001em on October the 11th my name is John mursky I'm chair of the Ann Arbor energy Commission as chair I'm calling this meeting together I am participating from my home here in Ann Arbor welcome to this electronic meeting of the committee or commission I should say this virtual meeting is to affect social distancing and to mitigate the spread of the covid-19 virus we will conduct this meeting similar to in persons meeting at the end of the meeting uh I'll raise the topic of when we start to meet uh in person because I think the city of Ann Arbor has adjusted some of its policies now so we'll come to that later on in any case um Commissioners during the roll call please indicate your current location during the meeting please remain on camera just as
002you would be visible during in-person meetings also mute your microphone if you are not speaking public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the two public comment options or opportunities please call one of the following toll-free numbers 877-853 -5247-488-788-0099 and enter the meeting ID 956-8718-7876 on your phone this information is also available on the published agenda and the public need notices section of the City website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctm channel 16. ATT channel 99 and online at www.a2gov .org or 82gov.org yes um backslash watch TV or watch CTN um Joe um I'm gonna have you read the link of the land acknowledgment and then we'll take the roll call and I'll have you introduce yourself and we have several new Commissioners and we'll all go around
003and introduce ourselves very briefly how's that sounds good thanks um we acknowledge that the land the city of Ann Arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe and Wyandotte peoples we 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 the ongoing consequences of this past can Empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing Injustice for all individuals thank you very much so let's do the roll call and then after that we'll go from my screen and I'll just have everybody
004introduce themselves the new Commissioners can uh speak a little bit longer uh because most of the rest of us know I know each other a little bit better in the meantime um so Joe go ahead and do the roll call and then I'll start with you and then go around the screen all right uh chair mersky present in calling or dialing in from my home in Ann Arbor uh Vice chair Colvin Garcia present from Ann Arbor um third uh Bridget maycomer I think she's just joining there if you let her in yet yeah they're right there we're doing rollercoil uh commissioner maycomer uh yeah thanks I'm um joining from a residence in Arcadia Michigan okay thank you um commissioner Levin hi yes I'm here unfortunately I'm having some uh technical issues with my main computer
005and now this backup does not have uh the video capabilities but I am here in Ann Arbor council member Briggs here in Ann Arbor council member radina here in Ann Arbor commissioner McCoy commissioner Kerber here in Ann Arbor commissioner overpeck president Ann Arbor commissioner Smith here in Ann Arbor commissioner Cohen cohenen um commissioner zitelman not present um commissioner McKenna president Ann Arbor commissioner harp here in Ann Arbor and commissioner Berkowitz here in Ann Arbor we have a quorum I think thank you very much uh by the way Alex and Missy both have conflicts tonight they both uh indicated that in advance and so they are excused so to speak uh thanks for the rest of you for being here Joe I'm going to have you introduce yourself because I'm not sure all the commission members
006know you and then uh go around um I'll go after that and we'll go around the screen then sure thanks um hi all to those I haven't met I'm Joe Lang um I am a energy coordinator here with the office of sustainability and Innovations um started back in June so still fully getting acclimated and getting to know everyone but I'm primarily working on a lot of our residential uh decarbonization work with Zach and a few others um I most recently came from Indiana University we're at a dual Masters in environmental science and public affairs while working at the environmental resilience Institute which does a lot of work with local governments in Indiana on climate change great glad to have you with us Joe so I'm John mursky for those of you who don't know me
007I obviously chair of the commission uh I've been on the commission since uh late I think 2016. I also serve as liaison to the environmental commission um I'm originally from Ann Arbor but um lived away for almost 40 years uh I have had a career in Industry with the German conglomerate Bosch and um it's great to work together with all of you Larry I'm Larry Kerber I've been in Ann Arbor most of my working life and I am doing commercial Solar Development here in Washington County do you want to introduce yourself you can do it now and then skip it later yeah hi good evening Commissioners my name is Thea jagerlener I am an energy analyst in the office of sustainability with Joe and Zach um I won prepared greenhouse gas inventory working a lot
008of metrics in our office and also work on improving the efficiency of commercial buildings around Ann Arbor Kendall um I'm Kendall I am a junior at the University of Michigan and I'm originally from Chicago so I've only been here a few years I have a part-time job as an environmental specialist and this is my second call on the commission and Claire Claire's new for the first time today I think hey everyone so happy to be joining you um I'm also fairly new to Ann Arbor this is my second year of doctoral studies at Seas to have some colleagues on I'm going to see them um I I guess I'll just share a little bit about my background while we're going around um I had a 11-year career in Industry starting in behind the meter solar
009so started as a solar electrical designer engineer and then for about six or seven years uh practiced in an MEP so mechanical electrical Plumbing building design it was a at the end of my time there in Boston the head of sustainable design for wsp it's a fairly large engineering firm and actually internationally so really specialize in in high performance buildings I would say my area of expertise is buildings and electrification most recently and my final role before coming to doctoral studies was that RMI where actually helped studies a lot like Ann Arbor but mostly focused in New England on electrification policies and and natural gas Bans Gabriel I think you go by Gabe right it's Gabe or Gabriel uh either way it's just just fine just fine with me okay go ahead hi everyone my
010name is Gabriel harp um let's see what what to tell you about myself shout out to spea in Indiana University I'm I went to Indiana University as well um and and studied biology a while ago uh I came to the University of Michigan uh later and and studied um the Arts and Design but um originally I'm from Detroit and I've sort of moved all across the world I think I've spent some time in South India working on uh with working on issues of energy primarily around simulation and gaming to help understand trade-offs associated with choices that are made in the intersection of energy public policy and social science um and I've also worked uh thinking particularly about Futures and different technology futures from different perspectives primarily as a way to engage others I've also led
011a public and public opinion research national public opinion research around climate change with a group called eco-america which has sort of helped uh shift the balance of public opinion around climate change and understand people's uh affordances uh questions mental models around around energy and and different questions that we're facing um and and here I work for the University of Michigan as the director for research and creative practice development at the Taubman College of architecture and urban planning Mike Berkowitz hello everyone Hi good to be joining you this is my first meeting as a commissioner I was just recently appointed um I use he him pronouns uh also um while I'm on it thank you to Mayor Taylor the city council for pointing me into Missy Soul so no she's not here today but I appreciate
012all of that and really it's an honor to be appointed I'm excited to listen learn and nerd out with all of you um a little about me I'm in a20 Ambassador I live in Ward 5. I see Erica Briggs on here shout out and thanks for your representation and uh service to our our award um I'm on the old west side right behind Slauson Middle School um they actually just had a soccer game that let out so I can kind of watch it from our her backyard it's lovely um and I live here with my significant other and our beagle dog um I'm a Spartan but I root for University of Michigan when they're not playing us so please don't hold it against me too much um you can often find me at the Ann
013Arbor Ice Cube I play on a handful of mediocre hockey teams um I uh I love to explore West Park and Eber white take my dogs and walk over there uh walks over there and uh you can also find me I'm in the mud Club at uh Wolverine state Brewing Company and blue tractor so uh if you ever want to talk about energy policy over a craft beer open invitation to anybody uh my day job is actually I lead um the Sierra clubs Beyond coal campaign in Michigan we do energy policy largely focused on holding DTE and Consumers Energy accountable often through the Public Service Commission and through the courts so excited to be joining and uh thanks for the time council member Briggs yes so um and Ward 5 representative and I've been serving
014on the city council since 2020 um I also live pretty close to Slauson Middle School just on the other side of Huron um I'm Mark Hannah and we have lived in Ann Arbor for a little over 20 years I'm here with my dog and two cats and two boys so one is off and has graduated from college and the other one's at Pioneer um have a background in transportation and land use policy most recently running an organization called Scenic Michigan and um I'm just really excited to be serving um on city council and on this being a liaison to this Commission of all you amazing folks Vice chair Calvin Garcia Carlene go ahead sorry about that here uh hi everyone my name is Carlene Copeland Garcia I'm the vice chair and our energy commission I've
015been serving on the energy commission since 2017. and um I am um currently working on electric vehicle charging infrastructure uh focusing on multi-unit uh dwellings and I am apologizing here yeah yeah and uh I will get back to I have been in Ann Arbor uh since I graduated um with my undergraduate degree here at the U of M and um have been actively participating in community advocacy Endeavors uh and um from safe routes to school helping kids you know Traverse to and from school safely walking biking to um installing helping to get the first solar power installation at the Ann Arbor Public Schools and um when I'm not when I'm not doing my work I'm you can find me hiking or running around the local Trails here in Ann Arbor and this weekend my team
016and I are going to be competing in the Detroit Free Press Marathon relay we're hoping to take first this year for our team took second last year so we'll really really uh open to be successful this year so thanks so much Carlene Trish so all um my name is free Smith uh and I work with guide house a consulting firm and I'm primarily focused on supporting utility clients um and kind of background across a number of topic areas including Energy Efficiency of the built environment Renewables kind of utility rates as well as kind of most recently primarily focused on transportation electrification and supporting those utility-based programs to increase EV adoption and Charter deployment and I am from Ann Arbor and have spent most of my time here and looking forward to working with you all
017thank you commissioner Peck hi I'm Jonathan Rebecca I go by Peck I use he him pronouns and I'm the dean of the school for environment sustainability at the University of Michigan and a climate scientist for my whole career and I'm also on the Michigan climate Solutions Council the governor's Council that is helping create a carbon neutrality in Michigan thank you commissioner McCoy Amber hi everyone um nice to see some new faces and new familiar faces and familiar faces um my name's Ember I use she her pronouns I'm a PhD candidate at the school for environment and sustainability um I study air pollution policy and politics mostly around environmental justice issues and have you know been doing diversity equity and inclusion work in the environmental space in various capacities for the past 10 or so years
018I'm also originally from Chicago area uh moved here for just two years over eight years ago um and I'm still gonna be here for a little longer Ann Arbor does that to you um and I'm also a member of the mug Club at Wolverine so that's a fun connection that I didn't expect to ever make at in these meetings so yeah excited to be here Commissioner of a converter hello everybody um and welcome to all the new members um I have been on the energy commission I think gosh six years something like that but I lose track of time I've served on the Ann Arbor Parks Commission in the past um I uh have been in Ann Arbor since the late 80s I have a background in medical social work but I uh have been
019working as a finance director for over 20 years for a local non-profit the Ecology Center um and uh I will leave it there thank you council member Ravina thanks I'm Travis verdina He him pronouns I have represented ward 3 since 2020 and uh like Erica have been here as a liaison to the energy commission for that entire time um I grew up in Frankenmuth Michigan but came to Ann Arbor for uh for college uh spent a brief period up in Lansing working in the Michigan House of Representatives where I actually met Mike um and and have been back here in Ann Arbor for about nine years and so um looking forward to working with all the new members as someone who has seen Mike play uh mediocre hockey and and had a beer with him
020anyone who wants to take him up on that he he is great company so Zach why don't you go next sure um hello everyone I've been before this body a couple of times before but those who I haven't met um my name is Zach Ross Smith I see him pronouns I am in working in the office of sustainability doing building decarbonization work primarily my title is community engagement specialist so I do do some work involvement on that as well and that leaves Noah hello hello I'm Noah 11. I'm originally from the East Coast New Jersey uh I first came to Ann Arbor as a student in late 90s I was at the time it was a snre now sees I also had after that I got a law degree at Lewis and Clark in Portland
021Oregon and I've been back living in Ann Arbor for the past like 15 years or so and over the years I've done work um with regulating uh utilities and other stationary sources uh related to air emissions [Music] currently live on the west side of Ann Arbor with my two kids who go to A2 Steam and welcome to all the new members so I can Echo other people's comments that is indeed honor and a pleasure working with all of you I'm really glad to tell you some of the new faces um bring some fresh new ideas and some diversity to the commission and it it's always almost astounding to me when I meet people in Ann Arbor how accomplished they are how interesting they are and I'm looking forward to working with all of the new
022members of the commission um and I think we have a great team so thanks for all that uh the next is the approval of the agenda can I get a motion and a second to approve the agenda moved by commissioner Colin Garcia and seconded by council member radina any comments or changes okay all those in favor of proving the agenda please raise your hand and say aye I anyone opposed it passes unanimously thank you next is uh approval of the minutes now the minutes are posted on registrar can I get a motion to approve the minutes also from commissioner Colleen Garcia and a second from councilman verdina any comments or changes proposed for the minutes hearing none uh all those in favor of approving the minutes please raise your hand and say I I want
023to post minutes are thus approved now we come to public input 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 956-8718-7876 this information is also displayed as I said on the meeting agenda and the video feed City 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 to indicate 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 mute any background noises so that we may hear you clearly please state
024state your name and your address at the beginning of your comments don't don't currently have any hands raised okay now I do all right um caller ending in one three four thank you Mr Lang and chair mursky this is Ken Garber I live at 28 Haverhill Court um somewhat predictably I'm calling again about the proposed Village Housing Development these are the 484 units off duvern road with another 100 plus units to come later uh you'll remember that at your July meeting you passed a resolution urging the Planning Commission in city council to encourage all buildings at the Village to be fully electric no natural gas thank you for taking that action it had some effect the developer Robertson Brothers later agreed to Electrify the 164 single-family homes but the 320 Apartments will still use gas
025the Planning Commission approved the project last month and it next goes to city council uh the developer to its great credit agreed to meet with citizens about electrification of the rental units that meeting took place two weeks ago attending for the citizenry were Matt grokoff Doug Selby Jan Culbertson and Sarah Hammerschmidt all of whom have professional experience designing or building low and zero emission buildings Robertson Brothers entire senior management team showed up including the CEO there was an amazingly Frank discussion of the barriers to building electrification that this developer faces they had no concerns about the technology hire renter utility bills are not a major issue right now because current gas prices put electric heat pumps at near parity there was some worry about upfront costs and supply chain reliability but the biggest issue for
026them by far was our local electric utility DTE Energy in Robertson Brothers experience simply hooking new projects up to the grid can take a long time in one instance they built 10 homes and then waited a year for DTE to give them Electric just getting dte's attention can be hard and if more transmission capacity is needed there is no predicting when DTE will get around to making the necessary upgrades it's probably not surprising for a monopoly utility not to care but it means that electrification poses a major business risk for the village project it's not just the delays DTE charges large fees for electric upgrades in contrast DTE Gas hookups are fast and cheap 30 seconds by the way by the way I've heard that the Ann Arbor School District has also had to delay
027heat pump hookups until DTE gets around to making circuit upgrades from a climate point of view it's still insane for the village to go with gas full electrification should be mandatory for all new construction and this should be written into our city code but dte's dilatory behavior is a real problem I don't have an obvious solution except for City staff to bring up electric capacity at the very start of the review process so developers can bring DTE in right away Muni would solve the problem but we're still a long way from that color we're at time thank you seeing no other hands okay good um normally I don't comment but uh I'm going to comment in this case uh there is a Planning Commission meeting tonight and Mr Garber I would encourage you to call
028in to the Planning Commission and share the same observations with the commanding Planning Commission I'll remarket this time and also at the end of the meeting that we are hoping still to have a joint planning and energy commission meeting to talk about all of these issues related to electrification related to energy efficient construction and all the various aspects related to that uh and the opportunities that the city of Ann Arbor has from a policy perspective um and carrots and sticks to be able to promote sustainable construction so this is really a major concern and for those of you who remember commissioner how come I corresponded with commissioner who come on this very matter yes this this afternoon and he confirmed that this is a major issue that we have facing Us in Ann Arbor and
029it will be a major obstacle potentially to meeting our carbon neutrality targets so um we are now on to the main topics of our meeting and the first is a presentation of the greenhouse gas inventory for calendar year 2021 by Thea Thea I'll let you take things from here uh great uh can you all view my screen okay yes awesome um well thank you uh I am just going to introduce myself again for anyone jumping ahead and recording perhaps um my name is Thea Diego Leonard I'm an energy analyst with the city of Edwards office of sustainability um and I prepared Ann Arbor's Community toide greenhouse gas inventory for several years now and I'm here to present an update on climate pollution or greenhouse gas emissions associated with Ann Arbor for calendar year 2021. um
030greenhouse gas inventories take many forms for many different purposes uh this community-wide greenhouse gas emissions inventory estimates major sources of emissions associated with Ann Arbor like using electricity and natural gas burning fossil fuels in our cars and vehicles and disposing materials it's estimated on an annual basis some of the sources I use are not available at the level of a granularity of the community of Ann Arbor and are based on modeled or scaled data for more information on the data sources I use the methodology and assumptions in preparing the inventory please visit a20.org this is also not going to be an exhaustive exhaustive list of every source of emissions that are associated with our community um one tricky thing that's especially hard to calculate are those associated with goods and services so if you are
031particularly interested in those associated with your household I'd recommend you check out Berkeley's cool climate calculator so I am going to focus today on digging into some recent changes we've seen in emission levels um if you'd again if you'd like to see more of a a deep dive into every Mission Source I'd recommend you check out ho0.org for some previous recordings uh I'm going to start by sharing the general changes we've seen in Ann Arbor's community-wide admissions since 2000 which is a year that we have a baseline established uh this chart shows the overall Trends in climate pollution or greenhouse gas emissions and sources that we have comparable data for in 2000 and then in 2015 through 2019 or pre-pandemic levels uh in 2000 greenhouse gas emissions were roughly 2.4 million metric tons of carbon
032dioxide equivalent which factors in the global warming impact of multiple greenhouse gases you'll see that throughout the rest of the slides um this level is equivalent to 40 million tree seedlings grown over 10 years and doing that for each year so it's a lot of emissions um in 2019 we've seen a 25 reduction in these emission sources uh oops this chart illustrates what sectors have seen significantly in lower emission levels since 2000 um that is primarily from residential and Commercial and institutional buildings because buildings and commercial and institutional or UVM buildings have changed hands over the years they're combined here um have a more comparable amount again over 80 percent of these changes and admissions that we've seen are associated with the energy used in our buildings uh well we actually consume more energy in
033our buildings today these emissions have fallen as electricity from the grid becomes cleaner in addition the average vehicle on the road is more fuel efficient than those available in 2000 um with that context in mind I'd like to take a look at the last two years of emissions so the kova 19 pandemic disrupted our lives in many ways from stay-at-home orders financial hardship Workforce shifts families disrupted and lives lost but we also saw empty streets and shifts in where we spent our time and paid for electricity 2020 emissions were 37 lower than 2000 levels and 2020 2021 admissions raised back up and were 30 31 lower than 2000 levels um and so I want to dig into where we saw these changes um to do so I am going to look at an inventory that
034includes more emission sources than we have data for 2000 um I designate these by calling them the simple inventory and the expanded inventory um the largest impact is the inclusion of commuting passenger vehicles um for commuting patterns which is more significant and so I'm going to also stop comparing to 2000 levels so this is that same Trend I showed earlier again not showing the Baseline but including 2020 and 2021 you'll see the emissions levels are higher um as we include more uh emission sources um 67 or roughly two-thirds of those submissions come from our community's residential commercial and institutional buildings an additional three percent comes from the Upstream emissions associated with the use of electricity and natural gas in those buildings um Transportation including those commuting patterns represents 28 of our communities of emissions and
035Disposal disposal of solid waste and the treatment of Wastewater represents the remaining two percent of community-wide emissions um also a quick note on officer emissions there are much more that aren't included here I mentioned um missions associated with generating the goods and services that we consume um a fugitive natural gas emissions at the point of production aren't currently included um it's challenging to get an accurate estimate of those emissions based on the data that we have available again I'd recommend you check out the cool climate calculator if those are ones who really want to dig into um we just wanted to caveat this um so this chart shows where the sources of our missions come from um so we see electricity um natural gas the upstairs Mission solicitor that propane vehicle fuel and our waste
036streams um overall we can see a trend in emissions dropping from electricity and uh in vehicle fuel um and here is that broken out for 2021 uh with a little bit more detail so from 2019 to 2021 uh emissions dropped 11 overall again we largely see those emissions changing emissions changes happening in our buildings and from Transportation so residential buildings emissions dropped eight percent commercial and institutional buildings 10 and transportation dropped 18 percent um also we're taking a look at emission levels in our buildings uh residential buildings including multi-family represent 22 of community-wide emissions so slightly more missions here are associated with electricity than with natural gas and a small amount attributed to propane um and again we see that variability and Emissions associated with electricity um use their missions for commercial and industrial buildings
037which represent 16 percent of community-wide emissions this sector is the least certain for calendar year 2021 as DT has not yet been able to share community-wide aggregate consumption data for this sector so this year is based off of an estimate of a trend line for previous years and a comparison to University of Michigan's electricity consumption which it tends to track um we see a pretty large dip in consumption in our commercial buildings in 2020 as office buildings and commercial spaces were slightly less occupied um also unlike residential buildings um commercial buildings uh electricity consumption is highly correlated to how hot it is outside and use of air conditioning um and so 2020 was not a relatively cool year 2021 was even hotter so this might be underrepresenting these these emissions and then the University of
038Michigan's use of electricity and natural gas represents a little less than 30 percent of community-wide emissions compared to 37 for the rest of the community's buildings uh electricity and natural gas consumption is publicly available through the University of Michigan's environmental metrics um and we know so emissions from electricity consumption are driven by two factors how much of it we consume and what was used to generate it so from 2019 to 2020 we saw a pretty large shift in uh not only what sectors we're consuming electricity um but also DT's fuel mix as it shifted away from cold heavily for a year and then back in 2021 it came back up again and just to flip through you can kind of see in buildings this General trend line follows that of um how much fossil fuel
039is uh and and coal is included in DC's fuel mix um I also want to touch on things like offsets and voluntary green power purchases these aren't included in official greenhouse gas inventories as these purchases don't directly impact emissions associated with the community um the intent is kind of if you added up everyone's greenhouse gas inventories uh it would represent total emissions occurring um however it is helpful for informational purposes to see that Ann Arbor's residential participation and my green power makes up about 10 of electricity consumption uh which was estimated by the number of enrolled customers and complete data isn't available for the commercial class so these changes in building emissions make up about 50 of the reductions from 2019 to 2021 uh changes in transportation make up the other half of emissions reductions
040um you can see here uh passenger vehicles and commuting make up the majority of endeavor's Transportation emissions and these changes are due to how much we use their vehicles so Google's environmental insights Explorer uh provides annual estimates for vehicles mild traveled for the purpose specifically for a greenhouse gas inventories so we can see this large dip in 2020 as our the vehicles or the miles we travel in our vehicles dropped over 30 percent and then a bump back up in 2021 not quite at Great pandemic levels but much higher than 2020. um again 2020 was anomalous year with this large drop of greenhouse gas emissions that we saw um I reviewed those emotions last year acknowledging that some of the drivers and reductions would likely not be continued into the future um like these lower
041BMT levels that we saw however I do want to mention that commuting patterns are a significant source of missions for Ann Arbor and continue continuing to allow employees to work from home as one powerful tool to reduce them uh so I want to return to the action and Arbor needs to meet 820 goals of carbon neutrality by 2030. um so we've seen an overall drop in emissions since 2000. um a lot of that is attributed to a cleaner grid um I want to emphasize however that if we immediately switched our all of our electricity to 100 renewable energy um that we still have a lot of work to reach um a20 so this little green uh line shows that exact hypothesis or not a scenario of let's just say all auto electricity is 100 renewable
042um myself a long way to go we would still need to Electrify our buildings and our vehicles and Implement widespread Energy Efficiency improvements to help make those changes more affordable uh I also only touched on data on emissions today um but a20 also addresses important improvements to our community like centering actions on Equity increasing resilience and strengthening our social education that isn't measured in greenhouse gas emissions um for more information on the h0 plan and the greenhouse gas inventory visit a20.org here's a screenshot so you can see uh where the navigation is to the community greenhouse gas inventory for specific questions on the inventory feel free to send me an email that's listed here and thank you for your time and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have so why don't we
043leave the slides up yep yep I'll go for that um so if anybody has a question on mute yourself and pose the question to Thea go ahead Gabe hi Thea thanks so much um you know I was looking at the slide of um I believe it was dte's Energy Mix where it shows that the I think the average is somewhere around 80 percent where uh being sort of fossil fuel or carbon intensive fuel sources if I'm reading that correctly um and I think what I was wondering is are there potential options um both in terms of the seasonality but also in terms of timing um with the mix of fuel itself you know and I'm thinking about solar at a time of when solar comes out in the time of when wind comes on and
044things like that and if they're um is potentially variation that might allow the city of Ann Arbor and residents to to be able to sort of utilize cleaner fuel sources versus dirtier fuel sources yeah I think that's an interesting concept and I'm not an expert here so um I wouldn't take what I have to say is the and I'll be all um I mentioned that looking at cooling degree days which is how we track um how different years vary in terms of how warm or cold they are because that directly relates to how much natural gas we use to heat our homes and how much electricity use for air conditioning um and I mentioned that 2021 was a really hot year uh which means that when we use a lot of AC in the summer
045uh utilities end up using peaker plants and those might be using coal as a hypothesis I don't know if that's actually why um the use of cold bumped up again in 2021 but I could see helping um offset emissions that way um one of the things they also estimate is transmission and distribution losses um which is when electricity uh travels from where it's generated to where it's used um it's not 100 efficient process efficient process and we we lose some of that energy as it happens and those are higher the hotter it is out um so those are days when it's even more beneficial to use on-site renewable generation like solar so great point others I have a quick question go ahead customer risks yeah so um I know that in our um climate action
046plan in terms of how we break out the um different sectors of of emissions transportation is by some of you that's kind of artificially low because it's not I don't believe it was incorporating that sort of commuting Behavior but it looks like within this um greenhouse gas inventory the commuting patterns are being brought back into this I'm just curious and I want to make sure I'm understanding being able to compare the plan to the greenhouse gas and inventory um are we is that calculating the you know pre-pandemic pandemic 80 000 folks who are commuting into Ann Arbor every day or that's what community Behavior are we measuring yeah um I don't believe the estimates and the hsager plan have been updated um but I would want to um confirm that I will say we know
047that committing patterns are important and that's why the h200 plan addresses it through some actions there are um other actions when they choose your plan as well that we aren't able to estimate like things having to do with uh sustainable food although right now we're not able to get a super meaningful impact estimate of that even though um Dairy and and beef is a really significant source of emissions I would say um taking the greenhouse gas inventory with the with a grain of salt maybe is helpful only knowing that no estimate will ever be 100 complete but we do know through context what's important and and significant um even if we don't have an exact number for it um so we know that commuting was important it is included um in terms of the actions
048that address fit but not I don't think it's included in terms of an estimate okay that's your question yeah I think so I just wanted to clarify so the commuting what we're measuring here is the the in and out um yes both inbound and outbound uh Community behavior and that's based off of um semcog has an estimate on that and that's the data source for this great thank you appreciate that can I can I follow up on that real quickly that means commuting is miles outside of the city limits of Ann Arbor that is correct um so you see a breakout commuting and passenger vehicles so the passenger vehicles I think is primarily in boundary or at least emissions that should be Associated um directly with the Ann Arbor through the um greenhouse gas protocol
049um and commuting I have separated out um as it is primarily outside the boundaries of Ann Arbor but we know it's significant um and uh from public input and and so on we know it's an important sort of submissions to address and estimate so um this is an important resource for all of us as well as many others um including just frankly informational resource I would ask that you footnote that so people can understand that I don't know that that's necessarily obvious to the layperson that takes a look at this so if you wouldn't mind you could footnote that on the chart uh when you post that both in registrar again maybe we can update it as well as on the City website commissioner Peck thanks I really appreciate the uh the thoroughness of this
050it's really nice job um do you have a way of as you mentioned uh goods and services and methane leakage and you didn't that you have to eventually get to those numbers and I'm just wondering if you know you have an idea of what ballpark figures would be because I'm guessing um goods and services especially is a pretty large number and we would need to start working on a strategy for that sooner than later and methane leakage um probably DTA tries to make it sound trivial but I don't think it is and at U of M there is a group over in clasp that's working on the leakage air court and his students and then in sees Greg kioli and this we're trying to work on scope 3 and getting a lot more detail on
051that modeled so there might be some synergies and reaching out to those groups if you need it yeah that's a great point and and just to add I I know in previous years I've shared an estimate for um goods and services uh the Berkeley cool climate calculator also provides um by ZIP code and by municipality an estimate of greenhouse gas submissions by household which includes that goods and services um and then multiply that by the number of households in Ann Arbor that kind of gives you an estimate of the scale that we're looking at which is helpful to understand that it's it's a large source of emissions it is however a snapshot in time uh I think the last year um a permission set was available was 2016 or so somewhere around there um because
052we're on a 20 30 timeline and trying to see changes happen uh quickly um I think it can be frustrating not having a uh a source of data that is more uh regularly updated um so that's one of the things there I am so excited and hope U of M or some other uh entity has some capacity to help estimate those I know with our circular economy work that we're definitely interested um did I freeze no okay cool uh we're definitely interested in those um and on the note of the um Upstream uh fugitive methane emissions uh associated with the actual gas production so this currently estimates um or includes the estimates of those that dtp provides but not not the ones that um the source of production again another significant emission source that we
053know happens we know it's a good thing to reduce natural gas emissions because um estimates of the scale of those vary widely from large to very very large um so I I would just to Mark knowledge that we know they happen we know they're large we know they need to be addressed um doesn't mean we can't work on them on one hand you know the natural gas might be we could just sort of ignore because as we go we you know phase out gas uh we'll get that benefit and I know you would like to see that benefit that's always a nice thing to see um on the uh purchase Goods at least uh and maybe services it could be conceivable I mean you can obviously work offline with Greg um and I could introduce
054you if you don't already know them or any one of the Seas folks on this Council commission could do that but we could also ask Greg to give a presentation on it you know he did all the modeling for the University of Michigan's carbon neutrality plan and so this is the one thing that we had to punt on because we couldn't you know couldn't get it done in a year and a half so it's it's being completed now but it would be really interesting even if we can't estimate it for and certainly can't estimate it every year for Ann Arbor to at least be able to get our hands around where are the knobs we could turn to reduce it great just let me know if you want any help thanks commissioner McKenna hi Thea
055thanks for your work here um really clear presentation of of the breakdown of the emissions um just scrolling through the the a20 plan um in this most recent iteration and I'm starting to think about you know just if you go to the maybe just go to this Library you're showing the um the drop in emissions or like the dotted line with the yeah sorry that's an enormous task um and it's obviously um intersectional but also um happening in all the different departments I'm just wondering how you uh communicate the barriers um and I know that's not the purpose of what you shared with us but thinking about how we actually actualize um these savings um so yeah I think that when I see this presentation I think about okay I'm thinking through the Technologies I'm
056thinking through the energy sources that provide all of our power and uh fuel our buildings but I feel like that position it as like a technology problem and I think that you know most of us know that there's an enormous organizational uh kind of challenge to making this happen from what we heard about earlier to you know the way the utilities serve new developments to um the existing housing and all the gas and and inefficiency of the older housing stocks so not to get into too much specific detail on like what all the barriers are I just wanted to ask you as representative of OSI and maybe of this work like how do you talk about the barriers um when when you talk about the emissions savings and kind of like the the really troubling
057uh slope of this dotted line yeah you know I I will caveat this to kind of like taking a step away from the greenhouse gas inventory I'm here for sending these numbers to us all because I think all of us carry in the room deeply about you know greenhouse gas emissions as a concept of needing to reduce them I've wanted to know where we are on track to get them to zero um I think it's been proven however that um knocking on someone's door or talking to someone you find on the street um talking about emissions and the levels of having to reduce them isn't really a successful um or productive way of carrying out that conversation of driving action um one it is a crazy number to look at and you either throw up
058your hands and say there's no way we're going to do it or the damage has already been done or you know someone will design some perfect you know technology that will fix this problem for us um kind of going to the Natural Gas uh topic on its own um I think there's been a lot of great research that shows that what people most uh identify from or respond to um is hearing the health and safety impacts of having natural gas in our buildings and how it directly impacts ourselves and our children um and your neighbors and other people in your communities um so while I'm here today presenting on numbers I acknowledge that this might not be the most meaningful message for the majority of the people in our community I think you commissioner Kenneth
059that was a great question um any others speak up or raise your hands so I have a number of points I looked at this ahead of time um and um if I may I some fee I may just send to you directly um but I have I think several questions or comments that are of interest to the group um first of all I want to respond before I forget to uh commissioner Peck's statement about um methane uh leakage related emissions and uh the comment that that will become less of a concern as we Electrify uh I just wanted tie that point to the point that Ken Garber made when he called in and I'd just like to note that since June 1st 2020 an additional 529 residential units that are going to be fired so
060to speak by natural gas have been approved and so those are not yet probably very few of those are reflected here because those are just approvals and as he mentioned uh the number of units that are coming online just from the village of Ann Arbor is going to be another 320 units in addition to that commissioner Peck I see you raised your hand maybe I misunderstood you but go ahead not at all but what you're um you're getting me to realize is maybe we need to get a lot more serious about a natural gas ban and just go all out and Marshall whatever we need to do it because I I look at this curve that we see here and actually I see it you know I see optimism in other words you know it
061looks like we're going down and we're not we're going to keep going down at the same rate if we're if we're good but we all know that uh that's going to take increasing amount of work at least to deal with some of these really big uh problems like you're you're raising and we need to re you know we need to get to a Tipping Point on that in order to sharpen the you know The Descent to steepen it um and I know that's just so I totally agree with you that we got to do something about it I'm just so let me play catch ball with you of ideas and then uh commissioner McKenna I'll get to you first of all I would like to point out and see how this is one correction that
062I'd like you to make um this is a little bit misleading um you show it in the sense that you have it grade but if anyone makes a mental best fit slope from 2000 to 2020 and looks at that rate of improvement um that's misleading because you have roughly to the middle of the chart um maybe 40 percent of the chart a 20-year time span and then on from 2020 over you have a 10-year time span so the slope of improvement that I might eyeball from 20 from 2000 to 2020 or 2021 looks relatively steep but it's really nowhere near as steep of that and we know that 2021 was probably still not a typical typical year in Ann Arbor because of the pandemic and this Associated um changes in behaviors so I agree completely
063with you commissioner peck it this shows that we have a a big task in front of us and because of what we're doing with new buildings being fired by natural gas that's adding to the problem we we are looking there was a ordinance uh revisions committee meeting that entertained a proposal from the planning department that would introduce a effectively a natural gas ban through zoning um that is hopefully one of the topics that we're going to be discussing in a joint meeting with the Planning Commission I provided last week information showing that the city of Boston is doing actually much more than that through zoning granted the laws are different in Massachusetts than they are in Ann Arbor or the Michigan but there may be some precedence there that we can rely on as well
064as actions taken and a number of other different states that were taken into consideration by uh by Boston in addition another possible ever uh that hopefully we will discuss is looking at our connection fees for water and wastewater and those are really significant and we might be able to use those as carrots and sticks to do exactly what you just described commissioner McKenna hi thanks I wanted to comment on this figure again just kind of add to the conversation about the slope of a line and I think how it is uh slightly misleading I agree with that I'd like to see that change as well but something that commissioner overpeck mentioned um kind of gets back to my initial question about what are the obstacles to actually achieving this drop off and it's actually more
065of a stepwise function right like you can't like gradually decarbonize natural gas and so I think that it might be an interesting next step to add to the conversation I mean you know we know that I think from what I've heard from what what the city um talks about for for the a20 plan um that even if we're you know and maybe the Planning Commission is considering a natural gas ban as well um talking about getting rid of natural gas is like it's a full piece of what needs to go away I think that that's more sophisticated and I think that when you look at um you know this eight years that we have to go uh we need to get more sophisticated and I think we need to bring ourselves and the public along
066with like having a more sophisticated conversation about what it's going to take um and then just while I have the floor I also want to mention that I I mentioned this briefly in my intro but I actually worked with said the 17 cities and towns in Massachusetts including Boston and Cambridge um to to write those natural gas bans um so I have an extensive amount of resources on this topic so definitely like to be involved in future conversations great commissioner pack did you re-raise your hand or yes uh and I get in trouble here because Claire has to finish her PhD uh but I think it sounds great what you're you're saying um two things one is that would be what you just recommended would make a even a better case than we already have
067for figuring out what the fugitive emissions are in the Upstream emissions because then we can show people what the true uh impact would be and second uh with a price of natural gas these days um and what the hell is going on in the world there's a really big justice issue here too so we're building in very expensive uh heating systems here and I think the last piece of the puzzle would be to really highlight how the indoor air pollution um is really bad I mean we could create a campaign to really educate everybody that you know having a gas burner in your kitchen is really stupid for your own personal health and that of your children Etc thanks excellent comments council member radino thanks chair mersky um I know you're aware of this I
068just because I've heard it come up in in this conversation I I wanted to also bring up a brief update that the the city is kind of paying attention also to some State legislation that is moving right now the the Michigan House of Representatives voted um out a bill that would preempt local units of government and prohibit us from enacting natural gas bans um there is companion legislation in the state senate or if that gets moving we are obviously working with the governor because it is something that we certainly do not want to prohibit our local unit of government from being able to uh to do and to take that tool out of our our options um the only other question that I maybe have um this was brought up to me recently and maybe
069somebody who's more knowledgeable in the subject could could help me out a little bit is if we were to move forward currently um I think slide 14 shows dte's current electric field mix um given their Reliance on coal still if we were to ban natural gas a question that I received recently is in the short term would that actually make our emission problem worse if we are more reliant on the coal as opposed to clean options and so I wonder if for folks who are still reliant on DT and don't have some of the the renewable energy options um is that something we should be looking at in the short term and if you could maybe speak to that a little bit so the ban would be a ban for new natural gas connections um
070so what that would mean is that any new construction would have to be all electric and therefore it would be Net Zero ready um dependent on uh how they're powered it would not change dte's fuel mix at all um I think it's some what commissioner Peck mentioned is important though is that if these new connections are fired by natural gas it's very likely that natural gas prices will go up for some of the mentions reasons he mentioned but also because a lot of the fracked wells are they've gotten out the easy gas and they're having to go to more and more difficult gas to extract which means that the prices are going to most likely go up so [Applause] um commissioner McKenna do you still have your hand up or yeah go ahead and then
071um commissioner Berkowitz yes if I may I have a couple of uh responses to commissioner Dina that's an amazing excellent question and uh very much in the minds of of our um citizens um I wanted to make a couple of points so I studied this when I was at RMI and I can share resources I'd like to also know how to share some resources so when we can talk about that later um but it as of 2019 um I found that every single state in the U.S except for Wyoming if they switched it basically if you bought a heat pump over a gas furnace uh today whether that be a new home or a replacement over the lifetime of that equipment um it's it's net positive emissions savings so like like it's a better environmental
072proposition in every single state except for Wyoming where there's an incredible amount of poll it's almost like 90 um and so that's what the fuel mix that you're seeing today I think that's a really important part of the argument um and the other part of that is that it's that stepwise nature of reducing emission so if we don't start um kind of digging into all the operational challenges to actually making that happen to getting rid of natural gas in our buildings um that we actually can't even achieve um you know all electrification so it's kind of like those those two components thanks for those insights commissioner Berkowitz thank you I also wanted to follow up on uh city council member Regina's question I think it's a thoughtful one um and just in regard to dte's
073electricity mix um you know and I'm not sure if uh this is shown here probably it will you know work into the the next iteration of this um inventory uh in 2022 or whenever the next update refresh happens but um DTE did uh retire their River Rouge coal plant in 2021 um the the last remaining units there it's kind of a smaller situation at this point because a lot of it was already retired but in 2022 they retired their Trenton Channel and their Sinclair coal plants um so this the number uh like the percentage you're seeing here for coal is going to drop dramatically um the other component is that um DTE is filing their next uh it's called an integrated resource plan is essentially a 15-year plan um they're going to file their next
074one in early November and the Rumor so far is that they will will propose Expediting retirements for potentially their Bell River or and or the Monroe coal plants too so you know nothing is certain there but the coal numbers are definitely going to go down on there unfortunately the gas numbers are going to go up too they did build a new large frat gas plant the Blue Water Energy Center to largely replace a lot of that coal capacity but the renewable figures on there should dramatically increase too so all that to say like electrification still has a net benefit the fuel mix is getting a cleaner in in rapidly like right now so um thank you for that great again thanks for the insights uh yeah I have just I made a bunch of notes
075here but I won't go through all of them one of the things though I do want to talk about in this forum is the date of when we can expect these inventories uh in the future I know that there was uh some delays in getting data as there have been in the past and there were also maybe some oversights that led to delays but what we're essentially doing here is driving in the rearview mirror and that's not so bad when you're on a straight and narrow road and the trend is good uh but it's potentially disastrous if we're getting a report like this in October um and we don't know that we have a big problem and we've lost 10 months in trying to rectify that or let's say six or seven months especially when
076we're on the time frame that we're on so I'm wondering if you can give a commitment to the commission of when we can expect these inventories uh in the future yeah it is challenging I mentioned our largest uh sources of emissions if I scroll back up here are from buildings and transportation um and so our data on uh the energy that we send our buildings electricity and natural gas comes from DTE that's not data that we have internally um the delay this year as chair mersky alludes to is there was a long delay getting data from DT and they still have not been able to share um data for for commercial buildings um in addition we use uh the Google environmental insights Explorer for information on um vehicle Smiles traveled again that's an estimate that
077is specifically generated for use in greenhouse gas inventories um that was released late spring of this year um so while I think it would be great if I could uh and that's also an emerging data source um so that doesn't quite yet have a consistent date on when it was available um I mentioned it was available late spring of this year um I think the the intention is to have this prepared uh at least by mid-year um that alliance with the deadline that we have to submit a greenhouse gas inventory to the CDP the carbon disclosure project um uh which fulfills our obligations that we've committed to through things like the race to zero um I think it would be ideal to have this the second calendar year ends ideally everyone has their data and
078shares it with us and then we have a full toll Barista plan but unfortunately that um it's not always how it happens when we're reliant on data from external sources I hope that provides some some clarity yeah it does uh we'll talk about it in agenda items for future meetings where we had the idea of getting DTE in um and maybe there's a couple of topics that we can talk about I've made a note that we can come back to that um or brevity's sake uh I think what I will do is maybe send you a bunch of questions that I have um council member Riggs I'll come to you in just a second sorry and uh then maybe you can respond to those uh to me and copy the rest of the commission so
079that we're not uh extending this conversation too long but I don't want that just applies to me so anybody else council member Riggs will start with you thanks I've mentioned this point at previous meetings but um since we have some new Commissioners here tonight and um you know likely uh some new audience members as well I just wanted to bring it up you know I think it's pretty frequent that um we mentioned the number of units of housing units that we're adding to the city and um in the conversation that we bring them up in here that often comes up in a somewhat negative light in terms of how they're powered and I think the conversation we've had here tonight is incredibly important um to be talking about that and to talking about how it
080means meet sorry to zero goals but I just want to make sure that um at least I am mentioning the fact that we have a multitude of City goals that we're trying to reach and um housing shortage is also amongst them and so historically across the United States and also locally sometimes the environmental movement gets put at odds with um sort of the development of Housing and I I don't want us to I know that's not your intent to do that chair mursky I know that the work that you do also in the community on this issue of housing so I know that's not your intent um but just uh to point out that that's also um very important for us to be increasing our housing stock and that we are trying to as quickly
081as possible figure out how we can legally take the steps that we that we need to take in the community to power our new housing appropriately but for folks who are interested there's a great book I read recently Golden Gates the housing crisis and a reckoning for the American dream that goes into this um in this a really great read or a great audiobook thanks for sharing that uh I would just remind everyone of our last meeting where we had a presentation that showed that we can indeed have affordable and sustainable housing any other comments so Thea thank you very much um we are blessed to have you in OSI and doing these inventories I know this is one hell of a task and I know that you're really good at this and we really
082appreciate it and thanks for sharing this for with us and uh we'll look forward to having you back hopefully in June or July of next year telling us about 2022. thank you for the time tonight commissioners so um Zach uh I think just a second where's my agenda here at this page over so yes now we're going to have an update on the home energy rating disclosure and some of the longer time Commissioners will remember that Zach made a presentation back in February and so we now have an update and I'm going to let you steer the meeting go ahead Zach great um yeah some of those might look a little familiar to those of you who are here back in February when I give this presentation um but uh so this will be for
083those of you who are new and kind of an update for those who saw it before um and it is on the herd program or home energy rating disclosure um and uh so what is that um that is a program that is designed really to make the energy consumption of a home easier for future owners to understand a lot like the miles per charge rating electric vehicle and I'm gonna reference only electric vehicles uh in the spirit of electrification uh and it focuses on residential single-family homes we have a number of different um initiatives that are addressing other types of buildings um and I'll touch on that a little bit here um but what is this program and why do we need that so to expand on what I've said already um a little more
084is that we want to make sure that everybody has the detailed information that they need to make wise home purchasing um decisions um they can benefit from that a couple of ways it gives them a bigger picture of what they're getting when they buy a house and then should they choose to prioritize Energy Efficiency once they own the home then they'll have more information to help them make decisions about those projects um and those Investments and so over time we hope that this will ultimately drive a market push that values Energy Efficiency and ultimately reduces carbon emissions in line with the a20 plan um this is uh some of those other initiatives that I mentioned commercial benchmarking was passed by city council last October green rental housing will be following heard um shortly after that
085so later this year Commercial Energy I suppose there's not something that is yet in place but that is where um we could possibly close that gap for buildings that are smaller than 20 square feet and then are not covered by the commercial benchmarking but what this does cover are single fan single dwelling units um so whether it's a standalone home or it is row houses or town homes or duplex um if it's single family it's being sold will be included so what's this program all about well to answer the why um we should start from the beginning and uh with a20 there are the seven strategies outlined the herd ordinance Falls squarely into strategy three that is to significantly improve the Energy Efficiency of our buildings that's what those other Suite of ordinances are addressing
086um and um following that by virtue of being a decarbonization effort it could also help with the electrification strategy as well um and so this is just a different iteration of the table I showed you a moment ago um The Herd ordinance would be the second of this Suite of three programs so just to further build the case for the herd program um I want to demonstrate that on paper sustainability and Energy Efficiency are important to real estate agents they believe that things like the utility bill is important to their home buyers um you can you can see here that um they they understand that this is something that is important to home buyers and that they want to be able to highlight when a building performs well um some full disclosure is that there
087are some real estate agents who are a little reluctant to support this initiative and I just want to name that because it becomes a really vital piece of our Outreach efforts and so a lot of the conversation that um we'll be having today uh is about the ordinance but I want you to understand that we accompanying that ordinance would be a strong Outreach and resource availability for real estate agents foreign and so to share a little bit more about the why of this program uh are that right now there isn't any such thing in place and uh owner occupied homes and single-family homes um uh have very few points of intervention where the where the city of Ann Arbor can can leverage resources to help homeowners make the right decisions and so by increasing the
088literacy of of Home Energy Efficiency it naturally leads that um consumer action consumers who have information about the performance of their homes and the energy costs um and what sort of improvements they can make um it it naturally follows um that then drives Economic Development there will be um job creation as a result of local investment in Energy savings we will need home energy assessors and um Energy Efficiency contractors who can who can do this work um uh the Community Development component of it are that it it clarifies and helps to address some of the energy burden risk especially for low to moderate income households who are looking to buy in Ann Arbor right now it's kind of a blind um purchase at least on paper you can request some documentation from DTE about the
089previous year of of energy consumption at a house that you're looking to buy but otherwise a lot of that information is in the dark and you're kind of rolling the dice when you buy a house hoping that it's not energy hog um and so therefore there is a strong consumer protection in that that it informs a lot of that uh home buying process um some of the direct benefits to the home buyer are sort of as I just mentioned they they give a total cost of living figure um which is broader and more encapsulating than simply the home price um and it helps them make cost-effective efficiency improvements lowers energy costs to support lower income households um for those who are selling their home excuse me and who will under this ordinance this draft ordinance
090be required to get a home energy score they then get to showcase the cost-effective Energy Efficiency upgrades that maybe they've already done um and that can in turn increase the value of the home that those that have higher energy scores anyhow and I want to import to make an important note there that that doesn't mean that those with lower scores are devalued we've seen a few home energy scores get implemented across the country and in every situation what we find is that this is an additive value and it it only makes it a stronger case when you're trying to sell your house rather than lowering this cost of any home that doesn't have a high score um homes that have energy scores tend to sell faster and that benefits the real estate agents um when
091when they are giving a more a better more complete picture to potential home buyers um the it's more attractive to those home buyers it's also providing a better service to them you know you're preventing situations where a home buyer could be disappointed in the home that they bought um and this helps to standardize a comfortable method of discussing energy performance with with clients it's it's a um it's a topic that in my conversations with real estate agents um is difficult to bring up not every um home buyer is interested in it and if they are don't know how to talk about it and so having something in place like heard sort of standardizes those conversations and then of course overall we're looking at a community-wide carbon reductions um which also benefit the health and safety
092and comfort of these homes so just briefly um the home energy score is a initiative of the Department of energy which is why it has been chosen for this that's also the same method that other municipalities who have passed similar ordinances um they also use the home energy score and so if you get a five on your home energy score it says you're using about um 50 more energy than I'm sorry you're using about the same um energy as about 50 of the homes um if you are getting a 10 that's the best that you can get on this scale um and it says that you have a pretty highly efficient home um and then everything that is uh below that you know conversely is uh or attracts appropriately with the score um so a
093little bit of the process is that a doe um home energy assessor evaluates the home's total energy use and then they put the assessment into a report and that report includes not just the home energy score but the data that they use to calculate that home energy score their um they would give you energy use estimates on any improvements that you might make and they can include Improvement recommendations um specifically those that have a 10-year or less Payback excuse me so those are the things that we would expect to see in the home energy scores in this policy um and then in terms of the broader impact um you you have a better sense of the high leverage upgrades as a new homeowner and so um the home energy score can recommend those efficiency upgrades
094which is um high impact for making those decisions for um the first projects that you do um the most new homeowners make major project decisions within about a year of owning the house doesn't mean that they do them necessarily but those usually when the decisions are made and if you are equipped with the information up front upon new ownership about Energy Efficiency it kind of guides a lot of those at least informed those decisions um and then overall it lowers your energy cost so it's kind of a win-win situation I've mentioned a couple of other municipalities who are doing something similar Portland Oregon is doing it and now several of the surrounding municipalities are also doing at Milwaukee and Beaverton are following suit um Chicago is um has seen some of that as well as
095Austin Texas and and these are where we're getting some of those stats that say that homes sell quicker for instance than those that don't have home energy spores that's that's what we're seeing um across the board so it's it's overall beneficial um they're are there's a lot of information from AC Tripoli about um Energy savings and how that benefits homes um they also do a deep dive into energy burdened residents and what they are finding is that those residents who are energy burdened have increased starting in 2020 and there's a trend that has uh continued and so it could be covet related it was already on the climb though um and so we're hoping to address some of those energy burned households through an ordinance such as this um and so to give you a
096sense of the timeline going back in time um starting around this time of year last year um we were working with some of the work that the energy commission had done previously and to put together this um this ordinance and we began talking with real estate agents and and their Community um and learning from them having conversations understanding pain points Etc um earlier this year what we were exploring was a voluntary pilot program and that was in discussion um at the last time that I gave this presentation um the voluntary pilot program was uh legislated prior to a millage and with the millage coming about uh we decided to put a hold on the voluntary program especially if this ordinance is going to move forward on the timeline that we are expecting which is that
097it could feasibly be passed before the end of this year um that would mean that we had just a couple of months to launch a voluntary program that may or may not have had much benefit if it's ultimately going to be required anyway and so instead what we did over the summer was work with um a fellow who did really great work putting together messaging and marketing materials so that once we know what is going to happen with her and what I mean by that is whether or not Council will pass this ordinance um we will be ready to go and hit the ground running um we have everything in place um to do Outreach and Community engagement and we are expected to do a full program launch um early next year starting right away
098as soon as this ordinance passes um so that's that's where it stands I will let uh your questions guide the rest of this conversation thank you Zach so that slide that you showed last just since you were right on it that's the old slide that we showed in February correct and it's no longer the current plan where I think you just said we're not going to do the voluntary program implementation and so on and so forth right that's correct yeah okay yes thanks for clarifying uh the reason that I left it on here is to show that that's what was in place the last time that we spoke right the all future items that are on this timeline still stand so we haven't lost any time the legal review is slated for the first quarter
099or has already been completed um it's it's in process right now so it should be done um I mean it'll have to be before the ordinance moves forward but all right um they yeah we're hoping to get feedback from legal stat um hopefully any time now um and that really once we get that legal um we will be prepared to move forward right so I'd like to open things for question and answer and discussion there's two other elements of this topic so we actually have the ordinance itself uh which we can get into if appropriate and then we have a resolution of support and so um we'll need a motion to consider that and a second um this is effectively the second reading since we did look at this back in February so let's start
100with questions about the presentation we have um two up council member Briggs and then commissioner harp yeah thank you and thanks for the update on this um excited for it to make it to the council table um I'm curious when it does what sort of you've done a lot of stakeholder engagement and discussions around this um what sort of feedback would we anticipate um for example from the Realtors Association about this was there support or mixed feelings or what what what's the sentiment you're getting yeah really good question um we have gotten mixed feelings um part of that is because like we have seen in some other communities and what have we've seen here previously in Ann Arbor um that mostly there tends to be misunderstanding during the conversations with them about what this means
101we find that most Realtors then actually are quite amenable to this and friendly to it and so that's where it's the engagement strategy that we spent all summer building um and some of those messaging tactics really come into play for example there was uh let me see if I can rack my brain here in a conversation with one of them there was a um the county had passed a I think it was um a water related requirement that they must pass a certain test and there was a qualifier to that that they had to achieve a certain score and if the house didn't get a good enough score they had to make those changes what some of the a lot of the misunderstanding comes in around heard is that they're ex they thought and some
102still think that they need to achieve a certain score before the house can sell and that is not what hurt is requiring they heard is not requiring any changes whatsoever it simply is requiring the score it then allows the home the home buyer to make decisions about what they want to do um uh when they take ownership of the home so um that's that's I think where one of the biggest um sticking points are we have we have been putting together uh with the help of Joe on the line a website that will be a resource hub for really anybody that can be involved in this process so if there will be information for real estate agents home buyers home sellers um and energy assessors and and contractors who do that and so with that
103resource Hub um we hope to address a lot of uh these potential concerns before they become major concerns and that's something that you won't see in the ordinance because we want to make sure that we can't adapt if a certain messaging or Outreach tactic is not working we don't want to have to seek council's approval to change the ordinance to change our Outreach but that is something that's really critical to to keep in the back of your minds um is that the OSI will be accompanying um this this initiative if it moves forward to become an official ordinance with a lot of Engagement to make sure that we're answering those questions appropriately commissioner thank you so much for the presentation I was really excited to dig into this and and I think a lot of
104the questions as I read through both the ordinance and and the slides as well some of that was answered to in the research report from the Department of energy that went into some of the detail about some of the measures and some of the calculations that went in so it answered a lot of my questions as well about um not only this sort of plan for improving the metrics over time but the sort of regional climate and grid emissions uh calculations or excuse me context that goes into I think some of the reporting metrics that come out with the with the assessment as well if I under if I understood that correctly and so that helped me get get a sense of how this would be how they would be made comparable but also the
105sort of types of data that went into it two there were two main sort of areas of questions that I was sort of left with and and you talked about these a little bit one was was this sort of question of who's doing the assessment and what the handoff looks like um between the score itself but also the report that comes with that and I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about that handoff and how that might be reflected in the ordinance in particular because one of the one of the key things I'm curious about is how do we help ensure that someone who ends up purchasing or buying the home actually has the report and the knowledge and the insights um the actions to take in ways that help them sort
106of support decision making or actually help them make improvements or decisions about what kinds of actions they'll take and and part of that was I was just wondering how in particular the um the real estate agent um might get that directly to to a buyer but also uh perhaps an inspector who might be working with a buyer to help interpret and understand some of that information as well in the process of of purchasing a home and then the second the second piece which I can I can sort of follow up was was a little bit about the artifact or the or the the the report document itself and how the structure of that I saw the example from Portland how can that best help support decision making and I was particularly looking at some of
107the items you know are the suggested improvements for example prioritized in a particular order what kinds of ways in which can they be set up and and that's something I think that comes out in the making but I was just wondering if you had any thoughts about that as well sure um so the ordinance specifically uh to address your first question um the ordinance specifically names that the home energy score information must be listed in the home listing um that involves a conversation with the MLS the local organization that handles all um of the the house listings the multiple listing service and they can actually add fields and have added fields in the past for things such as Energy Efficiency and so um the ordinance requires that the home energy score be added there and
108that's one of the um places where we will be doing Outreach with the MLS to make sure that that field gets added so that it's nice and easy um for real estate agents to include that information in a listing as well as for potential buyers to find that information now in terms of the report that's something that is because it was obtained by the seller it supposed to be made available upon request by the potential home buyer your second question was about um jog my memory I'm sorry sorry about about the about the report document itself yeah and the type of information the way in which the information is presented the sort of quality of the information about the improvements um in part because I found that a lot of the way in which those
109improvements and and you can go for example look at the DTE site in terms of how they uh communicate Energy Efficiency improvements and things like that and the kinds of steps they can take but also the Portland example that you included in the at the bottom I think of the ordinance um there may be better versus worse ways of of presenting some of that information ways that will help uh I think homeowners make choices about what to do when to do it how much you know how much and then what process yeah so that's a good question there are actually um requirements from the doe about what information is included in those reports and how they get that information and they go as far as having a quality assurance checks for that um and um
110so what I what I took out of this uh presentation um but perhaps maybe should have left in from February was a little bit more information about that we would have to find a doe partner um and there are a couple of options here in the Ann Arbor and Detroit area for who we can work with um in terms of Home energy assessors and then the doe does um it's I think it's a five percent quality control check so they'll they'll pull those reports um and go over them with the home energy assessor to identify how they got that information and um identify any potential miscalcs or things that they can improve on so there's some quality control in there and then we can further work with the partners and via the doe to identify
111if there are other certain things that we want to make sure are included in that report so for example one thing that has already been in discussion to include in the Ann Arbor reports are or something like Eevee Readiness that's not already standard in a home energy score as it is delivered from the doe but it is something that locally has been expressed as a desire to be included in this so we would work with our partner to make sure that that information is also in the home energy score Dina thank you um I have a couple of questions and and I would uh I guess I'll start by saying I think I appreciate kind of the the work that's being done on this and and some of the Outreach that's taking place um I
112do think that there probably needs to be some additional Outreach to Realtors I am already hearing from Realtors kind of anticipating this and I have heard a lot of unanimity across the board and their opposition to this um so I would actually love to also talk to some some Realtors who might be supportive so that I can hear that perspective as well as as somebody who will have to vote on this at the council table um one of the questions that I have is about um kind of the mechanism for what the process is for for doing some of these assessments one of the the concerns that I have heard is that um mandating this without necessarily knowing if we have the the proper channels in place for these to be carried out regularly could
113add a lot of backlog to the buying and selling process as sellers are waiting for um these assessments to take place so do you know if if there's currently kind of a enough folks who can do these Assessments in place for if we were to implement this that it wouldn't dramatically impact the housing market um yeah that is um one that we have heard a lot as well so this was also something I took out of the previous I was trying to save time but I should have left it all in the presentation some of those that we're working with are already prepared to help us meet that demand so there are um already a few home energy assessors in the area um they uh one of the partners that we could potentially work with
114is Walker Miller they're based out of Detroit and um they specifically are focused on um helping to provide home energy assessments but also Workforce Development for that as well and so they are working on Partnerships with local high schools and colleges to get folks trained up and into that field at really opportune times and and equip them with the skills to be in the green economy and so that includes training them up to be home energy assessors and so um they have some capacity and are equipped to do that green home Institute is another one that is prepared to help with that and then I will also state that um there is some discussion about making um some of the potential millage funds if they if residents choose to pass that next month available to
115hire perhaps an in-house um assessor who could also help address some of that um with some of the that all of that said RMI uh what helped us put together some numbers on what we would need and what sort of demand that would put on our local energy assessors and they found that four energy assessors would be able to meet the need there are fewer than about 2 000 homes sold in Ann Arbor each year and so um that's four energy assessors full-time should be able to meet that there are also some other energy assessors who are already in the area that aren't um uh actively doing a whole lot of these and so though they could be engaged um and we also do already have some funds designated towards we are prepared to do
116some trainings for free from the city that we would we would put some folks through the uh dob training program thanks and then and then maybe as a follow-up to that I wonder if and if you don't have this I can obviously I will have another opportunity to ask these questions but since we might vote on a resolution tonight um in some of the other places where this has been instituted have you seen any is there any data to suggest whether or not this has added any type of considerable cost to the to the selling process and in additional fees or do you know approximately how much it costs to do one of these assessments um yeah to do one of these assessments is about two to four hundred dollars um it can be cheaper
117uh what we have found in the last couple of years is that that has increased to about two to four hundred dollars um so um that's that's the cost that we're looking at there already are some in terms of an equity approach um exemptions built into the draft ordinance so for any homes that um for homeowners who are low to moderate income they uh have the option to um apply for an exemption from compliance with this now that said that's the way the ordinance is worded again our approach to it is not always written into the ordinance and so the city of course would seek out um offsetting the cost for those homes rather than allowing them to be foregone completely and in fact we uh the current draft says 60 Ami are and below
118are exempt Portland bumped it up to 80. um and we would likely follow suit um if if that is um if that's something that is attractive to this body um and if we have the funding part also thanks and then and then the last thing I'll say is really I think more of a comment than anything as you continue to have discussions I know I think the thing that I have I have most heard as a concern is potentially like fire anxiety that if they go into um a potential purchase and then receive an assessment that demonstrates that the home really is not very efficient and needs a lot of work that at some point the city May mandate that they make all of those changes um and so I I think that's one of
119the the pieces that I've most consistently heard when I when folks have reached out to me about this is that that it may but add some additional anxiety or some additional kind of uh time to that process as buyers installers try to negotiate out what whether or not they are mandating that the seller now makes them upgrades because they're afraid that they might have to burden that cost later on and so I don't know if that's something that's come up in your conversations but just something that I've consistently heard as as you continue to talk to Realtors yeah at this time there is no such I haven't had any conversations involving that and I don't anticipate that that is anything that would come into play I will say that with the recent passing of the
120inflation reduction act there are a lot of very attractive rebates and tax credits that are available to homeowners who do choose to act on some of the recommendations that are put forth in the home energy score so for the next 10 years at least till 2032 it's actually a really good time to be to be making some of those electrification and efficiency changes council member McKenna did you have a question you if your hand was up a couple times no it's okay okay um any other comments or questions before we move on to the associated topics Zach I would just ask that you provide some data to Council on exactly those cost estimates I know eco-telligent homes uh did a full blower door test on my house again a second time last year and it
121was um I think around 200 for a full blower door test and I know that they're still doing a lot of work in Ann Arbor and were featured at the electrification fair so um before that two to four hundred dollar range is is given we should have provide some data to council uh go ahead yeah sorry and just if that if that information is being provided also at some point I would also love to hear if there's what what the current timeline is for for an assessment to take place not just like how long the actual assessment would be but if we were to implement this and had those four people in place and somebody requested one about what length of time they should expect from requesting an assessment when it would be completed okay
122good idea so um the ordinance was posted on legistar it looks it sounds like a few people looked at it um are there any questions or comments about the ordinance before we consider the resolution Zach I submitted uh some questions to you in advance of the meeting which I think you saw um would you comment on on at least the ordinance related aspects so I I can read them or you can just go ahead and address them directly um sure um uh the first one I'll I'll address uh is one that I've sort of already addressed this question was about um the city providing certain Provisions for um either the city or another entity to fund reports um and this question was specifically about the exemptions of low to moderate income households um and so
123I'll just repeat again that that's something that we would keep an administrative approach so that we can appropriately adapt and adjust as needed to make sure that those are being funded I will provide a little more information background information on why that was included and the goal was to not then further burden a household that may already be energy burdened now with the cost of complying with a new ordinance even though it's in the spirit of of reducing the energy is if you're a low to moderate income household and you're trying to sell your house uh we we don't want to be burning you any further so you can apply for a full exemption um of course then if any applications that we receive under that exemption would be met then with okay great now
124here's how we will help you get it done um but but you won't need to legally apply yeah just for the council members that that that cuts two ways so if you don't do these scores then you sort of perpetuate these lower income homes that have high utility costs that low-income people can't afford and if they are continually Exempted then they're not aware of that and they're probably less inclined um to make the kind of upgrades that we want to see them make not only from a greenhouse gas and energy perspective but also from an affordability perspective so I think it really is important that we think about how we might be able to provide incentives for those being done um then there's the other point um about calculating greenhouse gas emissions two different ways
125could you comment on that and explain it um yeah I'll I'll um I might actually turn this back around uh to you about exactly what this question was asking um there is a um stipulation that says that the home industry score should include an estimate of the home's greenhouse gas emissions based on the home energy score estimate um and which fuel types are being used the question was asking if the second calculation could be if it was a hundred percent renewable Electric option um which if it's renewable electrics the uh doesn't that mean that the greenhouse gas emissions are very low I mean outside of doing embodied carbon I don't think I understand what they're no so there's the typical home in Ann Arbor is going to be greenhouse gas heated um water heated stove
126Etc but then there's also electric uh power consumption and so if um you have the electric component is going to have a certain cost in a certain greenhouse gas emissions but most people in Ann Arbor now have an option of subscribing to 100 renewable energy so one option is through my green power um in fact DTE has a special offering right now another option is through Arcadia a future option might be through Community solar on the landfill and so the idea is that if you provide the information of what the greenhouse gases and Emissions would be should they procure their electricity from a 100 renewable source that would give them an indication of what the benefit would be of subscribing to 100 renewable energy from some Source or another um yeah I mean I think
127I would again turn that back to the body if that's of interest to the energy commission um I don't see why that isn't something that we could include you essentially build the multi multiplication factors in and then when you spit out the report the report gives the two different uh figures and indicates what the benefit is of having 100 renewable energy which we want to encourage people to do absolutely are there any other comments or questions about the ordinance that people have if not we'll move on go ahead councilmember Calvin Garcia there was a section in the ordinance about okay under definitions that says asset rating the term asset rating it says for existing houses the asset rating is produced based on an in-house assessment which uses the department of Energy's home energy score for
128new houses the asset rating may be produced based on design documents for the house how is that going to be like consistently calculated with new houses like in a way that's replicable and everyone who's doing it is calculating it based on the same criteria I found that also confusing frankly I didn't understand that whole definition sorry maybe you can explain it or rework it sure um we we can rework it um some of these things also um were um uh kind of taken from other municipalities who have something in place uh I think an important thing to note here is that new homes uh new construction will not be um uh subject to this they are already getting a hers um rating through uh the current building code um at least a blower door test
129and so um they are already rated under another system so um it wouldn't apply to to new homes so yeah so Zach maybe you can communicate to us uh on whether or not that language is then going to be changed as well as the other couple of points um I think we can still go ahead and consider the resolution of support though yeah we can we can edit that um to make it clearer I I think I might recommend just removing the point about the newer homes um even though later in the ordinance it does state that new homes won't aren't covered but um we will uh yeah we can we can rework that that would be great great so we have a resolution of support uh could you pull that up and display it
130do you have that handy Zach yeah and maybe a parliamentarian can help me here council member Briggs um I'll finish my question um since we already considered this ordinance of support back in February do we need to reintroduce it with a motion to consider in a second or can we just go directly into discussion maybe you can pose your question and answer my question at the same time councilmember Briggs um yeah my question is um related to I just wanted some additional clarification around um the exemption piece of things which I understood what you're saying in terms of administratively that the goal would be to provide that as a service um but I'm a little concerned if if folks how that's been playing out in other communities um if that is an option if it
131makes a little bit quicker um in terms of the speed of things that there might folks might choose to to to just say no I'd rather go through the exemption process rather than even if you're going to pay for it and so I'm just curious how that's uh paid played out I assume that there's a desired not to commit ourselves in ordinance form that we are paying for this in perpetuity and so I understand the administrative component to that but I'm just curious how this is um with youth how this has worked in other communities um yeah good question um I'm pulling up my notes here from interviews with uh like Hillsboro and Portland and as I recall neither have actually received very many um uh exemption requests under this they had similar language for
132low to moderate income households um and I think what they're finding is that they're um uh let's see here is that they just haven't been receiving a lot of requests for that but that doesn't answer your question I I can do a little bit of digging uh council member Briggs if that's okay and I can help answer that question yeah that's fine it's not pressing for tonight I mean I'm assuming we really don't wanna include that within the language of the ordinance that we would be paying for it but I'm just just checking makes sense councilmember radina thanks I think I can answer your question and then I do have one more question too um I think if this resolution is new even if we looked at the ornaments before I think the the resolution
133needs to be moved um um and my my question is Zach sorry I thought of one more is there a reason why um I believe that this requires um the assessment to be done at this time of listing as opposed to the point of sale like a lot of other assessments is that is there a reason we did that specifically um yeah you're seeing language in ordinance requesting time of listing well yeah you mentioned you mentioned like you wanted in the MLS listing as opposed to it being something that's done before closing um or I know you know when I went through my home buying process a lot of those um the the assessments that would take place or the the um most of those will happen after kind of an agreements in place and
134then they have to be completed by the time of sale by closing yeah um one I'll harken back to the beginning of my presentation that um stated one of the stated goals of this program is to sort of help drive that market of Energy Efficiency and so by encouraging it at the time of listing it um gives prospective buyers the information so they can make that in their decision making before getting to the point of agreement or locked in to the home um I will state that as um written uh the um ordinance will focus more on time of sale that was a recommendation by some of the preliminary legal review that we've gotten because I think that the the likelihood of being challenged increases as we get closer to time of listing and so
135um that's again where a lot of the administrative Outreach engagement falls on the OSI is that as homes are getting listed making sure that we are informing real estate agents and home sellers early on in the process that this is something that they're ultimately going to need to comply with anyway and give them resources and information about how it behooves everyone to get it done early as early as possible to make that information available to as many people as possible because it's required at the end of the day anyway I think I'm confused a little bit and I'm also still confused by the title Zach I see you changed some of this in the title so it now reads the Ann Arbor code of ordinances but it still says time of sale so when when
136is this being conducted or required so again it the it would be required by the ordinance um by the time of sale um that uh removes certain requirements um there let's see the doing it at time of listing um involves a different process there that real estate agents already must adhere to and um interfering with that process I think makes it uh more challenging for this to to hold water is my understanding um and so the requirement is at time of sale um but we would encourage it at the time of listing and so that's that's when the OSI would would be encouraging it through letters and through Outreach um to everyone who is involved so that frankly is a big concern of mine when we talked so as Zach knows but many of you
137may not know Carlene and I and I think Bridget and Wayne Apple Yard former chair we held interviews with a number of different municipalities uh Portland Austin um at least those two for sure um and it's my understanding Zach that those are time of marketing requirements both at both of those municipalities is that correct um I believe that Portland is actually um set up the same way where it's time of sale um but it is encouraged ahead of time so one of the reasons why again the group that originally drafted a version of this that Taiwan has handed off to OSI uh was that by doing it time of marketing you you actually touched two two parties you touched the seller and you touch the buyer at the time of sale then really you're not
138touching as much the the the buyer okay there may be Outreach and things like that but um if you're really doing this at time of marketing you're encouraging the seller to look at this and they just simply comprehend it and think about what they're doing with their next purchase and if you do it at the time of sale it's really directed at just the buyer um and the other thing is is that if you're really looking at disclosure it's just like um buying a car you look at the sticker and there it is in big big numbers your MPG values and you see that before you make a decision it's not that you make the decision to buy the car you go in the salesman office and then as you're signing the contract then they
139say oh by the way this uh vehicle gets uh 12 miles a gallon and this is how it's taxed up against other vehicles so I'm I'm really concerned that this is leaving open a loop where we're just doing it um potentially at the time of sale but um yeah um commissioner Peck you know I couldn't agree more I mean this seems like a waste of time to do at a time of sale that's all I can say I mean it's like really half-hearted and um if we wanted to have any impact on things we got to do at a time of market and logically from I bought enough houses through the time I moved around uh that um you know could be done as part of inspection could be done you know when you're also
140having to do a whole bunch of other disclosures you know time of sale makes no sense and I think it's just a way to get the Realtors to give in exactly so we're sort of getting into the consideration of the the language what I'm going to ask is for a motion to consider the resolution um and a second and then we'll dive into this I was guilty of uh partly getting ahead of the game here so can I have a motion to consider the resolution uh I think I saw Carlene's hand go up is that correct yes okay and the second from commissioner herp so I'd like to open things up for comments um any comments no discussion okay so um council member breaks yes just to continue the conversation that uh the question was
141just raised um exactly I don't know to the degree that do you think there's an opportunity to move this to time of listing or do you think there are um are there significant barriers you know beyond sort of political considerations but you know um barriers to doing that um yeah one of the um barriers that we encountered when we were having some conversations with the goal are enforcement barriers um the once it comes time to sail because there's so many checks in place for what can happen before a house is closed on um that is a more natural setting um evidently for doing checks like this um and it's much harder to do that at the other end of the the time scale um so that might challenge that I mean you have the MLS
142is it in the MLS or is it not in the MLS um well the requirement the um ordinance would be that it would have to be listed in the MLS so there you go there's a check and I think the question at that point then comes down to again back to enforcement um that requires a lot of resources to check that those are getting into place um we do have some staff and budget time allotted for ensuring a quality check on that um but it falls down really to at the very end that's when everything is looked at and we were advised to include it at that time you know you would can I say go ahead I think you would sorry I think you would be forcing I'm not a lawyer but I have
143a funny feeling you'd be forcing people to do it if you had a city requirement and then if someone didn't do it and the seller wanted to get out of the deal it would like be a piece of cake and therefore it would put a lot of pressure on both the realtor and the seller to comply because they've realized that there's like a by not complying and breaking a city ordinance you know you'd be perfectly legally I mean I can't imagine you'd lose in court if you just decided not to buy the place and people hate that you know you could bail at any time that's the home buyer you're saying yeah yeah and I don't I think the realtor and the seller would I mean that would be doing them a great disservice it's
144just creating I do think that time of marketing is for our goals far more effective uh approach um these were recommendations that were made to us by legal who are looking at um uh they reference certain State um laws that are in place that it would be far more difficult to enforce um at time of listening so how about how about this how about time have come you know like the normal way you do it you put it in the contract but I'm trying to think I'm you know again I'm not a real estate lawyer I think we need to go back to the drawing board here because you there ought to be a way you know when you buy a house you have in the contract I need an inspection I need to see
145you know all the you know liens I need to assist disclosures all those kinds of things closures this and that that's when you want to have it in there uh I would love it if it was before then um but by putting it at that stage at least what you're doing is you're giving the buyer a potential buyer and out you know because so you do an inspection and you find something you don't like you ask the home buyer to fix it or you get your money back your deposit back and this would fall in that same category I'm really surprised the legal didn't go for that I mean did they did did you you know how I mean no offense if anyone's a lawyer but you know everybody likes lawyers like to have things
146kind of Ironclad I understand that but you know we we don't we have a climate crisis on our hands and we got to get this done you don't want to just have sort of a hollow regulation here I'm gonna jump in just really quickly and just say so I I think I think as a policy body I think we can advise one way or the other I would discourage us from having maybe further conversation about the nature of the legal advice that that staff is getting in a public meeting just because if if we were to go in one way or the other we don't want to broadcast potentially what our our lawyers are thinking about and so I'm going to maybe save Zach a little bit from having to answer about um what maybe
147he's hearing from the lawyers um but I think we can maybe express our preference one way or the other and then continue that conversation I apologize yeah I think you're right I support that too other other comments uh commissioner Macomber um so now I'm confused um so this is time of sale is it happening like at close thing or is it happening like somebody makes an offer on a house and this this uh audit is done and they get the results like a house inspection sure so for certainly the um ladder is preferred um the I I appreciate the um the encouragement to to maybe let me know what you're thinking um and we can we can go back and get a little more information on it um it's him important to consider this a
148lot of this is coming from like a um an approach to um it's more than just carbon British reductions um and so it's uh it does it does get tricky because there aren't carbon reductions laws necessarily on the place or on the on the books um so it it currently as drafted would it requires it at time of sale if we're doing our Outreach appropriately we're letting people sellers know before it gets to that time that hey this is a new requirement and you are going to have to get this um and you should do it sooner rather than later and then provide them with the resources to be able to so I sorry I'm so is this something I'm still confused I didn't think I was confused but I'm confused now so is this
149something where you make an offer in a house and uh all of that stuff happens you agree with the deal you go to a closing and you're handed this audit or is this something where you make an offer on a house uh whoever I guess the seller organ uh has to schedule the uh energy audit and its information provided to the potential buyer before the closing happens so that they they have the opportunity to react to it yes that's when that's when we would like to see it so there's if I may and correct me if I'm wrong there's a must and a want the must is that it's available at closing and when you get your stack of paper like this to sign there's a piece of paper in there that has your home
150energy disclosure and your home energy score so want is that it's available early on in the process so that when a potential buyer interacts with the seller that that information is available and that there's a dialogue at that time between the three parties the Ageless put it this way the agents and the buyer and the seller about that that is only a want that is not a must is that correct Zach you know I am going to have to ask for your forgiveness um a lot of these conversations happened 11 plus months ago um I am going to need to dig through back through the advice that we were given from uh legal and I identify where specifically they think that this would be most effective council member breaks yeah I'm this is I think
151a confusing conversation um but I would say that in terms of what we're looking at on um our agenda right now it says that his ordinance is currently written it says that you know prior to public listing any covered building for sale the seller of the covered building or the sellers designated representative shell and there's a variety of different things but the last one is include the home energy performance score in all real estate listings including the home energy performance report and attachments if the attachments are accepted by the lift team service So currently as written um what we have is that it it will there would be a violation if it wasn't done at the time of listing so whether or not that's how the conversation has evolved over time and um is maybe
152an important point to check because it sounds like there's been a number of conversations with OSI about this issue but the ordinance that we're being asked to approve tonight there would be a violation if that was not done is if I'm reading this correctly is that correct thank you for that actually you remind me I read it this afternoon that was my understanding as well and the point of confusion is that the title of the resolution still says at time of sale correct commissioner Macomber so which is it because coordinate says one thing and the resolution says something else the ordinance says at time of marketing essentially that's what commissioner Briggs just read she quoted from the origins I'm hearing a contradiction it is and I'm not sure what we're voting on are we voting
153to let the legal department decide whatever they want let's not vote let's have Zach said he could go back and just clarify everything get it all straight and because I think what you're working on here is a really great idea and we just want to make sure it's at time of marketing commissioner our council member Grace to councilmember Regina's point because I you know just to save staff time in terms of the conversation that I've heard around the virtual table tonight it sounds like there's a strong desire to happen for this to happen at time of listing that is what the ordinance in front of us says if if there's comfort with approving the ordinance language as is right now this is an advisory body we take that forward and obviously there are going to
154be elements there may be elements that need to be worked out before this comes to the council table um we under I would say that as council members we would understand what the recommendation is here if there's a different desire at the council at this table to not have it at time of listing and to have it by at time of sale then I would think that might be an amendment that might be proposed or maybe we do need to postpone it but what I've heard is that the comfort is actually around what the ordinance language says not the title and I am inclined to um agree with that I think again forgive me but uh chairman risky the title that you because you had pointed out some of that earlier today I think that
155that didn't get changed and can we can we change the title and vote on it and where it says at time of um listing and then that can be clarified and we don't lose time between this group and uh because that that corresponds with the language in the ordinance that is in legistar and attached um to the agenda so we when we when we do these kinds of things we change the wording often in the text in front of us there's other two other changes that I sent you that I recommended be changed anyhow there we go time of listing and I made two other minor points they were released insignificant um but maybe you've taken those into account yes okay great second whereas Point has been changed 21 of local emissions and from the
156residential Market and then there was one other minor one yep exactly yeah thank you so with with the change in the title with the understanding that this is all going to be clarified with the hope that we do not delay this any further and I'm apologizing for what I'm going to say at a time uh but this has been extremely frustrating to me and to others there was a virtually a complete version of this three years ago and we considered this in February and now here it is in October and we are just too slow on some of these things and somebody may have reasons to me they're not good enough so I would like to dispatch with this um that's my position before I take the vote I don't know if anybody else has
157anything to say before they uh before we take a vote in terms of registering their sensibilities I'm willing to entertain those um otherwise we'll take a vote anybody else have any other comments so seeing none all those in favor of approving this resolution of support for the ordinance that we just had presented please raise your hand and say I I close the pose any extensions did I see an uh an opposition from someone or was just a hand that stayed up longer no opposition okay passes unanimously great council member race um based on the discussion tonight I feel like there's a strong sentiment a certain way I just wanted to make sure that if we get feedback between now and when it comes to council that time of listing is um is not the appropriate
158right route for one reason or you know another um well I guess for legal reasons would be the there could be other reasons I suppose as well but um is this um something that you would like to have brought back do you think that's a big enough change to this ordinance um that it should not move forward to the council table um I'd heard some sentiments here that you know time of sale is is not okay but I I just want to make sure that there is also support with us moving forward for some reason that shows how does how to go ahead council member of Commerce how do you all feel so if it's time of stale I mean this is going to be a lot of work and staff time um and resources
159on the part of a whole lot of people um and it seems as though if it becomes time of sale it will no longer achieve what we want it to and looking at the heavy lift that it's going to be to roll out and force I guess my answer to that question would be um I think it's worth taking another look at it if it's really what we want to spend our resources Collective resources in council member radina and then I think um commissioner McKenna has something as well go ahead councilmember Adina thanks I I can I can maybe wait for commissioner I know she had her hand up I but I just I want to make sure that that's the sentiment of the body because I also did hear you know chairmanski acknowledge that
160this has taken a long period of time and so if if the desire is for this to come back to this body if for whatever reason point of marketing is not achievable that will add time to the process and so I just want to acknowledge that as well um and so so I guess I I just want to make sure that the that is the the sentiment of the body is that we would come back if a considerable change needs to be made commissioner McKenna and then commissioner thanks I'd like to comment on what we or yeah just put a voice to what we think is a considerable change um I mean I may be wrong when I'm looking at this like point of sale I mean just just for one I know from other
161cities doing this um it's it's commonly called point of sale and to me that's a longer time frame um than you know the the time that the the buyer signs the paper you know it's we're not talking about like a yeah like a 30-second moment at time of sale where the buyer signs the paper um that's just kind of my take on it that I think that time of sales is common language that's used across industry um and in policy for this and so I just wanted to share that uh commissioner my my thought on this is I think the information that's being generated by this is useful at any stage um in in the process both I think Upstream um in marketing but also even after the sale and I think the presence of
162that information given how sort of durable it might be and that its expiration is about eight years and and the calculations themselves of the footprint I think are about two years or so can be useful at multiple times and so do we think it does better work in helping people make better decisions at different phases in the process yes possibly but I think also having the information at any point in the process will help further the goals that we're looking at so um any other Commissioners have anything to add to that I mean we've already voted unanimously in support of the resolution officially that means it moves on I would ask Zach that in any case you reply to the entire commission as to what the situation is both in terms of the proper interpretation
163taking into account commissioner McKenna's uh statement about what is common language and what what does what does that really mean so what does the ordinance self-release say and mean versus what sort of typical nomenclature around these things and that that is maybe more broadly interpreted um and that I would also appreciate information um as to what's what the practice and experiences in other cities and that will go to our two council members that allows all of us to weigh in with those council members they can then we can weigh in with them and they can then also present this um when it comes to the entire Council so that way we don't slow things down so I think we can do both we still have an opportunity to weigh in on this with the information
164from Zach if this moves forward does that sound acceptable to everyone great good so we are on to the next point on the agenda which is an update from OSI and news from commissioners Joe I think you're going to take the lead here yep um pretty much as always got a flurry of things so trying to organize it by category here but um first want to just go through some of the events that we've had recently in our upcoming um last Friday we had our green Fair talking about all the things we've got going on we had really really good turnout and really good engagement with that so a lot of people asking good questions and just having a good time all around um we also on Sunday had our first ambassadors Summit where we
165got together a bunch of the ambassadors who were coming together just to talk about what they you know what they've been doing how the process has been how it's you know changed um they're what they've been doing going forward so I got a lot of good impact or information from that um solarize is ongoing in fact there's a meeting uh would have been earlier tonight at this point so additional rounds of that are on upcoming and lastly for upcoming we have a local food festival this Thursday um learning about all the you know different food sources that are around got some vendors got some a couple of the restaurants who are doing stuff with that um so if you've got time or have people that'll be interested send them that way um to go for
166a bit of fundraising um today we submitted a grant that we talked about I think in a previous meeting for uh the geothermal system in and around the Bryant neighborhood uh this would be that two-stage Grant where the first stage is looking um just at the design in a study or feasibility of what could possibly happen and then based on that um doe would down select to fund people um that had a good design and something that would be feasible um and in really good fundraising news one of the grants that we talked about previously ended up being successful um so the Community Action Network uh working in Bryant has received a 500 000 Grant from mishta uh to get started on doing some of those home retrofits uh we've kind of been stuck in
167this planning stage for a while with lack of funding but now uh with this funding is kind of the first one in the line to get things done um we have to do some of the things to submit a final revised budget and finalize things with mishta but we're estimating we'll be able to do around 20 home upgrades in Bryant with this funding and hopefully that'll spur further funding as you know we have a proof of concept there um one and two talks specifically about where we are with some of the energy concierge stuff as I know we've had some questions here and there and uh interest in the project um we've gotten started officially on the one-on-one version of this which would be you know people call in they work directly with an advisor
168looks at their home and starts making recommendations um we started working with Elevate and ego Works to make a model uh it's kind of if you want to look up what a similar one is it's called I heart my homes Connecticut um so this kicked off just in September uh Julie Roth is working with these two partners to make sure it's in line with everything that we want here in Ann Arbor um the goal for it is to buy by late spring early summer to have kind of gone through a pilot process of working with around 10 to 20 buildings um of a couple various different uh sizes and owner groups just to see how it works with that um the that hasn't yet started we're still doing the back end looking at how the
169modeling would work figuring out the intake and everything that goes into that and then once that's ready we'll start doing Outreach and working with um some some buildings in the community um we also have rmio be helping out a little bit with that doing some of the Outreach and other information gathering to talk about the virtual aspect of it the website version we've had a couple conversations with a couple different um platforms of kind of what they offer how it could be used how it would apply to Ann Arbor and also spoken to a couple other cities that have used some of those tools to see what they thought of it we're also working with it as we're going through some transitions with the website itself they're working to upgrade and transition over the city
170website to a fully new platform that'll have a lot more information and capability so they they want to just make sure to first see what it would look like if it was fully hosted um you know on a City website versus everything else so we're just kind of in discussions with them to see how that would all work we should have more clarification on what we can expect from that and then can inform our decisions going forward by hopefully the end of this year if not early next year um and then lastly just to give an update on Staffing as we talked about last time we've been down a couple people um we've currently made an offer for the administrative assistant position and then we are in the process of interviewing for the engagement specialist
171position um we have not yet posted the community energy manager one but that is in the works as well thank you news from Commissioners and from Council Members I'll take those as they come not necessarily in that order any updates of Interest okay seeing none I would just mention one thing um and that is make sure that you and your friends and your family and everybody else votes on November 8th and there is an important climate millage on the ballot as well as a whole host of other candidates that will make a big difference on energy and climate so make sure voting has consequences as we have seen unfortunately uh working group updates I don't know if there's anything to report anybody have a working group update no okay so we moved to public input
172this is our second opportunity for persons from the community to speak for up to three minutes if you're watching CTN please call 888-788-0099-4877-853-5247 and enter a meeting ID 956-8718-7876 this information is also on the agenda and the video feed City staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone in order to raise your hand press star nine on your phone and you will hear an automated message that the post is allowing you to speak when speaking move to a quiet place and state your name and address at the beginning of your comments we'll wait 30 seconds or so anything Joe nothing yet no nothing yet okay well let's go ahead and move on to agenda items for the next meeting and if somebody calls
173in then we'll stop and and take that um so I want to just read off real quickly what I had written down um first of all um we're talking about a joint meeting with the Planning Commission that potentially could happen at our next meeting I actually talked very briefly with Shannon gibrando who's the chair of the Planning Commission they meet also on Tuesday nights at seven o'clock so there's a possibility of a joint meeting coming up um I wrote down a couple of other things that came up during the discussion um one is uh presentation by um Greg Julian um about um I guess the general topic of um purchased goods and what scope 3 emissions related to that is that correct commissioner Peck you're still muted oh yes okay good I mean I gotta
174talk to him and see how far I think he's had quite a bit of time to work on it so I bet he's done a bunch yeah so if you if if that's something you could Circle back with uh with me and with Missy and then we could not put that on the list um then the uh other thing is potentially something related to fugitive emissions I understood that that might be something that might be interested for this group that's um basically natural gas leakage um and if anybody knows somebody who might be able to speak to that okay commissioner Peck then we'll Circle back with you and um a couple of other things that have come up outside the meeting one other thing came up in in the meeting is uh DTE um data
175sources that I wrote down and maybe we can get DTE to come in here and talk about uh how we how we can get them to accelerate providing data to us so that we're not looking in the rearview mirror um and that should be important to I think everybody including themselves um and then another aspect of having DTE in in here some of you may have heard from your neighbors or others that DTE is now offering migraine power 100 renewable energy at the same rate um as what you currently pay and it's not really clear at least from what I've heard as to what the details of that are and I think that would be very interesting to understand that and then how that compares to other offerings I mentioned earlier Arcadia also offers essentially
176a program for Rex and then there's also this would enter into frankly the I think considerations related to putting landfill on the solar on the on assuming land solar I am still on the solar solar on the landfill uh and and other potential things that the city may do also related to the sustainable energy utility I see Larry raising his hand yeah I also got something from DTE about um Greening of the gas supply that I thought I would like to know more about it as well um they they claim to be green and how they're taking care of the force at the same time um I've heard other people say that they're confused by it don't know whether it's legitimate true or not and I think that's another thing that would be interesting that's
177a great great Point thank you uh I had two other notes and then I'll open it up for other comments too one is um our next meeting is on Election Day and I know at least one person that's going to have an issue with that um I don't know that we've ever had that in the past or if that's a concern is that a concern to any of the other Commissioners is that problematic I've seen a few nodding heads commissioner councilman Briggs that I see you nod your head yes I did I think it's just generally problematic in the sense that um we want to reduce any barriers there are to voting and that means not encouraging folks to attend our meeting that night both as commissioner or as a member of the public okay
178so I will take that up let's go ahead and I see a thumbs up on that and I think another nod from council member Edina and I feel the same way so I will take that up with Missy I realize that shifting this potentially is problematic too but maybe we move it to another Tuesday but if we do something with a Planning Commission I assume they would have the same objective that we would in terms of encouraging election participation so maybe that's a good fit and then the last note that I had with regards to this is in-person meetings can someone either from staff or Council give us an insight into when if and when we might return to in-person meetings I know Council and Planning Commission are both in person go ahead council member
179Edina yeah thanks um so we recently updated some of our um say our covet safety protocol for for Council meetings themselves um and at the last meeting uh rescinded the state of emergency that we were at the local state of emergency we were operating under that being said we kept in place the resolution related to council or to the commissions which still the original language says that other than the list of exceptions all other commissions shall meet um virtually or electronically and so um I don't believe that there's currently any exception for this body to begin meeting in person yeah okay great I appreciate the the information for all of us so for the time being we remain then as is and we can all plan accordingly did anyone else have any other ideas suggestions
180for future topics commissioner yeah it's somewhat with respect to the the question of real-time emissions data um you know and related to sort of the inherent variability of the grid and the fuel sources that are on that and sort of how we can shift it I was wondering if there might be folks that we might be able to bring in to help sort of talk about some of that I have a cup I have one or two in mind um who might be able to speak to some of that from a presentation I saw recently um with another organization maybe you can feed me some information on that or that maybe at least the lead to maybe the what we need to get to commissioner great thanks thanks we have some colleagues that sees uh
181researchers that specialize in marginal emissions and the grid um like Michael Craig comes to mind so um definitely would be a great local resource Claire if you could send me that then we can also talk about that we Carlene Missy and I have a meeting where we talk about future agenda items and scheduling and who would be and so on and so forth because we have to also coordinate dates obviously with their calendar as well so that's great any other comments okay um so this is not quite as long as some of the meetings we had last year when we were considering the feasibility study but it was a long one but it was also a very interesting and interesting one and I really appreciate again working with all of you I really appreciate the
182new Commissioners and with regards to the new Commissioners we typically have new commissioner orientation and we have a number of you so I will reach out with you I made myself a note and we'll send out a meeting poll and try to get all of us together and just talk about uh how the commission works and answer your questions some expectations things like that so you'll hear from me here in the next couple of days or week or so uh with that said uh thanks again everyone and uh it is 8 54 and I declare this meeting adjourned have a great rest of your evening and a good night's sleep okay thank you