 So just to clarify, I had a bachelors-westered bill and it's still a massive addition. I was not introduced and as part of maybe tailing that bill further or preparing for the introduction, I wanted to take some testimony and maybe test the waters. The way I would describe it is that for the last year or two there have been numerous conversations with people who say there are potential off-takers of renewable energy that don't have access to that energy. The scale of it, for instance, municipalities, schools, the state itself, hospitals, etc. And so I don't want to test that characterization of what sort of unfilled need in the marketplace. Learn more about it and then see if there's an interest in moving the bill forward and trying to bring parties together to get more renewables sent into the marketplace at a more affordable price. So I think the other thing that's happening, that metering is that it doesn't, because it's grouped up here in the cap, plus it's price, there's pushback and attention to that metering and just something offering that is a larger option. So maybe we can find another path forward that will respond to the price and have some questions. So I'd like to start by inviting Mr. Campbell to join us at the table and offer the REV perspective. And you can reinterpret that question. I'm going to say something that you want to get interested in. Good morning. Well, I don't want to mess up with this. Thank you so much for having us here. For the record, my name's Olivia Campbell Anderson. I lead Renewable Energy Vermont. And we are, there are many REV members here in the room, but we are thankful. I've got with me some leaders, CEOs in the solar space that are providing these services to customers. Joel from Norwich Solar Technologies. Chad from Encore Renewables. And I, All Earth Renewables is also here, though I'm not speaking today. So we, I'm going to let folks are going to speak for themselves. We do have a PowerPoint that I passed out. I believe this is, I also just wanted to, to Jude. One of the things we wanted to do is provide an update on what's happening with solar in Vermont and who we are and latest benefits. And then talk about some challenges and opportunities, I think for additional economic development. And then I unfortunately didn't see, didn't know there was a new draft before. Oh, okay. Okay. Great. I feel more prepared than I was with that then. And though, though, and the chat is going to speak more specifically to the, you know, bigger concepts that were proposed last year. So quick snapshot here, you've got, you know, Vermont's clean energy economy. We, there are thousands of workers in the solar sector. I want to turn to events that are impacting our energy costs. And one of the main reasons of one of the many, but important reasons that hasn't really been brought to light. Related to the, the benefits of additional local renewable energy. And that's the impacts that our utilities and all Vermonters are already experiencing from increased weather events. So going on to slide three, where, you know, since 2000, Vermont has suffered more than one federally declared weather disaster event every year. The costs to the state's largest utility, Green Mountain Power, has been more than $34 million due to storms since 2013 with an average of $8 million every year. Washington Co-op, Washington Electric Co-op, I saw Patty here, but has also last, year before last, you know, suffered a loss because of the increased costs of responding to, you know, bringing back our aging infrastructure and poles and wires, et cetera. And so we spent decades talking about the Sunday effects. They're here. And the more that we localize our energy, the more resilient our communities are going to be. And the more money we're going to save, both in the long term and the short term, in terms of our costs related to what utilities have to pay in the regional markets. But also our physical costs of maintaining poles and wires, et cetera. In the next slide, you can see a snapshot of where, what I, you know, we are, you all know, you're pretty advanced here on energy issues. So, you know, that we are part, Vermont's part of a regional electricity grid. And these are the electricity sources that we are relying upon. But actually, we know what, I went way too far. I should have stopped and let me have Joel introduce himself as well. Sorry, Joel. I was just trying to get ready to do it. There's so much good stuff to do. Sorry. It's exciting to do it. Yeah, thank you, Olivia. Yeah, after 20 minutes, thanks. Yeah, so I'm Joel Stettinheim and I'm the co-founder of our technologies. And we are one of the state's largest installers of systems for schools and towns. And we do a lot of work in terms of how do we, or one of the things that really sort of motivates us as a company is how do we bring clean energy solutions to the state. And my co-founder and I are both living in Norwich. I actually grew up across the river and then I moved back and raised my son and I live in Norwich. We both got our PhDs at Dartmouth. So in addition to doing solar installations, we also have an active R&D arm. So we've gotten a series of grants from the Department of Energy. There's a slide on there that we can talk about quickly. But looking at novel solar technologies, and one of the things that we've really been looking at now is how do you most effectively integrate distributed resources into the program. So that you can bring the grid more resilient, especially as you combine it with storage. You can start to look at what are called microgrids. So that there are these independent grids, which are important in terms of resiliency, not only to weather events, but other types of more nefarious types of intrusions. So as a company, we're about 35 people. We do the end-to-end. We work trying to find good places to install solar. We work for communities that are looking to adopt solar. We do the design and installation. As a company, one of the things that I like to sort of represent or suggest is that solar and by extension sort of the green energy is a full, can support a full economic, full spectrum of economic activity. So we have people who are doing cycle, we have people who are doing legal work. We have people who are doing accounting work. We have people who are new to the careers in terms of doing installations. We have people who are very well-established in complicated design. So one of the things I like to sort of underscore is that when we're supporting clean energy, we really are supporting a vibrant, full spectrum in terms of the economy. So that's one of the things that's very important to us. It's not only how do we meet our clean energy challenges, but that we do it with local solar. So I think that many of us sort of have an immediate appreciation for buying our food locally. The benefits that that provides in terms of the quality of the food and also supporting the local economy. And what we like to do is the same sort of thing in terms of bringing that money back into the state. So if I could, actually, the perfect segue to this next slide, which is that Vermont, as people probably are aware, spends about $3 billion a year on energy. So roughly about a third of that goes into electricity, about a third of that goes into heating, and about a third of that goes into transportation. Because of heating and transportation, about 90% of that money goes directly out of state in the form of fuels. So we import all those fuels and send all that money out of state. So our vision, which now with the advent of new technologies, especially heat pumps and electric vehicles, is that we can really electrify the majority of that. So there's an opportunity for the state that's really a win-win in terms of meeting our clean energy goals at the same time creating this sustained long-term clean energy approach. And that would be part of, again, eating electricity, but then providing the power for that through local clean energy, through local solar. And it's actually a fairly small footprint when you look at it, or the state, that we really can do it. We really could meet our needs, especially if we were able to work in partnership with GMP in terms of making sure that these resources are best brought onto the grid in the most efficient way. But that's sort of our vision in terms of what the state can do. And one of the things that's exciting is that because we're a small state, I mean, we face the same challenges that many state states in terms of how do you electrify the grid. What we have is a benefit here is that we're a small enough state that we can really get everyone at the table and come up with good solutions. And actually, that is going to be models as to what's adopted elsewhere. You know, when California tries to do something, it's much more complicated, but we can kind of come up with a plan in terms of how are we really going to meet this challenge of heating and transportation and electricity. So we received, I think it was airline to help build the smart grid, or maybe it was just a field we've trained, which is a small enough state to get that transition up very early. And I don't know if that is being employed, but it's just staged us for doing the kind of work you're talking about now. So I would say that there's a ways to go in terms of what the grid needs to happen, what needs to happen with the grid to really be able to most effectively integrate distributed resources and we need a stronger partnership with GMP in terms of where are they facing constraints, what are really the most cost effective ways to upgrade the grid so that we can bring in these solutions. We definitely need to. And what's good is that when you see the adoption of renewables in the state, it actually is closely tied to incentives to one of the significant challenges that we're facing now as an industry is that the incentives that have been behind solar have gone down about 50% in the last five years. And we'll see this later too, but dramatic decline in the adoption of solar in the state, the number of jobs associated with solar that could bend a real reduction. But what that suggests is that there's a close tie between the incentives that are in place and what we achieve. So one of the things that is important going forward is that we start to include storage more actively in this. And you see states like Massachusetts with the MathSmart program where they put very clear, easily implemented incentives for storage that storage is being rapidly adopted. So what are, again, I think, the vision is that we literally want to get everyone at the same table to look at the challenges that are facing the grid and how can we most effectively address those and what are the resources that are needed to bring that to bear. And it's really a partnership with sort of all entities, us as people doing the work, GMP, regulators, legislators. Who do you think is the most appropriate convener of that conversation? Not storage, specifically. No, just kind of evolution of different assets, like storage being at peace. Does anyone facilitate that conversation? Not adequately. You know, I think there has been, I think there was great opportunity to have some shifting at the Vermont Systems Planning Committee to look at that, where all the stakeholders are at the table. But there's a bit of a dearth. Not on that committee, but overall. Yeah. The $3 billion that we're spending on energy, if you looked out 10 years, what sort of a high level for how much of that was, probably you know, $3 billion could be, we will apply it to stay part of that. Sort of like a decade sort of timeframe? Yeah. I think that you could actually start to look at something substantial in the order of 50 to 75% of that. It's the question, and this really comes down to, and this is what we've seen in the, so before 2016, and still to some extent, the U.S. was adding solar at a remarkable pace. So there were several years in which the largest fraction of new capacity being added to the U.S. grid was solar more than, far more than coal, which simply just isn't economically viable anymore, but more than natural gas even. So what we find is that we can actually make these rapid adoptions. It's all about sort of a will to do it and the incentives to support it. Well, we actually advocate our well thought out incentives that support a sustained long term for mon economy associated with green energy. So, but we do feel, especially in light of recent reports to people who are aware that the next dozen years are of absolute crucial outsize importance. So whatever we can do, but this again comes back to the win-win in that it's good for our economy, but we look at actually the investments. We talk about the burden that we're putting on our children, but this is one of those places, like when we invest in renewables, when we invest in clean energy, when we invest in net metering, it's actually the studies show significant awards 10, 15, 20 years down the road because we put these resources on the grid. We're now able to take care of them. There's often incentives that sunset, so that's what helps get us started, but then as they sunset the benefit is there. So again, I think that there's real opportunity for the state, because the state again is small enough to act, but it's also got a population that is supportive of this, appreciates that this is something that we need to think about. Great. And so, to you in any way in the room of one of the things, because we have this track, there are ways of self-editing in the private sector. If you have language or a concept of ideas that you want us to be thinking about, get edited and then brought forward, you can be shy about making proposals. That'd be great. Yeah, I mean, so this one, talking about, for example, schools, we do have, like we're doing the array for our Hartford schools, and they can, we're not able to meet their full load because the cap exists. And again, it just doesn't feel fair to me that if you're in a town of a certain size, you're only allowed to offset a certain amount. And what's interesting is a lot of this conversation and energy that you've seen is being driven by the students. They understand, they understand what they're impairing, they want to do as much as they can. So that to me seems like a very straightforward one, especially when you wrinkle on top of it this unfortunate piece that if you're in a school district that's getting consolidated, you used to be able to do one for each school, but now when it becomes a single entity, you can't anymore. But again, so that to me seems like a very clear one, but there are also language that we can follow up on on how to streamline and address some of the pieces that exist in permitting. That's a little bit of a question. Do you see a meter per customer and how do you find some right? So I agree with the point about we should try to get them on lots of schools. No, necessarily focus on what the district is and only allow one school to happen. Of course, ten schools in the district, but I would just say be careful with student activism. Yes, they're inheriting this earth, but they're also not allowed to do a lot of things because they're not adults and they're not mature and they act on emotion. And so as we've seen with many other debates, they don't have the life experience and so just reacting to students with some whims on political stuff. I don't find the best way to go. Well, I mean, to your point though, I guess what we, again, advocated for is just intelligent fact-based policies. So this gets to this idea of getting people together in terms of what's the best way to modernize an electrified grid and how do we do that with incentives that are targeted to bring on the resources that we want and they're sustainable for five or ten years because what we don't want as a company is that we hire people. We don't want to have it be great this year, bad next year, but we want things that we can plan on, we can hire, we can build for the future. And I would just say to that, I've seen a whole bunch of the solar developers around the state that have become very, very rich and maybe not all of them. And I think you're doing some good work, but there are several of them that are quite rich and so I'm wondering about the whole ask for incentives I would think that the industry has matured enough and the panel's cost has come down enough that it should be, at some point it has to grow up and be a business that stands on its own. And yes, we don't want to put it... Like a fossil fuel industry. One subsidy does not make another subsidy. I'm not in favor of subsidizing the oil industry either. But what I am saying is that there's a limited amount of money that Vermonters can grow with. We are a small state and largely not a wealthy state and Vermonters are feeling overtaxed and so if we have to prop everything up to subsidies there's a whole bunch of people that push back. I want to be very clear that we're not here asking for that today. So maybe we could just keep going. No, no, sorry. But I have a point well taken and we agree and that's why one of the things that, you know, that's why we are diversifying and innovating but there have been some requirements put on by the state that are making things more expensive than they need to be. It's some unintentional consequences. I guess I would underscore that the solar systems are bringing tremendous value to the state and if you look at the benefit that they include in fact we could potentially, we'll get to that but in terms, when you look at these systems they're investing a tremendous amount of money directly in the state. So when you look at that, the associated... So this really is a win-win when we talk about this $3 billion. So the systems that are installed in the state are supporting a vibrant clean energy economy although there have been significant productions in those jobs. And when you look at that associated economic activity it's absolutely a win for the state and we are far leaner in terms of the incentives that are in place for solar here than for example in Massachusetts which are 50% to 75% higher. And as an industry we're bringing tremendous value to the state. Thank you. So as I mentioned we're part of the regional grid. We are importing in terms of the actual amount and quantity of electricity more than 60% from the New England grid and from Hydro-Quebec and the larger region. We rev's position is that we have far inadequate amount of local community renewables and so I would also encourage you to look at the renewable energy standard. These charts are from the energy action network. They just... You may have gotten briefings on them but it kind of shows you so you can really see what is actually happening and where electricity is really coming from. So we have wind and solar that's 12% or less of our actual electricity in Vermont. We have had some innovations in solar. I think you have seen some more solar parking lot canopies with bifacial solar panels, pollinator friendly solar, a lot of agriculture with solar, a lot of co-benefits and activities happening. And I don't know... I'm going to keep going so we don't run out of time. Another, do you want to... No, that's fine. I already talked briefly about sort of our... but I would underscore that this idea, as a company and as an industry we're very much committed to figuring out how to do solar in a Vermont way. So this idea of how do you integrate solar with the landscape has been very important and there's a lot that you can do. The arrays actually have a lot of open space around them so we use them for like raising animals. You can use friendly pollinators. So the idea is not to make the... not to take land out of production but actually how to increase production from it. And then we already talked briefly about this is just a slide on sort of the research work that we're doing right at the grid monitoring station. I got just one quick question. Do you find any damage when you have animals around them? So you want sheep, not goats. No cows. And not cows. You need something... Some people have done cows. You need a much more substantial and elevated structure. So sheep are more equipment friendly. Goats are trying to climb on them. Cows are trying to climb on them. Chewing the wires. It's actually a return. Agriculture in Vermont used to have a very strong plunder of sheep. So actually that is something. Maybe chicken grease. Yeah, some of our members are actually working with the Department of Agriculture to have... There's like raising sheep as part of like flocks of sheep that move around because some of the younger generation and other farmers don't have property. But a lot of solar projects do have property and there are a lot of co-benefits. So the other thing, renewable energy storage we do really appreciate... I want to highlight the many benefits of renewable energy storage. In terms of the Vermont landscape, we have at least three companies in Vermont that are manufacturing inverters and components and compiling for renewable energy or other energy storage. Dynapower in South Burlington. Northern Power Systems, which is now WEG. Northern Reliability in Waterbury now. And so we also have many... What we're trying to do is maximize the benefits of our existing renewable energy that is installed here in Vermont. As well as think about when we have new, how can we maximize the benefit and also maximize community resiliency for emergency disasters, et cetera, reduce costs. There are many, many benefits to renewable energy storage. So if you'd like to come and see any of that or come see installed at any level, we would be happy to connect you to talk more about that. And I think maybe we want to turn to do a little bit of what's going... Yeah. Most of the storage managed for the site itself or are you also giving utilities control so that they can draw on it as an asset? Yeah, so operating both behind the meter just for the facility or certainly from what we talked about, the evolution or modernization of grid. This is one of the things that we're looking at is the way it should be more dynamic. Yeah, we just... We've announced, you may have heard in the news, a partnership with Green Mountain Power where customers, residential customers can bring their own storage device. And then Green Mountain Power is able to access a control to reduce costs for all utility customers within different things that they do in the regional wholesale markets, reducing capacity costs. And many, many... The benefits are very numerous and we've only started to scratch the surface there and many other states are far ahead of us on this. But we have great potential and opportunity so we really should look at how we can incorporate storage war into our renewable energy programs. If you or others see state programs elsewhere do you think we should email us and catch a link and stuff like that to start putting the other more information? Yeah, so the Mass Smart Program I think is actually very well structured in terms of broken up by years. So by size of system and then there are categories, specific things for, you know, rooftops or carports or storage so we can send you information on that. And it was successful in terms of rolling things up pretty quickly. So again, we've touched a little bit on what I was talking about in terms of doing solar in a way that's important for the state and the value of net meter and grains in terms of meeting our own clean energy challenges, people being able to actually choose their source of power and keeping those dollars in state. But this slide here, local solar powers from our economy I find is being helpful. There's just some numbers, some context for a typical system that we would do for a school or for a town. So we've done systems for the Hartford Schools for Oxbow and Bradford and Newbury, Bedford and one of the, if you look at this, so those systems have tremendous value for the communities themselves. They're able to, we view the arrays as broad educational opportunities that involve the students and the community as a way to really engage the students but also the community in terms of making them aware of the differences they're making in terms of climate change. So there's the educational benefit, there's the clean energy benefit but all of the things I really like to also emphasize is that there's a very strong economic benefit and so this breaks down what would be the numbers associated with a typical system for a school or a town, a 500 KW system. So it puts about $700,000 into the local labor force so that's equivalent to around 10 or 11 full-time equivalent jobs. So each of those projects supports 10 or 11 jobs on an annual basis. The school itself will be able to save about $500,000 over the course of the life of the system. Also very important, this is a way in which we're actually bringing investment dollars into the state. So there's about a million dollars in federal tax benefits that are leveraged and also very importantly what I'd like to emphasize is that there's an economic multiplier right, so those direct jobs that we create but there's an economic multiplier effect so then each of these projects typically generates on the order of $2 million in local economic activity. So this is again this idea that if we capture and generate our solar locally our energy locally then we're creating a strong sustainable economy. So 500 kilowatts AC so that would be what gets plugged into the grid, the AC side. Can you explain a little? I'm mentioning people installing. So again as I talked about before one of the things that's great is that it really branches the gamut so there's a physical installation which includes site work. There's the building of the array itself the mechanical pieces there's the electrical work that's associated with it but then there's pieces sort of in front or back and around that at the beginning we have to do a lot of environmental analysis we have to hire consultants we have to work with attorneys in terms of doing site preparation there's financing associated with it. It's a full supply chain it's not just the solar. I mean I think what we want one of the things to convey too is it's not solar only but it's the larger everyone that ends up becoming involved. This is where it's like directly the type of jobs that are supported really do support a broad range and again I like to talk about is that there's a range of jobs but there's also a range of where people are in their careers right so we have some young people who are starting out from the trades some people actually that we've gotten through working at some of the technical schools like Oxford River Bend School so people are just entering the workforce but then we also have people who are well establishing their careers so it's a question it says the school system invests 700,000 and saves the school 500,000 over lifetime I'm assuming that's 500,000 over the cost of the investment. It's just it's not clear from the way the language is drafted in that so you might want to my quick reading of it it looks like it costs 200,000 more and it pays back right so this is just so in this case the school actually doesn't end up owning the system the school will get a discount on their power which is a great option for the school because we all know bonding and trying to borrow the money coming up with the money and also they don't have a tax bill and the federal support is all the form of tax credit so if you don't have a tax bill you can't this is actual real like dialers to the school so for example if you have like a 50% discount on their powers so they used to be paying $100 a month on power now they're paying $85 so that's what I assumed it was but from reading it quickly thank you for asking make that clear be important to make it clear and then this next one actually I think is good just because it does get to this point about the cost associated with net metering so when you look at all of the benefits that are being brought to the grid it really is a very valuable investment in the grid and when you study it it's actually on the order of a nickel per month for an average GMP customer that's the quote unquote cost of net metering so it's actually a tiny cost when you really look at the benefits of the grid so I think we want to make sure that you have plenty of time and we're respectful of your time particularly since we can come back there's a lot of information in here that maybe we'll highlight this real quick and then go to our solutions so then again the clean energy job report is a great place to just get details these jobs are the jobs that we want these days are the well paying stable jobs the chart underneath it though shows unfortunately what's been happening in the past several years pretty significantly in the wrong direction and shedding jobs in clean energy and that's captured again by this chart this is one slice of it there are other slices that show this as being even more dramatic in terms of we just recently pulled the data we see sort of a year on this motion recent year to an analogous year earlier and there was a 70% decline in the number of applications for school and town size system so we're facing a situation that we're very concerned about and if we're going to meet the clean energy challenges that we face we need to move the other direction then the other piece that's often sometimes discussed is sort of where on is the state relative to others and that's what this plot has in terms of the solar penetration data and you can see that we are actually you know fairly far down there and on an annual basis we only get about just under 5% of our energy from solar so we have a lot of opportunity to do a lot more and what we see right next to us is Massachusetts similarly and I was talking about the Mass Smart program and they as part of that program had the ambitious goal of basically doubling what they were getting and they're well in their way to getting that so it shows that with a well designed program that's well supported we can make rapid changes so I'm going to let's see you can see here some snippets about what other states are doing I'm going to keep going ahead to the slide that is titled challenges and opportunities ahead so there's some background there for you but in terms of what's going on on the ground with projects you know and how do we maintain and increase our local renewable energy electricity access and particularly from the customer perspective so customers can have choices and rely on local renewable electricity their residential community solar and when we say residential community solar I mean when you have folks who cannot do solar they're on their own roofs or on their property for a variety of reasons that market segment no longer exists in Vermont so many of the companies who were providing that as a solution are under the new net metering regime it's not financially possible and that is partially also a combination of some of the unnecessary and or redundant permitting burdens so I think that we should be looking at that the other thing is as Joel mentioned Townsend Schools cap that some consequences where school districts merging together what we want ultimately is to have you know we want to have buildings be able to have solar on all our rooftops and have as I'm going to actually use Mary Powell's words from Green Mountain Power have a customer centric decentralized system where it's locally customer powered and she says it far more than I could but in order to do that there's been some barriers that have been put up that don't make that possible maintaining the standard offer program there is a I know you guys started talking about standard offer in connection with local hydro but there are there's a sunset provision that needs to be addressed we think you need to look at the renewable energy standard Vermont needs 100% renewable energy standard and you know looking at a much faster data like something around 2030 particularly important as we are electrifying our heating and transportation at the permitting burden and review we have there are projects that you'll see the deadline that have been waiting more than a year to receive a permit from the public utility commission where no one is opposing the project and it's already they've already gone through extensive review by the agency of agriculture history the archeology ANR the towns, the public some of these projects actually have letters of support from the town so I'd like to think about some timelines for review of projects because that costs money and you have Dan on project size yes that's on the next slide since we're and then you know there's also permitting for parking lot canopies we also I want to offer as well we would love to have you at any of our parking lot canopy projects there's a project at the alchemist that is it would be great to go see and also ECHO in Burlington just finished a project where the parking lot at the ECHO center has solar canopies and EV charging underneath all that's possible because of net metering so be happy to talk more there's in the slides here there's data related to the number of permits process permits we just really need efficiency and government operations and certainty because for businesses time is money and so some certainty also reduces costs particularly when there are no objections yeah this is very important for us I mean we obviously have people who we have on staff and that's not based on the assumption that we have a steady flow of projects that we can be busy with so when we plan on what had been a typical kind of turnaround we understand the processing that needs to happen but when things just get delayed and sit there for a long period of time we don't have pieces that we can move on to so it's very important for operational standpoint so there's more information in here and other guests will wait as well open date thanks thank you what Mr. Belbock is joining us at the table good morning good opportunity to challenge this bigest challenge of the day I was a forestry major at UVM forestry 101 first sentence was never speak after a PhD from Dartmouth But Olivia and Joel spoke to the technical, specific, technical benefits and challenges now of solar and Vermont, so try to speak more fundamentally about community solar. I'm going to reiterate a couple things Olivia just said a couple of years ago, so we built about 30 megs of solar in Vermont, about 50 megs of solar in other states. Two years ago we had a couple hundred guys, we're vertically integrants, we do our own construction, we do our own permitting, we do kind of super nuts for good or for bad. A couple years ago we had a few hundred guys and women on our payroll in our various companies working for Vermont. Today we have a handful, the rest of them are in New York, and so does North Carolina. That speaks to throughout that quick little paint on John Olivia's comments that the economic benefits of solar, if we're not careful, will evade us here. Completely global and fundamental level. My wife and I just returned from an environmental, if you will, a global warming tour and we ended it, we started it and ended it in the same place, in Maldives. The devastating effects of global warming, we don't see here. It's not an issue today, but it should be discussed in every meeting, in every Senate meeting, every House meeting across the state and the federal, we just don't see it. We recognize how important it is for us to move to a renewable grid, but until you see it first hand, you don't realize how important it is, and we can lead here in Vermont. We have a non-denuclear proliferation, many other political issues, and we should be applauded. You should be applauded. The fact that you had such a large growth of renewable jobs in Vermont, leading the nation, the highest percentage of renewable jobs in the nation in 2017, 2018, perhaps apparently to be usurped by Minnesota in 2019, but nonetheless you should be applauded. But we still need to do more, and we have the opportunity to lead by it. I'll get off my soapbox. Just a very briefly, what do you see in the Northeast that gave you that strong impression? I don't know what Senator Rodgers said. We've been talking about air travel a little bit in this community. Oh. Committee. It's an island nation. I don't have any 1,000 miles long, I think about 2200 miles long. The reefs are dead. They're white and they're black. The sand is dead. People are starting. While it's still beautiful, the beaches are beautiful, the waters are beautiful, the resorts are beautiful. I don't know how many people are going to keep going there. When you go out to a reef, you don't see them. But that's really devastating. It's the plastic floating in the ocean from Asia. It's another issue. And that's devastating. It's so devastating. We're supposed to go to Antarctica to sort of finish this quest. And I went back and said, do we really want to see this again? Let's take a few months. Let's take a little time before we depress ourselves further. It's unfortunate that with that weakness, I addressed it. But I said, I've got to revamp. I've got to go back to beautiful Vermont. I've got to ski a little bit in the spring. And I said, see you later in the play. And then I'm ready to look at devastation. So getting back to community solar, we have a tremendous opportunity. I don't know why there's a 500. John literally spoke about so much subject matter. And I look forward to reading the report. I'm not a member of Rev. I apologize. Sorry. But I hope that you'll still let me have your report. I don't know why. They're technical data. They provide so much information. Sometimes it's difficult to understand some of the specificities. As Joel struggles to make the economics work when putting solar on school campuses, most specifically, if those schools and those communities have the opportunity to utilize more than 500 kilowatts, there's no reason. It is nonsensical. It's antithetical. Earlier today, Billy Costa, I said, what's the road? I'm not political. I'm not down there all the time. Billy said, if I'm this coding, please step up. Look, historically, we want to make sure that the ratepayers receive the opportunities they should receive, for lack of a better description. Did I articulate it fairly well? Kind of. What we discussed was just generally nanometer power is charged at a higher rate to use at least. Thank you. As you get larger, there's certain economies of scale that perhaps will be realized. For the record, Billy Costa. This is a business where economies of scale are paramount. I've been in the construction development business for 37 years. I was in the healthcare business as part of that. I have never seen a business where economies of scale are so relevant. Economies of scale are so beneficial. It's infamous that the utility business of economy of scale is important. I was not aware. I now feel it. I live it. I see it every day. Ratepayers are to benefit. In this state, there is no better way for them to benefit than renewable energy on a larger scale. Now, I recognize we have to be sensitive to the aesthetic implications. I've had more than one argument in a coffee shop. When somebody asked, well, I did a hand in the card that said Bull Rock Solar, and they said, you're destroying the farms Vermont. And my answer is no, I'm saving the farms. I don't know what position you have on that, but that has been my answer. We should be building bigger arrays. There should be no 500 meter cap. The University of Vermont, Porter Hospital, the Medical Center of Vermont, they've all come to me and said, will you help us become renewable? Can we do five minutes, 10 minutes, 12 minutes? Can we do this big roof? It's oxymoronic. It's an anathema to me that I can't say to them. We can put solar on whatever roof you want. In fact, the economies of scale will allow us to allow the replacement of a roof as part of the project. I can't say that to you in most cases because there's a cap. Similarly, we've moved most of our workforces over to New York. In New York, there's an international partnership. In New York, the program is not a big program. The state of New York has determined that community solar is the way of the future. It's the way to create a distributed grid. It's the key in the long term to more efficient, more effective, cheaper, and cleaner power. They've been that global and wholesale sector. It's all community solar. It's not good. It's based on a stack. It's based on a reimbursement rate from the utility, similar to the residential rate that's being paid in that particular zone by the customer. It makes sense. It's not the windfall. Senator Rogers spoke to the windfall that solar developers were benefiting from a couple of years ago. Well said. Perhaps that was the case. That's no longer the case. Price will come down. I think I've provided this committee with performance. I think everybody in the solar community, you've been ahead with a hammer when I did, but it didn't. I've provided performance. You can see how much money solar developers are making on a project with depreciation of rates, depreciation of reimbursements combined with the federal ITC becoming somewhat defecated. You're going to see less profits. In New York, with an average reimbursement rate of 9.65 cents, economy is a scale of key to the success. In Vermont, we should raise the limit. We should be encouraging community solar, whether it's two megs or three megs, I don't know. Whether it's three megs or four megs, I don't know. That's for you to decide. Perhaps in coordination with the agency of natural resources. But we know that we should have community solar. I know that in the town I live in, I live on a sustainable farm in Chilofra Mountain, completely off of the grid. We have sheep underneath our solar panels. It's kind of a pain in the neck, but it looks cool. And I know that if we could refine the proper agricultural area, the proper municipal property, some of our households would be happy to sign on. They'd feel good about it. And if that isn't the ethos that we should be sending throughout the nation, I don't know what else. Similarly, when Joel puts a solar, we've built a bunch of schools. And we've had schools as off-takers and hospitals as off-takers. When we have a school, when Joel puts a facility on school, it should be maximized. I don't care if it's 10 megs. If it's on school, we should maximize that opportunity. Because the reality is, everyone is better. There's a global perspective without the technical perspective. So in terms of business structure, I think that the draft uses sort of retail as a base. It uses wholesale. And that creates a value stack on top for things like associated storage. And generation close to low, things like that. And then it's a far larger scale. Last year's version was up to five megawatts. But really, there were no takers. So I don't know. That was just sort of an opening position. I'm wondering what works and what doesn't work from your perspective on the development side about a proposal like that. I think the big proposals in general are dangerous. I think if I change the political, if I change the rules, so that everybody can participate, there's a much better process than a big process anyway. You're saying that isn't going to come in and understand it all. But this was more in me than that, that if you generate it, every project would be a sense of improvement program. Fair enough. There's things to be figured out. It's not easy. Fair enough. I would support, I think we've spoken about this, I certainly sent myriad of emails from a community solar perspective. Universities, municipalities, schools, 501C entities should have no cap. Whether or not they should receive a beneficial rate, I argue that it's probably not necessary. I think the efficiencies in the solar industry are impressive, have been impressive the last few years. And we can make ample amount of money. We can sustain it in this dream for a month without additional incentives. But I also don't think we should be penalized. I also think community solar, from a typical articulation of community solar, and again I don't know what the limit is, whereby municipal lands or agricultural lands, especially if it helps sustain the agricultural entity and the promise to be built, I think community programs should be encouraged. Again, I don't know if it's 2.2 megs, I don't know if it's 4.4 megs. And I don't know if there should be a limitation. There must be a point where they would be offensive aesthetically. I agree with that. But there are certain points where they're not offensive aesthetically, so they're less offensive than a bunch of advantages for lack of administration. And I don't know whether there needs to be a financial incentive over and above the residential rate. Not fair. I do know. There need not be incentive over and above the residential rate. I don't think it should deprecate it either. I think the residential rate is fair. I think the economy skills are such that you can make a fair dollar. I also think, and you should know, that when we search for off-takers in the solar industry, when we search for customers, they're generally offered anywhere from a 10% to 15% discount. So if you're a university, if you're a municipality, if your community members are receiving a 10% to 15% discount, something most community members are not able to avail themselves of now. That's tremendously beneficial to the ratepayers in general. That's a great community benefit. What's the chief obstacle to seeing? I mean, it's the way to find out what you have to cap on. It's a pretty good obstacle. Yeah, it's a pretty good obstacle. Pretty good obstacle. And we don't have a community solar program. Those are pretty good obstacles. And so if someone said to you, we're never a community solar, and they said, what is that? How would you define it? I would define it as I just did not. Say it's the opportunity to build a nonprofit or municipal facilities, educational facilities. It's the opportunity to build a limited amount of solar to the extent that you're utilizing all of that facility's needs and perhaps even their community needs. I would say it's also the opportunity to either sell individual panels in the field to a homeowner remotely or to sell the productivity from that field just like they do in New York. There's nothing wrong with the New York program at worst. But that's a little complicated. The smart kids in my office, we can figure it out. I can't. But they seem to be doing okay. So if a university, I think it'd be VN, for instance, there is a VED territory. VED is at 100% renewable. So I'm trying to sort out, this is a genuine question. I don't know the answer. Does it make sense for UVM to go and do renewable if it is a system that's claiming to be 100% renewable even if they do nothing more? As graduates of UVM, as a board member of UVM, that was a really loaded question because you know that I believe that the ethos, we have an obligation. It's an embarrassment. Everybody in this room should be embarrassed. The University of Vermont is not renewable. We are one of the nation's leading school and natural resource at the Rubenstein Center. And when I was a little taken out of that context. Yeah, it still makes sense. There is peak demand costs in the VED territory that would be ameliorated if we had a combination of battery storage and renewable energy in many different locations, bifurcated, distributed locations in the UVM campus. Same thing with the Medical Center. And the Medical Center, as you know, now is expanding. The triangle is from caribou main to skinny apples to portland main. And there are many satellite facilities. The idea that we have to play games, we were asked to put a facility on board recently. I'm seeing a lot more in our social media. We're supposed to put a facility on board. The idea that we have to play games, that the university, that there's some fear that the University Medical Center may be considered one global customer. We recently said we'd put a facility, a small facility that didn't do it, for any other reason than it's in our backyard and thought it was important. A small roof, we don't do small roofs generally, in Shelburne, Vermont. Downtown Shelburne, Vermont says, well, we can't be an off-taker and build a solar. So let's not put solar on the roof of the library because we would supersede our 500 kilowatt consumption gap. Really? It's a naff of a thing. It helps solve more. Senator Rogers, next question to you. I personally don't have a problem with getting rid of the cap when it's going on roofs. I do not like it when it's going into farm fields. That's just, that's my personal opinion. There's better things to do with our soil. If it's going on an institution, schools, I think it's a good idea to not have a cap as long as it's not screwing up the grid. In my neighborhood, our grid is screwed up and everybody that puts a new small solar system in a small or large solar system is shutting down other renewable resources. So if it makes sense in the area, in the community, in the energy that we use, I think it's something worthy looking at. Let me ask you questions. It raised two very interesting points, relative to the second point. If the installation of large and more economically viable solar allowed a contribution to the utility so that the grid were updated, just how $161 million for the grid upgrades is done four years in a month, would you feel differently? Possibly, I'd have to see it. Let me ask you about the first one. If there was a farm that's taken the grid out, this room was involved in a project that was built up in Grid Island. It was 7x DC. It was a community solar project in part, isn't it? That farm was scheduled for development of 153 houses. Now, whether or not they would have been able to sell 153 houses in Grid Island, I have no idea what the real estate market is. $100,000 a year approximately, that is not supposed to be specific, that we're paying to those landowners. Maybe that's what it is, maybe that's what we're doing. It was closed anyway. That's a stating that piece of land. The majority of that land is open because a small portion, about 8% of their farm has solar on it. Isn't that accomplishing some of the goals that you spoke to? Absolutely, everyone has to be weighed on its own merits. What I'm saying is I don't want to see whole farms covered with them because I believe there's better ways to develop. Yes, it's more expensive to put it on a roof, but a roof already has a drip line, roofs already have runoff, roofs are already heating up the water that runs into the streams, putting them in fields, changes the ecosystem. We'll stop there. Thank you very much. Good morning. Good morning. Should I weigh it or should I start? It's probably a biology problem. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak this morning. I'm going to just read a few remarks from a prepared statement. I'd be happy to leave this with you and certainly more than happy to share some of our ideas and some of our thoughts around improving the way in which we deploy solar and battery storage in Vermont. If you can submit that, I think we'll choose it more than to our webpage in this sense. If anyone wants to offer some information, we'll be assembling all this stuff into our website. Fantastic. I'd welcome that opportunity. Thank you. For the record, my name is Chad Farrell and I'm the founder and CEO of Encore Renewable Energy. Encore is an integrated clean energy services company that focuses on underutilized property for the deployment of solar, landfills, brownfield rooftops and parking canopies, as we've heard. I want to stress that we don't do any residential projects and I want to stress that that is a completely different market segment. So I think all of my comments here will be reflective of the commercial scale solar market. There's also a utility scale solar market nationally. We don't really have that here. We really need hundreds and hundreds of acres to do a utility scale project in between population density, topography and other challenges. We just don't really have a utility scale sector here in Vermont. But we are active in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and a number of other jurisdictions. We've worked with utilities and schools and municipalities, hospitals and commercial businesses to bring renewable energy to Vermont. We work with leading global financial institutions to bring capital into Vermont at the lowest cost of capital possible. We've delivered nearly 35 megawatts across 65 projects to the state of Vermont, representing a cumulative investment value of approximately $80 million. We've nearly 100 megawatts of solar and a number of utility scale battery storage projects under development and in our pipeline. Finally, I think it's important to note that we are a certified benefit corporation, which requires us to adhere to the principles of the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. Therefore, we look to use business as a force for good. We're very concerned with a lot of these environmental impacts that we talked about. As we know, there's been a decent amount of solar deployed in Vermont through this standard offer program, through net metering as we've been discussing and also through the renewable energy standard that was passed until a couple years back. So all of the solar in Vermont, as we all know, I think has resulted in the daytime peak being essentially crushed. This benefits all Vermonters. It's also resulted in the generation of thousands of jobs, boosts in local and state property tax revenues and much needed revenue for farmers and other landowners struggling to make ends meet. We've seen the market here in Vermont evolve significantly over the past 10 years that we've been active in the solar development space. As we've concurrently watched the global solar market expand exponentially, we've got a few numbers to support those statements. So in 2010 when we installed our first solar project and there were about a thousand megawatts of solar installed in the U.S. Last year our number was, I'm sorry, 1,000 megawatts. Last year we were over 10,000 megawatts with a high point being 2016 when the industry in the United States alone delivered 14,000 megawatts. In 2010, that first project we did we bought those panels at $2 and 25 cents a watt. We're currently buying panels for less than 40 cents a watt presently. Through the scale of the industry to deliver solar at a much lower cost point. In 2010, Encore was one person with a couple of interns where now 10 person strong collaborative of motivated and passionate professionals working hard to address the climate crisis that we face. So in summary, the solar market has blossomed due to the favorable economics of the growing industry where significant investments have been made into research and development. This is a contrast to the 20th century models of electrical generation. And as the market has developed new and interesting models have been developed in other nearby states that I think we hopefully will be able to take advantage of here in Vermont. These include the value of distributed energy resources program in New York and the smart program in Massachusetts. Both of these models have been successful in expanding solar employment in both of those states in a manner that is respectful of the cost of electricity. So we actually not knowing what you all wanted me to speak about this morning we actually did take a look at Senator Bray's initial bill from last year and I would just like to make a few points of reference based on kind of what and I socialize this with our entire team so this is not just my comments, these are from our entire team I think the concept of a base rate anchored around something now I know the bill was talking about avoided cost we would argue that a better base rate would be anchored around the current value of solar because what happens is with the avoided cost of energy alone you're skewing that number with cheap brown power that doesn't take into account any externalities with respect to climate and doesn't take into account any locational benefits for siting sources of generation close to sources of load or electrical consumption we really also like the concept of adjusters based on the following I mean siting adjusters are critical I think as we all know brownfields, landfills, rooftops, parking canopies are all more expensive projects to develop and to construct so an adjuster there would be tremendously helpful the grid condition and services adjusters there are also warranted we want to be motivated to build these projects where they are most effective within the grid customer type I think there's some strong benefit to incentivizing but providing solar at a better rate for municipalities and non-profits then there would be commercial businesses I think that's fair also the concept of adjusters based on rec ownership I think that would be helpful as well we like the opportunity to sell at least a portion of the output to the local distributed utility we would suggest the opportunity to sell all or a portion of that output because that would speak to the responsibility of a project I think overall we like the fact that the bill in its previous form at least attempted to provide a framework of a competitive supply to achieve greater scale than net metering maybe could and this is all while minimizing any potential cost shift to rate payers and I think overall also the predictability and the stability offered by a solution such as this speaks to the flexibility of projects which is going to speak to additional deployment so I think last year alone I think we all know there were numerous reports that came out emphasizing the need for immediate action to combat the climate crisis so to do our part we need perhaps more than ever to create this meaningful legislation that will enable a rapid deployment of solar and other renewable resources here in Vermont the increased electrification of our society coupled with the market based declines and the large scale coal and nuclear generating assets means that demand for smaller distributed sources of electrical generation are only going to increase we touched on it earlier I was just going to leave it as a side but we definitely also need meaningful legislation to rapidly advance the deployment of energy storage in Vermont energy storage is often referred to as the bacon of the renewable energy world it makes everything better I've also heard recently from my more vegetarian leaning friends it's considered a kale of the renewable energy world both of which make everything better so I would just respectfully request that the committee take this into consideration the need for rapid deployment of storage I mean I think as we put more solar on the grid we've shifted the peak to the evening hours we don't need more generation during the daytime under current load levels load levels are going to increase so that will change but in order to get more storage we need to be able to control the generation profile of renewable resources that's what storage does so thank you very much for the opportunity I'm happy to field any questions when you stepped out I said that I would email to Jude one of the pieces that they constructed from last year was longer term contracts so we were looking for trying to bring prices down by offering security over the long a longer period of time and so is that a meaningful sort of quick pro quo absolutely longer is better yeah we can achieve not much but we can achieve lower ppa prices power purchase agreement prices when we have longer runway so that speaks to both site control how long can we lease the land and then that also speaks to the contract length of the power purchase agreement I'm just going to write that one I look at this like the small farms and the current practices security so when you do a when a project is put on a school or or a college who owns the project? generally an investor owner there are funds that are set up specifically to own solar generation assets similar to the way there's a lot of big real estate investment trusts and big real estate holding companies that are set up to own a number of different real estate assets so generally it's a large it's a large fund we own a few of our projects but we're largely developer builders so we design, develop and construct the projects and then for the most part work with financial partners to own and operate the project we sometimes have a small stake in those projects so as to maintain activity in those projects for the long haul but generally we're bringing the capital into Vermont from elsewhere disclosure on how to get a long haul and heat pumps I bought a 10 years later my REITs are cutting I bought a used bunch of panels to the heat pumps and I don't get a long term contract you're asking for a long term contracts in order to get down to the lowest price per kilowatt hour produced for the utility or the hospital or the school scale helps and longer term contracts help and then you find these investors that'll take a much lower target rate of return because it's all about risk and a long term PPA with a utility is about as financeable as it gets there's much less risk in that contract than there would be selling that meter in credits to a customer I haven't taken a risk yet I'm getting whacked by the folks that come in later you were a pioneer by doing a project 10 years ago we did 10 years ago I haven't I understand and now I'm a bit of the seven days milk thing last year as a kid who grew up on a dairy farm like Senator Rogers and all of a sudden it's a ruthless scramble to in that case people that started reaching the people who make the milk or who own the land and that took 100 years this industry still so I could do it in 20 years same thing and leave the average person behind in the offering yeah I can't comment on the dairy industry I but I think with respect to solar I do believe that a rising tide lifts all boats so as the industry scales and as we are able to deploy solar at lower and lower cost points that should benefit everybody especially the race as a member of the finance community we discuss rising tide lifting all boats the same old complex said when business expands it gets shared by all people in our society and today that doesn't happen anymore whether you're a variety of businesses a few people get their hands on it and they're smart and they're good sales people and the result is all boats don't rise and again I can only speak to our business philosophy which is the triple bottom line which is really making sure that we are considering the communities in which we work and the people with which we work and the environment and yes ultimately the projects need to cash flow we have a business to run so we need to make money but we do believe in those other social values and I can only speak to myself for myself I was in that tradition and etc I was going to use the other one when we had people that went around the churches and offered to raise money for churches by putting on gambling and bingo when the church got 25 bucks they went from church to Eagles Club to the next place to hold the money away in drugs well I think as Joel spoke to there is residual value that stays within the community there are the full time employee opportunities for Vermonters there's the secondary and tertiary jobs that are created as a result of the economic activity all the way down to the convenience stores we're going to run by no longer mom and pop who earn in the lowest wages in the state of Vermont don't have health care and don't want to that's we're equating this to a bunch of convenience stores run by the state that is killing our median income and it's not lifting all those I'm a firm believer that we do need to address incoming equality I couldn't testify to that in this room maybe one or two people would say that's not their problem yeah, absolutely I think part of that does not happen absolutely, I agree with that mom and pop gave 401ks pardon I'm saying mom and pop gave people 401ks part of that I alluded to earlier negative externalities that don't show up so part of what's in the background that makes this conversation like this to you is a business as usual model comes at a tremendous untally cost and we get all the figures in the table to make rational decisions, I think your points are all taken and there's an unexpressed downside that we aren't particularly good at quantifying or responding to that and that's not a whole lot of cliches so thank you everyone for participating opening day community scale, renewable energy fishing journey and so we're going to get started there'll be a draft bill out by early next week but the concepts are the same as last year and nobody positioned to help us sort out questions and people feel like they hear if you have priorities, it's an encyclopedic task in a way so if you can send comments and prioritize your most important things for us to address, it'll be great Mr. Wallace, thank you for agreeing to come back for round two so thanks chair thank you all