 Good morning everyone welcome thanks for joining us on this sub-optimal weather day here but we're going to forge through because this is an important announcement, an important day. Welcome to the site of the city of Burlington's McNeil generating station and now what is the UVM solar research and training facility. Climate change is an existential threat to everything that Burlingtonians value most our community our health the natural environment and a thriving local economy and we have a long history here in Burlington of treating climate change the climate emergency as an existential threat and we've demonstrated here in Burlington that through innovation and action we can turn that threat into an opportunity and we can make progress. The story of Burlington's leadership on climate is one of the best Burlington stories that we have it started back in the 1980s with a sustainability bond that launched a remarkable weatherization effort that has become a statewide initiative and had the rest of the country followed Burlington's lead back in 1989 and started on the trajectory that Burlington started then we'd have 200 less coal burning power plants than we we do today. The second chapter of Burlington's environmental leadership what started in 2004 when the community made a decision to end its reliance on the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant for about half of its electricity and moved made major commitment towards renewables just a decade later in 2014 we became the first city in the country to source 100 of our electricity from renewable generation and that inspired the current team current leadership of the city in the Burlington Electric and our commission to set what is now the most ambitious goal we have had on climate which is to become a net zero energy city by 2030 to achieve this community wide goal we need our whole community and every level of government working together on innovative climate solutions and this exciting project is an example of just that a collaboration amongst higher education public and private utilities a solar developer and with support from both the local and the federal government this is really you're seeing around you is an excellent example of the type of partnership creativity and leadership that allows us to forge meaningful progress on climate with that I am pleased and honored to be able to welcome to the podium today Senator Bernie Sanders who during his time as mayor played a pivotal role in launching this remarkable trajectory this remarkable narrative and it's an honor to have you with us again today senator thank you very much mr mayor congratulations for all that the city of Burlington has done in being the leader in moving away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy the mayor's right this has gone way back when through a number of administrations and I think we should all be proud of of where we are today in terms of energy uh I don't have to explain to anybody uh the climate change is an enormous threat not only to our state to our country but to the entire world and in my view the future of the planet uh basically rests on our ability to transform our energy systems away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy a number of years ago uh working with uh Sandia National Lab uh we helped create a project in Williston uh in order to do something really interesting to take a look at how solar panels worked in different climates it's one thing to have solar panels in Nevada or Florida where the sun shines all the time some of us know that that is not the case in Vermont apropos today so the question is what happens how do you best utilize solar in climates that are not 100% uh favorable uh to solar energy and that has to do with a lot of the world and a lot of this country so behind us we have a number of different types of solar panels and in a combination of UVM working with BED in the city we're going to learn what works and how to improve it so this is an important step forward in learning how we better utilize uh solar energy and I want to congratulate the city uh BED uh and UVM uh for their willingness to go forward on this important project thank you all very much so um that story going back to the 80s that I started with a again it's a remarkable story it's a story that would only have been possible with what we have here which is a city-owned municipal utility the Burlington Electric Department the uh this utility is now led by General Manager Darren Springer and Darren and his team are committed and relentless in pursuing new innovative policies partnerships and programs to advance the vision of electrifying everything which is our core strategy for becoming a net zero city and achieving our our environmental goals the way I want to just list a few examples of how Burlington the Burlington Electric Department has has worked towards achieving this um this vision first of all the uh a couple years ago the the Burlington Electric Department launched a net zero revenue bond the first revenue bond of its type in the country we have created the state of Vermont's first ever voter approved and legislatively improved carbon impact fee and we are now in the process of writing the ordinance that will make that uh impact the future of investment here in the city going forward it's going to be before the council very soon we created a new on-bill financing program for weatherization and electrification and recently may we are making major progress towards realizing district a district energy system using the waste heat from the McNeil generating station to provide energy to the hospital something that we presented at the city council just a week ago BD works well beyond the normal limits of what local government can do by galvanizing unique partnerships with private utilities partnerships with higher education and workforce training programs with local businesses with funders and financing institutions and community members to push the leading edge of electrification and climate action and the person leading all that is Darren Springer he's going to take over from here and tell you more about that thank you for your leadership there thank you mayor it's great to be here today with everybody this solar test center for me has been a personal odyssey because I was on center sanders staff and we're working on it originally with sandia labs and the department of energy and now we're really proud to have these panels and this equipment here in partnership with uvm so we can continue the good work with solar research um i want to offer a few really critical thank yous um a thank you to the senator and his team for all their work bringing this project here and supporting it and helping to fund it a big thank you to the university of remont president caramella uh kirk donbrowski dan harvey and the uvm team for their commitment to this partnership a big thank you to the bd and mcneil team and the mcneil joint owners for their work a special shout out to james gibbons who's put in an enormous amount of time on this project through all the regulatory hurdles um and a thank you to encore renewable energy for their commitment and partnership um this is uh not just the site of our wood chip electric plant this is step one in a multi-step process to turn the mcneil generating station into an energy innovation campus for the city of brolington we have a great opportunity of partner here uh as mentioned with the university of remont with students who are going to do research and workforce development with these panels we have a great opportunity with district energy to make this plant more efficient and we have other opportunities in the future to utilize this site uh the one thing i've learned throughout my career is once you have partnerships like this and a site like this uh the sky's the limit in terms of the future you can have all kinds of innovative things that we can't even imagine today that could come out of this so we're really appreciative at bd for this partnership we're really excited for the future we're excited to partner with uvm and we know that on days that are a little sunnier than today these panels will be producing a good bit of energy and just a little bit of the technical detail we have racking to support about 50 kilowatts of solar um we have uh roughly an expectation that that'll produce somewhere around 60 to 75 megawatt hours a year of electricity uh if you want to put it in these terms i think that's somewhere around like 11 houses worth of electricity uh consumption and for comparison the city of burlington uh we use in a given year roughly 330 000 megawatt hours of electricity um but what you may not know is we actually have been named for a couple years in a row now the top city per capita for solar east of the mississippi by environment america uh so these panels will add to that and we hope to have many many more panels on roofs and buildings around the city in the future so i want to thank everyone for being here today and i get the pleasure of introducing our next speaker uh who is president caramella uh from university of vermont they have been a great partner committed to sustainability committed to research and innovation and we're really proud to be working with them on this president caramella thank you darin i think everything in vermont works in partnerships and that's the nice thing about our wonderful community i'm i'm really thankful to sandia national labs and department of energy for working with us on these panels and of course enter sanders and it's very long-standing commitment to this this whole area of renewable energy and the work he and his staffers have done certainly i want to call out hailey perot as one individual who's been extremely influential in in bringing this project of fruition of course burlington electric department the city mayor weinberger and uh uncle renewables and the mcneil joint owners uh it's really been a great partnership among all of us you've got a good number of uh my colleagues from uvm and our students here as well and you'll hear from one of our students who works on this project um the name of this facility which has training and research in it is what is most exciting to me because we not only need to um have more panels more generation but we need to have a larger workforce that understands how to use this that that understands how to optimize this that understands how it works in mini grids and micro grids and things like that and that's what the work that madsen some of the others that are here do and and emily will be talking about but also training the workforce for the future so i think it's a it's a great partnership um of all these entities that come together that will ensure that we have a workforce also in vermont that um ensures that we can take advantage of efforts like this so thank you all for coming vermont always offers great weather when we're making these great announcements so i'm pleased that this is no different thank you the next speaker we'll have a few remarks from kirk nebrowski our vice president for research who's been the uh the the energy at uvm behind all this turk thanks rash yeah this was uh this was an interesting project that landed in my lap about my second week here and we had to figure out how to do a rush uh stevenson wilder agreement we were working on a a large doe project proposal out of electrical engineering uh and it kind of all uh started to circle around a new core facility and really sort of wrapping up our program in that space so the list of sort of immediate folks on uh that were involved in that i want to mention a couple again james has knows only too well how how long a process this has been dan harvey from my office i was really critical hailey again from senator sanders office um uh laury bernum from doe is i didn't see laury today but really was really critical part of uh making that connection with sandia and then our faculty folks matt's uh almasaki matt white uh and and someone from my office who you'll never hear much about but uh julie macy put in i want to say about a thousand hours of correspondence so far uh working with matt and dan and others to get the doe grant through so we're really excited about that i want to do a quick shout out also to a group that uh came together around partly around this project partly around the other doe projects and that is the vermont clean and resilient energy consortium chad is a member and burlington electric is a member and many more and we were able to bring uh a consortium of folks in the renewable space and the energy generation space velco has been a key partner and what we saw is that if we brought all of the uh energy producers and affiliated parties together we could really do some interesting projects so this is one of them uh the energy sheds project that jeff was the first one to bring to my attention but as john erickson matt's and others involved is a large one and our new uh energy simulation and emulation project that's coming together in the college of engineering is going to be a game changer for our students and really for the city as a whole so um and that project actually i think uh it is responsible for a number of these panels as well so thank you to doe for that funding and matt's and team for bringing that together we've done amazing things in the last four years through partnership as the president mentioned our research is booming we've doubled since 2018 and that makes us uh even more of a talent magnet for the region and we're really excited about our ability to sort of bring uh people together uh and bring uh talent into the vermont and burlington ecosystem around technology and a whole bunch of other things and as part of that my uh role is to introduce emily 19 uh she is a third year undergraduate at uvm working in our electrical engineering department and she's already done two semesters of research in the grid integration work for renewables working with dr almasaki so emily good morning as an undergraduate student studying electrical engineering with a focus in power and energy i'm incredibly excited about the launch of the uvm solar research and training facility at mcneil it's my belief that facilitating the transition to renewable energy is one of the greatest technological tasks of the century which makes a site like this especially significant for uvm we need creative and intelligent ideas to make the energy transition possible and this new facility will encourage curious minds to explore these problems at this stage of my life i realize more every day how important it is to care about the work that you're doing for this reason power and energy is a very special field a field where technical skills mesh with economics and social policies to solve problems that provide for people and protect the planet and this site will allow students to develop their passion in this field the solar array will not only enhance the classroom experience for students like me but it will unlock opportunities for research that until now have been confined to models and theory being able to explore research questions and confirm models with real data is critical to making progress and pushing the envelope of energy technology with the real world vermont data we can ground engineering education in vermont's rich and active history of energy innovation this site will unite bright inspired minds with the tools they need to solve problems which makes me feel hopeful and excited about the future of energy research at uvm and the future of vermont's energy industry as a whole thank you and before we turn it to our last speaker i just want to acknowledge a couple more folks who are here we appreciate ken nolan from vermont public power supply authority one of our mcneil joint owners who's here with us and jonathan dowd from renewable energy vermont we appreciate rev being here as well i want to turn it to chad ferrell our great local renewable energy uh partner from encore chad thank you darin and uh thank you everybody for being here my name is chad ferrell and i'm the founder and co-CEO of encore renewable energy a certified b corp and community scale clean energy development company located right here in burlington vermont um we're building a clean energy future and we're leveraging all of the excellent work that has been done in burlington and the state of vermont as a whole over the last 10 15 years so so we're all here to today to celebrate this facility you know but but standing here and listening to my colleagues speak so eloquently before me you know one word remains at the forefront of my mind here and that that is opportunity our industry the renewable energy industry in the united states is poised for exponential growth over the next decade two three decades fueled by the inflation reduction act um truly groundbreaking uh legislation that the senator who i know had to catch a flight um you know was was was very helpful in helping get across the finish line so we now have a once in a opportunity to realize the clean energy transition here in vermont and throughout the country the opportunity extends beyond this facility the impact of the training that will take place at and around this array will extend way beyond the electrons it produces for our future clean energy workforce every student that comes through this facility will be equipped with the skills required to fully embrace those opportunities associated with the clean energy generation our our our company is just but one example of this burgeoning field we have more than tripled in our in our workforce since 2020 so in three short years we've tripled our workforce and we need more people we need more young people coming up through the educational ranks to support what is going to be an anchor segment of the economy moving forward we need people to build the equipment that we want to utilize on these projects we need people to install the equipment that we're utilizing on all these projects and we need people to help us deliver that clean energy to our communities here in vermont and again beyond so meeting this moment and addressing the climate crisis will require innovation and as we've heard today collaboration and most importantly a new workforce ready to deploy solar and clean energy technologies at scale this new research and training facility at mcneil will provide that next generation of clean energy professionals like emily and a lot of the other students here today that are currently studying at uvm with a unique opportunity to prepare to work in the rapidly expanding clean energy economy so thanks again we we're thrilled to be associated with this project you know burlington has been our home market for years it will continue to be so i'd like to acknowledge a few of the folks that did the heavy lifting uh we got jake clark here amber lasard and sonia johnson from the encore team and we've got lauren as well who helped put this this event together so it does take collaboration to realize these projects and really want to thank uvm burlington electric department and the city and as well as as the senator for all the leadership you know it was remarkable that we were able to keep this clean energy research facility here in vermont you know it was originally out in williston darin and his team worked extremely hard uh uvm folks worked extremely hard to make sure that we could keep this asset here in vermont for vermonters and for uvm and others to uh to experiment with so um thank you very much for your time this morning and we look forward to continuing to work in collaboration with all of you thank you and i think we're going to have a little bit of a ribbon cutting right now if folks can bear with us we're going to everybody want to grab a piece of the ribbon come forward in front of the podium emily's in the middle it's probably the best the best idea others why we've got in case we've got to save it for the next one that's right we've got a few of these to go yeah no cookies well if uh if members of media have questions we're glad to uh take those as well yes yeah i'm in touch with kurt district energy would you like me so um with district energy we did present uh at a work session uh bed vgs the university of vermont medical center uh and evergreen um back in last week uh and we're hopeful to continue our work on that and hopefully bring it forward to the council uh for a vote sometime later in november i i think in terms of workforce for burlington electric i mean we're seeing very acutely the need uh we used to have positions posted for a lot of these technical positions electricians line workers and we would get a number of qualified applicants and with the labor market being what it is and with the need for clean energy being what it is and what it's going to be uh sometimes we're posting and we're not able to get a qualified applicant or maybe we're only getting one or two so on our team we're seeing the need for additional workforce not just only for burlington electric we think about things like weatherization we know there's a shortage of weatherization workforce we know that there's going to be as chad mentioned a lot more renewable energy happening and we need workforce for that too so that's from our perspective i don't know mayor chad if you want to share any thoughts i mean i would just add to that that um our issues are our i'd add to that uh how tightly related issues are um what i hear and i believe to be a case with our challenges like theron was just mentioning but every business i talk to the biggest workforce challenge in many ways is our our housing market and the lack of housing that we have the severe shortage of housing so um it's another reason why you know we we try to approach it from both both ends here we have these active you know proactive workforce development efforts training from young people in vermont i think the effectiveness of those efforts is going to be limited if we don't also dramatically increase the number of homes that are available and that's why we've been so focused on housing for years one of the reasons we've been so focused on housing for years sure i mean i would i would just remark that um anything and everything we can be doing for educational and workforce training is critical um we are going to have a need for housing as the mayor suggests to house all those clean energy workers um but literally every conference we go to uh every event we attend there are more and more people there specifically young people which is really encouraging we obviously are going to need to house them um and but we we have jobs for them if they uh can get the training yeah i think it's it's really exciting to be able to have a real tangible um project to work on um i've already been doing research at uvm for uh renewable energy in the electrical engineering department and a lot of what we do now is computer based and we do math and simulations but we don't get an opportunity to really see what we're doing and feel so connected to it so it's really exciting to have something that you can get real vermont data from so it feels like it's right here in our community and we're doing work that that really matters so yeah it's very exciting okay thanks everybody