 Good morning! Great. All right, let's get going. Blood circulating, a lot of exciting things to do today together. So, my name is Chris Bray. I chair the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee. And I also have the pleasure of serving today on this panel with you all up here to talk about beneficial electrification and an evolving role for utilities in this energy efficiency in the state of Vermont. You know, at times our most precious thing that we have to spend and so I'm really thankful that you're spending your time here with all of us today at this panel and other panels. And in order to make it productive, I'd like to think of this panel not as just an information sharing but as a training session because the implication with training is that when you leave, you're going to use that training to do something. And the reason I'm thinking more about the notion of connecting it to getting something done is that I'm sensing this summer and fall a greater than ever a sense of urgency to make progress on climate and environmental issues. And I don't know if people have that same feeling or not. You're pretty quiet on that. For instance, just one small data point. The largest demonstration in Burlington's history in decades was for the climate strike just a week ago. So there is, I think, a much broader, deeper shared sense of the need to make tangible progress. And at the same time, though, I hear in my own language talking to my colleagues, peers, the public, almost an apologetic note when I'm trying to talk about climate and environmental issues, something along the lines of, you know, I hate to bother you, that planet is on fire, can we talk about climate for a minute? And yet that to me feels like having my weight in my heels. It's a weak position to make an ask and to do work with people from. So I'd like to find, I am experimenting with finding ways to get my weight forward, to lean into the work, to be comfortable saying that we need to be comfortable, all of us, saying that there's more work to be done sooner. And so I want to do an experiment with you all. And that is the first thing. So first, if everyone could stand up, we'll see how this goes. It may be something that we can all use after. I was an EMT and I was trained to respond to emergencies. It's nothing dramatic in a certain way. The alarm sounds. You travel to the scene. You use your training to walk into an emergency that may involve fire, car wreck, screaming, blood, mayhem. And then you quietly focus and take steps designed to save lives. And that's it. That's the job. So when I look at the environment, I see an emergency. The alarm is sounding. In the Midwest, three floods in 10 years that are labeled once in 500-year floods, or Greenland's ice shelf melting last on August 3rd, enough water was released to fill 4.4 million Olympic swimming pools in a day, 80 million pools in the month. The Bahamas got devastated by Dorian. And you see the photos. It looks like some sort of mantris weed whacker came through and decimated the microphone and the island. So there is a lot of alarms going off. And so I'd like to borrow the frame I'm talking about today is borrowing from EMTs and thinking, talking and acting. So the first thing is that I hope we can all get comfortable when we work and when we talk with our peers on saying in a clear and unapologetic way that we have an environmental emergency. Not a particularly dramatic statement, but clear and emphatic. It's acknowledging the situation right in front of us. So this is a repeat after me moment. You know, I'd like us all to say we have an environmental emergency. Ready? Set your turn. We have an environmental emergency. I'm trying to get comfortable using that language. And I hope we all can seriously. The next thing is when you're an EMT, so you get to this emergency and then you act. And so the next thing I would say is using my training, I will take appropriate and necessary action. And that's why I'm calling this training today. So let's try that one together. Using my training. I will take necessary and appropriate action. That's it. Great. Thank you. Please take your seats. I encourage you to investigate using that language as you continue your work. So we can all lean into this because we need to work faster. Leaning on holding onto that EMT frame of mind. I think about this panel is becomes not just information, but also training so we can take appropriate and necessary action in the coming year. And so I want to thank everyone for standing up, for speaking aloud, for leaning in. And now to help us with the training, I would like to introduce two great trainers in the state of Vermont. They are Rebecca Foster, who's director of efficiency Vermont. And Joni Sliger, a fellow at the regulatory assistance project. So they're here to train us on how to redefine efficiency in order to eliminate greenhouses gases through beneficial electrification. So with that, I'm going to take my seat and please welcome Rebecca Foster. Pardon me. Joni is going first. Thank you, Senator Bray. It's a pleasure to join you all today. As he said, my name is Joni Sliger and I am a fellow at the regulatory assistance project. Some of you may know us, but for those who don't, we're an independent nonpartisan NGO headquartered here in Vermont and we're dedicated to accelerating the transition to a clean, reliable and efficient future. I'm particularly pleased to be speaking with you today on efficiency. It's a matter near and dear to the heart of RAP and to many of those who work there. Several of my colleagues were working at, when it was called the public service board in Vermont, when the energy efficiency utility was being developed. And in the interest of full disclosure, it's still a topic that we work on today. One of my colleagues is the chair of the board at BEIC. So working on it in its free time. I'm not here to talk about either of those. I'm here to talk about some of what RAP has been thinking about, about how we can re-approach energy efficiency in a way to help eliminate climate pollution. So RAP has a saying, efficiency is the answer. Now what's the question? That has been true for decades. Efficiency is our least cost resource. When we make cost-effective investments in energy efficiency, it saves money. It saves money for ratepayers, utility, and society as a whole. This graphic is what we lovingly refer to as the layer cake of benefits from energy efficiency. So I want to assure you that in talking about redefining energy efficiency today, it's not to say that it no longer has value or place. That is the opposite of that is true. It's just a question of how do we frame the question. So first today I'm going to talk about how we might redefine it, how we might re-approach it and think differently. Then I'm going to follow that with a beginning to think about what the implications of that are. So generally speaking, across this country and in many others, we've tended to approach energy efficiency in terms of a single fuel. Many of our policies are aimed at increasing energy efficiency in using electricity and using natural gas and using gasoline and using a host of other fuels. Apologies. We call it energy efficiency, but you could call this single fuel efficiency maybe electricity efficiency. Today we're going to talk about being a little broader than that. When we talk about energy efficiency, we mean energy. We mean all fuels because that is how we can see savings. I have an example here on the screen. If you take a gallon of gasoline in an average gas car, that can take you maybe 25 miles, maybe a little more today. It depends. But that gallon of gasoline represents a certain amount of energy, a certain amount of joules. And if you had that same amount of energy in electricity instead, it could actually get you farther in an electric powered vehicle when this was done over 100 miles. In short, for the same amount of input, you can get a greater amount of output. There are efficiency savings that can be realized from recognizing differences in the type of fuel. This doesn't necessarily mean and I don't want to be claiming that, you know, the solution is easy, electrify everything. It's a little more complicated than that. At RAP we like to refer to this as beneficial electrification. And what that means is electrification measures that are efficient but that still comply with some traditional tasks we've done. Do they save ratepayers money? Are they environmentally helpful, beneficial? Is it benefiting the grid through maybe improving grid management? We say it doesn't necessarily need to meet all three of these, but certainly it shouldn't harm any of those objectives. If it can save consumers money and be neutral on the other two, we'd still call that beneficial. But at the heart of it, smart investments in efficiency are what we see as a path forward. Now, to take a step back why we're here today and talking about electrification in the first place is because our electricity system is getting far cleaner, has a lot farther to go, but certainly as a fuel it can provide greenhouse gas reductions relative to some other fuels that we use today. And if we can re-approach efficiency as a tool to help us best use those, it will help us achieve those greenhouse gas reductions. We call this energy optimization. It's the key to making decarbonization affordable because it lets us use low cost and low emission fuel sources when and where they are available to get an optimal result. As I mentioned, that's kind of a rethinking of energy efficiency from before. If we switch from having that gas car, taking that gallon of gasoline, having it as an electricity instead and powering that electricity powered vehicle, that is an increase in electricity consumption. It might be all fuels efficient, but it's a change and because of that there are certain implications and barriers that we need to be aware of in implementing that new approach. Several of these are the current policies that we have in place. Commonly across the country we've tended to frame even word legislation and policies on how efficiency should be done in terms of single fuels. U-electric utility, you need to achieve this many reductions in kilowatt hours consumed. You need to achieve this reduction in a percentage of your sales. Like I said, electricity efficiency. Some other policies we've had and many places continue to have are what we call prohibitions on load building or fuel switching. What this means is U-electric utility or most other utilities in general increasing your sales of your product through the use of rate payer money is not something you're allowed to do. In a world where we can think of all fuels efficiency of energy optimization as something that helps us move towards affordable decarbonization policies like these need to be updated. There are several states that have begun to do this. The state of Massachusetts is one of I believe 27 states in the country that has an energy efficiency resource standard. It is framed, the goals, in terms of reductions in consumption of the fuel but they also have requirements to meet in terms of their overall energy usage. They have targets that are framed in million metric British thermal units. Similarly in California just this past August they updated the test they had on fuel switching a test they originally adopted in 1992 to make it easier for efficiency administrators to implement measures that are efficient but that require the switching from one regulated fuel to another. I want to bring this back to really talk about decarbonization and how this is affordable with another example. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California incidentally not subject to that fuel switching test that was recently updated has adopted greenhouse gas reduction goals that are stronger than the state of California's and it's aiming to reach those goals not through 100% electricity which they have not yet realized how to do that cost effectively but to have a mix of cleaner electricity and targeted investments in other areas to realize greenhouse gas reductions in other sectors. Helping their consumers move to electrified vehicles helping them adopt electric appliances like water heaters and space heaters. And by doing this they have run that analysis seeing the data and are aiming to become net zero by 2040. Like I said, Regulatory Assistance Project has been working on these issues for a while and we have several exciting publications that have come out recently. I'm here today talking about redefining energy efficiency which I'm happy to say was a topic that we were recently able to publish an article on in the Electricity Journal. I bring that up in particular to highlight because right now is the open access period where you can get a copy of it for free. Best way to do that is follow one of the links. Jonch know one of my colleagues recently wrote a blog on energy optimization on our website. It has links not only to the article that I was involved in but to all of the others in the journal which we helped on or provoked. And many others that I highly recommend although not all though, apologies. I was not involved in these others but there's a host of resources. Like I said, I'm a fellow at RAP. I have deeply enjoyed learning everything I can and I think they have a wealth of information that can be helpful. Thank you. One moment. Power point. So in the interim, like I said, RAP works across the country and around the globe. I myself, I've worked in various places but I'm relatively new to Vermont and I look forward to learning more from both others on the panel and from you all about what some of the issues are that you see here in Vermont or in the state that you're visiting from to talk about them. It's not the same slide. Great. All right. Thank you. With that out of the way, there'll be no more technical glitches, I'm sure. So I'm Rebecca Foster, Director of Efficiency Vermont and I'm really happy to be here today to talk about efficiency at a renewables conference. What's that all about? Thank you to Rev for having us here. Thank you to Senator Bray for your leadership on these topics and really welcome the opportunity to talk about how a redefinition of efficiency might get us further toward achieving the climate goals that the renewables and efficiency industries all share together. So I want to start with a little bit of background information so I apologize if folks are fully aware of all of this but just in case, I want to talk for a moment or two about Efficiency Vermont's work. We were created by an Act of the Legislature back in 1999 and have been operating since 2000. Before Efficiency Vermont was created as a statewide entity, the utilities in this state were offering efficiency programs and were quite different across the different territories. The contractors, retailers, the supply chain were somewhat challenged by those different programs and complying with program requirements and knowing what products to promote and knowing what rebates were out there. So Efficiency Vermont was created to bring statewide equity, scale and statewide consistency to efficiency programs. We were the first in the nation energy efficiency utility. Now we're one of three in the state. Burlington Electric Department operates in Burlington and Vermont Gas Systems operates in its territory to bring efficiency services to gas customers. And we're focused on demand side management. So really bringing clean energy technologies out to Vermont's homeowners, businesses, renters, low income customers and we do this through education, technical assistance, incentives and really trying to break down the barriers that keep people from moving forward adopting clean energy and efficient technologies. We're operated by an organization called BEIC, Vermont Energy Investment Corporation and overseen by the Public Utility Commission. So that's who we are. A little bit about the history. Years ago when Efficiency Vermont was founded, there was a pretty different electrical system, energy system than there is today. At that point, the legislature set up very distinct roles between the distribution utilities charged with delivering safe, reliable, affordable power out to customers and the energy efficiency utilities helping customers to reduce their energy usage and reduce cost. And now thinking about what's changed we have those lines blurring a bit and I'll talk about that in a moment. But back when Efficiency Vermont was created really the environment that we were working within was that every megawatt hour of electricity usage was deemed to have an environmental cost and an economic cost and the state policy was to go out and reduce megawatt hours. That was Efficiency Vermont's target, that was our goal. And it worked. We've had a lot of success over the years achieving that goal including $2.4 billion worth of cost savings for Vermonters, 11 million metric tons of greenhouse gas reduction since we began work and then now over 16% of Vermont's electricity needs are met by efficiency. So set a different way, that means without efficiency as part of our system Vermont would need to purchase transmit and distribute 16% more electricity than we do now. So this is a success story and that success has really happened over the past 20 years while many other changes were going on in the energy system. So I'm going to talk a little bit about some of those. First, renewable electricity. So we've heard today that renewables are really a growing part of our electric mix statewide. That's about 63% renewable electricity with some utilities already at 100% renewable and others setting targets and setting goals to get there in the next years. That's fantastic. It's thanks to many of you here in this room and we know as the electricity sector gets more and more renewable the EAN report from last year kind of just paves the way to share with us the work that's still needed in the other sectors of our energy economy, transportation and heating in particular. So that brings about a bit of a shift in how we think about our energy challenges. The second big change is electrification as Joni just said. So we have two pushes toward that here in Vermont. One, the fact that electricity is a more renewable fuel. And then second, we have the advent of more efficient electric technologies for home heating, water heating vehicles. Those two things together really bring about a push toward electrification which the utilities are leading on through their really excellent tier three programs. And then the third is the advent of smart devices. So controllable devices for homes, for businesses, for large customers that really help us understand and then control when energy is used. So these have the promise with widespread deployment for helping customers match their usage to times when renewables are plentiful on the electric grid. And that's going to take a big push but if we can do that we have the potential to really decrease the demand. So these three big trends are kind of happening out in front of customers. They're shaping our state policy. There is another trend in the background that I do want to also call attention to. For me, I think this has the potential to do even more than these trends in terms of helping the state meet its greenhouse gas goals. And that fourth change is that efficiency of Vermont and the distribution utilities have really changed each other. Tier three, that I mentioned earlier, changed everything. So, you know, thinking back to when efficiency of Vermont was founded and we had these very clear distinct roles, efficiency of Vermont was focused on the demand side, were focused on customers and helping them manage and decrease usage. The utilities were focused on the supply side. Tier three changed that and now we both have to work together to help customers change their usage and help them rethink how they interact with their energy. I'll be honest, that was a tough transition. We needed to work through a lot of complicating factors about how we would work together. I think when we really came together and decided let's put customers first, let's come together to figure out how to meet their needs, we had a bit of a breakthrough and now over the last 18 months to two years I think there's been a real advent of creative solutions that have brought more value out to customers, whether that's electrification projects that include a lot of efficiency upgrades, whether that's stacked incentives that mean that customers can take on more comprehensive and transformative projects. So, a lot of work has happened there that I think positions us very well for a different kind of a future. Based on that collaboration with the utilities, you know, we've learned an important lesson I think at Efficiency of Vermont for customer all the time. You know, this is an all hands on deck climate emergency that we're dealing with. We need everybody to be in front of customers talking about what they can do to reduce their energy cost and their greenhouse gas usage. And we've also learned that there are some aspects of the energy efficiency utility model that really do make sense to leverage going forward. I'm going to talk about those three things now. One is statewide infrastructure. Customers, ratepayers have invested in Efficiency of Vermont and invested in the processes that we use to run programs and process rebates and the infrastructure to be able to have staff in almost every county of the state and go out and talk with customers and develop relationships that we can leverage over time. You know, that's the kind of thing that doesn't make sense to rebuild. So that's something that we've learned through these collaborations with utilities together that makes use of that infrastructure to meet today's challenges. We've also learned that making use of the market transformation focus that Efficiency of Vermont has is important and can provide a lot of value for the state. So one example of that is a lot of the behind-the-scenes work that we do with the supply chain. I'll talk more about that in a minute, but things like incentives for manufacturers for bringing new equipment in, training for contractors, training for builders, going out and making sure that quality assurance occurs and that we go back and when we find problematic projects that we go and we use that as a learning opportunity for the supply chain. So that approach and all of the work with the supply chain enables customers to come in and adopt efficient technologies at really high levels. And then lastly, a network of partners. And one part of that that I'll mention here is Efficiency of Vermont's Excellence Network. That's a network of over 300 contractors, designers, architects and builders all around the state that have agreed to promote efficient technology. They receive training for that. They receive marketing support. They receive customer leads, promotional materials. And so that's a group that we should leverage. We shouldn't be rebuilding that as we think about our next energy challenges. We should be helping that established network to succeed and do the next things that we need it to do to meet our climate goals. So that brings us to today. That's a lot of background about the learning that's happened and where we've come from. In terms of where we're going I want to kind of take a moment and just give a little bit of the context about what's going on in the policy arena right now. Out of the last legislative year the legislature in the past and the governor signed Act 62 which directs the public utility commission to open up a study that looks at whether and how the states sponsored programs through organizations like VTRANS or others and how the regulated utility programs in this state are working together to meet our climate goals. And if there are gaps to recommend to the legislature how those gaps might be filled. So as part of that responding to Act 62 and participating in that study which is open now. Efficiency Vermont has done some work to really reflect on the changing energy system our experience collaborating with utilities our experience serving customers and we've come up with basically three tenants that are in our comments that we would like the state to consider going forward. The first is that we should be increasing collaboration to serve customers needs so this is something that shouldn't be a surprise we've heard about collaboration I think all morning from various ways and this is really reflecting that with the new challenges we face we're going to need the best demand side expertise the best supply side expertise to come together to solve customers problems and to find the cheapest quickest solutions to your climate challenges and that we really can't find those solutions if we're both continuing to operate in different silos so we've got that as really the number one focus of our comments. Secondly we're talking about greenhouse gas emissions as the primary metric of success this is what we'd like the regulations that govern Efficiency Vermont to move toward. If we did that we would be aligned with the distribution utilities and their tier three goals to reduce greenhouse gas usage we would both be focused on the most pressing need of our time so this really reflects that decreasing megawatt hours with efficiency and increasing megawatt hours through to three programs in electrification are somewhat at odds and we need to really bring those two disparate goals together into a common metric of greenhouse gas reduction. And then lastly our comments really focus on using the statewide infrastructure that I mentioned earlier and trying to use that as a backbone function for all energy programs in the state so that we don't have to build that again and again and again for different kinds of programs but that we can make use of what repairs have already invested in. So that's kind of the thrust of our comments if the public utility commission and the legislature move in this direction and I recognize that's a big if what that could look like would be a redefinition of efficiency so we would see perhaps efficiency of Vermont's work shift in these various ways you know one on the electric side we could see more programs and efforts focused on increasing customer adoption of control technologies so that then the utilities on the supply side could make use of those control technologies to shift and flatten peaks. We might see more work within efficiency Vermont to promote different technologies in different locations at different times to try and address some of the challenges that the utilities are facing with their grids. One example of that might be thinking about the increased penetration of solar in Addison County for example you know we could look across the state and say okay there's a ton of solar going on in Addison County. What that means is that there's going to be a really big neck of the duck curve as all of that solar kind of ramps down at 9 p.m. on a summer evening how do we help how do we use efficiency to help the utilities with that neck of the duck. Well gee we could promote outdoor lighting in Addison County and that would be the perfect efficiency measure to pair with all that solar on the grid so that the amount of energy usage needed once the sun goes down is as low as possible. There's other things like that that we could do and that's what maybe a transform definition of efficiency could look like. On the thermal side if we're focused on greenhouse gases in the future I see us working a lot more with weatherization agencies and utilities to really double down our investments and our focus on weatherization both for homes and buildings and then on efficient heating as well so really trying to dovetail with the utilities efficient heating efforts through tier 3 trying to electrify a heating but also bringing to the table work on advanced wood heating and other technologies as well. Transportation is an area where efficiency has not worked to date in the future if we're really focused on going after the biggest greenhouse gas reductions the EAN report tells us that the state needs more effort there we need to do that in a way that is very careful and doesn't conflict with or compete with the existing utility tier 3 programs for electric vehicles and so one of the things that we've been talking about with utilities is is there a role that efficiency of Vermont could play there that would help you and what we've heard back from several is that if efficiency of Vermont could work with the supply chain and help dealers get more vehicles on the lots and train the sales people that would be helpful that would be a role that a statewide entity could do well it would be a role that would support the tier 3 programs and not compete with them so those are the kinds of things we're talking about there and then focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the number one priority if that were the case we would focus more on things like anaerobic digesters working to make those projects a reality we would focus on refrigerant management trying to move toward natural refrigerants and reduce leaks around the state so there could be a redefinition here that would really position efficiency of Vermont to work with the utilities in a new and different way the good news is we've got some experience doing that already so I want to just tell a quick story about coal climate heat pumps this just kind of demonstrates what can happen when the different energy programs in the state are oriented toward the same goal so a few years ago efficiency of Vermont began using its statewide infrastructure and supply chain expertise to go after coal climate heat pumps and we've identified that the technology had promised we've identified some challenges with its performance in coal climates we worked with other organizations like the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships and the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance to develop a specification for what cold weather performance would actually need to be in order for us to be able to promote it confidently to Vermont customers then we went out with those other parties those partners and met with all the manufacturers and said here's what we're planning not just Vermont but with all these partners here's what we're thinking about incentive levels and number of products we could move for you but in order to get access to all of these incentives you manufacturers have to meet this specification and lo and behold they played ball they decided to do it then we got engaged with the distributors because we know when someone's boiler fails in January the heat pump has to be available same day and so we got the distributors to stock the products by working with them and making sure that they were comfortable stocking they knew what they needed to do they were not encountering any business risk in bringing these products in and then we trained contractors on what good applications look like and on how to install these things so that we wouldn't have a lot of failures out in the field we set up a rebate processing infrastructure that was capable of quickly and efficiently processing thousands of units a year and then what most people saw is that we promoted these out to customers and provided incentives so all of that background work that backbone work that I just described really set the stage and then as efficiency Vermont promoted them and as the distribution utility started their tier 3 programs we had a really robust market to work with and tier 3 programs came online efficiency Vermont is backed away from our rebates on that technology and the tier 3 programs have stepped in to promote that heavily themselves so we're working together in partnership to really transition the market here and really doing different things having different kinds of roles that ultimately lead to a huge success for the state we're about the second per capita in sales of climate heat pumps in the whole country second only to Maine that's a huge success and we would love to replicate that as we move forward through our energy transition so I'll close now just by saying we know the urgency is real we've heard that many times throughout the morning already we have 11.2 years to dramatically reduce our emissions rate and bend the curve downward I'm optimistic because we have this opportunity now with Act 62 to rethink how we deliver these programs we have a baseline of partnership that demonstrates how we could work effectively together and we've done some initial modeling and if we changed efficiency Vermont's portfolio to focus on greenhouse gas reduction instead of megawatt hour reduction our initial estimates are that we could save three times the greenhouse gases that we do today so we have some opportunities in front of us we're excited about Act 62 and really encourage everyone in this room involved in that I see it as really a number one mechanism to start to shift our work and accomplish the greatest good that we can for the state of Vermont thank you thank you very much I have a couple of questions and then I also want to let people know there are two microphones up near the front of the room so if you'd like to ask a question if you just position yourself there we'll get some audience questions as well I wanted to start with it seems as though it's a common sense effort to shift energy efficiency work towards taking on these other tasks but as you noted very briefly there are some policy and regulatory obstacles in the US generally and in Vermont particularly that are either preventing or slowing a transition to doing taking on this work that many people agree they would like to take on so can you talk briefly about what those obstacles are sure I want to start by saying I think we talk about redefining and shifting of work and I think that's important as a philosophical thing but it's also important to realize that many of these policies even if there are barriers to this new work and many of the efforts we have still have a lot of benefits to provide even if it's not greenhouse gas reductions so while decarbonization is an imperative that we need to act on and we need to increase our effort on there are still benefits to get from traditional energy efficiency and I think threading that needle of expanding our work in an effective way while not losing out on the benefits from traditional efforts is one of the biggest challenges I see I mentioned prohibitions on load building prohibitions on fuel switching are barriers but we adopted those policies for good reasons that there was a fear that it would be a misuse of rate payer money to allow utilities to go increase sales of a product there may be reasons we want them to do that as we talked today they can provide a lot of benefits from doing that but those activities still need to be providing benefits to the people who pay for them and in general as I mentioned those are two policy barriers I know of generally I'm afraid I can't comment on the specifics here in Vermont great I think in terms of policy changes that would be needed to focus more on greenhouse gas production I think there are a few one as I mentioned we have policy mechanisms right now that put the utility tier 3 programs and efficiency remounts programs a bit at cross purposes and yet both of us are going out to customers talking about changes they should make and whether those changes are increased efficiency or electrify certain end uses that has the potential to be very confusing so I think breaking down the silos and then aligning us working toward the same metric would be a big step forward in terms of the other piece that I think is important I didn't focus on a lot in my comments I think there needs to be a specific focus on low and moderate income of Vermonters and other underserved hard to reach groups like small businesses and seniors as part of this transition that's something that is carved out as part of the efficiency remount portfolio right now we have a certain focus on low income and making sure that funding goes to that group and that they are part of the programs and can access those resources and I think that that should be increased in the future and that we really should make sure that those individuals who really need the most support the transition to cleaner energy technologies that they get what they need and it's not going to be the same one size fits all program that works for someone who makes decent wage in Jitton County as someone who's really struggling to make ends meet in the southern part of the state for example so I think that we need a specific focus on that challenge specific attention to how much of the resource goes to that group and I also think that we need to break down some of the silos between our different energy programs and align the folks who are working out in the field with customers so that we're delivering the best, most cohesive and understandable message about what folks should do to change so a question came in on the REV app and it relates to EVT so efficiency remount has been justifiably recognized and celebrated for its nation leading status all its innovation decades of work so anytime we talk about changing it it makes some people nervous the status goes a certain power even though there's a lot of evolving and surfacing challenges so how do you address the concern of people who say I like that you're talking about taking on green house gas missions targeting them but we don't want to lose what we've had and enjoyed and valued in energy electrical efficiency great question so to me part of the there are a few ingredients that have contributed to the success efficiency remount has enjoyed over the years one of those is a strong commitment as June mentioned earlier to data driven decisions and so if we were to shift our focus from one metric to another I don't see that going anywhere I think we often actually get critiqued that it takes us a while to come to a decision about what's the right solution for a customer what's the right program design but that's really actually a valuable process that we go through in terms of deciding you know what's a proposal that will maximize benefits out to the state and reach the right customer group with the right offer at the right time in the right way so that I think has been one of the facets of the successful programs that we've been able to roll out over the years I don't see that changing at all the other thing I don't see changing is a focus on energy cost reduction so this gets a little bit to the low and moderate income customer frame but you know we have to focus on green house gas reduction to kind of climate imperative and we know that in a state like Vermont that's economically challenged we know that there's not a lot of extra money just sitting around waiting to be used on climate resources so what I would like to see us do which is what we have done for years is really find those opportunities that can decrease the cost of energy to homeowners to renters to businesses and then you know kind of focusing on the intersection between energy cost reduction and electricity use reduction let's focus on the intersection between energy cost reduction and greenhouse gas reduction there's a lot of overlap in those two Venn diagrams and so I think that that's another you know thread that would continue in the future that would make the programs that we offer and the types of incentives and the types of support and marketing and education it would make it you know feel very similar to today in the background we would be oriented to just deliver a different set of benefits to the state I'll just echo that I think it's um sometimes we forget how much the work of energy efficiency is a matter of prioritizing actions there's a host of energy efficiency of things we can do to invest in energy efficiency and an enormous amount of work that is done to analyze those decisions and pick out the ones that will provide the highest net benefit and I think that analysis today is constrained by not having an um ability to give full recognition to what benefits might be available in greenhouse gas reductions but by adding that as an analysis it's a matter of allowing those priorities to be set in a way that best reflect what we as a society are wanting great um I have a quick question to the audience is anyone who's with an auto dealer could you put your hand up right so I don't see any hands could be I haven't looked at the all the I don't know every program going on at the moment could be there's one just for auto dealers next door and so it's not a representative sample all right there we go so TCI but the question and back to the panel is um transportation based green house gas emissions are about 50% of our portfolio um and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about I think when people think of energy efficiency utilities it's most often thermal loads that we talk about or equipment installed in a location so can you talk about the uh the wild world of transportation and how you're becoming a regular part of that sure so I'll start by saying we're not a part of it right now um but that you know as we've had discussions with the utilities about their tier three programs um we've also been following you know their work not just on heat bumps but also on electric vehicles and um you know looking at the customer incentives and how those are working and so we're becoming more um aware of and um conversion in some of the transportation issues um and you know some of those that are covered by the electric vehicle programs that the utilities currently offer and some that are not so one of the things that I've talked a bit with um some transportation experts about is just the segment of transportation demand management that you know is not involved in the electric vehicle transition so you know there's a host of different ways to reduce greenhouse gases from transportation including uh switching to electric vehicles yes um but also decreasing vehicle miles traveled increasing ride share transit um bike ped you know work um downtown redevelopment so that people don't have to drive from their homes to their places of work um broadband again to echo june so that people can telecommute uh without driving long distances um so there's a lot of work to be done in the transportation sector and I think um certainly the transition to electric vehicles is a big part of that particularly in a rural state like ours um but one of the things that's exciting to me about getting an entity like Efficiency Vermont um involved in the transportation work would be that you know maybe we could look more broadly than just the electric vehicle option um you know support the electric vehicle market as I talked about um and work with utilities to help facilitate their really effective programs taking hold with customers um but possibly focus on other areas of transportation that are not as uh directly linked to the electric sector absolutely it's exciting to hear about the collaboration work that Efficiency Vermont's already engaged in um because I think that is the heart of the challenge that we face in thinking about uh electrifying the transportation sector it's not an area that most utilities or even most utility regulators have a lot of exposure with and it's a drastically different area consumers usually use electricity at their house or their business and in quite predictable ways um but how consumers use transportation how they get from A to B what their constraints are on the time in which they can do that the speed with which they can do that the urgency of needing to get there um are all different um aspects of consumer use that we need to be aware of um we're seeing some work across the country trying to build on that collaboration and foster that um I'm happy to be working one of my colleagues is working on a paper he calls first steps for states on launching into this and I think one of the most important is recognizing that we have departments with a huge amount of exposure with this transportation department and they also have very little background or understanding of the electricity system the notion that there are spots on across the state that could be harder to connect to that could be harder to provide electricity to that there are might be congestion on the grid and difficulties in like getting electricity maybe to that current depot where buses are parked overnight um there's a lot of learning to be done there but it starts with collaboration um when we talk about this changing landscape when we're talking about regulated utilities uh the process is somewhat straightforward in that if we change the statutes that drive the PUC process then it changes the outcomes and how the utilities operate but then there's a whole domain of unregulated fuels and so can you of course and they need to be part of this solution I don't think of it as sort of a zero sum game in any way how do we um make that transition and include the unregulated fuels in a way that's um works out for all the stakeholders completely agree I think like I said all fuels efficiency is how we need to be approaching our efforts and the only way we can get there that I can see is by having all fuels financing um I think there are a host of different paths that we could take towards that but it is definitely a challenge that we face um but it's a very important one both for economics and for basic fairness um I wish I had better news it's I think a challenge that we don't yet have that success story of oh that's how you do it it's something that we're all struggling with um here in this room and across the country unless you're not in which case please go to one of the Q&A microphones thank you yeah I think uh from my perspective you know yes we've efficiency reman has done a little bit of research recently to try and uncover how other states are addressing unregulated fuels and what funding sources they're using and how they're delivering programs um and I think what we've learned is as Joanie said there's there is no silver bullet um many uh places as Vermont um are using um either regional cap and trade mechanisms or other funding sources outside of electric funding or taxes on the fuels themselves um to deliver programs and the magnitude of that funding varies based on the magnitude of those um the sources so in California at the western climate initiative in new england the regional greenhouse gas initiative or the Ford capacity market um those are really uh two strong sources here in the state and those are being used in places like Maine um which has a very large percentage of its heating through fuel oil um so I think there's a desire to kind of come together and find an answer to this question um Vermont may have an opportunity to start to um explore and innovate in that in that arena um I was also y'all just know very interested to hear recently um an announcement by the northeast fuel dealers association that they're moving toward 100% renewable fuel oil by 2050 so um I think there's um some movement there as well I think the fuel dealers are hearing uh the strong desire uh from their customers to be more renewable to reduce greenhouse gas emissions um I want to find out more about that announcement so I'll be talking to Matt Kota about that very soon um really but I think there's there's a need for some innovative solutions for that area and I think we have a start here in Vermont based on what we've done to date um but there's more to be done for sure and actually I think you mentioned briefly one aspect earlier the competing panel we have on the transportation climate initiative um I think reflect some of that expansion um there's conversations on trying to expand what reggie covers to include emissions sources that rise from transportation um I have not been very involved with that but it's exciting to see that move forward and to see that that might we can hope provide some amount of funds that could be reinvested in our communities to provide benefits um reflecting uh if not all fuels at least a more fuels efficiency prioritize great well thank you um so uh we are at time um but before we uh adjourn I wanted to see if people still have our phrase in mind from when we started in the beginning I'm gonna say that I'm gonna go through the phrase again I hope that the two sentences hopefully uh I'm joined by more than three people in the room so we'll give it a go here see if you remember it so one is uh we have an environmental emergency and number two is using my training I will take appropriate and necessary action so today we have a little more training on opportunities in front of us around beneficial electrification um I hope that um you'll keep this in mind as you make your whatever your area of effort is in the world of uh energy work and climate um keep this in mind and I know that are all the partners in the room um are interested in finding positive collaborations to help move forward at a uh faster pace more broadly more deeply than what we've been able to do in the last uh decade so thanks again and please thank our panel Rebecca Foster and Joni Sliger