 a little bit. I don't want us to go so fast that we don't have enough time to hear important information from our witnesses. So working from the bottom of the schedule up with the tax acceptances, they might have to S55, we'll reschedule for tomorrow. And just looking at who is, who travels versus who's local. So, Chair, Mr. DeVall, I don't know if you can in ten minutes to learn your conversation. Rather reschedule. I think the thing that we're trying to, we're taking up weatherization and the reason you're the lead off witness is that there's a much larger context for the weatherization conversation. And I thought that you could help us establish that context and then help us understand what weatherization goals might look like. We have 10 VSA 581, but we also have other things like the Paris Accord, 90 by 2050. So is it 10 minute window, so ridiculously narrow that you can't work with it? I can help set the context in ten minutes. I think what I want to make sure is that people don't sort of dive into our current weatherization programs and not see the ability to get around it, nor that we need to know about all of the events that we're going to get involved. Do you want me to receive that in a minute? There's an electronic program, so anyone would like to follow along with the paper copy? I have those as well. So thanks for your possibility. Thank you Chairman, members of the committee. Glad to be with you. My name is Jerry Duvalli, I serve as the Executive Director of the Energy Action Network, which is a diverse network of nonprofits, businesses, fuel dealers, utilities, low-income advocacy groups, a very diverse composition across Vermont that works together to achieve Vermont's energy and emissions reduction commitments. That broad network of over 200 members and state partners is supported by a small backbone nonprofit organization that works with state partners who are in the room to track progress towards our total energy commitments as a state and our emissions reduction commitments. So what I was hoping to do today was just briefly review what those are and where we stand now in the role that weatherization plays in meeting them. So if you look at page three of the presentation, you're all familiar, I believe, with the 2016 Comprehensive Energy Plan, which sets our long-term goal of 90% renewable by 2050. Currently, Vermont stands as of the end of last year at 19% renewable overall, and it's important to remember that that's a total energy figure, so including electricity, transportation, and thermal. And each of those sectors have different shares of renewability. When we get to the emissions reduction commitments, the fastest approaching is what Governor Scott committed to, which was keeping the U.S. in the United States Climate Alliance with the Paris Climate Accord, which would require a 26 to 28% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2028. As of the most recent data from the Agency of Natural Resources emissions inventory, we are just 2% below 2005 greenhouse gas emissions levels. You can see on page five oftentimes we talk about these three sectors of our energy, economy, and energy use, as though they're relatively similar, but they have very different profiles when it comes to the amount of energy used, the amount of emissions they produce, and the energy burden that they put on Vermonters in terms of the bills we pay for energy. I won't get in depth into that, but if you're interested in comparing transportation, thermal, and electricity by use, emissions, and energy burden, that is on page five. So going directly to what you asked me to review, Chairman, about the different emissions goals and commitments that the state has set, there are many that we track. If you see on page six, there is a green dot that says 7.46. That refers to million metric tons, and that's the level we would have to get to over the next six years to meet Vermonters or Governor Scott's Paris commitment. There are, of course, other goals that have been set. There are the statutory goals, one of which had a 2012 deadline that has been passed, but there is the 50% reduction in emissions below 1990 levels by 2028, which you can see is the 4.3 dot on this. And then, of course, the Comprehensive Energy Plan and the statutory goals end up lining up more or less when you get out to 2050. But one of the things that we've found is that it's really difficult to look out that far into the future. And so we've tried to bring the horizon forward to 2025, the most recent commitments the state has made in terms of the Governor with the Paris Climate Commitment, and then also the first milestone of the Comprehensive Energy Plan is in 2025, 25% renewable. And so we have done analysis based on, I should say upfront, the Energy Action Network, because we have such a diversity of members, we do not take positions on specific bills or policies. We remain neutral and we serve as a neutral convener in an objective track of working with state partners of the data. So we focus less on policy and more on what are the proven and available technologies and best practices for reducing emissions and for keeping more of our energy dollars in state. If you look at page 11, this is our analysis that we call the path to Paris. It is not prescriptive, it is not, I should not say the path to Paris, it is a path to Paris that helps show the scale of emissions reduction that would be required across our energy sectors to achieve it. And you can see that the thermal sector in the middle of that chart added together is the largest single opportunity for emissions reduction in Vermont. If in addition to weatherization, we also look at what is sometimes called fuel switching or moving off of fossil fuels and towards heat pump water heaters, heat pump, co-climbing heat pump systems for heating and advanced wood heating systems, including both pellet boilers and efficient wood stoves. So I want to focus on the role that weatherization plays among those top drivers. So it was mentioned that, I'll make sure I cite this correctly. So I'll share copies of this at the end of the presentation, but this is EAN's 2018 annual report and on page 28, there is a listing of all of the administrative and statutory targets related to energy that we've been able to find and track. And 10VSA 578 is the emissions reduction target that I referenced earlier, and then on the thermal side, 10VSA 581 is set the goal of improving the energy fitness of at least 20% of the state's housing stock by 2017, which has passed in 25% by 2020. Based on reporting from the public service department, we stand at about 25,400 housing homes weatherized. To meet that goal in the next two years would require an additional 55,000 homes weatherized. In the next two years, what did you say? By 2020. 2020, thank you. And that data is, I think, reported a year behind. So that 25,400, I believe, is through 2017. But the current pace has been about 2,000 a year. So we are orders of magnitude away from what it would take to meet the state's commitments. If you look at what it would take to meet this path to Paris modeling, which you can see, and the weatherization is just one component, but you can see on page 14, we modeled that you would need additional 90,000 homes weatherized over the next six years. And our modeling shows a slow and steady ramping up of that going from basically a tripling of where we are now in the 2,000 or so homes per year to about 6,000 in the next year, just under 8,000 after that, but continually increasing year after year to meet these targets. The last thing I want to say before concluding is that this is not just about helping meet emissions reduction and renewable energy commitments. This is a massive economic development opportunity. 70 to 80 cents of every dollar that we spend on fossil fuel, which is 100 percent imported in Vermont, leaves the state. And it doesn't just leave the state for other states or for the broader region. Oftentimes it leaves the state through multinational fossil fuel companies where those profits are going to places like Russia or Saudi Arabia or Venezuela or pick your foreign oil export. In contrast, all of the efficient and renewable energy solutions that we model keep far more of Vermont's energy dollars here in state, recirculating, supporting our neighbors, helping create local jobs and helping folks save money in the long term. There are charts here, for instance, that show the relative costs of different ways to heat your home. If you look at chart, the graph on page 18, it shows you the average heating fuel prices for the last 20 years. The two that are consistently the highest cost and the most volatile, putting the most strain on family budgets, are in purple, the propane, and blue, the fuel oil. In contrast, the efficient and renewable options of advanced wood heat, whether that's chips or pellets or cordwood and EPA certified stoves, or whether it's cold climate heat pumps, are all much more stable costs and lower for Vermonters over time. And what that transition is in terms of investing in weatherization versus fuel switching, there are different percentages of dollars that stay in state or not, but it's generally two to three to four times more of our dollars staying local and helping grow Vermont's economy when we make those investments. Thank you. Thank you very much for your insight. Take a picture. What's been going on? What's been going on? What has been going on? That's my question. Actually, Mr. Wilcox will be showing us a chart, but how many months ago are there with home hands? You've told us what we already know. So where? You've depended the table. We're scheduling for that. It's not us. That's an important conversation to have. There are people who can speak better to that in the room and beyond the room. If anyone does not have a hard copy of the full 2018 annual report from EAN, I'm happy to. I've got one at home, but everybody can have a second one here. Thanks. Thank you very much. Can we do a little switch up here and ask Mr. Wilcox to jump in? As you know, let's tip of the bat over to Mr. McNamara. Sure, it can be two minutes. A lot of professionals come in to speak to your presentation. Good morning. My name is Ed McNamara. I'm planning director for the Department of Public Service. And I'm just going to quickly touch on the 2019 annual energy report we submitted this January 15th this year. It's a new requirement part of the Conference of Energy Planning Statute basically asking us to report on where we're at and what we should do moving forward. Jared did a great job explaining the background where we are and how short we are in meeting the 581 goals. So I'm not going to go through that. The Climate Action Commission, I understand all of you will be here tomorrow to talk about the Climate Action Commission or recommendations. So really the annual energy report that we submitted only touched on a couple of tweaks around the edges in terms of weatherization mostly to do with efficiency remodeled. One recommendation was to consider using the energy efficiency charge associated with heat pumps and taking that, instead of having that energy efficiency charge used for reducing kilowatt hours, switch that money so it's used for weatherization. And then another aspect that we recommended as well was efficiency remod uses weatherization eligible funds for heat pumps and we'd recommended that those weatherization eligible funds be used just for weatherization. Other entities focus on heat pumps. As I'm saying that I'm recognizing I should back up a little bit. Funding sources for efficiency remod, efficiency charge raises money for kilowatt hour reduction. Something on everybody's bill. For weatherization related activities and any thermal activities, that money comes from two different sources. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and the Ford Capacity Market. So that's money that's outside of the state's control. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, however many allowances get sold and what the costs are, that's going to be what we get for reggie money. Ford Capacity Market, again, that's run by ISO New England. We have very limited control over what the outcome is. This is a funding source that efficiency remod, the PUC, the department, nobody has control over in that amount sort of rises and falls depending on those revenue sources. We're actually likely to see a reduction in those funding sources primarily because Ford Capacity Market the clearing price was reduced significantly from where it had been previously. Good for electric ratepayers, not so good for funding for weatherization. So overall the department recognizes that Climate Action Commission has made some recommendations regarding how to potential pathways to significantly increase weatherization efforts. I'm not here to talk about that, Paula Costello can talk about it and if you would like an administration viewpoint on that Peter Wach from A&R is the best person. I think following up on perhaps Senator McDonald's question I'm wondering if you could tee this up a little bit more for us. I think people sat down, we're talking about weatherization, we're not really responding to anything. I think we just need some context for some of this that we're hearing today before we move forward a little bit. That's helpful. Thank you. So there's a bill that's going to be turned into a draft form that basically lets pick up the pace on weatherization and increase the funding in response to the department's report, the Climate Action Committee report on spad kits. So that bill will formally we'll have it as a drafting request we can work through for the balance of the week. The goal is to So today, for example, we're asking folks not to come in to respond to the bill. Thank you. Before we start to look at the details of any particular bill for instance, one of the things that always draws attention is how are you going to raise more money and before we get stuck on that I wanted us to be able to back up and say well actually there's there are five different actors all delivering weatherization services in the state and who are they and what are they doing and where's the money coming from and how does the department's report there's levels of nuance that Mr. McNamara is talking about now in terms of it's annoying when four capacity dollars flowing in and so if we we have really two different sorts of programs going out there so programs that focus on low income weatherization Title 33 but then throughout Title 30 our energy statute we keep on referring to doing weatherization and thermal load work and so we need frankly both and before we start getting pulled into details on just one program and the other I thought it would be good for us to look at the big picture and then imagine how we would do both lower income weatherization as well as moderate a win for anyone who does weatherization work so thank you for the question sorry so I want to give you a very quick overview of what the department recommended sounds like we're in much more nuance than where you folks are at the moment so we'll be certainly back to that I think so the goal about the corner left or right corner of the page 24 to 30 days left is my guesstimate based on my normal adjournment so we'll be working along a good flip not too fast not too slow but first we'll get the big picture straight and then I think we need to do it for the department adjustments that you laid out in your report which was very helpful also suggest talking to the folks from Efficiency Vermont and Vermont Gas as well so you're on our schedule for later great thank you thank you Mr. Manager so I wonder I mean for me personally if you could help and I know I signed down to the bill maybe by tomorrow we'd just have it in front of us perhaps just so we can start asking questions if that makes sense we will be able to okay so thank you Mr. O'Connor morning hello handouts here thank you thank you so you know where I signed but I you can lay out the weather decisions sure so I can do a 10 minute explanation of what our program does who we serve so my name is Jeff Wilcox I work for the Office of Economic Opportunity in Waterbury at the State Office we're part of the Agency of Human Services and the Department for Children and Families I worked in weatherization 21 years the last 10 at the State Office 11 at the Community Action Agency in the local weatherization program so so my handout is on top that I'm going to kind of work through so our program creates safer, healthier and more efficient homes we're an anti-poverty program that puts money back in clients' pockets by saving energy for them on their heating and electric bills I work for the, like I said the Agency of Human Services and the Office of Economic Opportunity you may ask we're not an energy office why is the program located here but it's because we do a lot more than just energy savings we provide a lot of benefits for clients through saving energy and we've had the program for 40 years and there's three full-time staff at our office, myself included our job is to provide guidance for the agencies training, quality control quality assurance and we do that with three folks in Waterbury so who do we work with we work with the five local weatherization programs that are situated throughout Vermont to serve the state four of them are Community Action Agencies and the organization program and the other is NEDO the Northeast Employment Training Organization who is not a cap, they're a non-profit so each of those I want to just state the obvious so this program is no cost to low income clients so I'll get to the funding in a bit but we have about $9 million a year to provide services for clients, they have no out-of-pocket expense so with that said our five sub-grantees we call them are program providers they employ about 100 workers statewide so each employ about 20 weatherization workers that include energy auditors crew workers, office folks as well as the director of each office they employ or sub-grant out to many contractors, plumbers electricians and we hire a significant amount of contractors throughout the state to fully serve our clients who do we serve Vermont homeowners and renters with household incomes 80% of median income are below so for example if you're a family of four if your gross income is 63,760 or below you are eligible for the program we do have a wait list statewide approximately seven months if you averaged all five agencies because of that we've developed a mechanism to prioritize who we serve based on need some of it comes from the department of energy requirements but a lot of it is state statute so those priorities are clients who receive fuel assistance who are in the lower income bracket less than 60% and actually if you're less than 25% you have even higher priority families with elderly disabled families with children and as well high energy usage homes so I want to talk quickly about how the process works so a client applies for weatherization immediate to each five agencies so they apply to capstone community action the capstone weatherization program will deem if the clients are eligible or not and if they're eligible they will send them a letter stating which and then they will start the process with an efficiency coach visit which efficiency coach goes out to the home sits down with a client talks to them about the weatherization process what's going to happen coaches them on energy conservation looks around the home for any things that may prohibit or make weatherization more difficult like vermiculite a wet basement stuff like that or significant structural repairs but they also sit down with the client and do what a one touch screening and referral for other health and social programs service programs that's a process we created a few years ago to try to be as holistic and comprehensive through our weatherization program so we refer clients if they're willing and need that referral to the lead based pain program head start aging services Vermont put hotline in many others the next step is a separate visit by the energy auditor and this is kind of critical to how we spend our money the energy auditor goes out there's a lot of diagnostic testing infrared cameras, lower door testing tests all heating system appliances for safety and efficiency so they're out there to test and gather information and to bring it back to the office and then you know with their energy modeling program determine what's going to be the best return on investment the big bang for our buck is the slogan we use in weatherization we want to spend our money most effectively improving the any healthy safety issues but then getting a significant return on investment, a lot of energy savings for the dollars we put into the home so that's the energy audit the energy audit determines that with use of the energy state energy auditing tool and then they write a work scope that they then hand over to their their manager who then sends out and gets heating systems cleaned and tuned or repaired we do that first to make sure everything's operating safely so we then go into the home and weatherize it we tighten up the home with spray foam, caulking, weather stripping we're very illicit and meticulous about tightening up the home and especially in certain places like the attic we always want to start at the attic so the air seal which changes how the home works and how it integrates with heating systems and combustion appliances and then they insulate so the crew does and then when the crew work is all done the agency sends out their quality control inspector who goes out and verifies all the work was done as specified to be done and installed to our statewide technical procedures manual so that's kind of the process then the agencies report those jobs to us monthly as well as an invoice at our office we review that monthly, monthly, daily and verify that the work was done to our standards and one of the folks in our office goes out and does monitoring of the five agencies so he inspects 10% of the completed work of each of the five agencies goes out meets with the client, talks to them asks them how things went if they notice a difference tests certain items like a blower door test to verify what the agencies have sent us for information and if they find something that wasn't done quite up to spec they'll have the agency go back out and fix it and then so that's kind of the process of weatherization we do that 850 times a year well we weatherize 850 homes a year yep and you asked for a chart of what we've done for the last few years I didn't prepare that but the second handout on the bottom line shows the number of units we've weatherized for the last number of years so I want to talk about who will weatherize or what homes so we do weatherize single family and multi family homes so owner occupying rental the caveat is you know the home has to be lived in by an income eligible family when it's owner occupied like I said earlier there's no cost to the client for the homeowner if it's a rental all energy saving work is paid for by the weatherization program all health and safety matters like indoor air quality, bathroom fans cleaning tubes cleaning tubes, heating systems are paid for by the owner of the building if they aren't income eligible themselves so our programs require the landlord to do that work before we set foot on the property to install insulation in the air ceiling we do invoke a rent stabilization agreement for rentals that requires the landlord or the owner to make sure the rent doesn't go up for either one or three years one year if the owner pays the heat or the client pays the heat three years if the owner of the building is paying the heat so let's see here the funding comes from two different places essentially the department of energy weatherization program created our program in the late 70s and there's a program in every state in the country that receives DOE department of energy funds we typically get 1.1 million to this year we have 1.4 million and our state weatherization program has gone by different names over the years it used to be called the weatherization trust fund and now it's the home weatherization assistance fund which is created from a tax and the fuel two cents per gallon gross receipts on natural gas electricity so we typically 1.3 to 4 million from DOE and then 7 or so with our state program within that 7 million we do a lie heap swap in recent years I don't want to get into that right now I'm going to keep moving here so the big picture just so you know Mr. Faisy agreed to come back tomorrow so you're better coming up to this sorry Richard so the big picture things I want to convey is cost effectiveness of our program we're all about testing and confirming testing to determine what's going to be the measures that are going to be the best for the client and the household and also what's going to have the best return on investment from energy savings so a lot of folks think I need to replace my windows well we've never replaced windows and weatherization unless they're broken and it's done more for health and safety so air sealing and insulating poorly insulated surfaces and drafty surfaces is what gives us a much better return on investment and savings for the client we're all about testing and evaluating and then setting your work scope based off those results our average savings per year like 27% the numbers are flashing through my eyes I know it's around there and that's not based on a fuel study because our clients typically are using different sources of fuel and it's hard to do a fuel study in Vermont with bulk fuel delivery modeling program which is approved by the Department of Energy we enter all our pre data and then our post data and it estimates savings and that's where we get our savings comprehensive you know we're really comprehensive when we go into a home we change how the building works and if we aren't comprehensive and we don't test we can harm people cause back drafting cause mold and melt from tightening up the home so health and safety and testing is really critical to when you do this type of work holistic you know the efficiency coaching and the one touch referral we're trying to benefit our clients as much as possible not just by energy savings and money in their pocket by weatherizations proven to really improve the health of the home and the household to make it comfortable better air quality and I think there's one of the attachments is a one two-pager from the Department of Health and they have a longer version of that that's very good then there's a national study done by Oak Ridge National Laboratories that really talks about the non-energy benefits of weatherization and they're believe it or not they're more significant than the energy benefits of weatherization if you pause just for a moment people hear it and then it's surprising enough that they don't necessarily take that saying that the investment that's made in the energy investment and more than being compensated by savings in healthcare not necessarily healthcare but we'd love to get that done to show the healthcare profession but I'm not going to give you numbers they're swirling in my head but that study will show but just by improving the indoor air quality and the safety we go into homes that the heating systems are spilling and backdrapping into homes you know, knob into wiring or wiring is dangerous we're improving the safety the indoor air quality which results in less days sick for clients they miss school less they're healthier when they go to school able to learn better so it's hard to quantify exact savings dollar wise but there's some studies that do a pretty good job of it and there's a larger study that we didn't include but I mentioned to you I can email that to you so yes, it's some pretty good organizations that have crunched those numbers and shown that the non-energy benefits are significant so challenges I want to mention challenges to our program in any given year these are the challenges we face when we weatherize homes we have one of the oldest housing stocks in the state and we're at the roughest housing homes in the state so we deal with leaking pipe in the country yeah, oldest housing stock in the country but of the homes we're serving in Vermont we're in the lowering of folks who have deferred maintenance so we're in the roughest of the rough and the challenges that we have to face are vermiculite insulation that has asbestos wet basements leaky roofs, rotted sills, knob and tube wiring which we can't insulate around asbestos pipe wrap that's come frayed and it's all over the place that we can't disturb mold hoarding leaky pipes so our weatherization funds have some ability to address some of those things but we can't address all of them so we're all often trying to leverage funding from other sources help clients apply for low income low interest loans etc we can't take care of all those things with our own funds so in a lot of the homes we go out to have those issues so that's something important to remember with our low income folks there are a lot of challenges let me mention you have to treat all of them wholeheartedly if they can't find funds necessary repairs you can go ahead yourself I should explain a little better so those issues prohibit our weatherization because we can't go and install measures that are going to get wet or get ruined and we can't tighten up the home if there's a wet basement or rain getting the house damp but it'll just create a lot of mold and mildew in an unsafe condition so yes then we'll have to defer the home until it is taken care of we're working on a process to defer as few as we can but every year we do defer some homes at each agency would be able to replace something like a roof so that you could easily yep there's the USDA 504 loan program that's a grant or loan program depending on the age there are some obstacles depending on the size of the house that allows some clients to receive a loan or grant individual homes so people, families would apply and if they're eligible they could get a really low interest loan or if they're over 62 or 5 they could get a grant would you help them in that process? so you notify them of the possibility yes definitely part of our process when we have to defer a job or before we had to defer a job we're trying to link those clients to home ownership networks who have home repair funds we have set aside a little bit of funding with each agency called the HWAP home repair program and the HWAP vermiculite funding so that we can leverage those other sources to help clients so we don't have so many deferred homes yep one of the things that there's been a lot of people talking about doubling, tripling, quadrupling, etc yep I guess we're concerned probably everyone in the room shares how quickly can we increase the program while not overwhelming the capacity of those programs to receive new monies and spend them well do you have any thoughts about how we think of the pace and what kind of capacity do we have just to do more of the current personality of hire more, train more we've Sarah the director of the office behind me we produced kind of a plan because we've been asked these questions before is that in the attachment Sarah? yeah so in general I would say weatherization you've got to do it right to be effective to get the savings and the benefits for the clients which requires on-the-job training as well as specific training you know part of the retreating off the streets except we expect them to know how to insulate addicts and then air seal up to our standards so training is important you know so ramp up all depends on the workforce and the ability to train stuff like that so thanks again I apologize to everyone especially our guests that we are short time we're going to read the handouts we've got and Mr. Facy's rescheduled if we have more questions we'll send them on but thank you for helping us see how this program runs I think for a lot of people they think this is the only program in the state when I'm here people talk about weatherization they think it's only capstone we're the only low income somebody you know there is confusion and we're the office that administers and runs the statewide program thank you for your work I know that when I've talked to people who've had your assistance it's been a profound change for them if I could mention one more thing and I typically read a thank you note that's in your handout that explains the benefits to the clients it's pretty holistic and pretty amazing a lot of faces so the brief story I heard from a witness before was they were visiting a capstone weatherized home and the woman who lived there said it's so great to be able to sleep in my bedroom which was right off the kitchen and he said well why weren't you sleeping in your bedroom before she said well it was far too cold in there she spent a year sleeping in her kitchen floor in front of the oven the door opened and the oven running and I had to stay warm to make it through so that's the kind of thing that's an eye-opener yeah I've heard you've seen many stories yes that's not a movie of occurrence a lot of stuff like that so thank you sure thank you so committee and committees will be taking this up and diving right back in tomorrow morning thank you all