that? If you're taking out one tree, it's probably not so bad if you're taking out a small forest, changing the character of a neighborhood, maybe that's not so great. So I started looking around a little bit and had Energy Sage send me a bunch of quotes, and I think that, and I'd love to get input from Dwayne and Steve on this sometime, but I think that their estimates are far off for how much CO2 is saved and how much money might be saved by putting solar, for example, on my house, which is in the woods, unless I take down my neighbor's trees. Which I wouldn't take down any trees. So starting a conversation with them about this and scheduled some time with one of their, it's just one of their consultants on Monday, and if they don't have answers, I will up it a little bit and see if I can speak with somebody in charge there. Google Sunroof offers similar services and are about an order of magnitude lower in both regards. CO2 estimates and price, the amount of money I would save. So it's not a small difference. And Google Sunroof jibes more with what I, back at the envelope, calculate. So anyway, just something to throw out there that I noticed this week. I think that's a rich topic that's going to take a fair bit of discussion. I think it's going to be very site-specific as well. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'd be happy to look at it with you, Laurie, just in terms of the assumptions and range of assumptions. I'd love to know what goes into their assumptions. And with that, let me go ahead and introduce Don LaRoufa. Am I pronouncing that correctly? You did, well done. And Adam, is it Thorell or Thurl? It's pronounced Thurl. Yeah, around Thurl. With revision energy, who are going to talk to us about solar canopies and EV charging? You have the floor. Wonderful. Well, Laurie, first and foremost, I'll say your background noise sounds like every night when my wife and I finally sit down to watch TV, work, news. That's when our golden retriever decides he's going to squeak every toy that he possibly can. So you're not alone. Great. But yeah, thank you for the introduction and thanks everyone for, there he is, of course she is, for affording us the time to speak with you this evening. The request was made to talk about EV charging in and solar canopies, as Laurie mentioned. So I'll just give a quick background on myself. As you mentioned, my name is Don LaRoufa. I've been with revision energy for a little over seven years at this point, which is kind of surprising and exciting for me. My background was always in the corporate world and I made the decision, I think, like a lot of us renewable energy do at one point to say, I think I need to do something that I feel is a little bit more impactful. So I work out of our North and over office joined and focused on commercial solar projects for the first six and a half, seven years and then made the pivot recently to focus on commercial EV charging infrastructure in Massachusetts. You know, Massachusetts has always had a very bullet clean energy plan. So I almost say we're at the point now with EV charging with the amount of focus and incentives that are available, kind of like what we were with solar in Massachusetts maybe 15 years ago. So over the course of time, because of the strong energy plan, Massachusetts has to see how much solar has been installed and like I said, we're right at that beginning point here with EV charging. So I'm super excited to be leading the charge, which I guess the pun is intended on that with revision. And with that, I'll let Adam introduce himself. Hello, everybody. I see some familiar faces in the crowd. Nice to see you tonight. I have been building solar systems, designing solar systems in the Valley for the last 16 years. Live with my wife and children in Montague. And so I'm grateful for you all having us in tonight to help flesh out these ideas around EV charging and solar carport canopies. Thanks for having us. Don's gonna kick off with EV charging and then I'll follow up with carports. And we certainly welcome Q&A along the way. So if you have questions, feel free to raise your hand and we'll tackle them as we go. Yeah, thanks Adam. Couldn't set the front on myself. So you bear with me here. I'm not nearly as familiar with Zoom as I am with Microsoft Teams. But I'm going to share my screen, which I hope you can all see. Okay, looking good. Come on. Perfect. And how do I just... I just... The view here with our participants, I just don't want to cover up too much of our slide here. Adam and I tried to change this earlier. Well, oh boy. I'm going to leave it as is. Actually, you know what I'll do, which I hate to do. I'm going to minimize the group here. But to Adam's point, certainly have this be interactive. We've left, we've reported time at the end for Q&A, but certainly as I'm going through my piece here, chime in and happy to interact accordingly. Don, that's specifically for the committee to ask questions during the presentation, but the public, we're saving that for the end. Okay, wonderful. Great. So, yeah, like I said, I'm going to start out talking about EV charging here. Thanks again. When, you know, part of my presentation will kind of cover electric vehicles in general. We talk a lot about the technology, and then more importantly, the way that vehicles can interact to the grid and other devices differently than you would think with a traditional vehicle. So, you know, some of the benefits of electrified transportation, and you know, it's funny, I'm sure, I'm assuming there's a number of electric vehicle drivers on the call today, which is great. And it's funny, EV drivers love to talk about, you know, the difference of the benefits of driving an EV. And a lot of that's different for, you know, some different individuals. So, you know, overall, a common threat as you'll hear, it's just a better driving experience. And whether that means it's, you know, the vehicle is quiet, it doesn't have any engine noise, or as much road noise to contend with. You know, one of my colleagues is from the UK. He's a big Formula One fan. So he always talks about the performance of electric vehicles, and you know, like kind of how quick off the line they are and the way that they handle and just the way speed seems different without gearing. But naturally there's, you know, the reduction in greenhouse gas and emissions that everyone always feels good about. And certainly a lot less maintenance that's required compared to a traditional gas vehicle, whether you know, we're talking about oil changes or fluids that need to be, you know, maintained and changed. And the big picture is really a lot of security around, you know, energy, you know, quote unquote fueling your vehicle and driving a lot of independence in that capacity. So the next picture and slide here just talks a little bit about, you know, where we are today with vehicles and, you know, certainly technology changes quickly, as we all very know. And it wasn't too long ago, you know, part of the conversation around electric vehicles was, you know, well, you know, you know, how far can you go in the car? You know, what type of range does the battery have? And, you know, it's super exciting to see today that there's at least a dozen, you know, vehicle models from various manufacturers that all boast a range of, you know, 250 miles per more or more per charge. So, you know, the norm has certainly changed with the vehicles themselves. And that's cascading, you know, globally. I mean, we're at the point now that in 2023, one in five EVs, or I'm sorry, one in five vehicles that were sold globally were full plug-in electric vehicles. You know, we'll close you to home here in the United States. In 2023, there were nearly 2.5 million EVs registered. And, you know, Massachusetts, California leads the charge, which California typically does with, you know, green and clean technologies. But Massachusetts certainly won't be far behind. I mean, part of that, you know, bullish energy plan I referenced earlier, you know, Governor Baker signed in that by the year 2035, any new vehicle that's going to be sold in Massachusetts will be electric. You know, there's essentially there will be a ban on gas-powered vehicles. So, you know, again, technology changes quickly. And if you think about 2035, that's not that far away that will be in a, you know, nearly a full electric vehicle world when it comes to new vehicles. Even as it stands today, again, as I talked about, you know, technology has changed and, you know, outside the scope of passenger vehicles, there's a number of advancements that have been made for, you know, fleet vehicles, public transportation. This is a photo obviously here of a electric school bus. See here, Concord has deployed part of their fleet to electric school buses. I live in Newburyport, not Beverly's fairly close to home here. Beverly's nearly 100 percent electric bus for their fleet of school vehicles. And, you know, what's interesting about all electric vehicles, but certainly, you know, school buses is when we talk about, you know, what we call vehicle to grid integration or really what can become, you know, a secondary use for this vehicle. So if you think about, you know, the driving behavior of a bus, it's kids go to school in the morning on the bus, or they're brought home in the afternoon, and then the bus sits pretty idle, you know, throughout the course of the day, and that cascades into a much longer period of them being idle, you know, over the course of the summer. So the city of Beverly, for example, has, you know, uses their school buses in a number of ways, you know, in a power outage emergency, you know, there's the ability to use the charge of the battery for the hospital. There's, you know, if you think about, especially during the summer months when school buses aren't being used, you know, there's the ability to have the vehicle run air conditioning at like a local community center. So there's a lot of ways that these vehicles can, you know, really support different behavior than what's traditionally, you know, traditionally thought from vehicles. Yarmouth Main is another area where we just did an installation for a school bus depot. So like I said, to me, that, when we talk about, you know, what's exciting with electric vehicles, to me that's one of the most exciting parts is, you know, how this technology can be used in other ways. Certainly public transportation becomes a great area that can be impacted. I know, doing a little reading, the PBTA I see in 2021 made an investment in, I think, about $8 million in public transportation and buses in the valley, which is outstanding to seek. So, you know, that'll give the benefits from an operational standpoint that can be benefited, you know, that benefits the area, but certainly a reduction in carbon footprint as well. And that's what I'll talk a little bit more about is, you know, where we are today and even big picture, you know, the, this technology, you know, can become a little bit regionally specific. So, you know, in the valley where you are, between the, you know, number of individuals that live there and schools that are available, it's great to see that electric buses are being utilized. And, you know, the next piece won't, you know, I talked a little bit about electric vehicles being used for emergency situations, but there's also the ability on a community level for them to be used in a lot of fun ways. So, if you think about the amount of events that happen, you know, maybe over the course of the summer where power might need to be used or a generator might need to be installed, this is a photo actually from our company meeting that we held up in Maine last year. So, after a days long annual meeting, we, there was a concert that was put on that was fully, fully run and deployed by using our fleet of Ford Lightning. So, you know, I mean, power lasted all night. The concert started and ended on time and it was, you know, not only a lot of fun, but really just neat experience to, you know, see this technology at the Ford Fund today and all the other ways it can be used. Just for, you know, kind of size comparison when we talk about the, you know, the battery which is really the driving force of electric vehicles, your, you know, typical passenger vehicle and there's an example here of a Chevy Bolt which is a little on the smaller end, but that has a, you know, if I get into the weeds or a little bit on numbers, that has a 60 kilowatt hour battery. So, there might be some individuals on the call tonight who maybe have installed a Tesla power, you know, at their house for supplemental power or backup power. Each type of power wall is about a 10 kilowatt hour battery. So, if you think about a Chevy Bolt, the Chevy Bolt is now housing six Tesla power lines. So, not only does your, you know, passenger vehicle become, you know, the standard from, you know, getting from point A to point B, but that technology can now be used in a lot of other ways. And if you think about even the cost of installing a Tesla power wall which is, you know, usually carries a price tag of, you know, $10,000 to $12,000, there's, you know, a $60,000 piece of technology that's residing in your car that, yeah, that can be used for your home. And naturally, as the size of, you know, vehicles increase, so does the size of the battery to run that vehicle. So, you know, school buses that I mentioned and talked quite a bit about, you know, how's about 15 of those batteries. If you look at a Protera, you're getting north of 40. So, a lot of options and a lot of ways to help utilize deployment, get it really, really across the board at a number of different areas. Question, Don? Yeah, fire away. How many of those different vehicles that you've listed so far, both of the cars and these larger ones, are actually easily used in reverse to, I mean, they all, I assume they all have 120 volt outlets in them somewhere, but not many of them can be used to power a hospital or a home or a right, because that technology just isn't deployed yet. Yeah, no, that's a great question. And the technology is there. You know, that kind of steals the thunder a little bit from my presentation, but that's okay. But yeah, it's pretty specific right now when you talk about, you know, like I said, a bus being, you know, a backup for a hospital, which I believe Beverly has done, but you know, even more on the consumer scale, we're at the point now that there's essentially an inverter available that like one of our co-owners has a Ford Lightning. He's recently deployed the technology at his home that he can now use his, you know, use his pickup truck to power his home in an outage or again, even in times of peak load. So you're right, it's not, it's not as commonplace as, you know, taking a plug and plugging it in, but the technology certainly exists today. But can you do that with any, with any of these electric vehicles then? I didn't think you could do it with a bolt, for example. I, you know, I don't know if you can, it might be, that might be specific to, it's definitely vehicle specific. There are certain vehicles that can do it. There are certain vehicles that cannot do it. I think we're starting to see more and more vehicles with that technology coming as a standard option, but it's not across the board yet. I think it, I think it will be in the not too distant future, but certainly not yet. Thanks. Thanks, Adam. Yep, perfect. So, and that's actually a great segue when we talk about all of these vehicles and all of their, you know, their capabilities, but the big piece, you know, the crux of the conversation is, you know, how do we make these vehicles work and that all comes down to charging. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the, different technologies that exist for charging. You know, big picture, you know, to simplify it a little bit, you know, there's essentially different levels of charging and that kind of really ties back to the, the speed that a vehicle can be charged. So there's level one, level two and level three, which is also in this DC fast charging. So this slide's a little dry. So the next few, I think, kind of break that down into something that's a little bit more relatable. So always, you know, it was fine when you talk about electricity and, you know, empower, use the analogy of water is a pretty apt way to think about it. And you talk about the flow of electrons is kind of similar to the flow of water. So this first example here is shows you what a level one charger looks like. Essentially every electric vehicle from the dealer is going to come with, with a level one charger. It's not a very fast way to charge, you know, kind of like my little friend here drinking from a, from a water fountain on a hot day. But, you know, some of the benefits, it's really easy to use. Essentially just plugs into, you know, your standard wall outlet. So there isn't the cost of, you know, doing any electrical upgrades at your home. But again, the speed of it overall is pretty slow. It's going to recharge your vehicle at about three to five miles per hour. So if you think about the range, as I talked about on, you know, most vehicles today, it's, you know, it's up to like two days to, to charge your vehicle. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's a great simple option that, that can be used pretty much anywhere. The next piece or the next level would be a level two charging. And kind of as the numbers imply, it's, it's a more robust, it has more robust charging capabilities. So it's about four times faster than a level one. You kind of like just the, our little chocolate lab here, drinking out of the, out of the sprinkler, you know, it's going to deliver about 20 to 30 miles of charging per hour. It does require a little bit more robust installation. You know, so, but it's typically what you'd see, you know, what most homeowners end up installing for their vehicle again, so they can exchange that full charge over the course of the night. And it's what you, it's what you usually see in a, you know, in a public setting, either in a parking garage or, you know, maybe at an office or, at a retail location. And then the next level, I'm kind of tying it together with our water analogy here is DC fast charging or what's known as level three charging. And that's, that's a really, really robust charge very quickly. So typically that'll be used intermittently, you know, it won't be kind of the, the main charging platform that'll be utilized. You know, it's great for occasional use that it can, you know, we can deliver up to 300 miles per hour of charging. Naturally the, you know, the hardware's a lot more robust. So there's an increased cost. Installations a little bit more involved where it requires higher power through face power. But, you know, typically you'd see a driver use this for, you know, maybe like a 15 or 20 minute session where maybe they're on a long journey, they're going to stop at a fast charger, stretch their legs, maybe grab a bite to eat, use some amenities. And, you know, big picture when we talk about, you know, where charging needs to be deployed, it's really looking for areas that might serve a dual purpose. The last example here is what's called the power sharing model. So basically that it gives the ability of the charging cluster to be, you know, a little bit more fluid and elastic to adjust charging based on how many vehicles are there essentially. Meaning, you know, in this example here of this cluster of Tesla chargers, you know, if one vehicle is plugged in to charge, it will be able to derive all the power that's available and charged very quickly. As more vehicles show up, basically the amount of electricity or, you know, again, water could be distributed evenly across those vehicles. So it will take a little bit longer for them to charge, but everyone's going to receive the same amount of power. So it's a great way, like I said, for, you know, individuals and the vehicles to interact in a more fluid and elastic way and for the technology to adjust accordingly for a better experience. As we talk a little bit about where most charging happens, this diagram here just really talks about the first point being that most people are going to do a bulk of their charging at home over the course of the night. And I know we do, you know, live in a much more virtual world than we have in the past, case in point, are meeting this evening. But usually the second area where people spend the most amount of time is, you know, is at work or at their office during the course of the day. So that, you know, workplace charging offers a really unique kind of sweet spot in the deployment of charging at this point from, you know, from a couple of different avenues, like I said, number one, it's the second one, displays a vehicle usually sits, so it only makes sense to have that charging happen during that time. But there's a lot of different, you know, technology options. But the point I like to make for workplace charging in Massachusetts is where we're really blessed with the amount of, you know, high tech jobs that the state has, not only from, you know, the tech side of the world, but also in biotech. So, you know, from a company standpoint, it can become, you know, offering workplace charging becomes a great way to, you know, foster their commitment to sustainability, you know, drive their green initiatives. But even when a business looks at, you know, kind of the human resources side of the house, it becomes a great way to offer, you know, an additional benefit to their employees, which can even, you know, cascade as we talk about the, you know, the employee side of the house, you know, a lot of employers strive to get a competitive edge in such a competitive, you know, hiring about there and really foster, you know, what's called an employer of choice environment. So, you know, by making the investment and offering this benefit can be a great way for them to, you know, not only attract, but really, you know, retain top talent in their industry. So when, you know, I've talked a little bit about what makes a good site for charging, I mean, to boil it down to the most simple factor, it's, you know, it's an area where drivers will use it. So like I said, you'll see a lot of focus on, you know, heavily traffic corridors at this point. But, you know, coupling that with an environment where, you know, it can kind of be dual purpose, you know, it makes a lot of sense. So, you know, in addition to workplace charging, hospitality seems to be, you know, a really great fit for those organizations that make that investment to offer that amenity to, you know, to their patrons. But even if you think about your day-to-day activities, you know, any, you know, retail establishments, you know, restaurants are great. You know, I know I, if I'm going to go food shopping and there's the option of going food shopping where there's the ability to charge my vehicle versus not, I lean a lot more heavily towards the area where I can get some charging done. And again, there's benefits on the retail side as well. LLB in Maine is a project that we did a handful of years ago and they were really excited just to be able to, you know, offer that to individuals that are coming to the store, coming to their store. And not only is a way to, you know, attracting the drivers, but, you know, as a way to maybe increase what they, how much time they spend in the store and, you know, the impact of that makes it a business. So, you know, again, it's great that there's the ability to, you know, not look at the traditional, you know, site options that you would look at for like a gas station where there's more increase, you know, there's increased means necessary from, you know, a site standpoint, the type of work that needs to be done, what type of equipment needs to be put in the ground. You know, like I said, anywhere that a light can be turned on becomes a great option for a vehicle to be charged. But then again, coupling that, so it really complements the driver's behavior seems to be the smart approach. Certainly all of this deployment comes at a price. And like I said, where I feel like where we were about 15 years ago with solar, we're kind of at the point today where, you know, there's a number of funding options available to support the deployment of this infrastructure. So I'll walk through that in a little bit more detail, but essentially there's the federal funding that was derived from the Euclation Reduction Act last year. State of Massachusetts has a program called MassEVIP. And the biggest impact that's been made within the last year is from the utility companies through programs they have called Make Ready, which I'll go into some more detail on. And locally, more locally throughout the state, there's a number of municipal light departments. They typically all have some sort of incentive that they offer for electric vehicle charging to be installed as well. So specifically for Massachusetts, I mentioned the Electric Vehicle Incentive Program, which is the creative name for the MassEVIP plan, has about $13 million available to help subsidize the cost of the chargers that actually covers up to $50,000 per station. The really big driver as stated is coming from the utilities at this point. So National Grid and EverStores combined have rolled out $420 million to cover the cost of the charging hardware. And that's in addition to any infrastructure work, meaning that if you want to put in a bank of fast chargers that, you know, there's a lot of power that needs to be derived to do so. So the utilities will actually come in, install a completely new service, and cover 100% of that cost. So if anyone's been involved in an evaluation like that for, you know, a client or a business, that usually carried a cost of, you know, I mean, north of six figures, probably $150,000 for a new service to be brought in from the utility. The utility will do that at no charge to embrace the deployment here and then in addition to the new service, like I said, there's up to $60,000 per charging station that can be, you know, that can be subsidized through the incentive plans out of the bill. Naturally, the incentive and rebate process can be a little bit challenging. This next slide just gives you a quick example of that. This was actually taken from EverSources Make Ready Plan where a certified installer, actually for EverSource and for National Grid, but I wanted their deployment meetings that we attended. This is literally the workflow to, you know, to realize funding from that. So the point I just always put out there, it's, you know, that there's a lot of funding available, which is great, but it's really important to, you know, have a partner on a project to can help navigate that because it's certainly not easy. The next two slides, as I kind of tie up my presentation here, again, this just talks about, like I said, what I think is the most exciting part of electric vehicles and charging, and again, it's the interaction that happens through the grid. So on the left side of the screen, you'll see what's called V1, which is just almost the first level of integration to charging, and that's simply charging your vehicle, you know, plugging it into a charger, having those electrons go and charge the vehicle so it can be driven. Like I said, the more interesting parts of what we'll see in the future is the bottom piece, which is vehicle to grid integration, and that's again, you know, utilizing these smart controls to either act as, you know, emergency backup or again, can even be used four times to deploy power from vehicles during types of peak demand. And then the last being vehicle to home, which kind of brings me to, I think my last slide here, this is a photo from one of our customers in Dover, New Hampshire, who's always been a pillar and a very early adopter of clean energy, but I mean, this is what I think the future of what all Hoos are eventually going to look like. You know, he has solar voltaics for his electricity, he has solar hot water. Where the heart is, there's a Tesla power wall installed, so solar panels charge his battery either for backup or just to, you know, drive power back to his home. He drives an electric vehicle and, you know, again, as I mentioned, the technology we're on the cusp of the, you know, bi-directional charging and having your vehicle be able to, you know, to power your home for business. And boy, I feel like I did a lot of talking here. But with that, I will turn the presentation over here to Adam to talk about car ports. Unless there's any, well, again, we can save questions to the end. Thanks, Don. Very well. That's a great overview. And of course, we're doing this giant transition to electric vehicles because 50% of greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation. And so if we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we're going to have to tackle transportation. And EVs and EV charging is a big piece of that, but it doesn't do us much good if we just generate the electricity to charge those cars with diesel peaker plants or coal-fired power plants. So our solution to that, in large part, of course, you've got rooftop solar and ground-mounted solar, which you all, I'm sure, are familiar with. But we've got solar car ports that we like to install in collaboration with the EV chargers that we, the EV charging network that we're building out as well. Not just environmental reasons to build car ports, though. There's a certain increase in business income that can be expected with the installation of a car port, municipalities and businesses and nonprofits have enjoyed significant returns on investment from building solar car ports, and it makes them that much more appealing choice for fueling your EV charging network. There are, beyond the financial benefits, there are some additional benefits that people enjoy from parking in car ports, including climate management inside the vehicle, shelter from the elements, keeping the cars cool in the summertime, and keeping the snow off them in the wintertime. People really enjoy that benefit. Studies show that car ports and retail locations are always the first to fill. People are going to park there where possible. I'm sure you've all seen the canopies at the Mullen Center or the Valley Co-op. People really like to park under covered parking, and it has a benefit to the vehicle's fuel economy, sometimes reducing it by 25% from preventing the heat buildup inside the vehicle, so other good reasons to install car ports. The real benefit of solar car ports is really the dual-use aspect. You've got parking lots that are going to be there. You've committed to that, providing parking to people, and it's essentially wasted space to not cover that with solar. You compare that to cutting down a forest to put in a ground-mounted solar system or taking up arable agricultural land to put in a ground-mounted solar system, and there are real benefits to leaving the farmland, leaving the forests, allowing them to do their piece of the carbon sequestration puzzle, and using those asphalt parking lots that are going to be there anyway, and using them for energy generation as well. You can fit a lot more solar panels on a covered parking lot, and you end up reducing the maintenance of the asphalt because you're preventing all that UV from hitting the surface and degrading it prematurely. Get into the different design options that you can choose with car ports. The first one is a T-shaped cantilever style that essentially has the posts run down the middle strip of two parking spots, wide car aisle, and then covers the two parking spots. It has a single tilt, typically, towards the south, but can also be oriented toward the east and west without much decline in production, as long as it's relatively unshaded. The second type is a V-shape. This helps in our location to deal with the snow a bit. In the cantilever version, you've got a single tilt, snow is going to fall on that, and then it's going to slough off to the low edge, which may create some plowing difficulties because I mean that the snowfall from those edges can be challenging. So you're not really ever sure when the snow is going to fall, so you can't really time the snow cleanup and you end up potentially with some frozen berms on that single tilt. So my opinion is if you're going to do one of the single tilt from the previous slide, you want to have those oriented sort of off of the drive path potentially into a grass area on the side if you have that ability. If not, the V-shape works well. It's two different pitches facing in towards each other. This works best in a north-south orientation. If the posts of the canopy run north-south, you could pick up the eastern sun and the western sun and generate a fair amount of power, but also prevent those snow berms from forming when the snow melts. As an option, you can add water management to the canopy. They don't. Typically, water management is not included in a solar carport. The panels cover what they will, and the panels are generally something like six feet by four feet. Really rough numbers there, but between the panels is a little gap and so rain will go through the gas, but it's a much reduced sort of intensity of rain because it's only falling every so often. When people want a true weatherproof structure, they'll put in water management. They'll put in basically a small roof surface underneath the solar system so that it can catch the water. An internal drain system will run that water too. That would show the existing drainage of the property, but we don't see that very often because it adds a fairer expense, and we find that folks don't tend to mind the smaller amount of weather that it does get through. That is the V-shape, and then the next one that I'll talk about is the long span. This is basically the most power-dense of the options, and it covers both the drive aisles as well as the parking spots and tends to be the most cost-efficient style. It ends up being a bit more monolithic, but ends up being the most cost-effective and energy-effective option that we have. You can take that long span and you can actually put it on top of a parking garage. A lot of people complain that they don't want to park on the top or the parking garage because you're parking your car in the hot sun in the summertime and you're parking in the elements in the wintertime. Putting a nice carport level over the top of that helps to prevent that. It reduces the maintenance of the asphalt underneath it, and makes it makes it more appealing place to park while generating that clean solar electricity that most densely you want for your EVs that are parking there. That's what I've got for carports, and I would be happy to open the floor to any questions that we have out there. All right, so at this point I bet there are a lot of questions. If you have a question, go ahead and raise your hand. Whether you're in the audience or on the panel, and I see Jesse has his hand up. First of all, thank you both for joining us. This is really great. I took a bunch of screenshots, stole some information along the way, that was fun. I'm curious, and I know I'm sure this is the first and most annoying question you always get, but as far as dollars per watt installed, and without, I don't even necessarily need you to give a number, but if you have one, great, or even a range. But more particularly, where does it compare to residential rooftop solar or field solar? So where do these carports tend to sit in that range of, or what is a typical range of dollars per watt installed? Sure. Now are we talking for you specifically, Jesse, or are we just talking for the general public? I'd like 50kw over my driveway if you don't mind. Yeah, sure. So there's significant infrastructure investment to the carport that you don't have with a roof mount, right? You're putting concrete and steel in the ground. You're pushing these things up. It's not always steel. You could also do a timber frame. We have some partners that do timber frame style, so you can have a fairly nice aesthetic at the residential scale. Steel tends to be cheaper and easier to install for much larger scale carports, but it really does depend on the size of it. The more you put in the less cost per watt that you'll have because there's so much that goes into the engineering and sorting out the basic idea of the thing that once you've got that, it's so much easier to sort of replicate it again and again and again for that location. Definitely more expensive. For that reason, the state is offering additional smart incentives for carports on the larger scale, but I would say your most cost-effective carport is one that is commercial scale. But we do see people who like, they want a parking canopy in their yard. They're going to do a parking canopy anyway, so put some solar on it. That happens. We've got a nice partnership with local timber framer and can do that. It just doesn't happen very often because you're basically building a car. You're building a parking canopy and then you're putting solar on it. I think of this as mostly a commercial application, which makes sense. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, thanks. Dwayne? You're muted, Dwayne. Yeah, I was busy trying to put my hand down. No, I see I'm muted, but okay. First, I thank you both to both of you for great information and presentations. I'll stick with the canopies first. Not so much associated line of questions. There's a lot of parking lots around the world, around the country. Maybe not huge amounts in Amherst itself, except for the university. There are some, but there are plenty of parking lots in Hadley, for example. What, I wouldn't say pushback, but feedback do you get from potential sites of these types of commercial facilities that make it sort of barriers to progressing this more actively in Massachusetts? There's a lot of interest in the public. There is the smart incentives that it should make it a bit more competitive with other solar. So what sort of the pushback or problems that you face when you try to get commercial facilities to do this? Yeah, that's a great question. I think the upfront cost is one, Jesse kind of nailed that. I think, too, there is some development work that needs to happen, because we need to know the actual final design of the carport, which dictates the price of the amount of steel needed to support the system, as well as the depth of the foundations, the concrete that needs to go in the ground. There's what we call geotechnical engineering that needs to happen, where they're digging more test pits in the ground. They're analyzing the soil for its weight-bearing capacity, how well it's going to prevent that concrete from shifting side to side under wind loads, that kind of thing. In order to do all that testing and then engineering work, it's a fair amount of money to do that work, and you're sort of doing it a little bit at risk, because you don't know if you're going to like the final number. You can kind of get sort of random order of magnitudes, and the way that we dealt with that in the industry is to kind of give a high number, so people hopefully will come in less than that, but then that high number can really be off-putting to people. I think it takes a good partnership, and I think it takes a willingness to sort of infer a penny, infer a pound in that engineering piece of it, and working with a trusted partner who you know is working in your best interest and isn't just in it to make a quick buck or something like that, I think goes a long way. Then there's zoning and all that, but I'm sure the town would be very helpful for making such a thing happen. You can run into challenges with certain towns. Certain members of zoning boards can may think a carport is something like an aesthetic eyesore, or something, and say, oh, we don't want to see something like that. Can I just jump in? I want to say that some of the challenges I think that we face with the carports are, and I think you pointed out, you have to put in some kind of stormwater management system, but also some sites need to be graded. It's not like you just go in and stick these carports up. There's so much more infrastructure that has to be addressed that makes it, so it's not just the cost of the installation of the technology, it's all of the other infrastructure things that you need to address on top of that. There might be funding available for the carport, but you don't necessarily have the funding to put in the stormwater management system. That's I think some of the challenges that communities face. Yeah, that's, you're absolutely right, Stephanie. All that circles back to what my response to Jesse's question, which was, all that is fixed upfront cost. The bigger solar system you put in, the more income it generates to help pay for that initial upfront fixed cost that you can't really get around all of that engineering and zoning work that needs to be done. That's a great point. I think we have a question here from Julian. I'm going to allow him to talk. Go ahead, Julian. You can unmute yourself. Hi, thanks so much. Awesome to have this presentation. I thank Laura for inviting me. That was great. I had a few questions more on the municipal side of things about electric vehicles. I know the town recently in its capital budget has purchased a new electric school bus, or I think two of them actually, which is fabulous. In terms of other town vehicles, I'm looking at a small van for the recreation department in town is about 60,000. A public works pickup truck is about 60,000. A police cruiser is approaching 80,000. What I'm wondering is with these vehicles, which I mean to a consumer seems pretty expensive vehicle, what would a comparable electric option cost, like maybe a Ford Mustang, Mach-E, or a F-150 Lightning? Would the cost be relatively comparable? If not, how quickly could we recoup those costs if we decided to slowly transition our fleet in that direction? Do you want me to take this one, Don? Sure. It ties nicely to your last response. I'm happy to take it. The cost of electric vehicles has historically been slightly higher than the standard internal combustion engine counterparts. You can get electric vehicles for less cost than internal combustion engine in some cases today. I think you get the base Ford Lightning F-150 is like 50,000 bucks, so that's comparable to its internal combustion engine counterpart. Right now, there are a couple of different incentive programs to try to help level that playing field. One of them is the Federal EV tax credit, which gives up to $7,500. It used to be a tax credit. Now they're doing it as a rebate at the dealership. That's $7,500 in some cases. In other cases, $3,750. Not every vehicle qualifies for it, so you really have to assess that, and there are different income things. If you're a millionaire, you're probably not going to get the leg up that people of more moderate income might get from that tax credit. The other opportunity that we have is the more EV rebate in Massachusetts, which in some cases gives up to $7,500 or $8,500 for a pickup truck. That's $15,000 of pickup truck right there if it qualifies for the Massachusetts State more EV grant and the federal tax credit. A couple of really nice options there. Then, of course, we're talking about reducing operating costs. You have to look at both fuel and operations maintenance. There's no oil to change. There's no spark plugs to swap. There's no engine tunings. There's no belts. All that stuff no longer exists in the EV version. Then there's the cost of electricity versus the cost of fossil fuels and which ones, how those compare. Historically, the cost of electricity has been significantly less than fossil fuels. I think what we saw last year was that electricity prices crept up beyond what we had expected. In order to deal with that, I really suggest you get a solar system. Yeah, thanks. Which makes it free. Yeah. No, thank you guys so much. I guess my follow-up question would be more for Stephanie if the town is the town eligible for some of these grants if we could be saving $10,000, $15,000 on a vehicle and moving away from internal combustion engines. Is the town eligible or not? Yeah. We have used those programs for the purchase of some of the vehicles. We're limited depending on the criteria at the time because these things kept getting revised pretty much annually. The last time I think we were wanting to use the mass EVIP program, we couldn't because we were going to be purchasing hybrid police vehicles. They haven't gone 100% to EVs but they've transitioned to hybrids for some of the newer police vehicle purchases. We used some sustainability funding to bridge what would have come from the mass EVIP program. We used sustainability funding to cover that difference. But I will say, and I was going to raise my hand actually to say that the green communities program as part of that participation in that program, we have to have a green fleets policy which we have and then it sort of gives us standard miles per gallon fuel estimate of what our vehicles need to meet those requirements, those guidelines. And that is going to be changing I think in 2025 where if there's an electric version of a vehicle that's being replaced, you have to replace it with an electric vehicle. So the state's sort of transitioning us. So even if we're not doing that currently, we're going to have to in the next few years. What year did you say that was, Stephanie? I think it's 2025. That was the last I saw. Again, I want to double check, but my understanding was that they're going to be transitioning that requirement to 2025. Thanks, Stephanie. We have Steve and Dwayne and have their hands up. So Steve, go ahead. Great. Thanks, Don and Adam. Are there things that this committee could do, the ECAC, that you suggest that we could do to help increase the number of solar canopies and or car chargers in the town of Amherst? You know the community better than I. But I think a big part of it is education and kind of evangelizing these technologies. So I think community involvement and connections that you have just to open up a dialogue or evaluate these things is probably the most impactful. All right. That's the sort of thing we do. I was wondering if there were bottlenecks that you see as developers of these technologies that you wish weren't as time consuming or frustrating to deal with that maybe there's something that we could help to remove those bottlenecks, at least at a town scale. You know, we're not going to be able to do much of the statewide incentive program at a local level. Something that comes to mind to me is developing, you know, a longer range plan. If we're going to move from one in five EVs on the road to four and five in the next 10 years, where are those chargers going to be? Where are we going to do that? Is that going to be in the in the in the bigger municipal lots? Is that going to be a street side? Are and same with carports, you know, and then how are we going to provide the electricity for those developing an idea about whether the town wants to own that and develop that or if they want to put out an RFP for people to come in and say, yeah, I'd like to I'd like to build out these 20 parking spots with charging infrastructure. I think I think right now is the time to start coming up with the plan for for how the town wants to best manage this sort of what it's it's it's an inevitability at this point. We're all going to be driving these electric vehicles. We're all going to be places of charge. How do we do that in a way that, you know, is in alignment with the rest of the town's goals and planning? I don't think that conversation is happening a lot out there around the state. I don't honestly don't know. Maybe we're all are already doing that. Of course, you lead the way on so many things. But that's that's one thing that comes to mind. Okay, good. Thank you. Okay, so we are running out of time. So let's try to keep these short. But I got Dwayne and Laura and then we still have to open the floor for comments to close the meeting before we close the meeting. So Dwayne, go ahead. Yeah, just and it follows up actually on just what was being discussed. Well, as we get to four, four or five cars EVs and then five to five, five or five cars EVs, it seems to me the the a primary thing that's keeping say families from buying replacing their fossil there. Just take me for example, we got an EV. I have an EV it works great. I'm fine with charging and all that no issues, no range anxiety. But I need to use the fossil gasoline car when we go on long trips. And we can't we get you know, families can't sort of have have a non EV need to have a non EV vehicle to allow for longer trips, which are pretty critical. So as we get to like all electric vehicles, it seems like the highway systems fast charging on the highway systems is what's really needed. My question is, do you know what Massachusetts is doing with regard to that on the mass pike 495 so forth? Don, you want to tackle that one? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So mass has been a little bit lower to react than some other states. Like interestingly enough, you know, our company was founded in Maine, Maine is like yours ahead. And I think part of it is, you know, I'll take a step back, you know, on a federal level, some of the funding options that have been rolled out are under a plan called Nevy, which is the National Electric Vehicle. So State of Massachusetts from that federal funding has received $60 million in funding options. It's just now a matter of coming up with the parameters to make that deployment happen. So, you know, I think mass has been a little more conservative in kind of looking at what some other states have done. So, you know, any challenges or, you know, problems that happen aren't replicated. So the plan's there. I mean, a robust RFI as well as our P were issued. It's nice that they opened it to public comment initially, which us and a number of others installers provided feedback for. But they're still in that process of really kind of digesting for full deployment. So, you know, the funding metric is there from a federal level. Like I said, there's funding that's been approved here. Now it's really a matter of, you know, how is the program going to work? How is it going to be deployed? But certainly first and foremost, they've identified those, what they call alternative fuel corridors or the highways basically to be the first area of deployment. And to receive that funding, there are parameters that need to be involved. You know, some of the things I talked about, like, you know, there need to be amenities available. You know, it can't just be, you know, off the highway, off in the woods. There needs to be, you know, there needs to be restaurant available. There needs to be some sort of amenities there for the driver. So, you know, like I said, I feel like where we were with solar, you know, over a decade ago that we're at the beginning of the tidal wave to happen. It's just, it's, you know, the initial deployment is always the most challenging. Thank you. Those corridors, I think, are what? Route 2, I-90, I-91, the beltway, yep, and then out the Cape Route 6. 24, you know, 24. Okay. Yeah. So they've identified some sort of main arteries that they want all of us developers to figure out how, you know, where do we put the charging station spaced out appropriately, one every 50 miles is the parameter with Menendez, as Don said. So we're working on figuring that out. But Maine already issued its Neve grants, and we're already building under Neve grants in Maine. We're already building on our Neve grants in New Hampshire. So we're, we're, now she's, we like to make it a little difficult. A little bit of red tape, we need to navigate through. Let me try to cut it short a little bit. I see Stella, but I also need two people from our attendees. Shoshana, King and Martha. Stella, would you mind if I let some of the attendees ask questions first? No, that's fine. This was also going to be public comment, because it's my daughter who has a really quick question. Okay. So are we moving to Shoshana or Martha, a public comment, or do you have questions for Don or Adam? Shoshana, I'm giving you the ability to talk. So you can go ahead and unmute. My name is Shoshana King. I'm a resident of Amherst. I was interested in just bringing up the fact that there's a lot of apartment complexes that have a lot of residents with a lot of cars and a lot of parking space. I think it would be advantageous for us to not forget about the renters in our community for having the advantages of EV plugins at their residences. It's a great point, Shoshana. I'm going to do that really quickly. Eversource has had a program at least a year or two ago, maybe it was a little longer, but they had an EV Make Ready program where we actually did have one of our multifamily unit housing landlords or owners install EV charging at their complex. So when those programs come up, we do actually try to make that known to the business community. We send information to the Chamber of Commerce. So I'm not really clear what Eversource's current program actually allows for commercial, but certainly when there's opportunities exist, we try to let them know about it. And if you know about any, Shoshana, let us know. We're always on the lookout for stuff. We only have so much bandwidth between us. And it's great when we can get the landlords involved. Okay. And there are still those Make Ready program funds available. So excellent. And on a big level, I know the state has identified multi-unit dwelling as a major challenge that needs to be solved to your point, Shoshana. So they're aware of it. Interestingly enough, there was a news story last week, two weeks ago. Maura Healy just freed up about $50 million in funding to the Mass Clean Energy Council to tackle this specifically, to try to talk about deployment of like sidewalk charging, good chargers on light posts, maybe replace parking meters to help address the renters or not homeowners, people that live in multi-unit dwellings to have an option to charge as well. So it's an area that's been identified. Thank you. So, Stella, if yours is, Martha, is your comment or question for Don and Adam, or do you have a public comment? Go ahead, Martha. You can unmute. Yes. Martha Hanner from Amherst. And thank you very much. Back to the question of the car ports. Are there any creative ways to help jumpstart or somehow decrease the upfront investments and encourage grocery stores and shopping malls and so on? These are the obvious places for solar panels, and yet that's such a big initial block. Do you folks have any ideas of things that could be done to help reduce the costs or spread out the costs or anything? I think it's a great question, Martha. It's the answer is probably longer than we have time for tonight, but those are the kinds of questions that we need to be asking for sure. No answer, huh? We're working on it every day. I'll tell you that much. Yeah. I think the question is, how do you get the owners of the properties interested, right? Because there are incentives and things out there, but you have to get them interested. Oh, sorry. I was just going to say that there are, you know, people are motivated by many, many different things. And so it really matters. It tends to be case by case. Certainly, financial incentives tends to be a fairly common one, and I'm sure that if we provided support for that development work upfront, that that would, to help sort of de-risk it a little bit, that that would probably spur things along so significantly. Also, I will add that newer construction under the specialized code and the stretch code are going to require a new construction to include EV parking and charging stations. So that's part of that new regulatory structure. And will you come to the sustainability festival on April 20th? I believe we're going to be there. I'll invite them. Just talk to me. I'll talk to Lydia. Yeah, talk to Lydia. Talk to Lydia. She's the one that really makes it happen. All right. So now, Stella, your hand is still there. Oh, it is. Yeah, it is. It is actually a question. Rosalind, do you want to ask a question? Um, since there are so many electric cars here, are all the electric cars not electric, but some half electric, half gas? That's right. There are some cars that are all electric, and there are some cars that are half electric, half gasoline. So they're starting to make their way from being gasoline cars to electric cars, and they're sort of in the middle of that transition. Good question. Good question. Oh, Lauren, you can say it again. Like half in the middle, and like... I think it's more like half the time electric, half the time gasoline, half the time electric, half the time gasoline. They run on electric until the battery runs out, and then they run on gas until you recharge them. Yeah, but I think they're right. The gas engines in the front and the electric motor and battery tend to be in the back and at the wheels. Ah, right, right. Good point, youngster. So half and half. I got it. Now I got it. Half and half. Good questions, good questions. So with that, I'd like to thank Adam and Don again. Thank you as well. And I think it's late, so let them go, but we will still complete the meeting. We have a few more minutes left in our meeting. So thank you again, Adam and Don. I appreciate your coming. Thanks. Yeah, sure. And if you have other questions, feel free to reach out. Lydia can get you in touch with us. We can answer any other questions y'all might have, or that might come up afterwards. Great. Thank you. Take care. Take care. Bye. Thank you both. Yep, bye. You're welcome. Bye. Okay, so I think there were no more ECAC member updates. Any more updates? If not, let's go ahead and open the floor for attendee questions or comments. Any questions or comments coming from the... Oh, kitty cat. If not, I think the only thing left is a move to adjourn. Is there a move to adjourn and go celebrate Valentine's Day? I can move to adjourn. The first draft of that question was why are not all cars electric? Oh, that's a very good question. More of a philosophical... Historical question. They should have been electric from the start 100 years ago. Well, they were. I think they were. Yeah, they were. Yeah. Yeah. But batteries weren't very good back then. Well, and Dwayne, as I'm sure you know, the marketing and public opinion was... There was a whole system of battery exchange in New York City at the turn of the century, and then those were deemed weak and cars for women. And that was the whole marketing campaign. And if your car had to be loud and belching fumes, otherwise you weren't a man. So there's an incredible... Yeah, there's an incredible history there of misinformation, as there is for most aspects of our life that we take for granted. That's a topic for our next webinar, which you will be giving. I'm paraphrasing a professor from Mount Holyoke College. Probably do a better job than me. All right. But with that, we have a move to adjourn. We have a second. I will move to adjourn. Second. I don't think we need to vote for this. Give it a time. If you can just adjourn. All right, then. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Don't forget...