 That's what I'm talking about. Thank you. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Well, we're going to run a gun. So I'm going to try and run a two minute movie or so and I'm going to talk about feedback and how to set my system. So at seven o'clock, we would normally start, but because there's some problems getting into building, we're going to give everybody a few more minutes if that's okay. So, refresh your drinks, put your feet up. Linda, you're first. And we'll start in about four minutes. Okay, sounds good. Okay. So we have a flu shot at the law firm every year. And, you know, he signed up and they come. And they have, they said, we have COVID shots too. And Kate, my wife was having a hard time. Romeo. Finding it too for us and the kids. So I was like, I might as well, can I say anywhere? Is it like, I don't know where to like, tell you, okay. I got it. Good. How are you? Excellent. How was your trip? Outstanding. I think they can hear this. Such an amazing. Good deal. It's. I just wanted to make sure you're here. I think. I don't know where to go. Did you go? Okay. What should I do with my volume? Welcome everybody. First, we're doing things a little bit different in ward eight and some of the other words. We're really encouraging people in ward eight. To speak up. Raise issues that are concerned to you at the beginning of the meeting. But we're really not, we're asking that people. Be brief. We will end by a 15. I don't mean to be rude, but I will either. Ask you to speed up or slow down so that we can be respectful to those of us who have to come. So try to hit your high points. Don't repeat stuff. Get to the points. We see the ward NPA. I do. Romeo can share if you have a different viewpoint about a place where we can connect with people. Hear the ideas. And then follow up with additional meetings outside of here. So that there's connections that are built within the city. And particularly within your day. You're not going to be. We're really not going to problem solve. But for the most part, we don't want to dig into anything in detail. Get names, put your information out there. So people can contact you. The issues are too important to solve in one hour. So. It's kind of how we're doing it. I'm glad everybody's coming. I want to hear as many voices as people can say. Romeo, you want to jump in here quickly. My name is Romeo. I am member of the streets. I still put it out. NPS are pretty important. Civic engagement is incredibly important as well. We can't emphasize more than. It's already been set. I think. But it's not about me, so we'll just go to the meeting itself. All right, let's quickly introduce ourselves. I'm bill church. I live on Bradley street. Romeo. Romeo university heights. So just name and where you live. Okay. It's Ariana. UVM's campus on campus. Thanks. Darren Springer. Ward seven. Eats. Meno. South William Street. Newly. Ward. Excellent. The new blood is what we need. I saw. Charlie. You want to just say hi. Charlie G. Ward two. Ashley Adams. Ward six. I live in Ward one and I'm on the city council. So I'd like to open it up to anybody who would like to comment on what life is like in Ward eight issues that are important to you. We will be discussing the old YMCA building as an open discussion. Bruce Baker couldn't be here, but it's a time and opportunity for people to voice their concerns, raise some issues. And then there will be a 30 minute discussion on the power plants. And then we'll hopefully have Tim and Hannah and Gary Golden, who I see is on for the school board. Just to kind of update everybody about what's going on in those activities. So. Oh, you have to leave early too, right? All right. So we'll make an exception here to have Hannah start. If you want to. Okay. All right. It's open. It's open for any. Buddy who wants to raise your hand and have a few words. Intro for folks online. Scott, are you letting people in? Who want to speak? You're on zoom. Raise your hand. Don't make me call on you. Okay. Let's move forward then. So, Hannah, do you have an update on. Anything going on with YMCA? Yeah, so before getting into that, the general state update in a little while. We've met as a group, a lot of work that we've been doing on the council. And nothing super major. I would say. In committee work, I'm on the HR committee. And right now we're going through the personnel. So, I'm not sure if you have any comments or comments or comments. So, I'm not sure if anyone has any comments on that. I think this is just a 30 minutes call and coming in. We'll send it to me at remote work. And social media and finalizing that. So. All the meeting next Wednesday. The committee. And we'll talk about the finalized personnel. All the three that all the other shared with all of you. In the committee. So we met last week and got updates on what the homelessness issue looks like throughout Chinatown specifically in the work of the city has been doing. Nothing major to report. The work is kind of continuing from the CEDO front and so we didn't start any new business there. And then I'm also on the transportation energy utilities committee. And we just finished working through the, we're like going to dive into the district energy vote, which folks are here tonight to talk about. So all of them own that. So you said that the homeless issue is now going to be a county issue. I think it's always been a county issue. And I think it's a lot of the data is collected because it's very difficult to collect data just based on. So it's just data collection or they actually working together. Is it from a county standpoint? From a, from my understanding, there is a group that is meeting together to try to problem solve. Anything from the state. I mean the state, I have nothing to report there. I think that they are preparing for the upcoming session to see what the city is doing. And I think that's something that we're going to have to do. I don't know if we have any further comments and all the work that around what it's doing, but. I haven't heard. Our state representatives tapping into the discussion on homelessness. Don't know. Clearly. We have some in the public safety committee. We have a draft resolution that hopefully will come before the city council. So it's a draft resolution that's being. Which doesn't address homelessness specifically, but does address public safety. And in it we call. A number of things. Releasing a significant amount of this opioid settlement money that appears to be hung up. In Montpelier. Providing more judicial resources. Providing more resources that states turnies off. Office. So, you know, advocacy on behalf of the city to Montpelier. And that's a significant part of what we've been talking about. And you'll see this resolution as a number of clauses in which we. You know, demand things. And at least put, put pressure on, on Montpelier. I, in Hannah, I, I no agrees with me very much believe that the homelessness issue. As well as these other public safety issues. And I think that's a significant part of what we've been talking about. You know, that's a significant part of what we've been talking about. And you'll see this resolution as a number of clauses in which we've been talking about. I think that's a significant part of what we've been talking about. I, I think that's a significant part of what we've been talking about. And I would very much believe that the homelessness issue. As well as these other public safety issues that we're seeing. Really should not be burdened by. Burlington alone, that these are at least county wide issues. If not state-wide issues. And need to be addressed. By more than just taxpayers of Burlington. We have an obligation to do our part, but, but. I have a question regarding the chronic theft that's going on, and I think Councilor Shannon brought up during the last Council meeting. Is that that is also being discussed the last meeting that the public safety yeah so Romeo the public safety committee, which is myself, Councilor Paul and Councilor Grant have been meeting including last week, I think it was four and a half hours working on this resolution. I think it's close to being done and close to being presented to the City Council I'm hopeful that the City Council will vote to approve it and I'm hopeful that it's bipartisan. And it addresses retail theft. It is, you know, part of, you know, it is, it is, I don't want to get into too much because we have a publicized it completely it's not quite finished. But we envision going forward, a number of informational sessions, we're asking for things from Montpelier, we're asking people to come to the table and present us information. And we're not waiting for that either so for example yesterday I met with Councilor Shannon, Councilor Barlow, Councilor Paul, State City George, Chief Police, both of whom graciously give up an hour and they're busy afternoon to talk about retail thefts and the general public safety issues. It was, it was an informal meeting, but we're pressing so I think collectively many of us on the City Council, well, I'll just speak for myself. I am not clear and I think many of us are very clear that what's happening right now is not working. I am not clear exactly where the breakdown is right now in our criminal justice system and I suspect that the answer is that there are many places that are not connecting with the criminal justice system that has many most complicated problems. There's not just one answer, but getting better clarity, you know, what is the relationship between what's going on and the number of the songs that are the police citing cases that are not going to the state's attorney's office is not prosecuting or if they are prosecuting are they held up through lack of judicial resources? What is the resolution of those prosecutions? How many of them are going to, you know, the restorative justice program? How many people are successfully completing the restorative justice program? How many people are washing out and ending up back in the regular order of business? You know, there's a lot of, in my opinion, anyway, there's sort of a lot of fluff in the air, not fluff, but there's a lot of there's a lot of things that are being said about what's going on. But I don't personally feel like I have a full understanding of really what the what the breakdown is. And I think the hard work that we do to get some clarity. So I'm sure that issue will come to a ward aid steering committee. We it's an important issue in ward eight. What do you suggest the people in ward eight do to support or get involved in this particular issue? I mean, I think right now, the citywide, at least, I think, just having everyone's focus on reaching out to their counselors and breath in their concerns and what they're seeing every day is really important. I know that it's a little bit more challenging because in board aid, we I think we're pretty much on the same page of we understand the issues downtown and we're trying to do whatever we can to figure out the public safety issue, but I'm going to do the law for all of you folks. And so we need the rest of the council with us. And so just advocating for other parts of the city to get involved with the pressure on their own for their own play is very important. And then also just our normal monthly city council meetings are a great platform to go and speak on public forum, but also don't forget committee work and like the public safety committee is a great place to go and not just go to the ward and learn more books. But I think a lot of the times being in committee, you're able to have more in-depth discussion and more people can have an account meeting, so making sure that you are paying attention to what's going on there is my new chart. I agree completely. I mean, the more voices that we hear from people's experience downtown as residents, as business owners, as parents, as elders, as young people, I think the more voices we get in the room on that, I think the more helpful it is. I personally believe and I think Hannah agrees with me that we are at a really critical inflection point. I don't profess to have the answers. It's a complicated problem. But I think the urgency has to be maintained. Right. I am a member of stolen bike group on Facebook, as well as car stolen thing, and this thing gets updated practically every day that somebody's car was stolen from their parking lot or bike was stolen from the porch. It happened to as well, you know, and so I think it might be a good idea for, you know, community, what do you call it, word aid members to kind of get, you know, on that Facebook pages and whatnot and just tell folks, hey, reach out to your counselor, speak up if your car was stolen, speak up to a counselor or, you know, report to the police department, whatever. But I tend to agree that sentiment of reach out to counselors or folks to, you know, speak up more. So I have a question on whether this is an issue of policy only or assumed standards within the community. I'll give you an example. When I walk home, I often go by people who are comatose on the sidewalk. That's not okay. But when I call the police or the fire department responds, they know who it is. It's repeat offenders. But what is my responsibility when I see open drug use and what is the expectation of how I can help or do I just ignore it? Yes. And what is the policy that's written as standards? Yeah, I think, I mean, that's two different things. So if you, and I get a lot of questions about this as well as a counselor, but then also like through my work, if you're walking past someone that clearly it is experiencing any medical emergency, which you can assume is drug related, but if you have an emergency, just flat out, call 911. That's the number one thing. If you see someone that is going through a challenge or could use someone to check in with them, calling Center Street outreach is also another way to do that. And I can, I can send around over email or post something porch forum, all of these numbers, but that's another way to contact someone. But the number one thing is if you see someone that you think is overdosing or going through medical emergency, call 911. That is the exact thing that we should be doing. Is it a policy issue? I mean, I feel like that's what we're trying to figure out right now is how we can help folks. But then also, I think it's no secret that our downtown and city in general, for we're really not helping folks in the way that they need. And that's why it looks as though things are in shambles in a way, at least from what I can experience. And so that's what we're trying to do. Part of our work to work with that right now. And then I don't want to agree on having any answers that we did. We would be probably solving problems. So are there any other questions for Hannah and Tim? If not gear, you want to jump in and tell us about the new high school. This is here. Right. Am I on now? So. If you've been following. The news or my. From porch forum postings. We have gone through a bit of a rough spot. With the funding. We have. We were delayed getting started with the construct, the deconstruction of the high school. The construction of the high school. Because of the lawsuits. And then we've also found. Some unexpected contamination. Through some of the building material. That was used in the, the foundation of the. Of the least wings. A and B. We are now having to readjust our. Financing our funding because of those. We've had to. The delays. We've had to push. Construction into the winter that we weren't expecting. And they're just higher cost of that labor is not as available. Materials are more expensive. We're also limited in a number of bids we've gotten. For the, the work. And so it's not. Perhaps as competitive as we thought. But it's not as competitive as we thought it would be. To stay the course. We're still within the funding that. We asked the voters for. And we are cognizant. Of the need to keep the costs down. We're just at a point where. Getting the cost down could degrade. The building itself. As far as the longevity of a new building. We'd love this thing to last. And so we really are committed to. Building the best building we can within the constraints. Of the funding and the conditions of construction at the moment. Really no plans to increase the budget or ask for more funding. Yeah. There's not even a yet we're not, we're going to stay the course. We, we have. Think Tom's last letter. And so we have to just, we have to make sure. That we're, there are two different funds that totaled about $15 million that we can still draw on. And we still haven't touched the money from the state. Believe that's accurate. So we are, we're staying the course. We had a contingency fund built in. We've tapped some of that. If nobody objects, I'd like to hear from Sam. Yeah, I would say it was definitely disappointing to hear that I wouldn't be going to the high school if somewhat not unexpected, but going back, not to go back to the public safety thing, but I think it's hard to go to school downtown, not only because of the building, but because of what is around the building and what I see when I walk to school. And, you know, it's hard seeing that stuff and I know it's hard for other kids and I've heard about it from other kids, right, seeing some of the drug use and bites and the bus station. It's just, it's tough. So that is, that is, I would like to top that off. And I hope I agree with you 100% really. I, I basically, I see Romeo every day. You know, the bus. Thank you. It makes me very happy, by the way. Thank you, sir. I, I, I hardly agree with everything that you said, really. And it's hard breaking to see that happening and see, you know, kids being exposed to what's happening in downtown. And yeah, I wish something could be done to alleviate the stress that you basically face every day coming to downtown with all the stuff that is going on. But I hope the city will find some, some, some, some form of resolution to expedite things, whether it's funding or whatever is going on. But I just want to top that off and say, it's just regretful what's happening really. This is affecting the students over there, go to the school and the kids that come over to Church Street area as well. And us staff members who are the transit center every day who are exposed to needles and people fighting. I mean, I just left there right now and the police is already there responding to a concern already. And people are basically just shooting their neck, whatever anyway they find. And so it's just hard breaking to see everything that's going on really there. And it's just, I don't know what, I mean, is it policy breakdown? Is it just lack of accountability? I mean, sometimes I kind of like wonder what else can be done to alleviate folks from doing what they're doing in downtown because they're affecting practically everybody from high school students to adults to families to just about everybody. And I do speak to some of these folks who I do get some from time to time chance to kind of just kind of get a picture why they're doing what they do. But it's difficult to get a good picture of what they're doing sometimes because they think that you're either a police officer or some kind of investigator trying to find out what they're doing and whatnot. But at the end of the day, I think the solution is out there. And it's just a matter of us collectively figuring out as a community. I just want to top that off. So, so as a community in Ward 8, we have the University of Vermont is a major factor in Ward 8. Has there been any consideration the university attempt to support the enrichment of our students in Burlington? I'm not I know you don't make that choice, but I often look to see that, you know, we're asked to accommodate the university and their needs. And nobody's saying that they're not an economic engine here, but they could they do more? I mean, could they meet specific needs, especially around education? But why don't discussions don't happen? Well, I mean, I will say that there are discussions happening. You know, our specific issue was trash. Okay, there are other issues before we get into the energy plan. If you have update on the one, yeah, I was going to say before I have to head out. I've been working with Bruce Baker and just reading email that he sent to me because he's not able to do it tonight. The application process has been moving forward. They received the approval from the divine advisory board and the office review board. They're in the process of obtaining final permits and creating construction plans. He still does not own the property. He's offered him on his assistance that aren't owners. He's been looking at management at the site. His hope is to close the property as soon as possible. Only once he owns the property, he'll be able to clean down a building, put it into place, a more sustainable site model. And that comment to Medicare was updated on what's going on there. She talks about the update that he has since he lost my husband. I just want to, if I don't, if you don't mind, Bill, just quickly interject. And, you know, the two, Hannah's gone a little bit because she won't do it herself. You know, Hannah spent just as in recent days spent incredible amount of time resources working with Bruce to make sure he knew what city resources were available to him in response to homelessness encampment. And it just took an incredible amount of time and energy. And I just, I really appreciated someone else on the city council. And I just want to really call out Hannah's work on that. Absolutely. And it's the encampment issue. And then also the, you know, I hate the term quality of life issue around parking students. And whether those have been presented to groups too, when you've met with them, is that possible enough? Yeah, absolutely. It's obviously a very challenging issue. And it's one of those situations where you run into the fact that it's a private property. And so there's not a ton that you can do to believe the private property of the public official. Nor should there really be. I don't really want the visuals to be a private property. But then beyond that, you know, that South Union is a street where a lot of folks are traveling through with their families to go to admins. And so it just is not safe for younger folks. Nor should they have to travel through needles and just trash everywhere. But also understanding that we're not really providing the individuals that are in need a compassionate response to what they're going through. And so a lot of the work that I have been trying to facilitate is making sure that the property manager knows their rights and are able to work with me to trespass individuals when they need to, but then also making sure that the individuals in need are connected to street outreach. And are at least being presented with the resources that are available to them right now. And then making sure that the neighbors that are living around the area as well are being heard. And so I think as of right now, I don't want to call it an issue, but the property seems more secure. And so I'm hopeful that we can fit that way. But obviously, there's the same individuals walking sidewalks and such. That's when I can step in and help make sure that we are here inside of the non-acceptability issue. But anybody who would like to comment and just raise your hand on the zoom and I will try to I can see very clearly who wants to speak up. So in light that nobody has raised their hand, I'd like to move to the issue, which is the second issue, which is the power plant and issues around that. Pike, would you like to start? You've got 15 minutes here. All the microphones are live. On Pike Porter, this is my wife, Ashley Adam. And we here are here to discuss why we don't believe that the district energy proposal should go through. It's really all climate related. A lot of the information that we're basing our decisions on, you can find at the two symposium that hasn't been on June 13, this through our code will take you there. I encourage everyone to watch it. We have two eminence bi-scientists present. Their presentation starts at minute 34. And I'd like to talk a little bit more about Bill Mooma, one of the presenters. He's been the lead author of five major IPCC reports. He's worked with the Senate to stop seas and spray cans to help protect the ongoing layer. He is a world renowned client scientist, and we were privileged to have him. And I hopefully will show four minutes of his presentation. So we're here to talk about a district energy system, which needs us to talk a bit about McNeil, although there's separate issues. District energy system is going to pump steam two miles up the hospital for heat. It's going to cost about $42 million. It's going to increase wood burn at McNeil, which in turn will increase CO2 pollution coming from McNeil. And at $42 million, it's going to prolong the life and our dependence on McNeil. Now, McNeil is a wood-powered electricity plant, the largest power generator in Vermont, and it emits over 400,000 tons of CO2 annually, making it the largest stationary source of greenhouse gases in Vermont. I'm here. We're here tonight because we believe in science, and we believe in the scientists. We believe in the scientists who spray us with climate. We need to quickly and rapidly reduce our greenhouse gases in order to avoid the presence of our planet another 1.5 degrees Celsius. We have about seven years to cut our emissions in that, and about 27 years to bring that zero. 2023 may very well be the coolest and driest year in the rest of our lives. And now by the video. All right, my apologies. I hear that no one can hear the video. Unfortunately, hopefully I'm no longer, all right, be back. Anyway, Bill Moomaw knows his way around the IPCC. He helped write those guidelines, and he came here to tell us that burning wood is worse than burning fossil fuels. And that's what it comes down to. A little bit about McNeil. 25% efficient. The district energy system will make it about 29% efficient. The Department of Energy advises that modern district energy systems are 65 to 80% efficient. That comes from the Burlington Electric website. Burning wood makes more CO2 per unit energy than fossil fuels, including what we call natural gas or fossil gas. I'm going to skip this, because I think I'm running out of time. I missed the time there. But the proposed district energy system increases our greenhouse gases in a timeframe that's too far out. We are trying to hit some goals at 2030 and 2050. And that's now is the moment we need to reduce our gases. And the district energy is going to increase it at this very moment. Here's a graphic that shows how much more emissions wood creates over here at over 3,000 compared with natural gas over here in blue. So it's three times the amount. So these numbers are taken from Burlington Electric studies and rock gas studies. These numbers might be running the district energy system if it sees the light of day. They estimate that the system will displace about 13,000 pounds of CO2. First environment claims that the district energy system will increase pollution through fuel usage by 8%. EPA indicates that McNeil pollutes over 400,000 pounds of CO2 annually. So the district energy system is going to create about 32,000 tons if the space is 13,000 tons. So we see a net increase of 19,000 more tons of CO2. That's the problem with the system. Now, Bill Lomond is not the only scientist who believes this. This is a letter signed by over 500 eminent climate scientists to world leaders, fives, and other world leaders that say we can't replace our fossil fuels with burning wood. There are 28 pages of this. I'm not going to scroll through them all, but I would like you to know it's out there. The letter says burning wood is not carbon neutral and it's not climate neutral. It creates a carbon debt that takes decades or centuries to repay. Four or three years takes time and the world does not have time at this point to solve the climate crisis. The sustainability and renewal ability of the wood that you use does not change the fact that it worsens the climate crisis. Emissions from CO2 begin an irreversible warming process that is subsequent removal and the atmosphere cannot stop. You cannot unfry an egg. Scientific studies indicate that the life cycle of burning trees is decades to centuries. And again, we have deadlines of 2030, 2050 that Burlington Electric refuses to recognize. Just one headline of many articles, scientific papers I've read, maximum warming occurs about a decade after carbon dioxide emission. So you're going to hear about a lot of studies that Burlington Electric has done. I want to make clear that these four studies have four things in common. They all assume that burning wood is carbon neutral. None of them count the 400 plus thousand tons of CO2 emitted at the start crime petrofile. They don't consider the time frame in which we must reduce our emissions and they ignore or disagree established climate sites. This graphic represents the amount of CO2 that they do count this little black line down here and the brown is all the CO2 that they exclude from their company. So why district energy now? Well, the Affordable Heat Act recently passed by the state requires Ramon Gas and other two dealers to come up to acquire clean heat credits. And district energy will provide Ramon Gas to clean heat credits. Neil Londonville, the president of Ramon Gas, was a principal architect of the Affordable Heat Act. Thank you for presenting. Would you like five minutes of people to ask questions? If you end here, we can get five minutes of questions in. If anybody has any questions, I can't see the hands. No, because we have another speaker. Linda, did you raise your hand? Yes, I did. I was wondering whether or not they knew, whether the speakers knew, whether or not any any alternatives to this expansion were considered. And is there any federal money to help for cleaner energy? I think I don't know and I don't believe that other alternatives have really been considered, mainly because this has been placed into the Affordable Heat Act as a process that will create heat credits. But if you just think about the process, it would make a lot more sense to get putting a high-efficiency wood-fired boiler at the university, at the hospital, rather than pumping steam two miles up the hill. A new modern boiler could create efficiencies of 80% or more rather than 29%. But no, I don't think that's been considered. I do know that others are looking at geothermal options and somehow using that to at least help get the heat, the temperature of the water up to something usable. Is there any technology in development that would capture the CO2? Trees are our best technology for capturing CO2. They have the cheapest, most efficient, most effective way of doing it. And when you cut them down, you're removing that ability to do so. People are spending millions and billions of dollars to try and reproduce what trees can do a lot more, almost incredible efficiencies. What about algae mass? That also works. So is there any development? Could this become a research activity in a small place like Burlington where we look into some technologies that address the carbon capture? So other vegetation systems, algae, hand corn, switched grass, these also capture carbon. Trees are unique in that they live 450 years if you let them. So algae dives quickly, switch back dives quickly. So that life cycle that we're talking about happens more quickly. We can lock up and store carbon for centuries with trees. It would be better for the climate to continue burning gas at the hostel than to burn wood. We would just increase our carbon emissions that much more when we switch. Any other questions? Trees here. Yes. Good point. Can you just say how people should get in touch with you? What would be the best way? So we do have a website and it's stopbtvbiomass.org and you'll find all sorts of good information on that website. You can also contact me through that website and I can share research articles and all sorts of really helpful information. And this brief, I can also send you, this is a brief that is just a very concise distillation of the two presentation by the two climate scientists back in June. So this is a great document if you want three page read of the issue. Very helpful. We also have a petition that you can access on our website and I have it currently tonight. If you, the petition has a lot of detail about the issue and if you would like to make sure that it doesn't happen, please sign this petition. Thank you for coming. Daryl, would you like to, 15 minutes? Great. Let me just get that going. Hi, I'm Darren Springer, General Manager of Burlington Electric. I think since we did introductions, my colleague, Jen Green has joined. We have another colleague, Betsy Lesnkowski, online here who's our Chief Forester at the Meal Station. I'm going to go ahead and share some slides. Give me just a moment to pull those up. See, it looks like that's working. Just get the slideshow going. And there we go. So for folks who may not be familiar, Burlington Electric were the municipal electric utility. We're part of city government. Over 100 years old, we do operate a number of different power facilities, including the Meal Generating Station, which is the largest power producing plant in the state of Vermont since Vermont Yankee closed in 2014. We also have a website, BurlingtonElectric.com. If you go to BurlingtonElectric.com slash McNeil, we have resources regarding question and answer sheets. We have a webinar that was recently recorded with communities in Lund, Sweden, Halifax, Canada, and St. Paul, Minnesota that are also using district energy with biomass, talking about how they're working their different systems. We have a variety of third-party reports on there. We are proud to be 100% renewable since 2014, first city in the nation to reach that accomplishment. Since we reached that accomplishment, we've been focused on the idea of net zero energy 2030, which means becoming 100% renewable zero fossil fuel for thermal and for ground transportation. We track that progress every year, and this is data from our roadmap that shows that particularly in the commercial sector, we're seeing a bit of a rebound in natural gas use. We're going a bit in the wrong direction there, as you can see. Overall, when you count the transportation and thermal sectors, you can see we had a good dip into the pandemic, and then we've had kind of a flat slash modest rebound since that point. We really want this to be trending downward. The reason we're here talking about district energy is district energy is the single biggest step that would bend that curve down and get us off of fossil fuel in an important sector in the community, which is the commercial sector, which is tougher to decarbonize. The hospital uses steam. You cannot make steam at the pressure and temperature needed with geothermal. I wish we could because we're big supporters of geothermal, ground source heat pumps. We use those. We supported those at Hula. We're supporting them at the new high school. You can't use that type of technology to decarbonize at the hospital. District energy is one of the few technologies that actually would meet the energy needs, the reliability needs, at an institution like the hospital while getting us off of fossil fuels. I would mention that our boiler at McNeil is actually between 80 and 85% efficient. When we talk about McNeil efficiency overall, McNeil is 25% efficient because producing electricity from a solid fuel with moisture content on wood chips doesn't lead you to a particularly efficient result. But when you use it for thermal energy, when you use our boiler to produce steam to send up to the hospital, we get actually a 10% boost to the efficiency of the plant overall. We have an 80 to 85% efficient boiler there at McNeil. This is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change most recent report, sixth assessment. This is from the Energy Action Network website. They're an organization that works on energy in Vermont and it notes that of the total anthropogenic human-caused emissions in the last decade, the combustion of fossil fuels was responsible between 81 and 91%. Fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis. That's the challenge. That's what we need to tackle. That's the by far most dominant source. As you can see here on the right, their graphic. When we take fossil fuel from underground, we put it into the air. We're taking carbon that's been stored for millions of years and we're putting it in the atmosphere for the first time in recent history. When we use whether it's biomass or other kind of growing things, we are using carbon and we're both sequestering it when the plants grow. We're emitting it when we cut or when we emit from burning, but it's part of a different carbon cycle, what they call the fast domain carbon cycle. That's above ground. That's been above ground for recent history. That's been part of our climate in recent history. There is a difference there. That's acknowledged by every scientific body from the IPCC to the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources and others. This is from the IPCC report, the sixth report AR6, which notes that essentially producing energy from forests along with producing a sustained yield of timber and fiber can generate in a sustainable strategy a large mitigation benefit. In fact, this chart here is the IPCC looking at options for how we reduce carbon, how we mitigate carbon relative to our 2030 goals. Bioelectricity, which is what we do at McNeil, and bioelectricity with carbon capture and storage that I heard you mention earlier and which can exist for biomass plants, are both a piece of the puzzle. Not the only piece, not even the biggest piece, but a piece of the puzzle. We talk about forestry. We talk about sustainability. It's really important to note what we do is not go into the forest and cut trees for energy. We don't do that. In fact, we don't cut trees at all. We work with private landowners who are harvesting. We work with licensed foresters who are harvesting. When they use the wood for higher value purposes, whether that's for furniture or for saw logs, whatever it might be, and this is our contract here with our language, we take the leftover tops and limbs, the damaged disease trees, the non-commercial wood. We're able to use that wasted wood for energy at McNeil. That represents approximately 88.5% of our energy fuel needs in 2022. It comes from those types of sources. We also get around 10% from sawmill residue, which again is just waste at a sawmill facility. 1.6% from our waste wood yard where residents, Burlington and surrounding community can bring untreated waste, and 0.3%, less than half a percent from what's called low value round wood, which are, if you see logs at McNeil, this is low value round wood that's been harvested in an otherwise commercial harvest, but it's not commercial product. We keep that on site because certain times of the year, mud season, for example, you can't get in the woods, you can't produce wood chips, so we have that for fuel security purposes. This is just another representation. This is Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Lab, looking at a life cycle, apples to apples, 3,000 different studies harmonized to reach these numbers, carbon value for per kilowatt hour, and you can see biomass at 52, that's the median value, way better than natural gas at 486 oil at 840 coal at 1,001. I want to note it's not as good as wind and solar. It's not as good as nuclear. It's not the perfect solution. It just happens to be a lot better than fossil fuels, and that's what our focus is, is not being on fossil fuels. I'm going to skip through this because this gets into some detail, but basically it's saying that the Vermont Agency and Natural Resources, the federal government, they follow the IPCC guidelines, which means we look at a life cycle basis and we count emissions from harvesting wood in the land use sector. We count the emissions when the tree is cut. We credit the land use sector when trees regrow. If you hear about McNeill's emissions, these guidelines, which we follow from governing bodies in the scientific community and in state government, say that those emissions are accounted for, but they're accounted for in the land use sector. When we think about the land use sector, this is data from a third party report looking at the lands where McNeill is receiving wood, and it shows that in those lands, those private timber lands between 2007 and 2020, we've added over 24 million tons of net additional forest carbon storage. So we're not losing forest carbon in the areas we harvest. We're actually gaining it from sustainable efforts at managed forestry, which is good news. And then just lastly, in terms of our fuel supply, this is from the Manomet study that Dr. Muma, who was referenced earlier, has cited favorably. And Dr. Muma cited this study. This study wasn't particularly favorable to biomass, but what it said is if you're using the tops and limbs, the residues that we use at McNeill, then biomass electric power is better than natural gas, has a quicker payback for carbon than natural gas compared to fossil fuel alternatives. And then here we are. What are we here to talk about? It's district energy. Two minutes. I can breeze through. Here's the map for the project. Goes from the McNeill plant up to the University Medical Center. Could connect to other buildings, including at the university or other buildings along the way. But the primary goal at the moment is can we get to the medical center? Reduce 225,000 MMBTU of natural gas equivalent to 16% of our commercial sector natural gas use in the community. And it's a combined effort. It uses waste heat from McNeill. It uses steam from McNeill. There's efficiency savings at the hospital. And it also has an electric boiler that can run when prices are low. And then just lastly, I think this study was referenced. This is on our website. We had third party analysis using the model that's developed for the clean heat standard that the legislature passed says that the McNeill district heat project reduces greenhouse gas emissions over 95% relative to natural gas. That's why we're pursuing this project is because we believe and the data here definitely supports that this is a better fuel than fossil fuels. And we're going to keep McNeill. McNeill is an important resource. Nobody here tonight is talking about shutting off McNeill. We couldn't afford it. It would be bad for reliability. If we're going to keep this plant running, let's use it more efficiently. And this is a great first step to do that. Thank you for your time. Glad to answer any questions. Thanks, Darren. Any questions from anybody? I'll have two. Go ahead, Linda. So I have a question about the carbon emissions and the particulates. Can you speak to how much or if that is going to increase in the air locally in the local atmosphere? Thank you for the question. So the first piece of information is running district energy does not necessarily require using any more wood. And in fact, we use more or less wood on an annual basis depending on the electric markets. And that'll continue to be the case. If the electric market prices are high, we're going to try to run the plant more to insulate Burlington ratepayers. Some years they're not as high. We don't run it as much. So there's some variability. Our particulate matter is at one tenth of the state level and one one hundredth of the allowable federal level. Our NOx emissions are between a quarter and a third of what the state allows. And that's because of investments in pollution control technology at the plant that were made particularly in 2008. So we don't foresee any operational changes in the McNeil plant as a result of district heat. So while the wood burn is variable at McNeil, district heat will increase any given years wood usage by eight percent. I'm sorry. My time for questions, right? That's not accurate. I think we can both answer questions. Well, I'm just not going to have a debate. Right. But he's a lot to ask questions. No, but I thought there were other questions online. I just wanted a chance to answer questions. That's all. Is Burlington Electric Exploring Nuclear? We're not. The community really decided back in 2004 that we want to move away from nuclear. Interesting question though, but no, we're not currently looking at that. Yeah. Nobody has said we're going to take the McNeil plant offline, but if it goes offline, what happens to my electric bill? Well, we estimated for fiscal year 23, which is the last time we looked at this when we did our rate case. If we did not have McNeil that year, 20 percent rate increase. And you showed a slide. I don't know if you can go back to your slides again, the very first one where you have the you're looking at the greenhouse gas emission with a future state. It was a second or third slide. Let's see if I can get back here. Hang on one second. Let me know when I've got it. That there we go. You know, that looks like my phone app weight reduction plan for me for the year. And it's a little bit misleading, isn't it? Because, you know, your eyes go to the steps. But the what bothers me about this is that granted that 2020 was a year that probably not going to happen. We hope doesn't happen again. That's right. That you're not your your GHGs are high. And if they don't go as predicted, is there a plan to address that? So actually, yeah, it's a good question. This actually is progress. It's just not as much progress. We're actually lower on emissions now than we were in 2018 when we started tracking the data by 11 plus percent. So the community has reduced emissions. The question is, can we reduce even further? And can we get on that path that gets us on a steep downward trajectory? They've gone up slightly since 2020. But if you look starting at 2018, which is kind of when we started this tracking exercise, overall, it's down about 11.2 percent since that point. But I take your point like we want to continue to drive it downward. We support a variety of things, electric vehicles, heat pumps. We've supported electric transit buses. We actually just introduced our first electric bucket truck for our line crew. There are a variety of solutions that can help us move in this direction. Federal legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act is going to help with this, too. But we need kind of an all in effort. We need technology development. There's a lot that has to happen to get us all the way down to that end of that line. Does Burlington Electric now give you vehicles coming to market a lot? Are you guys going to be opening the charging stations a lot? We are. In fact, we have a new one at our office at 585 Pine Street, first fast charger, modern fast charger in the community. We have another one planned for the marketplace garage, and we have a team that's trying to get federal resources to really make fast charging available all throughout the community, as well as we do level two chargers, public stations. We're working with rental properties, try to add those at rental multifamily. So charging is a big deal. We need to make it accessible for everybody. Yeah. So both sides seem to like trees, and I like trees. Is there a way we can plant our way out of this? Not really. A slide that I didn't get to represents a 150-year-old oak, which equates to, I think, 465 10-year-old oaves in terms of the same amount of carbon dioxide. So we should certainly plant trees. But to cutting down a mature tree and saying, oh, I'm going to plant another one, the time lag of centuries, the math doesn't work if we're trying to meet these deadlines in 2013-2026. What are all of us willing to give up in this? I mean, maybe that's the question. What do we have to give up? I don't hear that. That's a conversation. So on our end of things, first of all, again, we're using wood waste. So if you're going to assume that we're not talking about 100-year payback for harvesting a tree because we're not cutting trees for energy, I think we have to assume that the forest products industry is going to continue to operate in the state of Vermont for the foreseeable future. And we're a market for that wood waste. That's kind of the first piece. The second piece is we should be really proud to be in a community that generates our electricity without relying on fossil fuels. That's a good step forward. We can use EVs and other things to benefit from that. With this plant, I wouldn't argue that it's perfect. I wouldn't argue that maybe 20 years from now we might not be able to look at ways to if there's new technology or there's more solar wind and batteries, maybe we'll be at a point where we can step away from it at some point in the future. I don't think we're there yet. I don't think we're there in the near and medium term. And I think it's really important because you asked the rates question. We need a balanced portfolio. Just like if you're investing in the stock market, you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. We don't want all of our power generation coming from one type of resource or one location. We need diversity. We have that now. It's well balanced and it serves our customers better. Sam, I want to ask Sam a quick question. What are you willing to give up to make this problem better? You're the next generation. Hey, it's our fault. I take full credit. I take full responsibility. Yeah, we should have done something earlier sooner, but how do we engage people who are students into taking ownership of some of this? And unfortunate, you know, you got to do what you got to do, right? Anyway, I'm not supposed to say these things. But, you know, we should be facing problems. I think what we're losing sight of here and what every climate scientist in this world will tell you that it's about carbon emissions. And while I had bought efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, that is the entirety of our world. And the focus and loss in the conversation is that this plant and this more CO2 than any stationary source in this state. District energy. So let's just put aside the issue of should we close the plant down. That's not what this conversation is about. District energy will increase reliance on that plant for how many years. Why would we do that when we know about these emissions? Wellington Electric doesn't count those emissions. They're not being straight with us. And that is really, that really makes me angry as a repair as the president and as the farm. Well, let's just lay that out on the table. We know that because the EPA has that data. And I have a printout from the EPA. I can share it with you tonight. It's about carbon emissions. May I respond briefly? Well, I didn't hear a question there. But yeah, I just, I take it we're a public agency. We're an arm of city government. Our job is to provide information. There are reports on our website, the site link that I shared that show exactly what the stack emissions of McNeill are. Nobody's hiding anything. Nobody's not being straight with the community. I have children too in this community and I've spent my entire career working on climate change. I wouldn't be bringing this project forward if I didn't think it was a benefit for climate in the community. Sorry, no, for the community. Please, please don't interrupt me. I did not interrupt you. This is a climate project for us. It's been a long held goal in the community. It does not hurt the plant's operations. It improves the efficiency of the plant's operations by 10%. So if we're going to have the plant and we want to use wood more efficiently, this is a great first step. There are other things we can do as well. I just, on behalf of the Burlington Electric employees who are public sector employees, we are not a for profit entity. We are not ExxonMobil. We work for this community. We provide 100% renewable electricity and I just, I, those types of comments really misrepresent who we are. And so I'll always speak against that. Are there any other questions, please? We have a few minutes. Linda. Yeah, I'm just wondering about the hospital because it seems like this plan is premised on helping a hospital. And I was just wondering if you could just briefly explain what those needs are. And yeah, and I guess, is there a tax, a property tax consequence here? It's a good question. The first answer is there is no property tax implications from this project. This project is not taxpayer financed. It's not Burlington Electric financed. It would be financed by a nonprofit entity that would issue bonds to pay for the project and would sell the energy to the hospital and they would repay the bonds through the sale of that energy. And the only role for Burlington Electric or Vermont Gas would be to provide incentives under state programs to support the project. So that's an important point. I thank you for that question. The second point is the hospital is a customer of ours and we work with them on a variety of things. Energy efficiency and new buildings helping to reduce their consumption. When it comes to the needs they have there for steam, we've learned a lot because the original version of this project was a hot water project and we realized that it's not really interoperable with their system. So when I became general manager in 2018 and the first question at the press conference was, what are you going to do about district energy? How are you going to get it done? We went to the hospital and we said, what would work for you? And it had to be based on steam. Now to be clear, the hospital, this has to work for them and we won't bring this forward if it doesn't work for them economically and if it doesn't work in terms of helping to reduce their fossil fuel use. So that's a really good point. It's a good question. It would be addressed as part of any proposal to the city council. Go ahead. Since you've become a district manager, who are you at tenure? Yeah, I appreciate that. I think we're in a really dynamic moment. I think we're an exciting moment in a way because we're able to use our assets to really help people with transportation, with heating in ways that we couldn't before. So I think this project aside, managing what I think is a fundamental transition of being a monopoly electric utility that serves to keep the lights on and keep the power running, to becoming 100% renewable, to now our goal being we want to actually compete for your dollars in transportation and heating because we have a cleaner fuel, a more local fuel, a cheaper fuel in the transportation sector. That's a fundamental shift within the utility business and I think we're managing that transition and it's an interesting and dynamic time. We're going to wrap up. I want to thank everybody for coming. Rimo and I often talk like, what happens if nobody shows up? And he has this slide ready to go. Rimo, you want to tell us a couple of things about Africa before we go home? We've got two minutes. Yeah. What should I go see when I go visit? The people, the nature. I've had the privilege of having to go back to my place of origin. But I'll just try to summarize real quick that it's beautiful continent. I hope everybody has the chance to go there and see it. It's nature as you know it really once you're there and just immerse yourself with wildlife and the people and just trees. Before it all goes away. Speaking of the entire part. So yeah, it's amazing. I just went to the home of Africa and I took some time off just kind of going to the wilderness and away from humanity in general. I'm glad you're back. Thanks Charlie and thanks Scott for front of the meeting. Thanks everybody and see you next month.