 is being recorded. So I guess first I'd just like to welcome everyone to our Renewable Energy Task Group meeting of the ECAC. We're really excited and thankful that you all were willing to help us out with this process and join us. Sean, I'm just going to check who that is. Sorry. Oh, it's River. I'm just letting River into the room to be with us here. Sorry. So I'm glad you could all join us and be part of this process. First I want to say that my name is Stephanie Chickarello and I'm the Energy and Sustainability Coordinator for the Town of Amherst and my pronouns are she, her, and hers. And we would ask that the first time each of you speak this evening that you say your name and then also state your pronouns and then you can continue to comment or whatever it is you want to do to participate. So I just wanted to let everyone know that this process is going to be very different than we, the town had a climate action plan that it developed in 2005 and it was very different. It was a very small group. It did not involve the broader community. So this is an extremely different process than what we've done before and we're very excited for this process and so happy to have so many voices from the community participate. So thank you so much. I wanted to say a few housekeeping things. One of them is that if for some reason this meeting gets zoom bombed, where someone comes on and disrupts the meeting by either using inappropriate language or showing offensive imagery, please feel free to just disconnect from the meeting immediately. Just log off and leave the meeting and we will contact you with further instruction as to how we're going to reconvene. The other thing I wanted to state is that if you're not talking, the best thing to do is to mute your microphone because sometimes background noise gets picked up even more so from those of us listening than what you may be hearing. I unfortunately was on a meeting this morning and it inadvertently talked about my puppy's pooping habits and didn't realize my microphone was on so you know what happens. So try to remember to mute your microphone and the other thing is if your video at any point says that you have an unstable connection or you have an unstable internet connection just feel free to turn your video off. We would love it if you could stay on for as much as possible during this meeting so that we can really see one another but if you have to turn off your video connection because of an unstable connection that's totally fine so feel free to do so. So I'm going to start this meeting if you bear with me one second with a land acknowledgement. So this is to the indigenous people of the land that were here before us so we humbly acknowledge that we stand on Nanatuck land acknowledging also our neighboring indigenous nations the Nipmuk and the Wampanoag to the east, the Mohican and Piqua to the south, the Mohican to the west and the Abenaki to the north and with that I would like to turn the meeting over to Ghazikaya. Thanks so much Stephanie. I'm Ghazikaya. I use they them pronouns and my first name is is two words so Ghazikaya is my first name and in group activities like these it can be really helpful to make agreements about ways that we would like to be respectful of one another so I'm going to introduce some possible agreements that we can start with for today and then as we get to know each other over the next couple of meetings we may find ones that we want to add or things we want to change. So the first one is that we want to be putting people and relationships first so we want to think about how these climate issues affect real people in very tangible ways in their lives and think about building understanding rather than winning or getting our individual goals met. As a part of taking care of each other we encourage you to just take care of yourselves by taking a break whenever you might need to if you want to use the restroom or turn your video off for a moment to talk with your children or your dog or whoever else is needing some attention if you need to go get a snack or some water please just feel free to do that at any moment. The second one is to think about the language that you use in some of the other groups we have interpretation into different languages we're not going to have that in this group but even so we're really going to ask each other to slow down to speak slowly and clearly to really think about avoiding jargon or any technical terms and to pause frequently and check for questions. One of the ways that we're going to be inserting a pause to help us all be really thoughtful tonight since we don't have translation which naturally creates that is that we're going to ask you to raise your hand before you speak and we'll see your hand and we'll wait a good 10-20 seconds before we go ahead and call on you and you can do that by just physically raising your hand if you have the video on you can press it on your little um if you click participants you'll see your name um under our panelists and you can raise a hand there by clicking on more uh if you're on the phone you can also press star nine and that'll raise your hand so that's just going to help us to be really thoughtful and reflective as we go through and to avoid what can sometimes turn into a competitive conversation and can kind of quiet those voices who who don't have the um the the personality or the style or the knowledge to jump in quite so quickly um that moves into the next one which is step up step back if you tend to be a quiet person um or if you tend to be a person who really shares a lot in meetings we want to ask you um to sort of shift on that so if you're a quieter person we encourage you to think about sharing more if you tend to talk a lot think about sharing a little less and this is to encourage us to all participate and to even allow for what can sometimes feel like an uncomfortable silence in those longer pauses some people who are quieter or more hesitant may um work up the uh the ability to jump in so we want to leave some pauses and we're gonna um also ask you to really keep things private and don't pry for more information so we're gonna hopefully be sharing some real information with each other about how these issues impact our lives um so whatever you learn about others their families their feelings and their finances please keep all of that confidential and don't ask for more personal details or stories um let's really try to receive any need without asking for someone to prove it and the last one is that we're gonna really make a effort to learn about each other's personal and core cultural values remembering that culture and values are just filtered through our own experiences what might be right or good or normal for you might not be um the same for everyone so one of the ways that we're gonna do that like Stephanie mentioned is we're gonna introduce ourselves with our pronouns we're gonna really encourage you to stick to talking about just your own personal experiences and not talk about other people or other groups uh to commit to considering um again that your version of right may not be the same as everyone else's in the room and the way that we can learn the best is by asking lots of questions so that's it for the agreement thanks a lot gizikaya i'm jim noman uh my i'm comfortable using he him his pronouns uh and i uh am part of the consultant team that has helped set up this process um but our role is really to just make sure that everything goes smoothly we don't have a big role to play uh so in that sense let me introduce uh andra and dwayne as the co-chairs of this uh this committee and members of the uh energy and climate action committee for the town of amherst hi thank you so much for joining us as stephanie said um it's uh it's really a wonderful thing for us to have you know the community members with all different experience to be a part of um our planning for how amherst is going to um be as green as possible um and this particular group is focused on renewables and uh electricity and something i'll explain called um community choice aggregation um so then i use she her pronouns um so i'm a member of the energy and climate action committee which is a town committee dwayne and i are both volunteers um on the committee and um we're helped very much by stephanie who works for town and then there's also some town counselors so we have some um folks who are elected officials as well the um ecac which is how we tend to um shorten it is um not a decision-making body but we're planners or you know suggestors for the town council the elected officials who make the decisions um and we did do some um suggesting already if you saw the introductory uh recording that we made um i um described our our process for getting input and and then um suggesting goals for um our our towns climate goals and the town council took our advice and set the goals of reaching net zero um by a greenhouse gas by um 2050 which is what the science says we need to do and then you know stepping back by 2030 just 10 years from now we want to be halfway there and then if we step back another five years um we'd like to be a quarter the way there so making this climate plan is really about thinking about how the the energy we use um can be less polluting um and have less carbon um less greenhouse gases and your help in um making priorities about what ways we might do this is um is what this task group is really about um and it's very important to us that we're involving a lot of people from different parts of town who do different kinds of things in town and no different parts of the community in town um and we will be reaching out to and already started reaching out to businesses and to um uh residents and to other committees and um you know this is a part of the work that the bcac is is doing um and the town manager will be um you know sort of Stephanie's boss um will be involved in in getting town departments um to respond to questions we have so that is um what we're going to be doing together um so this community choice aggregation we decided that it needs a longer introduction than anything I could give right now um and so we'll probably make a recording that you can watch at any time um so that you can understand some of the um background but the basic idea of community choice aggregation is that the community the you know a local community makes the decisions about um where our electricity comes from and we're working already with Pelham and Northampton to create this um organization that will buy electricity for all of us our residents our businesses our um our governments and um and then in the process there's money the the we buy the electricity we sell the electricity and then there's some money left over that we get to choose that's the choice part of community choice aggregation we get to choose how we spend that and and we can keep more of the energy dollars that we spend local um to create maybe energy efficiency jobs um to um support uh solar in our town um so that's um the aggregation part it's the pool pooling all of our electricity use together so that's community choice aggregation CCA and we'll get more into that but it provides a tool for us to um be able to do some of the ideas we're going to come up with and provide some money to put towards it while also giving us choices so Dwayne great thanks Andra Andra and um I thank everybody for for joining us today I've had the pleasure to be a member of the Energy and Climate Action Committee for the town of Amherst working with Andra and Stephanie on that and our consultants and and wanted um support Andra's appreciation for you all being part of this task group that's really geared to make sure as Stephanie points out that this is a community driven and community informed process and so we do want to really use the time that we have together uh Andra and I'll set the stage just quickly here but to really get some really engagement with community members and really appreciate your time the other important thing to recognize is that while we are eagerly um uh working on developing our climate action plan uh over the course of the next number of months uh this work does not stop at at developing the plan that's in essence the beginning of the plan of the of the uh of the uh process that we have in front of us and it will be important that the community is not only involved in developing helping us to develop the plan and making sure the plan is informed by the the community but also when it comes time to supporting and implementing and helping to make decisions many many difficult decisions I would suggest once the plan is is enacted and and in for so we look forward to not only your engagement and your other members of the community as well uh engagement uh not only in this um working group as we work towards the plan but also well beyond the plan as well so I wanted to use my seven minutes I think or maybe five minutes left to just put a little bit of context of of where we where we're at in Amherst and sort of frame a little bit about the challenge and the opportunity uh that is in front of us um and this uh task force is really focused on um renewable energy and particularly electricity generation uh that will be central to the plan with regard to meeting the carbon mitigation um requirements uh that the town has set forward uh and so it's important to sort of at least have some context of of um what our what our um current use of electricity is in the town as well as uh where some of our and what some of our um renewable energy resources are and choices ahead of ahead of us and and I would argue some difficult choices but ones that really need to be informed by community preferences and community engagement so I don't want to throw a whole lot of numbers out but I'll throw just a few out and then put them in context currently in Amherst if you exclude the colleges and the universities and the university we as a community and this is primarily residential and some and commercial we really don't have any substantial industry in town but it also includes municipal use we consume about 100,000 megawatt hours of electricity in a year uh that's probably a number that's it's a nice round number uh it's estimated it doesn't mean a lot uh but um I'll put that in context in a moment but just think think about that in terms of the uh challenge in front of us is uh is really looking at I wouldn't say necessarily replacing 100,000 megawatt hours a year with renewable energy because a percentage of that is already renewable uh based on um state policies and so forth but most of it is not renewable um in in terms of what the renewable energy electricity generating resources are that we have to to work with uh primarily in in massachusetts we're talking about solar uh we're talking about wind uh onshore which is actually fairly limited but very abundant in offshore wind as well as hydro both small hydro as well as uh large large-scale hydro imported from primarily from canada when you look at amherst itself we are in the pioneer valley so we really don't have wind resources you would expect to be economically viable so we're really focused primarily on solar as as renewable energy generation local renewable energy generation opportunities um for for the town um so when I mentioned that we consume about 100,000 megawatt hours a year if for example and this is just a scenario if we were to to meet all of that consumption with solar we would need to find room for about 90 megawatts of capacity uh in massachusetts in amherst uh that number may mean something to some people may not to others so put another way that 90 megawatts would typically take up about one square mile of of area uh doesn't need to be all in land um obviously we have roofs uh we have residential roofs we have commercial roofs um and we have uh parking lots uh and and so forth we have schools uh school roofs and so forth uh but if it was you know thinking about it in terms of land area it'd be about one square mile to put that in context the town of amherst is about 27 square miles uh so it'd be dedicating um uh you know one could think about it about you know chunking off about five percent maybe less than five percent of amherst uh for our renewable energy generation not that's not the way we're looking at it but just to put it into context um as i mentioned uh particularly for solar uh we do have opportunities uh in town uh we've already seen uh solar in town uh on on roofs um on parking lot canopies at the university uh certainly um and um but we also have um uh opportunities um on our land on our landfill which is moving forward as you know as people probably know um and but we also have forests uh and we have agricultural land and we have open land and that's um where uh tough decisions may come into play as we move forward with regard to uh to what extent uh do we enable and allow solar to encroach on some of these other lands which have um other valuable uh aspects to them um if we are trying to meet some of these uh some of this generation locally those are decisions and and discussions to be had later but just throwing them out there as uh as um sort of the things that we are starting to confront as we talk about going to close to a hundred percent renewables so really the community and we're looking for engagement from the community on some of these issues in terms of um uh how to consider some of these tradeoffs of of where we get our renewable energy from tradeoffs uh with regard to land use for solar uh within Amherst or even outside of Amherst how much do we want to depend strictly on getting our renewable energy locally versus for example from offshore wind which is going to be quite abundant and a growing resource for the Commonwealth in the next decade and two um and uh and so really what is our openness to really contract for some of this renewable energy outside of Amherst either through the CCA the community choice aggregation that Andra put forward and how much do we want to put into investment and opportunity to site um and and support and gain some economic advantage from citing renewable energy uh within our within our town uh but at the same time then some of the tradeoffs come forward with regard to land use so those are the issues that uh we start grappling with um I will I also did want to say that uh when I say the town currently uses a hundred thousand megawatt hours a year for electricity the expectation is that for that to grow and grow probably substantially not because we're becoming less energy efficient we're working the we're work need to work on that as well and that'll be part of the is part of the plan as well but we're really looking to um to to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel a key strategy is to electrify our heating sector in with air source heat pumps ground source heat pumps for buildings and then also on the transportation side a key strategy for the town and for the Commonwealth is really to electrify our vehicles as well and so that really is going to grow expect to grow our demand uh and consumption for electricity so we to that extent uh some of these issues will be even more pronounced and opportunities will be more greater opportunities for local generation so um that's what my take on it and sorry I did mean to say that my my preferred pronouns are his and his and he um and sorry to not mention that at the beginning so I'll pass it back to Jim I guess is he kaya Jim I was wondering if we could all just take a deep breath for a minute that was a ton of information and I know that we have a lot of levels of understanding in this group and that for some of us that information was not something we could wrap our heads around including myself um so I want to reassure um everyone that um in addition to these meetings myself and Andra and Dwayne and Stephanie are available to talk at a slower pace with opportunities for more questions um outside of this meeting that uh Andra mentioned we're going to hopefully put together um a video that will be a short uh but very clear introduction to some of these things that Andra and Dwayne talked about quickly tonight um and that everything that Dwayne went through these are sort of the priorities about you know what what are the big chunks that need to be tackled um and all of those decisions have not firmly been made so what we're doing together is to really try and understand what some of the options are and how they'll impact us all um so I thought that that little note about one mile of square footage was really interesting and helpful for me to picture sort of like how many do we need and I think it's interesting that we actually know how many solar panels could replace you're saying that could replace like regular electricity that burns some sort of fuel that creates pollution in an oversimplified manner yep yep pretty much that's it awesome thank you so much so i'm gonna again take a moment just give it a minute so thanks uh Dwayne and Andra thanks a ton great introduction uh committee has been working very hard and you now get to work very hard to uh figure out what we're doing what is this plan uh so to start uh i'm gonna ask some questions uh to get us going so when we talk about all this energy and all this stuff that is you know some of it's being made by burning gas and some is being made by burning other things and some of it's being made by solar power and some of it all these different places some of it comes from uh you know kebek and and big dams um a lot of that energy gets used wherever you live and so our first question to get the conversation kind of rolling is to ask the question of um how is your home heated and cool do you burn gas is it electric is it cooled uh is it cooled by opening the windows um and who controls that who controls how that happens uh is it something that you control is it someone that someone else controls and then finally how could that be better how could you make that better or how could someone make it better what would be better so we'll give that a sec and then let i'll open that question up to answer and feel creative wave your hand or raise your hand if you want to uh you want to speak please hi i'll go first um my name is alini um and i go by she her hers so i live at the brooks and i rent um the condominium here and what i i feel like the whatever system that we have we it is electric first of all um so we have the ac's and it's extremely old in my opinion um and i feel like tons we waste way more on energy um because the systems are not really updated and the same with the heating and i know during the winter i can feel the drafts and the windows i can feel the draft on the doors and i have asked my landlord to look into whatever we could do to improve that because at the end of the day i am paying for the electricity and then in the summer it's around 200 dollars and then in the winter anywhere up to 400 a month that we're paying and it's a two bedroom two floors um condo so i i i feel like she kind of threw the ball back at me and said that's on you um because whatever like she she's out of town so and i know because my mom owns the apartment here and they had um whoever the company that we have our um that we have our source from they went to their house and they like changed the bulbs changed the the the outlets or whatever to make it more um cost friendly and then when i asked her about that she's like i haven't heard of that and kind of left it up to me to go figure that out and of course because i'm busy with the kids and work and all of the other stuff going on i never really looked into it and then i always suffer at the end um not at the end of every month i guess um but yes i think that a lot could be done better and i don't know if it's the responsibility of the condominium or if it's really the responsibility of the condo to have a better system for our electricity heating and cooling systems so that's kind of how i feel about mines thanks apparently uh that was awesome uh i'm gonna let that sit for a moment just hold and sort of think about that experience jen would you like to jump in sure you hear me yeah great so i also live at the brook um and so we own our unit but that doesn't change a whole lot for us in terms of heating and cooling um all electric we're an end unit too so we end up and it's like pretty poorly insulated so we end up paying a lot more than um the units that are you know inside between two um so we have control of the heat you know and the cooling i guess but we um and we have some control over like the suppliers i guess like so we could opt for green um or clean energy but it's significantly more expensive and i personally like haven't like compared to what my husband has and he's like we can't do it like so um i you know as an owner i don't feel like we have a lot i don't have any more control than really a renter um and you know i guess it could be made better if um you know clean energy you know if we're more affordable it was more on par with dirty energy and um the other thing that you know i've had some conversations about or just like the idea of incentivizing um you know just solar is something that you know i i walk a lot in the neighborhood and look longingly at all the people the solar panels and it's like not you know achievable um under our circumstances and you know just the if like what really stops like it's always like what really stops that from happening and it's like always the resounding question for me and yeah the idea of incentivizing that you know yeah so classic management owns this property and other properties and just you know they're a good number of isn't you know we're not the only ones you know they're a good number of apartments in Amherst and um i think that everyone would probably love to be able to participate more fully in that so thanks jen let's hold for a sec we can come back if you won't have more you can always add more um and interesting there's an interesting sort of observation for me in this so far one of the big topics in the sort of renewable field is what's called uh uh the essentially which is making heating and cooling electric as opposed to being gas fired do you know that everybody who's spoken is talking about electric heating and cooling so in that world these guys have already they're already passed that particular solution um any other uh who would like uh to join us yeah go ahead sorry there was something else I wanted to add because Elini uh reminded me that you know mass saves came and did you know the audit that they do and you know but and we could change light bulbs and you know outlets and whatever but you know when it comes down to like improving the installation that's not an option because we are like even owners is just like studs in as they say so we can't go into the walls and improve the installation situation and again we lose a ton of money I mean there's just so much um and going out of here and so that's another thing I just wanted to stick with thanks Jen it's a key key observation thanks a lot so um I didn't realize that I had done this but I put all three of us who live at the brook together in this group so you're going to hear a lot about the brook um we have one more community leader who's um going to be joining us hopefully at some point tonight but if not tonight eventually who's lived in other complexes and um I personally have lived in five complexes in Amherst so um I would just echo the things that both Elini and Jen said I think that um as renters or in a community that's a complex that is run by some sort of property manager the the choices just becomes ministerial and um 40 percent of Amherst is renters and 20 percent of Amherst residents are um live below the poverty level and 91 percent of those people rent so just to like wrap your head around of who are the renters a lot of people think it's just students but it's really it's really not it's a ton of families um families with full-time jobs and multiple kids who still are um living below the poverty level and who uh like in my situation I qualify for fuel assistance which I'm very grateful for um and it does significantly impact my finances but when I tried to get involved with um a community solar program because I I really care about this stuff um I signed up through something called Nexium I'm not sure if people are familiar with it but it did not like uh work with my fuel assistance they haven't created a program that acknowledges that so it got very confusing for me and it has been like a huge financial burden to me this year because basically the way their system works is you pay Nexium for the solar and then they pay Eversource and fuel assistance pays Eversource so both of the monies are going to Eversource and then I was basically I wouldn't have had to pay any electric bill for the past six months but instead I was paying like usually my electric bill is very low because I'm super frugal and I like keep everything off all the time and freezing and usually I only get like 87 dollar bills and um I've been paying like 250 to this Nexium for six months and after the first month I tried to cancel and they agreed to let me cancel but it's taken six months for Eversource to take me off their list so it keeps charging me every month and I've asked Nexium you know many times that they need to get a committee together and acknowledge that they're marketing to our neighborhood that's how I found out about it I got a postcard here but they're if they don't have a program that works with fuel assistance then they're going to put a lot of people like me in a really bad situation that I can't seem to get out of and they keep telling me oh your credits will stay there I'm like I don't need credits I need to not pay you money that I wouldn't have had to pay especially in the middle of what's like a financial crisis for me anyways so for me I you know I sort of always had the feeling that environmentalism is just for rich people and I wasn't going to even bother and then I've tried really hard this year to do things and it feels like everything has ended up being a catastrophe like the solar panel thing was horrible you know I tried to like buy local food for a little while it was like 14 000 million dollars so everything I try you know it's like there's just no system for people with limited income or who are renters to be able to participate I'm really happy that Lynn is here because I've learned a little bit about co-op power and I know that's something that they really like to talk about so I hope at some point tonight you'd be willing to share but um yeah and same thing about the insulation that you can just feel the heat just like going right through the walls thanks someone let's like to jump in talk about your own experience Lynn don't forget to unmute yourself that works better that way doesn't it I mean it's lovely to watch you the um uh I lived five years in North Village and another two years in Puffton after that it was quite a number of years ago but these stories are sounding so very familiar um um to answer answer the question you posed Jim um you know we I live in a house up in Franklin County now and we heat with oil and we um tried for a bunch of years to get this high a percentage of biodiesel into our oil heat system but uh found it was hard to get hopefully with the biodiesel plant coming in in Greenfield we'll be able to get it again because that felt good and we also noticed there was so much less soot in our basement using the biodiesel so we figured there was probably less soot in our lungs too but but this lives with us and generally house just was saying those and put the shades and then opening them up and getting the fans and blowing in all the cool air at night hopefully cool air at night usually it works um my mom in the 80s was neat more sometimes so we have a small window air conditioner that she uses and um and that's fueled by electricity and so we have the co-op power version of the next amp the subscription solar program and we get 15% off of our electric bill um but it's uh as someone who administers that program it's it's really it doesn't work well with um with folks who are on fuel assistance who have the reduced electric rate and we've run into that and just we just haven't charged people like you know we have like two people that got into that situation and we said stop paying us and pay us when you get to use those credits even if it's next year sometime you know um but it it was it was really heartbreaking to watch how the mismatch happened there um and in the future I really um there's there's a one of the members of co-op power who's um approaching 100 said to me five years ago she said I want 100 biodiesel in my oil heat system now I want to be off fossil fuels I said yeah in a couple years we're probably she said how many years do you think I got left I want to be off fossil fuels before I die they're like okay okay I got the message let's see what we could do and I'm feeling that way I just like I want I want not only me but I want my whole community I want our whole region off of fossil fuels yesterday and it feels urgent and um and to do it in an equitable way um so that it's not just household by household but it's community by community that we figure out how everybody can get off of fossil fuels and have an affordable way to have a secure energy supply and I'm really applaud what you're doing what we're doing here in Amherst because this feels really important. While we pause I just want to welcome Cedric I'm so glad that you're here Cedric and um hey I just want to fill you in we're talking right now about how do you heat and cool where you live and who's in control of it and what would what would make it better so if you want to jump in at any point and share thoughts on that we'd love to hear from you. Thank you uh I'm gonna think about that for a second and let someone uh someone else answer if they have an answer. Sounds great thank you. Thank you sorry about no no thanks for joining everybody with someone else like oh sorry Jake didn't see your hand go for it. Hi my name is Jake Marley my pronouns are he has and him um and to answer your question Jim um I live in Belchertown, Mass so just outside of Amherst I live at home my family bought into a community shared solar project um a number of years ago so able to take advantage or make use of that um I am in a separate apartment though um in my space is heated by oil so and I have direct control over changing that and after this conversation I'm feeling motivated to do so um in thinking about ways how I can cut down or be better myself recently I've really been trying to eliminate single-use plastics just entirely and so with that is thinking a lot about planning ahead of course that's separate from renewable energy but conservation or limiting impact type and then limiting trips as well planning ahead so unplugging appliances is something that I'm constantly doing reducing energy usage I do have a single unit AC that I've had to turn on a few nights recently but yes try to open up the windows make use of the natural landscape in my background I'm the manager of a company Hyperion Systems which is a local solar development company and also involved in a lot of research work with Dwayne River and the team at UMass Clean Energy Extension and our company is primarily focused on solar on farmland or agrivoltaics or dual-use solar which I can explain more about at another time thank you thank you Jake you know it would be great if you could talk a sec about your family's community solar like what does that mean what's that so my community solar it's a larger-scale project rather than having it on the roof of your or in the backyard of your property for various reasons we have a lot of trees around so it's not an ideal roof situation so we bought my parents bought into a large-scale community project that is in Massachusetts it's in Harvard mass I'm not sure of the overall size but it was installed by a Massachusetts company designed by a Massachusetts company solar design associates and so so it's pooling investors essentially taking several homeowners to raise capital to buy into a project similar to co-op power I would think or in some sense and then they they through the utility get the money back through off of their bill it's credits to their monthly bill which it sounds like would be very beneficial to to everyone of course great thank thank you Jake just as you know we we use all these terms and say all these things and it's like what's that again like how's that so I appreciate it I appreciate everybody being willing to do that yeah river hi everybody I'm river strong and my pronouns are he him and his and I just want to say how great it is to be here and see everybody and to be having this conversation it's just stories stories make the world's right and so just hearing these stories really is it's inspiring and and yeah I can see how it's kind of it's just starting to chart our direction so really great to hear from everybody thanks for sharing I live in Amherst in North Amherst kind of a by Puffer's pond in a co-housing community and there's about a hundred people here there's about 30 units and it's kind of arranged like condos people own their own units and then there's some renters who also live in the community and until recently within the last few months I heated with propane which were the original systems when this this community was built about 25 years ago and propane systems were put in for all the units but the community was also built with environmental values in mind for example the the roof lines were all faced with southern built with southern facing roof lines so that the community could accommodate solar when the original people who were here built could have the hope of putting solar on when they got some when they built rebuilt their funds from paying for the place and they were built with six inch walls and pretty well insulated for 25 years ago so they were they were forward thinking that said I had an unfinished attic and decided that really energy efficiency is the for me is the first order of business somebody told me once you know if you're losing money out of a hole in your pocket you don't go out and get another job to keep it filled you just get a needle and thread and that always sounded sound to me so I really personally and professionally I work at UMass with Duane in the clean energy extension really preach energy efficiency because it's almost always the most cost efficient and impactful thing to do if you're losing energy so I'll I'll still be coming back to that but then yes definitely renewables after efficiency or in parallel with efficiency oh I forgot to say who controls the heat here so I'd like to think it's me but it's actually my teenage kids so that's a that's that's a point of negotiation um so I got what's called a heat loan which is a state program um that provides low or zero percent financing for energy efficiency projects and um it might be I can't remember if it's income eligible but uh and it's zero zero percent loan to to refinish my attic and to do the insulation part of that to kind of tighten the house and then to take the next step my goal was to get off fossil fuels altogether to can just get off propane and the next step was I found a program through um an organization called front center for eco technology based in northampton and they had something called solar access which is an income eligible program and it bundles together solar photovoltaics so solar panels for electricity with heat pumps um air source heat pumps and it bundles those two things together and um and the financing to go with it uh which is done through umas 5 credit union and pulls it all together as a package um the goal of which is to what's called cash flow cash flow positive so in other words the the payment so it's a it's a loan and the payment on the loan is less than or equal to the amount that you you were paying for the for your electricity and heat from those two sources so the idea is that you you actually make money because you're paying less to the bank than you were paying to the utilities for those things by participating in that program so that's something that I would I don't I don't actually know if it's still running but something that I would recommend that people check out um it's been really good and uh it was very complicated even with uh CET holding my hand there were a lot of meetings and forms and bank meetings and um and time off of work to kind of project manage the whole thing and it took the better part of a year to make it all happen um but it it did happen and everything's up and running and I have solar on my roof and my air my air source heat pumps are running and I have a pretty tight attic and we'll see if over the course of a year if I actually use what's called net zero if I if I zero out my my energy bill make enough of my own power to provide my own heat and the air source heat pumps do have cooling capacity but I haven't used it yet um because I'm uh a new englander and grew up without air conditioning and so I kind of refuse to turn on the air conditioners again against my kids wishes so um that's the situation I feel really blessed and there's a lot of there's a lot of people here who are pursuing a similar path in this community and um I've been inspired by many and and many many folks have held my hand and kind of showed me the way uh but it's been really great and I would love to um talk more about it oh and and so thanks a lot that's me while we pause on that one I just want to um have somebody in the group think about giving us a very brief definition of fossil fuels a few people have used that term so far and it'd be helpful to explain what that means so I'll jump in um my lay definition as I understand the fossil fuels are um fuels that are derived from fossils uh or formally plants often people say dead dinosaurs but it's usually not that it's it's um it's accumulated plant life that has fallen to the ground like leaves fall in the woods but then um over over millions of years compressed under high pressure and made chemically potent and um and stores a lot of carbon dioxide because as plants grow that's food for them so they're storing a lot of that and then that falls onto the ground and like it gets compressed over time and there are pockets of dead plants all around the world that with enough heat and pressure become either coal or gas oil crude oil that's pumped out of the ground or natural gas this is another other form of fossil fuel and these are refined into different things like gasoline like oils oils gasoline's derived from from oil and they're really they're amazing energy sources in that they store a lot of energy content and that's why when you you know put a match to some gasoline it goes up in flames and it works really well in cars and it works well for heat and does a lot of amazing things it's really a miracle substance these fossil fuels and they also hold a lot of carbon dioxide so when they're burned like we're burning them in a lot of our homes and a lot of our vehicles they release carbon dioxide so that's the challenges we didn't realize until relatively recently that all that carbon dioxide that we're taking out of the ground and then putting into the air is serving as a blanket and storing storing the sun's heat and heating us up but fossil fuels are burning these these old very old plants okay and i'm going to give it even briefer one because that was a lot of very interesting information but basically if you put gas into your car or if you have like the fuel tank in your basement that is how your heat works or if you have a plug into the wall electric air conditioner or heater then coal or some type of gas like substance is being burned to make that power am i right on that okay so when we hear people say i want to avoid fossil fuels they mean they don't want to use one of those sort of regular put your plug into the wall type situation or gas in your car and it gets confusing to me because when you when i hear people say we want to electrify everything i think oh i already have all electric but it's a it's a different system when they're talking about electric cars right and and uh so i just want to keep sort of reminding people that there's there's a lot going on here and we'll slowly wrap our heads around it but we're not going to get too much into more technical now because i want to let everybody finish up sharing although it might be good just to mention the different kinds of electric heat there's some that are much more efficient than others and the electric resistance heat that's the cheapest kind of heating system that's put into a lot of low income housing isn't very efficient and the heat pump that river was just talking about is very efficient so there's a lot of a lot of room for conversation and i i just also clarify if i might gazi chai is that um when you get electricity from the from your plugging something into the wall one really doesn't know where that and what made that electricity that electricity is being made somewhere else and being distributed to your home through the distribution lines that we see all over the place and so it largely comes from fossil fuels from power plants but in this transition to renewables that's where more and more of that electricity for the grid um obviously if you have it on your home you can use it pretty much directly but if it's solar in these community solar projects um or elsewhere or offshore wind that's putting renewable electricity non-fossil fuel burning electricity into the transmission distribution line so it can get to your home great thanks everybody cedric anything you want to say at this point you can think in and listening you'll save it feel free to jump in whenever you're ready and i think also we haven't heard from don and lauren and stephanie um i guess i don't know how to begin um name and pronouns yeah my name is don allison and i go by he is and him um i live in south amherst um and we have a solar array it's actually on a track um that produces more electricity than we use um in our home we since we put it in we've never had an electric bill we're fortunate that way um i have an electric car um and my wife we also have a a gasoline internal combustion engine car um but since covid we haven't used it since one car has been sufficient for my wife and me um all four of our kids are grown we probably live in a house that's bigger than it needs to be um we are our the primary heat is propane um although we have been discussing um heat pumps or even something larger like geothermal um for our house it's a little difficult to talk about this because we have the luxury of being able to afford um these things um and i think a bigger problem isn't for those of us that can afford it but how to create a system that will provide um non-fossil fuel energy to the whole community um so it's a little bit difficult for me to talk about it since we can do these things um if we put in heat pumps or geothermal we could put another we have enough land so we could put another um tracking system on our property and produce even more electricity um um yeah yeah um i'm acutely aware of um issues i spent eight years at the u.s attorney's office in washington dc um i'm acutely aware of um the inequalities in our justice system and inequalities all over um on the border brookfield farm so we're members of that biodynamic farm all of my kids went to the walder school and were very much tied into that anthroposophical biodynamic community um and i'm also on the board at double-edged theater in ashfield which is doing a lot of work now on depending upon which person i hear talk um indigenous and thank you stephanie for that opening blessing um so it's something that's really important to my wife and to myself i feel like i've been a little bit dragged into it by my wife and i think andra knows that um so she can smile and and say that um but we're both very committed now um and i think it's really really important that we find solutions for people who will up the rental community and amherst and in in the whole country that's pretty much all i have to say makes it done don let's let's hold for a sec is he can you want to say something yeah in this pause i just really want to um appreciate and respect you don for acknowledging the discomfort that comes when we are faced with the reality of inequity um and that part of what this meeting is about is about getting you in touch with that discomfort getting all of us in touch with that discomfort in a way where we're actually faced with talking to each other about it across class across race across languages um because those of us i'll just speak for myself uh i also have that not in my stomach i have a mix of anger and um shame and desire um all mixed in and um you know when i hear someone say you know maybe that they feel blessed or fortunate or any of those words i also feel concerned that we are conveying that this reality about who has ownership of their land or of their power or of their choices um is related to some sort of uh system based on goodness when the reality is that it's a system based on racism and class discrimination and um those are things that this committee has been open to exploring some of you may have heard the term environmental justice and it's an effort to bring to the forefront that we're not just talking about pollution and fossil fuels that we're also talking about the systems um that have created the need to have these conversations um and so yeah i just i respect you for acknowledging that feeling and i encourage all of us to to not pull away from that feeling while we're here together to to take the opportunity to sit with it and to really notice that um what's coming up a lot is ownership um and how land ownership impacts our abilities to make decisions um and how we either because we own land we have all sorts of um financial breaks and when we don't own land we are spending more than those who actually do have the financial privilege so thank you very much hi everyone my name is Lauren de la para i um use she her her pronouns and um i currently live in boston um so i rent um and i think we felt lucky in the sense so we live in a very small apartment i think we're we have 450 square feet and so heating and cooling is not very expensive um we're also in a middle unit so they're you know we're on the second floor um and we've always been interested in procuring renewable energy but there i think there's a lot of confusing marketing out there and we never have actually made that leap we used to live in summerville and there they have a municipal aggregation program as well and so we were we opted up to the 100 percent renewable rate um for a time there but now that we're in boston we don't do that um we have taken advantage of massive incentives in the past so my husband has gotten us you know a nice fancy programmable um thermostat that helps us keep our uh energy slow when we're out of the house which obviously we're not using as much these days since we're pretty much home all the time but but it has been really nice in the past um to to be able to set that on automatic um and we we do things like you know putting weather uh insulation on our windows and weather stripping our doors and things like that but um i think that's sort of the theme it's that there's just there's only so much you can do in your render um i think i actually um so i went to umass for grad school and i took a course with dwayne and um wrote a paper about the split incentive problem um which is sort of the technical term that i won't use again um that that speaks to this this conflict that's created when um when renters are paying the electricity bill but landlords have their control over the decisions being made about upgrades and maintenance and um and it's it's really a tough problem to solve and i think there are some things that we can um we can advocate for when it comes to yeah things like property management um companies for sure i think one of the barriers that we face in our current location is that um there are seven units in our building and seven different condo associations um so so finding ways to coordinate um at the smaller scale like like with rivers um co-housing community or um with the community solar i think are are just like really exciting and promising practices i feel like i didn't answer the original question so i'll just say um our place is heated with natural gas um and i think for it to be better i mean yeah we would have the option to opt up to 100 renewable um on our our electricity bill um and we would be able to maybe have a more structured way of working with our landlord to um push forward those types of upgrades in a way that's mutually beneficial um that's it for me thanks marin um i'm gonna ask cedric one more time if you want to say something as we'll just wait a sec hi guys hey hey everyone how are we doing sorry uh kids um i got kids um for me uh i'm i'm a little bit uh on this side of i live on a small i live in a small apartment also uh i'm in amherst i go by cedric uh he him his i uh in the area i live in i just i'm just going to tell you all my story is recently my my room has been a sports room like you guys say in mass a sports room um and it's been the heat has risen and i have carpet in the room so it was pretty hot uh last it was last couple weeks where it hit like 90 95 and things like that so i have to figure a way out with my heating um and i have i think uh like those electric heats on the ground so i don't know what the type is is that i have the electric heat on the ground and uh and i mean i i i was just standing there and i was sweating like a a wet dog you know a wet dog's tongue you know just sweating just all so i went on youtube and i said all right what can i do to like get this heat out of my room uh open the window and then i just put an electric fan and faced it the other way and i have two windows and it just goes in one one in out the other so the heat just you know gets out my room uh and then when i come back to my room so i basically uh train in the afternoons uh and so when i i leave the room i take the heat out and then when i come back i kind of bring in the cool air and then once the cool air comes in i close that bad boy up at night and then i basically is my little cooling system during the day the shades are closed and uh that's that's it there's no ac unit i mean the fan i turn the fan off as much as i can i don't necessarily uh i don't tell anybody but i don't pay the electric because it's all inclusive so i don't you know so but i try not to abuse it still because i don't know where it's going from um during the heat uh during the winter time though i really don't control the heat at all there's no control it's the building so i don't know who actually it's the company or the whoever the owners are of the ability they control the heat and and uh so it's it's it turns on and off sporadically during the winter time that's it i just try to you know keep it cool in the summer and uh you know stay warm in the winter just trying to survive you know and that's it's my story right now yeah yeah it's uh it's this is like this is a rough summer this is a very yeah it's kind of raining either so it's pretty it gets pretty hot because we need the rain yeah thank you so much subject i'll just uh mention i don't know if it's the case with yours but i've lived in a couple places where you can't even put a a c unit in the window because they're weird windows is that the case with yours oh no i see uh one of my neighbors has a a c unit um so uh it's not you know i just didn't get it yeah which they're like hundreds of dollars yeah right yeah the other issue yeah i'll just share a really quick story because there are so many places around that don't have windows that will allow for one or who don't provide an ac unit when i was pregnant i lived at um pomegranate lane and you can't have a unit in there and it was so hot and i was so pregnant my kid was born september second so i was like a major at the end of august and i ended up googling desperate similar to you said right in the middle of the night one night when i was just sweating with this that's right i yelled and um i googled what do pregnant women in india do i was like that's gotta be the hottest place i can imagine and i found out that this is what they do or not pregnant in particular but everyone wet their sheets and then puts it on them wet and actually the evaporation like cools you and it magically works so now i you know galileo has grown up thinking my eight-year-old that like everybody just like goes to bed with a wet sheet you know in the summer because that's our our cooling system yeah i put a wet towel over my fan there you go my fan and then that cools it down as well all right over your head something like that during the time to cool down nice so i'm in that club with you yes i need you to come help us do a fan system yeah the wet towel club hey just youtube i youtube has everything folks youtube and now i have all of all our problems baldy i have a climate action group to go to now thank you awesome thank you sad jerk yeah thank you thanks a lot um and so i'm gonna just hold for a sec i just want to offer there's some great youtube videos on how to make an air conditioner with ice that you just put in seems pretty cool nice so i'd love to we there's some themes that are coming up and then we're starting to feel i think don talked a little bit and because he kaya has talked a little about some of the themes um and i'd like to just for us to try and highlight some of those themes um uh as we go through the process of creating a plan uh there's so many different things to do um that'd be valuable i think for us to kind of set some like okay these are what we're trying to work on when we're doing all these different things we're gonna we're gonna identify a few things there's some something about uh um you know reducing possible there's something about working in ways that don't uh that don't uh advantage landowners and don't advantage uh people without means to support certain activities i'd like to sort of get some sense of where we might take that like what are you hearing what do you think about what what are the i i use the word principles but it's like what what are the like what is it we're aiming for here when we're trying to do some of these things yeah jake i just want to quick mention stephanie did not get a chance to share on the first question so i'm fine with moving on just in the interest of time it's okay so i think one of those themes um what you were getting to was community access fair community access um and getting pretty technical or or all limited i i'll try community solar is sort of an initiative to get projects going and the state is incentivizing all backgrounds to community access through these smart program which is something that is maybe for a second conversation but that's the current incentive program in massachusetts so there are fair community um access uh adders is what they're called so there's the standard incentive and then there's actually adders on top of that so a company like a next amp would be an aggregator for multiple tenants or multiple communities to develop a large project and then have multiple off takers so that was pretty technical uh and i'm gonna i'm gonna push you all right so great bunch of technical things we can do this we can do this we can do this what's the goal the goal five words 100 renewable energy okay stephanie you have something you want to add to that yeah i was just going to say um you know one of the themes that i heard too was also um you know um housing that isn't well insulated um and so building envelopes that are inadequate are you know make all the difference and so i feel like there needs to be a way to address um that needs to address uh you know the existing housing stock because people are living there and i think of someone like you know jen who owns her place and yet can't do anything about the building envelope which just you know is just wrong you know and i just feel like there should be some ways to address that somehow um and i know that's really super challenging i know i'm saying that like it's you know just a thing you can do and it's it's not an easy thing you can do but somehow i wonder um it seems like a lot of the the incentives often exist for you know individual homeowners but what about complexes like i don't see a lot of incentives for complexes and really that's where there's a lot of need so it seems like there should be a way to address that that's one thing um and then i last talked about my second thing was but that's a pretty big one why don't you hold on to that one here second thing let's give it a sec and then river i guess what's coming up for me in this conversation is um you know don touched on it and because he's kind of uh of the disparity between resources and access to um we're talking specifically about clean energy here but um we could probably broaden out but we'll keep it to that so i think to try to address your question jen it's something about equitable access not necessarily equal and the image that comes to mind i don't know if any of you are familiar with it but there's an illustration of three kids who are trying to watch a baseball game from behind the fence and one's one's short and one's kind of medium and one's tall and um and the tall one can already see over the fence and and the medium one um can just barely and the short one can't and uh in one instance you can create equality by giving them each a box to stand on um and and that feels right like everybody should should be equal um but then you actually the illustration shows them standing on the box and the in the short one still can't see over the fence and the medium one can and the tall one also can but could before anyway um so the question of equity is that they each get the box that they need so the short one gets two boxes and the medium one maybe gets one and then and the tall one doesn't actually need a box so there's something in that it's such a simple unbeautiful illustration of equity versus equality so i'm thinking if there could be some kind of needs assessment around access to clean energy um whether and you know with with a bunch of different criteria related to okay do you rent or do you own um uh there would undoubtedly be some income or some kind of wealth um indicator but to try to understand the needs of each of the individuals in the community uh and there may be a hundred problems that i'm not anticipating with that but it would be interesting to understand how um did the the access profile or something um around people's ability to access clean energy and and renewable energy thanks for during this next pause i just want to um make sure we're leaving space for Jen and Cedric and Elini because we can't see your hands so i'm going to ask us to take in a little bit of an extra pause here in case one of you wants to um join okay Elini all right um so i think one of the things that would be great i definitely because i'm a renter um you know being the process of buying a house for a long time but it is hard um for some of us so but i've been renting i want to say since i was what 18 so again i don't know i forgot how old i am um for a long time and i feel like we don't have a lot of rights as renters um everything is very hard we have to comply but whatever they tell us to do and i think it's especially hard to rent in a condominium where not only do i have to go by what my landlord has to say but also comply with the property managers it's like two different steps that i need to take every time i i want to do some sort of improvement um to where i'm renting um so definitely i think um renters right will be something that would be great for us to work on and um accessibility because like i do want to be able to have um economy saving um light saving um features in my house but i cannot afford that so either i have to go get it myself or beg my landlord who won't do it so it's you know kind of that situation like if things were more affordable then i'll be like well forget you i'm gonna do it because i am the one that's paying at the end of the month um but when it's everything else is so much more expensive it makes it even harder for us to have to do that so that's kind of my two cents on that thanks alania that that was a beautiful statement of of sort of what river was sort of trying to get at uh you made it very clear uh um gen or cedric you got something you want to say hi sorry i was losing every losing the connection with the video so yeah and feel free to turn it off and still speak oh and i i didn't include my pronouns shiver hers um no i think that you know along with what we're talking about with access and equity i mean in you know stephanie said it just like you know in the how do we make it um possible for people living in the complexes to participate in any of this and um because uh you know you feel just like powerless basically to participate you know there's just like all these opportunities for you know yeah homeowners essentially and so yeah and i think for things to really shift it's going to be you know business owners or like property managers you know um it's you know it's like it's capitalism it's like what's it gonna i mean right now it's just you know like like good will you know like oh we're gonna take we're gonna let like our bottom line is going to take a hit so we can do this good thing but i just feel like there has to be policy or to incentivize um business owners to make these changes and that um the good you know it's like this is good for everyone this is good i mean it's like you know it's it's like for the planet for all living beings and animate and non-animate beings like forever and that like yeah i mean you know capitalism doesn't like fit the model of you know sort of ecological wellness and uh yeah so that's where it always sort of comes to from you can i ask you a little bit more there jen um so one of the things we haven't said right now is that one of our aims is to uh is to help to help beings others and humans as well is is that what you're saying i'm saying would you like to say it more strongly i would say i mean it's all like it's all one like we can't really separate ourselves from the natural world and you know we've created this system that's worked for a while but it's not gonna work forever i think we all know that like the bottom line is not you know it's just like there's a limited growth and like we can't keep doing it this way so like what's it gonna take and you know it takes an emergency or you know we're sort of in an emergency and anyway i you know i'm sure i'm pushing to the choir here but yeah like what policy changes have to happen to shift you know the minds and hearts of like i don't know it's not just minds and hearts i mean people can have their minds and hearts in like you know the right place but it's it's really about um the system shifting so that like you know whatever has to happen so that the landowners the property managers business owners can um make you know whatever make the money they need to make and also um do right like for the good of you know everyone and i you know i don't it's not the planet it's well it is it's it's us i mean the planet's gonna be fine like once we're all you know after i mean i don't want to be pessimistic but you get what i'm saying i just i don't know i think it always just comes down to that that shift as far as like the equity piece and the access piece so um i'm gonna let Stephanie talk she has been very patient i well i didn't say much earlier about you know um where i live and how i feel in my house and all that but i did want to say i so i came to home ownership very late in life and so i was a renter from um well when i was really young my parents are rented and we lived in east boston and um it was a very small apartment and we had very little control over anything in our house um and um my sister slept on a couch in our living room until she was 17 and um so it was a very small place and i remember it always in the summertime being excruciatingly hot and you know we had fans and opened the windows but there was not a lot you could do um especially in the city it was just brutal um and then from 18 till about 45 i was a renter as an adult in my adult years and um so i even as a homeowner now you know we own our home and we heat with oil because um we couldn't afford to just revamp everything you know we're we're sort of piecemealing it as we can as we go along but we couldn't just afford to um to just change things over so um even though i do the work that i do i heat my home with oil right now um so i just wanted to say that and um but then i wanted to say that um you know when i look at these themes and i look at you know um the use of natural resources i i agree with jen on some level um that it really takes kind of an emergency to really get action because the way systems are set up things will just continue and i think that's part of why we're trying to do this in a different way is because to affect change you have to change you have to change things up so um you know the ways that we're having this conversation about talking you know that we're starting to talk a little bit about policy too and these types of things are really important and um i know that was a little bit all over the map but it's just kind of where my head is because everybody said so many really great things that got me thinking and so my my thought process is you know sort of in a million different directions so um that's that's really all i don't know that that was very helpful but uh that's just what i was thinking i wanted to bring up something that hasn't come up tonight um which is health one person mentioned like soot being in their lungs um my eight-year-old has allergies to dust and moles and we have carpet and you know like alini said these ancient air conditioners and heaters and fans and um Galileo just has like so much congestion every night and i really feel like it impacts Galileo's sleep but i know that breathing impacts like heart regulation and all these other things and now Galileo's taking medicine every day and i know so many families that really suffer um because of the way the complexes don't care about the mold or the dust or the carpet or whatever with their kids with asthma um our neighbors both the mom and the middle kid have like asthma that ends them up in the hospital um at least a couple times a year because of the way that the dust and the mold um intertwine in their unit and and that's something that i hear from people in all the complexes really appreciate the um themes that people are bringing up i feel like um i'd really like for uh an an emphasis on landlords i think that you know 40 percent are rental and we have um the possibility of really being coming up with some creative solutions for how to make healthy homes out of our you know the apartment and kind of many kind of minimum kind of minimums um enamorized that will affect a lot of people so that that's a priority for me to really focus on multifamily possibilities and um Lynn knows that um she and they both know well the difficulties with mess save and um it's not a solution to a lot of these problems it it it does not do the deep work it's really low hanging fruit that that they'll they'll do and you know my condominium also mess they would not pay for the amount of insulation that they could add to it um because it doesn't meet their criteria for how much of a difference it would make um so yeah i think that it's one of the things i'd like to do with the community choice aggregation is um have opportunities for incentives for both homeowners and um landlords to fix things for um that wouldn't be paid for by other programs thanks andra and that experience is thank you for sharing that experience as well um it is 720 uh it's probably time for us to sort of wrap this up um palini cedric i think jen lost service for a minute and had to run yeah but she might be back on uh anything you want you would like to sort of say to wrap up this before we sort of close the the conversation and do a little bit of closing sends back go for it cedar hey uh no i'm just i'm all set i'm just listening and uh really just want to hear hear what people have to say so thank you thanks jen we just uh hope palini and i was just going to um say the same thing that it was a lot of information um a lot of things to kind of take in and process and be aware that we that i normally don't um so this was a lot of great information and takeaways awesome thank you thank you jen anything you sort of want to share out of that conversation you think is important to land on yeah sorry i i actually lost connection and i had to come back on my phone so um i unfortunately i missed a piece um but um i'm just grateful to be part of this and looking forward to you know kind of seeing what what can come of it you know like what we can do to you know actually move the needle on some of the bigger um you know barriers to to access and participation um to everybody's participation in you know clean you know accessing um renewables and clean energy so thank you great thank you thank you jen and um i just want to reiterate uh gizikaya's comment earlier that if there are things you want to say if there are things you want to try and understand better if they're for everybody and if there are things you think wow i've been listening to this conversation it's finally sunk in it's like i need to say this um reach out to stephanie reach out to gizikaya reach out to dwayne and andra uh and uh say and ask by all means uh and the other thing is that we have we will have two more meetings uh that were scheduled we're scheduled to have the meetings are not scheduled uh it'll be probably probably trying to schedule it around the end of the month uh to give us time to put all the notes together and make sure everybody has time to ask the things and we talked about putting together a video about the community choice aggregation it's like okay some things we gotta do before we get to the next thing um we want to give ourselves time and not uh get out of control um and then uh the sort of the final thought is that um we uh the there's sort of there's a team that has put this this meeting together and that team is uh dwayne and andra and stephanie and uh lauren and gizikaya and then myself and um and thinking about sort of what do we where do we how do we start the next meeting we thought that it might be great to ask a question for you to take home and ask some of your friends and then bring back that information and so we've sort of we had a couple of questions that we were toying with but I'm gonna let I'm gonna put lauren on the spot and uh let her sort of ask the question we had originally thought about asking a question about heating and cooling and we've kind of kind of done that I think pretty well so I think we're gonna head us we're suggesting heading a slightly different direction uh lauren yeah definitely um so and gizikaya feel free to jump in as well um but given the great conversation this evening around um what I called earlier the split incentive problem but around sort of this tension between renters rights and and landlords and the role of property managers and business companies business managers um we were thinking of asking folks to ask your neighbors or your friends um sort of what barriers they've faced as tenants in the past or um if they know of folks who have and um what would really be important to think about when it comes to um to to resolving that issue to um strengthening renters rights to um working with landlords if you are a landlord yourself then um thinking about sort of how you come to that angle um or if you know folks who are landlords how they think about that issue um so yeah if if folks want to reflect on the the renter landlord relationship and their experience with that um and and how that might be improved to expand access and um access to clean energy awesome thank you uh Lauren nicely put so we're going to ask you to do that uh kind of as homework for the committee uh for the task group uh to ask a few folks what do I think what do you think um and then um we'll gather that back up uh Gzikai will reach out to everybody about gathering that information back up uh and so that we have a way to share uh at the beginning of the next meeting um I'd also like to acknowledge that I kind of pushed Dwayne and Andra out of the way in setting up that question and um I'd like to offer you the uh the last word my last word would be just um appreciate that question I think it's it's a good question to pose and I'm all in favor of moving forward in that direction but my last word is really just appreciation for um listening and learning from everybody today um I think that was my main job other than my um seven minutes of maybe two cumbersome language uh but nonetheless um really um learned a lot uh took in a lot um that'll be really important for the committee um and look forward to their next next session and the one after that so and thanks Jim and and team for um facilitating such a good discussion yeah I really want to appreciate the um focus on stories I think that that both helps us to know you know who's in the room um but also it's uh gives us the the ability to be very concrete in whatever solutions we come up with um so I like the idea of coming back with some stories thank you everybody I am um really interested actually in having one to one conversations people so um if you but you know are open to that please you know let whoever your contact is because it's Haya or Stephanie no um because I think it would be really rich to pull more um stories out of people with with more time we don't have a lot just to our meetings absolutely and I want to offer to everyone that there are 15 community leaders who are working with this project total and they're all as incredible as Jen Cedric and Elini and um we have a lot of resources and information to share so anyone who wants to have more opportunity to talk with myself or one of the other community leaders you can also ask Stephanie um about that fantastic thank you very much anything else I just want to thank everybody myself too and say that this was really fantastic this is the second of our task group meetings and they've both been just really wonderful and thank you everybody for sharing so much and so honestly so great to meet some of you that we didn't know before nice to see old faces awesome so we'll see you all in three weeks or so great thanks everybody thank you everybody thank you