 But we've not got weatherization. Almost everyone thinks you're talking about low-income weatherization. And there's weatherization. We're going to do the low-income weatherization. We also have a program on the side of that program and the goal to expand both. And it's useful that we can talk about the whole region of the weather. And go along with the plan. Maybe a little bit fee-on. Thanks. Thank you for the record. I'm Richard Faisy with Energy Futures Group of Residence of Starksboro. And so I've got a few slides that I thought would be helpful to organize my talking points. I'll talk a little bit about who I am and next down a little bit on Senator Frey's mention of my experience in Vermont. Remind us all of our energy and climate goals, a little bit of weatherization history and some suggestions about what we might do going forward. So I'm on page two. So I've been in the energy efficiency industry for more than 30 years. I've got a number of certifications and policy program experience work throughout Vermont and actually US and Canada as well, too, before my current position as co-owner of Energy Futures Group in Hinesburg, I was at Vermont Energy Investment Corporation. But I also wear a couple other hats, too. I'm the chair of the Energy Club of Vermont which is a fuel dealer becoming an energy services company. And hopefully you'll hear from Brian Gray, who's a general manager there at some point from a fuel dealer's perspective. But we're trying to figure out what the future of the fuel industry looks like as we transition to doing weatherization heat pumps and renewables. I'm also on the board of the Bill of Performing Professional Association which is the Trade Association of Home Performance Contractors, the market-based weatherization contractors in the state of Vermont. Sort of the token non-contractor on that potentially. And I also was the chair of the Funding and Finance Committee of the 2012 Thermal Efficiency Task Force. So we've been having this conversation for a long time. And I pulled that document out from day to January 2013 but there were a lot of people who worked out this document calls for $250 million of investment in energy efficiency. And we have not made progress in that respect in that time. So I'm also the chair of the Starksboro Energy Committee. So I'm involved in community-ended things and a partner in Energy Futures Group. A little bit about Energy Futures Group on the bottom of the second page including our just a reminder of our, we did a renovation of an 1850s farmhouse and we now produce all of the energy that we need for the building for the year on solar panels on the roof. So it heat it with heat pumps and high efficiency so you can do it in Vermont. That's a little more, that's a little more extreme than what we're talking about here which is helping existing buildings improve. And the top of page three I asked the question why weatherize our buildings. And I think just as a reminder we're doing this for multiple reasons but certainly climate change is real and needs to be addressed. This is one effective way of doing so. Every time I hear the governor as well talk about his three priorities, I think how closely aligned weatherization fits with his grow the economy, make Vermont more affordable and protect the most vulnerable. And on all three fronts, weatherization falls right in line with those. I think I'll talk a little bit more about how those fit as well. Vermont's frugal, we're certainly a focus on supporting job creation and energy contractors. There are many opportunities for not only keeping money in the state but growing our clean energy industry here as well too. And then we heard some yesterday about the need to meet the state's goals and the bottom page three I just have a reminder I'm not going to go into detail about it but I think you're all aware of the 80,000 home goal that was to be weatherized by 2020. We're not on track as Jared Duvall suggested yesterday. That was put in place in 2008. Here we are in 2018 and we've made very little progress towards that. And then we've got the compatibility plans of 1998, 2011, 2016. They've all mentioned weatherization and both small weatherization which I'm sort of considering the market of homes and then capital W weatherization and low income weatherization program too on both fronts. There's mentioned there Climate Action Committee called about doubling the rate of weatherization assistance program activities, energy action networks report that we heard about yesterday talk about weatherizing and additional 90,000 homes by 2025 to put us back on track. This is a good question and it's not a way for us to get to it if I need to say. So we've identified this repeatedly and made much less progress than I think anyone ever hoped. You have it. Are you going to get to an analysis of why would we make such a... do I weigh down 10 our goals? Why we have it? Yeah. I can conjecture about why that might be. So maybe I'll hit on that and some additional points to move forward. Sorry Richard. No problem. Good morning. Good morning. On the top of page four. So again we've got energy energy and climate goals and then the chart on the bottom page four we saw with Jared Duvall yesterday talking about where we are currently and where we need to be. And I think just the point that I've now made enough times you'll probably hear it again. We've been talking about this for so long and made so little action towards that. And I think the bottom line answer to your question Senator is we really have not been willing to fund what it takes to make this happen. And it's... I think it really boils down to a funding commitment. If we're committed to weatherization we need to put our money where our mouth is and we haven't been willing to do that as a state. So I think that's sort of the bottom line answer. Can I ask another question? Sure. So my understanding for all two weatherizations that challenge is fairly different than that. If you don't have money period you're not deciding how to spend money. You just need that kind of help in order to have safe affordable housing. If you're in the middle of the comrades and so a great participation is a lot. And I'm part of what I hope to all figure out are some of the obstacles that many more people that could afford to do it maybe with some assistance maybe with some more interest loans whatever that means it makes it affordable what the obstacles are to have that more effective to more people. It's a voluntary program people are going to need to sign up. I'm not sure we understand why people don't. People are limiting. Yeah and I think it really is an income based answer and clearly some sort of approach that is sliding scale that helps out those who most need it at the lowest income bracket but scales up those with higher incomes probably don't need as much incentive to move forward but those in the middle income area I think have been left behind and we see a lot of the participants in the market based programs are those that can afford that have some discretionary income perhaps can afford to pay for weatherization improvements which would have a longer perspective term perspective than somebody who might be living paycheck to paycheck or not have a lot of savings to put towards this. So in your work can you define middle income? I mean it's I think it's 80 to 120% of state median income somewhere in there and that's where it's so in theory well I mean it's probably actually the low income weatherization program which actually the next slide and the top of page of five is really my understanding is it's up to 80% median income and by statute but in reality based on the resource they have available they really are 60% and lower and so you may be on that list or we've been helping some elderly residents in Starksboro through the process and connect the dots there and if you are disabled and elderly and low income you'll move right up on the list if you've got some more if you're not quite in that situation you may be on the list for a year or more at that higher than 80% and others can speak to that better than I can but I think that it's so in reality it's probably 60 to 120% but if low income weatherization was more fully funded they could probably serve more of the constituents that haven't been served historically. I mean it's fine to hope that what we do addresses that moves that from all which have to flow 80% so that it can fully serve the populations design this and then we also do work that helps us have to feed the 120 as well. What those two look like is it growing one and the rest both or are you sure working with all the partners here to figure out how to do it not to reinvent the deal but to figure out who the right partners are and what that's tool for I want to use the best tools to help all the people. So I have some recommendations that I totally will address that as well too. So just I thought it would be a little helpful to sort of set the stage or level set when we're talking about these entities. It really is and I think we've already begun that conversation here I think about it as sort of two bucks there's a low income weatherization assistance program or WAP in place since the 70s it really it started its life as a job training effort and then turned into a national program and it's really now sort of attempts to do both of the focus is more on the energy piece of that. So as we heard yesterday from Jeff Wilcox Vermont receives some money from the feds and but the rest of it is raised through fees on fossil fuels oil and propane and natural gas and then electricity charge as well too. So I mentioned a long prioritized list or waiting list means that the 60-80% is rare so we just talked about that. There's also a 3D thermal helps address multifamily programs multifamily units as well within that program. And then to the market-based programs and so most of these are home-reforms with energy star is sort of the brand name that Efficiency Vermont supports along with a heat-saver loan. There's this sort of army of certified building performance institute or BPI contractors that are out there serving that market and so this is an Efficiency Vermont initiative it's in place they've been certifying these contractors for ages what's happened over time is that because of the lack of demand the number of them seems to have been declining. It should be growing really if we're trying to meet our goals and it has been going the other way. I think a lot of them hear this from the BPPA board they don't a lot of these contractors needs the insurance the market's going to be there so they can staff up so they can cruise going and they can most of these guys are guys and gals are builders that have offered this service so they can go back to doing additions or renovations if they don't have the work in the weather station field so it's really if we're it's hard for them to plan a business with without a long-term perspective and funding to support their business going forward. So on the bottom page 5 we're going to break out some of the funding to give us an understanding of where things are coming from and what the numbers look like over the past year so we heard yesterday that the weather station program did about 900 homes that's typical 800 to 1,000 homes a year about 11 million dollars in funding 10% of that coming from the feds and 90% raised in Vermont and then those those sources are U.S. Department of Energy and then the revenue sources are listed out there 2 cents a gallon for oil and propane raises a little less than 5 million dollars there's a gross receipts tax on natural gas at 0.75% and then half a percent gross receipts tax on electric. On the market side of things that's really all funded through the regional greenhouse gas initiative Regie and FCM funds for capacity market funds that raises about 3.6 million dollars a year about 1,000 1,200 homes or so are being weatherized through the market so a total if you lump both those together we're at about 2,000 homes a year spending about $15 million $3.25 of that is from WAP activity and about 25% or so on the market side so I think that's helpful to understand where we are now relative where we want to go going forward thank you it's very helpful I haven't seen any of you pull together all of them great I'd have to know about if I could put it here in another way great so top of page 6 so given where we are what should be done what do we need to be doing so we really need to be doing if you look at the goals the EAN projections we need to be doing about 15,000 homes a year but we're doing about 2,000 that's a significant shortcoming and a gap and even even the proposal that I'll suggest don't get us there it's but I think just understanding if we're I think we're deceiving ourselves to think that we're going to meet these goals without really some bigger bites than we've been willing to so in terms of what we need to be doing ensuring that the WAP funding continues and grows this moderate low moderate income household area that hasn't been fully served we should figure out a way to serve them shore up and grow the existing infrastructure and capacity we're not going to be able to we're going to sort of a lock the industry needs to get ready and they need to sort of work in partnership and there's some job training and some to get the contractors prepared and geared up but at the same time we need to build market build demand for what's out there so the marketing component as well that will be important so this all benefits from economic development job creation greenhouse gas reductions and health yes we have and underneath all that is you know being steady and committed for the long long we had that sort of power it seemed like you created a boom bus cycle for weather stations and then some people were bad tasting them off about what kind of commitment was this put money in and then fell back so I think it would be something that you know and for the long long you know clearly that's helpful and then bottom page 6 somewhat else as well too and just I think it's important to put this on the table to think about this there are some successful models that are out there a couple years ago we did a pilot program with the Green Mountain Power seed funding and Building Performing Professional Association now where we work with 35 existing homes and got them to between between 50 and 100 percent total energy savings actually the average was 79 percent savings model we're doing enough to study right now to validate how they actually perform but this is through a combination of weather station heat pumps and solar PV guarantee the savings a good sign was that nobody called us back and to for their savings guarantee claim so we either did something right or they're too busy to pick up the phone and call but we did if we did say that if our projections don't live up call us and we will make a difference so program it was a combination we offered incentives up to $5,000 on top of efficiency for months incentives and customers $40,000 projects which sound expensive but the average savings is about $3,500 so these people were saving a lot of their total energy bill most of them did do a financing component to that so they these are $40,000 projects 20,000 with solar typically 10,000 with weather station 10,000 with heat pumps that's sort of how it broke out and their total bill prior to these are $4,000 a year energy bill sort of thing and they're saving $3,500 so they were close to that they're not spending anymore servicing the debt plus paying their reduced energy and there are and there are loans that will support that so out there so Vermont has some great financing products that can support these energy large projects just mark the place of the value of that $40,000 investment so the next point on this slide make energy visible through building energy rating and labeling so we've been at this for a while in Vermont to try to working with appraisers in the lending community to allow the market to see and value building based on energy performance so right now there's very little way for people for home buyers or appraisers or lenders to understand how a building's energy performance wrap the stacks up against another one and what it's going to cost for somebody to live in that home based on the average family size and temperature settings and whatnot so putting Senator Bray to stop we've been working on this for a couple years which would in support with the realtors put out energy information at the time of purchase so that homeowners could understand what it is they're getting into and what available resources were there for making improvements to homes is that still no I know what we did right it's just yeah we're all out there that's right so S20 with a little bit of a modification is part of the weather address as part of the push it's been incorporated into H440 which I have here which adds an additional component to reestablishing the Vermont's building energy labeling working group which provided a report to the legislature three or four years ago and had subsequently efficiency Vermont did a pilot program 250 home energy rating labeling pilot program learn some things there there's some national tools that are available from the part of energy and otherwise so H440 suggests that that working group be resurrected and figure out what the building and labeling system for Vermont should be and H440 was modified as 118 and H440 is in this our building it is okay okay so yes it's important this is a long term market transformation initiative but if we're going to if we're going to move the markets we need to make energy visible and let markets make decisions based on that so I think that's an important component and I'm glad that if you're thinking about incorporating that there so I mentioned before too workforce training and marketing for weatherization as well are important so I've got my final slides on page 7 I do have a set of recommendations and I am looking at the clock as well too so 2019 so first recommendation reauthorizing the existing funding sources it expires this year make sure let's make sure that continues I think that's pretty much should be a slam dunk but at the same time ramping up the low income weatherization and the market weatherization funding and suggesting here sort of a two-stage increase basically doubling the funding that we talked about before the two cents a gallon let's in the first year as a sort of ramp up for the let the industry get oriented for six a gallon and one and a half percent gross receipts tax this will raise about six million dollars in new revenue and will result in moving us incrementally towards that 15,000 home goal by moving us to 3,000 homes and then in the following year let's double it again and move that or at least add another two cents there and make it six cents and that would move over 4,000 homes that would give some assurance some ramp up provide the industry to prepare and get ready for that and start making some more meaningful progress in this area and then as we talked about lock it in for as long as possible before reauthorization so we don't have to have to be going back and having this conversation too frequently the bottom page seven additional recommendations workforce development training working with potentially Vermont Technical College the BPPA trade association would be very interested in working with their members and putting putting out their ways to grow the industry marketing to let the that middle income sector know that resources are available for sliding scale grants and incentives based on income so it's really I don't think there's one size fits all but I think there's some good thinking that's been going on you'll probably hear about this from others about you know sort of a transition for grants to incentives to loans based on income it's probably not this committees or the Senate's place to dive into the details of that you know the experience out out there then I'm sure the efficiency of Vermont and others could help put those uses together efficiency going on in there because we're talking about raising money on fuel oil right yes so what percentage do Vermonters pay on our electric bills to make our electric rates go down to be more dependent on other states I believe what's the percentage I believe it's between two and three percent nine percent nine percent nine percent nine percent and we've gone from the highest electric rates in New England in the last 20 years to the next to the lowest and the fund it is I read the fund last year for other stuff but we've been nine percent of our electric bills have been invested in making our homes and businesses and whatever more efficient with electricity and we've gone from the highest in New England to the next to the lowest what did we spend today to make our to make our inefficient homes more efficient in in the use of heating oil well two percentage worth two pennies on $2.50 gallon gallon of heating fuel is 1.25 percent so it's nine percent versus 1.25 well it's about 50 and this is less than one it's got to be less than one two senses into two and a half but it's going to be yeah .8 thank you partner .8 .8 percent and we wonder why we're not getting anywhere hmm and what and we're talking about going to 1.6 yeah we're we're kidding ourselves I mean this is this is preposterous this is preposterous you might as well just bungle the money and send it to our state year after year and give it to the oil industry because that's what we're doing that's another idea that we're that's a good idea yeah Brian and I this is this is 18 we have a goal 19 but 19 yeah yeah I guess I could have been more aggressive here but but that's what he was hoping for he would have started over going in the red and that would get double right a pedestrian and not calling on our bellies yeah this is we're talking like going from .8 to 1.6 as as a heavy lift And we're fooling ourselves, and we're fooling. We have to, the people who deliver trucks and loads of oil have to be laughing at this. I mean, this is preposterous. But we're all just looking around to see, I'm sorry. That's not in the room today. Yeah. It's not a lot. It's not a lot. Jesus Christ. We're going to try to preposterize it. Yeah. It seems like the money committees need some convincing. We're not going to convince them we're telling them they have to look after poor people. Because that's all they do. And it's going to have to be a different, it's going to have to be an economic movement or a fortability movement. We've got enough movement or something. We got away with it on electricity. We sent millions of dollars to gas metro. I don't see why we can't. But there, we've got results. Up to the next level. Those have been. From the bottom to almost the bottom. Yeah. And even when we do have stuff like, we make stuff, the money gets spent. It gets spent here. Not out of state. And we keep driving up costs for poor people. Highest. You don't want to do something for poor people. You want to do it and stay away from it. Don't complain about helping poor people too when you bring away the big stuff. Okay. You clearly. For discussion. I'm going to wrap this up. Directing the budget. Where it exists. Let's not create anything new. We've got some good infrastructure in place and some good experience. Grow the existing programs that are out there. It's really just, as we said, initially this is a funding issue. I'd say primarily. And I'm glad that H440 is part of your bill. So think about building energy rating and labeling as part of that. And I just have it. I think I've made all my points. So I think. Welcome, Doug. If we could write a chapter and have all the money we wanted. Okay. The thing that I'm sensing is going to limit the radio which will make additional progress. The ability to staff up and develop the program and do the allocation of the group. We're going to need more people. So training is part of what we've been talking about on Friday. How we build capacity. Delivery. Every legislator always feels that I did that pretty shared responsibility. Pressing on it. Are you putting money into a program where everyone's all spent? My goal is that we would fund things better. But we'd also be able to report with confidence that we know we're going to build capacity in that order of the way so that we're creating a lot of internal friction. Waste of money because we're not ready to accept that much money. Yeah. I don't think this is more than enough money that the, you know, if I've suggested a sort of two-year ramp-up sounds like Senator McDonald would like that to be more robust in year-over-year going forward. And I think that the industry, knowing it's coming and with some assurance the industry can and will respond to that. Well, I didn't want to throw up on those lines. So the bill just starts with the most simple thing. A one-time double. But it's an open question on the committee. Like how much more I'm hoping that to actually step-byes progression. That'd be great. A double year after and then we're celebrating. Great. Any questions for Mr. Faithy? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So, now I'd like to invite Mr. Stella in the morning to talk. I'm sorry, I was late because I was with Jeff Spaulding and other guarding Southern Remarkable. Okay, so my only question is we're not going to have all these folks back to respond to the bill. Okay, that was the article that Jeff just posted about what they write and places. So if we will be able to walk through we'll schedule counsel to come in and do that. But for now the line of people really has talked about the topic more broadly. And the things that are in the bill the draft bill is in moment. I'll include that building energy labor component that we just talked about and a funding stream that's going to create higher-level funding. And now I figure out our homework is to figure out how much more money can we use and how would it get distributed to whom in order to bring up a level of performance for everybody whether you're low income or above. Thank you very much. I'm Paul Cuskello the executive director of my council on rural development. I'm here speaking for the climate economy action team. I'm also the former co-chair of the governor's climate action committee commission. The climate economy action team came from ACRD's work. We're a leading facilitator at the ground level in Vermont. To contribute to state policy around rural development but also to be a neutral arbiter at the local level listening to all sides of issues outside of politics looking at how the best ideas of communities add up helping communities set priorities for action connect to state federal resources and we work effectively across Republican and Democratic lines we tend not to take positions on political issues instead we convene leadership on ground issues that are more things that are of fundamental importance to the future. We've done that around broadband around working lands and now we're doing it around climate action. Knowing that this is an area that has a fundamental place in Vermont's future economic development we convened the climate change economy council two years ago which evaluated the economic opportunities in Vermont taking leadership positions around climate. We've had three major summits with 500 people at each we've brought major investors and entrepreneurs from across the country to Vermont including Danny Kennedy who describes the climate economy as the most fundamental opportunity in world history for economic activity that we're going to see transformational work going forward about vehicular electrification, smart grid development, efficiencies net zero development entrepreneurism innovation, creativity and that fundamental to Vermont's economic prospects is seizing market share situating ourselves as a destination and in our rural setting modeling rural renewal in a way that can benefit the entire country and potentially contribute beyond our borders. So grand idea we've framed out a number of action positions based on that that echo closely with both EAN's prospectus and what Richard Faisy just presented in terms of the range of issues from weatherization to building code and time of sale evaluations and so forth. I'm here to speak for SEAT on one of the two core priorities that they have established for presentation this year to the legislature and that's around weatherization obviously and have you had an opportunity to see the bill? I have not, okay. So the climate economy action team envisions a future where every Vermonter has a comfortable and healthy affordable place to live like the governor's commission on climate action that calls for dramatically expanded weatherization to provide to promote affordability, protect the most vulnerable Vermonters while providing jobs and reducing Vermont's carbon impact. The bottom line is that Vermont won't be affordable until Vermont homes are affordable to heat. Vermont's economy will not be affordable unless we reduce the amount of money that we're exporting for oil and for carbon based fuels and return those dollars to internal economic development and generation. Current resources to meet Vermont's low income weatherization goals are inadequate. Low income residents, that means cold and these are people in each senate district in every town in Vermont people are living in colder older homes that are depreciating. They're looking at burdensome heating costs with adverse health impacts and there have been studies done that show that addressing weatherization needs the benefits on the health side alone would provide a positive return on investment in the current amount of weatherization dollars. I've heard Deval Richard-Phasey have given you a lot more statistics and current statistics on the number of homes and perspectives on the number of homes. We believe that a surge in low income weatherization investment made today reduces fuel needs for future Vermonters for the next generation so you think of the impact of a year spending you have to think about that in terms of a 20 year investment in low income families making their homes healthier providing significant economic returns to them in the reduction of their fuel bills and we believe that Vermont should be doubling its annual investment in weatherization assistance program directly for the most vulnerable Vermonters this year. There may be five other steps that you can take but this is the center of it, protecting the most vulnerable, advancing their affordability for the future. Can I ask a question? So I've seen it in the Climate Action Committee report on recommendation what's the relationship between that commission and the governor's budget I'm trying to ask a political question but I'm not seeing a funding stream to match the recommendation so I don't I'm trying to figure out how to take the record it's his own commission but the budget's not the same so very little in the governor's commission's report is reflected in the governor's budget I just want to make sure I wasn't missing a piece, could be somewhere else in the budget we're not privy to the internal dialogues that happened around the commission's report weatherization was one issue that was fundamental to that commission another being EVs electric vehicle rollout supporting the reduction of use and time of sales taxation on EVs stimulation for lower income people to be able to get into the used EV, used plug-in hybrid market and there was $1.5 million in the governor's budget towards that but but stepping back this is the work of years on the other hand there's not a lot of budgetary proposal connected to this and we're very concerned we're very concerned that we're at a point in history where we need to set trajectory and where the state house seems to have its head down around the costs and long-term investment we deeply appreciate the interest of this committee on weatherization and the importance of taking full vision and full action today and not full action should hit the budget line how to interpret the head down to move that means focus or not paying attention in the same way we're watching a very difficult appropriations conversation on the house side we're watching house transportation having a very limited view of the potential for investment and that's very challenging I think from the point of view in terms of our economic the economic drive behind this work did you have an opportunity to lobby the governor yourself as the chair on these? let the opportunity present you did, okay Senator Rogers so you keep going back to EVs and I read a report a couple years ago from MIT that said they thought in the near future other technologies would overtake electric vehicles right now everybody's focused on electric vehicles but then I've also read that some of the charging stations were currently putting in or thinking about putting in may be completely obsolete in a year or two so have you guys looked into any other emerging technologies and it's like what they were saying is don't put in the slow charger you have to use a slow charger you have to get the next generation charger doesn't make any sense to put them in are you guys looking at any of this the future technology to make sure we're not spending millions of dollars on technology that is going to be obsolete in two years? the engineering around the specifics of slow and fast charging you should ask someone with more expertise we're more facilitators of this process than experts in that particular kind of arena the thing I would say is we're a comprehensive or a technological solution when we have potential to make investments today like weatherization with proven ROI I agree on that the aspect of it so the weatherization program is administered by the agency of human services delivered to the five cap agencies there's a proven record of achievement there's challenges in building a rollout at scale and doing this aggressively you brought them up Mr. Chair but from our point of view those challenges are management challenges not policy challenges in other words things like building workforce training within the capacity of the cap agencies to effectively deliver services is something that cap agency directors and weatherization directors can work on aggressively if there are resources there that allow them to do that work and so one of the challenges we see around this is the weatherization conversation last year and in previous years tends to get entwined with management decisions around the challenges of doing it appropriately and those are certainly important but you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good you have to be pragmatic and you have to recognize the managerial leadership of these institutions that have a great track record of implementation and so we very much encourage the support of the existing structure and we also know that last year there was a long conversation about the possibility of bonding we worked closely with Neil Lunderville who's a member of the Climate Economy Action Team on that bonding conversation we know that the complexity of the bonding conversation involved people in thinking about the full range of activities from loans to subsidy at different levels to low income weatherization and we're concerned that when we try to evaluate and build a scope system that's complete for the issue sometimes it doesn't pass through and we end up having minimal results in terms of the direct work that we could be doing for the most low income for monitors today so we very much encourage the committee to ensure that there's progress on that low income weatherization as a fundamental for this year knowing that there's a lot more work that needs to happen for the future ultimately the Climate Economy Action Team is very concerned about the systematic work that needs to happen around incentives and systems change in the building you know the RFF study documented the fact that a new income stream alone that was that was a carbon price that set market signals on the use of carbon fuels alone would have a fairly small effect on the behavior of the monitors that it would be a slow effect and it wouldn't be a transformational effect that would have impact on the scale required by the state energy plant for its fulfillment also documented that investment in that having money for investment would be fundamental to the transformational shift and you look at what's gone forward in Quebec and other places under WCI and cap and trade systems cap and invest and you see that transformational activity comes from the investment side alongside of the income source development we believe that one way or another Vermont is going to need to move forward with a systematic framework of action and that could be delivered and developed pragmatically step by step or it could be participating and joining a national or an international structure like that over the future years or it could be a homegrown solution that looks at all fuels development and as Richard Faisy was suggested that looks at the gradual increase in the costs of in the surcharge on fuels that works efficiently together to advance both efficiencies and new generation climate economy R&D investment and so forth for the future so we're in conversation with a number of different groups about an appropriate framework for that kind of work we know that this committee and other committees in the building have been thinking around these topics at length and we'd like to be involved in the dialogue beyond this year of going on this topic I know that yesterday Richard was there was there was a through on Paris there were three different tronches of work in the U.N. whether it was one piece it would be 90,000 more like 20, 25 but alongside of it working slight efficiency keep on so other nations great pieces of the story but there's more to it for us and I believe that this is really central to the the RFF study came out and it showed the fact that there's a need for investment that didn't describe those investments in any detail regulatory assistance project with some support from Richard Faisy and his group looked at those investments and from our perspective the key things that they pointed to were the same that we were working to advance in Vermont this year which was weatherization and really driving the EV market it may not be the final answer and many people think that public transportation is going to be as important to the future but today it seems like the most significant low hanging fruit in terms of public action and the public good so as a committee that Climate Economy Action Team has that as its core priority I can submit this testimony that will list the members of the Climate Economy Action Team where I could share those with you now If you could just send and I know it's a pretty lengthy list of members of the committee who received the Climate Action Committee report so I don't understand what you're saying so we'll get those reported and then the NEC's recommendations would be great but if you could send maybe a report over we'll make sure it's posted on as I have one quick question so Mr. Faisy noted that you thought that whether or not it fitted to sort of both Governor's brain in terms of of the goals or in terms of growing the economy making Vermont more affordable protecting the most vulnerable would you concur that that there's a good thinking from legislation all three of those I would and I would add that it also supports economic opportunity in Vermont both in terms of job creation in the short run but the more we say when you're in economic development you look at how you're exporting dollars and how you're bringing and regenerating dollars in community and when we're exporting as much as we do for fossil fuels 90% of that dollar is lost to the Vermont economy rather than recycled within it so for us the return on investment and local generation and efficiencies that save money keep those dollars cycling in the local economy and in rural communities is particularly important thank you welcome Ms. Miller to join us on the table good morning thank you for the opportunity to be here for the record Johanna Miller Energy and Climate Program Director of the Vermont Natural Resources Council Paul Costello because while I work for an environmental policy and advocacy organization I fundamentally believe that as an importer of 100% of the fossil fuels that we use this a response to getting off the fossil fuels is perhaps the most impactful economic development opportunity this state, this world has ever seen so I just want to echo in support I appreciate the context that the two folks before me have raised and I want to just provide a little bit more sort of context of share with you some of this in the past about we think about and work on these issues and really just sort of celebrate the fact that you're talking about weatherization and exploring potentially a much deeper commitment to it so so a big part of my work I think as you know is working at the local level with the still growing network of all volunteer energy committees we were in Bennington not too long ago and working with the Bennington County Regional Commission now there are several different communities that have not had energy committees that are exploring them from Arlington to Shaftesbury, Bennington Rupert, Cowanulles looking in you could give us a heads up when you're down there I'm sorry no that's alright I just left the court and I'm here all alone Senator I'm going to give you a heads up because tonight tonight we will actually be in my little pond with NVDA focusing on again in the Northeast Kingdom Brian and I have a meeting tonight sorry I won't be here we're working on an amendment but it's we're working in partnership with NVDA the goal of starting more of these grassroots groups because our little communities do have energy committees and they're doing great work they're doing great work and I put that out there because of the fact that as you heard from Richard and in general I just want to say that these communities are really interested in moving moving the ball in terms of doing something on climate in terms of reducing our reliance on those imported fossil fuels in terms of making sure that people live more affordably and all that stuff just to note too that you heard one of the challenges in terms of the uptake of weatherization is giving people a sense of the value of it and driving demand and these communities really partner in that we've done things with various partners including the button up Vermont program and partnership with Utilities, efficiency Vermont Regional Planning Commissions that's a successful annual event where we're trying to raise awareness and give people a sense of how and why they should be making investments in weatherization but as you heard we have done some really good work there but we have a long way to go and that is not just that is not just an economic issue I also just want to say too to put on the record is the committee of jurisdiction this is also a climate issue so I had the privilege of serving with Paul Costello and 20 other 19 other including myself other members of the Governors Climate Action Commission in terms of the recommendations that we made really focusing on the building sector helping Vermonters in particular low income Vermonters weatherize their homes and reduce their energy reliance and energy consumption was a core priority and that was focused both on the low income sector so our recommendation was to double the number of homes weatherized for low income we also made a recommendation around increasing our commitment to the to the moderate income tranches as you heard before in terms of again helping people make this kind of investment so I look at this opportunity as a cost saving strategy we know that low income Vermonters spend a much higher percentage of their incomes on energy a lot of the stuff that I'm saying you heard earlier is not really news to you but I just want to underscore because it is a commitment that we have had for a long time and we haven't actually really committed and that's my hope that in this conversation today and as you continue to explore this issue that we think about and really do make the commitment and think about this is not just the cost of what it will take but look at it as an investment look at the benefits all the different things you've heard articulating in terms of public health, cost, comfort, climate economic opportunity so I do just want to spend a moment talking about the climate piece of it too because as an environmental working for an environmental organization I do think that that is a crucial component I mean so as you know the agency of natural resources last year put out their greenhouse gas inventory report over the course of 2014 and 2015 the two most recent years that they analyzed our greenhouse gas emissions went up 10% in two years and that is largely in the thermal and the transportation sector and it is the exact opposite direction that we need to be heading and in part I think it is because that we have not focused as much as we need to in those sectors it is also in part because that those are largely unregulated sectors we don't have the levers to pull to really require progress in those sectors like we do in the electric sector I would say kudos to you it's not by accident that we have made progress in the electric sector we're on track in terms of our greenhouse gas emission goals as good senator McDonald noted that commitment your work has helped for Moner save money in the electric sector from you know transmission deferments from you know not having to you know invest more in generations so that's a strong commitment we need to do the same in the unregulated fossil fuel sector and weatherization and transportation that's what you're considering I'm glad for it and also just to note on the heels of the ANR report came the one of several other big reports last year which was the IPCC the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes report it was you know this is the world's leading climate scientists that put a finer point on what they've been saying for decades which is we need to be moving off the fossil fuels because humans are driving climate change it's largely connected to our use of and combustion of fossil fuels and they noted quote without unprecedented action of our society we will face serious social economic and environmental disruption so they noted to avoid the worst consequences of climate change of a sort of warming weirding planet that we need to cut our collective societal consumption of fossil fuels in half by 2030 so that obviously will require a dramatic reduction in energy consumption and combustion as a core strategy in Vermont so am I here saying that Vermont is going to solve this challenge alone absolutely not but we have an obligation to do what we can we've had a commitment to that in statute tripartisan supported since 2005 we're tracking in the wrong direction but back to the point of the fact that we import 100% the fossil fuels that we use we have a huge opportunity to actually really commit to reducing energy consumption doing something about weatherization stop the hemorrhaging of the dollars that go out of our state as you heard from Jared as you know about 78 cents of every dollar drains out of our economy keeping those dollars here in the state of Vermont putting people to work in the weatherization sector in the efficiency sector broadly I mean again it's not by accident that one of the fastest job sectors growing job sectors in the state of Vermont is in the clean energy sector that is again by good public policy it's a strategic focus and an interest of Vermonters who are interested in saving energy doing their part for climate investing more affordable 21st century energy solutions all that stuff so I'm here just to say it's real opportunity in terms of the conversation that you are exploring in weatherization to really think about this and commit to it in the same way as we've committed to progress in the electric sector so I'm not going to highlight some of the things you've already heard in terms of you heard from the regulatory assistance project I believe I do just want to note that one of the things that they came out with in terms of the benefits of weatherization they did say they're noting that weatherization has multiple benefits you've heard and you're aware of those but they quote avoiding carbon emissions at better than zero cost that's what a commitment to weatherization could do for us so better than zero cost sounds pretty good to me and clearly that encapsulates some of the other sort of public health and other non-climate benefits but that's specific to carbon I don't have a chance to look at Senator Bray's bill but I do just want to say from what I understand it does seem to respond to what the Governor's Action Commission recommended in terms of doubling the number of homes weatherized looking at both the low income sector and serving that sector better as well as the moderate income sector I think that is really important so thinking about that in terms of all the different benefits and really committing to it I have a long list of benefits here many of them you've already heard I don't necessarily need to revisit them but you know just to highlight quickly I do want to underscore that I truly believe that this is really a strategy that would get to the Governor's goals which I certainly and I think most of us all share protecting the most vulnerable creating more jobs putting people to work and really you know setting us up for not only like short term affordability but also thinking more long term I mean getting off of fossil fuels is a strategy is an investment that will make us more energy secure more energy independent and keep more money here in the state and in people's pockets if we actually do it so I can share some of these stats with you but I just mostly want to sort of support the focus that you are taking on this and recommend and support what I believe Mr. Faisy had put forward reauthorizing existing funding sources for the low income authorization program but then actually setting the stage for really making far more of a commitment so ramping up our commitment over a couple of years doubling the you know two cents on existing the existing fuel tax increasing the gross receipts tax by 0.75% and then doing the same again in the ensuing year so setting the stage for using some of those dollars to do workforce development job training marketing engagement all of that stuff which is a fundamental you know it's a comprehensive approach it's a needed approach we've been talking about this for a very long time I think it's really a question about are we serious about you know thinking about this in terms of you know are we serious about making a commitment to this and really realizing the benefits that such a commitment could achieve so it is my hope that we and I think you can be strongly supported by at least the very strong network of folks that I work with in terms of really committing to this investing in ourselves investing in those sort of strategies that are I would say our 21st century strategies let's move away from the 19th and 20th century and help people become more affordable you know have more affordability and energy independence so again I can share some of these stats with you but you've heard some good testimony already I'm not going to take your time but if you could send them to June and then we'll get how they speak yeah I will do that many of them are pulled directly from the work that we did on the governor's climate action commission so it may be just a synopsis of what you might get from Mr. Costello quick little question I'd like to ask people who are interested in climate change have you given up flying commercial jets I don't fly very often I live here in the lovely city of Montpelier where I walk quite often and I just this is not about wagging I totally agree with you on the weatherization stuff but when we talk about overall climate change and we talk about transportation being a major contributor a whole bunch of people that are in this building advocating for all things Vermont can do still jump on the jet like three or four times a year and are traveling all over the place and I don't fly anywhere very often either the last two times I've flown is because I have a child in the Navy and the only time we get to see him is if we go there but it's just it's part of being holistic about our approach to climate change and if we're really serious about changing people's behaviors we need to look at changing all the behaviors and I totally agree and I think I did a comparison years ago when we put the windmills up in Lowell and Sheffield and if we invested just the tax dollars just the tax dollars that came from the United States Treasury our tax dollars we could have insulated 23,000 Vermonters homes more than doubled the carbon reductions and put Vermonters to work that's not total investment that's just the tax dollars so really behind putting the money in because when those windmills are obsolete and worn out those homes would have still been insulated and still saving Vermonters over the time I did the math it was over 23 million dollars a year we could have saved Vermonters kept it in their pocket and stopped all that fuel from coming in so it's just it's funny how some people and you're absolutely right we shouldn't say that one we shouldn't give up on this one but I think we do we need to look at I couldn't agree more I think we need a comprehensive strategy we need a comprehensive commitment we need real commitment to thinking about this as an investment the Governor's Climate Action Commission we put forward some good solid recommendations unfortunately several of them don't answer the question of how are you going to make that happen in terms of funding those programs it is I like to look at places like our neighbors to the north the cold and in part like rural place where they have things like the Western Climate Initiative which is a carbon pricing program which is serving them well because it is actually serving as a way for them to begin to make that sort of transformation off of fossil fuels and helping people make those kinds of comprehensive it's not just we were talking about transportation we need to drive your house even if you have to go to Brownlington we need transportation solutions we need thermal solutions we need electric solutions we need to be doing all the above in the most cost effective way possible and I look at Quebec where again they've done it it's a really pretty picture their GDP is going up and their greenhouse gas emissions are going down so you're talking to someone thinking about and pushing for putting a price on carbon pollution and using those dollars to fund the non-pricing solutions so actually looking towards helping people recognizing that we again import fossil fuels they're dirty they're finite and they are volatly priced moving people to actually more affordable stable clean options or doing all the above so I just want to say this is not easy we built our civil society on the backs of subsidized dirty fossil fuels and getting off of this wheel but this is a start and to Mr. Faisy's point I think this is if you did do what we recommended I want to just echo support for his recommendation it's going to be a strong step forward but it's still insufficient but it's my hope too that we think about this and we commit to it as a investing in ourselves stop framing it only in the cost and the consequences because we clearly want to protect those who can least afford to pay we want to bring them along in this transition I work a lot with our community action agencies and our low income partners the goal is not to penalize or harm rural and low income people it's to help them I think the whole climate thing I think it was Paula pointed out it's a huge it's a place where innovation could actually help everybody there's so much potential for new technologies to create new jobs and do a better job at everything that we do air travel is a great example it's such a polluter and it pollutes areas that there aren't cars such as goes over the Arctic drops things and all that in what sorts of innovative ways we incentivize those kinds of developments engineering opportunities in this state like some other states have done we did about years ago on rail unlike some other countries that have great rail systems that travel at high speed we have old clunky rail systems and that's a tough one it breaks down I couldn't remember those are both unfortunate but if states like the state of Vermont begin to send market signals people are going to innovate more they already are and this is not this conversation is not only happening here it is happening in lots of other states I just came back from a panel in Michigan where they've asked me to tell you the success story of what you guys have done in terms of efficiency and take the train out or I actually drove that with my mom it was a really cute carpool opportunity anyway your point is well taken but I just hope that we really begin to look at this in a different way so I said that you two are two peas in a pot they didn't recognize that we're going up to island pot tonight the table you're a finger where you're sweating they don't like burning fossil fuel up there fair enough like for bike masters or Husky good morning good morning first of all how long was the time we were here so I know where should I talk until you tell me to stop we could aim for roughly 20 minutes we'll see how that goes so Paul Zabrisky from capstone community action and I have a a weatherization fact sheet that passes around just so I don't forget to hand it out sooner and thanks for coming back because you've seen this stuff a little bit I'm the first to visit one of those I'm going to try not to reduce all the territory I've already been down just sort of to remind you I wear a lot of different hats my primary focus is the director of the weatherization assistance program at capstone community action so that is a low income WAP often hear it called we also manage 3E thermal which is a statewide program that does deep energy retrofit of apartment building so we're really much more involved in the affordable housing rental market with 3E thermal we're also a contractor in efficiency performance with energy start program so we work in the market rate programs as well I'm also a board member of the building performance professionals association a trade group of contractors and consultants and program implementers we run a lot of education programs so my relationship to this industry is really with the boots on the ground and the day to day operations of it I think that the point picking up on where the conversation has been is everything we do is cost effective based on the current relatively cheap price of energy so we run programs that all have cost effective models that are based on $2.50 or $2.80 fuel oil or equivalent everything else that comes along with it comes along for free the health and safety benefits the carbon emissions and lots of other emissions that go along with burning fossil fuels one of the things that we're not doing well as an industry and I'm speaking for all of those is the challenge of working together on getting people all the way there so one of the questions asked earlier was about the limits to growth and from my perspective it's all about demand if there's not demand for services then there isn't any need for a workforce to fulfill it and training the workforce without stimulating demand we've been there we did that it didn't end well so can I ask a good question my understanding is that there's a backlog now on the loan to weatherization and that's without particularly active outreach so okay so weatherization's demand is actually driven by supply so we don't advertise because if we do we don't fill a waiting list of old people we can't serve so in the weatherization assistance program it's all about what's the available resource we operate to the amount of investment money available and that's currently funded just to remind you two cents on oil, kerosene and propane half a percent on electricity and three quarters of a percent on natural gas so but going back to sort of a broader understanding of the marketplace one of the things we don't do in weatherization is we have highly trained auditors who go into a home but we don't walk out with data about whether or not a car charger will fit in that electrical panel whether a heat pump is suitable for that property whether the roof is solar oriented you know all three things that in the long term where we want to be with these homes those are all important pieces of information and here we're putting a professional in the building we're collecting a ton of data we're running all kinds of models but we're not capturing those three critical pieces which one of the other hats I wear is I work with Washington Electric Cooperative in your tier three program and we actually sell them megawatt savings from weatherization and take the money and use it to weatherize more homes so you know I have a pretty good understanding of how tier three works and yet we aren't able to integrate the utilities programs effectively with either weatherization or our home performance program home performance program is more of a market driven piece with weatherization but there are opportunities for us to do better but currently we operate within the really narrow confines of what's cost effective we put the body in the home and we want them to come out with the data that makes that work cost effective I think you said that three data points you can get that you're not making up is ability to support new homes solar orientation and ability should there be a market exactly those are the ones we're off the top of my head so in other words for the broader sphere of things we'd like to see us adopt the audit that happens is it's suitable for the weatherization but if this is an opportunity to capture more data is that because the program is designed just to do weatherization and it's not authorized like the other data largely you know I don't want to it's we're siloed we're working in our world and the utilities are working in their world that's not to say that we have the institutions we need and they're actually high functioning in terms of the WAPS in terms of efficiency and Mont has a great brand that is the state's brand and it is promoting but there's not consumers want the value of efficiency but they don't want to spend the money on it right and when we work in transportation transportation is unique because in my experience people sort of turn over the asset every 10 years right so people are constantly spending on new technology new innovation right the next car you buy has even better bluetooth and it's got whatever you know we're adopting technologies there's no app for making your house better insulated right it's a long term it takes a sizable investment and it's the kind of investments people make on 50 year cycles not 10 year cycles there is reluctance to just jump in there's a perception that efficiency is somebody else's problem I think the RFF report characterize it as its demand is inelastic right that people just figure that they're buying oil and that's what they're going to have to do is they're going to buy oil they don't see an opportunity to say I can invest in having a lower cost of it I'm talking about investing to invest spend their time on this and administration isn't that what you're talking about I'm not picking on any particular persons I think it's a broad public it's just where we are we accept that the house is drafty and cold and don't think oh I really could do something about that and so very small numbers of people actually do there's another example that is from one weekend to the next I'm going to the same gas station last weekend it was 249 and the previous weekend it was 234 so I could jump to 15 cents there were no pitchforks and torches outside the station no one said anything about a 15 cent increase but if we talk about a penny or two in the building it causes a wave of you know I understand that but last time there was a change there was language added to the bottom of the fuel bill it said it's now two cents a gallon that goes towards the energy efficiency weatherization for 30 years no it happened it was added I think four years ago three years that language was added to the bottom of the bill so it took the bill from being essentially invisible to the consumer to making it visible not a word you can hear about it right? you heard about it new tax well it wasn't a new tax anyway you know I think you know the demand is inelastic how you come in reinvesting that tax directly back in savings and I think the wrap up board hammered that point home incredibly effectively so a quick question about getting more done while someone is in the building what's I'm thinking of that sets me up to think about what would we do to address that so do you have any thoughts on how we address that to break down those silos not in the next month but I mean like what course can we set ourselves on to address that for the long I think collecting how to do it within the context of legislation I haven't given enough thought to feel like I want to make a specific comment what's a useful thing for us to be aware of I think yeah I think where where it becomes important is I've been working a lot with Efficiency Vermont thinking about the folks who are above the benefits there's both a group of people who are whetherization eligible that are in a waiting list that could be there for years and then there's folks who aren't eligible but they don't have the resources to just do this and so focusing on opportunities for sliding scale incentives where folks with the greatest need get a more enhanced incentive in sort of the base that we provide them with access to some excellent loan products that we already have you can say their loans is a superb product we've had great success with loan guarantees or not loan guarantees but performance guarantees savings guarantees with the zero energy now program that I think can link to that so if somebody is getting an enhanced incentive and borrowing a portion of the job to pay the contractor that there's a guarantee that the savings will cover their debt service but expanding sort of the access essentially stimulating demand and I think with that and with a support for intentional marketing and workforce development we can bring a lot more homeowners into the process of making these improvements and ultimately what we're trying to do is reduce the cost of housing as I look to say how do my kids stay here without making housing affordable and that includes making those houses comfortable and efficient so often when I hear about reaching higher income the non-loan income sector the numbers that get used are 80 to 120 percent where's 80 to 120 come from? I hear the numbers over and over again but it's not 125 or 150 do you know where that comes from? I think 80 is a very standard HUD number and I think 120 is also a HUD number is that correct so thank you I mean what we've looked at in developing this concept for sliding scale is we've worked with homeowners who work with our constituents on challenges around credit and we serve a lot of homeowners who run into problems with credit whether it be underwater on car loans credit card issues so we do a lot of budget counseling and when we work with the folks who are sort of in that environment every day working with homeowners the sliding scale is actually a curve it's fairly strong a high percentage of the job at 80 percent out to about 90, 95 and then it suddenly starts dropping off very quickly you get to a point where people have the liquidity in their budget to be able to afford the loan and you need a much smaller incentive until it sort of levels off at the current level of incentive which is about raising up a job currently so you were to do a job presumably you would see an incentive through the home performance problem 15 to 20 percent it's driven by savings not spending but that number seems to be relatively strong but we see this curve and I think the steepest part of the curve is just below median income but clearly there's a point at which below that people just don't have the income to support taking on additional debt sizable debt to do large jobs and that's a barrier I mean the workforce development is rightly concerned with if we're going to step up the investment which I think I hope that's where we end up going that to be sure that we step up the investment in a way that the market can respond in an orderly way we're not pushing too fast and causing causing problems so how do you have a sense of one of the things we talked about earlier is if we double for next year that's 4 cents but if we doubled in a year after that that would be 8 cents is that a path you can imagine working on especially given that we're starting at 0.8% of the cost so in terms of whether or not the industry can grow at that rate I believe it can but it has to be across all sectors that can't grow at that rate alone so it needs to be stimulating all of the income of equities we just have to be across all markets in order to grow the industry I think we need that anyway the thing about this investment half of every dollar that goes to weatherization goes to payroll so those are all dollars that are staying local a third of it goes to materials which are predominantly purchased from local businesses and roughly a sixth of it ends up as overheads and administration and brand utilities, trucks blah blah blah but the investment itself is stimulating to the local economy and then the savings it produced just keeps dollars that are currently exported within the economy so all of that economic activity is of great value to the monitors and it's keeping that investment at home so you've been close to this work for years I also feel like if you could speak some to how you see its impact on the lives of the people who serve we've heard a lot of that I mean I appreciate it, I mean it's just maybe you're going to say something different than everyone else has said so I have the best job in the world because I get love letters for the people I don't meet that tell me about how wonderful our crew leaders are our auditors are and it's not they are wonderful people but it's because we work in the house for two days and after the first night we show up the next morning and they know it's different our impact is immediate it has it's tangible to people and they're incredibly grateful and they speak to that and I get showered with accolades that I don't earn the letters we get you know I hopefully there's a preach of people out there I'm grateful for the work you do I am thankful for the opportunity to be here this morning I work from I'm an ecologist I look at a planet where you know vital ecosystem services are failing in every major biome we have a crisis and I know that the tools to address this crisis are before us we don't need a new app we know what we have to do particularly in the residential thermal sector so to be having a serious conversation about it is I'm thankful to all of you for entertaining me today I'm sure over a nice three weeks but I have some questions but that is the goal you know that within three weeks we finish the bill and we have a discussion I'm sorry and I have a chance to read it I'm trying to get over it I don't feel like nobody's trying to read it I'm sorry thank you on your weather station thank you very much if there are any more questions please we will take up to 25 minutes thank you thank you good morning thank you for being around today we are trying to figure out weather station I think we are getting a good feed on the low input side but for me the beef side know these well what's going on outside of the low input great so Abby White, efficiency Vermont here to talk about weather station and I wanted to frame up for you the system in Vermont and the different actors and how those actors interact with one another I'm going to talk about the services that we've been providing really on the moderate side and then what we see in the market what we know from consumers and how that information is informing our new approach in 2019 so it's a little wide ranging and happy to be interrupted at any point to take questions so also this has been submitted to Jude so it's posted apologies for the extra paper but I just so a bit of grounding you're all quite familiar with efficiency Vermont but just the first slide you're aware that we're a performance based energy efficiency utility founded I'm an extra yes for ledge council alright I think that's all the feedback I have right now okay yes so we are administered regulated by the public utility commission as an energy efficiency utility and we provide electric and thermal efficiency services throughout the state with the exception of the city of Burlington which is its own energy efficiency utility as is Vermont Gas Systems who's also here and we provide those services to homeowners and businesses across the state so the next slide I think it's important at times to zoom out a bit and understand the role that efficiency Vermont plays in our state and our economy some of which is visible to consumers and some of which is invisible so if you look at this market adoption curve this shows really just generally what does it take to bring new innovative technology to the state bring it to scale drive adoption and then over time sunset that and our role is really in this first part of the market adoption curve where we're constantly looking for new technologies new services, new designs of programs to help consumers change their behavior whether it's purchasing a new product or services or doing something different in their own business so we're constantly scouting those services we're sourcing the products ensuring that they're optimized for Vermont's climate for Vermont's economy we're developing the supply chains for helping to for the distributors carry those products that we have contractors who are well trained to install those products and provide those services all of this happens before a consumer actually says yes I want to engage so this is all behind the scenes to bring adoption and to scaling and that's why I presented it here because the question that you've been asking is how do we scale up services and I think that efficiency of Vermont has been in this business of scaling services driving technology adoption for the past 19 years I think we're poised to do that we have the skills to do that a quick question on this curve depending on the technology we're talking about I mean putting them on energy efficient light have you now draw everyone from innovators to ladders yes and so that's what we do is once a product becomes mainstream like the CFL was 10 years ago and now the LED is today and has been for a couple years we remove our involvement from that market we take move incentives away because the market has evolved to the point that price has come down that's affordable and then we deploy those resources elsewhere exactly so that just a bit of background I want to focus on the next section if you flip to the statewide weatherization system so you've heard testimony this morning and last week on where we are and meeting our goal and this is just a visual way of looking at it comes from the 2016 report so it doesn't account for 18-17 but you can just see here that there's quite a gap between where we are what we have achieved today which is the blue bar and where we need to get to which is the gray bar so so lift the page he already has he read his mind okay so if you flip the page the unnumbered page I apologize no numbers numbers are so old they are they are so if you flip to this page that has the Vermont programs and the pie chart here this shows you the share of work that each of the entities has contributed so again this only goes through 16 it doesn't capture the last couple years but you can see here that the biggest slice is provided by the weatherization assistance agencies that looks a little bit less than 50% you have efficiency of Vermont providing 30% you see the share that Vermont gas has provided as an energy efficiency utility to their customers that are customers of natural gas you see 3E thermal and then Burlington Electric has a bit of a slice where is that slice oh that there okay what is 3E thermal 3E thermal is Mr. Zabriski spoke to it and it's a program that provides weatherization services to low income multi family and we actually I'll talk a bit about them in a later slide but there's in how they fit into the picture the landlord over is it public and private public and private public and private okay so if you flip to the next slide how programs air act I want to walk you through this a bit so if you see at the top this sliding scale of income level and you can see that the weatherization assistance agencies and 3E thermal those serve customers that are a less than 80% of adjusted media income you see on the right here that there's several different providers that are serving 100% so you have efficiency Vermont Vermont gas systems you have a bit of Burlington Electric and then you also know some other utilities are providing incentives through tier 3 I'll say that we work very closely with Vermont gas systems and all the others to ensure that there's all alignment in our programs and our services so that what somebody is getting in Vermont gas territory is it wildly different than what they're getting in efficiency Vermont territory so we try to line up the way that we're going to market efficiency Vermont provides the backbone services of this really this entire network so you see here below we are managing the efficiency excellence network that is the network of contractors VPI certified contractors that are trained on how to do this work we provide we recruit them we provide ongoing training and support and then access to the incentives we also manage the heat saver loan program we'll talk a bit about that we provide a lot of marketing and customer engagement so we provide statewide reach on our outreach and engagement effort that not only serve to drive people into efficiency Vermont services but serve to drive them to other services as well we provide project supporting quality assurance so we go back we do some checking on the projects and see how they're performing over time certainly support to contractors and then all of the tracking verification reporting that's required by a public utility essentially and that's I think what makes efficiency Vermont and also Vermont gas systems unique in this mix here the level of regulation and oversight that we have on these dollars is pretty stringent also just to be played around with that assessment whether or not oh gosh so it's it's part of our just regular it's um so you know that we're we have three of performance period the demand resources plan and as part of that we have different performance indicators embedded in that because we're electric and thermal some of those performance indicators are driving us to the amount of MMBTU that we save so that's really what I'm saying is that and I'll talk about this later but we're constantly looking at the yield and the cost effectiveness of those dollars and that is something that our regulator is also looking at and ensuring that we're receiving enough benefit for the investment and so that's really I think what you get when you're investing resources in efficiency utilities like efficiency Vermont and Vermont Gas just also want to note here on the slide that efficiency of Vermont provides $1.1 million annually to 3E thermal to do the multifamily low income authorization those savings we account for those savings as part of our demand resources plan and then we also work very closely with the weatherization assistance agency in homes and there's opportunities for electric efficiency upgrades we're able to go in there and provide that whether it's through refrigerators or heat pumps, certainly lighting so we're definitely looking at ways to integrate and leverage our resources we've been doing that for quite some time but we're trying to innovate even more I have a quick question on need marketing and customer need so the bridge we were saying we don't do any active outreach because they're on the waiting list why disappoint people so part of the answer is if we do more outreach we'll have a demand that will help drive the program so do you how do you balance that because I was thinking about efficiency of Vermont there's actually actively kind of drive demand yes we're actively trying to drive demand and so are you turning people away? are you limited because we are limited I will say that there's a long lead time for projects a customer will take it's not an impulse buy it's not like my refrigerator broke and I need to go buy something I'm at the store and I'm going to pick up some light bulbs this is something that they decide over a period of time so we need to be generating a lot of leads to lead to conversion rates that we want to need so the on-going promotion and marketing reflects just the nature of the sales cycle for weatherization yeah okay the one thing I also want to point out on this chart is the gap and it's pretty obvious that there's a gap between 80 and 100 and if Mr. Zabriski may even say it's more like 60 to 100 with all the folks that are sitting on the waiting list and so this gap and again our services are available to everybody but the services through Efficiency Vermont require a customer match they're not a full grant so somebody has to have an ability to put some money on the table either through savings or through financing and we know that customers at that 80 to 100 percent really don't have the ability to do that adjusted median income adjusted median income or 80 to 100 percent area immediate income it does get adjusted it does get adjusted okay so I wanted to just clip to the next chart here talking to the thermal budgets and impacts so the revenue that Efficiency Vermont deploys for weatherization and all thermal activity comes from the regional greenhouse gas initiative and the forward capacity market and this chart the blue and the green chart just shows you how that funding has changed over time the total amount that this represents is roughly $52 million since 2011 it actually goes back to 2009 I just didn't have that data to bring to this chart here and what we've been able to achieve through that is 814 thousand MMBTUs and savings and over 209 million lifetime savings to customers so that 5.2 from the forward capacity market and regional gas separate and distinct from the 9 percent tax which goes exclusively almost exclusively to replacing electric components and occasionally betterizing electric yes rental apartments yes there's a separation here many of our constituents don't understand many of us think we understand but it gets less easy sometimes yes so this is the portion of Efficiency Vermont's budget that is dedicated to thermal efficiency thermal efficiency yes yes that's any you know 10 to 12 percent of our total budget so we're not talking about electric right now so one of the things I want to know is that this source of funding is trending downward FCM and Reggie and that has to do with the just these are variable versus a revenue on auctions I said knowing what the auction for FCM and Reggie is the regional greenhouse gas auctions so your last year is 2017 do you have to know where you are and what will be something FCM for anything yeah I actually have that okay well we can wait we're going to get there it's the lower hanging group that's used up to do that the auction is bringing less well as the electric sector cleans as the electric sector becomes more clean in our region the revenues from these auctions decline which is a good thing which is a good thing exactly but just to note that that if there's a conversation about funding yes that well is going to get smaller and smaller okay great so I want to flip to the next slide if I may so 2018 weatherization budget impact this is how we deploy resources in 2018 so you can see here the low income of the family through 3e we provide a little bit of weatherization for businesses not a lot you can see moderate income and then he saved her loan so the total amount of investments in 2018 was 2.3 million you can see the number of projects completed then next column roughly 200 with 3e 800 through our moderate income work which we call performance with energy star and then you can see over here the savings on the right so this is what has been in place these types of programs have been in place for years and I want to talk a bit about in a future slide how we're shifting and changing those but if you flip to the next slide just the moderate income piece of that again we've heard do roughly 800 projects a year we deploy the resources through participating contractors that are in our network neighborhoods of western Vermont who's here is one of those participating contractors and it's important to us that we serve all areas of the state I think that we have some gaps in Bennington County and in the West Kingdom and so we're the ones that are looking to fill those and recruit more contractors into the network the rough project cost is 7 to 10,000 and the average incentive is 1200 and so we've I would say captured the part of the market that has the ability to pay we have not captured the part of the market that doesn't have that ability or doesn't want to take a loan and so we're looking to involve our programs and services to better serve that segment. So when you say gaps in Bennington and the Northeast Kingdom how what's you say again a little bit more what you need to fill those gaps well first of all we need contractors that are qualified and interested in receiving the extra training becoming certified as possible. Is it easy for them to get certified in those areas I mean geographic areas or is it just lack of certification possibilities in those geographic areas? Well we certainly travel around the state for my trainings everywhere I think it's just for them it's an investment time and effort and if they're you know constantly doing that evaluation on their own what am I going to gain from this is their the more work that we're all doing to drive demand as Paul Zabrowski talked about the more attractive it will be for contractors to want to go through that process but a lot of the folks that are in our network they're general building contractors and they diversify their services to do weatherization as well. Can you General I'm looking to say what it costs to get that training and we will take days per year and that's like a thousand dollar investment in the program. Well all the training is provided by free for efficiency but Paul do you have a so having been certified once a month I would say it has a cash cost of between $3,000 and $5,000 some subsidies to that are available probably 60 hours 40 of it around class time and to sort of spool a crew this work is about $100,000 between truck with their diagnostic basically to roll you guys do it pretty good. Yeah I mean we provide our excellent trainings for free to become BPI certified is above and beyond that but Yeah It is It is So I want to shift a bit and talk about the health impacts of weatherization this has come up but I wanted to present some numbers there was a research there was a report done by Vermont Department of Health came out late last year I haven't seen that report I definitely recommend a review of it but one of the key findings is that the 10 year benefits per household that have weatherization measures and health measures done on top of that the savings are almost three times the cost and so this is the analysis that they've shown here when you talk about health plus weatherization you're looking not only at air sealing and insulation and all the work that we would be doing and for weatherization but you're looking at mold remediation additional ventilation pest and dust control accessibility issues asbestos so you're going above and beyond and when you make those investments you can see here in the first year and the 10 year benefits and also the public benefits as well I'll note that just a quick question what kind of investment how many dollars in how many dollars a pound I believe I think in their report it was 2,000 dollars and but I can certainly check on that great or I will say actually let me amend that that the average cost per project is roughly 10,000 dollars and that the amount of the incentive I think was closer to 2,000 yeah another statistic that our staff person works on this just wanted me to pass along is that the EPA says that 6 out of 10 households are hazardous to human health so when you think about I mean is that related to weatherization could it be water issues all the above 6 out of 10 in the United States they should have a right so when we talk about air quality indoor air quality is a serious public health issue not just an energy issue yeah so I think it's just important I wanted to bring in something to express the non-energy benefits of weatherization this report has just been released so it's important to take a look at it but the non-energy benefits and I think as somebody else far outweigh the energy benefits we're able to quantify the energy and dollar benefits a lot more specifically than some of these as you tighten up the home so what does it do with radon issues all of those things need to if you're looking at health you have to look at that for reasons that these projects are complex and expensive because the home is a living system and there's all types of chemicals and opportunities for problems at homes so you end up addressing things like air changes for animals to tighten the home exactly what else is a lot healthier looking a lot of pressure well that it's definitely one of the barriers to market adoption is the complexity this isn't something that you can just say go to the store and purchase this off the shelf because every home is different and you need to ensure that the contractors that are working in the homes really understand the complexity of this Mr. Chair I'm worried when I see charts like this which chart this one because it includes how much you save in dollars do you spend it for heat and other health numbers in there which are different dollars and to the extent that you can differentiate those two this is when you save for the heat this doesn't cost you the checks that you write or the cash you put in the envelope and then separate the others as you edit them when this is a tough one for people to digest well those things I don't think that's not really funny so it's subtle but it's important when you're trying to interface with the problem I think to your point part of the real challenge it's not only that they're avoided costs they're not tangible you did get sent because of something right and you can't see it there's a ton of work that's been done this area and I'm just trying to present the tip of that iceberg and I definitely encourage testimony from VDH icebergs are slippery slow yes okay so if you flip to the next page project completions I want to just share with you what we've been able to complete through efficiency Vermont since 2008 when the regional greenhouse gas initiative resources started flowing so you can see a ramp up during the ARA time period parks was a recipient of our funding and I'm sure they were really able to escalate their work during that $4 a gallon heating oil makes a difference so you can see we were tied during that time and then it kind of fell off now talking just a bit about the way that we're approaching some of the barriers to engagement so these are fairly obvious but there's just the poor all of this upfront cost contractor availability and skill awareness of the benefits and then as I said the complexity of weatherization we're trying to sell people on getting a root canal right you know it'll feel good when it's done but it's not a pleasant process to go through I'm just being honest about it and part of my job and within marketing is always trying to figure out what to do I ask myself that every morning before I come in the committee I won't play today and you were the reason today that was less painful okay and all of our other so just a quick bit on the research we have so we know that customers are interested in making their homes more efficient and that the reasons why replacement of broken equipment are comfortable so you see here saving money is a little bit down cutting energy so we have to be mindful that the things that they're looking to achieve are not always monetarily related to the things that we care about like greenhouse gas emissions if you flip to the next one many people have improved most of the things that they can or they think that they have but yet they don't know what's this is always surprising to me as a person who's trying to get the message out there that we're doing we're putting a lot of effort behind promotion and awareness and engagement and still it's something that's not registering for people there's definitely an awareness gap we also know that people want to do a lot of work on their own so we're figuring out how we can support those people and I'm going quickly okay so I want to say what's new for 2019 so we are if you look on this x-axis here this is an income level going from low to moderate to high and then comprehensiveness of the jobs we used to I would say primarily our areas were focused in the home performance with Energy Star which was a performance based program everybody you get the same incentive if you reduce by 20% in your low income your high income you get the same incentive and we're switching that around so that it's much more income based so you look at the ways that we're trying and that we're innovating now working on healthy homes pilots with three different hospitals where we're providing incentives for health plus weatherization and then we're doing a study to understand the health impacts over the longer period of time so that we can better quantify the health impacts is your connection to hospitals that if you they tell you you have a patient with chronic or with chronic secondary disease that that's someone you ought to reach out to you that's the idea that you target that that have COPD or asthma that you go to those places first and NeighborWorks has done some great work in this as well and hopefully Ludi will speak to that we're also working with Capstone to do a pilot to help to reduce the waiting list for customers that are 60 to 80% and putting more efficiency Vermont grant dollars on the table in partnership but also enabling the web to provide those services so I have here the next line down is the home performance income based this is our traditional program again but we're redesigning it to have a more income sensitive scale we're also now offering rebates for partial jobs just the attic just the basement because we know that customers to undertake all of this at one time is a big commitment as I said here do it yourself so we're offering rebates for people that do some of the work themselves they document that into efficiency Vermont we provide cash back for that and then home energy visits which really there's no savings associated with those but because of the complexity of the job and the amount of touch points you need to provide to customers we're scaling up our efforts to be into people's homes and to just walk through and identify okay we're feeling a lot of air infiltration in this one spot where you're home are you cold okay let's go kind of do a spot check to identify some of the quick and easy things people might be able to do it's not an audit but it's a it's not an audit exactly because the audit again it can scare people off often they come back with a pretty large price tag and you know people get sticker shop and walk away and I also just want to call out that we're working in collaboration with the BBPA and Richard spoke about this earlier to the net zero pilot okay this is the next slide just shows how those different programs are going to be funded through 2019 I won't go through the details but just call out that we're looking to increase our investment in this area last year roughly it was 2 million we're looking at about a 4 million and that you know by shifting things around it in our portfolio and that's it we're going to talk more about ways to finance but can you say something about to save our loans? sure so heat saver loans you go I neglected to show it but if you could overlay heat saver loan it would kind of sit right between low income and moderate income as a way and we're looking to package financing with incentives so it's like turnkey similar to when you go buy a car it's all packaged right there for you and you sign at the kitchen table so heat saver loan we offer that as interest is low as 0% over longer periods of time the process the qualification is less stringent than what you might get at your bank so we're able to take people with lower credit ratings a little bit more risk tolerance and this is again a financing mechanism but the regi and fcm dollars do flow into that to buy down those loans and also accommodate the additional risk so I don't really know how the money would get there but if there were more dollars available to you where would you put them in terms of trying to address that 80 to 120 or maybe it's 80 to 100 where would you assign new dollars that they were available so if you flip to the last chart here that just shows where the money is going right now I would say a few different areas one is the low income pilots so enabling efficiency of a month to partner with weatherization agencies in service to 60 to 80 putting more money on the table those are expensive jobs so the cost effectiveness of those dollars is not as high when you go to moderate income so this goes back a bit to Paul's point earlier that if we really want to accelerate we have to ensure we're doing it across the entire market low moderate higher income if we want to get to the numbers so I think in terms of impact sure I would go there I would also go to really just the home performance with energy start moderate income putting more resources there that could buy you could put more incentive on the table up front you could take the average incentive from 1200 to 2400 that would move a lot more people and then put more money to continue to buy down those investments so I think all of those things combined if you have a greater amount of grant paired with low income low interest loans hopefully get people to the point of no investment needed up front or modest investment and that the cost of their loan would be would be less than their energy costs so you make it revenue neutral or revenue positive for them on a month to month basis if you can show them the numbers and convince people that that investment will pay for it and we've been doing that model with financing with businesses for a long time now because businesses that matters right at the monthly cash flow yep yep thank you very much all of this is for the capacity and greenhouse gas yes thank you would you like to invite Ms. Biddle to join us at the table good morning I say Ms. and Mr. everything so before you very well thank you I'm Ludi Biddle Director of NeighborWorks of Western Vermont and the Heat Squad and I did bring testimony what I'd like to do would be to just read the paragraph that describes and then actually go back to one of the original questions I heard this morning because so much has happened in this meeting room this morning that I think I could just add some very specific suggestions where are you based by the way we're in West Rotland West Rotland and we serve Addison, Bennington and Rutland counties with all our housing services we're a non-profit housing organization and we have programs statewide as well which I'll describe so we're asking that your committee the natural resources and energy support in your bill or in your budget memo our request to appropriate 1.25 million in one time funding either all at once or spread over a five years period for the statewide expansion and I'll describe the Heat Squad but this is so that Vermaters can be served in every county in the way that we've been successful in Rutland County which I'll describe and that we can reach a scale where our program will be self-sustaining as well and I think that's an important thing to mention what's the memo that you're referencing here our budget memo well I'm not as familiar with your processes but if you have a way of recommending our you're going to talk to appropriate we are in the budget memo for the house I do know that and we're glad that so that maybe what I would refer to we're just hoping that you'll be willing to appropriate this funding process they don't let us get our hands on the checkbook yeah I would send time down there on that one yes thank you very much I know Route 107 quite well so that's our that's my reason for being here what I'd like to do I'm not sure I understand that reference you knew Route 107 I drive up from Rutland about the appropriations committee right about the appropriations committee what I'd like to do what I'd like to do so you'll have all this but so many people have brought to your attention the need and given you the statistics and some of the history and so forth and so on so I just thought that I would sort of launch into a story that illustrates what I believe you can accomplish by funding the heat squad and in particular and sorry to interrupt but just so that people know so you're not one of the five or six capstone you're not one of the leo's you're a private nonprofit we are the NeighborWorks is a private nonprofit housing organization founded in 1986 and our mission has always been affordable housing throughout and a few years ago we acknowledged and were pleased to discover that energy efficiency and weatherization was an immediate way to provide affordable housing in other words if you drop the cost of heating you will help the household to most need it very quickly we received state funding currently we received state funding for our housing programs from the block grant program not for weatherization we do not have any state funding right now for our heat squad which is a specific weatherization effort in the past in 2010 until 2014 we had a very generous grant from the department of energy during the our years we had four and a half million dollars and with that we started the heat squad the we had represented as an applicant to this program at the department of energy that we would retrofit a thousand households in Rutland County over a three year period and in fact that comment got a lot of giggles I think from the grant leaders but they agreed to give us the money to see if we could do it there had been nine retrofits in Rutland County the year before and in over a three year period we did in fact retrofit a thousand households in Rutland County 60 percent of them were under 120 percent very immediate income so that's pretty significant for Rutland County those households to this every year are saving about a million dollars which is like a million dollar grant to the county to no that's exactly what I wanted to share yes so we are not we are not a weatherization program and we deal we work most specifically with that group that is not served by the weatherization programs but up to 120 the moderate income households who need the help as much as anybody but are not in line for the free services so you asked earlier what are some of the obstacles why haven't we progressed faster at this and Abby pointed out too that when we had this very generous funding from DOE there was this significant bump and we're suggesting that we could have another significant bump with this kind of investment again what we do is address the obstacles in if you will human behavior there are a lot of others financing whatever but what we do because we are a housing organization and we're very familiar with working with these households the first thing we did was drop the audit cost which is a huge sort of initial barrier so we drop the cost to 50 dollars and right now it's between 100 and 150 in two places that is that's significant we also explain so from there we provide this customer service we explain to our households in very direct labor intensive outreach the science and technology it's confusing it's new nobody understands why they should have an audit what it will tell and what they'll do with it we help them with that basically our customers have somebody helping them from the very beginning throughout the process we explain that then we actually do construction management with them we provide the objective review of what's proposed for their home we're not going to be earning money on the work done they will trust us to give them an objective opinion as to what is most important what's most cost effective for their home and then we actually we have a lot of busy people who don't get the work done because they're not home so we can literally be we're able to and I said this before let the dog out and let the contractor in that's the kind of service that will get people over the hump in Rutland had an audit done five years ago but he hasn't had the work done because he's never home and we can overcome those problems for people and if you do that you get further along it's not that we've added so much money to the to the customer we've added the assistance to the customer and particularly the ones who are more challenged to get this work done so and then we also have we're able to address other housing issues often people are thinking why should I get the basement insulated when I need a roof done and I need electrical and I need all the other work how will I ever get any of this done and it's overwhelming well the heat squad is able to address all the other ancillary issues or important issues in a housing issue so for example we do do an assessment of the appropriate whether heat pumps would work and we'll do that work as well with them we have just had a big graph from the agency for natural resources to replace wood stoves in Rutland County which has the worst air quality in the state we've replaced 149 wood stoves with pellet stoves where possible and with more efficient wood stoves so we are a pretty comprehensive look at the home you heard about some of the health issues that are addressed through these efficiency measures we actually have a partnership with the Rutland hospital very specific partnership with the Rutland hospital where they they refer their ASBA COPD patients to us and the nurse and our staff go into the home together and do an assessment that will actually have an impact on their health and they do go to the top and the hospital has contributed I think it's now up to $9,000 of their funds for our customers to use in these circumstances so it's a very direct partnership with the hospital for the household or for the whole shoe for the households who qualify for this need they all actually give us funds to do hand kept ramps to do hand kept bathrooms whatever their patients need to get out of the hospital or improve their health outcomes it's pretty special glad to hear that we spent $6,000,000 in here it's the same size as the budget so for money I always feel like why not bring health into the whole story that's right in the hospital we have these wonderful conversations with the doctors and nurses sitting around the table they just say we've had to keep patients in the hospital because we can't get them back into their home for some physical reason and we say well we can do that for you and their answer is where have you been all this time so we have this new partnership that is very very direct and the efficiency measures are just one of the tools that we're using we also when we're in homes and we feel very strongly about this we've been in probably 45,000 45,000 to 5,000 homes over the years that we do a full assessment of the home not just for efficiency measures but for aging in place for example our guys are trained to look for the thresholds that are changing from kitchen to dining room or something that could trip somebody up or fixing the light fixture on the back porch so that there isn't a dark staircase to fall down a number of other ways that we and then because we're a housing agency we can refer people to sources that can help with other issues so it's a pretty comprehensive service and very very direct can you explain a little in terms of the notion of a one-time funding period either at once or over five years I can understand how the money would flow it would only be a one-time request so we we've worked with spreadsheets for quite a while to analyze how we can grow our program to serve more the state and we basically have spreadsheets that cover these walls we do earn fees since we had completed the DOE grant and we were on our own we've been setting up a system to earn fees from some of our services we're still dependent on grants and the neighborhood itself has been supporting the heat squads within the interim just to keep it going but if we get to a volume of business from which we derive fees we calculate that in about five years we could be self-sufficient earning earning on our own and I'm happy to share it's just a model but it does have projections as to an increase in the volume of business well thank you and I don't I've jumped in a couple of times to ask questions I don't know if there's anything else you want to include that you didn't get to yet I well what I want to say the heat squad did expand from Rutland County to Addison Bennington, Windham and Windsor counties with help from the C program at GMP and so forth and then we've actually gotten a grant recently from the Northern Borders to expand into the Northeast Kingdom so we're serving as well as we can that section of Vermont and this section of Vermont what we're trying to do is scale back up to the level that we achieved very quickly with the DOE funding and provide as I've said also in other testimony Rutland in this case got the big red apple it got a program that has saved enormous amounts of money for the residents and the residents who need it the most and of course the carbon and all the other benefits we'd like this service to be available across the state so the the DOE money that we launched in the squad was roughly four million that you used to stand up the program to operate a lot yes I should also mention that in our sort of one stop shop model we also are a lender we are what's called the CBFI community development finance institution we're certified by the US Treasury to receive capital that is to be lent to underserved communities and your contribution to neighborhoods would qualify for a one to one match from the US Treasury for that purpose which is also important to point out I just forget to mention this and we are a lender so part of the funds that came from DOE two and a half million dollars went into our loan fund and it has been out you know in loans to households we are now part of the heat saver program at Efficiency Vermont so we once again have interest rate buy down funds to make our loans affordable and scaled for the lower and moderate income households and we've just and we've just also been approved by our state treasurer to receive another million dollars in loan capital from her five million dollars that was approved last year to capitalize our loan fund well thank you very much thank you thank you I would like to invite Mr. Berry to join us for the table you're welcome just switch it up Mr. Berry go thank you I'm Tom Berry with Vermont Gas Systems I do have a quick presentation I'd like to go through I am mindful of time so I'm going to try to be fast and I have been accused of being too speedy in these things but I don't think that will bother you guys at this point and then there are a few copies for the audience please get the electronics as well so as Abby from Vermont had mentioned we are an efficiency utility at Vermont Gas we've got 50,000 customers so if you are a customer of Vermont Gas in Chittenden Franklin or Addison County if you want to have your home insulated or you want to embark down that path we're the entity that will provide that we work closely with EBT we do the thermal efficiency we partner on a bunch of different opportunities we've been doing it for a long time about 40 million dollars in investment we've made over those years a lot of installations that includes rebates on equipment and insulating homes when you add up all those savings it's over 300,000 metric tons of carbon reductions Vermont is pretty significant you know the next slide real quickly is this house slide which really is a powerful story that culminates on a lot of the stuff that we've talked about today but the power of energy efficiency with kind of a bundle of measures so if you convert from oil to natural gas you reduce your carbon emissions by 23% because natural gas is cleaner than oil if you replace your equipment with a natural gas high efficiency system typically your oil one was at 75% efficiency high efficiency natural gas is at 95% so you're gaining 20% efficiency insulate your home on average you can save upwards of 20% or even more percent on it in your home even things as small as a small thermostat so what we like to say is we have our customers on a pathway to reaching the 2030 goals in the energy plan by reducing carbon by 40% and frankly we're well on our way to the 2050 goals and I haven't even talked about the costs here I was talking about carbon there but if you look at the cost in that other column so you can get all these benefits and actually have a reduction in your overall cost so it's a compelling story and really that kind of sums up a lot of what we do the rest of the stuff again I thought it was going to be a quick question that's a burner tip EPA numbers at the burner tip and the just quickly rundown we're a little different than some of the other efficiency providers we actually have our own team of auditors so we actually when you call us up we send out one of our folks they will do a blower door test this is a blower door unit here pull out and report these are all much like with Paul's team BPI certified long-term experience auditors they'll give you a full report with a list of measures you can do and if you want to move forward you can move forward on your own and we'll give you the incentives and help you finance it if you want to have us do what we call fast track we'll actually help you get the contractors and line it up and really project manager for customers that's been very successful because I think many of you folks know just delivering the audit is just one thing but actually getting somebody to move forward with the full project so we encourage people to embrace that our grants or incentives are they can be upwards of 50% on a project so if you've got $5,000 depending on how much of that screens and for low-income folks we actually work with the WAP programs in the CDOEO folks so WAP will fund 50% out of the WAP funding we'll actually fund the other 50% so for that customer in Chittin County they can get a free weatherization job we also offer zero interest financing we have different programs slightly for single family and multi-family and mobile homes each one of those is a little different condos and mobile homes are a little different because they're low energy they're tough to screen so we have specific packages really designed for those that are much more prescriptive say look you can get $600 to insulate your condo and it's easier it's simpler to move forward and on the mobile home we actually have a pretty comprehensive program to tighten up a whole mobile home just because it's we know in many cases those folks have a monthly challenge and whatever year to help those folks out we offer equipment high efficiency rebates on the commercial side again I'm sticking to my fast promise here commercial programs those are much more customized we do offer some prescriptive set rebates but really the businesses each one of them is unique we have a couple of engineers that go out and work with businesses on these customers how can we save these businesses on their energy and really how can we operate them more efficiently businesses are certainly interesting savings but if you can show them efficiencies for example converting from oil to natural gas it's much cleaner burning so basically the maintenance on their equipment is much less and things like that I gave you one example one thing that I think we talked a little bit in this committee last year about renewable natural gas offering but this is kind of a neat example so we're the first gas utility in the country that sells renewable natural gas we're getting it from a landfill in Quebec we've got a project in near Middlebury that's going to be a farm digester that's going to take biogas to clean up and inject in our system that's a pretty cool area for us so that's we've been selling that for about a year now and we've got a couple other supply contracts we're going to bring in renewable natural gas projects in Chittenden County and Franklin County to also have digesters that will create renewable natural gas how can Vermont coffee say they're 100% renewable coffee? well it's their energy so they've got 100% cow power so they're paying for all their electricity they're paying for cow power and then all of their natural gas they're getting 100% renewable natural gas from our program so it's kind of anything the best part of the story that ties to efficiency is that when they converted natural gas they upgraded their roasters to high efficiency roasters so they save 75% on their energy cost because natural gas is cheaper and the high efficiency so they had a windfall if you will where do they get their beans from? they get them from I think South America but I have to check on that I was going to put energy on this the claim is it's 100% renewable energy produced basically what's going on with his claim is that he's got we believe we have worked with him on the documentation because one of the things you want to do in the merchandising sector you don't want to misrepresent you've got to be very accurate about what you're saying in that regard it's no different than Burlington's claim in 300% so again yeah we might have him in yeah he'd love to talk about it he's been a so he's got a who is it? Paul Rolston and so Paul he's been a real advocate for this and renewable natural gas is one piece of it but just the concept of taking your savings and investing them if you can your average homeowner can't do this but investing them in something innovative in his case it was he says 100% renewable coffee renewable energy in his bag I'd have to check on that but my point is I'll send you just a quick list of partnerships and I can just wrap up we're working with all these players around basically to be more efficient working with Paul Costello in his energy economy BED we have a great relationship with Burlington Electric and we're doing a bunch of stuff with them we call CHAMP which is this brand that we do a bunch of each year we try to pick off some efficiency project to kick off around the CHAMP brand Net Zero Burlington wants to be Net Zero by 2030 how can we help them get there the Climate Action Committee we're working with on this modern income group that's come up several times the 80 to 120 how can we dig in on that group we've got a little bit of an incentive that's going to kick off soon around that this is step one and then a journey to really dive into that sector we work with the WAF as I mentioned earlier we're working on this digester I mentioned a lot of cool projects out there and we're excited to be a member of this efficient security so that's all I had great thank you very well what's an urge for smart growth it's virtual peaker as the company will work with they actually we've got a pilot going where we'll give our customers a smart thermostat what does it do so a smart thermostat like a nest thermostat or an ecobee it's a smart thermostat that is well what it is basically you can set it for different times basically like the old programmable thermostat but it actually learns basically so it'll know that you came home at 5 o'clock and it'll know that you leave at 8 o'clock in the morning so it'll actually start again dial back your eating during those periods basically so when they say smart it's learning but it's also connected to the web and mobile app so you can go look and say wow my house is at 60 degrees I'm headed home I want to turn it up so it's fully integrated there in that regard and so we're working on those those programs like GMP and others to so we thank you very much Mr. Murray we have 15 more which we have 15 minutes for that cleanup this morning's tour and then we'll get up to 5 and our last 15 minutes thanks sorry about the phone noise I thought I might thank you thanks for the opportunity to testify it can be a real challenge to simply summarize and not go over what my processor witnesses have said but can I come in on a suggestion you've heard all the things we've heard what have we not heard that we should be thinking about that we try to build the storm let me summarize also because you've heard a lot of different testimony in different areas but first just by way of introduction my name is Eric Montcom here representing the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition as well as the Vermont Community Action Partnership the Community Action Partnership is made up of the 5 Community Action Agencies and their directors the Affordable Housing Coalition for folks who are not familiar with it is a statewide membership association we've got approximately 80 members all the housing nonprofits that build, own and operate housing around the state are members as are numerous antipoverty agencies, homeless shelters and so forth just by way of a personal note I've been doing this type of advocacy for the last 20 years I have been involved in housing and community development issues and homelessness for over 30 years at this point in a past lifetime used to work in the trades used to actually do housing rehab that involved energy efficiency back in the 80s and 90s at a preferred time of the technology and also just to the Burlington issues, City Councilor when we issued the first energy efficiency bond and decided to try and put Burlington on a path to complete 100% renewables so obviously I'm here to support acceleration of low-income and moderate-income weatherization are housing folks all built to the highest level of energy efficiency whether it's Shires Housing in Bennington or Addison County Community Trust or Rural Edge and the housing partnership in the Northeast Kingdom and Down Street Burmont and Orange County they do that because it's absolutely critical that they lower their costs because of their permanent stewardship obligation to public funds that are invested in the housing and just by way of example and our folks work with 3D Thermal, they work with EGT they work with the low-income weatherization assistance programs when that is works with their projects but by way of example Cathedral Segre Corporation one of our members built the first net-zero multi-family building in the state in Milton just went online about two years ago and then Chair Bray in your area in Walfam they also work with Addison County Community Trust first on the Vermont that replaced the older defunct mobile home part so our affordable housing members have a deep commitment to this they care very much not just about their own bottom line in terms of the cost to maintain the housing but obviously also about their low-income constituency they serve some lowest income for monitors and I think we all know that the lowest income communities are the ones that are ultimately the most affected by climate change and have the most at stake as we saw after Irene with the disproportionate impact on mobile home communities as an example so low-income for monitors really are disproportionately affected by climate change and that's one of the reasons that our coalition has joined a broader coalition of climate advocates to advocate not just for weatherization accelerated weatherization agenda so as I said we do support doubling the funding for both low and moderate income I don't know if folks have seen this crystal-hand ad I'll just pass it around it summarizes the weatherization asks that you have heard before but just briefly to summarize weatherization does keep money in our state's economy it helps support jobs grows the economy keeps the money in the state assists the most vulnerable for monitors obviously reduces greenhouse gas emissions and helps us to move forward on our state's climate commitments which we are obviously locally behind on there are multiple benefits as you've heard it's not just you see it's housing safety housing health it's a low income health Abby talked a little bit about some of the health benefits and the health department report that she referenced actually put together a really excellent one pager that I'll hand out now I think Jeff Wilcox referenced it yesterday but didn't really get a chance to talk about it so this report clearly shows that there are general health benefits benefits for people's productivity especially upper respiratory health asthma, cardiovascular looking at the box in the lower right hand portion of the handout and we just find this report incredibly compelling and this fact sheet I think really states highlights well what the benefits are from a health from a health standpoint so I'll also just simply add that I don't know folks saw this in the fall when DPR leading up to the elections did their survey of what are the greatest financial stressors in the lives of Vermonters overwhelmingly about a third of the they said housing costs are their greatest financial stressor property taxes which we often think of as a huge stressor and here that it's a huge stressor was a distance second with 18% of the respondents energy is a huge component of that housing cost and it makes up that financial stressor so just summarized by outlining our ask once again which is first and foremost to reauthorize low income low income weatherization for the weatherization assistance programs and reauthorize its sunsets June 30th like zero when you worked on this when the general assembly restructured the fuel taxes three years ago there was a three year sunset built in the sunsets June 30th 2019 so first and foremost our ask is to reauthorize low income weatherization to protect those thank you those five programs typically reauthorization has sometimes been three years sometimes been five years this has been around long enough we would ask that it be reauthorized permanently that the sunsets simply be removed for the low income component and as you consider an increase hopefully a step increase that you kind of draw a circle around whatever is dedicated to low income weatherization so that it's clear that the existing the existing fuel taxes the existing revenues for low income weatherization are dedicated to the weatherization assistance program and that any incremental increase also clearly be dedicated to them through the home weatherization assistance fund which is a special fund within the state's funds so that's our first and foremost ask the second ask as you heard from Richard Faisy earlier and other witnesses we've worked together to come up with a way to meet the Governor's climate change recommendation to double the number of units it can't just be done by low income weatherization it needs to be done in concert with moderate income weatherization through efficiency Vermont through 3D thermal including also through the programs that neighborhood sequester Vermont runs and our proposal is to increase it the fuel tax two cents per gallon next year and then again two cents per gallon next year and for Vermont gas to go from 0.75% gross receipts tax to 1.5% next year and then 2.25% the year after which would effectively double what is currently dedicated to low income weatherization but would then distribute that somewhat differently in our analysis to get to the 4,000 units per year weatherized we would see 35% of the new funds the new revenues go to low income weatherization 40% to the 60 to 120% of median area median income ban to note the question earlier I can address that briefly in a moment so 40% to more moderate income 5% to the affordable multi-family housing developments assisted through 3G thermal and most of those are the more complex projects that are nonprofit members 10% for existing market rate, thermal conversion measures and 10% for workforce development and expanded marketing especially in rural and hard of just serve areas for the more moderate just briefly address the question where does the 80 to 120% come from anything below 80% is considered by HUD and in the housing world as lower income for a variety of federal programs 80 to 120% is generally considered in the housing community the antipoverty community with more moderate income range and the state context for that is that the governor's housing for all revenue bond that you all passed two years ago that went through VHCB and is being spent producing affordable housing all over the state that the governor and the proposal reserved a certain percentage for the 80 to 120% ban and for VHCB's the home ownership statutory their statutory limit is to serve people up to 120% so that's generally where the 120% standard comes from how has it come to pass that in Vermont the law demands electric zooms to contribute 9% and every dollar they spend on electricity to efficiency and for a heating world the number is less than 1% is the legislature responsible for that? I don't really have a clear answer for you Senator you've been working on this for a long time I certainly haven't does all the credit go to Mr. Koda or what we'll ask him that it goes to Vermont Gas it also goes to there is an electrical charge my question is why is the charge on oil so miserably and out of whack perhaps how much money did we spend out of state to buy oil and we only that's 0.8% to try and deal with Vermont homes it's a trick question in the other it is 11 times as much of a legal requirement to deal with efficiency from the past it started over 20 years ago and part of what funds low-income weatherization is also a 0.5% gross receipts tax on electricity I can't tell you what was behind the infinite wisdom of the General Assembly that created the efficiency efficiency utility working with directing the public utility commission but these are historic numbers that have been around for 20 years and it's I think it's up to the wisdom of the current General Assembly that you want to make changes to that do you have a dog at home? I think that's another rhetorical question what happens when you go home year after year thank you very much any further questions so thank you very much for that wrap up for this morning my guess as to how we have such disparate numbers is one was a regulated fuel it went through a department of people seeing process someone did some cost benefit analysis saw the wisdom of the investment and off we went but that's not the system underlying this program so do we will someone refresh us sometime in this discussion how much money will markers spend cash dollars every year to buy fuel out of state to meet their hopes so regularly I'm sure Mr. Kodak can help us with a lot of data and if we didn't have an amendment just a topic thank you so many as you know for a week we've been passing over as 55 since like a toxic bill seems like a toxic bill are they still passing it over today? yes well potentially not but I'd say I'd say yes because we've seen the amendment that grew out of a conversation so if you could correct me please thank you as folks know I think it's two years ago feels like longer that's one of the three passed the senate passed the house, went to the governor got the intro and through executive order and the agency committee on chemical management got started and meanwhile I think the senators are interested in doing the statutory rather than the executive order so we're moving S-55 to do the same thing and I think that S-103 did before but meanwhile that group was formed with me and so I asked Mr. Agate to work with A&R to look at are there things to and to just harmonize building this in statute that we don't have to reappoint everyone start from scratch we have knowledge that's already been done and go on so at the same time I asked Deputy Secretary Watt not to include the most part new proposals that we haven't worked with and we have a proposal of amendment that's here in front of us and other things so I'm pretty like two of us so if you could take us through them and start reading it honestly my sense is we may not feel well enough but we can at least get a look at what we have so the S-55 amendment that you have in front of you does three major things it conforms to the Inter-Agency Committee on Chemical Management that was proposed in S-103 and S-55 is introduced this year to the membership of the committee and the power of that committee under the executive order under 02-19 in addition it strikes a requirement required report from that Inter-Agency Committee that was S-55 has introduced because the Executive Order Inter-Agency Committee has already addressed that report and submitted their recommendations to the governor and then the third thing it does it gives the Inter-Agency Committee new authority to basically accept nominations for review of chemicals for their prevalence in the state use in the state risk to people in the state and to have the recommendation to the governor and then tangentially review policy and law making changes that would address the management of a particular chemical so those are the three major things it does on page one you'll see the Inter-Agency Committee is created its purposes lines nine through fifteen remain the same they are unchanged the membership is largely the same on page two line four it had previously said the commissioner of information and innovation for whatever the subsequent entity is designated it's now secretary of digital services or doesn't mean in addition I don't believe the governor's he has a secretary of transportation on it and so that would be one additional difference from the executive order the citizens advisory panel that the Inter-Agency Committee is required to convene largely remains the same some of the language is different page two lines eight and nine the agencies wanted to be clear about that the persons on it are available to the committee on an as needed basis to provide the following expertise and they were very clear about that one individual with expertise and that's throughout then they combine some of the membership from S-55 as introduced line 13 and 14 an individual with industrial hygiene or occupational health expertise they were combined an individual with expertise in human health and environmental risk assessment that was combined a new language is on page two line 17 you have had an individual with expertise in manufacturing they have proposed or processes located in Vermont and subject to Vermont record keeping and reporting page two actually going on to page three lines one and two subdivision H that's new one individual associated with the small business located in Vermont and then line six and seven one individual with expertise in public policy they added that phrase with a focus on chemical policy so largely the membership of the citizens advisory panel is the same some technical tweets there then you get to the authority the additional authority the duties of the internet agency committee page three line 17 you see new subdivisions four, five, six and seven and this relates to the new authority that's being added in the new section that's section 16 6634 and it is to review nominated chemicals and make recommendations including proposed legislative or regulatory changes to improve chemical management through changes to chemical record keeping and reporting or other requirements subdivision five is really about the process that they're going to engage in for that nomination they'll have that ability to hold public hearings to take testimony and receive comments et cetera page four line four is how they are going to implement those recommendations that come from the 6634 process they're going to coordinate the appropriate agencies to implement the recommendations and then page four line seven they will also have the authority to develop procedures guidance and other resources necessary to carry out the function of the inter-agency committee I have a good question so there's also a high concern to children right and I forget how to say hey high concern to children program is about 66 chemicals and whether or not they are present in a children's product as you know that there are let's just say a hundred thousand chemicals that could present an environmental or human health risk so this committee will have jurisdiction over any chemical nominated whereas the working group for chemicals with high concern to children has jurisdiction over 66 or any chemicals added to that list by the commissioner about five rule I have a quick question I don't want to stop this but is there any way where we say the same chemical comes up in both bodies both panels so how does that get sorted out well you'll see in the 6634 process that the process involves some process there's a nomination then the interagency committee reviews any recommendations from the technical team then they vote on what those recommendations are and then they make those recommendations to the governor and the legislature and then you just saw and their authority they have to coordinate with appropriate state agencies to implement those recommendations so I think there is opportunity throughout that process for coordination those little high concern working group slash commissioner of health commissioner of health is a member of this so I think there should be ample opportunity for coordination on page four line 16 the date for the report has been changed from January 15th to December 15th 2020 then also the report is to the governor and makes recommendations regarding actions of the committee to the governor and you get a copy of that before the report includes a couple of new provisions line 7 and 8 a summary of identified risk to human health and the environment from reported chemical inventory and there had on page 5 line 12 there is the new reference to human health and the environment so it's largely the same on page 5 at the end line 21 you had had a limit of four meetings per year of the interagency committee that has been struck one thing of note there is no provision here for compensation of anyone that has never been and I just want to note that so so moving on page 6 section 2 this is the new section which sets out the nomination authority and process you'll see page 6 lines 8 through 11 the committee accepts nominations to review a chemical class of chemicals or group of chemicals that nomination may be made by the committee, a member of the citizens advisory panel worth of public the nomination submitted to the chair in a form developed by the committee and shall include at a minimum and to the extent information is available to following information but this is my biggest question so you're a member of the public you're authorized to make a nomination but you now have to submit a form that includes all of this information the use and risk of adverse exposure information about potential hazards or risk information related to releases to environmental media the extent to which the chemical is regulated by the state, the federal government or other jurisdictions and any other information the committee determines is necessary so will a member of the public have all of that information will they have that information what is the expectation from the agency on what would be accepted as a nomination that phrase and to the extent information is available is this I'm not sure how someone would available to whom with what level of efforts we can present I think that's part of that whole question what is the standard that the agency will hold people to in submitting a nomination I mean I think you saw some of that earlier this year in S-49 when people saying the leachate from landfills has PFAS in it that creates a threat to both groundwater and surface water quality is that enough is that enough for a nomination I don't know the answer to that page 7 line 4 the committee shall determine whether nomination warrants further technical review they may require additional information and they may prioritize review of nominations which makes sense if they get 50 nominations they're going to have to prioritize what they're going to do we need to schedule for review I have to leave soon as well I do worry that tomorrow we don't have much time on this and I would say it's a priority over weatherization stuff since this is a crossover issue this Friday the last day that this can actually we're fine I mean we fine but for as long as your leadership says that's what I was thinking it's working but it would be to them I think very long this morning so we have I'll work on the schedule and we'll I don't want to rush something that's important I appreciate everyone's concern that you can get it right so I can move fast to the rest of it so if there's the preliminary determination to do the review they set up a technical team to do a technical review if the technical team determines that they make recommendations you'll see on page 11 page 9 that the full committee reviews the findings of the technical team and then the full committee issues its findings they give the citizens advisory panel time to review those findings and then if they determine that they're going to make a recommendation on page 10 they approve or deny the recommendation and then they submit that copy of that recommendation in a report to the governor and the appropriate committees of the general assembly the one thing I want to note I think it's important section 2a you can't tell the governor that he can't have his executive order anymore I'm sorry to set that up in the first place but I'm not going to get into that you just say it is the intent of the general assembly that the interagency committee established by the governor's executive order shall fulfill the powers and duties of this statutory committee and that the persons appointed as members of the citizens advisory committee of that governor's interagency committee shall continue as members of the citizens advisory committee that's your intent you can't tell the governor that the executive order doesn't exist anymore when there's conflict between statute and executive order the statute controls but you just basically conform the statute to the executive order there's an argument that they can exist at the same time but you just want an expression of intent that they will not and the goal was whatever an orderly transition from one to the other seems like the discussions suggest that a way amicable transition that raises the question of when do you want this to go into a guide currently in passage on passage so that transition would theoretically be made possible so I'm just thinking about that a little bit it almost seems that there should be a little time post signing the law so alright so thank you everyone thanks for staying over we will schedule more time and I would like to make some interesting partings because none of us have gone through that nomination I appreciate everyone staying over thank you