 Fuel Dealers Association, Vermont Fuel Dealers Association would be, if it is, a trade association representing heating oil and propane sellers, and as well as heating service companies. We provide training for over 1,000 heating technicians a year, and offer a variety of regulatory assistance for both consumers and for our member companies. With me today is Peter Bourne of Bourne's Energy in Morrisville, Judy Tarnovich of Proctor Gas in Proctor, Vermont, KC Coda of Code and Coda Oil in Bellos Falls, Vermont, and Manny Fletcher of FILE Brothers in Orwell, Vermont. I, if it's OK with the chair, I'd like to provide a little bit of background about our industry and talk about a few specific bills that allow VFJ's board president, Manny Fletcher, to offer some testimony, and as well as Peter, Judy, and KC for our reflections on what we do here in Vermont and the value that we think we bring to the state. Behind me, you'll see some of the people that work for fuel companies in Vermont. There are thousands of employees that deliver oil and propane and provide heating service in Vermont. And these are the types of jobs they do. It's hard work. It's skilled work. It's well-paid work. One of the things that we also do at Vermont Fuel Dealers Association is we help interpret the regulations for consumers and for the fuel dealers. In 2011, the State of Vermont ordered the Department of, excuse me, the legislature asked the State of Vermont through the Department of Environmental Conservation to ask tank regulations. So we made sure that all 120,000 heating oil tanks out there were safe to fill. And that was an important regulation. It's a regulation that we worked on with the department, with the legislature. And in 2017, we mandated the State of Vermont and mandated inspections. And that had the effect of reducing the amount of spills. It also allowed me to go out and apply for and get a federal grant through the National Oil Heat Research Alliance to incentivize people to take out non-compliant oil tanks and put in new oil tanks. So if you were today, go out and replace your old oil tank with a new oil tank, you could qualify for a $250 rebate through that association that VFDA has with the National Oil Heat Research Alliance. And more about that information is on there. You may have heard me say this before. But the reason why I bring it up is because when we talk about bills in this committee, one of them, H462, the Act Related to Climate Change, with regards to a citizen being able to take a private right of action against an entity if they feel aggrieved by climate change, I frankly, I worry about my little trade association. We are incentivizing people to use fossil fuels. Fuel dealers that sell fossil fuels. The testimony from Luke Martland shoved me to my core. The idea that if we continue to sell fossil fuels past the goals that become statute, that we are, in fact, liable. So that's, I'm happy to talk more about H462, but to get through the other testimony, you know, in 2011, the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association brought an issue before the last lecture. And we worked extensively with renewable energy in Vermont and other environmental groups to pass the Clean and Efficient Oil Lead Initiative, which is to change the content of our fuel radically, to reduce the sulfur content from as much as 2,000 parts per million to, like to where it is now, to 15 parts per million. The oil heat that we sell in Vermont is clean. You heard testimony last week from Mr. Ebslin, who was a brilliant businessman. We talked about dirty oil and black smokestacks. Those do not exist. We do not sell that fuel. We sell only ultra-low sulfur heating oil. Why? Because legislature mandated it. It passed a law in 2011. And as of July 1, 2018, every drop of oil has to be ultra-low sulfur, eliminating, nearly all, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. That's that scale that used to be cleaned out of all those heat exchangers that I showed you a couple of months back. That is gone. There's no black smokestacks anymore, contrary to what Mr. Ebslin testified. Now, what he did testify, and what might have been lost, is the fact that you also effectively set a deadline for eliminating the worst of the worst fuel, which is number six fuel, sometimes called bunker oil, sometimes called residual fuel, or heavy oil. This is the stuff that goes into ships. This is the stuff that goes into large manufacturing facilities. This stuff is dirty stuff, right? Very high sulfur dioxide. And Mr. Ebslin's company is successfully replacing this, not in all cases. It's being replaced in some areas, particularly in one very large facility in Chittin County, with two oil rather than natural gas. But in most cases, this oil is the thing of the past. We've reduced it by 85%, 90% over the past 20 years. It will be eliminated. It will be eliminated in very short order. The stats from the Energy Information Administration will only go up to 2016. But in 2016, we were less than 2 million gallons from a high of 14 million gallons. We will be at zero. If we're not already there, we will be, and I expect the stats to reflect that. Residual oil has to be heated to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, just to keep it liquid enough to burn. This is the bad stuff, right? So at a large manufacturing plant, they are now using CNG, truck gas, cleaner. They're using clean burning ultra low sulfur heating oil, or they're using propane. And that's a good thing for the environment. And something that, frankly, you're never going to see a press release from it. But we have eliminated 14 million gallons, just because of action taken by the legislature, to eliminate that fuel. Just as a facade, I ask you, so what about Amtrak, or freight trains? So the locomotives use this. Diodeasal. Ultra low sulfur, clean burning, diodeasal. I've noticed when I've gone to White River Junction that there's a locomotive sitting there running all the time. And they say it's running to keep the fuel warm. Don't even think about that. Don't speak for the train. That's in the side. But interesting. I don't know the answer to that question. But in all cases, CNG is not replacing that awful heavy oil. In many cases, it's oil heat. And why is that? Well, the fact of the matter is we have something called firm and interruptible natural gas. So we know this. We've seen this slide before. You have, as Mr. Murray with Vermont Gas will tell you, we have firm customers and we have interruptible customers. Firm customers are the small businesses and homes. And the interruptible customers are the large users of pipe natural gas, which include manufacturing plants, include power plants, large buildings, and institutions. So they are interruptible customers. They get a better rate. But they also have to have a backup source of fuel. That is not trucked CNG. Trucked CNG is an interruptible customer. So when a large manufacturing plant in Essex, if they are put on interruptible, what are they relying? Well, they used to rely on sick soil. Now they rely on clean burning ultra low sulfur heating oil, not CNG, for their backup source. So that's a long way of saying liquid fuels plays an important role in our energy infrastructure, particularly when it comes to electricity. Go ahead. I have a question. Why do you rely on? So CNG and Mr. Murray will correct me if I'm wrong here. But CNG at the facility at NG Advantage is just like the Global Foundry's Plant, just like the hospital, an interruptible pipe natural gas customer. So when it gets really cold, it doesn't happen every year. But it can happen during the bomb site clone. Those customers of pipe natural gas have to rely on a backup supply. But since NG Advantage is an interruptible customer, their trucks, they're not available for that. They need storage of two oil or propane in order to flip on the switch when pipe gas is interrupted. Compress natural gas is trucked in. But even though it's trucked in, it is an interruptible customer through Vermont gas systems. Scott, to follow up on Laura's comment, if they had trucks sitting there full of compressed natural gas, then they could use that, right? So energy advantage is interruptible. But the trucks that are out there aren't. That's true. But you'll find that, whether you're Global Foundry's or the UVM Medical Center, you use more than a truck. You use more than a truck, and you need tanks. We have the best energy. We talk about energy storage everywhere we go, right? We have the best energy storage systems. It's been around for 120 years. They're called tanks. They store a tremendous amount of energy and a small amount of energy. And it's safe for these stores. So to conclude with the infrastructure, this is an important point. The power plants. So we're witcher-peaking. We use the most amount of electricity in January, typically. So when that happens, we rely on energy throughout the grid to provide enough electricity to supply us when it's very cold out, right? So we rely more and more on natural gas for our power production during peak times in the winter. But there's a time when natural gas is interrupted, and those power plants aren't getting their interruptible customers. And they rely on those power plants. Rely, they're dual-cycle power plants that use both natural gas. But when natural gas is interrupted, use clean-burning ultralosulfur, diesel fuel, or heating oil. And that is such to a point that during the bomb site clone, when there were 15 days of below zero temperatures, New England power producers needed 84 million gallons of clean-burning ultralosulfur, heating oil, to replace the natural gas that they weren't getting to create enough power to keep the lights on throughout New England for just 15 days, these 84 million gallons. By comparison, residential heating oil customers in Vermont use about 70 million gallons. They needed a year supply of Vermont's heating oil in just 15 days to keep the lights on. We are a critical part of our energy infrastructure, not just for heating homes, but for powering businesses and keeping the lights on. I'm trying to understand that interruptible, non-interruptible. Sure. So I believe I get the natural gas part of that. But you're saying even trucked CNG is interruptible. Is number two oil interruptible? We are a hierarchy of customers there. We are the backbone of both the electrical infrastructure and the heating infrastructure. Because our product, you know, one gallon, 138,000 BTUs is so transportable, it's safe. And the fact of the matter is that without it, the large power producers, not just in New England, but throughout the nation, would be in trouble without the availability of natural gas, which now provides the majority of our electricity, not Vermont, throughout less than New England. So that interruptibility is strictly a function of supply. Not enough pressure to go through the pipe, right? I'm not sure if I can... There's only so much in the pipeline. So when the cold, cold weather creates a draw on it where they don't have enough to take care of customers, it goes on, they have to use the standby. Compressed natural gas, they back their trucks up to a pipeline, they compress that gas off the pipeline into their trucks. That is why they're there. They don't have a storage facility where they load their gas like we do. Theirs comes off the pipeline. So when the pipeline goes on standby, they're not able to back up, compress that input. That was a piece of it. Okay, I just... That's what I thought. And this is not a Vermont gas, thank you for that, Manny. And this is not a Vermont gas issue. This is throughout the country. This is how pipelines work. Back to electrical clout and heat pumps. Because... Yeah, I had a question, yeah. So I don't take issue with anything you've said about being an essential part of our energy infrastructure. I play a valuable part in that. What I do take issue with is your characterization of fuel loss queen. Because even though you have ultra low sulfur, and it does reduce sulfur dioxide emissions and NOX emissions and things like that, it still produces carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas, which is contributing to climate change. What do you propose to do to offset the amount of carbon dioxide that's being produced in terms of heating fuel, diesel fuel, and transportation, that sort of thing. When Vermont gas, electric utilities, we have... They're regulated. We have programs in there that require them to help customers be more efficient, reduce their energy consumption, things like that. What is the fossil fuel industry being non-regulated fuels, doing to do the same thing? That's a great point, Representative Anatoche. And one of the things that we have done, one of the things that was part of the cleaning green oil heat initiative in 2011, was to increase the levels of biodiesel content, renewable, distillate into the supply of diesel fuel and to heating oil. One of the presenters after me is one of the largest sellers of biodiesel in the state of Vermont, and can answer some of those questions about the renewable content fuel and how we are as an industry, our goal is to be 100% renewable, to be able to sell by 2050 a 100% renewable, distillate product for both on-road vehicles and for heating. That's the industry's goal through the National Heat Research Alliance. And what about customers? We passed in the house a couple of weeks ago the weatherization bill, which adds two cents per gallon to home heating fuels and biodiesel in order to provide more low-income weatherization funds. That to me is an important program that would help homeowners, well, basically homeowners, low-income homeowners, reduce their fuel consumption and thereby reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. There was a lot of objection to that and it didn't pass what a solid majority, but there were a lot of objections to it. In the meantime, since that happened, fuel oil prices have increased by five cents, which is twice as much as the increase, two and a half times as much as the increase that we were proposing to help low-income homeowners. Now, say that's market pressures that caused the increase in prices, but we don't have control over market pressures like that. We do have control over the kind of revenue we can produce with a minuscule tax to help people reduce their heating bills. Besides my question is can you get behind programs like that to say, this is a good thing? So, in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, we have supported the reauthorization of the existing fuel tax. It's a tax that we have paid for nearly 30 years now supporting the low-income authorization and I know you have been a champion of the weatherization programs. We understand that the advantages for a homeowner for health and safety, particularly when it comes to issues related to carbon monoxide, to mold issues related to damp homes. We know the weatherization people. We've seen their work and they help install also fuel burning heating systems in the middle of the night in the winter through the emergency system program. We understand that. We just don't think that the tax should be increased. That said, you asked about other programs. People don't call Peter in Casey's and Judy's and Manning's office and ask to burn more fuel. They want to burn less. Everyone's selling fuel, not everyone. Nearly all fuel sellers provide service. They have to. They have to have someone on call in the middle of the night and pay them time and a half to get out there and fix something if there's no heat. They also provide service and upgrade equipment, provide more efficient equipment. Many fuel dealers, not all, but many fuel dealers also do weatherization services for non-low income for people that aren't qualified. They understand that's part of their business model. And without a taxpayer funded program, without a rate payer funded program, we've seen our gallons drop dramatically. In the 1970s, the average home uses 1,700 gallons of heating oil. Now we're 680. We'll be 500 soon. A lot because of cold climate heat pumps, a lot because of wood stoves, a lot because of better weatherization, better equipment, better fuel. We understand the future is not selling more fuel to fewer people. It's selling less fuel to more people. And that's why we got behind the biodiesel effort. That's why we got behind the ultra low sulfur effort is because we realized that we can't sell more fuel to our customers. That said, you install a new piece of equipment today, a new burner, a new bucket burner, a new rail burner, a new boiler, a new furnace, even one that's just middle of the road. You are light years ahead of where you are if you're taking out a 30 or 40 year old piece of equipment. It's not different from buying a new Hyundai today is gonna be drive a whole lot better than a Porsche bought in 1970. So we see our gallons going down. We see our receipts going down. Do we need to create a rate payer funded program to increase that? We don't think so. And I understand that there's a disagreement. So we're not gonna debate this. Okay, if you have a question, all right. I'll just follow up with a comment about how electric utilities, regulated utilities under tier three are required to do something about reducing fossil fuel usage. And the unregulated utilities that deliver fuels don't have that same requirement. So that's why a two cent increase is not a terrible idea. Isn't that how it works? To get back to some of the big, big ideas that I've certainly been around for the last 13 years I've been doing this, which is the move to back to the future, right? In the 1950s and 1960s we talked about electrifying the homes, the gold medallion homes that Ronald Reagan took sponsored from GE and all that stuff and how we're gonna have electricity that's too cheap to meter thanks to the nuclear power plants. Of course that didn't come to pass. And at one point, oil heat represented 90% of the heat in homes. That has changed, that has changed, obviously. But we're seeing a return to electric heat through coal climate heat pumps. In coal climate heat pumps, they work. They provide air conditioning in the summer, efficient air conditioning in the summer, which more and more people want. More than 60% of our homes in Vermont are hydronically heated. They're boilers working through baseboard radiation. And they don't have ducting. They can't install a central air conditioner. So they have the window rattler or they have a coal climate heat pump which can produce an efficient source of air conditioning in the summer. It also is a space heater so it can take the chill off and provide heat in the fall and the spring. When it is zero degrees out or below zero out, those condensers are outside. Remember we're taking the ambient air and we're either turning it into cold air or turning it into hot air. So in the winter time, when those condensers freeze, the only way to unfreeze them, other than get out there with a blow torch, is to turn on the air conditioning. So in order to unfreeze the condensers when it's very cold, you are turning on the air conditioning in an already cold house. So this is why it doesn't work all the time. So in other words, electric heat, unless you're home, now new home construction at zero construction, absolutely, but in most homes in Vermont, you are still going to need another source of heat and that's going to generally be fire. It's going to be wood, wood pellets, it's going to be gas, it's going to be oil. And the issue is it's not only are we using air conditioning to unfreeze electric heat pumps in the middle of the winter, that electricity is coming from, remember peak demand and the interrupt of power, it's coming from oil. So we're using oil-fired air conditioners to unfreeze electric heat pumps in the middle of winter. That's a long way of getting to the fact that H51, which is in H51, which I think the intent of it is to stop the natural gas pipeline from expanding. And that may be true, I don't know the intent, but it has a very specific exemptions for tanks that are hooked to homes for heat, that's appropriate, that's a very specific exemption for tanks that are hooked to pumps for people to fill up their cars. So we've exempted the service station that has the pumps that fill up your gas or diesel fuel, we've exempted the tanks that are hooked to homes, but what is not explicitly exempt in what a attorney might view as fossil fuel infrastructure are the bulk storage facilities, which we, before it gets to your tank, before it gets to your car, or the tank that feeds the car, is all of the very large 20,000, 30,000 gallon and up tanks that we need to get the fuel from Albany or from Montreal or from Portsmouth or from Springfield Maths and put it there so it's near your home in time for us to deliver it in order for your home to stay warm. So if you were to proceed with H-51, I would ask that the bulk storage facilities that store propane, gasoline, heating oil, kerosene, if I say propane, propane heating oil, diesel fuel gasoline be exempt explicitly as is tanks that are connected to a home or a building. I have a question just for clarification. So you're probably aware where I live, there are 100, we have NITOS fuel oil there, and they were very large tank at their place, which I presume they used to fill their trucks for delivery. Is that what you are referencing? That is what I'm referencing. So the... That is not exempted as part of this? Yes, so what it specifically calls out is new construction. So in essence, this is where it gets challenging as I represent all fuel dealers, but if you have a bulk plant and you're pretty satisfied with your storage for the next 30 years, or if you're in the gas pipe lines path in Rutland, this bill, as Mr. Ebslin suggested, would actually eliminate your competition. However, as we want more choices and more choices, bring lower prices, be a bit in and tanks don't last forever, the ability to replace them. In the interest of continuing to sell gasoline, heating oil, diesel fuel, and propane, we would ask that that be removed and shall this bill go forward? But then back to the other point, but perhaps the intent of the bill is not necessarily to make it easier for us to sell heating oil, propane, gasoline, and diesel fuel. And that really gets at the core of some of the stuff that I hear in the building, which is that we're a drain on the economy and this is a good thing. And what I'd like to, before I segue to my boss by many Fletcher, is to say that, yes, we don't produce any oil or gas here. It comes from, for off places, Pennsylvania, and Texas, and Quebec. But this computer came from China. I'm sure it was bought at a local store. Lots of this stuff, except for cheese and milk, maple syrup, we import a lot of goods here. In beer. Sorry, in beer. And it is frustrating, it's frustrating to think that there is a belief that we're a drain on the economy when we sincerely believe we fuel the economy. And if it's okay, I'll be around for questions, of course, but it's okay. I'd like to turn it over to Nandy Fletcher to talk a little bit about the contributions. Can I just one more question, Mr. Chair? So just going back to the source names. Yes. So if we don't exempt the storage tanks, I would like to understand what that would mean, because we obviously would not have a, even in an ideal world where we're not using any fossil fuels at all, that's not gonna happen, right? So there's gonna be some transition. So we do not exempt fossil, those big tanks, what would, how, what would the companies do? Like to, in order to serve their customers? Well, would it be, in my understanding, and again, it's a long way off, but if this bill as written first draft becomes law tomorrow, it would mean anyone with an existing infrastructure, as long as that infrastructure was around, it would be fine. It would mean anyone that wanted to expand their operation, if Hannah and Greg Naito wanted to expand into Bennington, they don't wanna go over Route 9, so they wanna put a tank over on the other side of North Bennington, then they would essentially, you have to get a federal permit, you have to get a state permit, and if I were running the Department of Environmental Conservation, and the slot was passed, I'd say to Greg and Hannah, yes, no, you can't do this. The existing tank. Existing tank. Is grandfathered. That's my assumption. Again, we're dealing with the first draft of a bill. That's my assumption. Thank you. Is it okay with the chair? Okay. Please, man. Good morning. I appreciate this opportunity. My name is Mandy Fletcher, I'm currently employed as Operations and Compliance Manager at Files Brothers Incorporated in Orwell, Vermont. I've been in the propane industry for about 35 years. We're a small family, well, not small, but we're a family-owned propane company that serves Rutland and Addison counties in Vermont. We do a lot of residential, commercial, and agricultural. We have a lot of farms that we service. I've been on the board of directors for VFDA for 16 years, and I'm the current president. I was born and raised in Vermont. This was my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, and my great-great-grandfather. I come from a long line of Vermont farmers. We ended up relocating to Montpelier after the farm and house were burnt in 49. I grew up, like I said, in Montpelier. My family was blue-collar. We were proud to do a hard day's work and get paid an honest wage for it. My dad worked two jobs most of my life. He worked construction. He worked as a machine operator at a place called Capital City Press, which was a local printing company, which is no longer here. My mother worked in a plastics plant called Ready Plastics here in Montpelier, which is also no longer here. I graduated as Stone's Throw from here, from Montpelier High School. In 1980, college was not in my future. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I didn't feel like I should use my father's hard-earned money to pay for something, but I didn't want to know what I wanted to do. At 18, I became a part of the Vermont workforce. I worked construction. I worked retail. I worked at a ski area. I cooked in a restaurant. It was a hard time to find a job in 1980, and I balanced around, stayed employed, but couldn't find that one thing that I wanted to do in the career that I was looking for. In 84, I was offered a job as a propane delivery driver. It was a hard job, hard work. I was making $4.75 an hour, plus benefits. I listened, I worked hard, did what I was told, and I used the work ethic that my parents put in me to advance. I eventually became a manager. I've been a manager for about 18 years now. Because of the propane industry, I'm a homeowner, I'm a consumer, I'm a taxpayer, and I put two children through college for something I'm proud of. The industry's been good to me, and that's why it's so frustrating to hear repeated over and over that the products and services that we sell are not contributing to the local economy. There are currently over 1200 CDL operators with hazmat endorsements in Vermont. There's 2567 Vermont certified gas technicians, 794 certified oil technicians, and there's over 1,000 customer service representatives in Vermont. These are all working Vermonters, making a decent living, buying local, paying taxes, donating and volunteering to local charities, so they're coaching their children's sports teams, and they're putting their kids through college. I understand that there are a lot of people in the state house that want to eliminate the use of petroleum products, including the fuels that we sell. But for our customers, that depend on us. The service that we provide is not a luxury, it's a necessity of life. Vermont represents a tiny fraction of the global fossil fuel consumption. We have the lowest greenhouse gas emissions in any state in the country, according to the EPA. Will eliminating a small amount of fossil fuels consumed in Vermont change be worth the cost, the cost of Vermont? Make no mistakes, it'll cost over 5,000 jobs in our industry alone. The cost of everything will go up, trucking tobacco products in and out of the state will go up. That'll cause businesses to leave the state. It'd take jobs with them. Vermont would become too expensive for the average for monitor, and people would need to leave the state. As I said earlier, my father, his father, his father, and his father, we're all born here. They're all buried here too. It troubles me to think that I may have to leave this state to find work in my field. Because of a plan that will make the already cleanest state in the country a little cleaner, which would amount to very little on a global scale. Again, I thank you for your time. One more misconception that I think I hear is that a lot of people think the money that's spent on fossil fuels goes to big companies and the large, large companies. But there's a lot of it that goes right here in Vermont, and stays are here in Vermont. And we feel that we are important to the industry, to the state. Again, I thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry, I didn't catch your first name. Manny? Manny. It's Manny Oll, but I go by Manny. Thank you for your testimony, Manny. I have a question for you. So we have done a lot of work around efficiency and alternative fuels over the years in continuing to do that. And I support that work. And I also support our small businesses. I would have to imagine that that work is impacting your members. It is. And so my question for you is, are your members doing anything to diversify their revenue streams, their business models that you can tell us about? We're a lot of members that are getting into selling other products. Like I said, Peter sells the bio diesel. Peter, there's field dealers that have gone to selling pellets. They've gone to doing a lot of things. I mean, we're trying to stick to one product, which we do best. I can't speak for all dealers, but there are a lot of things going on out there. A lot of guys that are venturing out into other products. We're just trying to provide a good service at a good price and gain our customer, our share of the marketplace by doing that. I do, I mean, the efficiency. There's one thing that has been kind of sticking with me for years. The low income for monitors and the weatherization fund to homeowners of low income is a great thing. What we're missing is rentals, people who rent an apartment, the landlords. There's no reason for a landlord to put money into an apartment. It's gonna raise his taxes. So therefore he's not, it's an investment of his. He's not gonna dump a lot of money into making a house tighter or put in the best heater so that his tenant pays less because they're paying the bill. That's where we're missing a huge, I mean, the weatherization, you can give it to the low income owner. There's not, there's a lot of them, but in the grand scale of things, it's the tenants that we're missing out on as far as doing that. I have no idea how you take that two cents that we're paying and you work some kind of program to give some kind of incentive for a landlord to do better. But that's the big part that you're missing. So I'm here for some reason. I would like to follow up on my question with you Mr. Chair. So in terms of less fuel being used, your small business is being impacted. I represent rural Vermont. Some of these bigger, more urban solutions that we know could be in the future for heating, like district heating, all of these that may be available for more densely populated areas. I know that those will be very long time coming to rural Vermont. So my question around diversification is, are there any businesses in your association or in your fields that are looking kind of at the big picture of heating needs around including the efficiency. So are like a complete kind of heating company. Are any of your members doing that? So in addition to maybe say, offering, delivering heating fuels, also offering and installing heating pumps or pellet stoves, like do you have any companies that are kind of transforming into heating companies as opposed to- I think a lot of our offering heat pumps as a solution, of course it's not our top priority as far as, we get to sell which the cost of a heat pump with the rebates and whatnot doesn't make a lot of money. So it's not like we're going to give, we're going to be able to sustain by just selling heat pumps. But we do offer them. Customers interested in wanting, we want to help them supplement their heat orders in a certain area or at air conditioning, we do offer and we do sell them. I mean- I think you can find other places when you come up here. Okay, thank you. And the other question that I'm, and then I'm done that I thank you for this is just if there are any support that would be needed for some of your smaller companies to be able to transition into a larger service providing model like I'm talking about like more of a heating model as opposed to- I know Heidi's saying we're going to have additional- Yeah, I think Peter can answer this question. So I'm also curious about the industry generally with regards to distributors. Do we have more distributors than we had 10 years ago? Is there a consolidation in- There's more of a consolidation. Some of this has gone out of my area and the Upper Valley, there are, one, there's some consolidation going on, two, there's some new owners who have gotten in. And I guess the other question I have just related is to the extent that a propane dealer in Montpelier is serving a geography that is served by multiple dealers, how much competition is there- There's a lot of competition. I don't know much about how this occurs kind of around the state and different geographic footprints. As far as my company, we try to stay primarily in Addison County, we go part of Rutland County. That's my owner, that's what he wants. He doesn't want to expand too far. He wants to take care of his area. There's other companies that are owned by national companies or there's other independent owned companies that have branched out because of a need. If you have one person in one area, you're the only game in town, if you can get someone else to come in the area, of course, then competition helps as far as for the customer. The best thing for the customer is competition. But is there consolidation going on? Are there mom and pop distributors that are starting to go- There are some that sell. There's always- In the Upper Valley, 20 years ago, we would never see Irving trucks. Now we see a lot of Irving trucks. And just curious- They're always in acquisition mode and they're always wanting to buy. So that's always happening. If I may, absolutely. Fewer companies today than 30 years ago, fewer companies today than when I started at the FDA 13 years ago, there's consolidation in the market. It just happened. We're selling fewer gallons to fewer customers. It's natural. However, whenever there is consolidation, we often see the local companies benefit somewhat because people see a different truck, different driver, different people in the front office and they all of a sudden decide they want to choose differently. You also see an opportunity for small operators to get into the market. An opportunity to expand territory and an opportunity to get in the market. That goes away if we can't build bulk tanks. You can't build bulk tanks. You're not going to drive a fuel oil truck. From Morrisville to Bennington. But if you had a bulk tank there, you could establish a new operation and do something. So that's why the bulk storage is so cute to us in the H51 that perhaps maybe overlooked perhaps was on purpose. I don't know. I can tell you that the reading H51 has written. I do not feel comfortable advising my members that they go forward and get, if this became law, that they would successfully be able to obtain a permit to build bulk storage. Again, and I don't want to take it out of the hands. And we can have this conversation offline. I'm really interested in how that the industry and your trade association has maybe changed in the last 20 years. Few member dues. Well. Yeah. You're still dressed just as well. Yeah. But, you know, this happens in a lot of industries where there's consolidation and this is not making a judgment but there are more regional companies involved than maybe there were in the 1970s. That's true. You know what that looks like. That's true. So anyway, let's go ahead, Mike. Yeah. First of all, I want to say that I agree with you in terms of that issue with the renters. We do need to figure out a way to incentivize landlords to upgrade their efficiency, their weatherization. And I think we could do that. I think it's possible. Just have to design a program that'll accomplish that. I got to turn my coma off here. The other thing is, as I said with Matt, I understand that you guys provide a valuable service in terms of helping people continue to eat their homes and stuff. And that is not going to go away overnight. Your point about all the jobs that would be lost and everything, that I would point out that that doesn't necessarily have to happen because we need to transition from our dependence on fossil fuels to cleaner energy. And that can be done by all diesel, clean electric usage, things like that. So I understand the concern about loss of jobs and the impact of the economy, but I think that that is an adjustment that needs to be made and we need to transition to a point where unless there's been a fossil fuels plant in 2050. Do you have a question, Matt? Just two comments. One is about the carbon plants. There are some programs for carbon plants and I would like you to look up 3dcerno.org when you get on the account, which that's... She was key in this out. She put that cap in there. Which is available for owners who are doing projects on the building. Mostly it's not places where tenants pay for the use, places where it's a large building, it's such a big... But anyway, and weatherization provides services for rentals as well. The second point was just to follow up on Laura's point, which was really an on point, I thought about heating companies for fuel delivery companies, transitioning to heating companies. Actually, so I have a long history in weatherization coming at improving the efficiency of buildings from the point of view of fixing the shelf, fixing the building itself. But many of us always thought that really the mechanical systems installers and people who do the maintenance are actually the place to start from to do efficiency improvements on buildings. So it would be much easier for a mechanical company to expand into a weatherization company to expand into mechanical work. So I just point that C for your further thought down the road. Hey. I would, as a landlord, I will say thank you. And as much as people may know, I am a landlord and I can tell you that we, as long as our taxes and costs continue to increase at the exorbitant rate that they do, those kinds of investments are not happening at places where residents are paying for their own heats. And so that is just... And if we wanna talk about landlords, I suggest we get the other landlords in here to talk about the situation with regard to housing opportunities. This question might be over both our pay grades. But we often talk about propane natural gas as a bridge fuel between the dirty oil and the green future. And the state energy goals are for increasing the renewable by 2050, 25 years away. But investments in the infrastructure have a lifetime of 50 years. And you know, tanks, pipelines, things like that. And so I guess my question is about how do we make that transition when our bridge is that long? Because it doesn't make sense for you to invest in a propane storage facility. And rather than depreciate it, and I'm over my head here, depreciate it for 50 years, to be told you can only use it for 20. Right. Well, how do you have... We're hoping to use it for more than 20. Yeah. We're slightly disagreeing on that. With biofuels. This is a segue to talk about biodiesel. Perhaps Peter Bourne. Sure, up here. I don't know if you want to. Thank you, Mr. Bourne. Thank you. Please, thank you. Mr. Bourne, I'll seize the opportunity to please Mr. Critchie. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Critchie. Thank you very much. You probably don't need to know that. I'm glad you're here. You had a really good one. You had a really good one. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for letting me speak this morning. So I'm Peter Bourne, President of Bourne Energy. We're a family-owned business based out of Morrisville. The company's been in business for 71 years. I went to work for my parents out of high school. I've been there for 46 years. On the second generation, we have a third generation, my son, and one of my nieces is working for us. And so we continue to push forward to the future. We're about 95 employees, and these are full and part-time, mostly full benefits. So when we talk about other employment things, these are employees that are getting retirement plans, health care, the full benefit package that everybody's covered here. It's not considered a low-end job, or it's considered more of a career. We have a lot of young people working for us, coming out of tech centers. We have, I think, three of them that are 21 to 22 that are buying their first homes this year. So we try to take care of them well. We encourage them. We want to improve. We want them to be solid citizens of Vermont. We give them that opportunity. We sell bio-heating oil. We sell propane. We sell wood pellets. Basically, our main service area is northern Vermont for various products, although we sell wood pellets throughout the whole state of Vermont. The wood pellets we sell are basically made, most of them are made from North Carolina and Vermont wood pellet, although in the rest of the pellets, we basically handle out of Northern New York, out of a forest responsible, not getting the term right, but it's responsible forestry program mill site out there. We do our own bio-blending. So we built a plant in more so we can blend our own biofuels to whatever percentages we want it to be. We've tried hybrid delivery trucks a couple of years. It didn't work real well, but we tried it. We believe you're very strong on no idling rules, parties for the environment, part because I'm a cheap son of a bitch and I don't want to see a truck run. The pellets we're doing are bulk and bag. As they say, we deliver the bulk throughout the state. We did put a bulk silo in North Hyde Park, so we bring pellets are trucked into there that we can distribute in the Northern part of the state. We have a lot of LP that's brought in by rail into Newport for us. So again, minimizing a lot of trucking and pollution from that, so we can haul from there. We install cold climate heat pumps as we question our customers because we are a full service company. In the last, the other thing is we're responsible with the communities we serve. We serve us a lot of communities. We've been very fortunate. People have looked upon us kindly. We've been competitive. We don't profess to be a cheap company. We just try to be the best company. But in that, we spoke to us, again, as any of the other dealers will tell you, we support the communities we're in. We're the ones making the donations. The arts community to the Cub Scout, you name it. If you got our door on the front main street, somebody's coming through the door looking for something and where they're kind of companies that respond to that. Going back to the fuels. In the last 15 months, we've basically between biofuels and wood pellets in the quick math that people put together for this, we've replaced about 630,000 gallons of number two heating oil in their other products that we sell. How over the past how? 15 months. 15 months. Yeah. That's amazing. The bio that we use is to, we've always been trying to get the recycled or renewable. There was a plant called White Mountain Bio in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, they went out of business or were sold to another thing. But that was recycled cooking oils. What was our primary product to start with? Now we're picking up at a company in Rhode Island. I believe it's recycled, but it's bio is what I can tell you. We don't want palm oil, but whether it's totally recycled, I couldn't tell you that. I don't have an honest answer on that one. But what you feel is important to continue that blend. And anybody buys fuel from us doesn't have a choice. Yes. We sell all bio. We do have a few customers of Burn B99, though that is a specific request, but everything else is, we put through our plant varies in relation to, because we are in a competitive market, it reflects to how much we blend to what the market allows us to do, because we are in a competitive market. We can't, one price doesn't fit all. When you say it's competitive in terms of the kind of blending that you can do. Price. Price. Oh, okay. These are, you know, it's price. Yep. So you blend what you can to the price that the market will bear. Correct. You had mentioned in the beginning, obviously the number of employees that you have. Some younger techs you're hiring from. From Green Mountain Tech Centers, where most of them come from. Hyde Park is five miles away. And do they do a particular training program that you are interacting with them on? Yeah, the tech has a HVAC program, heating ventilating program. And then also we continue their training and we've set ourselves, our employees at that level have a particular, they get more licensure and more skill sets. It directly reflects to their income. Sure. So the more they learn, the more licenses and more skill sets. So we set up in a way that we want them to get there quickly, competently. So we structure it that way. And these people, these young people, there's four of them that are, the original four are, again, they're 21, 22 now. And they're really kicking in. I mean, they're starting to get plumbing licenses and gas licenses, HVAC certifications and things of that nature. Scott. Thank you. What's the next one? Just the bio is more expensive and that's the reason why you have to. It cycles up and down right now is more expensive. And again, we're hauling it further. Okay. So everything adds a penny. Great. Good. Thanks. That was essentially my question. What the difference is in the cost for that? It varies. It really comes down to demand. Massachusetts has a very aggressive bio program. So there's no theoretically loose product out there. So we bring it in to make sure. So I think right now we're only doing a B2. We've done high as a B10. Again, depending on availability and pricing, we can't put ourselves at a pricing disadvantage. The last load of bio was 10 cents more down than our heating oil. So you gotta balance that out and still get your margin. So just as a follow-up, I know Peter and I will say, just your company is an amazing company and it's been a real asset to our entire region for years and decades, obviously. And all that you do for the community, Rotary Club, for example. Thank you. Yeah, we've been touched a few times. No, but I will say, so in, Laura was talking earlier, you were asking Manny earlier about the whole, I just want you to, you actually install wood pellets. So we sell pallet equipment. The pellet stoves are much more affordable, but put a central heating system into a normal home, $20,000. Okay, that's good. But you have a more complete heating system. We have a complete service and installation service. Residentially driven and like that. The thing is you're in a competitive market there as well. It's not like you get free rain and you're gonna make, you can make up the income that you would be making on selling fuels. It's very competitive and it's tough. And I think most energy dealers that have the same package of goods that we have would tell you that making the service, having the service department or installation department really produce the revenue needed to support it. It's phenomenally difficult. It is not easy at all because we're trying to provide a service 24-7. So you're paying people, we send a, when a service man goes out at night, he gets paid time and a half of the time. He leaves his home until the time he gets back to his home. Now he could be driving 45 minutes to the first call. We charge for one call and he goes back home. He could theoretically be making, getting paid for three to four hours of time and a half. I get to bill a customer for one hour, maybe two depending what he ran into. And then he gets home and goes back. So you start looking at that overhead. What I'm trying to get is the overhead carrying cost. It's like people say, geez, you're charging, we charge $99 an hour. Look at the money you make. No, no, the overhead with this is very extensive. The labor costs are phenomenal. It's just, but you wanna have good people, you gotta hire, you gotta pay them. And who, which one of us wants to get out of bed at three in the morning and hop into a truck at 10 below? Hard to find a lot of people that wanna do that and do it competently. And that's part of the thing. So when you're looking at these other things, I think what I'm concerned about, as I sit here and I've been thinking about this, is that Borns has been done, we've done a really good job. We've cut, we've danced on the edge sometimes, the bleeding edge, sometimes the cutting edge, but we've done it at our own risk. We've thought this is worthy of that risk like that. But if we screw up or if we fail, I own it. It's all mine. I can't go back to my customers and say, geez, you know, we had this great idea. It failed and we're gonna raise the price 10 cents. Can't do it. I'm not a utility. I am a independent business owner trying to run a business in a very competitive market and market. So that's what we're working on. I don't know what the hell she's gonna do with that. So then it's a rotary. It's a rotary. It's a rotary. It's a rotary. Mike, Mike. Yeah, you may have answered this question if I understand your B2 and B10, but does that refer to the percentage of biodiesel? Correct. So B2 is 2% and B10 10. So your maximum wind is 10% biodiesel? Well, you can go higher. There's a certain point where the heating equipment itself, you want to be sensitive to that. One, the more bio, if you have older tanks, biofuel in its own entity is a cleaning agent. So if you put in a tank that has a lot of sludge in it from being 20, 30 years old, you're gonna free that all up and you're gonna plug the furnace up. It's gonna plug the nozzle, the fuel system at some point. That's one issue. The other is not all burners will handle it nicely. Most will. And when we're going for a B20, that tells me that the next step in the transition, but it's really letting the equipment catch up with the fuel and the technology kind of stay hand in hand going through this. Do you know your customers to the extent that you can say, well, I recommend this blend if they're interested in buying these up. I recommend this blend instead of this one because your tank is pretty old and... Can't do it. There's no way in the world you'd be able to do it. We just, we're going with, we're the service company and most of our customers, if we get it wrong, we know where it's gonna end up and our lap and it's not gonna be very nice. But there's no way in the world, we load our truck, we're loading the whole truck at whatever B level, B2, B10, or something like that. And that's where it's just going out there. We've been doing it long enough now that more than likely the older tanks that we would be worried about have cycled through enough that it's probably not so much of an issue. But if a new customer came on board with an older tank, we might create some havoc for a little while. Yeah. So, the only other thing we can do is I can help you for your environmental consciousness and your diversification. I think that's a working model that you got there. Thank you. I think you already answered one of the questions I had, and that was, so the biodiesel is about $0.10 more gallon. Maybe today. Yeah. We're talking a market that's no, it's like oil's up $0.05, it could be down $0.10 next week. I mean, and it's tied to that. It's all tied to what the mercantil is. However, each individual producer wants to set their price structure. And then, you know, Matt had talked about a lot of these bigger industries, that leave getting off the number six fuel to the CNG fuel. What's the price difference there? I have, you know, that, I have no idea. That's definitely, that's, for say, above my pay grade, really, we don't deal that level. We don't, retailers don't sell, excuse me, Peter, don't sell number six fuel. That's delivered by a heated tanker truck, not by the retail companies that deliver a 2,800 gallon truck. So what is that price difference roughly? I just wanna see the, is it aware with all that these folks are? It's becoming an extinct fuel. In fact, the last bastion for six oil has been chips and there is a recent federal, excuse me, international agreement called the IMO agreement, I don't know what IMO stands for, but I'll find out, which says ships no longer can use this heavy polluting fuel. You have to use diesel fuel. That happens in 2020, which is a good thing. Six oil is the waste product from the refinery process that was used by heavy users, by large users. It's becoming extinct. For ships in 2020, yeah. Thank you. For us, for the rest of us now. Some of my questions have been answered, just going back to biodiesel. I know originally, cost is certainly an issue. There was, there were initially concerns about biofuel, biodiesel, de-grading gaskets and gel and cold temperatures. Yes, and the original going out there, we're hearing that and we haven't seen that as a huge issue. I mean, I would not sit down and say our service issues in relation to biofuel have changed. It doesn't show up on the scale for us. Again, we're seeing on the B10 and lower level. Again, we have a couple of customers that use B99. I haven't, again, it's such a small amount. It would not be worthy of any kind of measuring. So we've got two more people? Yeah, and I thank you for the time. And if I could bring, thank you, Peter. If I could bring Judy and Casey out, what's up? Peter, just one quick question to follow. So when you have a blend, like B10, you also blend the price, right? I mean, it would all, it's all based in our price. Yeah, I mean, everything, whether we're doing B10, I mean, it's all, here's our cost of goods. I mean, we work from our margin. Right, I mean, but the 10 cents per gallon is 100% biodiesel. In today's, yeah, today being April, whatever, yes. Whatever the price is, that's for 100%. So if you blend it 10%, then it's only once a month. Correct, that's correct, but. 10% increase. Correct. So the opinion increase on our B10. My cost of goods is gone up, because when I come to my retail, I'm still on a competitive margin. So it's how much margin do I want to eat to be able to do this? Right, okay. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. And Chairman, we need to be very generous with your time, if in order to save a little time, because I know you've been generous, if I could have Casey and Judy both come up. Great. Thank you, Chair. It's nice and warm in here, what do you mean by that? Oh! People just wondering. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the smallest committee room that they know about, so. I just want to just real quick, if I may, just show you a quick picture. This is my husband who passed away in 2010. He had taken the company over from his parents that started it in 66. This is his son with, I might brag, my first grandchild daughter, fourth generation coming into a family business of 12 employees that have lived and worked hard and I believe run a good community business. Like I said, there's only 12 of us, 12 families that I take care of. And I will tell you and put a hand on a Bible, I have all the confidence in the world and the propane I sell as a clean energy. It is listed by the federal government as one of the cleanest fuels out there. I'm gonna defer more expertise to Casey, so. Thank you. Don't forget to introduce yourself. Oh, I'm sorry, Judy Tarnovich from Proctor Gas and Proctor Verma. Hi, I'm Casey Coda from Codon Codon Fuels out of Dallas Falls, Vermont. Third generation heating fuel company. Sorry, Casey, this is the way to the explanation. We're cousins. His father and my father are brothers. Yeah, thanks. But he wouldn't let me work on the equipment business. So I became a lobbyist and he came to come to know better. You saw that Matt had better skills than somewhere else. Our family is rich with tradition in Vermont. One of the unique stories, actually, Matt and I's aunt just passed away, she was the eldest Coda, but she was our historian. So any Facebook posts, she was always there to let us know what the date was and what happened. We recently put up a picture from our first gas station that we had in Pell's Falls. It was the very first 24-hour gas station in the state of Vermont. Pell's Falls was a hub for everybody who was shipping and going to Boston, coming through there. So the milk tankers that were coming through that were bringing milk to Boston to make cheese to distribute out through New England. And our family was tied with that. We got into the heating oil business in 1941. My grandmother and grandfather, the reason it's Coda and Coda, she wanted to make sure her name was on it as well. And obviously we knew who really ran the company. In 1973, my father bought the business from my grandparents. In 1995, my brother and I bought the business. Third generation, my three children periodically worked for the business. We currently employ a hundred employees. We, over the years, obviously started with one business. We now have one division. We now have seven offices throughout Southern Vermont. And we did that based upon keeping core Vermont values. Do what you say you're gonna do. Stand behind the work that you do and provide the best product possible. Obviously we sell bio-heating oil, propane, kerosene, diesel, on-road, off-road. We do sell some wood pellets. We've always tried to diversify. We have fleet maintenance, which we do. We do lots of other things throughout our company. We do plumbing, heating. We put in heat pumps out of the ground that we've done. We've done lots of different things, trying different cutting-edge things. Obviously we're a for-profit company, so certain things that we've tried that have failed. We've had to go back to other things that we know are successful. But the thing that's unique about Code & Coda and where we've talked about training that is done throughout the state, we built our own classroom. We train all of our tax drivers ourselves. We have our own hands-on classroom. It's part of one of the warehouses that I built. It was an old cheese plant that went out of business in 1962. It was dormant for a long time. We moved into that building and felt it was a great space to be able to utilize to do that. Through attrition over the years, we've probably trained all of our competition in our area because there's a level of expectation of what we expect out of our tax. There is a code of difference that we believe in. We feel that if we train them ourselves through the school, through certified instructors who are employees of Code & Coda, that we get the best employees out there. We've always taken the view of making sure our customers use less every year. Since the 1980s, we were selling system 2000 heating systems, which can save customers up to 40% off of their heating fields just through conservation. My brother's house, he bought an old Victorian home in Bells Falls, used about 4,000 gallons a year, which was crazy for me to fathom that a house could use that much. But we changed that. We put a system 2000 and didn't insulate the house, didn't change anything. I used about 1,700 gallons a year after that before he did any of the renovations. So we've been doing that since the early 1980s and even before, and you figure, as we've done that, we've reduced our consumption for our customers, and that's always been a family priority. We're Vermonters. It's about conservation doing more with less, right, Judy? And that's always been our effort to go that way. The other difference is, as an industry, we're all friends, though. Manny, Peter, Judy and I, we know each other. It's handshakes and hugs, we know each other. We really care about one another. The things that make Judy and I very similar, is that we're the glue that holds our communities together. I know Judy and I are employees, well, we do, Peter's talked about it, but we're the ones who, when the Little League needs to build a new field, we do that. I know you guys help rebuild the field in your town. We did it in Bellas Falls. I was the point person on the Little League board. We did that in Lough. We rebuilt the Little League field. We sponsored youth sports. We helped the theater in Saxon River, Vermont, when they burnt down. We helped donate so that they could rebuild the theater. Where my nephew, who has Aspergers, he excels by acting and doing those things. And it was great to be able to help with that. When people need help, code and coda, I know is there. I know Proctor Gas is there. We encourage all of our managers to be part of the community. We wouldn't have been able to grow to seven offices. If the bill that we're thinking about passing now, we wouldn't have been able to do that because we needed storage in those areas. That was important for us. What we brought in every town that we got to were part of the community. There was a discussion about acquisitions earlier and it's true and one of the conversations that I have with my company is, what I sell is no different than what Irving sells. The only thing that sets me apart is the customer service and the fact that I see my customers when I go to the grocery store or when I'm at church. They know they can contact me. They know they can get a hold of me. If there's a problem, they pick up the phone and where they can walk in through the office. I'm there. I'm not in Canada or in New Jersey or Pennsylvania. I'm in their community and we're very much a hands-on company. And to the point of the additional two cent fuel tax, we do our part to help with the weatherization. We have a program in place through VFDA where we give back to families that can't afford to heat their homes. My company sits down at Christmas time and we together as a group, because my CSRs are more in touch with the customers than I am on a daily basis. Okay, who's struggling? Who just lost a husband and mom is sick and they've got four kids and there's just no way they can pay that heating bill. It goes away. That's a lot more than two cents or $15 a year. I weight about $500 bills. We are the pulse of our community and we know the families in our homes that have the true need more so than you can't possibly know who has a name sitting here in Proctor, Vermont. I do. And we take care of them. And Casey takes care of his community and Pete takes care of his community. We do our part. So I'm interested, Judy, in your company serves Proctor. How far do your trucks go? Kind of, yeah, do you need it? So I serve as primarily real accounting. I don't go over to New York, so I don't cross that border. But I head down towards Manchester, over to Ludlow, and then not quite up to Middaberry, about a 40-mile range. Yeah, and I was curious about that relative, Casey, to your, you've got a number of offices. Right. And I don't know if their offices are storage facilities or if they're- Some are just offices and we sort of, obviously, strategically try in place. Do you think of that as from a storage facility or an office, you can kind of serve a 40-mile ground and know what the magic number is? It depends on the terrain, right? Obviously, Vermont is very mountainous, so there's some mountains you don't wanna have to climb every single day if you have to go refill. So it depends on the region we currently have, probably, I believe, six facilities now. And so some share one, and that's usually what we try and do, depending on the size that we do and how many customers you have in that area. So we do try and share it and make sure that they are. But that's also the cost of businesses, you know, obviously, whether you have to pay extra over time. Again, if it was less infrastructure, our drivers would have to drive more than an hour one way for some of our locations to turn around, load, that's gonna take a half an hour, turn around and go back. So what does that do? Will that increase your cost? Maybe that means we don't employ as many people. And that's the struggles that we face on a daily basis because if I build a new ball climb facility, that's easily a half a million dollar investment that is just our overhead. We have to be able to figure out how can we do that and still be competitive with our competition to do that. And so that's always been our focus of, you know, doing the right way, you know, we're. We don't want to really go out any further than where we can provide good timely service either. If it's two hours to the customer and you drive two hours, you get out there and you don't have the part you need. Could be an hour back to a, you know, an FW web or wherever you need to get the part. So the service piece is important. And the thing that makes us different from a utility and I, there really is a huge distinction between what we do. I'm sure everybody in this room has lost power in here at some point in their new life, right? When it comes back on, is it within two hours? Maybe once in a while. Sometimes it's days, sometimes it's weeks. I know when we had the bomb cyclone and we had those storms, there were people without power for several weeks, at least I know in our area. The fact that when people lose heat with Coven Kota, we're there within a couple of hours. You're going to have heat back on that day. I could only imagine the cry to the Attorney General's office if we left thousands of customers without heat. Hell, if we're slow getting to a customer, I'm probably getting a call from the Attorney General. And that's saying we're going to be there. It happens like we're going to work. Right. And so that's the connection we have. We go into people's homes. It is very personal. There is a special connection that's different than any other industry, I believe. Where you go into a store, there's not that personal connection. Your home is your livelihood. It's the most valuable asset you will ever own for most homeowners, most homeowners. And so there's a tight connection. So our ability to have the infrastructure to be able to get to do those things within a couple hours, that is integral to our business and for our customers. We pride ourselves on those times. I think I can't remember. I think you were asking Manny about is our industry doing anything to help with efficiencies? There actually are programs to our national association and Perp, which is Appropriate Education and Research Council, where depending on how many new appliances you put either in a new build or reconstructions, there's rebates that come back. And actually, they're changing the numbers of appliances. But I think, for instance, in a new build, if you're putting in five appliances, you can get back $1,500. You're putting in three appliances. I believe it's around $750. So there are incentives to put in appliances that burn more efficiently and clean. Casey, you mentioned ground heat pumps. You mean geothermal? Geothermal, sir. How many systems have you installed there? We've done about five. Five? Five. Probably over a course of 15 years. 15 years, sir. They're very impressive. Yeah, so we did one on Okemo Mountain, which I thought was crazy because they'd have to drill really deep to get down to some warm water. And they ended up drilling five wells at a cost of $6,000 a piece for each well to mention, as before you even do any of the piping inside. So obviously, those opportunities are incredibly expensive. So the pool of clientele to be able to do that, to put in a $80,000 heating system, and they have propane as a backup. The heat pumps worked up until they got November, and then they used propane throughout now. It's a large home. It's not an average home. And so it's probably 5,000 square foot home. But even though they had spent. Was it one house? I thought you were talking about a whole house. Oh, god. It's one house. Yeah, one house. So it's a massive one. Oh, congratulations. Thanks, Sheldon. Right. Hi, Matt. So that was a unique one. We've done some other ones at our smaller scales. We did one for a gentleman in Saxon's River, but three quarters of the house is buried in dirt. So he has the insulation factor, because you can only see the corner of the top floor on the house. It's near where Matt's family lives. So you're short kind of like a hobbit. He loves the dark. So those situations work. So we've tried to do a lot of innovative things with that. And diversification has always been part of everybody's product. I'm sure, Peter, when the company first started, you were just selling product. You weren't fixing things, as most companies did. And so people got into the repair business, got into those services. You know, and again, we're proud to be for monitors. We're proud of what we do. I had a quick little story just to explain who we are. I had individuals got a letter from one of my CSRs. She got a call. And she's new to our company, but doesn't get the pull effect of who we are, because it takes a little bit. She said, I just want to share a story that I received today from a customer, Kathleen. I'll leave her her last name out. Move back to the area after being down south for some time. She was happy to see that her new home works with Kota and Kota. She went on to tell me a few years ago that when she still lived in town, she was headed to work on a cold morning at 6.30 AM. She realized she was driving with a flat, the tire that was flat. She pulled into one of our parking lots. And someone very nice came out to help her. They helped her change her tire. They brought the other one down to put air in it. Come to find out the spare was also flat. And, obviously, she wasn't going to be able to go anywhere. She noted that the thing that she remarked on, the person stayed with her until the tow truck showed. She wanted me to know that she was always thankful and grateful for that help. And that it was months later when she saw an article in the paper and realized that the man who helped her was Casey. She wanted us to know that she had never forgotten the generosity. And it was one of the owners of the company. And this is one of the many reasons that she is happy to have Code and Code as their heating provider. That story is not rare. It's commonplace. And as her monitors, we should all be proud that you have thoughtful, caring organizations that heat your homes that do the things that I know Judy and I take pride in every day. And it's not something we take lightly. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate your time. For being here with us. Thank you.