 I would now like to call the April 21st, 2021 Longmont Sustainability Advisory Board meeting to order. Can we please start with a roll call? Sure. Kate Collardson. Present. Mary Lynn. Present. Adam Reed. Present. Jim Metcalf. Present. Charles Musgrave. I'm here. Cave Allmire. I'm here. We have Lisa Knoblock. Annie Noble. I'm here. Francie Jaffe. Here. Tim Ellis. Here. Then we have Dave Hornbacher. Present. And Trista. Trista, forgive me, I don't know your last name. Fugate. Fugate. Present. Thank you. Thank you. And I don't see council member Christensen here yet, but if she comes in, I'll let you all know. Okay. And we have a quorum. We do. Yes. Perfect. Thank you. The next side of the, on the agenda is approving the minutes from last, the last meeting. Would anybody like to make a motion to approve those minutes? I'll motion to approve. I will second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. That looks like unanimous approval. Thank you. So the next item is public invited to be heard. So I will open it up for the public invited to be heard. Each person wishing to speak will be unmuted to speak one at a time. When it is your turn to speak, please state your name and your address for the record. Okay. If you have another noted, you will have three minutes to comment. I will be keeping time and I will interrupt you at three minutes. And if you continue speaking, you will be muted. So, um, We will now open it up. All right. First, we have a do Kelly. Oh, where is she? Looks like she may have dropped out of the meeting. I'm not seeing her on our list. So we'll go to, um, Tim Sheckley. This is Tim Sheckley and Boulder, Colorado, 3666 Street, Boulder, Colorado. Uh, thanks for the opportunity to, uh, to bring up a couple of things that you might be of interest. I'd like to call your attention to two articles that were sent to you recently, roughly describing, uh, Hems. Oh, it's an acronym. H E M S home energy management systems. The two articles are one was a solar today article. Um, called titled intelligent energy operating system for the solar homes and micro grids of the future. It's about Hems technical standards under development. And, um, the second article was IEEE spectrum. Tomorrow's power grid will be autonomous about Hems project by Holy Cross energy, R.E.A. and NREL and best salt. Uh, these are, um, these articles are relevant to Hems's goal of getting to 100% renewable energy by 2030. Um, if you'd look at the, uh, uh, Longmont climate action recommendations report of June, 2020. Um, if you look at page 18, there is some recommendations. Uh, one is R E two home energy management systems. Hems. Uh, this, uh, um, identifies Hems as a key element in utilizing a distributed solar and storage. Um, the Hems role is clearly described by the, these two articles above that I, that I mentioned. The second item I'd like to point out is R E one, uh, smart meters. The role of the smart meter is not, not made clear. And it has never been explained exactly how these meters will get to what help get to 100%. Uh, they're expensive and their value is only assumed a smart meters heavily promoted by industry. And sometimes they claim to be enabling time of use pricing. Um, but time of use is not appropriate for wind and solar. They really need time of renewables rates instead. That's what Hems do. Time of renewables rates in a sense. Um, in any case, my recommendations are that the sustainability advisory board should examine these technology options carefully. The following options of smart meters. And another one called ADMS automated distribution management systems. Uh, mention that in a second, but, uh, how does the, the question to ask us how these actually function to get Longmont to 100%. Longmont is considering spending many millions of dollars on meters, but how would meters help in comparison to spending on Hems and on ADMS. ADMS is automated distribution management systems or sometimes called advanced. Um, uh, add ADMS is needed for it. Derms, another acronym distributed and distributed energy management systems. Uh, Longmont will need ADMS and Derms to coordinate. Purple grid initiatives. So please, please take a look at how these will actually contribute to the climate action plan. Thank you. Okay. Next up, we have Bill Alt, Alt house. Uh, hello. Uh, Just wanted to point out, uh, a lot of us have thought for sustainability and environmental action for a long time. And the problem has always been that what we need to do costs more. Uh, we're now in a transition. There's a few things going on, particularly, uh, what statcraft has done in Europe with a virtual power plant that is a hundred percent renewable. They're a hundred. They're the largest renewable energy supplier in the world. Uh, they bought no equipment. It was all off balance sheet, just contracting with existing resources and then bringing them together in an AI platform. It is now the most wildly profitable power plant in the world, as well as being the biggest, uh, and a hundred percent renewable. And an incredible example as we transition with Platte River power, what an opportunity. And if it's customer owned resources, this is a whole level of economic development. This may be a way to bring in the chamber of commerce and others who are large energy used in an opportunity for them to lower their rates and generate revenues. Um, so the virtual power plant concept needs to be clearly and explicitly vetted by PRPA. They should be made to prove that won't work before it's disregarded like they are now. Uh, secondly, another really good opportunity for Longmont is you did something brilliant at your treatment plant, which makes renewable natural gas, which is going to convert all your trucks, buses, all the, all the, it's brilliant. The, the renewable energy credits are really large. And right now you're building out your vehicles and you don't have enough to generate the credits and you're burning it at the flare, losing about a hundred to $200,000 a year in credits for Collins transportation. I've talked to them and they had a turning at EPA in charge of this program and asked them if you put that gas in a tanker and you sent it over to Fort Collins to charge their buses, and they were able to generate credits the same as when you put it in your vehicles and the thought was yes. So there's another example of how we can prove renewable pays today. The VPP is going to be the big one, but right now you're losing a couple of hundred thousand at the treatment plant that can be captured. And so very exciting that we can show the money to the people who have always obstructed our environmental efforts. Great times. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next we have Marty Pfeffer. Hi, this is Marty Pfeffer 100 Sandler Drive Lafayette. I want to comment on the proposed advanced metering infrastructure system for the city of Longmont and its application of smart electric meters citywide by sharing my experience being sensitive to the spectrum of electrical frequencies. I believe that converting the electrical metering system to a cellular frequency communication system will pose a serious long-term health threat to everyone exposed to the operation of these meters in ways similar to my experience. All of life operates with electrical energy at the same fundamental operating frequency of roughly seven point eight three Hertz or seven point eight three cycles per second. That is also the frequency of our planning from which and of which we are all made our finely tuned bodies and all that and all and that of all organisms responds to the increases to exposure above seven point eight three Hertz and register it in our functioning. Imagine our basic body vehicles are machinery in a lifelong continual environment of basic electricity cycling at 60 Hertz nearly nine times our normal operating frequency. Amplify that with each increased frequency in our world all the way up to microwave frequency. The band is cellular communication technology uses that level is 10 gigahertz. Think about that for a moment. 10 to the ninth power cycles per second. When the switch is pulled to power up a new am I metering system every person will suddenly be exposed to that level of microwave frequency. Why then haven't we all dropped dead and gone extinct 100 years ago. Many who denied the reality of harm due to the exposure justify their beliefs this way. The curve of mortality due to the range of autoimmune diseases correlates to the curve of the development of technology over the last 150 years. We have a certain amount of resilience and adaptability and so the pace of ill health and disease can be unnoticeable like the analogy of a frog and a slowly heated pot of water that never notices it is being slow boiled until it suddenly dies. I have what is called electromagnetic sensitivity the condition of being consciously aware of certain damaging effects from exposure to electrical frequencies. My body shows me symptoms of impaired functioning when I am exposed to higher frequencies for too long. How much is too long varies a lot and I have learned to know the sources of symptoms and the steps I need to take to protect and restore myself to a healthy balance or as near as I can maintain it. It is a dominating function in my life to strive for a normal night of sleep. I am like a canary in a coal mine and you are all there with me whether you are canaries or not. I end with some demands slow the pace of your approval and make a thorough study of health risks. Approach the technology as guilty until proven safe and innocent. Initiate a citywide public awareness and participation campaign on the proposal. Utilize online newspaper, television and radio media and neighborhood leafleting to promote the campaign. And act citywide public forums in many locations. Initiate a certified voter approval process for the proposal. Thank you. Thank you. I want to thank all of you for being here today. You are the one who was able to rejoin us. We will have her speak. Can you hear me? We can. Technical glitches. Hi, this is Dokelly of Barberry Drive in Longmont. Last month I spoke about the near failure of the power grid in February almost leaving us like Texas in the dark and cold. Thankfully almost doesn't count except to serve as a long power communications along with the PRPA, I'll be interested to hear what they have to say on this topic and on the state of our current energy management or lack thereof. As you know, I'm also an advocate for safe technology which does not include wireless smart meters. As a person who's experienced microwave sickness, I consider wireless devices on every home and business that send and receive microwave RF emissions to be far too dangerous and risky of a proposition that includes fires and security risks and a potential massive boondoggle for the city as these meters fast become obsolete in the advent of future tech already and almost here that's far safer and more customer centric. What I'm speaking of is on the premises energy generation, battery storage and energy sharing in micro grid networks and a term I've only recently learned of which is virtual power plants all of which together would shield us against many of the vagaries of unrelenting natural weather events. Our mother nature presents us with over the past year. You've heard the name Tim Shackley. You've heard it just a little while ago when he spoke to you. You've heard it from me and others at this meeting in city council. And as I've said before, he's an experts expert on wired and wireless communication, a statement of fact and not opinion. This is his life's work with expertise and not only telecommunications, but renewable energy. I asked Heather to send you via email Tim's June 2020 comments to the FCC so you can read his qualifications. Tim seems to me like one of the actual grandfathers of this entire field for over 25 years. He engineered development of electric utility gateways and energy management systems. He had a major role developing into international standards for home and building networks and for AMI. He was developing software and hardware in the 70s and was a pioneer developer of RFID technology. His decades long career in international standards began in the 80s and continues to this day. In his spare time he's been a successful entrepreneur in this industry. In the 90s he was there when smart meters were invented, which I think qualifies him greatly to comment on the subject. People fly Tim today to court appearances as an expert witness or engage him as a featured presenter. He's the forest gump of telecommunications and renewables. I'm grateful that he gave us three minutes today and I invite anyone here to invite Tim for a full presentation on any of the above topics. I request you read his comments to the FCC regarding a redo of the 1996 radio frequency guidelines. Last month one of this board's visionaries married in. That's time. Thanks. And that's how we have chair. All right. Thanks everyone for the comments. The next item on the agenda is the any revisions of document staff. Are there any revisions or submission of documents to bring up? No. This is what I'm seeing. Okay. Then we will move on to the general business. So we are going to have a presentation from PRPA and LPC. So I will pass it over to Trista from Platte River Power Authority. The floor is yours. Hi. Thank you, Kate. Appreciate that. So good afternoon. Longmont sustainability advisory board members. My name is Trista Fugate and I am Platte River's director of community and government affairs. And I am pleased today to join you to provide an update on Platte River activities. Next slide, please. Maybe. There we go. Perfect. Okay. Today's presentation will include the following areas of discussion. A quick Platte River overview for those watching who may be tuning in that aren't as familiar with Platte River to want to provide that and describing our relationship with for Northern Colorado communities. Also, then we'll dive right in to the 2020 integrated resource plan or IRP for a quick overview of that plan that was approved back in the fall, followed up then by, okay, now what? Our energy future. So brief discussion on some milestones and that pathway to 2030. At that point, I will hand over the baton to Dave Hornbacher who will cover off some information on the distributed energy resources committee and what that committee is doing in terms of a DER strategy. So provided a quick overview or update on that as well as some activities taking place at Longmont power and communications. Next slide, please. So again, the quick 30 second, maybe a little longer, commercial on Platte River Power Authority. So Platte River is a not-for-profit community owned generation and transmission provider to the four Northern Colorado communities of Estes Park, Fort Collins, Longmont, and Leveland. We are considered public power. Mayors of our own communities sit on our board, as well as typically the Electric Utility Director in each of our inner communities. So here in Longmont, what that means is Mayor Bagley sits on our board as well as Dave Hornbacher and Dave at our last board meeting was elected chair of the Platte River Board. So he will assume that we're all following this next board meeting. So congratulations to Dave. So our board structure allows us to provide for local decision making and to be responsive to the constituents in our four inner communities. Decisions are shaped and guided by three board approved board established rather core pillars to safely deliver energy that is reliable, financially sustainable, and environmentally responsible. Next slide, please. Quick little map here to show where our communities are located. You all probably know this very well, but coming from Texas, it took me a while to get my bearings and figure out the geography of the land and this map helped. So providing that again for anybody tuning in. So our four inner communities, SS Park, Fort Collins, Longmont, and Leveland, and this gives you an idea here based upon the retail customers of each of those inner communities, how big the Platte River surface territory our four inner communities are. Next, please. And next slide. For those of you who may not be familiar with what an IRP is, why we do one, when we do one, who we report to a quick overview. So by law, and to remain eligible for our federal hydropower allocations, Platte River must submit an IRP or an integrated resource plan to WAPA, which is the Western Area Power Association, every five years. Here in the electric industry, we love our acronyms, sorry about that. If I say something that you're not familiar with, just please stop me. The IRP must include a five-year action plan. However, this IRP is typically modeled out much further than that to about 20 years. The 2020 IRP was developed in alignment with our resource diversification policy that directs staff to work toward the goal of 100% non-carbon energy generation by 2030. While maintaining our three pillars, and those three pillars I mentioned a couple slides back as a reminder, are reliability, environmental responsibility, and financial sustainability. The IRP is just a snapshot in time, and it's a predictive plan. So it's based on proven commercial technology. In other words, what's available today? What can we buy today? Outside of the formal IRP process, Platte River regularly performs modeling exercises. For example, anytime we bring on a solar or wind project, which we've done several times since our last IRP was approved in 2016, we're going to model those resources and those assets to see how they fit into our overall system. A mini IRP, if you will. So modeling is not foreign to us. We do this quite often. Next slide, please. I believe our resource diversification policy was included in your board packet for today's meeting. But as an overview, our board unanimously approved this policy in December of 2018. So we've had it for about two and a half years, or right at two and a half years. Again, I've mentioned it previously, but it does direct a staff to work towards that 100% non-carbon resource mix by 2030 while keeping in mind those three pillars, as well as it outlines nine different caveats, nine things that must be achieved in order for us to be successful. You've got a few there on your screen as examples, but I encourage you to read through the policy for the entire list of nine for those that are maybe joining or they don't have the board packet in front of them. This policy is also posted online at prpa.org. Use the search function for resource diversification policy and it should pop right up. Next slide, please. The 2020 IRP, which was kicked off in summer of 2018. So 2018 was a big year. We had that IRP kickoff and we had that resource diversification policy approved. The 2020 IRP took a little bit longer for us to approve and take out through that process, our board adopted it in October, October 29th of last year and it achieves a greater than 90% COT reduction from our 2005 levels by 2030. Now you may be asking, what's important about 2005? Well, that's because our state legislature passed some laws back in 2019 that established that as a baseline for measuring our greenhouse gases and our reductions on the way to the greenhouse gas reduction roadmap pathway. So as listed here on the slide, the 2020 IRP retires all coal generation by 2030. So that means the units that we have partial ownership in being Craig units one and two, both being retired in 2025 and 2028 respectively, respectively, as well as our baseload generation unit, raw hide unit one, by December 31st of 2029. This plan also adds substantial renewables and batteries. It does add rice reciprocating internal combustion engine units, but only if and when they are needed. And they would be to maintain system reliability only, not contemplated to reduce or to replace baseload rather, should be noted that those rice units are outside of that five year action plan that I mentioned on that IRP overview slide. So again, would not be these are not immediate purchases. And since we plan to have a couple more IRPs before 2030, you know, chances are those those will not be needed. So again, 2020 IRP exceeds legislative goals that were embodied and the legislation passed back in 2019 being SB 236 and HB 1261, as well as the goal of the Colorado greenhouse gas pollution road map reduction that is a mouthful and I get that wrong every time. So I'm sorry about that. But again, that goal is to decrease utility generated carbon emissions by 80% over 2005 levels. And remember ours achieves a greater than 90% reduction over those 2005 levels. And we're able to achieve all this with a modest rate increase, honestly, two to 3% annual rate increase anticipated until 2030. You know, considering a our weights would increase just slightly lower than this under the base case scenario, that's awesome. It's awesome for what we can do. So cumulatively, for a 29% rate increase through 2030, we're able to achieve a great reductions, whereas we would have normally had a 24% rate increase anyway. So you're really again, looking at a very minimal rate impact to achieve these emission reduction levels. Next slide please. And after board approval, this plan received statements of support from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Colorado Energy Office, as well as the governor. I'm pretty proud of that. Next slide please. So with the adoption of the 2020 IRP and the establishment of our new baseline, Platte River remains committed to our board approved resource diversification policy. Again, with that stated goal of 100% non carbon energy by 2030. Plus with the adoption of this plan, Platte River has committed to voluntarily submitting a clean energy plan to the Air Pollution Control Division, surpassing the minimum requirements of the of the CEP to reduce emissions by 80% of the 2005 baseline. Again, that 80% of the 2005 baseline is what is contemplated in HB 1261. And thankfully, our planning doesn't stop with our 2020 IRP, nor our clean energy plan. We are committed to completing at least two more IRPs by 2030. So a lot can and will change between now and then. Next slide please. That brings us to our energy future. Next please. This particular slide as well as the next one was included in our board packet for last month's meeting related to a discussion on strategic planning and goal setting. However, this discussion was postponed until this month's board meeting, which will take place next Thursday. So you guys are getting a preview. So you know, consider yourselves like special because our board hasn't even seen these yet or they have, but not discussed them just yet. On this slide, we captured what we've identified through our current planning efforts as our milestones, some things that we, you know, that we're going to measure ourselves against, recognizing that a lot will change during given the fact that we've committed to those two additional IRPs. So if you'll notice in the years 2024 and 2028, we have there the IRPs noted in bold. Okay, I'd like to draw your attention to the first five years of this, the milestone timeline, which is our five-year action plan. You will notice in there that we only have slated that 150 megawatts of solar being added in the year 2030. Other resources, including the rice, if it is needed, are in 2029 and 2030. However, we do have a fit net there that states that because of those two plans that we know where we have coming up, the other two IRPs, we, we're assuming that some of this will shift around, but not more than likely within that five-year action plan. Okay, I just want to be straightened up front with what all this means. So it's kind of a lot, a lot to take in. But again, the five-year action plan includes only about 150 megawatts of solar. However, we know we have our IRP in 2024, which could shift things around. So I just wanted to make that crystal clear. Next slide, please. Again, this slide, not yet discussed with our board, is a graphic representation of that pathway that we are on as a result of the activities that were outlined on the milestones slide. Likewise, it draws attention to key items in that blue box that are needed to get us there, to get us to that in 2030. To support this path to 2030 and our efforts, the board will undertake a strategic planning process later this year. In fact, the IRFI was sent to our city newspapers in the inner communities and is running today, and it should be running today at least, as well as Friday. It's also been posted up on our website and sent to approximately 15 potential vendors. So we expect to then issue the IR, the RF, I keep wanting to say IRP. We expect to submit or to issue rather the RFP then sometime over the summer, mid-summer timeframe, hopefully then awarding an early fall and starting our process, the strategic planning process before the end of the year. Next slide, please. I think that, yes, that brings us to Dave's portion of the presentation, so I'm happy to pass off to Dave at this point. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Trista. I'm Dave Hornbacher. I'm the Executive Director of Longline Power and Communications, and I'm also providing a brief DER strategy update because also I am the Co-Chair of the DER Strategy Committee with Platte River Power Authority. And that is, as you can see by all the different cities above, it's a collaborative work between the four cities of Estes Park, Fort Collins, Longmont, and Loveland, and Platte River. So we're all got our sleeves rolled up and are working on this. Next slide, please. So for many of you, you may already know everything that's on this list. And for some of us, this is sort of a new and growing area. And so I want to just pause here for a moment because DERs stand for many different things. They're distributed energy resources, and classically there's five categories that they fall into. If you go on the internet, you might find six, you might find a little less. I think this is sort of a growing area, but this is normally what you'll see, which is the distributed generation. So typically, that might be like rooftop solar, energy efficiency. So anything that we do to really conserve or become more efficient with our electric energy is part of a energy resource. And most of you probably should be aware, but there's also the efficiency works through Platte River Power Authority. And that gives access to our different community members to different types of efficiency rebates and also home energy audits and so forth. So if you haven't been there, I encourage you to look up efficiency works. We also talk about beneficial electrification and demand response. And the fifth is distributed energy storage. So that's the typical five that we're going to talk about. Next slide, please. So what does a high distributed energy resource future look like? That's actually one of that's what we're working on right now as a committee. So this has been a year long effort that we will finish in June of this year. We've had three public meetings so far. We'll have a fourth to sort of roll out and discuss the results of the work from the teams from the four cities plus Platte River and the community input that we've received. So there's work going on. We created three subcommittees. They're in the areas of planning and evaluation, operations and customer programs. So these are the main areas that everyone is working in to come up with basically strategy documents. And so in the end, it is a strategy document that the four cities and Platte River will use to then start design different types of programs that we can implement. Next slide. And so within some of the framework, it talks about policies and processes, programs, rates, incentives or technology investments. So really very wide swap there, but two step approach, qualitative as well as quantitative. So it's how do these different types of DR strategies contribute to our communities as well as the goals. And it's consistent with the guiding principles and visions. And also the quantitative is really looking at benefits and costs from the perspective of owner communities, those customers, our general society as well as Platte River. Next slide, please. Ah, so that was the brief overview on the DERs. But part of what Tristus sort of had laid out, we were asked sort of, well, what is Longmont doing? And so that is the next slide presentation that Heather is bringing up. Excellent. So I've sort of broken it up into three steps. And if and you may or may not have seen some of these slides before depending on if you were at the Sustainable Resilient Longmont meeting. First, we're going to talk about getting into shape, sort of three steps, innovative tools and choices, and then sort of wrap it up. So this first section, I'm really going to talk about the basics of what we see for our customer load and some of the challenges associated with that and some of the vision and strategies that might be out there. Next slide, please. So this is a just a typical residential daily load profile. And as you can see is that, you know, here you are at home. And this is what happens. You're getting up at seven in the morning. Now, this is probably a pre COVID load survey, but, you know, you would get up at home, you would start to use a little more energy, you would head off to work, maybe some things at home and then, you know, folks are starting to come home. And as they're doing that, they're doing different things, you know, within their home, as well as maybe their heating system is warming up for them to be there in a variety of things. But what you'll see is that that energy usage from more or less the lower average to the top is about twice. And so that is a challenge, especially when you talk about renewable energy resources that have a certain amount of variability on them. As you can imagine, if this profile is during the middle of summer, you're still getting a little bit of solar kicking in locally. And wind may or may not be kicking in. And during the, the, let's call it the brightest part of the days, the demand is actually a little bit down. And so that's why we really need to look at many tools. Next slide. So some people call it the duck curve. And so, you know, I found this fine malware to help us explain the duck curve, but I don't think that's what was generally meant by the duck curve. Next slide. So there's sort of my clumsy duck curve. But if you imagine that blue line coming up over the back of the duck that's starting to drop down and back over the head at about again six, seven o'clock at night, there you have a duck curve. And so that is just one of the things that we're working with in our challenges. Next slide, please. So this looks at it on an annual basis. We've got multiple years here. And this is just looking at the city of Longmont, you know, what happens in the city of Longmont. So we saw what happens on a daily basis for a home. Now, what happens on a weekly basis and throughout the year, as you'll could see is that we are a summer peaking utility. So again, come summer, we need about twice the amount of resources available to consistently and reliably meet all our energy needs. And likewise, as we move into those tapering months of the fall and the winter, the amount of resources is much less. And so you can imagine that one of your challenges is how do you get that many resources performing at that moment in time, yet don't be out there buying more than you need and that you can't use or likewise becomes idle during the rest of the year. So next slide, please. So there you go. Thank you, Heather. When I look to the future, I've tried to characterize it into maybe three stages that we may go through. You know, you've certainly heard about peak shaving. And so that's really looking at that peak. What can we do to shave that peak? Now, we'll go into some of the tools, but what can we do to shave that peak? So the amount of resources we need available or the amount of existing loads that we can share during those periods of time allows to flatten that peak. And this just shows it on an annual basis. But think of the same thing with your duck kerb. How do we flatten that peak out at, you know, in the evening? Then the next slide is what I see is stage two is load shaping. Are there things that we can do to move the load to other periods of time, or in this case, other quarters of the year? So again, you're trying to provide the same amount of energy, but you're doing it in a different way. I think the graph, if you think back to the graph of the residential home, that's probably more representative because you can imagine if you come home and you normally turn on your electric oven and your stove and you run the dishwasher and you start that load of laundry and you plugged in your electric vehicle, those are all happening at once. And your water heater is your electric water heater is kicking on too with all the things you've got going done. So if you can start to spread some of those things out where some of the items such as your electric vehicle charges later, perhaps the dishwashers running a different time, perhaps you've got the, you know, maybe your dryer set on a different cycle, perhaps you've preheated your water prior to this period of time. So those are some of the the possibilities. Next slide. And when I look to the future, when we're talking about that 2030 timeframe, I really see it as a third stage where we have to synchronize load and generation. So when we've got a lot of generation going on, we're in the middle of the day, maybe our load is low, but we've got tremendous amount of wind coming on. There's, you know, bright solar going on. We've got probably hydroelectric in the summer. We've got all those things generating energy. What can we do with it? Where can we house that until later in the day, a different time of day that we need it? And so that's, and likewise on load, we talked about, you know, can we reduce or shift load so that it becomes more one with the generation? And next slide. And so in synchronizing load to generation, there's going to be a lot of tools out there. We're talking about the distributed energy resources, the HEMS, the home energy management systems, electrification, renewable energy, electric vehicles, conservation efficiency. It's just, there's a lot of things that come together. It's not just one tool. It's all of these tools working together to synchronize our generation with our load. Next slide. So in creating our future, what are those innovative tools and choices? And this, I have to say, this is one of my favorite little pictures of the road outside of Moab. It's just, it's the most windy darn thing and it is, ah, it gets you grabbing the edge of your chair as you're going up or down. So anyway, next slide. So this is something we've certainly used in our discussions with council when we're focusing on different elements. We've stated as an integrated electric resource system. So it's really a combination of things that really get us to our 100% renewable energy goals starting on the left in a clockwise fashion. There's going to be policies and rates, you know, rate structures that help to encourage policies that are part of it. Innovation and emerging technology is another aspect of it. You know, there are things today that are in, in laboratories that will, that will be coming out and become mainstream. And so how can we actively move from those types of test situations to bringing really value on the system? Renewable energy from Platte River. We talked about distributed energy resources. I'll go into that a little further. Beneficial electrification. I want to pause there for a moment. That is, that also is a, is a significant part of how we reduce our carbon footprint because we're really converting from those fossil fuels to that. But bear in mind, everything that you start to electrify that is not electrified today is additional electrical energy, renewable energy that needs to be systems provided for. And so that can create a challenge and it can create an opportunity for us. The built environment, commercial benchmarking we're going to talk about briefly, and then intelligent grids. Next slide. So enabling technology. This is certainly not intended to show everything and anything out there, but it's really about your metering. It's about on our distribution system, sensing and controlling, demand and, and distributed energy resource management, customer tools. So how can each of us become involved and start to manage? I mean, if anybody you have like an equal be like I do, I've got that thing at my fingertips and, you know, certainly with a home energy management system, you have lots of tools out there. The distribution, sensing and control will become very important as we electrify because we're putting more load on existing wires and transformers and we have to be able to manage that and understand that to ensure that those systems do not become overloaded and either fail and or need to be replaced with larger systems when maybe there's other ways to manage them and utilize them. Next slide. So one of the items is also building benchmarking. And we're actually in a phase two on this. We benchmarked a little over 20 buildings in town, mostly city facilities and then a few other larger commercial buildings. And it really gives a grade for the building score and lets you know where your building is at. How is it performing? Once you know that, you also then have the ability to try and figure out how you can perform it, have that perform better. Better performance likely means less energy use and probably more comfort for the uses. So it's a, it's a reduced energy over time. It's data and you can see it's almost sort of like when you're shopping for the car. You know, how efficient is your building or how efficient is your car? It's a really strong basis for understanding and change and for potential policies to encourage that further. Next slide. Beneficial building electrification. Again, what can we do with our building inventory to reduce carbon and to reduce the and really keep it affordable for our communities. And so this is something that we're really looking at and I'll go into electric feasibility a little bit later, but these are actions that we're taking. Next slide. Grid-interactive efficient buildings. There's a lot there on that screen. We're talking about efficient. They're connected. They're smart and they're flexible. So, you know, efficient. We talked about how much energy you're using. Flexible at the far right. We talked a bit about how and when do they use energy and are there other items such as a battery or such as solar that can help offset that. Smart that we have the tools and connected. So we're able to really not only understand what's going on, but being able to manage those either as individuals or also as utilities. Next slide, please. So one of the pilot projects we have is Habitat for Humanity. We're working with them on 10 10 buildings that they have with. So we're working with Habitat. We're working with also the owners of those buildings and it's sort of to test some of these home energy management systems to test the communication, to test and experiment with shifting load a little bit. So you certainly see the, you know, heating air conditioning units there. Basically sensors and controls. The third picture, that's a patio. So they're going to be installing that at two homes. So it's a walkable solar patio. So I'm not familiar with that, but I am so excited to see that. See what that's all about. And then the last on the right is the electric water heater. A lot of work has been going into electric water heaters and really how not only the data that comes out of there, but also how you can stage them in different ways to reduce energy consumption during times of peak and yet still meet each of our customer needs. Next slide. As we go to the future, we expect to see quite a bit of change here. Colorado Electric Vehicle Plan in the year 2020. A very ambitious plan with the state of Colorado and what that means for all electric utilities is more electric load. And that means that we will have to not only account for what currently our customers use, but for this new type of, let's say customer class and how to provide that energy either at home or at businesses or in other public spaces. Next slide. And that goal is with the light duty EVs is really is getting to a million by the year 2030. So you can imagine that is a lot of vehicles out there and a great deal of carbon savings and an increased electric load. Next slide. And so the city of Longmont has five charging stations. And so that's at the memorial building and also the DSC, so that is our Development Services Center, just off of sort of between Maine and Kimbark at about 4th, the library down at the museum and then over at the service center at 1100 South Sherman. And if you Google charging stations in the area, you're actually going to find about 70 charging stations within 10 miles of Longmont. So many of them are in Longmont or the surrounding areas. So you can see that in a short period of time, this is really growing and it's, you know, in anticipation of and in support of moving forward with more EVs. Next slide, please. Another action that's being taken right now is electrification feasibility committee. This has gone before council council has advised staff to proceed. We are currently in the process of a request for proposal for a consultant to assist in the facilitation and working with staff hand in hand in leading this process. And it's really, it'll be about a year process. It's looking at community priorities, looking at policies, criteria for strategies, and community perspective. And so a lot of things are going on there, but we're trying to get ahead of the electrification rather than just be responsive and by being ahead, we feel that we can be more in tune with the policies and practices and meet the needs of the community in the most consistent and efficient and affordable way. Next slide, please. So we've talked about several different things and it's really sort of a complex formula. You know, how do you take energy that's being generated by different types of sources each, which has their, so to speak, their own personality, what they do, how they do it, how variable they are, you know, means of how we might store energy and then discharge that energy when the system needs increasing electric loads, which also might be opportunities for energy storage at home solar at home batteries, batteries for neighborhoods or at our substations. There's a variety of things out there. We talked about home energy management systems, building efficiency and conservation. I think my point trying to be is there's no singular solution and our role not just as a utility but as a community is working together to have all those elements to really work to ensure that reliable and affordable energy here and that we absolutely meet our environmental goals. Next slide. And frankly, what we create today is going to evolve. We've already seen that, you know, technologies are continuing to be developed. We're working hard in different spaces. We have several pilot programs here at the City of Longma where we're trying to, as a utility, learn how these things can work so that we can integrate them more into our system. And so today's solution is not going to be necessarily tomorrow's solution, but it's likely to be a strong part of it. And really what we're doing here at Longma Power Communications each and every day, we are truly working on and creating the utility of the future. Next slide. And so here with Longma Power Communication, we really are power for life. We have been providing power to this community for over a century and continue to do that. And so we've had many generations of long monsters here enjoying the power from Longma Power Communications. And I thank you for your time and that concludes my update and overview. Chair, before we begin on the next part, I just wanted to note that Councilmember Christensen joined us about 20 minutes ago or so. Hi, welcome. Thanks for those presentations. And Ward, do you have questions? Yes, Adam. And then Kay. Yeah, thanks a lot for the presentations. I have a question for Trista. And I'll first start by, you guys are doing really great work moving toward the renewables I think that's really ambitious. And I'm really impressed how you're moving away from coal. Regarding the rice plant that you want to build in, I think 2030, I'm wondering if there's a way instead of building another plant, you could procure that electricity from say other markets? Well, and again, I'd like to first off, thank you for the acknowledgement regarding our move towards with adding more renewables onto the system. We're very excited about that. But in answer to your question, again, the rice unit is not contemplated within the first five years. So that's our action plan when we're making investments. It's outside of that period. It was slotted in because remember early in the presentation, I said that an IRP is basically a predictive model based on current technology that's commercially available. That right now, the model just basically spits out what's most economical, taking off factors and multiple factors into consideration. And that is what's spit out for those out years. Full while knowing that we're going to have those other two IRPs in 2024 and 2028, those inputs will be changing. So what's more economical on those out years, more than likely will be changing as well. So the model again, take all of the considerations, all the inputs into consideration rather and spit out the most economical. So at the time the model was run, that was the most economical. And that's why we ended up with that option. Great. That helps clarify that. I guess I had one more question really briefly. The renewables aren't just getting added all at 2030. There's going to be a gradual buildup. What's roughly the time scale for that? And that's again, I hate to point back to those 2024 and 2028 IRPs, but those are going to provide us more information. The further out we forecast, the less reliable, the less predictable things are. And that's why we have the five-year action plan. And then we kind of have an idea beyond that. But the renewables will be more renewables will be slated throughout those other two IRPs. Plus also, if we're able to look at the market and see what's most economical, I mentioned in my presentation, you might not have caught it because it was a brief mention that between 2016 and our 2020 IRP, we had three renewable projects that we brought online. We did not have those planned in 2016. They were not part of our action plan, but you know what? They were economical and made sense. Our communities wanted us to do it. So we did it. So the IRP is a great roadmap, but it doesn't lay things out specifically year by year, day by day, what exactly we can do. And I know that doesn't bring a lot of comfort to people because you want to have a plan. I get that. But we take a lot of things into consideration when adding those resources. So as part of the 2020 IRP, they need to come on by 2030. When they come on, that's going to change. That's going to depend on our needs. Does that kind of answer your question, Adam? Yeah, that's really helpful. Thank you. Okay. I'd like to add just one thing to that is, Adam, you know, sort of your first part of your question is, you know, can we get energy? You know, where can we get energy? How does that look like? Back in the slide that was sort of showing actions coming up, one of the ones that is really nondescript, but is very important, it was Weem, Western Energy and Balance Market, and so Platte River as well as others are pushing to create this imbalance market. And the intent is, is that energy can be shared across a larger geographic area. So you can imagine if the wind isn't blowing here in town, it may be somewhere away in Wyoming or a little further east or out to, you know, the south of us. And, you know, same thing with solar. You figure even with just the course of time or cloudy here, but not cloudy up at Platte River's raw hide site. And so the more flexibility we can build in with also other generation transmission organizations, the better we all can help solve this issue of getting to 100% renewable. Thank you for including that discussion. I didn't do it as eloquently as you could. I appreciate that. Okay, we've got Kay and then Charles. Um, so I just, I feel like I'm the board pessimist here. It's probably a little true. But I, you know, I was going to say I have two questions and luckily for everyone, I have to go early today. So number one, I always have the burning question when we're talking about things like electric vehicles and when we're talking about, you know, electric water heaters versus gas water heaters. And, you know, and I was going to say this comes from the fact that I do believe that, yes, natural gas is a pretty clean burning fuel. I'll just come clean and admit that. But, and I'll also say I highly prefer it to coal just for the emissions factor alone. But my question is, is when I'm looking at the pie chart on the flat river, the PRPA website here, which also came up in a presentation a couple of weeks ago, I want to know if I want to know, I guess what is, what is the benefit on going to something going to more, I want to say electrical utility and electrical home product of electrical use when we still have 40% being produced by coal. And that is a, that's my question is I'm going, I need, I want to see the pie chart change and this moves the second part of the question being, I'd like to see what this pie chart looked like in 2005 when the GHG emissions came out and I'd like to compare it to now because, because, you know, it would show us that yes, you are indeed gaining substantially, I mean, the pie chart looks great. We got 30%, you know, when we got 20% hydro power, you know, we only have a little tiny slice of solar still in this beautiful state with 300 days a year. And there's working on it. And there's a teeny, teeny sliver here of natural gas compared to 40% coal. And again, I want to see what did this look like in 2005 until now. And I know you, you're saying that, you know, these IRPs, they're going to change, they need to be a flexible plan. No one is going to be disappointed if you make a projection. Everybody here on this board and everybody working with PRPA, with the city of Longmont, I think we all understand the fact that paths change trajectories as you go and that economics and availability and, you know, demand is going to alter the course of where you're going. But I also want to say, as the board pessimists, I would like to see where you project those pie charts to look like over the next 10 years, where I'm not saying that by your presentation, you can hang on to 40% coal in so 2029. I also had the question too on the rice units are the rice units, are those natural gas units? They're natural gas, contemplated natural gas right now. Yes. Okay, because we have, we have rawhide A through E. And again, I've got a tiny sliver of natural gas running to a 40% of coal. Last part of this question. And, and is I'd like to also see that pie chart and how it looks during summer and winter where you have peak demands versus non-peak demands and different resources are available versus not. I'm looking at a pie chart again, this says projected deliveries of 2021 and it's like an overall sum of the year. And I'm going, well, does that mean are we doing better in summer? Are we doing better in winter? Are there things in that that by seeing this diagram over the course of the seasons, maybe even over the course of the day, is it going to show you where you can start maximizing in one area versus another? And, and, and, and that's my I want to say that's the overall global view I have for you. That's a lot to unpack. I hope I can address some of your questions quickly. I don't have our over 100 page IRP document committed to memory, but I'm fairly certain we do have some projections in there that would address some of your concerns and questions about the energy mix moving to 2030 and what that, what that could look like, you know, what that's projected as part of our 2020 plan. I'll need to find that and I'm happy to follow up and provide that information. Like I said, I'm fairly certain that it's it may not be a pie chart, but there's something there that's going to give you some information that's you'll find value. Okay. And I'm fine. And I'm, unfortunately, I do have to cut out early. I'm like, I'm totally fine. I would love to see it if you can send it to us for review for our next session. I do want to bounce back to the first question I had though, because I never have had the answer on this was, was, you know, is there less emissions? What, what, what, what, where, what happens when we have call being the source for the electrical for the for the electrical cars and stuff? And that's just the question. I don't think it's just Lisa's got an answer for me. I have a bit of an answer for you. So we, we actually chatted with it with our consultants that do our greenhouse gas inventory about this a little while back about essentially trying to get it what is the threshold for the emission factor, which is what's calculated for greenhouse gas emissions that makes the transition to electric appliances make sense. And the number that we got back from her is about 1400 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. And our current emission factor for 2020 is below that. So we are at a point if that makes sense that even though, yes, we are still using some significant amount of fossil fuels, that transition to electric appliance, the benefit, the greenhouse gas benefit of transitioning to electric appliances outweighs the greenhouse gas cost of the fossil fuel mix that we have current. Does that make sense? And does that answer your question? It almost answers my question, but then I want to ask where you're drawing the bubble if it's just over the city of Longmont or if it's over the entire front range, which would include the point of generation. Both. So those numbers are different, but both of those numbers are below that 1400 metric ton CO2 equivalent number. I know you've got to jump off, but I did also want to share with you remember that I mentioned the clean energy plan that would be submitting to the state APCD later this year. We have to demonstrate an 80, at least an 80% reduction over 2005 levels. And so within that plan won't be the pie chart, but it will be the numbers. You'll see the 2005 levels and numbers as well as the 2030 numbers. So I'm sure I can probably get you something before then, but I just wanted you to know that there there's also a source document for that as well coming. Interesting. What's the timeline for that again? The clean energy plan will be submitted and we have to render the board process of approving, reviewing and all that good stuff. So we hope to submit sometime this fall. Thank you. Sure. If I could just jump in for one second to Kate, I love your question and how you're thinking there. I mean, you know, I think back on that last thing I said about it's going to be complex and so forth. I could just as you're talking, I could just see you sitting in a, in a chair in a room, the dispatch room, and you got this load going on over here. All the demands on the screen you have, you know, these 15 to 20 different type of resources that you're seeing going up and down and up and down and up and down and you're trying to figure out how to balance all those, you know, that type of variability with what you have. And so that is going to be the big question. Obviously a lot of algorithms to solve those things. But also just to your point about, you know, right now, Platte River is a little tiny sliver of solar and Platte River is actually, as Tristan said, is working on 150 megawatt facility as we speak under contract for trying to get through the permitting process, which sometimes can be interesting. And to give you an idea is the city of Longmont Peak during that summer was about 180 megawatts. So if that is up and running and full sun and full producing at least that moment in time, if you're the dispatcher, life would be pretty good because you had 150 megawatts from brunt source to do, to go to the city of Longmont, but then the cloud went over. You're going, ah, who do I do now? And so that's where you'll have other resources. So more solar to come shortly. But it does tends to take a few years to get something of that's utility scale through. And one last tidbit of information. We are working on a real time generation page for our website. Hopefully we'll be up fairly soon. You'll be able to see, um, yeah, real time generation. It should, it lags about five minutes, I believe, five to 15, give or take. So, um, hopefully you see that rather soon as well. Get me the little slide dial for the time so I can watch it change. You can go back and forth. I think there should be an amp with that that you can play at home to see how you can balance those things. Great. Um, thank you. And just I'm willing to entertain a motion to, um, to officially change Kay's title to board pessimist. If anyone wants to put that out there. But great questions. Kay. I, Charles is next and, uh, Jim, you're, I see your hand. So, thank you for coming and presenting today. I really appreciate it. And, uh, you know, this is really helpful to us to understand, you know, what PRPA's role is and what the plans are. So definitely appreciate this. I had a few comments and some questions kind of mixed in. Hopefully I can keep the questions organized enough that, uh, you can understand what I'm asking. Uh, so, so a couple of things. One is it sounds like you have a commitment to, um, uh, stop using coal into 2030, which is good. I did, I didn't quite hear the plan for what will happen with raw hide a through F, which were gas fired. Um, so that's a, that's one question. Okay. Can I answer that or should I? Sure. Sure. Okay. Yeah. If I get to, if I get to continue asking more questions. Yes, of course. Um, raw hide a through F would stay online. Those are our peaking units. They are used, um, as Kay mentioned, and not very much. Um, I don't have the exact percentage, but a few percentages possibly a year. Um, but they are again, those peaking units. So when we do reach those very, very hot summer days or very, very cold winter days, um, we're able to fire those up and use them as needed. I see. If, um, if battery costs drop fast enough that they could be used, you know, grid storage as in place of peekers, is PRPA willing to take those offline before their expected lifetimes? I can't answer for the board and the board decision, but, um, I can tell you that if an IRP shows that it's the most economical way to dispatch our energy, yes. Um, that would be included as part of the IR, IRP portfolios that would be discussed. Definitely. Okay. Okay. Um, and then what, so, so one thing that's kind of interesting, uh, if you look at the UK use of coal over the last several years, they've had a drop from about 60% of their power being generated by coal to 10%. It's actually dropped below 10% now and that happened over a period of less than five years. So, um, it's, it's amazing actually how fast that's happened. Um, it seems like there are opportunities for us to do things. Um, if the UK can do it and I'm not, I don't have great faith in the UK generally, but if the UK can do something, it seems like we could. I wonder if we are willing to maybe move our, our, um, commitments up faster than 2030 if technology allows. Again, I would point back to the IRP when the IR, when portfolios are presented, they are presenting the most economical way to dispatch energy. And if that's proven up, then I've, that would definitely be a consideration. As Dave mentioned, um, the, the solar project that we're working on right now, the, the, um, we've been working on it for a long time to permit it. So that, you know, the process of planning, approving, and then permitting and building projects, you know, that, that takes some time. I don't know how our comparison over here to the UK and building projects and getting things online, you know, what that comparison is, but I do know that that is something that, that we have to take into consideration because it does take us quite a bit of time to bring projects online. Got it, got it. Well, the British invented bureaucracy. So I, I imagine, yeah. So, so then, and then just a couple other quick things maybe, um, one is, uh, so you could, you can imagine, um, you know, we have to, you know, for, um, you know, rooftop solar, for example, there's quite a few advantages to it. It doesn't necessarily add, uh, to the cost of distribution, um, since it's generated, you know, power generated locally. Uh, and the cost of PV is going down quite a bit. What is, what would PRPAC as its role if, um, rooftop generated both commercial and home, uh, power generation were to increase because of cost reductions in PV and our normal exponential, uh, technology adoption curves, if, if private power generation became say 75, 80% of the mix. What would be PR, I mean, I know you could end up with stranded assets and things like that is PRPA kind of planning for scenarios where there could be, uh, you know, it took about 10 years for horse drawn carriages to go away and for a car, you know, cars to replace them. Uh, there's many other examples of technologies that got replaced very quickly. Is there, is there plans for what could happen, um, if we go, um, through a similar technology adoption curve like that with PV and, and, uh, battery storage, et cetera? I honestly don't know the answer to that question in terms of, is that something that we're currently looking at today, that order of magnitude and bringing on that much solar roof, you know, rooftop solar. Um, I would imagine there that that would be something as Dave is involved with the DER strategy committee. I was about to hand that off to you, Dave, um, that that would be something that would be taken out by that committee as a consideration in their, um, their policy adoption and future programs and projects. Dave, I'm sorry. Yeah, just a quick, just interject real quick before Dave goes in there because you could imagine that PRPA could take on a very different role in the future that where their role is, uh, you know, the source of power, power generation was smaller and they're, uh, maybe more in terms of, you know, management. Yes, definitely. And I believe that's why we saw the need, the, a great need to work with our communities. I'm informing the DER strategy committee and working together with them. So, yes, definitely. I would love it. I would say that we have acknowledged that. Do we have an answer or have we really put together a plan yet? Probably not. We'll get there. And then one last thing, um, when I looked at the IRP and kind of went through it, um, there were some, some things seemed, um, I mean, I don't know where the numbers come from for the forecasts and of course models that are based on forecast numbers. Uh, it's hard to predict the future. Um, and it's, and models don't work very well for predicting the future when they're, they're fed, um, forecasts that aren't, aren't great. Um, you know, depending on who you talk to, the EV adoption rates, uh, are about to explode and, um, as batteries get cheaper and manufacturing gets cheaper, et cetera, um, uh, they're, and that could kind of be a two-edged sword for us. I'm not sure if, if there's any, uh, you know, vehicle to grid, um, bi-directional, um, charging and dispatch of energy or if that's in the plans or if there's anything, and yeah, that's one piece. And the other part is that of course there's, uh, you know, when transportation gets electrified, that could add a significant amount to the, to the, uh, to the load or the demand. Right. And again, we acknowledge that when we started this plan, it was in 2018 and it was, and then, I mean, and then COVID hit, you know, and that kind of slowed us down a little bit. Um, but the, the planning process, you know, was long and some of those, um, protections, yeah, we've acknowledged, um, some of those inputs, probably not quite as accurate when we finished versus when we started. So that is why, and we are, we acknowledge that technology is advancing way faster than, than, you know, it has historically in this sector. So that's why we moved our IRP up and instead of doing it every five years, you know, we're, we're doing two between now and, and well, 2028. So to help capture some of that and work on plans. Oh yeah. And, and I wasn't, uh, meaning to, to blame. Oh no, no, no. I just want to let everybody know that's one of the reasons too. If this is, you know, I work with the Department of Energy quite a bit and, um, mostly on the, um, responding to FOAs and, and, um, doing research for them. But one of the challenges has been, and this is, so these are numbers that come from the Department of Energy, the, uh, Energy Information Administration. And, uh, I remember, you know, 10 years ago, they had these plans, you know, for a dollar, kilowatt hour PV, for example, and we're sitting now at about, you know, four cents a kilowatt hour. And, you know, uh, there was lots of these kinds of forecasts that we've dropped significantly faster than what was projected. So, uh, anyway, just, um, there, there could be some dramatic transition going on. And I'm, I'm glad PRPA is thinking about it. So thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks, Charles. I, um, I've got Jim next and then Polly and I, just keeping an eye on the time, want to wrap it up pretty quickly after that move on in the agenda. Um, so Jim, it's the floor is yours. Yeah. Thank you very much. I appreciate the presentations. Um, I had two kind of unrelated questions. Um, well, they're, I think they're related to what you talked about, but, uh, the first is, so the big, the big bump in usage in the summer, that's, that's all cooling, right? That's all people trying to cool buildings and houses. Is that correct? I'd assume, Sarah, but I don't know if Dave answered that, since it's more of a distribution utility question. I think Dave's muted. Sorry, I kept on having things pop up on my screen right over the mute button. Every time I try to hit it, something else try to happen. Um, yeah, you're seeing, uh, you definitely are seeing a lot of the cooling element that's coming in. It's certainly not exclusive. Uh, you know, I think we, we naturally see a little bit more, let's call it human activity when we enter into the, you know, the summer months, you know, with, uh, you know, between what we're doing at home and shopping and so on and so forth. But without a doubt, cooling has added to it. We do have a fair amount or a growing sort of manufacturing here in town, uh, like with smuckers, for example. And that sort of helps to flatten that a little bit, you know, because they run, you know, in 24 seven and it helps to, you know, we talked about that two X peak. So if you get a couple smuckers, maybe your two X peak is not as high because they just increase that base that always stays there. I've always been curious about, you know, when you talk about shaving that peak, um, uh, in my house, we have an evaporative cooler and I don't really notice a difference in my summer winter electricity bills, right? It's, it's their hyper efficient. And of course there's other very efficient ways to cool and heat houses, like heat pumps and things like that. And I've always been curious from a cost benefit analysis, how much of that peak we could shave, with programs that, that made those types of cooling technologies a lot more prevalent and preferred, not just in new houses, but also in people who have retrofit houses. You know, it just seems to me that it's a, it's a low hanging fruit. I don't know if you guys don't have to answer that, but I'd be curious to know, like if, if, if we said, okay, well we're going to, we're going to reduce air conditioning use in residential homes by x percent, how much would we actually shave that, that curve down and could that actually help us? The other thing that I had that, that I don't, I don't know the answer to this at all, but I, I think a lot about the materials that are going to be required for our transition into renew, in a carbon neutral future, the copper and the lithium and all the rarest elements and things like this. And I've spent a little bit of time in mines, heavy metal mines and things like this. And I'm curious if the cost estimates, I mean, as more communities decide that they want wind generation, then, well, every windmill needs two tons of neodymium. So we have to buy more neodymium. And there are not many places that produce neodymium. And I'm curious, as more people want these things, and as our domestic supplies for rare earth elements haven't, haven't really even been there for decades, right, since the fifties or so. And we've, we've opened up one rare earth element mine in California now. There's a couple of potentials in Colorado. I'm wondering if the cost projections though are also dealing with potential resource scarcity from those things like neodymium especially and lithium, you know, there's almost all of our lithium comes from one lake in South America right now. I, I'm wondering if, if the cost projections that we have for the future are, are thinking about the market forces that all of these necessary ingredients are going to start undergoing. Well, let Trista answer that one. I was going to say, Jim, I'm afraid I don't have a really good answer for you right now. I was trying to take a quick peek at our website to see because I know we have a number of studies that were performed as part of our IRP. And I'm not sure that we address that your specific concern. I know that we do have a life cycle assessment of our planned assets, but I don't know if that really gets to your question. So I'm sorry, I don't have a really good answer for you. I mean, I'd be very curious. There's a lot of, there's a lot of talk in the geoscience community about trying to reopen some of the rare earth element mining activities in the United States. But of course, mining is not popular and getting access to those materials is not popular in the regulatory infrastructure for trying to open a rare earth element mine is going to make like a solar panel project look like, you know, just kid stuff. And I'm really curious, like we all want to do this, we all need to do this. You know, it's clear that we have to decarbonize. But I'm very concerned that we haven't really thought out the ingredients side of the equation, especially when more and more people and more and more communities want to do more and more of these renewable energy sources. And I'm fully in support of them. I just, to me, that's a missing part of all the future projections that I've ever heard is the reality of kind of the material supply side, the geoscience side of it. And I apologize for not having a, I apologize for not having a better answer for you, Jim, but I took down and I really like the statement that you made about having the ingredients side of it kind of figured out. So I'm going to take that back to my team and see, to see what if any consideration has been given to those ingredients thus far. So thank you. Lisa, did you want to jump in on that question? Just mute it. All right. I was left hand unmuting and not coordinated in that. I just wanted to make a quick comment first. Well, I really appreciate that point, Jim, because I think it is really a really critical part of the conversation and calls into question bigger issues around consumption patterns and things like that in general and some assumptions that we make about our continued ability to consume at the same levels that we have been by just switching our energy sources. And that's a bigger conversation for another day, but I want to make a plug in that for energy efficiency, not that there aren't materials associated with that as well. And I will say I haven't necessarily seen the life cycle cost breakdown of the ingredient side of efficiency, but my assumption would be that it would still be less impact. And I think it's one that we tend to overlook in looking at these new technologies and innovations in this transition, but that it's really a critically important part of the equation to reduce our overall energy need as we're looking at this transition as well. So I just wanted to put a plug in for that. And it also has a number of other benefits that come along with it in terms of health and safety and comfort for households. I completely agree. And that's one of the reasons I brought up the idea of how much could we shave off the curve with things like evaporative coolers, which are a pound of copper and an aluminum box. And I totally agree. So, Mary, it looked like you wanted to jump in on Jim's question. Is that actually, I have a question formulating in my head that relates to what Jim has said, and something Mr. Harmon Barker brought up and Lisa brought up. And my question is, as we're moving into this future where we need to use every one of our resources so efficiently in order to reach anything close to 100% renewables, it seems to me that the planning and analysis of our system and the organization of every possible resource is most important. And that's what the models that are used in the UK, Germany, across Europe, and South and Australia are using the virtualization models. And it's very difficult to start thinking about that because we are in a system which has nouns, it has things, it has individual DERs, and virtualization requires that we are able to think of things as activities and when these activities happen and how they interact. And I want to know what the commitment is to analyzing some of these models like the Kraftwerk model for virtual power plants that already exist. They're designed to be, you know, I mean, obviously they have to be, to some degree, customized and enterprise, but they are, they have solved a lot of the problems that an area like ours is facing. And as Charles has noted, prices are plummeting, people really want to be energy independent. They're buying cars, they're buying solar panels that have DERs. And I want to know about this next level of integration and where we're at with that. The virtualization question. Go ahead, Dave. I'm going to jump in here for a moment. So you're right, Mary. We certainly looked at an awful lot of things we talked about, covered a lot of ground today. And I think we do not limit, we always look to different types of best practices. And are they or are they not applicable? It's very, I think we all have different examples of somewhere where somebody's doing it better. And I think it's incumbent to take a look as to see what they're doing. Is that applicable here? Is it really better? Because we'll always look at also, how does that work? Is it reliable? What does that cost look like? Can you actually permit or do something like that in the States? But yeah, we are certainly not blind to what's going on around us. And so, whether it's something in the UK or something in another utility in the United States, we have a lot of different leaders out there and they lead in different spaces. And so, trying to figure out what's similar, what's different to our space and how we can adapt it. Thank you. Polly, sorry I didn't mean to jump over you there. Mary had her hand up anyway first. This is a good discussion. I think that there are a lot of good questions and a lot of good points. When Charles brought up the quick change over from coal to, in England, from coal to not coal. And when we're talking about that in, you know, our former president was going to bring back coal, which is ridiculous. But because it's all been robotized anyway, so it wasn't like the jobs were going to come back. But the problem with some of this is that where those coal jobs have disappeared, it's good to have coal disappear. It's a miserable job. Maybe none of us would like to do that. But to the people who live there, that was their job. That was something they could count on. That was something their family had done. And we've taken everything away from them and offered them nothing in return. So there are tremendous social repercussions. A lot of Brexit was partly because England has been devastated in the countryside by taking away coal. We have to also add back training to people so that they have some alternative. So that they're trained in how to be involved in the green industry economy. So they're trained to build turbines, to maintain turbines, to design and plan electrical strategies for solar. I mean, we're not counting on the repercussions of that. And also I worry, as James said about the repercussions of us being creating an energy system where some of the most critical parts of it we rely on another country to provide for us. That historically has never been a very good idea because then we can be blackmailed. And I mean, that's kind of going on all over the world right now with oil and natural gas and a few other things. So there are a lot of things that we need to consider before everything gets so far ahead of us. Although this is a lot of these changes, as Charles said, they're happening very, very quickly. But then the repercussions in terms of socially and economically, we have huge problems then when things get so fast and we haven't really thought it through. So I think this is really an interesting discussion in many ways about thinking about all the other extra stuff. We all want to see everything be nice and clean, but is it really as clean as we think? And do we have backups? And are we taking care of the social repercussions and economic repercussions on people who are already poor and we're making them poorer? Can I jump in on that one? That is an excellent point and something that as a member of the solar industry, I can say that our industry is taking very seriously. In fact, two weeks ago, I know that there was a conversation with one of the main industry associations and some of the administration in Washington, D.C. about that very topic. And this is something that at least some of us in the industry are very aware of and really taking seriously. And I am not trying to say we have a silver bullet and we're don't worry, but I don't want to give that impression at all. But this is something that it's a very important topic. And at least from the solar side, it's being discussed. Well, there's a huge influx right now, potentially, for investment in infrastructure and in job training and solar and wind and all of these energy things are perfect. This is the time we can move forward and really have it be fair and I'm optimistic, even though I'm actually much more like Kate, I'm a pass of those two, but this is a really interesting time that we have potential to really move a lot of these things forward when we have not had that opportunity for quite some time. Absolutely. We need to move on. I also am seeing a bunch of hands. And if anybody has a really quick point that they want to squeeze in here, Jim. I will actually just be really quick. I actually think in my career as a geologist, mining geology was dead when I was in graduate school and now it's booming, particularly because of this. But there's actually an enormous opportunity for people from the coal industry who know how to mine. We're going to actually need them. And so there's also a lot of opportunity, I think, to rethink how what environmental disasters we're willing to try to manage and which ones we actually need to get away from. And mining is a lot easier to manage than global warming. So I'll just shut up though. Interesting point there, Jim. Thanks for bringing that up. Adam, you said it was quick. Are you indicated with your hand? Yes, I can make it really quick. It's just a follow-up with Councilmember Christensen's point about some sources are not as clean as we think. And regarding the estimates for the CO2 emissions that Tristie talked about, for natural gas, do you also take into the emissions from the extraction process like inventing and flaring and future of emissions? But as part of the greenhouse gas inventory? Yeah, that's right. No. And we follow a prescription or it's a prescribed method of calculating that based upon what the state has laid out. And that is not included in it now. Thanks, Ruth. And if you are interested, I'm sorry, Kate, I know you're running out of time, but if you are interested in seeing the Clean Energy Plain Guidance Document and Associated Workbook, it's a verification workbook where you plug in all of your numbers to see if you magically hit that 80%. That information has been posted on CDPH's website on their Climate Action page, I believe. So if I can find the link, I'll drop it in the, well, I don't know if I can drop it in the chat. I'll send it to someone to talk to you guys. Sorry. Thank you. I'm sorry, Kate, but that also isn't done for renewable technologies. We almost never factor in the energy emissions that are associated with those extractive industries either. Good point. Lisa. Yes, very quick. I just want to let folks know, and as Kate mentioned, it is the environmental justice and climate justice issues are very much a focus of both the National Federal Administration right now as well as the Colorado State Administration. It has been for a couple of years. There is now a state just transition office and there is some legislation that's been coming down specifically focused on these issues. And it's one of part of the policy statement of CC4CA that we're a member of as well to support those transition communities and workers. So there's a lot happening on that level and I'd be happy to share any information with folks on that. That is a very cute baby. Okay. Thanks, everyone, for that great discussion. We will move us along in the agenda. Thank you for your time, then. Thanks. Yeah, thanks for being here. Those were great presentations. I really appreciate your taking time to answer all of our questions. Thank you for the invitation. Thank you. Bye-bye. Okay. So, I see nothing under other business on the agenda unless anyone wants to jump in with something. Okay. The next item is items from staff and the item on here is the Longmont Sustainability Coalition Meeting. I will say that I was the board representative for this until my health issues last year kind of took me out of commission. And who is the person speaking on this? It's a fun meeting. I encourage anyone to attend. Yeah, that's me. I just wanted to remind folks that the next Longmont Sustainability Coalition Meeting is May 12. So it's before your next meeting. So I just wanted to make sure that was on everybody's radar to attend. The meetings are, they start at 5.15. There's not until 7.15, but we haven't taken up that two-hour slot in quite a while, especially with meetings being virtual. We do often come for some similar information that we do in this group for those of you that aren't familiar with that group. But it is an opportunity for networking and sharing with a number of different folks that are engaged in sustainability activities across the community. There's representation from some of the other boards and commissions as well. Folks just usually share their priorities. So I just want to make sure it was on folks' radar. And hopefully people will attend. Great. Thank you. Does anyone, oh, Nancy, do you want to add it in there? I just, we had an additional item from staff that was not listed. So we actually were just shared this today and we'll send it after the meeting. There's a 119 first and final mile study and some other transportation items that are happening that we will share with the board. But the feedback is between now and the next meeting. So wanted to mention that and share that with the board. And then also there are, Earth Day is tomorrow. So there's a number of Earth Day events happening at the museum this week. The climate change, the climate, I forget, the climate change series is actually was part of a climate action task force recommendation. There's also a sustainability sustainable resilient Longmont event this Saturday where their evening events are focusing on equitable climate action. So we have presentations from city staff as well as the equitable climate action team has a panel. So just wanted to let the board know about the different Earth Day events happening this week. Nancy, is that virtual or is that in person? All are virtual. So the panelists are in person, but you can watch on usually live stream to Facebook and then this Saturday English will be live stream the Facebook and Spanish will be live stream to our YouTube page. Thank you. All right. Annie, did you have anything else you wanted to know? Okay. Did the board, anyone on the board have any items? Okay. So, sorry, Kate, a quick question. If we have comments about like what our business was of the day, when's the appropriate time to make those comments? I'm not sure what you're asking. So, for example, we just had a long discussion with Pat River Power Authority, et cetera. And is there time for us to kind of debrief with each other or to make comments on what we heard or to comment on the things that we asked of PRPA, et cetera. When's a good time to do that? That is a great question. I do not get through that question. I think it's appropriate if you want to talk about it under items from the board. Perfect. We passed. Actually, that's where we're at right now. Yeah. Well, that is where we're at. Okay. Yeah. So, a couple quick questions. I thought it was great to have them here. I wonder if we might have them on again at some point. I mean, I think ACT basically had to come up with questions on the fly from their presentations and might be good for us to kind of digest a little bit and talk to them again and maybe even for them to come back after they've gone back and thought about some more questions. Anyway, I'm not sure if the rest of the board would be interested in that. The question, you know, I really, you know, Mary kind of asked this question and we didn't quite get an answer. And I tried to ask the question too about the role between PRPA and private generation and energy storage, like what's their philosophy on that? And I really think that'd be good to hear about. So, I don't know if the rest of the board would be interested in bringing them back and talking some more, but I would be. I would be as well. And in terms of that point, I also think that it would be important to have some representation from the city, because one of the probably the biggest chains that Longland's going to undergo between now and 2030 is it's going to get a hell of a lot more dense. And many of these kind of like the Aspen project and these distributed power things, assuming that people have a big roof and might not work as we try to increase Longland's population without expanding its footprint, which I know is one of our goals. So, I would agree and it would be great if we could coordinate ahead of time with some of these competing interests to figure out how they actually would play out and what the realistic kind of like population density and rooftop availability and importance of trees and how all those things actually would interact with each other. I think it would be good to have city representation to help kind of deal with that as well. I'm not sure who the right person would be. I always just assume it would be Lisa, but I don't know. I saw, I think Adam, Mary, Polly. Well, I can just briefly mention that I would be in support of having the PRBA come back. My understanding is that Tristo was going to bring some of our questions to their board and other folks there. And so it would be good to see and hear what their thoughts are regarding those. And it'd also be nice to have some times to digest some of that material and think about it and then come back anew with some questions. Mary? Yeah, I agree with James and Adam, Charles. I think that they need to come back. Some of the questions like what James asked, I know that there's movements to, I think 350.org is involved with this, to put more solar installations in riparian areas. I found about that in the 350 Colorado page. I know that there's a lot of movements around the world to integrate with car batteries, especially fleets, so that they can be used for storage, for off-peak storage, and they can be recharged first thing in the morning. I think we need a larger picture with larger entities. You know, and James, if there isn't room on the apartment houses and the condos, perhaps the commercial areas, folks are interested in putting in solar arrays. I think we need a larger picture to understand the scope of what's coming, what we know, and how some other communities and parts of the world have solved these issues. Thanks. Yeah, Polly, you're on mute. Polly, you're muted. Okay. I'm in support of what Charles said because I do think that we gave them, James and Charles and Mary, everyone gave them good questions to consider. I would like to see them think, I don't think they've heard about what Mary suggested with virtualization. I would like them to give an answer about a lot of these things, which of course, they're just answering on the fly. If they've had time to take it back to the board and bring it back, that would be good. What their plans are to create training programs, for instance, or what we have in mind about training programs for people who are being put out of work by the very things that we are doing that are... Anyway, yeah, if anybody wants to hear a brief explanation of some things that City Council did last night, I'll be happy to do that. I second. Before we hear the council items, I want to check in with Lisa, Annie, Francie, who are in charge of our... Who comes and talks to us and get your feelings on... I also am supportive of another LPC presentation. Yeah, I think... I was thinking about that as you all were talking. I'd be happy to... All of that is a lot, what you all just talked about. There's probably a couple of meetings that we would want to either set aside at least one meeting to have PRPA come back and dig deeper into some of those questions that you all had asked when they have time to process and when you all have time. I saw that Trista's already sent some information that I will send along to you all. And then I think that potentially another meeting that can pull together some of those other areas as Jim talked about. We have been talking about having... And it is on my schedule for this year. I haven't actually scheduled what month it would be, but an update with regards to the Envision Long-Land Comprehensive Plan. And that's our planning folks that would be able to speak to what are our current projections around build out population density. What does that look like as far as we know today? Obviously, even as Trista talked about, a lot of those things can shift and change. But what's our current understanding? There's opportunities around community solar that can address some of those things. So, I can pull together a couple of folks and have probably at least an initial kind of overview and conversation around that. And if there's additional more in-depth information that people want, we can at least kind of start there and move forward. A two-hour meeting is probably not enough. Is enough to scratch the surface on some of those issues and just kind of get some information and ask some initial questions, but probably a longer term conversation that this board might want to consider as an ongoing piece to discuss and look at options and directions for the city? Yeah, Tim, did you want to throw something in there? Yeah, I just want to keep everybody focused on the fact of what Trista was saying about this five-year and four-year plans. You can have them back in this summer. I don't think they're going to give you the answers you want. And you ask all great questions, but a lot of them have to do with the five to 10-year period and even beyond that, which they will be working on over the next three or four years to come up with a new IRP. And I think what they're going to tell you is those are great questions and we're going to consider them for our next IRP because that's the next block of time we need to plan for. And getting back to Jim, what your questions are, awesome questions because all those resources we're using for renewables are limited resources. They're scarce. But I think what goes into the models is a big chunk of technological advancement is going to solve it for us. So that's what we always counted on and that's what's in models. And the further out a model goes, the less good it's going to be about planning for actual reality. And I think that goes to back up kind of what Platt River does with this five-year planning is they can put on the table stuff that's there now, what we can plan on now. Five to 10 years, man. Technology is changing so fast. There may be a battery built on zinc that's a common resource that we're going to be implementing everywhere in 10 years because it's cheap and we have a lot of it. So I think in those models, there is that component, a big component of technological advancement is going to bring costs down and it's going to have new ways to do things that aren't going to count on the limited resources we have now. So I just wanted to make everyone aware that I don't know if they're going to be able to answer a lot of questions that you're answering right now without doing further study, which of course they need to do for their next IRP. Thank you for that healthy dose of reality. Appreciate it if you bring this back down to earth. Oh my gosh, there are so many hands away, five minutes left. Yeah. Comment. At least it's great to know what the resources are out there and my question is centered around what is the formal and comprehensive system that we need in order to understand what the resources are out there and how they can be integrated, which is the algorithmic stuff that that Mr. Hornbarker suggests talked about and that we're talking about with virtualization, which for which the models already exist. Yes, Annie. So I was just going to suggest that I mean, I know there's a couple options that are out there. We could schedule a special meeting to have this conversation in the future. We could also compile a list of additional questions and send that to both Dave Hornbarker and Trista and Trista could pull the resources because I think it's kind of hard to answer some of these questions on the fly because they're very technical and there are a lot of people that are involved in putting together the IRP and so that may be another option and it wouldn't take up meeting time and I know we have a lot of things on future agendas so that's a great special meeting or compiling a list of these questions and having them answer them and writing might be an option. Compiling a list is a great idea. Yeah, I think I would support that one too. Thanks, Annie. The Charles. And just a quick, quick note on what Tim was talking about. I was thinking not so much on getting answers, specific answers to specifically what they would do but I'm very interested in the philosophy and kind of how they see their role and what they'll do so I think those are things they can answer. There actually is already a battery not based on zinc but lithium iron phosphate. It's already coming along. All those are abundant trials. The lanthanides are what I'm worried about. Jim was talking about the lanthanides for the rare earth magnets or where we're going to have issues. But anyway, I do think they can answer questions about the general philosophy of the customer relationship and generation and virtual power plants, not so much in the specifics of what will they actually do. Okay, thanks. Heather, you popped in for a second and pop back out. I was just going to offer the same options that Annie suggested. Cool. Thank you. Okay. The next item on the agenda is items from Council. Polly. Okay. I thought I would try to be brief about what we decided last night and let people yell at me if they want to. But I really support what Annie said because I know that when you're talking trying to do a presentation and people are asking questions, it's mind-boggling. So you're not always necessarily writing down because you're also trying to talk. So if we sent them a list of questions, it would be helpful to them too. So last night, there are two things that I thought I would bring up because I think that it might be difficult for people to understand why we voted the way we voted. We're being asked to, this is something new in a way. Council's being asked to support or not support different issues that are state issues. So two of them that came up last night. Well, there were three of them. One was the equity-justice partnership, which everybody is for that in theory, but it depends upon how you define equity and marginalized people. But we voted for it anyway. I don't want this to be just a racially based thing. My opinion is that it really is about poverty. Of course, people of color tend to be much more living in poverty, but the truth is that there are also many people who are not people of color who are living in poverty. And they need to be considered with justice in moving our energy issues forward. The second one is the, the, there's an idea to have a special district created for passenger rail. I think this is exciting. I think this is terrific. However, and a special district is a financial creation. It's the way you finance it. You get everybody to vote for a special district, to tax themselves an additional amount to support that special district. And given that people in Colorado have voted against paying for transportation again and again and again, it seems to be the only way we will actually get anything done. However, you know, we already have a special district, the regional transportation district, and we can see how well that has worked out for a long time. Not too well, and we've had it for a long, long time. So we have to be very careful about doing that. So it's a kind of a complicated thing. We voted to not support it unless it was amended, because there are things in it which would let everybody, it would turn it into, instead of something designed by engineers, which usually works, it would be designed by politicians, which merely works. So that's why we voted against it. Nevertheless, I'm really excited that I think this is a very big opportunity for us to have, from Wyoming to New Mexico, a passenger rail. This is what we need for the future. It doesn't matter whether it's a train, whatever it is, we need the right of way, and we need a transportation system that is not on the highways. It needs to be discreet, so it will actually function despite the traffic, and so it will take traffic off the roads. So the last one has to do with gas and oil emissions, greenhouse gases, and we voted to monitor that unless it was amended, and that's going to piss off a lot of people, sorry. It is not something that actually does anything about oil and gas directly. What it does is put PUC in charge of getting reports and also monitoring and also penalizing people who don't comply. That's kind of problematic because we have our own, we have worked pretty hard in this community to create sustainability and to monitor gas and oil emissions and to create a system whereby Flat River Power Authority will get us to something rational by 2030, and other communities have done nothing. So we would be under this thing, we would be under PUC instead of right now that's controlled by elected officials, the city council working with the Flat River Power Authority who are composed of half elected officials and half utility company people. So that's a problem. The other problem is we were told by the city and there's some dispute on whether this is true that there would be an immediate penalty for carbon emissions that were already currently emitting and it would be in the amount of 96 million dollars, which that's a lot of money. So that's kind of a problem. That's why we voted to monitor it unless it gets fixed. So if you want to yell at me, go ahead. Floor is open to you all. Polly? No? Okay. Thank you Polly. So the last item in the agenda is the informational items and correspondence that is included in the word packet directing your attention there. There's nothing for us to do, but please know that it's and now we've come to the end. Would anybody like to make a motion to adjourn? I'll move that we adjourn this meeting of the Longmont Sustainability Board. I will second that motion. Great. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thanks everyone for another great meeting. Have a good one. Thank you. Take care everyone. Thank you. Take care. Bye.