001the Ann Arbor energy commission and I call this meeting to order uh I am participating by the way from my home in Ann Arbor welcome to the November 8th 2022 electronic meeting of the energy Commission this virtual meeting is to affect social distancing and to mitigate the spread and impact of the covid-19 virus we will conduct this meeting similar to in-person meetings we're basically forgotten what those are like Commissioners during roll call please indicate your current location during the meeting please remain on camera just as you would be visible during an in-person meeting also mute your microphone when not speaking public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call one of the following toll-free numbers 877-853-5247 or 888-788-0099 and then enter the meeting ID number nine
002five six eight seven one eight seven eight seven six this information is also available on the published agenda in the Public Notices section of the city website on the broadcasters meeting on CTN Channel 16 and ATT channel 99 and online at www.a2gov.org backslash watch CTN so Missy please read us the land acknowledgment you back chair mursky I acknowledge that the land the city of Ann Arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe and Wyandotte peoples I further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the United States on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous peoples The Taking of this land was formalized by the Treaty of Detroit in 1807. knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of
003the ongoing consequences of this past can Empower us and our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals thank you very much Missy would you also lead the Roll Call absolutely and forgive me it's a little clunky as I go back and forth here um reminder uh if you could just share where you're calling from that would be delightful uh commissioner Macomber I'm joining from my home in Ann Arbor thank you uh Commission 11. uh yes I'm joining from my home in Ann Arbor apologies for the lack of video I'll make sure to resolve that by next community but thank you very much uh chair mersky present in here my home in Ann Arbor Vice chair Colvin Garcia president from my home in Ann Arbor uh let me just
004double check on my list uh councilmember oh hi council member bricks yeah here in Ann Arbor uh council member uh I want to say council member Adina is excused he wrote that he's unable to join us tonight because the election issues yeah uh commissioner here and calling from campus in Ann Arbor uh commissioner Kerber here from my home in Ann Arbor outstanding commissioner Peck hi y'all home in Ann Arbor commissioners Smith oh wait I wasn't calling for my home in Ann Arbor since I toggle back and forth here perfect uh commissioner uh zitelman for my home in Ann Arbor great commissioner Cohen president calling in from my home in Ann Arbor apologies I typed over you did you say Ann Arbor yes Ann Arbor great thank you commissioner McKenna president calling from Ann Arbor great
005commissioner Hart here uh joining from Ann Arbor excellent commissioner Berkowitz present here from my Homan Ann Arbor chairsky you have a near unanimous uh attendance you're on mute but I too am in awe I was gonna say excellent and that's because we have such an interesting program tonight So speaking of programs uh we have an agenda it's close to Van legistar can I get a motion to approve the agenda in a second and then we'll open it up for any discussion or changes so moved by commissioner McCumber second from commissioner Colin Garcia any discussion changes to the agenda seeing none all those in favor of approving the agenda please say aye and raise your hand all right anyone opposed none opposed it passes unanimously uh next is approval of the minutes of the last meeting
006uh can I also get a motion to approve those in a second so moved by commissioner Calvin Garcia second from commissioner McCoy any discussion any changes necessary very straightforward minutes this time seeing uh no indication that there's any changes necessary all those in favor approving the minutes please raise your hand and say aye aye aye anyone opposed none opposed great okay we are on a roll oh this now takes us to public input if you this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak for up to three minutes if you're watching on CTN please call 888-788-0099 or 877-853-5247 and enter the meeting ID 956-871-87876 this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and in the video feed City staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the
007last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star nine on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any background noise so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments all right caller ending in one three four thank you Dr stultz and Tara murski Ken Garber 28 Haverhill Court I've been in my green power for about four years at the 100 level I get an impact report each month DTE last month told me I'm doing great and said my year-to-date impact was equivalent to planting 20 trees or removing 1700 pounds of CO2 this
008is false solar panels and wind turbines do not remove CO2 from the atmosphere I wish they did but they don't what they do is add more Generations if DTE used that to replace fossil fuels we'd be getting somewhere but I don't see it DTE is slowly retiring coal plants but replacing them with natural gas that happened at Saint Claire and that's the plan for Bell River I'm not even sure my offsets go to new Renewables as opposed to existing assets pte doesn't tell me and even though I have the 100 option my billing rate reflects dte's overall dirty fuel mix solar by itself should only cost maybe six to eight cents per kilowatt hour my 17 cents per kilowatt hour also pays the cost of dte's fossil fuel power generation if I'm right all my
009green power customers even at the 100 level like me are still paying for coal and gas generation through the rate structure now about natural gas balance the forestry component is suspect third party offset verifiers have a conflict of interest because they're paid by companies selling the offsets the verifier that DTE uses American carbon registry was exposed in August by muckraking TV comedian John Oliver for certifying Forest preservation offsets for land that's under no threat of logging as for renewable natural gas in which landfill methane is diverted for burning in gas furnaces that puts the same carbon into the atmosphere but as CO2 rather than CH4 the EPA already requires large landfills to capture and control their methane emissions so even if landfill methane displaces fract gas there is little additionality but let's let's assume these
010are quality offsets avoid them anyway consider that when we burn gas we send a signal to the capital markets to make more fossil fuels um offsets can't offset that only avoidance can at this late stage in the climate crisis every investment decision we make needs to be for Renewables electrification and energy use reduction offsets ensure that Capital keeps flowing to dirty energy offsets in fact are worse than nothing because they encourage inaction and that leads to more emissions not less if DTE wants to help the climate it should prevent new developments from connecting to its gas lines but it does the opposite of course natural gas balance is designed to protect dte's gas business not to phase it out which is what's needed thank you for your comments Mr Garber missing anyone else that's all
011it's all we'll wait just a second longer um I guess probably not worth waiting much longer because people had three minutes to get in line behind Mr Garber yeah there's no one else even in the in the room okay okay yeah very good okay so let's move on then um the next point of the agenda are updates from OSI and news from energy Commissioners so we'll start with news from OSI Chairman's kitchen I fail in the agenda to put this earlier do this at the end um we have work group updates um and reports from environmental commission at the end so we're sort of duplicitous in that regard oh that is an error on my part then if folks would entertain a kind of in process motion we do have our speakers with us and
012we can move on to that portion and then I could do an update with what we have left why don't we do that I think that's fair to our speakers so that they can enjoy the rest of their evenings okay so we have two presentations from DTE um one about my green power and the other about their natural gas balance um program and um I welcome them and appreciate their appearing I wanted to just preface uh their remarks are um or give my own remarks before their remarks and that is just to remind everyone in an hour that a huge portion of our greenhouse gas emissions come from greenhouse gas emissions traceable to DTE generating electricity uh and also from uh natural gas that we burn as consumers we are the consumers of everything that
013DTE supplies us so this is something where we have to be critical about ourselves as well as about DTE um I wanted to also uh I know I'm speaking to the choir here but um everybody knows that uh cop27 is taking place this week uh and I think it's important to note that in the lead up to cop there were some interesting let's say climate statistics uh that were issued by the rural metatrological organization um and I I just like to read off a a couple of those uh recognitions or or statistics that that they pointed out first of all the planet if you look at including this year and we're most of the way through this year um so it's very likely that the planet has witnessed its eight warmest years on record um
014the global mean temperature in 22 2022 is on track to be 1.15 degrees C above the pre-industrial average um ocean Heat was at record levels in 2021 the latest year assessed and the rate of sea level rise has doubled in the last 30 years and then we're seeing glacial melts all over the world but in particular in the European Alps where in 2022 there were average losses of three to four meters in their glaciers so it's I think really important that we think about that and I think also um if some of you didn't hear some of the opening remarks given by un Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez um he said that we are in the fight of our lives and we are losing and he went on to say the world is on a highway
015to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator so I think we all need to do everything that we can to leverage opportunities to reduce our our footprint our greenhouse gas footprint our carbon footprint and we're going to hear about potentially two ways to do that tonight and so we will first start I believe with the my green power presentation is that right very good yeah so I believe we've been with us from DTE Energy and I just want to share Commissioners this topic came up uh because it's a it's a pretty interesting time for renewable energy and many of you have probably gotten flyers or seen information about the migraine power program and so there's a lot of questions we wanted to Daylight that and have a chance to kind of have interactive dialogue
016so then I believe you are now a co-host do you want to share your slides directly yes yes thank you yeah thank you uh Dr stelz thank you commission for having us here tonight I really appreciate it um and look this is you can tell it's an important issue uh for the World by your comments around the UN for uh you know uh for for the caller who called in I mean this is important to all of us not just that we do it but how we do it something we want to be very thoughtful of I think that's on everybody's mind so I've got some prepared slides uh that I'd like to present I can bolster them with a little bit of additional information on our uh residential and small business program and then
017leave um plenty of time for questions and uh you know keep going until you make me say I don't know which I hate to say and then uh I follow up with whatever whatever I can answer tonight but um yeah let me uh let me show my screen and um earlier in the week I had to use zoom I use mostly teams uh if my sound starts to waver in and out I can bolster it by calling in from my phone as well and use the audio for that so just let me know if you start to lose my my audio your audio is fine right now thanks man great great great thank you so much [Music] everyone see um yes we do if you can put it in um slideshow that'd be great yep
018it's now there so thanks jump down to the first substitute slide because everyone here knows you know who you are already you don't need to tell you um so yeah without reading every bullet here uh DTE Services 2.2 million uh electric customers in our service territory and uh the point of this is not to say that DTE is a big company I'm sure you know that DT is a big public Fortune 500 company um with all the goods and all bads that come with that but um the point of this is the dte's perspective it's important that we touch these folks We Touch 2.2 million electrical customers and that's a responsibility and we get that and we see that so so what does that translate into um uh DTE has um articulated a plan to
019get to Net Zero by 2050 and it's actually interesting this company is a very interesting time and even at the time I uh created these slides additional or since the time I created these slides additional information to come out like just last week last week uh DT made public its uh most recent IRP integrated resource plan and um 2050 gold remains but there's even been some accelerations on that if you actually uh look at some of the executive summaries that are out there and search the word accelerate or accelerate it's really interesting and great stuff to see but the plan overall is the same through retiring coal plants investing in renewable energy and Energy Efficiency programs we're working our way very methodically towards a net zero goal foreign [Music] this slide up talking about electricity
020uh the um emissions associated with uh electricity that's generated on your behalf so that's very much true and uh migrating power was meant to be a solution to help to begin to address scope 2 emissions those emissions associated with purchased electricity um the program is voluntary right and so in addition to the 15 RPS folks that want to attribute reader degree of uh their energy consumption uh to uh to clean sources to renewable energy they have to raise their hand and we try to keep the program as simple as possible uh we have the advantage of already having a relationship with all of our electrical customers and so adding something uh into the relationship that can be easy and that can take uh two different forms whether we're talking about the smaller large Business program
021which I can get into in a minute and uh you know just kind of talking about the large program for a moment so uh the distinction large program versus small I've gotten some feedback that I do spend the most of my time currently uh talking to large customers but have a fair amount of experience talking with our residential and small business programs well in the current form of the program the enrollment break point between the large and small program is 2500 megawatt hours so it's a fairly large customer uh that it takes to enroll for and qualify for the large program now the main difference on a high level between the large program and the small program is that large program uh has a contract associated with it and a minimum enrollment uh also due
022to availability you know capacity constraints uh currently if you were to sign up for the large customer program you would begin um uh you begin receiving that energy or being able to attribute that energy starting in 2026 soon to be 2027 by the end of this year we uh we'll be getting into 2027 start dates with a small program there is no contract required and you can start and leave the program whenever you want uh although I should add because of the popularity of the program capacity is starting to be a constraint there as well so um but that's a good thing in the sense that uh you know if we were having trouble selling out the program it would slow our bills whereas you know there's nothing that puts more pressure on our renewable
023energy development team to build more or to find the option to build more than to continuously sell out year after year uh into the build plan so that's that's a good thing for the large program I did mention there's a contract associated with it and flexibility we try to make the name of the game uh it's customizable in the sense that you can adopt the program in five percent increments and so that's uh five percent up to 85 percent you can join so anywhere from five percent to 85 and five percent increments uh your contract term could be 5 10 15 or 20 years it's originally 5 10 or 20 but we added 15 just to seemed like uh you know going by fives is a theme Here for flexibility but uh just adding as
024many options as possible for folks different people make um their decision based on different factors um you know no upfront Capital right it just becomes a monthly uh either uh credit or uh cost depending on depending on energy markets and I'm going to come to that I know that how these things are priced and energy credits versus um your standard energy uh is something that's team Focus here and believe me I will get to that in just a couple of slides I want to talk a little bit more about the structure of the programs um so what are we what are we doing I mean on a high level is probably obvious we're building large-scale wind and solar uh projects inside the state of Michigan so that's important um we're focused on building and creating
025you know uh clean energy jobs within Michigan and that goes everywhere and that's not not just with MDT service territories we're in the U.P we're way up by Traverse City which we can show you West County so uh all over uh Michigan but inside the state of Michigan and uh we're able to build at a scale that uh allows us to um really make it economical so some things when you're You're Building solar projects are going to be expensive whether they're big or small but other things uh you know you really do get the economy of scale and uh you know mpsc approved um as a utility one of the uh things that I think of as a very good thing is that uh everything that we're doing here is under the oversight of the
026mpsc and so um you know there is a factor of sort of Big Brother you know looking over our shoulder and to the extent you know DT in my experience is uh an incredibly uh customer minded organization but um you know you don't have to take my word for it because we've got a regulator so um so you know you have that additional Comfort additionality locality affordability tracking and kind of take these in order um we're not trying to say okay and um you know just kind of take it you built for five years ago as I said you look at the large program um where you know getting people into the program now so that we have full support to build our program build into our program 20.6 1.7 and Beyond I actually started
027this year uh selling uh 2024 and as of 2 20 24 20.5 sold out uh that's not now that's not directly pertinent to the slide but I keep talking about if you start date years and uh capacity and that's a point that I'm going to keep committing throughout the um uh presentation because there has been such overwhelming demand which is great which is really really great um and I hope it really gets us to keep uh keep doing what we're doing we'll have locality right this is this concept that you're um you're consuming uh inside the state of Michigan so isn't it great to um to be associated with renewable resources that are being built in the state of Michigan affordability this kind of comes back to my point about um uh you know scale
028building and scale I think that there's also you know a lot of things that have been done you know if you look at the uh the changes between former uh the writer 17 and writer 19 the tariffs that drive this program being restructured into the new Rider 17 and uh just so the way that's continued to help lower prices there's some folks in this room who are key contributors thought leaders in um in how we go about doing that and a lot of folks DTE um you know a lot of folks within our territory and Beyond and the mpsc have all kind of put together thoughts and how we can get this as the expensive as possible for the um for the customers so again I think customers benefiting from us being a regulated utility
029and then tracking uh so uh you know you get these wrecks these uh renewable energy certificates are created for every one megawatt uh hour of of energy that's produced by a renewable resource a wreck is produced is created and that's got a serial number it's trackable uh and uh Michigan's got the Mi the my Rex system so that's a a digital uh software that is you know that's the mandated software that's used inside the state of Michigan and uh the good thing about that is again you know this is under the oversight of the mpsc we create the the energy is generated the wrecks are created they're tracked in that system and uh retired on behalf of our customers at the end of the year so it's it's fully auditable so we're not calling and
030selling uh the same megawatt of energy to uh to two different customers but um it's also you know from an administrative burden perspective it's another good thing about our program where it's just another thing where you know an individual is probably not looking to track their own wrecks uh you know if they even produce one you know wreck a year I think that large companies it could potentially become an administrator um just you know a little bit of the successes that we had this year to highlight two of them uh one is the four deal we are inordinarily proud of this deal for a bunch of reasons um you know part of it being record-setting with respect to a private company utility super cool um if I use an informal term but I get excited
031you know going and seeing things like this um this deal between Ford and DTE um will uh have us at 650 megawatts of solar energy just to give you a sense a large solar Park that we're building in Michigan is in the neighborhood of 200 maybe 200 plus megawatts so this is probably three or four large solar parts so I I think that that's um super exciting and um you know you probably hear us talking about it for a little while hopefully hopefully you know and I I don't think this will be the only thing we're talking about because we have a lot of really interesting things going but uh but a super big deal in system um the Ann Arbor Public Schools um uh enrollment uh I was personally very closely involved with this
032one as well and um I think it's great I think um you know if you look at the ability to help uh the school district meet its goals and and uh economic manner uh I think that my green power through my personal opinion is was an unrivaled Choice uh I think it's it's going to turn out to be better and better uh for uh aaps over time and um you know really happy to be able to speak to this one 31 schools uh involving that buildings this is the slide I like to say almost speaks for itself um because and I said because although it's obvious what it is a logo slide I'm always going to talk to this because there's a lot of great stuff here and yes this is a series of big
033companies that are in the program but a lot of these folks have offices locally right there's folks on the line and constituents who work for these companies and and institutions and health institutions right with the Trinity being just east and Washington being right there and um like having a test track in the Northwest Washington County you know these folks are just all around you and inside a city of Ann Arbor in some cases as well yeah big block in there at the top right so uh just some folks some names you know and uh before I move on and this is my take a breath and see if I have questions but I want to add on to this some additional information on the residential and um Small Business program that was uh kind of
034brought to my attention a little absent from the Priceless instead of time to do a slide on this uh but I can follow up with these numbers and we'll throw some numbers out here for you um so you said you know if if someone were to say to me yeah the large customers it's apparent there's some large customers in there we get it but what about the small customer adoption so if we look at the small program this is folks that are under 2500 megawatt hours in an enrollment that's going to be two main types it's going to be uh individuals so homeowners like myself I'm in the program uh or uh business owner and that can be um someone like uh that owns a restaurant or wants you know small businesses okay so I'll
035take those uh separately uh small business coming into the year as of the end of 2021 is approximately 46 000 customers in the program through the end of October this year alone we've added 26 000 to that so you could say by the end of October is around 72 000 customers uh in the program now the interesting thing that we've seen this year and you could kind of do the math if you think you know it took us let's say you know three or so years to get to 46 000 and then on base to add another 30 something or 40 000 this year alone the the obvious conclusion there is that it's picking up speed it's almost uh going parabolic in the sense of how quickly people are starting to um join the program
036um another Point small business so the second point I wanted to make was around small business uh coming into the year was approximately 460. uh small businesses in the program we've added another 300 through the end of October there's also um a designated uh sales consultant who works specifically with small business in the past uh it was a part of the job of folks like myself who covered large and small but it's become something that we've dedicated and pointed someone at uh specifically so uh just repeat those numbers I can tell people we're writing down so um came into the year with with residential 46 000 26 000 were enrolled additionally through the end of October bring to a total of 72 000. you know what I can I can follow up and I can
037send these uh over small business came into the year at 460. another 300 added through October for a total of 760. um so so the program's growing there's uh if anything growing and accelerating adoption on the small business and residential side um I see there is a question and this is my stop and take a breath slide so uh unless I'm breaking protocol by taking questions in the middle I'd like to open it up go ahead commissioner Macomber uh thank you so uh I'm wondering what percentage of dte's customers participate in Michigan green power because uh as I understand the um project approved by mpsc DTE doesn't have any requirements to actually invest in New uh renewable energy until they meet 75 percent of customers participating in the program and that essentially DTE doesn't have
038any requirement to invest in new programs until they meet that number sure let me let me try to answer that best I can because I may not have those exact numbers right in front of me so bye um my total usage total customer usage eligible customer usage I believe it's around nine percent in terms of the enrollment in in the program I believe uh please so hopefully I can follow up with that number that's shooting from there um but the second part is more interesting to me if you do look at our IRP and I myself uh haven't really had enough chance to really sit with it and fully understand all the sort of things that have changed since our last one um DTE has filed a plan to continue to build uh year over
039year over year and it's hundreds of megawatts of uh Renewables that are already part of the plant so uh if you're talking about a forcing function that asks well causes us to build even more on top of that um that's possible that's a possible uh for sure but um you know I assure you that a large part of dte's plan is to grow Renewables as part of the generation mix over time and it's uh pretty explicitly laid out there in the IRP for sure there are two uh I'll take Dr Stoltz for students I think commissioner McKenna was before me oh I apologize commissioner please thank you hi van thanks for sharing your work with us um it's great to have you here and I'm looking forward to a great discussion my question to you
040is about costs to the consumer and basically the overall business model of this program um so I'm reading that um please correct me I'm not super familiar with the pricing I'm not currently on the program but I'm reading that the cost of consumers is about three cents per kilowatt hour is that correct currently uh for this for the uh the residential program is very very close to zero uh and I believe is actually a very small credit currently in the favor of the customer okay okay great and uh I'm sorry please oh if you had more I'd love to hear yes it's actually my next slide so it's uh okay you've set me up perfectly thank you Commission I have just one follow-up here as well um you mentioned uh Rex are retired and I
041think your point was that uh you know you're not kind of double counting or double selling which is clearly uh important um but I want I wanted to ask a little bit more clarification on the Rex Market in Michigan and it's my understanding that the way wrecks work is that they there's a um a requirement for utilities to have a certain proportion of their generation provided by Renewables and therefore there's a Rex Market that has a value for each kilowatt hour created of renewable energy um so you're retiring them but are you also selling them and or like getting that value I'm just kind of curious how the business model works on your end yes uh so there's a couple of different things as part of your question and one point that you've come to
042uh twice commissioner is how does the business model work and that's what this next slide is going to get into and I want to I want to spend some time on that because that's that's really worth delving into the other part of it and let's kind of separate the 15 RPS uh that's the you know the renewable portfolio standards standard it's the law 15 of all of our customers uh energy needs to be attributable to renewable energy that is separate from the migraine from Power program in the sense that everybody gets it's not voluntary um their maybe a portion of meeting that obligation that comes from Rex and that's something I I would be less privy to on sort of day to day as to you know how we're getting their uh generation versus uh
043Rex Etc but there is a wreck Market in fact and uh you know Rex uh you can come into through buying through generating um through the types of generation that you build and the types of wrecks that you get uh for building you know bonus records They call them Etc but um that's you know sort of the 15 if you want to talk about the wrecks that are generated through um migrant power assets and then we are not turning around and trading those into the market uh not the ones you know definitely not the ones that um become essentially the property of the um the customer who is enrolled so in an ideal world where uh we weren't super duper uh capacity constrained we'd be selling out these assets about 80 percent we'd be you
044know enrolling them about 80 percent 80 that's associated with the enrollments would go uh would be retired on behalf of the customer and that's it the other 20 will be keeping the bank for if production were to get down and we didn't have enough to make you know to meet our customers needs and doing nothing Etc you know that's just how you would do a program where the exact production is a little bit you know maybe uncertain from month to month it's just sort of a buffer um but no we would not have the ability to go and trade one of these into the market um and then also retire on behalf of the customer the myrec system make sure that we don't double dip like that it's again one of the good things about
045having something associated with that a serial number and I will come back to answer your question about how the credits uh work in the marketplace but have I answered at least the rest of your questions thank you thank you for the question commissioner um why don't you go ahead and explain this slide if that's okay Missy and uh maybe that may better inform some of the questions coming up sure um okay so it's uh we've broken it down to like a relatively simple math equation to just kind of like talk about what is the bit that you would see on your bill and it's a we put it as a net premium and that could be a credit or a debit a credit or an expense depending on this second part right so here's the
046math part right the subscription fee let's talk about the subscription uh that is your Baseline monthly cost that's your rent for lack of a better uh analogy um these projects are built and the projects have nlcoe now I'm going to oversimplify a little bit right and the lcue is everything that goes into the cost of building it the land the panels the studies et cetera et cetera et cetera and you take those and you um spread them out across the 35-year respective life of the project and uh you model it down and what you come up with is a cost per megawatt hour so I'll pick a number and we'll say you know 58 dollars per megawatt hour I say your subscription fee based on the lco we have our Blended pool of projects will
047be 58 per megawatt hour so if it produced if the energy It produced went to the marketplace and was worth zero nothing you would be on the hook for 58 per megawatt power but like any other sort of farm it produces something and that has value in the marketplace so let's go to the second part so that's the subscription fever we don't we own a farm right that farm let's say it's a corn farm I like to just kind of let's just shift it right because this is not it's not as uh intimidating that sounds uh so 58 uh per month is our far you know uh rent on the corn farm and then when we produce something energy we go to the marketplace the Maison Marketplace and we get credits for selling it now
048there's two different types of credits the there's the what I call the Energy Credit could also call the LMP credit and that's a good way of thinking about it is a lot like the spot price of the energy right at any commodity corn gold wheat right uh will have a value at that moment to that um market and so when you go to sell the energy into the marketplace it's worth something now that's your big credit there's also a smaller credit called capacity credit so for having that energy available at that time so the Miso uh Marketplace you'll also get credit for that so those two credits together the energy and the capacity credits are worth something now there's basically two scenarios they'll either be worth more than the 58 bucks per megawatt hour that
049you're on the hook for or they'll be worth less they're worth less than you owe the difference if they're worth more then you get a credit now we're in interesting times now sort of I think I'm gonna come back and I know I so I did that fast I want to give people time to digest that and ask me some questions about that if they like but we're in interesting times now and this is sort of what is on everybody's mind because people seem to know that right now the credits are exceeding the subscription fee so the subscription fee is pick a number 58 bucks a dollars per megawatt hour uh let's pick a number and say the credits together are 59. 60 megawatt hour which in this made up numbers scenario folks would be
050making one to two dollars per megawatt hour so you'd see it so on your bill I I said the break point for the large customer programs 2500 megawatt hours so if you have a 2500 megawatt hour enrollment on your bill there would be a line that said 33 additional lines for being in the program line one subscription fee 2500 megawatt hours times uh 58 dollars per megawatt hour uh sales tax or something we can do that math is my own problem but whatever that is and then credit will do the credits together it's two separate lines the energy and the capacity but let's just do it together to make it easy uh 2500 megawatt hours 59 megawatt hour and if you you know tear that out you'll get basically the one dollar difference times 2500
051megawatt hours I mean I can do that now you'd have made twenty five hundred dollars as a credit against the other items on your bill so you know partial offset of your DTE bill in that uh in that instance and that's kind of where we are these days I have a uh oh the first bullet pertains to the uh the large customer program and the interesting thing to me about this is not that just that it's in a a credit currently but we didn't forecast it to be any credit DTE um takes a fairly conservative uh typically in my you know sort of uh observation in my experience has taken a fairly conservative uh forecasting approach and whereas between even predicted to be a little bit of a um uh an expense to the customer
052you know it's nice to surprise to the uh to the upside and turn around and some credit so that's the large customer program and then the small customer programs and the credit as well we talked about earlier we expect and what we expect to happen is um especially as we get past 20 30 the credits to continue to exceed because uh subscription fees but again that's a forecast I do not have a magic ball if I did uh I would have been the winning Powerball uh personally but um I've taught for a bit and there's been people with their hands up so uh you know to the extent uh can I interject the first Missy before you to make sure that we all understand I'll put it this way whether I understand maybe I'm one
053that's uh most feeble-minded here um in the first bullet point I want to make sure that we use the same terms that are in the formula up above so forecasted expense what is forecasted expense in the terms up above does that mean the third element credit was estimated to be a loss I mean in other words was the farm going to be producing at a loss or are we mixing term names between the various elements forecasted expense is another term for the net premium here so yeah that that's a that's good feedback and I can change that for going forward that uh I'll use that terminology so it ties to the above but um yes so the expectation was that if the subscription fee were 58 that the credits would be getting in the marketplace
054were 51 and so that they would be a seven dollar cost to the customer but what happened was they were on average um but uh 76 76 dollar credits which is surprising everyone delighting everyone to the upside okay so in other words the figures in the first bullet are both net premium figures one that's forecasted as a net premium of 18 per megawatt hour and instead the net premium is only going to be seven dollars per megawatt hour is that correct yeah um it was very close up until the end because it's actually you stated as something that's good but it's actually even better so expected outcome for the net premium was that it was going to be a seven dollar per megawatt hour expense to the customer but what uh is happening um year-to-date
055is that it's an 18 credit I'm sorry yeah I got them reversed okay a massive swing uh a massive swing and it's it's wonderful and it's I I don't think that that will necessarily pull uh you know that we would um you know blow it out of the water by that much but um it's a great experience and since the large customer customers went live in June of 2021 it has fairly consistently surprised to the to the upside too because in just the last point for clarification before the questions these are figures for large customers not residential customers correct yes and so the large customer uh net premium had been as uh the commissioner had said um uh earlier I believe this commissioner can I pointed out um was a debit uh was a so
056the net premium was an expense and uh as of June of this year it resets the Small Program resets annually uh became a very small credit so it's um think about it as just about zero but that's like credit for the customer okay and as you say that will change depending on the markets um so that that's clear okay um that that helps for me um Missy go ahead with your questions and then Ember and then Larry yeah thanks so much Vin I just want to I wonder if you speak to two things one is um as Commissioners may know in the volunteer green program the vgp in which this is a an initiative we got settlement to potentially pursue 440 megawatts of new Renewables for Ann Arbor which is roughly equivalent to the amount
057of electricity that we use in any given year so very very similar to the Ford product I wonder if you just speak to uh when if if we were to move that forward which we have not made the decision to when that might come online and how that would sort of look so that's kind of one bucket that I wanted to draw attention to and then the second is one that I think is really important and sort of gets to what our caller Mr Garber was mentioning which is can you just verify my assumption is correct in this which is if all 2.2 million DTE customers subscribed to the vgp program it doesn't mean the DTE is 100 renewable because the base load still has other mixes am I correct in that assumption so uh
058let me answer the reverse order there is a certain amount of capacity that's set aside for the program but if 2.2 million people try to subscribe to the program tomorrow it would be you know it'll be but we were already at capacity issues right and so it would it would over kick the current coverage with respect to what we um had planned it would be the best possible problem in a lot of ways because when you're probably be an opportunity in the sense that we could then plan to build to try to meet that you know what would happen to your point the base load generation Etc I think we all are familiar that DT's recently built um a branch I need uh you know natural gas generation facility in Blue Water right so there
059are other things in the mix and um and yeah even I would love to see what happens though is I guess my answer is I would love to see what happened if 2.2 million signed up for the program but yeah right now we're in the uh the 70 000 range so um I first wanted to get me to say I don't know I don't know exactly what would happen but I think I'm sorry under the bus on that that fundamentally is a question about additionality and I think that's what I was trying to get it is how much addition it's not a one for one and that that's important for the commission is we want to get to a one-for-one replacement hence why the city keeps intervening uh to create new projects that get us
060there so just wanted to sort of name that broccoli no that's that's great and and and yeah and if you look at the IRP um one of the things though that I mentioned in my my store my Preamble was this concept of acceleration and I think that uh you know dtd's plan and uh desire to have Renewables be a greater part is working in the sense that if you compare the last I repeat of this IRP things like what I had been saying for the last couple of years is step one you know one of the you know big Milestones is by 2040 will be at 80 well if you look at the new IRP by 2040 will be at um net reduction from you know from our initial base mark which I believe their
061Baseline um was that DTS based on which 2005 so seeing those move in the right direction coal retirements get accelerated things like that I'd say it's it's moving does it you know so it's it's kind of a bit spasmodic to point it doesn't feel one for one to a lot of folks and I definitely understand and can empathize with what the caller was saying as well uh in that you know I do this and then I don't see it's not like you step on the gas and you're it's maybe a bad example some of the gas in your Tesla and and then it it leaps forward no it's kind of like we do stuff and then you know we see it in the plan and there's a little bit of an ebb and flow but
062I would say that it's it's working uh to the extent that that they give you a piece of mind the other uh question that you has about the uh the 440 megawatt project um would love to um you know to explore that and really kind of dig into uh how soon you know I say similar with size projects that we're talking about now probably you know 2027 don't quote me but just to get a sense my response to the extent you're giving me an opportunity to say this and you know um I'd say for things like that there's such interesting demand from large customers right now um that definitely um let's continue to talk and move that forward uh uh you know because I want to make sure that you know you have a place
063uh you know you keep your place in mind for sure because you know those dates just just keep seeming to move back I have a question for clarification Missy um would the city in effect be an aggregator in that regard and that would aggregate the demand of Ann Arbor customers and would go essentially is that what you mean by this 440 megawatts yeah it's what we proposed was if uh if we were to do effectively a wreck purchase we would want to do new Renewables in Michigan and so we put that in the vgp knowing the long lead time as a project that was approved by the Public Service Commission so we could execute on it if we wanted to so it's available to us yeah John we would be buying for everyone in the
064community okay okay great Vin could you provide us after the meeting the Caps I mean you've talked about caps several times I'm wondering what what are actually the caps and um is it and maybe what it's contingent on if it is contingent on you know something that um enrollees would do or is it something contingent on something that's on DTE side and it's Supply chains could because that's something you could provide us after the meeting is that the uh available enrollments meaning like yeah let me follow up on that on my site and get a sense of uh of okay I will get you something yeah because otherwise it's not very transparent what's what's limiting you know if we were we and others were really um increase the demand is that increased demand going to
065run into caps and therefore the demand is really not going to be um something that's going to be automatically met within a certain time frame by by increased Supply and overall I mean yes is the answer for sure and it's in details interest uh for sure too okay find ways to get folks remember forgive me you're up it's okay thank you um my first question is related to Dr Schultz's question and also comes from um Ken garber's comments uh I'm not a math person so perhaps I was not following the rate structure combo exactly so I just wanted to ask explicitly um our customers who are enrolled in Michigan green power even at 100 Levels still paying for coal and gas generation through this rate structure that was something that I believe Ken asked um
066and then my second set of questions was around um the the goal for that like the statement that by 2050 The Net Zero carbon emissions in dte's electric and gas businesses um there would be Net Zero carbon emissions so my my first question there is how is the measurement of that goal accounting for methane loss via leak in transport and if it isn't why isn't it and my second question is at by 2050 what percentage of electricity generation from DTE will actually still be from coal in natural gas um and I mean I asked that because I want to make sure that we're not obscuring the actual impact of you know dte's electrical electric electricity use in our our use as customers um you know particularly because we know that low-income communities and communities of
067color are facing the highest burden from Poland natural gas so I would like to know what the actual percentages will be by 2050 as of right now thanks sure so um off top of my head if I can tell you said call uh production as part of our generation 150 will be zero and I can I can't remember I haven't actually spent enough time with the new IRP to tell you the specifics of what the what's the last few the last year that Nicole uh generated plant will be um 2035 so thank you thank you for that and uh the other question is he's going to get a little bit of a similar answer and that's uh you know backing up I think it was your second question was what will be the specific percentages
068that's public record that is in the IRP and there's a like a five to ten from each um really nice executive summary available online which I can follow up and send that uh to the group and it's got some interactive things involved and it will fully answer anything about what the projected percentages are going to be I just don't have the numbers uh inside of it right now so I apologize that's a little bit of a cop-out the information is available uh and I have a feeling that someone might be looking at it right now but uh I don't I don't have it in front of me tell you the exact percentage of the 2035. I'll send it out to the Commission in just a minute commissioner McCoy so we have that at our fingertips
069Amber did you get your first question answered oh and then backing up um no the first question was relation I believe I'm sorry I believe it was in relation to uh Ken garber's question on the phone about paying for um the generation mix is that fair or do you want to restate it no that's correct I mean I was about asking like even if what how if the rate structure for migraine power even when we're 100 um as a customer if we're still paying for coal and gas generation through that rate structure foreign I think it's a little bit of um a confusing way to determine um and so what I'll say is that the way that this is structured in terms of how you pay for it is you can imagine basically your bill
070stays the same and they have these three lines that I talked about and so if you look at your bill um you could say I'm paying for everything that I was plus or minus the microphone I I think that for a lot of the other reasons that I talked about your generation can be linked directly at least for the 85 enrolled in micro power can be linked directly to these assets that are associated with the program the other 15 uh associated with um RPS generation so there's two different ways of looking at it I mean there is a practical component of needing to be able to set this up on your build uh and you know supposedly infrastructure and there's sort of all that stuff so I I wouldn't phrase the way um you know
071the position there but in the sense that yes micro power is uh you know these three additional lines on your on your existing Bill yes uh yesterday did I answer all your questions uh satisfactory because I'm happy to go back into any of those if you think I have pants then may I follow up on that um DT or Deans earns a guaranteed rate of return based on its capital capital assets correct that is my understanding yes right so if an asset is not passed it useful life then it's still earning a rate of return on those assets even if they're fossil fuel and that rate of return is being distributed or paid for let's say by dte's customers and so I guess maybe another way of asking Amber and Ken's question is if indeed
072DTE is earning a greater return and that rate of return is being paid for by DTE customers and part of that those Capital assets are fossil fuel assets then are we not paying for those fossil fuel generating assets good question um I know I see your point yeah I kind of go back to my earlier answer in the sense that the way we've structured the program this is an add-on to the existing bill so I mean you can break it down and you know talk about uh utility accounting I'm sure you can find a way to talk to that but what I think the focus it really ought to be in my answer this kind of goes back to the sort of thing about you know you step on the gas and there's a little
073bit more of an EB in the flow looking at the difference I would Point again to the new IRP I think that there's proof there that gte's plan is working it's accelerating um you know coal plant uh retirements and uh accelerating you know the path to to Net Zero and and that's uh you know the best answer I got for you right now okay commissioner Kerber then commissioner Calvin Garcia yes uh thanks for for being here Vin um so I really like the my green power program the problem is that 2050 is just too long so I know everybody is wanting Pat you want to Pat yourselves on the back but 2050 is just not acceptable in any stretch so I'm going to come back and just take one sentence you put on one of
074your slides that said affordability less expensive than on-site owner-owned generation I would challenge that is not defensible what you're saying is all the people that are doing their own solar don't get a financial return I can tell you that is unequivocally false no question I'd like to see your calculations that justify that statement right now if you look at this program right in this slide you have up there the oh somebody on my green power is still paying 17 to 18 cents per kilowatt hour they haven't saved anything they're basically just going green which is fine I'm totally in support of that but that does not make it more affordable than going green using your own energy so you know just tell me what how do you make this claim that it's more affordable than
075what gives you a payback in seven or eight years how do you make that comment I just don't understand it thank you for that thank you for the question and look we got to be able to answer the hard questions and justify what we have on the screen so I appreciate you holding me accountable here uh Commissioners and thank you for that um let me just take it so that the line down there does refer to the large customer program the uh 18 they could point it to is actually a credit but uh even taking the small customer program because I think that you know if you're talking about an individual putting um solid pounds on the roof and and I never want to speak poorly of um putting solar panels on the roof and
076if anything uh I did say came across as negative on that uh that was not my intention because um I think um it's great that people are getting out there and doing something and I've definitely had enough conversations for folks to know that some people it is their strong preference to do that and um you know putting the economic issue even set aside for one second I'm going to come back to it so that's the part of your question um someone says that they want something they can point to and touch and um you know and have that on their roof and it's frankly it's a great advertisement for for going green personally I'm a big supporter of that you know because I'm a Believer in this stuff and so yes that's great um in
077terms of cost I mean right now as an individual anywhere to come to me and say uh I'm going to put solar panels on my roof and I'm going to start tomorrow you know I've financed it it's going to cost me x per month and I say okay well let's compare that to migraine power you've got your pick a number 100 I don't know I'm making up a number per month you know to pay okay my green power will cost you that's the current number we're comparing against zero will it always be zero I don't know but uh so the way I make these statements now is if that or if we compare the cost of even logic let's step back for a second right talk about economies of scale um building on your roof
078versus building a 200 megawatt you know uh call it a thousand acre um Farm logically which you know would you expect would um would have uh uh you know enough economies of scale to make the cost per for a lot less no I'm not saying that I've got all the answers I don't know if I can know it all at all and if there are numbers um that you had that you wanted us to compare or look at Etc I'm always open to the uh uh you know to the to the dialogue and to looking at my numbers and definitely appreciate the challenge if anything what I put up there so I'm just kind of Defending I'm not trying to get one over on you or anything by you but but you that power that
079you have someplace remotely someplace in Michigan that's largely being produced by coal generating plants you charge a customer about seven cents per kilowatt hour just to Move It from that plant to their home right that's that's that's where you start so you can say that you can generate electricity less expensively but you still have to deliver it and I think there are a lot of people who think you don't deliver it very reliably right now which is a major issue that I think everybody here has heard over and over and over again so I mean fun at the end of the day when you say more affordable if you have this program and I believe in this program I think it's a great program but you're still paying 17 to 18 cents per kilowatt hour
080for it and those people who have solar on their rooftops are saving lots of money and are paying a lot less so to me that's affordability so I'm just I'm not going to belabor this use of that word but I think you should probably rethink whether you want to have that on your slide because I just don't think it's an accurate statement thank you appreciate the feedback thank you commissioner Colin Garcia thanks so much for being here Ben it's uh really um such a great conversation that we're having um and um so I have a couple of questions uh one of the earlier slides uh you had a statement about the tax benefits to local communities and I just was curious uh if you could just embellish about that to explain what those those tax
081benefits are then I have another follow-up or that's actually not a follow-up question but a separate question that uh more closely ties with um with Larry's um questions for you so if you want to start with the tax benefits and then and then I'll ask you my other question sure um you know what I'd like to do is um because the actual statistics around those will change and I usually can get a couple of really good bullet points uh you know stats uh from my uh quarter pound group uh if you allow me the opportunity what I can do is I can follow up on be using the key some good statistics around jobs created tax benefits Etc and they're usually accumulative and they change periodically so I can follow up and send a couple
082of strong bullets and then you know answer any questions if there are the most but you know I think quantitative answers would be better with myself qualitatively financially off the cuff is that that satisfactory uh yeah I mean I was just curious as to like does this mean that especially um you know like if municipalities like if they purchase into the program if they're then going to get some aspect of the you know the investment tax credit or something like that I was like wondering how that works but yes I'd be great to see further information yes if that's what you'd be for absolutely I will not say no uh so as to my other question um so I installed solar panels um on my roof and so I look at my bills and and
083since I I subscribe to the my green power uh program and I see that I still am paying a power or Supply capacity charge a power supply non-capacity charge a power supply cost recovery charge and as far as the power supply charges and so um there you know as as Larry was saying there's still that full 17 cents it's really great to know that that you know a portion of my electricity is green remotely through the utilities and I I also am producing electricity with my own solar panels clearly like not not enough you know to uh you know to meet 100 of my needs because I just I that but locality doesn't have enough solar exposure however so my question is the 85 percent like how does that calculate out you know if if
084a property already has its own solar power production if it's doing a combination of both locally and then also a utility subscribed yeah I know it's a good question um I'll make an assumption you know with I think a lot of the rooftop solar it's essentially at the time of meter um installation which means that the usage that you effectively get from it so to the extent it's reducing your overall usage from GTE that's coming off the top right so um the part that's your 85 is a function of what's actually getting the meter and so you know if you had a pie you know and that's the total amount of electricity that you consume in a year um and you're you know you produce let's say you know the pie is 100 units you
085produce five units in solar from your roof now the price down to 95 units and that is it's it's is is what we're doing 85 for your enrollment so your your rooftop unit is reducing your overall uh metered consumption makes sense all right yeah very good that was that was the question that I had thank you sure sorry about that I had myself on mute again I I think um and Alex we'll get to your question and Larry did you have a question again did you follow up again okay so we just we just have Alex I think um and we'll get to him in a second but what I what I'm realizing here is uh that um it may make sense that we we as a commission maybe behind the scenes we don't necessarily
086have to do it in the meeting is to go back and look at at some of our questions and some of your answers and formulate again some questions where maybe we provide those questions to DTE and GTE decides who's the right person to answer some of these questions and some of the base load kind of questions and and some of the other kinds of things that we're getting at um that are not really specifically related to my green power but what's sort of going on with big picture and and how a customer is still seen maybe a part of that in the bill so um we we really appreciate you doing the best you can to tackle those but it may be something that a follow-up meeting may may make sense and we'll we'll Circle
087back through the sea um if that's indeed the case so Alex go ahead and then we do have one more presentation and I did uh write you that we're going to try to finish this meeting by eight um and I realize I'm not I'm part of the problem that part of the solution here so um but um Alex and then if we have another one or two short questions then we can move on to the Natural Gas balance program go ahead thank you uh for coming then I have a couple of questions um the second one's kind of a two-parter please bear with me so DT's website says just under 10 of the fuel mix is renewable however the Michigan green power program web page says DT already provides customers with 15 renewable energy and
088my understanding is that DTE is required by state law to have renewable generation capacity of 15 but our existing renewable facilities actually running at full capacity and then I can just State the other questions and okay so when someone buys into the program do you know how much money that they pay in their bill actually goes towards the expansion of renewable energy sources so not including operational costs of existing facilities and then additionally onto that would methane gas infrastructure receive this money under the classification of renewable natural gas so taking them in order the first question really pertains to um RPS so it's it's not part of the migrant power program it's a little bit outside my area so I'll you know I'll give you a kind of a shorter answer on that and then
089you know maybe we have to Circle back to it but you know there's a gap between production and 15 RPS made up in other ways uh you know potentially through purchases Etc so I don't know the exact you know difference there but that's really kind of what we're getting that on my understanding what that question is the difference between RPS generation and meeting our 15 goal I can say that we definitely do meet our mpsc uh mandated 15 RPS uh but I couldn't tell you exactly you know the percentage of how we can close that Gap but we read that correctly uh that makes sense uh question two had to do with I'm sorry uh one of the questions had to do with um you know the costs um where the where the money goes
090to basically when folks are paying their fee I mean it's direct inside the subscription fees directly tied to the alsoe's uh of the pool of projects um so that is not um that's not the source of capital and um the the follow-up question on the part Associated that is um you know or the money's going to or or are sustained a different way is renewable natural gas part of the migraine power program it's not yes it's in the pool of assets or of two types they're either wind assets or solar assets wind was the original prevailing technology for a while it has been solar PT is starting to get more back into wind again so migraine power program for our electrical customers is wind and solar first time thank you very much hey thank you
091Finn uh for being with us here today um I had a question just around the flexible nature of the program you had mentioned you know some of the contract periods um and just curious if you can speak a little bit more directly to that flexibility um and per the potential concern that uh kind of signing up for one of those contract periods may walk a customer into you know potentially unfavorable kind of Economics um and uh uh you know prevent potentially the the build out of on-site generation that that may be a bit more favorable here and um and for the purpose of this question when we talked about the contract terms it's the large customer program and yeah I mean the contracts are you can can go from as short as five years five
092ten fifteen twenty there's also an um contract Provisions that allow for termination and that's in that's in the Tariff um so that's that's a possibility there's assignment there's a possibility with uh DTE sign off and um there's even potential opportunities for you know a acute uh an additional Community customer um taking the place of the customer seeking exit so there is potential for termination uh as in any agreement um but uh uh you know the reason for the contract terms is um they're large commitments for building and so long that we've got customers sort of um signed up the last DTE to with confidence I mean you know from these large assets at the rate that we want by rate under first thank you that's helpful I was also interested if you could speak to
093I understand there's a community impact or support element to the migraine power where uh you re you when you receive the kind of the migraine Power report There's an opportunity to allocate additional funds to kind of low-income customers can you talk a little bit about kind of how that allocation occurs kind of the additionality aspects um you know to uh you know uh kind of subscribing to that as well sure sure I think there's going to be uh probably another opportunity for me to follow up with uh sending information on how you know the mechanics of that could work I mean it is voluntary so folks that are in the program which is voluntary aren't compelled um to do that but it's another opportunity for folks to um to contribute to uh you know obviously
094regularly cause and there's been uh some real women support for that which is great in terms of you know how folks can do that I can definitely follow up with uh with some more specifics yeah you know as I said it has a follow-up in terms of the folks looking to get more involved in the low-income Pilots okay I think it's appropriate to move on um Commissioners if there's something that you recognize that you would like a line of inquiry to be pursued you can submit those to me as I said maybe there's some other things thinking back on this where we might want to have another person or even with someone else come back at some point in time so don't hesitate to uh reach out to Missy and me and Carlene if if
095you have something that comes to mind uh otherwise I think it's appropriate that we move on to the Natural Gas balance program and I believe um we have another DTE representative looks like Henry there yeah we have HJ who's going to join us and I want to apologize Commissioners I'm going to be signing off in about 10 minutes to go do some election work so Joe is going to take over for us so HJ uh I believe you're a co-host and you then I think we have to have you stop share and they say you should be able to share yours very much again thank you and thanks Missy for your Civic service okay hi everybody nice to meet you can everyone see my screen not yet yep oh let me click share I'm not
096a how's that uh it's coming there we go okay thank you very much hey um just uh I don't know if I've met many of you uh I know Missy um from other work uh around the city and stuff but my name is uh HJ Decker um Henry is my official name but I go by HJ uh I'm the director of sales and marketing for the DTE Gas Company which is DTE energies um gas utility uh I'm a proud Ann Arbor resident so I live right here in the city uh I'm sitting over here on the Southeast side of the town so um happy to meet you all I've been a resident ever since I moved to Michigan I'm not from Michigan or have any ties to Michigan whatsoever but uh I'm one of the
097few people that decided to relocate here uh years ago so um I'm happy that you will have me um uh just a quick uh before I get into it um for any of you that don't know I mean DTE Gas is like I said our gas utility we have about 1.3 million customers across the state um a little different than the electric utility where primarily the gas utility in Wayne in Washington counties uh but we're also the gas utility in Grand Rapids up to Traverse City Petoskey over to Alpena and we even have some service territory in the upper peninsula primarily around the city of Escanaba um so um I'd like to start off with you know um you know um in 2020 DT gas came out with a a commitment to reduce our carbon
098emissions um you know quite quite um novel for a gas utility to come out and do this um we broke down our value chain into three areas one is our Upstream emissions which is essentially the methane leakage that happens um in the process of of us purchasing natural gas and transporting it to our system for our customers uh the middle portion is the dis the utility distribution emissions so those are the assets that we own we have a lot of distribution pipes some high pressure pipes as well compressor stations as well as storage and then Downstream emissions although we didn't we have not committed to Net Zero on our Downstream uh that's our customer emissions um we we have committed to helping them along on our journey and reducing their overall missions by 35 by
0992040. um so these are you know relatively aggressive for Gas Utilities out there again Gas Utilities are in a kind of a different different situation than Electric utilities but uh DTE is certainly been at the Forefront of um uh trying to commit to some of these um emission reductions um I can talk a bit more about upstream and and and um our own utility operations but today I was going to talk a bit more about Downstream um you know upstream and internal emissions we have a pretty good uh path forward on that um we have some programs that we're starting off we kind of know what we need to do and how we need to get the industry to move along with us um Downstream emissions from natural gas is obviously uh the the tougher
100uh nut to crack if I can say that right and we believe it's going to be a mix of all of the above it's going to be things like renewable natural gas um which I can talk a bit about uh it's going to be things like carbon capture and sequestration um as well um we're um looking at Nate we're using nature-based offsets uh currently um not that this is a an incredibly long-term uh tool to use but it is something that you can act upon now hydrogen is something that DTE is actually spending a decent amount of time and frankly money on um investigating how hydrogen can be used as a substitute for natural gas and then Energy Efficiency in particular things like natural gas heat pumps uh which are 30 to 40 percent more
101efficient than current furnaces so my schematic here just sort of says that you know we need we need to as an industry explore all of these Technologies and solutions to see how we can uh truly uh um reduce Downstream emissions from natural gas and this goes across both residential as well as uh industrial uses as well as I kind of note here and I in my pictures so um as part of this program and commitment um back in the beginning of 2021 we launched a very unique and first of its kind voluntary um uh renewable um natural gas program for our residential customers it was initially launched for our residential and small commercial it's essentially a program we filed this with the commission uh and they approved it um it's a essentially a program where
102a customer enrolls in the program pays us a premium to offset um up to a hundred percent of their uh emissions from their use now we've we've simplified this program in that the the 100 is actually an average residential customer on our system so it's actually a set amount you know our average our average residential customer uses about a hundred mcf a year uh in natural gas so we set up the program too that if they enrolled 100 percent we would go out and on their behalf purchase and retire a mix of carbon offsets and renewable natural gas um uh the important part here is um you know these carbon offsets and renewable natural gas sources are all in the state of Michigan uh we've got some carbon offset projects in the upper peninsula uh
103one in the Gaylord area and then we have a number of renewable natural gas um projects that we subscribe to in Canton right here um uh close to Washington County as well as one in Grand Rapids uh which is brand new and we've helped facilitate their connecting to our system uh program's been relatively successful at least we think um we've got all a little over 9 000 customers and we we plan on having over 10 000 customers by the end of the year um that's about five thousand per year again we're only about two years into it my green power has been around a bit longer so uh um and they've they've seen obviously as Vin set a quite a marketed uptick in the recent year or two on subscription so we hope to get
104there um but again it's kind of tailored and flexible customers can subscribe anywhere from kind of five percent of that average residential usage all the way up to 100 percent um in addition to the residential and small commercial we this year um earlier this year we launched a a larger large commercial uh industrial program where we are actively marketing these products to um larger users across the state whether that be Industrials or large commercial uh We've enrolled uh one commercial customer so far so uh not not a huge number of customers so far but again these are larger users uh and they really are kind of learning about these products um there's a lot of Education that needs to happen with these uh a lot of people are not as familiar with um renewable natural
105gas or carbon offsets as they are with maybe solar or wind electricity generation um a little bit of an overview of carbon forestry projects um I assume that many of you are somewhat familiar with these there's uh several different kinds uh there's re reforestation um afforestation which is kind of a new area that wasn't even forested previously agroforestration um which kind of integrates it into uh agricultural areas and then improved Forest management or ifm um which basically takes existing forestries um and essentially compensates the owners of those Forest to either change their behavior around what they do and have done and plan to do and or change the way the Forester managed to increase the um the amount of trees and carbon that is actually captured in these forests so it um it takes sort
106of a baseline um and then and changes it from there and uh and that that owner is compensated for that uh some other co-benefits of um uh some of our forestry projects um that you know don't get a lot as much air time as maybe just the carbon offsets themselves but you know these uh these will you know are are intended to uh preserve the forest uh create additional habitats for wildlife uh it does benefit the Michigan economy as these are premiums that are paid into owners of the land um and then provide additional acreage and Recreation areas uh for michiganders as we go foreign for those who may not be as familiar with this uh source so um there are a number of uh processes out there and industries that create methane as part
107of their process and in many cases this methane is either kind of wastefully flared or used in an inefficient process or frankly just released to the atmosphere methane is about 25 times worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas emission so if there's a way to kind of capture it clean it up process it and put it back onto the natural gas system where it can be used in a more useful way namely heating homes that's something that we we are trying to encourage in the state of Michigan um you know like I said our voluntary program does purchase these products but these products are um are in under a lot of development right now there's you know my company one of my groups that reports to me also handles all interconnect requests so when a
108landfill or a wastewater treatment plant or a dairy farm wants to connect to our system and inject clean natural gas they come to us and and work with us to do that a lot of renewable natural gas is um uh put to CNG vehicles or compressed natural gas vehicles which are much especially when it's RNG or very clean running sort of Transportation even even if it's brown gas into a CNG vehicle which we also have a business that does this uh it's much cleaner than diesel which has a lot of pollutants around socks and knocks that come along with it the natural gas does not um so um we we see it as a key component we think there's um you know it's it's not the end-all to be all for natural gas obviously the
109the potential is not as high as the demand today but we see it as part of the puzzle and it's something that can be done today right it's the technology is commercialized uh and it's widely deployed already um it is a bit of a premium uh renewable natural gas um costs somewhere between three and five times Brown gas um but it can be cheaper at least today than other sort of decarbonization Technologies um and a lot of that is because you know RNG um you know it's technically methane when it goes in the system and you don't have to modify equipment or home heating applications or anything like that whereas other potential sources of fuels even if clean might require costly costly upgrades um as part of the program again it's it's a voluntary program
110but we like to be very transparent with our customers we do an annual report uh we have a lot of good information on our website uh we work through um two uh highly um regarded uh certification uh organizations out there for our carbon offsets we work through what is called the American carbon registry we do a pretty rigorous process through them as well as our developer and then as well as us ourselves we we kind of did a our own due diligence on the projects that we're investing in and taking carbon offsets from to make sure that we we were comfortable with the quality of those uh and then the same on the renewable natural gas to make sure that these are indeed coming from bio bio sources that are being captured and cleaned up
111and um making sure that those environmental attributes are traceable and therefore we can retire them once we've purchased them on behalf of our customers as they enroll in the program and continue to be on the program and that's it for me um relatively short and sweet uh again I'll I'll end with sort of a um you know just a high level thing you know we believe that you know again you know obviously methane uh when combusted emit CO2 um there's not a lot of great Solutions today to help mitigate some of those impacts we're offering uh what is very much a voluntary program um uh to our customers to have an impact today and and encourage some of the development of these Technologies while in the interim VTA gases pursuing um some of these other
112Technologies like ccs and hydrogen and seeing if there are not some ways to incorporate them into our sort of Supply as we move forward foreign I guess with that I guess uh I will touch on I don't cover it in this presentation but uh some of the other interesting things we're doing at the gas utility on the Upstream side so we purchased quite a bit of natural gas for our customers uh in other parts of the country we uh recently launched a bit of a pilot program to uh Source response what they call responsibly sourced gas uh RSG it's um essentially certified very low methane intensity so I um some of the Commissioners were mentioning methane leaks things of that nature so we are starting to step into the market of acquiring very low methane
113intensity which means it's another fancy word for how much methane is emitted during the production and transportation of this natural gas uh and sourcing that for a for a small premium for our customers uh on our own utility operations um as some of you may know we've we've got a pretty robust uh what we call gas renewal program where we are actively replacing older pipes that are uh many decades old at this point uh prone to leaks um and making sure that we replace them with um much higher quality much more reliable less prone to leaks much less prone to leaks uh high density plastic as opposed to Bare steel and cast iron to make sure that they are uh are as clean as possible as we do that as well as changing some of
114our own operations around blow downs and as well as retrofitting our some of our other equipment to make sure methane is not emitted into the atmosphere all right I think we have a question open things up for questions yeah uh commissioner couldn't uh yeah so I had a question about the clean Vision natural gas program so I know you said that it um the offsets were like standardized for households um and but you also said that there was like one commercial customer for the commercial customer are there offsets like dependent on how many how much they use or is that also standardized no no for the for the larger uh commercial and Industrial customers we are doing sort of uh I guess the best way to say it is bespoke sort of Arrangements right so
115we've got some customer that customer is is larger than a residential so they will purchase more offsets and more RNG than a typical residential customer and it'll be based on their actual usage for the year um other and then we also are changing the mix some some of the larger customers have shown interest in going 100 offset some have wanted more RNG and that type of thing so with those it's very much a sort of bilateral agreement between us and them on what they want to do we felt that you know simplifying the program to an average residential home was with a just a much easier way to reach a larger number of uh kind of smaller customers that sign up through uh the phone or sign up to the website and things like that
116questions Mr Berkowitz uh HJ thank you for your time here with us tonight appreciate your presentation um so I'm I'm reflecting on what we've heard uh both from you and from Ben earlier um I personally see the value in the electric uh voluntary green pricing program for example if you're like me and you know you live and work in a building with limited or no solar potential um you know it uh truly does seem to create new renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions though I think there's some questions around the additionality and kind of the one for one and as we were talking about on the gas program I'm a little less um excited about this and kind of candidly a little bit skeptical about a few components um you know it sounds like
117um it's fully offset programs um you mentioned carbon capture sequestration the forestry programs um hydrogen and renewable natural gas all of these are technologies that perpetuate fossil fuel sources and actually might take us further away from a renewable powered and electrified economy um I I've got like a few things where in particular I think it doesn't Vibe with kind of what the city of Ann Arbor uses as our criteria for trying to you know projects that would meet our sustainability goals and I would invite you to reflect and respond to some of these but a few things that jump out to me one is first and foremost on the equity front you know offsets don't uh help people or communities directly impacted where that gas is extracted or burned often you know marginalized in environmental
118justice sacrifice Zones near both the extraction sites and the gas plants themselves not to mention you know this is not improving People's Health who are operating indoor gas appliances like stoves or home heating um also as we're talking about removable natural gas there are concerns around agricultural digesters you know this potentially props up demand for factory farms or industrial agricultural operations which them in and of themselves are huge greenhouse gas emitters but they also create local Air Pollution issues they contribute to the water pollution problems currently ailing Lake Erie there are issues with cost Effectiveness I know you had mentioned that removable natural gas is three to five times you know more expensive than uh traditional gas most of these offsets like carbon capture are exceptionally high cost they're a bad deal for rate payers
119actually and alternatively like Renewables are a very good deal we just heard about how essentially the capacity and the energy credit for solar and wind is so high that people are essentially getting paid by DTE to sign up for you know more Renewables um but it kind of seems like that's the the opposite situation on this gas program also like it sounds uh like a lot of these offsets have very limited capacities um so um I just recently read a report from the Public Service Commission uh that said that renewable natural gas its full potential is only six percent of today's you know gas consumption and it would be dramatically more expensive as you kind of ramp that up as well um you know it kind of seems like these are things that are really
120maybe better suited for just like offsetting Niche components of the economy that are like near impossible to decarbonize otherwise and instead we should be like looking at Renewables and storage and efficiency and demand response as kind of the actual way to meet the challenge that gas poses in our system currently um so sorry I've I've said more than enough but I'll I'll leave it there is I would love to just hear Reflections about like um is there a reason why we can't make Renewables and storage and like efficiency part of the gas offset program here um well I guess Renewables as in you know we I I don't work for the electric utility so if you're asking about renewable electricity and storage of electricity that would be a question for uh the electric side and
121you know Vin did talk about our IRP which incorporates um a significant amount of that um so you know am I going to sit here and say that electrification won't happen no absolutely not it will but I think there is a transition period here where in particular in a cold climate weather cold climate place like Michigan you know natural gas will you know for for some time be the more uh reliable and affordable way to heat your home in in sort of the depths of the winter now does that mean it has to be the shoulder months as well does that mean it has to be the mild the mild winners as well um but to say that the natural gas system isn't going to have some sort of use in the future I'm not
122uh you know I think many of us are not entirely convinced of that now will it play will we use a lot less of it most likely so right but it might provide an excellent source of safety uh and reliability that you know a full electrification Society again particularly in a place like this if you want to talk about the southeast or the Southwest absolutely right like uh home electrification is there now and it works um pretty well um you know it may it may have some cost issues with it but that's you know neither here nor there um and you know look we look at our voluntary program as something that we can do today um you know to help um you know offset some of the emissions that our customers are seeing for
123home heating which you know again like I said the the solutions to that are probably not in the short term they're probably more of a nearer longer term as we transition to something that has a bit more of that um and again it does um encourage the development of some of these projects which may not have otherwise been developed particularly on the RNG side I mean um I'm not in the dairy industry so I mean if I'm not sure it's DT's place to advocate for the dairy industry to be shut down um but you know to the extent they want to sort of be cleaner today uh this helps encourage that sort of development commissioner zelman yeah I just have a couple of clarifying questions so the first one is does DTE expect gas consumption
124to increase in the coming decades and if so does this mean DTE plans to expand their methane-oriented operations and infrastructure in the long term and then I also have a question about how DTE plans to invest in the sourcing of this renewable methane so the strategies in Ann Arbor's climate plan include building a circular economy to reduce garbage waste and encouraging Less meat consumption to reduce participation in animal agriculture so how much methane could DTE feasibly Source from just the other options we heard like food waste and Wastewater sludge because like to be frank renewable natural gas as a term sounds like a way of moving the discussion away from fracking while optically utilizing like language popularized by environmentalists right um the on the renewable natural gas um again we don't um we're you know
125we're we as a gas utility we're not actively developing these projects right we are just interacting with them and helping them uh interconnect with our system and and put their methane on our system to the extent they can do that in an economical way which is their prerogative not ours um you know we are sort of bound by tariffs when asked uh if someone can interconnect with us we you know unless it's just completely uneconomic and unfeasible we can't say no um and nor nor would we do that um uh again on the meat and dairy side uh that's I think not for us to you know opine on if that demand declines uh over time um that's okay too um as long as that's you know as as part of the part of the
126salute all of the above solution uh that's okay um what was your other question on your first question I'm sorry um does DTE expect gas consumption to increase you know uh to be honest with you part of our um overall reduction of customer Downstream emissions has a large Energy Efficiency component to it so we expect to decline overall uh consumption of our product um as we go over time so that's through um you know your your like increased Energy Efficiency measures whether that be the basics which everyone should be doing no matter what um insulation better Windows things like that but also exploring new technologies that um may continue to utilize natural gas but in a much much more efficient way commission over pick hi I want to thank you HJ for coming talking with
127us I am uh I want to talk about one reality of our decarbonization plan in Ann Arbor that I really worry about I also I'm I'm quite disheartened that it appears DT really isn't that committed to decarbonization you know it's clear that one of our biggest challenges in Ann Arbor is going to be getting off gas we have to get off gas we have to get off gas by 2035 or 40. and that's going to be really hard particularly with respect to heating you're right about that and the reason it's going to be hard I don't think is due to the uh really cold temperatures I'll get to that in a second I think it's due to the fact that you know that's a lot of infrastructure in homes and the pace at which we
128decarbonize uh Heating in the uh will largely depend on you know how fast people can replace their gas not just appliances but their heating which is the expensive part with electric you know electric is the future electric is the only way we can decarbonize obviously gas is not decarbonizing burning gas to heat your home is crazy uh in a world where we're trying to decarbonize the the thing that I I feel is a little disingenuous and when your response is when the Michigan climate Solutions Council the governor's Council was discussing the issue of these really cold temperatures solution that Consumer Energy suggested uh is you know obviously we can't build three times as much electrical generation a renewable electrical generation as we need just so we have that extra capacity during really cold periods and
129of course during real cold periods too you're not guaranteed that we'll have the the wind blowing and the sun shining to the significant you know to the the amount needed so they suggested this renewable natural gas solution not in the way you did DTE is doing that seems to be suggesting but rather uh to power peakers you know in other words the gas plants would still be there uh they wouldn't be running routinely they'd only be running on the really cold days to generate more electricity I mean one of the reasons this is important is it's hard for me to believe I mean inconceivable I think that homeowners residents even commercial uh building owners are going to want to have both gas heating infrastructure and electric heating infrastructure in their buildings that's crazy we got
130to replace all the gas heating with electric and so whatever the solution is has got to be electric and I just want to get your I mean the IDE it seems like you're trying to guarantee dete will have a gas business in 20 60 20 70. uh something like that by trying to prolong folks having gas heating in their homes and build other buildings we really got to get that out of there and if DT is committed to carbon neutrality they got to be committed to electrifying not just appliances but also Heating in all our buildings and of course the University of Michigan has come up with a different solution which is to use ground Source heat pumps and I I'll admit that that's going to be too expensive for a lot of existing homeowners
131and building owners but it's another way to leave gas behind we have to leave gas behind for heating building Heating yeah I mean again you know I'm not a policy guy I mean if if people want to transition away from gas we're fine with that I mean um you know again you know it has to be done under you know clear and concise policies right I mean um we're not Advocates of mandates uh of that sort of stuff we we do believe in customer Choice under the uh you know Under the Umbrella of the what the law says um and if the law doesn't say that then you know we will continue to do what our customers ask of us uh to some extent within reason obviously um we we believe that the the natural
132gas infrastructure system may have a role to be played in a climate like ours again like I said that's not necessarily a lot of usage but it is it could become you know there are interesting Technologies being developed around dual fuel systems you say that you know that's um uh crazy but there there there's actually some pretty good equipment out there that works pretty well firing both dual gas and electricity as far as heat pumps it greatly reduces the use of natural gas but it maintains a system efficiency that's quite High when you know air source heat pumps do decline quite precipitously in efficiency in very cold climate so I understand that but it's still like we got to stop burning gas that's the whole point we don't want dual use heating if people are
133going to spend money they got to spend their money on electric heating it'll be cheaper than the Dual and who cares about efficiency if we burn any natural gas we're increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and we are worsening the climate change crisis and I'll just switch over you know and it doesn't help to have DTE try and promote this stuff that's what you're doing and I just don't I just don't think that's right um you know you're in Ann Arbor right you know and everyone has like you said and we all have choice and freedom and all that stuff but you know I want to know if DT is really on board with carbon neutrality it doesn't sound like it at all and the last thing I'll bring up is a different
134topic just because I happen I'm at the University of Michigan and studied uh climate ecosystem change for much of my career and one of the things you see out west right now is a lot of carbon Going Up in Smoke in other words people are um hoping that forests are going to be used for natural climate Solutions and you know Carbon offsets and instead what we're getting out west is a net release of carbon to the atmosphere and the reason for that out west is because it's hot it's getting hotter and because of the heat it's drying out the soils and the vegetation atmosphere can hold more moisture just like plants wilting on a hot day in your garden and that means um it's pretty Unstoppable and this is something that isn't a drought Everyone
135likes to talk about it just as being a drought um but the worst route we've ever had in recorded history in the west is in the United States for that matter is occurring now it's not occurring just in the west it's occurring in the high plains what's going on is called a redification in other words with climate warming we're drying out soils and vegetation increasingly around the entire continent I wrote paper on this and the um the thing that really worries me about our offsets and our state forests I've said this to my our colleagues in the state as well is that increasingly our summer hot spells are turning into you know dry spells or turning into droughts and they're going to get much worse if we allow climate change we continue burning natural gas
136for example allow climate change to continue and that'll that'll mean all these carbon offsets that are uh in in based on forests I'll go up and smoke here and there in Michigan too or the forest will just be weakened the trees like you already see look at Ash or hemlocks or Maples or Beach all these tree species are being affected by disease and pests and it doesn't help them at all that they're being stressed by warm or drier conditions so these these offsets based on forests are are just not reliable anymore and again I think we got to go with what is reliable which is renewable electric power and electrifying everything and I just wish DTE would realize this and stop fighting the rest of everyone basically and get on board with carbon neutrality right
137thank you for your comments Mr Berkowitz yeah I just wanted to ask um kind of uh following some of the things that commissioner pack and others have said and I raised earlier um it sounds like DTE has the flexibility to kind of create whatever programs kind of make sense or you'd be interested or work with whatever Partners make sense for these offsets for the guests voluntary green pricing program I'm wondering if there would be any way y'all would ever consider you know working with a group that say like um I pay extra you know on my bill monthly I pay that surcharge that goes into say a bucket of money that would then be used to help Electrify people's homes or businesses or institutional buildings and maybe improve the efficiency of them you know tighten
138up the building shell do installation remove asbestos repair you know roofs things that are home health and safety but also efficiency upgrades is that something DTE would ever considered or are your hands tied in regard to like doing a program like this well I mean we have pretty robust Energy Efficiency programs today right these are set in law and we're passed back in 08 um so we spend um you know well well north of 100 million dollars on Energy Efficiency programs those are not more and more focused on low-income communities uh and those are your like I said exactly some of the stuff you said you know better insulation better Roofing uh better Windows um things like that better efficient appliances uh I mean there's still quite a bit of low hanging fruit out there
139on just general appliances on them being more efficient both on the electric and gas side um the law you know the law does you know when we get into sort of promoting uh fuel switching uh that is something that we are investigating particularly in our in the propane areas where it makes a lot of economic sense for customers to get off of what we call Delivered fuels um which are you know frankly worse than natural gas there's not only the the propane that um uh emits more CO2 on a heat based content but then just the truck traffic that goes across roads delivering propane so we are experimenting with pilot programs to convert um some of our electric customers over to um uh off of propane and onto electricity uh entirely so um you know
140in the gas territory we we don't have a program to actively promote switching although we more than happy to support that to the extent it happens um um but you know that's an interesting question that um you know frankly I should take back to our senior leadership and and think a little bit more about thank you much appreciated I have a few questions if I may could you go back to the slide that shows um the reductions and uh how they're broken out into three different savings categories there we are um I have a quick question just for understanding sake um there's a targeted 35 reduction in emissions from customer end use that's essentially in a sense your customers scope 3 emissions is that a good way of putting that correct and what that means
141if they're going to be reduced 35 percent that means 65 percent will remain and continue to be emitted into the atmosphere is that correct uh that that is correct okay and I think that's exactly what commissioner overpeck and others are getting at is we need to get off of gas we realize you don't set policy um we realize that DTE took exception to the 820 plan in that Ann Arbor says we want to completely get off of burning fossil fuels and Electrify 100 percent um but again this is I think the message that we're asking you to take back to your management um is that this is really unacceptable from a climate perspective and a long-term perspective in terms of ecological health human health and so on and so forth um my second Point um
142was there are uh utilities Natural Gas Utilities that are redefining or looking at redefining I should be um forthright here um their business model and instead of saying we are a natural gas utility they're saying we are a heat delivery utility and um what they're looking at is saying um in in the end what what's happening is we're we're burning natural gas to generate Heat and what if we just simply Supply heat um and I um would recommend that you look at what's going on in Boston in Massachusetts um there is a a group that's sort of behind it um with the acronym h-e-e-t and that's what they're looking at doing is replacing um Natural Gas infrastructure with uh essentially geothermal infrastructure it could be either ground Source or it could be Wastewater or it
143could be any number of different sources and really just re-examining the business model so it's consistent with what scientists are telling us absolutely has to happen and the other thing is that from a business perspective at least my perspective is and I'm I'm a business person or an ex-business person but it seems to make sense to me I don't I don't I'm not working in your industry but it's clear that a lot of customers are going to be moving away from natural gas because people are becoming more and more aware of the climate crisis they recognize that one of the ways of combating it is to Electrify fully Electrify and so what you're going to have is you're going to have a remaining infrastructure that you're going to have to maintain across the entire geographic
144area with fewer and fewer customers and so that means the maintenance costs of those are going to be essentially largely in the same you know the only line that you have is going to maybe to individual houses somebody's going to turn off a valve at their house but everything else is going to have need to be maintained and you're going to take that fixed cost and you're going to have to distribute that over a dwindling supply of customers and that's just not going to be sustainable and from an equity point of view frankly the people that are going to be able to Electrify first are people like me that have fully electrified and that's going to leave other customers and Ember commissioner McCoy mentioned this earlier in terms of equity the people that are going
145to be left are the people that can't afford to buy their induction stove and their heat pump this and their in and so on and so forth and they're going to be carrying these ever increasing costs for maintaining on a per unit basis so they're per customer basis they're going to be carrying a higher and higher cost so I think these are some of the the things that we're getting at from multiple different angles from the climate angle from the equity angle from the business model angle we we just see these as being inconsistent with the direction that Ann Arbor wants to move and we believe that all municipalities and frankly the globe is going to be moving so I know that's not formed in in uh it's not in the form of a question
146um it's just a a request that you consider this holistically and I think in doing so uh DTE has to consider that actually there are other business models where it can continue to grow by growing its electrical supply it can grow by being a heat delivery utility as opposed to a natural gas utility and it can still be you know a functioning very profitable ongoing utility but one that's consistent with the direction that we all need to move in so thank you for allowing me to make those comments as well as my fellow Commissioners because we're now at 8 11. do we have any other questions or comments for HJ thanks very much we appreciate this um and uh it's it really helps clarify the program for us which is really what we wanted to
147do um and we appreciate you also um being willing to take our questions and comments you're welcome yep thank you great comments and I definitely will take a lot of this back great okay fellow Commissioners we are approaching the end of the meeting um the only thing that we have left are updates updates from OSI um Joe I think you're going to be able to provide those then we have updates from Commissioners and working groups and then we have public comment and then that is basically it so Joe take it away sure um I will first say feel free to check out our newsletter that went out last week that'll have more in-depth and comprehensive updates um but just a few highlights in there I mentioned at the last meeting um the Community Action Network
148in Bryant received a grant from mishta to uh fund some of the upgrade work we're doing there right now we're in the process of finalizing everything and working making sure to prop up the structure of what we are doing there with mishta so we can start getting people in line in the system so we can start making um those upgrades to their homes um additionally we just kicked off the fourth cohort of our a20 ambassadors last week um got a wonderful group of people who are going to be going through that uh 12-week cohort before they uh start working on their sustainability projects out in the community um we also one of the FYI programs from CTN was just focusing on the race 2-0 challenge I think that came out last week so just serving
149a reminder that the race to zero challenge is ongoing throughout the rest of this year um and even though we are rapidly approaching the end of the year people can still sign up or if they've been involved they can continue their involvement uh so just wanted to note that is going on um and there's also another solarized cohort that is upcoming at the end of the with a meeting scheduled at the end of month uh with another uh another couple that are in the wing so if people are looking to get solar those are continuing to be ongoing thank you Joe Joya uh posed a question to Missy she answered me in brief and your update may be as brief as what she told me was um was about um the status of the landfill
150solar project did she talk to you all about that and so you could provide an update um I don't have information on my end but I can check in poker to make sure she responds to that so very briefly what Missy told me is that there's no change in which she had told us several months ago um I um I think it was also in a meeting but also there was some email exchanges I think as well and um so I'll let Missy speak authoritatively to this but what I think the situation is is that with some of the supply chain eruptions and also with the Department of Commerce actions uh the price of Solar has gone up and that has jeopardized the project it doesn't look to be financially feasible right now I think
151also frankly as we heard today the my green power offering is going to be attractive to a lot of customers here and that may undercut um the interest in the landfill solar so right now it's in a holding pattern uh that's my understanding so updates from commissioners well let's start with updates um from Council uh council member Grace anything of import um if there is my my brain is not recalling it at this moment so I'll see if anything triggers but very good uh updates from Commissioners and then I'll get to working groups my hand raised but I think it Blends in with my uh background in the day in a building um I have two uh one is just general energy news um that last week Washington state became the first state um in
152the country to ban uh gas heating in new residential buildings which is incredibly exciting um and that building code will go into effect in July um and of course I thought that was really relevant to our discussions around Banning natural gas heating shout out to Ken Garber who I hope is listening who continually reminds us about the importance of that um but I I figured that maybe looking at that when acknowledging it but also perhaps looking to Washington for you know our own direction as as we consider that and the city could be useful for those in the commission who were working on that um and then the second thing is an issue that I had raised privately to chair mersky and and our council member Liaisons but um two of my colleagues in C's
153are residents of um a building that is being demolished on division for an Energy Efficiency development that is being considered next week um on Division and it just brought to me I think this continued issue that we need to work on on considering you know the ways in which housing and housing affordability and access are pitted against Energy Efficiency at times um and things that we continue to continually need to consider as especially I think renters get put in a place even when they're long-term renters like PhD students at Seas who care about Energy Efficiency um you know get get put in difficult situations that they're in absolutely no control over and you know in different ways than homeowners who may be choosing to make um upgrades to their homes or selling it and demolishing
154it and that kind of thing so I hope that's something that we can consider um you know as a commission as things come up or can intentionally create a working group around um because you know I think that's something that's always on my mind but it came up as incredibly relevant for two of my friends um uh this week thanks for your comments on that by the way um Ember and her two friends and I are meeting on Friday to discuss this further and by the way this is not probably just going to be a one-off or couple off situation if the green rental housing program uh passes uh it's more and more likely there will be um energy upgrades some of them most of them probably will not be anywhere near the scope of
155the project that ember described um but it could be that there are renters that are displaced um as as this program is implemented so um it's it's definitely something that's um worthy of the commissions uh attention and further discussion commissioner McKenna thank you chairman Murphy I'd like to make a brief comment about a a bit of a narrative shift and then there's no way that we could all adopt this or that I'm even proposing that we make a hard turn um but you know I think I've brought this up maybe at the last meeting in termerskine I've discussed it briefly in the time in between but a lot of times we talk about motivation for climate action coming from really serious um kind of like atmospheric and and weather changes associated with climate like we
156heard from term Mercy earlier about you know the picture of climate hell and I think that that is you know something that we're probably all lined with but at the same time I think we could make it more personal and I'd like to see um you know both this commission and sort of like the city more broadly um when we're motivating action towards climate talk more about um those personal impacts um and impacts for our citizens and and to you know to our fellow Americans which is like the worst term ever um and so I don't know if that means some more research I think you know what I think of is lives lost property damage who is feeling those impacts like just more explicitly like what are those impacts um damage to homes displacement
157you know we hear about Michigan being a place where a lot of displaced people are going to be coming um from climate change and I think that um painting a more like Michigan and local picture and and human picture of what's happening is a really important shift that we need to start making um so I just like to kind of put that out there for now if anyone's interested in talking about this further definitely would love to develop it more right now it's just an idea but I want to have some more consistent language that has that that human element thank you very much for bringing that up and reminding me and um I would add to your list two things human health and I would add simply suffering I mean if if you just
158think of suffering and the Very people are suffering because of what is happening it's it's really immense so uh commissioner thank you um and to commissioner McKenna's appoint the joint office between the World Meteorological organizational World Health Organization just released a new sort of portal and Clearinghouse for climate health related impacts and it you can find that at climate health clima halth.info and if you go to slash hazards it points out and identifies many of the impacts Associated directly with health and health outcomes associated with climate climate change and many of them many of these are also tied to um energy relate energy related uh impacts both upstream and downstream so just as a point of reference for some of some of those as well rate on any other updates I think I said what
159I wanted to say um anyone else any updates from working groups anything uh Carlene that you want to mention I would like to mention an update I am I've been um one of the leads on the Transportation electrification uh committee and um back in in 2017 we started looking at ways that we can impact the adoption electric vehicles uh through policy and so that is how the Ann Arbor's EV Readiness organs came about existing EV Readiness ordinance and since then um the group has been looking at other ways that we can support the development um the delivery of EV charging Solutions um in particular the private sector not through not the city projects but but private projects and um by creating things like guidance manuals uh for for installation of charging systems and other things
160at this point based on um the input from City staff that we're going to be yeah down I don't know it's downgrading our our committee from an active committee to an ad hoc committee and uh we're looking forward to um renewed um engagement with City staff on on the opportunities that are available moving forward that's my update thank you um any other updates I did remember one and it is related to another topic on the agenda and that is um Missy and I and Shannon gibrandel and Brett Leonard are still looking at having a joint planning and energy commission meeting um we don't have a definite date yet but I did want to mention that the Planning Commission is looking at something that was brought up earlier about natural gas bans and that is the
161possibility of um doing something through zoning to essentially require electrification possibly even additional kinds of things although that becomes difficult because it starts to get into direct conflicts with building code and energy code but uh they already had a discussion on this in the ordinance revisions committee and I believe it's being taken up by the entire commission at its next meeting which actually may be because they meet on Tuesday nights so I'm not sure if it's tonight or next Tuesday or something like that you might check in registrar if you're interested um but we we will definitely take up these topics again as well as potentially other carrots and sticks that we might be able to use to green construction um one could potentially even be connection fees and things like that because Ann Arbor
162connection fees are quite significant now whether that's financially feasible is another matter but it's something to that's definitely being looked at so um we'll come back to uh other other agenda items but I wanted to give that update um right now we have public input um and so this is our second opportunity for members of the public to be able to come in and uh that you would have three minutes to comment and if you are interested um please call 888-788 0099 or 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 956-871-87876 and that this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and the video feed um see staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand uh to
163indicate your desire to speak please press star nine on your phone and then you will hear an automated message that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and so that we may hear you clearly and then please again state your name and your address at the beginning of your comments I don't have any raised hands yet but okay we'll wait a minute or so so while we're waiting for 30 seconds think about agenda items for the next meeting and one of our next meetings will most likely be a work session where we sort of plan out the next year as we've done in the past that potentially could be December it potentially could be January depends on what we can line up um for December and January
164but obviously it would be something like we'd like to do in the next let's say two maximum three months but um we'll we'll take those as we hear whether or not there's anybody on the line anybody yet Joe No Hands raised okay well I'm gonna look for hands from you as far as agenda items for the next meeting okay we still have a list from the beginning of the year we're pretty far down that list but we will take a look at that I already mentioned a couple things already and uh you can always submit agenda items uh after the meeting uh some of you have done that already so we have those also on the list one of those was something that Alex had suggested on I'm looking at Hydro we just need to
165get the right person lined up to be able to do that um commissioner Calvin Garcia what's your thought thank you uh just uh how to put a little placeholder for us to be able to have an update on the uh energy concierge program development to see where we are because it would be a really great um you know place to not only just you know provide information and guidance and support but the one program that was being looked at can have people being subscribed you know to the you know in the process of improving their own uh offices or dwellings and then we can share what we're learning with each other and that could be part of the human element as far as sharing our our challenges and and you know collectively coming up with
166with ideas for how we can really start pulling into our lifestyles um a lower carbon um usage so thanks duly noted and I'm quite certain that that will be somewhat dependent on whether or not the climate millage passes because we will have additional resources to expand those kinds of programs and we will be much more limited if it doesn't so um with that thought uh we will all wait with baited breath on the outcome of the election I'm sure in many many regards um and maybe that's something that we will be talking about in future meetings because that will determine a lot not only just whether the climate Village passes but a lot of other things so thank you all for hanging in there I thought it was an interesting discussion and um I appreciate
167working together with all of you very much and as I told our new Commissioners I'm really excited to have all of you it's uh it's stimulating to work with all of you so I thank you for the evening tonight and uh I hope you have a good rest of your evening um it is what time 8 30 and I declare this meeting adjourned thanks all