 Thank you everyone for coming. I'm Nick Persampieri. I live in Burlington's Old North End. And I've worked on climate and air pollution issues in the government and nonprofit sectors for many years. And I want to share with you my concerns about ballot question number two. Ballot question number two asks Burlington voters to allow the city council to impose a so-called carbon pollution impact fee on fossil fuel heating systems for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The fee would be imposed on fossil fuel heating systems that are installed in new buildings, as well as fossil fuel heating systems that are installed in large existing commercial and industrial buildings when those buildings replace their existing heating systems. The ballot question specifically says that the fee will be imposed on fossil fuel heating systems, but not on renewable heating systems. However, the ballot question gives voters no indication whatsoever as to what the city considers to be renewable types of heating systems. So we're really concerned because when you read the question, I mean, it sounds like a great thing. You know, who doesn't want to impose a fee on fossil fuel heating systems for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Sounds great, doesn't it? The problem is the city defines renewable systems, which will not be subject to the fee to include heat generated from three different types of carbon intensive polluting fuels. First, biomass, they consider that to be renewable. And there are two types, two different primary types of biomass burning to generate fuel that will not be subject to the fee. Number one, there's fuel, there's heat that will be generated from the McNeil district energy station from burning wood. What they're planning to do, as some of you may know, is they're planning to retrofit the McNeil plant, which burns mostly wood. They're planning to retrofit that plant to coalesce steam, send the steam by pipe and large users, including first the University of Vermont Medical Center, and eventually the Interveil Center and possibly the UVM campus. So they're burning wood to generate steam to supply heat to those large users. That would not be subject to the fee. The other type of biomass burning that would not be subject to the fee would be wood and pellet stoves in people's homes. And again, like burning wood in McNeil, that generates more carbon dioxide emissions than burning coal. And in addition, it's a very bad idea to be incentivizing wood and pellet stoves in a city like Burlington from a public health standpoint. The American Lung Association recommends that people try to avoid using wood to heat their homes because of the emissions of particulate matter and other hazardous air pollutants. And if you are going to use pellets to heat your home, you need to make sure that you have a new system that meets EPA's most recent upgraded standards for particulate matter. But those standards have shown to not be protective. So the fee will not apply to biomass. The fee will also not apply to renewable natural gas. I should say so-called renewable natural gas. How many people know what renewable natural gas is? Just a show of hands. A few of you do, but some of you don't, so I think I probably ought to tell you what it is. Renewable natural gas is essentially the same thing as natural gas. It's methane. When you burn it, it emits CO2, just like when you burn natural gas, it emits CO2. But renewable natural gas, rather than being taken out of the ground, is generated by landfills. When organic matter decomposes in a landfill, it generates methane. And landfills are required by federal law to collect their methane. So that's mostly what renewable gas is. It also includes methane collected from bio-digesters at farms and from wastewater treatment facilities. Again, these are not this is not a climate solution. And finally, the fee would not apply to biofuels, which are also not a climate solution. The problem is that by imposing a fee on fossil fuel heating systems, but not on these three types of carbon intensive, so-called renewable energy, you're incentivizing those carbon intensive renewable types of energy. Which are actually worse than just using fossil fuels. So for that reason, we ask you to vote no on question two. If question two passes, it would authorize the city to pass an ordinance to put the fee into place. And so if that happens, our group would fight at the ordinance stage to try to prevent that from happening. But the problem is we wouldn't be able to easily fix the fee when they're developing the ordinance. We couldn't fix it by adding those carbon intensive types of renewables to the fee. Because the charter change legislation that allows the city to regulate thermal heating requires that any fee that's going to be assessed be approved by voters. And so if voters approve the fee on fossil fuels, the city's authority is limited to imposing a fee on fossil fuels. If we wanted to expand the fee to also apply to these dirty so-called renewables, that would have to go back out to voters. So that would not be an easy fix. Finally, I just wanted to say a couple things about the McNeil plant. Number one, this fee is definitely designed to incentivize and improve the economics of the proposed district heating system. Back in 2018, our mayor spoke in support of a different carbon impact fee. This was a proposal for a statewide impact fee. And he was quoted as saying, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but he was quoted as saying a statewide carbon impact fee would make the economics of the McNeil district heating system a slam dunk. So that's what's going on here. There have been efforts over the years to build the district heating system and they failed because they're not economically viable. This is a last ditch attempt to make that project work. And finally, I just wanted to note that Burlington Electric and other parts of the city have been engaging in the same types of greenwashing that was depicted in this film. Burlington Electric justifies the district heating plan based on a memorandum prepared by VEIC. That memorandum concludes that going to district heating would reduce greenhouse gas emissions relative to using natural gas. I think it was 75 or 85 percent. I think it was 85 percent. And they reached that conclusion by not considering at all the emissions that come out of the stack. They count what the so-called biogenic emissions as zero. And with that, I guess I'll turn it over to the next speaker. Well, yeah. Well, I'm not sure I could give you the math you're asking for, but we agree that that methane ought to be captured from the landfills and not allowed to go off into the atmosphere. In fact, federal law requires that landfills of any size collect that. They're extensive regulations governing landfill gas collection systems. And, you know, that methane is used. It's more efficient to use it locally near the source rather than put it in the district pipeline for use in the district city. But we don't see any reason to incentivize that. It's not a climate solution. So I hope that answers your question. Yeah. I could speak just a tiny bit to that, too, is that there's every study you see about renewable natural gas says you should burn it at the site. And the moment you try to transport it, it's a disaster for the climate. There's tons of fugitive emissions from pipelines and processing, et cetera. So if you're going to do anything with it, you should burn it right there rather than the contract that VGS has with Seneca Meadows landfill in New York, it would have to go over a thousand miles to get to Vermont. And that's a whole rabbit hole we don't need to get deep into, but. And let me just add one other thing. Go ahead. When the gas is collected at the farm or at the landfill, it's called biogas and it's unrefined to some extent. And you can use it, but if you want to put it in a pipeline, you get to process it. And the processing consumes a lot of energy and waste resources. That's the step that you shouldn't bother with. Just do something with it at the site. And one other thing I wanted to add, just going back to the film, you know, they mentioned that burning wood puts more CO2 into the air per unit of energy produced and burning any fossil fuel, including coal. Trees, if they're allowed to regrow, do absorb some of the carbon dioxide, but it takes a very, very, very long time. A meta-analysis, so you start out with a carbon debt relative to gas if you burn wood. And a meta-analysis of 245 different case studies included that if you're burning whole trees, it takes an average of 74 years to repay that carbon debt. And that just gets you back to the carbon impact of gas. Right, right. That's the... That's correct, because larger, older trees, you know, take up more carbon at the new trees that replace them after the forest is cut. Are there any other questions? We have an audience mic for you. On average, how many acres of trees does that McNeil plant burn a day? How many acres of trees? Like in 24 hours? Does anyone know? I honestly don't know. Yeah, I was going to say at full load, it burns 76 tons of wood an hour, which is equivalent to about 30 quarts. And Berlin was saying they burn 113 tons, I believe, and that's equivalent to an acre of New Hampshire forest. So there's some math to be done. Could you clarify, I'm just trying to grab my head around, 74 years to do what? I mean, there is lost sequestration and there's carbon emitted by the burning. So what is that 74 years actually take us to? It takes you... So to get back to zero, it takes 74 to get back... It takes 74 years to get back to the carbon impact of burning natural gas. If you burn wood, you emit, I think it's close to twice as much carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced compared to gas. So there's a carbon debt there and after 74 years, that carbon debt is erased. So at 74 years, we'd be back to zero? Yeah. That would be the cycle. 74 years cycle. Yeah. Yeah, and that assumes that the trees are allowed to regrow. There isn't the land use change. The trees aren't blighted by some pest or a fire. But how do you get back the carbon that's not sequestered by felling that tree? You could ever get that back. Right. But still, at 74 years, that tree is growing. It's a bigger tree. There's breastry more carbon. So I don't see how you ever get it back. No, right. Right. That's what I'm thinking. You never catch up. If we were to cut down all the trees in the country, we would generate enough power to power this country for one year. Period. I mean, I think that just kind of says it all, doesn't it? And one last thing I wanted to emphasize about the carbon impact fee in case I didn't make it clear, you know, by not impose by imposing the fee on fossil fuel heating systems, but not on these carbon intensive renewables, you're incentivizing those carbon intensive renewables. You're making it more likely that someone who's making a decision about what type of heating system to install is going to choose one of those carbon intensive renewables. And that's the fundamental problem with question two. I think we have a question from Jake, too. Yeah, I was just curious about what folks have been saying about the economics of district heating for UVM. Can you speak to that math? Because I'm confused about the economics. First, why does it have to be economically viable if we want to do the right thing? I'm not saying, I'm not advocating that this is the right thing. I'm just saying, if we want to do the right thing for the planet, then why does it have to be economically viable? The University of Vermont can write that into their policies, no, in making decisions. And do we not value degradation of the planet as financially costly? We have to pay for that at some point, right? So can you just speak to the arithmetic piece? I accept that that's the way they think. My mom is not the big thing. It's the economics that are the big thing. Yeah, my mom calls that a Schumann argument where we're agreeing, but we're arguing about it. Yeah, exactly. I think we agree. Okay, thanks. At our NPA, Jennifer Green from the EV came and was selling it. And I asked about like this pipe, it's going to cost $45 million to pipe the steam up to the medical center on the University. And I said, that doesn't make sense. Like, why are you piping it so far? I mean, my understanding was this was steam that was just going up in the air, and we're going to be using it, capturing it. And, you know, instead of just wasting it, and I said, why not just use it in the neighborhood right next door? You know what I mean? Instead of piping it a couple miles, and she said it was economics. UVM and the medical center can pay for that piping, but BEV can't provide the piping to put the electricity or the steam into like, you know, the Old North End, which is right next door. So I don't know. That's what she told me. Again, they've chosen it. They could do a lot of what they've chosen to do. So I just want to clarify that going forward, McNeil plant would actually be better than if we just burn natural gas than what we're doing now. In terms of A, B, or C, A was what we're doing now. C would be to all of us live with less carbon imprint. But B, in between there, McNeil would be better if we burnt gas because we wouldn't be cutting down trees, and those trees would continue to absorb carbon, correct? And we would be saving our land and we'd be honest about what we're doing, which is we're putting carbon in the atmosphere, and if we burn natural gas, we have to admit it. So in a sense, what we're saying is it would be better if we went back to natural gas at McNeil. Oh, of course. Of course. Yeah. Yeah, I know. So it's kind of a weird thing we're talking about, but because I don't want to go back to burning natural gas, but I also don't want to be cutting down trees that are actually actively absorbing carbon and then polluting with those trees. I mean, it just doesn't make sense. So I think we'll try, Nick, do you have a brief response? And then we'll try. I just wanted the space speaking for myself. I agree with you. You know, I mean, I think we need to be working towards the phase out of McNeil now, and if it does need to operate for some short period of time, they ought to be burning gas. Okay. I agree with you. And I'll. That the Global Warming Solutions Act does not have a cost factor. You don't have to justify a pathway because of economic sense. It's all related to climate and not economics. Thank you. I think we need to move on to the next speaker. Yeah, we'll keep it moving on to Steve, and I think a lot of these questions will probably come back up. Hold it. I'll take a light. Yeah. I don't know how much of this I'll actually read, but just that one. Yeah, there we go. I'm Steve Goodkind. I am the happily retired former public works director and city engineer for the city of Burlington. And I've tried to think about to keep what I'm going to say simple and focus. I thought the movie was pretty good. Both movies were pretty good. The statistics they have there. I'm just going to sort of go back through some stuff that without having seen the movie, I have the same kind of stuff, but I'll keep it short. Just think about, talk about how the climate change act or whatever it is doesn't have anything to do with economics. You'll find there's no shortage of hypocrisy at every political level in this country and state when it comes to how we're approaching climate change. Burlington in 2019 adopted a climate emergency act. It says we'll be net carbon neutral by 2050. And I'll go through when some of the stuff comes actually from the movie also that it's not possible. It's just that it's a fraud what they're doing. And we might be better off to do something different almost anything different. It turns out the McNeil plant. You saw it even 12 years ago and they made that second clip burns 400,000 tons of wood a year. And the state of Vermont put together a spreadsheet because they don't report this. They put together a spreadsheet on how much CO2 they thought the plant would produce. And what they did was they, it's a long spreadsheet, lots of different calculations that depends on the type of wood, the facility. And this spreadsheet was specific to McNeil plant. Anyway, after this long spreadsheet you go through all these calculations what it turns out is for every pound of wood you burn at McNeil you get a pound of CO2. So when you see 400,000 tons of wood are burned 400,000 tons of CO2 were created. And it's a one-to-one ratio. So if the future of McNeil burns more wood it's easy to figure out how much it is. But you'll find that wherever you look, look the internet, scour it, you will not find anywhere where BD CO2 production is found, stated. They never talk about it. They never mention it. They do make a brief reference to tons of wood being burned 400 tons a year, 76 tons an hour when it actually operates doesn't operate full time. But it's 400,000 plus and almost anything the city is planning on doing to convert fossil fuels to electricity and have electric vehicles and to use waste heat it all involves McNeil. That is our one source of power that we really control and it's useful at anything increase. So when you say it's 400 tons a year in 2023, 10 years from now it's going to be more than that. There is an upside limit. I think they're allowed to have 731,000 tons a year. That's as big as it can get. So they're not close to that. But you can see a lot more out of McNeil in the future than you're seeing now. When you talk about the source of the fuel and they like to say they're using the tops of the trees that junk them whatever. But the truth is if there wasn't logging going on they'd have no fuel. So they can't, they're not really separated from that. It's just a flip side of the same coin where they're taking the whole trees are part of it. They rely on lots of forest destruction to get their fuel and there's no doubt about it. And again, you can say it's just the tops but there'll be no tops without the bottoms. And I don't know if it's better if they take whole trees or do what they're doing. But to create all that little stuff off the top takes a lot more logging to be done than if you just log the whole tree ironically. So I don't think it's a better way to go. It's probably a worse way to go but they're both bad. Because I think the film has said and Nick said it, burning wood is worse than any fossil fuel worse than coal just is. And burning wood in your home sometimes that isn't so bad. But the McNeil plant when it burns wood it's about 27% efficient. So even of all the wood that goes in there, 27% of it is useful. The rest of it is just wasted. The waste heat project is trying to capture a little of that. But basically, an industrial facility of burns wood is about the most wasteful thing you can do. And you do the burn wood at home if you have a good wood. So if you might get 80 or 90% of the heat out of it, this thing gets a third of that maybe. So it's not even a good idea to burn wood industrial plant. But if you think about trees and they mentioned 74 years, I think in Vermont it's more like 80 years, roughly for a tree to grow back to maturity. That's just to absorb the carbon when the tree was cut down that was removed. Then you might have to actually theoretically go another 80 years to catch up with what you missed. But if you look at it, trees grow, if you're any kind of a math person, you know what exponential growth would be, it grows slowly, then it grows faster and faster and faster until it gets to maturity. So a young tree in its first years of growth doesn't grow as fast, doesn't create as much new mass as a large tree. And the same thing with this carbon uptake. The old trees do the work, the new trees do much less. Forget about exponents for a minute, though. Assume a tree grows, and this is giving them a lot of credit. Tree grows in a straight line. The little tree just keeps growing the same rate up and up. If you just took a straight line growth rate and you took how many the trees that are cut down today through 2050, that's the year we've declared our carbon emergency, we're going to be carbon neutral. You took those trees and you measured the average tree, how much it would have grown back in 27 years, it's about 15%. So it doesn't grow in this early, that's that's what the average trees, some trees will have grown more, some will let some less, the ones that are cut closer to 2050 will grow less, the ones cut today will grow a little more. But the average tree or an average grove of trees goes back about 15%, not even close to being renewed by our carbon emergency deadline. And in that same time, the McNeil plant, if it doesn't increase its output an ounce from what is today will produce 10,800,000 tons of CO2. So it's not, the equation is not even close as far as what you're taking out, what you're losing, you're not only burning the trees as this gentleman mentions, you've lost something which is already doing the work. So you're taking the tree out of service, even it grows back in 80 years, you still lost 80 years of service of it doing its job at full capacity, mature trees do the work. McNeil and the people that run it have tried to make arguments with the state recently that little trees grow faster than big trees. And that is okay, the little trees are really doing the work, they're confusing what's called acceleration and velocity, a big tree has velocity, it's moving along, chugging along, sucking up carbon. A little tree starts at nothing and it does increase its ability to grow. So its acceleration is faster, but it's not ever reaching the speed of a big tree until it's about 80 years old. So they'll do anything to confuse, anything to make it seem like it's okay what they're doing, but it's not. And just because the loggers are cutting the trees and some of them are used for other purposes in the lumber industry, those trees are being cut and that's the only way we get fuel. And I don't know if you stopped the lumber industry, but they shouldn't be confusing like they're okay. If there wasn't the trees being cut, there'd be no fuel for them. And that has a big impact. Another thing that McNeil does, because it's renewable, you can sell what's called renewable energy credits. And that means that they can sell their credits to someone else who has a dirty fuel or fossil fuel, and they can get some kind of credit and greenwash their dirty fuel usage. So you got a dirty fuel, kind of greenwashing another dirty fuel. And if you took McNeil and really wanted to look at his footprint, and by the way you saw it in the film, I think someone else said it here, they don't count one ounce of CO2 produced from this biogenetic wood, not an ounce. They don't report it at all. When they reported in 2021 that the city's footprint from transportation and energy uses was 188,000 tons of CO2 per year. That's what we generated from those uses. That didn't include one ounce from McNeil. The true number is about 400,000 tons more than that. But that's how they operate. To them it's okay. They're just giving this number a lower number doesn't include McNeil. They've met their goal, they think. Mother nature doesn't know that. The climate doesn't know it, but that's the way they operate. It's not just them. You saw it in the film here. That's the way this industry operates. The biogenetic fuel doesn't count like it never even happened. And if you look 100 years from now, and even then it doesn't work, you might say, okay, over 100 years it was neutral. But it's not going to be neutral by 2050 or anytime soon. It just can't be. So if you take McNeil though, and you want to look at it the right way, you can look at it and say, okay, how much CO2 does it produce? They say zero. Or they say a little bit because it does have some fossil fuel that helps ignite the wood. So it's a tiny bit. But basically zero. They say that their renewable cycle means that everything is netted out. But again, in the one little example I even use, the renewable cycle is very slow compared to what we're putting out. It's never really going to catch up, in fact, as long as McNeil runs, it can't catch up. And you include the impact of selling these renewable energy credits, which means others are burning their dirty fuels because we're burning it. And you put that all together, McNeil and probably most of the other fossil and the wood burning plants like that show on the map, I didn't realize it was so many, they're the worst fuel. They are the absolute worst. We would be better burning coal. And I'm not saying I want to advocate for it, but coal and natural gas look real good for the short term compared to these wood plants. And then, and I'll finish up with this, if you look at the, both the district energy plan, but especially the carbon tax plan, both those plans do nothing to lower McNeil's CO2 output, not by one tiny little ounce. They do nothing. In fact, they rely on McNeil's increased use and McNeil's increased output of CO2. So it looks like a sheep and wolf's clothing. These things look good. I mean, who doesn't want to tax dirty old carbon in the future? And who doesn't want to have district heating? Well, yeah, but if you're going to use this plant, you're never going to meet energy goals. And we really just got to, we really have our heads in the sand. It's just, you don't know what else you can say about it. And one thing we got to think about, and maybe we're one way lucky, in this city, we may be able to, if enough pressure is applied, shut this plant down. We can't control the other plants that are all over that map here. But this thing is, you know, a mile away, sitting over there, we're part owner of it. And if enough pressure, we probably could phase it out and get rid of it. So that's a little bit of luck in a way. There's so many of these things, I don't know that it matters that much in the end, but it should be, it should be closed, should be phased out. And anything you see that comes from the city, especially from McNeil plant, you mentioned, say Jennifer Green, she's one of what I call the Magnificent Six. They were out whenever there's trouble and the plant is challenged. The Magnificent Six gather an issue, a statement as they did recently showing how good the plant is. And they'll come up with all kinds of reasons. But they'll never, they'll never talk about how much CO2 that plant puts out. They'll talk about jobs. They'll talk about electricity rates. They'll never talk about how much CO2 that plant puts out. But remember, it's one on one. So if you see tons of wood, it's tons of CO2. I said more than I wanted to, thanks. Do we have any specific questions around that, or we can keep it moving in respect to everybody here? I'm just curious about the political process that got this on the ballot. And who, I mean, who was paid off? I think both of these, well, the one on the ballot is BED puts out on the ballot. They're originated from them, went to the city council, city council, and you have to put it on the ballot, everyone. Which city councilors, please? I'd love to hear the name. Say again. Unanimous. A unanimous vote. This is not on by petition. And you could have gotten something like this on the ballot by petition, but this went through the normal process where it's vetted in the city council, and they eventually say it should be on the ballot. And it is on the ballot. And they're in love with it. Oh yeah, they're really quickly. One thing to remember is optics is a big thing with all these politicians. This is all about the optics. They want to look like they're dealing with the climate. They don't care what, they don't care that they're using zero for the CO2 emissions from McNeil. They want to just be able to say, we look at us, we're fossil free and look at how good we are. It's all the optics. What really is happening, somehow they just are able to zone that out. Just real quick one follow up. Were there hearings where they heard the information that you're giving us right now? There were, well, there was something. I don't know how much they heard, but there was something. Yeah. This was, I don't remember the exact date. January 12th or something like that. Yeah. We spoke in opposition. I made a detailed written submission. They voted unanimously in favor of it. Gene Bergman did say that he acknowledged that biomass was a worldwide problem and that the city might have to revisit it in the future. That's what he said, but he voted for it too. They're waiting for the science is what some of them said. They're waiting for the science. I gave them the science. I mean, I gave them copies of studies. They just ignore it. I just want to say one thing. It's just another version of a big lie. I mean, that's all it is. It's a big lie. Yeah. Yeah. I heard Gene. So Gene lives right across the street from the McNeil plant. Pretty basically, you know, and I heard him ask Jennifer Green and different people. He said, I need the facts. I need to tell my neighbors, like, what is this doing to us? You know, I don't think he ever got me. I think he was part of, he got the sales pitch. I'm surprised he fell for it because he does know that. If you want to get an idea of how BD goes about disseminating their information about the plant, on their website, they have a section about McNeil and they have a part where they've got six, what they call myths and they're going to, and in this website, they show the facts behind the myth. So the way it goes is the myth is stated and then they give the facts. One of the myths, my very favorite was, was you can see pollution coming out of the McNeil plant. That's the myth. The fact is, this is what their answer was. No, you're seeing steam. That's their answer. That's, and it doesn't get any better than that. Instead of saying, well, you're seeing steam, but most of the pollution you can't see, that would be an honest answer. Instead, it's you're seeing steam. Don't worry about it. That's the people you're dealing with. Well, you can do all kinds of things. They're just, they took it very literally. You can't see the CO2. So the answer is, you can always see steam. You don't want to know any more about it to you. That's their answer. You're probably cat, but they're not going to tell you that. They're just going to tell you're seeing steam. Don't worry. All right. I think we'll keep the conversation moving on to Peter. Peter, I think you have slides so we can, if you don't, you can move the table a little off to the side. I'm Peter DuVal. I, with Dermot McGuigan, I wrote the pre-feasibility report for low-temperature district energy system based on McNeil in 1992. So when people talk about district energy, that's what they, that's what they mean. And it was the right thing at the right time. Proposed steam pipe to the hospital, that's not district energy. And it's the wrong thing at the wrong time. And it would be very expensive. It's the current latest estimate was $24 million. I don't think, I don't think any of the users would pay, pay for that. That's, can you hear me? Yeah, okay. I'll, I'll try to speak up. The McNeil generate, are you just, okay, we'll just, just, you can catch up with, with the slides. There's not that many of them. So the McNeil generating station is a 50 megawatt net green wood chip plant. It operates at a capacity factor somewhere in the 50% range, 50 to 60%, which is typical for the biomass plant. And it is the 400,000 short tons of green wood chips going into that plant. And you saw that in Viva processing plant in the movie, I think that said it was like 750,000 tons. I'm not sure if that was with the green, green logs or the finished pellets, but either way, you can see that McNeil would consume maybe half of that plant's output. So McNeil is a big, big plant. It's, it's twice the size of what BED needed at the time the plant was built. And they just wanted to build it bigger because of economies of scale. And they had some other owners that they could rope into this. So that's why it's so big. And it's so expensive to operate because it has this huge wood shed around it that it has to draw from. It's, it's burned natural gas in the past, and it could burn oils. And it could burn coal, even the one of the permits I looked at mentioned that it could burn coal. So it's basically a coal plant that burns green wood chips. And it's true that it's not efficient. And the reason it's not efficient is because they're trying to burn green wood chips, which are 45% moisture content. That's about half water. And I'm sure you guys have all operated wood stoves. No self-respecting vermoner would put green wood in the wood stove, right? So the wood needs to be seasoned. It's not seasoned. And it'll never happen at McNeil, which was, you know, conceived in the 70s, based on work done by the Moran plant. And the Moran plant was a three boiler coal plant on the waterfront. You might remember it. And now it's turned into a frame. The plant operators did a homemade conversion after the OPEC oil crisis. You can see there's wood chips on the right side pile and coal on the left side pile. They just made something up and got the wood to burn inside the coal boilers, which wasn't that hard, I guess. And based on that success, the McNeil plant was conceived. And the whole point of this is to reduce exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices. It wasn't to make, you know, green energy. It's all about the price of the fuel. And of course, at the time, Vermont's forests were growing back from having been cut down for the sheep craze and the large dairy operations that were happening in the 1800s and early 1900s. So foresters being foresters, they wanted to clean up the woods and they thought they had a lot of potential fuel in Vermont. But it turns out, you know, in 2019, McNeil spent $9.4 million on wood chips. And $5.4 million of that was spent on imported wood chips from outside of the state. So that's about 57% imported wood chips. It's an expensive plant to run. So this is a basic configuration for nuclear power plant, coal plant, wood chip plant. You burn the fuel, you boil the water, make steam, run it through a turbine, and cool it on the other side of the turbine to condense the steam to water and run it back through the system again and again and again. And most of the heat comes out in the condenser where it's cooling off the steam. It's low temperature, but that's where the bulk of the BTUs or the jewels go. In the early years, McNeil plant barely ran because it was so expensive to run. Recently, it's run more, but it's not because it's cheaper to run. It's because of the greenhouse gas accounting problem that you saw discussed so well in the film. McNeil gets 35% of its revenue by selling the renewable energy certificates. These wrecks are what make the plant run. And you got the whole message about how biomass emissions are supposed to be accounted for at the land use change level when the trees are cut down. So that's not happening, of course. But McNeil's non-tangible renewable energy certificates, they're valuable and they're sold in the renewable energy certificate market. McNeil's really proud to say that these are Connecticut class one renewable energy certificates. And that doesn't mean it's better than class two. It just means it's a different category of certificate. It just sounds nice. You've all heard about carbon offset schemes. This is just a carbon offset scheme. It's just a little bit better than schemes where they're planting trees on another continent. It's a little bit more controlled and a little bit stricter accounting. But it's still it's based on this lie that burning biomass is carbon neutral and therefore zero emission. Yet those two ideas are kind of conflated when talking about biomass. So this is just to show you where the wood comes from. Not a lot of money spent in Vermont on wood like $25,000 in Orleans County. Now that's closer to the Ryegate plant. So Ryegate was probably buying chips in Orleans County. But even 1.2, 1.3 million dollars in Chittenden County, that's not a lot of money. Most of the money is going out of state for the wood chips. Okay, so we know that McNeil's a coal plant that burns wood chips and the wood chips are very wet. So it makes it very inefficient and it's just a simple boiler that runs a simple turbine. And there's a lot of heat wasted and it goes up the stack and it goes up out the cooling tower. So let's just go back to the Rex live just for a moment. So what happens is this is on the left side. Those are the it's not going to get any sharper. It's just small. It's just a pie that shows you that those are the resources that McNeil gets from its capacity. It has wood chip plant capacity. It has large hydro capacity that's purchased and all VED. Yeah, yeah, sorry. And this big wood pie slice here, that's McNeil. But then they do this rec market arbitrage. They sell the certificates that other state utilities will buy and then they go get wrecks from someplace that is maybe not quite as sophisticated or acceptable to the to the southern New England states. And that's why all of a sudden you get this cabinet plant that's providing the bulk of the wrecks for VED to claim that it's a 100% renewable utility. And I'd really like to learn more about that contract because I don't quite understand why it's making up such a big portion of the renewable claim. So yeah, let's move along. So you get this turbine at the plant. It's run on steam. And the plan for the steam pipe is to parasitically take steam off the turbine or maybe out of the boiler. I'm not quite sure what they're planning. But either way, it reduces the output of the plant and or increases the amount of fuel that's being burned in the boiler. And that's a hit, you know, that's that costs money and it costs generating capacity and all that. And then they're going to take this really hot high pressure steam, stick it in a pipe that has to be steel and welded and has to, you know, it's an expensive thing and run this pipe, you know, right up past past the Friends Meeting House here on North Prospect Street. It's going to be a 25, I'm not 25, 20 foot wide ditch that are affected area when they put this in and then get it up to the hospital. And the hospital is the main customer. Everything else is maybe. So it's probably a go if the hospital agrees to this. And then the other customers, well, they're just they're not likely to do it. I think it's it's really just the hospital that has this interest in the steam. Just a question, is UVM promoting this pipe to be built? And is that something that they're trying to have it pass? Or is it just they're just waiting to see what happens and then they'll make a move after that? Yeah, I'd say. But that's what they're but that's what they're looking forward to. So my question is, is anybody at UVM like promoting this or making putting their hands into this? So so this could pass. And eventually this pipe will be built. It's actually Neil Lunderville who's masterminding this whole thing. He's the one who's interested in that getting the steam up to UVM and and yeah, and in the hospital. And he's the one who's interested in having the the clean heat credits that are being that would be created. This whole system of clean heat credits that that is in the humongous S five bill that's just come out of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, yeah. I don't know the specifics but UVM Medical Center has entered into some type of business arrangement with the city governing this. I mean, I wouldn't say it's a firm contract, but it's some kind of memorandum of understanding or I mean, so they're but I'm not suggesting that they're promoting the ballot question. But you know, they've been talking to Burlington Electric about this. You know, when the plant was built, it was built with the oversized boiler. And with the turn with the turbine system that designed to have steam extracted from it at several points. They did try to market the steam to UVM and the hospital in 1983. And it was a long time ago. I know, right? This is an ancient plant. Okay. And that was all rejected because it's too expensive. And it doesn't make any sense. And it would, you know, it's really hot material being trying, they want to try to transmit it over a mile, losing heat all the way to get to the hospital. And why the hospital needs so much steam is just legacy. It's sticking with really old technology is you don't need steam to heat a well insulated building. These days, yeah, yeah, well, this is the 21st century. So the thing to do is to build buildings that are generating, creating more energy than they need energy plus buildings. That's, that's what we should have right now. So, all right. So that's yeah. Anything else? Any last bits to add about it? I just want to say that district energy, we knew about this in 1992. Okay. In the plan that we wrote, we were ready for low temperature system. And we knew that biomass is not renewable. I was part of the 5611 negotiation for Vermont environmental externalities rule. And that was not adopted, but it was negotiated for quite a long time. And biomass was excluded from the renewables list. Because we knew all the stuff that was explained in the movie. This is a business risk. That's the other thing. In the movie, there was one moment where one of the guys said, this is a risk that the companies should be aware of that when and as soon as the subsidies go away, the industry is going to disappear. Okay. What's happening now is doubling down on an industry that's about to collapse. And Berlin can't afford to do that and put that on its citizens. And the other thing to watch out for is the plant exists in the New England electrical system. There was electricity before the plant existed. And there will be electricity when the plant disappears. And it's off half the time anyway. So don't listen to any threats about how you have to have the plant. And if it goes away, there's not any power. Awesome. I just want to make two more things. The PUC can revoke the certificate of public good. And then the plant stops operating. This is not some kind of long negotiation thing. If the PUC decides the plant needs to shut down, it can shut down. And lane insurance memo that's been mentioned. The stuff I would say about it can't be printed in the New York Times. It's just not a good memo. Sorry. Maybe we'll have Ashley and Pike. You can facilitate a brief Q&A if you want. And we'll can start with Steve and then we'll finish up with some action items. But one of the problems with... Yeah. You may know the answer. But one of the problems, of course, with any of these commitments, if they build the pipe, they're going to want to know they're going to get steamed for 20, 30 years or whatever. Right? And that means McNeil would have to always have the excuse, well, we got to keep running because we have a legal commitment and we'll be subject to some big fine or lawsuit if we ever try and stop the plant. So that's the insidious thing about this. If they build the steam pipe and invest, say, $42 million to build it, they're going to want to guarantee that McNeil is going to provide steam. McNeil will want to give them that guarantee, but I think we want them to not give that guarantee and to stop the thing. But this is just the Trojan horse to get in there and then have this as another excuse, possibly along with the carbon tax, while McNeil has to continue to run. It's out of their hands. We're committed now. We can't stop. That's what they're that's what they're angling for. Find reasons to keep McNeil going when it's outlived. You stated what its real purpose was. It's outlived its real purpose. It should be shutting down by now. There are a lot of people who benefit financially from the continued operation of the McNeil plant. And especially with these clean heat credits come into existence and they can be generated that are created at the McNeil plant. I think we can hand the mic off to Ashley or Pike. If anybody else has any other questions, they can kind of facilitate that. Any other questions or thoughts? And then great. Outside there's a sign up sheet. If folks are interested and want some more information, please sign up. I have a link to an EPA site that can provide you with the carbon emissions and nitrous oxide emissions etc for McNeil for any given year I think from 1990 on up. So if you want to verify some of these numbers like in 2021, 456,000 tons of carbon dioxide was emitted for McNeil, I can provide you with the link to the EPA site and you can look it up. I also have copies of the contracts, dozens of contracts with the loggers and lumber yard in New York state and in Vermont that details whole tree chips so you've heard that they use residue. Residue is a term of art in the logging industry. It means the trees that are not valuable enough to go for lumber or veneer or other high value processes. Sometimes the residues are actually remained but with the contracts in place the McNeil contracts that those residues the wastewood as they call them are cut and then burned. If people want to see the contracts, if people want to see the Burlington Electric Department harvesting guidelines, I can send those to you again just sign up and put an asterisk by your name saying yes I'd like to see this information and I can pass that along. Any other questions that folks might have? I've heard about the telephone gap with the the logging around that project and doing some actions around that. Is that at all connected to the lumber that's being used in these facilities like McNeil? Some of us are connected with people like the organization Standing Trees who is trying to stop the telephone gap which for folks who don't know the U.S. Forest Service wants to cut about 11,000 acres in the national forest you know in southern Vermont. 11,000 acres of forest. Probably some of that will get burned at McNeil but I don't know if there's any direct correlation. It has been calculated how much of wood how much CO2 is sequestered down there and would be lost. I don't have that number in this brain of mine right now but it's quite a bit. And Catherine here is can probably pass around in a moment postcards to send to the head ranger of the Green Mountain National Forest lodging a comment about telephone gap in the comment periods open till March 13th so that's just another not directly related action that we're keeping a close eye on. Working hard to help protect public forests. These are our forests. You know I have a hard time not crying when I hear 12,000 acres of our forest might be cut down. It's chilling. It's chilling to me so we've been working closely with Standing Trees and early I wanted to just bring your attention to this what I thought was a very impactful bit of information that the director of Standing Trees that quarter shared with us earlier today and it really puts in context what 453,000 tons of CO2 each year means. So so what does that mean you know what is what are some how do you connect that to your to our daily lives so I just wanted to share a few and you can look at this on your way out. 88,640 gasoline powered passenger vehicles driven for one year or 1 trillion 21 million 134,167 miles driven 46,290,288 gallons of gasoline consumed this is just one year of McNeil yeah it's incredible 51,819 homes energy use for one year and on and on and I also wanted to just point out you know Pike mentioned the contracts the overarching problem here is greenwashing we've all been heavily greenwashed and duped for years by Burlington Electric and leaders in Burlington and it really makes me angry we're getting to the bottom of it and it's been a real eye-opener we'll be posting contracts logging contracts to our website so if you sign up you'll be able to look at them and it is primarily whole trees that are being burned they can call them residues that is a forestry term that most of us aren't familiar with because we're not in the forest industry necessarily so all of these terms need translating for the rest of us so that we can really fully understand what's going on as Steve mentioned Burlington Electric's website is not a reliable source of information I was duped by it and it again has been a real eye-opener and I also wanted to to just point out as well the transition at one point a decision was made I don't know I don't have the details of that decision however Burlington placed its climate future in the hands of our utility Burlington Electric and at that point the goal shifted from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to reducing fossil fuel use that is a fundamentally flawed and very dangerous position to take and what that means is that the mayor city council Burlington Electric can say we're meeting our climate goals because we're reducing the use of fossil fuels well meanwhile what they don't say is that greenhouse gas emissions are ever increasing there was a piece of information that Pike found that indicated I think it was in the IRP that indicated that if Burlington meets its net zero goals meaning electrify everything what that will mean is that emissions will go from that 453,000 tons per year to about a million tons per year this is not a climate solution so our goal is to get these false climate solutions out of our out of the plan and you know the first step that we've identified is saying no to item number two so I really would encourage you to to do that it's an uphill battle because as Nick pointed out you see that ballot item you read that ballot item and you want to say yes oh my gosh you want to say yes because it doesn't tell you what renewable means what Burlington considers to be renewable when I attended an mpa meeting recently a few weeks ago Aaron Paul entirely glossed over that item and did not explain the details and I think that's what's happening all over the city so please vote no please spread the word we really appreciate it and please sign up if you would like additional information and if you'd like to get involved we'd love to have you yes thank you thank you yes I agree as well proposition zero yeah do you want to come up and proposition zero would would put on in the city charter that residents can sign a referendum to be placed on the ballot so we would override city council and something like this where the vote was seven nothing I or whatever it was immediately the citizens can get involved and put a ballot on the have a ballot referendum and overturn it a more democratic more democratic yes yeah more community focused yes thank you that's item number eight on the ballot called prop zero okay yeah thank you all for coming yeah thanks so much I will finish up really quick to be respectful of everybody's time so just to orient toward what us at stop btv biomass are thinking for next steps vote no one question to tell your friends and we're going to be canvassing around town probably starting Wednesday when we get a big printing of half sheets to put near but not in people's mailboxes so if you sign if you put your email there you can put a note if you're interested in canvassing or we'll probably get in touch with the general email anyway and we're going to be doing that so if you'd like to go around your neighborhood or beyond and do some of that that would be most welcome and that's what we're going to be pushing until March 7th is that ballot initiative and then the other things we're keeping our eye on are like Catherine Pastor on those postcards and Ashley said is the telephone gap logging which is in depending on how you measure it the largest logging project ever in the Green Mountain National Forest and the comet period for that is open till March 13th standing trees is kind of leading the effort on that and then also we're keeping a good eye on the affordable heat act and that should be moving to not should but likely will be moving into the house before town meeting day so there'll be a whole new opportunity to get your voice heard and hopefully heated on that and another little piece of news coming up is on Wednesday we have we're we should be getting the results of a records request for all the harvest plans going to McNeil from the last three years so we should have a lot more information and then soon photos and on the ground examination of what where the trees are actually coming from and what that looks like but sign up if you want to help us canvas spread the word thanks