 Hello everybody. Welcome. You know for the next hour and a half or so we're gonna be here together. We're gonna talk about Vermont's electricity policy. We might be getting a little bit into the weeds but hopefully not too much. But most importantly we're all here gathered together because we care about the same issue and we want to know what to do about it. Looking around the room I see familiar faces. I see new faces. This might be a completely new topic or issue to you. This might be something that you've studied and thought about for hours and hours and so I'm hoping that today will be a space where we can all like learn together and ask our questions together. And I think most importantly the energy and the intention of this room is not leaving when we walk out the door. What's most important is what we do with this information after we leave and that's where we're gonna be making our impact and that's what we what Vermont really needs is a strong climate movement to be making a much larger impact than we already are. So thanks for being here. I'm gonna have Marcy come up and do a short land acknowledgement. Natalie Braun who's here is gonna speak just shortly to the 350 Burlington Node and why it's like the coolest group of people ever. And then we're gonna get things rolling. So yeah. And then this is the microphone for anybody. Hi everybody. I'm so glad to see everybody. Fabulous. So here's my long land acknowledgement. If you'll indulge me. I met with Judy Dow last week in Abinacke Wise Woman to talk about how to do a land acknowledgement. She told me that this practice began in 2015 as one response to a truth and reconciliation commission which addressed Canada's long and horrible history of indigenous residential schools. I understood Judy to say that a land acknowledgement is owning our relationship to the land we are living on. What is the nature of this land? 18,000 years ago, I think we think thereabouts. The land below and surrounding us here was weighted down under miles of glacial ice 400 feet below sea level, which is 500 feet lower than it is today. Over time, the glacier retreated north and opened up a passageway to the Atlantic Ocean, causing saltwater to rush in to form the Champlain Sea. As this land was freed from the immense weight of the glacier, it began to rise up and throw the saltwater back into the ocean, making way for the freshwater of Lake Champlain. And here we sit today in the presence of that lake with gratitude and reverence for it. And we honor the Abenaki people who have cared for this land before us. In that spirit, here's some wisdom from Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Native American botanist and teacher. In the Western tradition, she says, in the Western tradition, there is a recognized hierarchy of beings with, of course, the human being on top, the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of creation and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as, quote, the younger brothers of creation. We say that humans, we Native Americans say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn. We must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They've been on the earth far longer than we have been and have had time to figure things out. And here's another quote. Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground, whether far or near. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children's future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all of our relatives depend on it because they do. Thank you. Thank you so much, Marcy. That was beautiful. Got it. Natalie, do you want to come up and speak briefly to the 350 Burlington node? Thank you. And this is a little slip to put on for audio. Okay. Does it need, may I just eat this microphone and will that be good? Yeah, that's for somebody's individual. Oh, I see. Okay. Great. Could I just hold it? All right. I'm just holding it. So this gives you, Gail, I'm going to walk up. I'm going to let you put this on my scarf just where it should be. If you would. Excellent. Thank you. So my name is Natalie Braun and I am the sometimes facilitator and frequent email sender from the 350 Burlington node. And I am so delighted to see all of you today. If you want to get an idea of what we're capable of in the 350 Burlington node, look at that table back there of all that good looking food. And I want a special thanks to Marcy and for handling the majority and all of our other node members for stepping in today. So currently, you know, we go, we go primarily in terms of what 350 Vermont because they have great wisdom in their campaigns. And right now we are supporting those campaigns around the renewable energy standard, obviously, and then some very significant things around some ordinances in Burlington as well as the McNeil plant. However, there is space for any, everyone's gifts in the Burlington node, even though that sounds kind of very legislative. And I just want you to know, we meet every twice monthly. There's an online option. In person has been wonderful over the past six or eight months. And what I would do is invite you, Campbell, I'm going to have you raise your hand. She has no idea I'm doing this. Okay. And me, if you are interested, if you're not already on our Google group and listserv, just in terms of, even if you never show up or can't, I think we have some pretty good information coming out around what is happening. The meeting notes are very concise. And just in terms of keeping your finger on the pulse of what 350 Burlington and to a larger degree 350 Vermont are doing. So Campbell or me after, whenever you have an opportunity, we will happily take your information, pop you onto that listserv, and you will be exceedingly well informed from there. So thanks very much. Awesome. Thank you, Natalie. So I'll speak just a little bit to 350 Vermont. My name is Connor Wertz. I'm a community organizer. You see him pronouns, and I've been organizing here in Burlington and a couple other parts in the state for a little bit over a year. 350 Vermont is building a people-powered and people-led climate justice movement in Vermont for a just and thriving world. And what that means is that it's our mission here on staff and all of our leaders, our volunteer leaders, to empower you to take the action that you need in order to like really like try to address this climate crisis at the roots. So really like our ethos in our mission is not like to you just sit there and take directions. It's we need as many leaders in this in this climate movement as possible and we need intersections and like to be addressing all of the oppressions out there in order to really dig into the roots of the climate crisis. So we have teams all across the state and we focus on both local and statewide action and policy. Do you want to talk about the agenda really quick? Okay, so for a little bit next for the next like hour or so we're going to go into introductions and just kind of get to know each other briefly in small groups. Rebecca is going to give a short presentation kind of info download on electricity in Vermont where it comes from, why it matters, and what's going on right now that we can do to make it better. There'll be a Q&A so you can kind of answer or get any clarifying things out of the way that you're confused about and then finally we'll kind of lean in towards that like well what's next? What are we going to do about it? So hopefully you'll leave today feeling empowered and with a couple of things to do so that we can be making a difference as soon as possible. We're going to do a pair share for probably just like five minutes or less so just a couple minutes and find so many that you don't know and answer these questions what brought you here to this workshop. What do you think the connection is between electricity and climate change and if you want something silly talk about your favorite pasta shape because I think that tells you about a person. Y'all let you and we're going to just have a halfway through and find some of you don't know and get to know them. I'm Rebecca Galdin and she's her program and I'm a TV organizer at 350 Vermont. I am specifically organizing around electricity in our state. So we're going to talk a ton about electricity. I just want to say that when we talk about the problems with what we have and what we do want to see this is representative of a lot of volunteers and folks just like you coming together and asking hard questions and doing tons of research and really thinking through this. So I just want people to keep that in mind. We're going to start with a quiz. So I'm curious what percentage of Vermont's total electricity use do you think comes from solar or wind? So if you think it's from 60% raise your hand. Okay no takers 40% no how about less than 20? How about 5% so less than 20% pretty right on how about how much of Vermont's electricity would you like to have come from solar and wind and we can just shout it out like as loud as you want 100 I think I heard like complete consensus for 100 which is yeah with a little small hydro in there awesome so that is kind of what we want to see ultimately so we're going to delve into why electricity is so important for climate change a lot of you probably already know but also where it comes from and a little more details on what we want to see before we start we're going to try something called the sticky note chat room so we've got a bunch of sticky notes I'm going to pass this around and people can just rip off like a couple I'm also going to pass around some pens in case anyone doesn't have a pen um so while I'm doing this presentation you'll you will most likely have a lot of questions and most likely at some point be confused which is totally fine and if you have any questions you can write them down on your sticky note we're going to have a chance to pass them up and Ben is our residence electricity expert and he's going to answer some of them but if we don't get to all of them if you can put your name or and contact info on there so we can make sure to get back to you um next week um that way we can make sure everyone's questions get answered so before um diving into all the details I just want to frame the conversation a little bit um so when we talk um so one important thing to remember as we talk about electricity and its issues is that there's no 100% electricity generation generation solution which means ultimately we also need to talk about how as a community and as a culture how are we also thinking about using less so an example of this is like there's a lot of talk about electrifying vehicles which is certainly way better than fossil fuel cars but what about things like walking and biking and carpooling and transportation that works for a rural state and all of those kind of things so I just want people to hold that piece as well um in that vein as there being no perfect solution um we're definitely going to need solar to meet our energy needs um but it's important to think about how solar is done in a couple of different ways um so one thing um to just remember is that both solar and wind technology at least currently um need certain minerals in order to work and um so you can see on this chart one of the minerals those things really need is copper and 89 percent of our copper reserves are either on or 30 or within 35 miles of federal indian reservations which means that and the as you imagine if you can imagine the impact of mining these minerals is really significant really hard on communities um and often there's no kind of prior or informed consent so that's just another piece of this to hold um I do want to mention there's some federal work on the federal hopefully federal level hopefully coming down the line about how do we recycle those minerals so that we're not having to continually mine them oh yeah sure so operating means like it's happening they're taking minerals out of the earth um pre-production scoping means the actual mining isn't happening yet but they're either looking into it or they're like starting to set up the mine process um and I also just want to mention I will send out all these slides to everyone and um there's lots of clickable links so you'll be able to click the links as well okay any question that is asked without a microphone is not on the tape so that's why I suggest that somebody hold it and then pass it so somebody says they want to ask a question and pass it to them if you're comfortable with not having any of the questions on the tape that's fine I'm just saying maybe perhaps the person was answering the question to repeat the question yeah that's a great idea we can we can do that and if for some reason you're not having you're not comfortable with your question being on the tape I'm happy to either put it on your post-it or I'm also happy to talk after the presentation um and so um this is a bunch of further reading around mining and indigenous lands and also thinking about like um thinking about post extra uh like what it looks like to not have such an extractive world um so a bunch of more resources around that people can look at afterwards um the other thing I want to mention is the solar siting question um which even among people who really care about climate change can be hard it's a really hard thing to talk about and there's lots of different opinions and lots of different different perspectives so I just want to name that that is something that comes up and um something that like we all need to talk about and listen about um and I think ultimately what it comes down to is thinking about where our power will come from and whose backyard it's going to be in um so we can hold that as well if we talk about this okay now we're going to dive in so um a lot of our proposed climate solutions so things like cold climate heat pumps um transportation are going to dramatically increase our electricity use and this is one of the sort of solutions that's put forth a lot for climate change but electrifying so shifting from fossil fuels to electricity is only going to reduce our emissions if those electricity sources are actually um low emission sources has anyone heard about the renewable energy standard I hadn't heard about it until last year so awesome this is great um so the renewable energy standard which is often abbreviated as the REZ um is a law that was passed in 2015 that said okay electric utilities you have to provide 75 percent of your energy from renewable sources by 2032 and 10 percent of that needs to come from in-state sources so like I don't know what do people think does that sound good decent kind of not too bad and I was like that's go vermont maybe could be more but um but it's it's it's actually pretty deceiving um and there's some real problems with their renewable energy standard we're going to talk about all of these um but just as a quick overview um so problem one is what is considered renewable so in its definition of renewable energy standard or sorry renewable energy um the standard includes large-scale hydropower from things like hydroquebec um and it also includes biomass and these are pretty problematic sources of electricity um number two is that it actually allows utilities to meet their renewable energy obligations so to get towards that 75 percent goal by purchasing these things called renewable energy credits while still providing non-renewable energy um which sounds like impossible but we're going to talk about how that happens the last thing is that um the REZ actually makes it really hard for new solar and wind both in our state and regionally which without that we don't really have a good way to get fossil fuels off our grid okay so we're going to go back first and talk about the problems with what the renewable energy standard considers renewable so we're large i'm sorry oh yeah i i missed the last point oh yeah um the last one i'll just repeat it again and we'll we'll we'll take a deeper dive into it but just that number three number three yeah i can go back to the screen too just that um the renewable energy standard standard makes it hard for solar and wind to be built regionally both regionally and here in vermont um so large hydro um electric and biomass are considered renewable so what is wrong with us first let's start with large hydro um so the way um like hydroquobec basically what is able to get so much generate so much power um is during the 70s they flooded a huge amount of land 3.8 million acres um of forest to meet to create dams in order to have enough um power to generate electricity um there's a number of problems with this so first of all this when all those all that organic matter is flooded and it's sitting underwater it starts decomposing and when it decomposes it emits methane which is a really potent greenhouse gas we when we say oh okay large hydro you're renewable um you're bringing us closer to our climate goals there's nowhere where we count all those methane emissions and also um displaces indigenous communities and poison food supplies and ecosystems with mercury um again very little conversation very little consent around this um we're also losing that 3.8 million acres of forest which is a carbon sink um for taking carbon out of the atmosphere um and on top of that we're losing biodiversity um and it's causing a pretty big amount of ecological destruction so um this is um James Papatier he's a member of the Kecia Keek tribe um uh First Nations tribe up north and um this is this is what he says about the flooding no one ever consulted or come no one was ever consulted or compensated the dams destroyed our way of life our original village was flooded our resources and our trapping territories are flooded we've been dispossessed of our territory for those who buy energy from Hydro-Quebec they need to realize that it destroys cultures the environment so this is one way we're when we think about hydro and if we think about new hydro um it would be uh exporting basically the harms of our energy use to their communities we're the only state in New England that says large hydro can be considered renewable for our renewable energy standard other states call it the renewable portfolio standard but it's the same thing the other thing I want to touch on is biomass um which I know is close to the heart of a lot of folks here in Burlington just as anyone involved with McNeil and trying to stop their expansion awesome um so folks are probably pretty familiar um with a lot of the problems with biomass um I'm just going to say this one quote because I think it illustrates really well um so for each kilowatt hour of heat produced using wood initially is likely to add two to three times as much carbon to the air as using fossil fuels um in our 2021 annual power mix for for Vermont um seven and a half percent of it came from biomass so that's also something we really don't want to see considered as a renewable energy yeah um so in 2020 our 2021 annual power mix in Vermont seven and a half percent of our electricity came from biomass just like to add that uh New York state and Massachusetts don't recognize biomass as renewable um and I'm just going to repeat that um so 20 percent uh not from McNeil but seven and a half percent comes from um by from biomass and sorry do you mind saying what you just said again um maybe into that microphone if you want New York state and Massachusetts don't recognize biomass as a renewable energy source over Vermont does that one just goes that's just for the recording it doesn't actually amplify it but it the means the video can hear it awesome thank you um so problem number two is these things called wrecks and specifically um unbundled wrecks so what on earth is a wreck this stands for renewable energy credit um and they're really confusing um so it's basically a certificate that every megawatt hour of renewable energy that enters our grade receives and these wrecks basically like these stickers they can be bought and sold separate from the actual electricity electrons that they're associated with and when that happens it's called unbundled so this is a way that we can essentially greenwash our electricity this is a screenshot of green mountain powers um webpage where they explain what their annual energy mix is so what where does electricity that they're selling to their customers come from and just to be clear this is this is not intended to pick on green mountain power this is what the state says is telling them to do um and this is what the renewable energy standard is telling them to do and this and why it's problematic so they say gmp supply is 100 carbon free and more than 78 percent renewable so that 22 percent that's considered carbon free but not renewable is from nuclear um the 78 percent renewable portion looks like this so um you can so this is specifically again green mountain power um so you can see that they have the 21.1 percent nuclear and then um 28.6 percent is from uh other new renewables um only 21.1 percent actually came from solar and wind you can see that the majority of it came from large hydro and that that other renewable section is kind of broken out into um wood a little bit of methane and not a whole lot of wind and solar what's the dark purple thing to do the dark uh existing vermont hydro so that would be like small hydro projects which are fine we just don't have a ton of capacity to expand those further um so the rest of that so remember on their their web page they said we're 78 percent renewable um and so and there's like a little like around 20 percent that's from solar and wind where does that extra 56.9 percent of renewable come from these are all the sources if you don't want to read all the percentages that's fine but all the little frowny faces are saying like this is not something that we should be thinking of as renewable either because it's not actually low emissions or because it's not really a just form of electricity or both um and I'm just going to mention here I know I keep using the word renewable and folks have brought this up in the past it's it's a rather unfortunate semantics um issue and that like our state is looking at is looking to increase our renewable energy but renewable doesn't always mean low emissions or just so just I'm going to use the same language as the state is using but just to keep in mind so seven percent of what this renewal of what um green mountain power considers renewable is actually coming from natural gas and then as you can see a lot a huge chunk of it is large hydro um and also you can see the wood in there from biomass um and also a couple other not so awesome things um okay so how is it possible that natural gas can be called renewable um people have a lot of strong feelings about this slide they either really like it either makes so much sense to them or it makes no sense so I'm just going to explain it this way take it or leave it um we'll we'll try a couple other ways to explain this so the renewable energy credit so the sticker that you can move around to say electricity is renewable or not um it's like if you had an organic tomato that had a sticker on it that has the usd or a organic sticker on it and you had a conventional tomato and you could take the sticker off of the organic tomato and put it on the conventional tomato and then say okay this tomato is now organic because it has a sticker that says it's organic this is basically what how the unbundled is a simplification of how the unbundled renewable energy credits work so in this analogy the organic tomato maybe it's solar power and the sticker is the wreck and so that solar power comes with a sticker that says renewable let's say the conventional tomato is um maybe our iso new england grid mix so this is like a soup of electrons that's in this big grid in new england and for example in this green mountain power um in 2021 got 15 of their electricity from that half of that soup is from natural gas so in this situation green mountain power can take that sticker from the solar flop it on that natural gas and say we bought the right to say that this is organic that this is renewable um and that's how unbundled renewable energy credits work i want to take a quick temperature uh check because wrecks just don't really make any sense um so if folks can raise their hand like how confused are you one i'm totally confused two confused three halfway there four almost there i'm like maybe a four um five got it so i'm gonna try just one other way of explaining it um and again feel free to take it or leave it so um just another example of why the problem with unbundled wrecks so if you buy if if you're green mountain power and you buy 100 megawatt hours of power from a natural gas plant you can claim to be using renewable power as long as you also buy 100 wrecks those stickers from a solar farm from a solar farm or even like or from hydro kebec i'm sort of using as a shorthand for these renewable energy credits which is really they're not actually stickers they're like a certain they're like a piece of paper a certificate um and so um when wrecks are sold like this so separately from the power they generate that is when we call them unbundled the problem with this um in this example that natural gas plant it's not burning any less gas and it's not putting any less carbon emissions into the atmosphere the energy the utility is selling isn't actually coming from renewable sources it just looks like it is on paper because of that label because of that sticker the solar energy the farm is generating is already being used somewhere and that natural gas is still being burned meanwhile this is another way that we can export the harms of our energy use um so this is a natural gas plant um in kinetic it um and under our renewable energy standard using the um renewable energy credits this can be called renewable um i just want to mention earlier we talked about how um in that pie chart seven percent of the renewable was coming from natural gas i know that doesn't seem like a lot but as we do the electrification we need so as we install cool climate heat pumps in our homes as we electrify our transportation where is our energy going to come from um we can't we don't want to we don't want to draw more energy from nuclear um small and large hydro is pretty at capacity we certainly don't want to see large hydro expanded because that's like we're going to mean more flooding um which leads us to that system mix remember like the electron soup from the iso new england grid um that's almost half natural gas so we don't want to see that seven percent we don't want to see it there at all but we certainly don't want to see it expand um and that's if we don't change things that's where our electricity is going to come from so um the on the right again that's a picture of that same um natural gas plant in connecticut i mentioned earlier it's right next to a school um it's footprints about 64 acres um the map on the left there is is downtown burlington that's what it would look like um if that gas plant was here that's how much space it would take up um i didn't so i i for whatever reason i hadn't thought about it this way but um in new england there's 81 gas and oil plants well here in vermont we have zero we do have mcneil which is not great and we do have riot gate um but that means that when we're not when we're not seeing our electricity when we're not seeing solar panels here it means that we're putting the harms of our electricity used in someone else's backyard okay so what are the problem with unbundled wrecks again they allow utilities to meet the renewable energy obligations that that law that says you have to have 75% of your electricity come from renewables by buying wrecks will still providing that in part um non-renewable energy and exporting our harms uh of energy elsewhere okay problem two um particularly with these unbundled hydroquebec wrecks this is one of the ways that um it's made harder for solar and wind to be built both here in vermont and also in our new england region how does this happen so this is what the current renewable energy standard looks like um so you can see there's big hydro here we are in vermont's here is great like whoever green not power other electric utilities buying wrecks from large hydro here's also maybe some solar in vermont um other states have obligations to meet for their renewable energy but remember they're they can't buy those renewable energy credits from the big hydro they're not it's not they're not allowed to consider that renewable um so they so vermont who are utilities in vermont these are only about ten dollars a piece the ones from large hydro so we buy those cheap ones the solar ones are maybe about 35 dollars piece um these other states can't buy those ones so they have to buy these more effective ones um where does that leave us um in that previous picture we saw um solar being bought out of state and that going to other states for them to fulfill their renewable energy credits they're still not they're still i'm going to go back to that other slide for a minute they're still those other states are still buying power from natural gas plants too and then doing the same thing sticking the solar credit on it but what would happen if vermont said okay new new plan we're going to change the law to say no more unbundled hydro kebec wrecks so vermont utilities you can no longer buy those stickers from hydro kebec and stick them on other power and what if we also said that our utilities needed um their electricity to come from 30 new in-state wind and solar okay so three things would happen the first is that those utilities so those utilities can no longer buy those inexpensive wrecks from hydro kebec um now they need to buy in-state solar and wind as demand for electricity grows we're going to need to meet those new demands by building new solar and wind so rather than buying natural gas from out of state and then buying a hydro kebec sticker to say okay this is renewable we can't do that anymore so this is if we were to say no more unbundled hydro kebec wrecks instead of the picture on the left which is the initial slide we looked at we would have what's on the right where we have more solar and wind in-state and that's what our electric utilities are buying to supplies with electricity so how would the rest of new england meet its renewable energy credit requirements now so remember they were buying some of that solar from vermont now vermont utilities need to use that solar so it's no longer available for new hampshire and main and massachusetts and rhoda island and connecticut to buy what are they going to have to do they're also going to have to build more wind and solar so by us changing our requirements we're actually helping there to be more regional in state our regional solar and wind which again is what we need to kick fossil fuels off the ground um so just another way to think about it every time we put up a new solar panel we're pushing natural gas off the grid and reducing emissions okay we're almost there i know this is a lot of petty stuff last problem um our current renewable energy standard only requires 10 percent of renewables to be in state again we're the worst uh we have the worst requirement for new renewables in the entire region a quick overview again of like all the problems with the reds problem one what is considered renewable energy that large-scale hydro and biomass are considered renewable problem two those pesky unbundled recs say allow utilities to meet their renewable energy obligations will still providing non-renewable energy yeah what do all the states that do with their recs are they a lot of unbundled recs let's we're going to do a Q&A in just a second so we'll get to that it's a good question um um problem three um both so both because of those unbundled recs and the cap of only 10 percent in state renewables by 2035 both of those make it really hard for us to build new solar and wind both in state and regionally um the last problem which we actually which we talked about when we talked about hydro cobec is that the renewal there's nowhere where those out of state greenhouse gas emissions from the production of energy like with large hydro and methane um there's nowhere where those emissions are taken into account so that was a whole bunch about what we don't want to see um what do we want to see we want to see our legislature change the renewable energy standard and when they change it we want them to say no new hydropower and biomass to be used to meet our renewable energy goals we want them to say no unbundled recs we want them to incentivize and prioritize solar and wind new solar and wind in state and regionally um and we want them to stop exporting the negative impacts of our energy so the graph on the left was that one from the beginning from beam out in power the one on the right is is what we're proposing to the state so that would be 30 new in state renewables 30 new out of state renewables and then 40 pre 2010 renewables um and this would likely still include hydrocubec because we have a contract with them until 2038 but we certainly don't want to see them put new hydro into our grid the policy stuff on this and the details can get super complicated and confusing and it's really it's okay to not understand all of them the real takeaway is that we need to and we can do better on this and in 2035 we our electricity could come from 60 new solar and wind if we lay the foundation by changing our renewable energy standard to allow us to be able to do that we're almost there um i just want to mention rates briefly um because this is this is an important question and 350 vermont is a climate justice organization which means that the justice piece and how this is going to affect people is really important um so it's important to keep in mind that oil and natural gas how much the rates how much they cost change a lot with based on what's happening in the rest of the world and right now the way it's looking is that fossil fuel costs keep going up well renewable costs keep going down and this is um a bar a bar graph showing um the blue is natural gas and the orange is standard offer solar and you can see in this instance the standard offer solar solar stayed about the same whereas the natural gas is going up up and down in cost um if rates were to go up that does not mean that we have to bear the burden of that um one thing we'd really like to see happen is for a rate payer protection act to be passed and there's actually a bill um sitting in the house environment and energy committee right now to that effect and what a rate payer protection act would do is it would say based on income there is a maximum amount a rate payer would have to pay on their electricity bill the other thing um is that these additional costs could be um unburdened from us from the rate payers and they could be covered by um the general fund which is something that the state does a lot for other other programs and there's no reason why that couldn't happen that was a ton of info and it's okay if you don't understand um part of the problem with the renewable energy standard is that it's a really complicated um so if folks have questions i'm gonna ask them to pass them this way to ben um and then um oh yes and see this here too so we've got two electricity experts um and i think we have like seven to ten minutes and whatever we don't get through will um we'll try we'll follow up with some folks okay great and if you want to put your email down on your sticky note that way if you don't get to the question we'll email you a follow-up and make sure that you run your services okay this one is amplification and that's recording you can sit over there if you want to read the folks want to that's just grabbing a drink of water but the folks want to pass their questions up this way or you can also pass them to see who's in the black vest and if other questions come up after this um that's great too and um we have lots to do oh that's a field one this is the death one i guess i'm assuming you know we're well mic'd up thank you who's only gonna answer two or two okay is everyone not is everyone ready to is there anyone your last last questions i guess we'll um how much time do i have then rebecca i'll get to like five ish minutes so we still have time to put this on the top okay the best i can do is just the way they the order they came in and then we can um if we if somehow we knew your email address you know or to be honest we could just answer the question to get sent out to everybody right that's probably the best bet so okay um okay reading glasses on so the first question is how do other new england states handle their recs renewable energy credits do they are they bundled or unbundled that's a good question i think the key thing is that um the key thing about recs as you saw is what the states consider renewable to get a rec so other states seem to be better at at giving thing only things that are clean electricity of renewable energy credit and um and the renewable energy credit device you could call it started like maybe 15 or more years ago mostly in cali some other renewable so and the idea was that they would keep ramping up the requirements for the utilities to get more and more solar and wind and and then if they didn't get them the right amount of recs they would have a penalty and then they use that penalty to add to also i believe incentivize more renewable energy and um so that's how it worked and they were allowed to use um they were allowed to use unbundled recs i believe because before 2017 vermont had nothing no kind of idea of recs and some of those recs came from projects in vermont because for people who wanted to build solar projects could get an extra incentive by selling the recs to states that had a rec program so um i know that makes it even more confusing sorry i could add to that that you could also say that the big problem with our unbundled recs is where they come from so ours come from hyde in kovac at the same time let's say a utility is importing natural gas power electricity from the regional grid you can claim a rec from hydro kebek to satisfy the requirement but that doesn't put the greenhouse gas back in the stack somewhere else where it was burned so that's that's the key thing is that that uh you can't it doesn't we don't have a system for accounting for uh out-of-state carbon emissions we just pretend that these out-of-state recs the hydro kebek recs in particular um and another aspect of those those hydro kebek recs is how old they are a lot of the talk is about uh the concept of additionality which means new stuff uh and and you know if you think of the uh un and ipcc reports and the paris agreement everything that talked about needing to move the needle on climate change they took a snapshot and said right now uh here's business as usual we're in deep trouble we have to get down to 1.5 degrees maximum temperature increase and and they developed pathways for reduction of carbon emissions well if you're just using something that was built 40 years ago and claim that then that's not a reduction in carbon emissions that's just moving the pieces around the deck chair some of the titanic or something you know it's not new so um those you know uh that's what uh when rebecca described that 30 in-state 30 regional new renewables that's the idea there is to just to move the needle i don't know if that directly answered your question have nothing yet it's not just hydro kebek recs that are a problem burlington electric for example buys recs from other old hydro projects in new england some of which are over a hundred years old that's correct and as to green mount green mount power gets it's whoops gets it's a hydro large hydro recs from about a dozen different places mostly hybrid mostly haven't go back yeah well these there's two that i think i can get through pretty quickly so this one is this was a small part of the present that's the nature in releases mercury and it gets into the rivers and then the fish that um the indigenous folks last question why is small hydro better than large um the small large hydro tends to be what they call store and release they have a big dam they store the water behind the dam and when they need the power they release it and generate electricity small hydro tends to be what's called run of the river like the one on the bridge over to a nusky um it if there's lots of you know rain and a huge amounts of water um the water flows over the dam and doesn't generate electricity it generates electricity depending on how much water there is it's not storing the water to generate electricity whenever it wants the storing and the releasing is what causes a lot of the methane emissions so the there there's also a low impact hydro institute that certifies hydro projects as being low impact so that's another way of looking at good versus bad hydro another way to look at the large hydro is that um uh hydrocobac has flooded an area total among you know dozen pro dozens of projects an area the size of the state of vermont plus another like 15 percent and their plan for the future includes five more new large areas of flooding so it's ecosystem destruction it's destroying an ecosystem that has been the home of indigenous communities forever and and so those people are now forced off of their traditional lands into you know modern villages that are built by by the power company for them to live in and it's it's uh you know changed their entire culture so and and uh you know some of the tribes have been accommodated with funds and and so on but some have not some never have so it's a real mix of that score but um it's certainly a vast ecosystem destruction thank you both um here i'm going to announce for next slide so let me grab that quick let me get out great well thank you everybody for getting through um a lot of that large part of the content piece and it sounds like it can be a little like sad um but we're we're going to dig in very soon about what you can do about it so but for now for the next five minutes would love you would love to do another quick pair share so find a different person or then the person you met the first time and just spend five minutes and just say like what what are your feelings right now your questions after hearing all of this information are you surprised are you angry are you like yeah i kind of expected that um would love yeah so just share your feelings and um if you want to get some food this is a great time to like grab some snacks stand up recharge while you're chatting and we're going to come back together to talk about what to do about this in five minutes okay break we can actually do about this um and i'm actually just in case folks are um in case anyone that ends up leaving early i'm going to pass around this sign-up sheet if folks can make sure they sign in that would be so appreciated um connor's gonna hand it out and um we have a real opportunity this fall to change the renewable energy standard um and that's part of why we're going around and doing these events um and the reason we have this opportunity is because so many folks like yourselves have kind of made us think about it and said this is not okay what we have and we need to we need to make it better um so that because right now we can't we leak electricity companies legally cannot do what we need them to do in order to change things um so that's why we need to change what the renewable energy standard looks like um so just a little background um last legislative session there was basically sort of a a better renewable energy standard introduced and that said um that pie chart we showed earlier that said we want 30 percent new in-state 30 percent new regional and 40 percent from old sources um and that went to this committee called the and called the house environment and energy committee um and what happened was that they decided to create a legislative working group so this is a group that meets outside of the session they're actually meeting right now um there's both legislators on the in the group there's um people from electric utilities representing electric utilities in the group and there's also um environmental organizations in the group 350 Vermont is not part of that group but we um our allies some of our allies are in that group asking for what we talked about today um and that working group is going to come out with recommendations in early December of what a reform renewable energy standard could look like and so it's really important that um we're making it clear now even before the legislative session starts in January what we want to see um so how do we do that um one way is contacting your representative um it certainly doesn't hurt it never hurts to build a relationship with your representative and talk with them about what you care about um so i would encourage anyone to do that whoever your representative is um for this bill the representatives right now that have the most power are those people who are on that committee the house energy and environment committee where this bill is going to be talked about and debated and basically it's going to have to get through there before it can go on to becoming a law um so this is the list list of folks um who are sit on that committee um particularly for Burlington folks i'm curious if anyone is from the south end or knows people in the south end awesome cool um so that is a really um that for folks who live in this area that's a really important um district because your rep sits on that committee um so um another uh so particularly where we would love to talk with people from the south end if you have family or friends or community in the south end um and are open to talking to them about um talking to them about this or introducing us to them and connecting that would be awesome we also actually have another event very similar to this um in two weeks happening here same place slightly different time um and it's going to be geared towards families so it will be a little bit longer there'll be free child care also food um and so especially anyone's welcome to come especially if you know people with family in the south end yeah family friendly um what ages any yeah so you know it's like there might be babies crying in the middle that's fine a toddler might come in and either parent that's fine yeah um we really want to be open to everyone um what else can you do um so in addition to connecting us with those key districts which when you get this slide deck you'll you'll be able to look through those um making a public comment to the legislative working group um it's a lot less scary than it sounds so they meet every other week um and making a public comment means it's done virtually you let their assistant know you want to make a comment she sends you a link and then it's like two or three sentences of what you want to see um and the group can't there's no back and forth so you're not going to be like grilled on what you said you just say it and then it's that's it it's done um and it's great for them to hear that people are watching and what the public wants to see um there's also spreading the word about this in your community so this could be writing a letter to the editor or putting a post on front porch forum um and then in january we're also going to have a big rally at the state camps so that is another way folks can get involved um what we're going to do now is just take a few minutes to do fill out some next steps forms um so this is a way for you to say what you might want to do and also what support you might need from us um there's a few different documents on that back table um about doing some of these next steps but um we all we also have a lot of materials we can send you um for first is that if there's specific things you're interested in doing um also this time just to mention there's a I also printed off um an article about hydrocobac on the back table that might answer a lot of the hydrocobac questions if people are interested um so i'll give folks um maybe five minutes to fill out those next steps forms and then we'll come back together and we will close here to that right great itself from middlebury maybe thank you yeah no it's good yeah uh that legislative committee they're meeting this wednesday and they they started out every other week but now they're beginning to end and in holidays they've shifted it up so that the next wednesday then the following Wednesday which is the first and then every other week uh for a couple of weeks and then the 6th of December so it's a it's an awkward schedule that they have but you can find out thanks for that stave and also in our follow-up email i'll send a um like a how to make a public comment and i'll put those dates on there thank you for thank you for mentioning that but this wednesday and they're online you can watch them on youtube uh or they're up they're recorded so you can watch them at double speed aren't the meetings open to the public they are in the state house and you can and you can make a comment in person there without going to zoom but uh if you're going to watch it online as an outsider you can only do it uh through youtube which means you can't participate you have to let them know then you get on your zoom so maybe another minute and then we'll come back together all right um well thanks everyone for taking some time to think about next steps and um you can either come put them up here at the end or pass them this way um we're going to do a quick closing we're going to um but before we do that i just have um we just want to make sure we can read everyone's email addresses who asked for questions um so at the end if um i think it's you hill mirf but we just want to clarify that this is the right email address so if you don't mind that's right awesome thank you so much so to close we're going to do a one word go around um maybe folks have done this before um and it can be a thought a feeling um a reflection but one word um and we'll just go around in a circle um i can start um uplifted now pass across the rooms outrage and do it one word uh motivated excited better guys disappointed and may i just interject though i think that by using one word me for instance saying disappointed you may not know what i'm disappointed in i would say kind of dumbfounded uh enraged and overwhelmed in order to see if so many people collaboration uh determined did did everyone in the back row get a i don't know if everyone in the back row that you did okay awesome um i was writing everyone's words down makes a nice poem so people want to hear what we all said together oh yeah okay uplifted outraged hopeful hopeful and outraged informed motivated hopeful community overwhelmed upset knowledgeable connected excited energized optimistic sorry something i can't read disappointed dumbfounded enraged overwhelmed heart and collaboration determined thank you so much everyone for coming i also wanted to just say a huge thank you to the 350 vermont burlington node they really all the outreach the awesome food which people should totally eat more of afterwards um thank you so much um for putting all all the work into helping make this happen um and all of you for coming out on your sunday to hang out and learn about electricity so thank you