Ann Arbor Energy Commission Meeting 3-8-22

001commission and as chair i'm calling this meeting to order as i mentioned and i am calling in from my home here in ann arbor welcome to the march 8 2022 electronic meeting of the energy commission this virtual meeting is to affect social distancing and to mitigate the spread of the covet-19 virus we will conduct this meeting similar to in-person meetings commissioners during roll call please indicate your current location and during the meeting please remain on camera just as you would be visible during an in-person meeting also mute your microphone when not speaking public comment will be held via telephone only to speak during any of this public meeting uh opportunities and there will be two please call one of the following toll-free numbers eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven four eight

002eight eight seven eight eight zero zero nine nine and enter then the meeting id number which is nine three seven six seven five one six eight one nine on your phone these this information along with is available on the public uh published agenda in the public notices section of the city's website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 and att channel 99 as well as online at a2gov.org backslash watch ctn missy would you please read the land acknowledgement absolutely i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinaabe including the ottawa ojibway and buddhawatomie and wyandotte peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the united states on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from

003indigenous people 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 and justice for all individuals i have to unmute thank you very much missy um would you now take the roll call and before you do so i'd like to acknowledge um that councilmember rodina informed us before the meeting that he's not able to be present tonight he is on an airplane on his way to washington dc um he indicated that depending on when he arrives he may be able to join in at the end of the meeting go ahead great i'm gonna

004sort of stick on that train uh commissioner cleavy has also shared that he'll be absent tonight uh uh commissioner hook um uh chuck hook i'm here from my home office in ann arbor commissioner mccomber let me just make sure everyone's in the waiting room okay uh commissioner here in ann arbor hey chairmaski you're in ann arbor great well they're so fast uh vice chair colin garcia here in ann arbor thank you councilmember briggs here in ann arbor thank you commissioner mccoy here in ann arbor thank you commissioner george here in ann arbor and i'll be on camera in just a second we miss you commissioner kerber here and in ann arbor commissioner peck you're in ann arbor commissioner juno ann arbor thank you commissioner stevenson all right chair uh let me just check the room

005you have a corn very good very good thank you so um could i have um a motion to approve the agenda and then a second a motion from councilmember briggs in a second by commissioner juno all in favor please say aye and raise your hand i um i don't see anybody that or didn't any anybody oppose or any concerns unregistered so the agenda is approved um next is approval of the minutes those were posted a little bit late but they are up hopefully people have had a chance to read them um do i have a motion and a second to approve the minutes of last month's meeting uh motion by commissioner hook um and seconded by commissioner levin all in favor please say aye and raise your hand bye anyone opposed or any concerns none

006registered the motion passes so we now are on to public input for the first set of input at least again this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes if you're watching on ctn please call 888-788-0099 or 877-853-5200 and enter meeting id 937-6751-6819 this information is also displayed 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 9 on your phone and you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak and speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you

007clearly and then finally please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments all right uh caller ending in one three four thank you doctor stealth chair mursky ken garber 28 hammer mill court um i'm glad to see city solar installation and the green rental housing program on the agenda rental housing is especially key from an emissions standpoint so i really commend osi for taking on this intractable problem i read the slide deck and i have one question about that i apologize to staff for posing the question in advance of the presentation the question is about slide 11 occupant weatherization i have some personal history here back in 1985 i helped organize a petition drive for what we call the basic weatherization and rental housing act we got the signatures to put it

008on the ballot voters overwhelmingly approved it and it became section 8 528 of city code chapter 105 which is still on the books this mandates weather stripping crack sealing and caulking it all inside outside interfaces and attic insulation to at least our thirty landlords must meet these standards in order to obtain a certificate of compliance the lack of which entitles tenants to withhold rent 37 years later i'm still a renter and two years ago i was forced back onto the depressing local rental market in midwinter i toured a couple dozen rental units several of which were complete dumps that did not come close to meeting these weatherization standards misaligned doors without weather stripping cracks and unsealed window frames uninsulated utility connections incredibly drafty rooms you name it energy sieves if you're a long time ann

009arbor renter you've seen this too i noticed that occupant weatherization slide 11 is one element of the green rental housing program you'll be hearing about today i read the slide as saying that we will now allow tenants to install basic weatherization measures without penalty my question is can we better enforce section 8528 so that landlords themselves do the work as we intended back in 1985 and as code dictates rather than putting the burden on tenants to do it i suppose we were naive back then to assume that land to assume that landlords would comply but given the new urgency of climate change and our 820 goals maybe we can step up enforcement now thanks for any insight staff can provide on this question i'm really looking forward to the presentation uh great caller ending in

010six six 661 hello yes we hear you great thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is gus teschke i live at 313 montgomery i have a question for dr stealth um i'm part of ann arbor indivisible and we are very happy when the energy commission and city council uh managed to pass a resolution to do a feasibility study for a municipal electric utility and uh some of us in ann arbor indivisible participated in ann arbor for public powers petition drive that gathered uh 1 300 signatures for a feasibility study and you know we really saw the interest in the community for this study we're hoping that dr stultz will release the draft of the rfp so we can follow along um in this process can that be done what we will do is

011we will uh take up that question at the time that we give uh reports um including report from staff and osi so this is not okay i think okay q a session this is just a time for public comment all right thank you very much thank you looks like missy is frozen your back missy but your image is frozen if you hear me sorry about that it looks like it looks like you're now live with us i'm live i'm back alive i'm unclear if i'm alive but i think that i'm alive uh yes so did i cut did you hear anything i cut out right away didn't i you did we didn't hear anything um we had a question that was called in and um i responded that this is not an active q a

012session but that you would likely be able to address the question when you give your report um later in the meeting absolutely that's delightful great uh caller ending in to eight hello you're very faint hello can you hear me yes awesome uh my name is greg woodring i'm from ann arbor public power i very much appreciate the uh chance to speak today um i like gus i am calling in i mostly curious about just the progress with the rfp uh as probably everybody on the commission knows ann arbor public power is pretty committed to trying to bring about uh about a municipal energy facility in ann arbor um we have been in this interim period while we're uh waiting to hear the results of the feasibility study focusing on education campaigns learning more about what

013this process looks like and hoping to educate the public on it and uh in addition to just trying to see if we can uh you know help out where we can with bringing this about so we're really just hoping that we could get a bit of an update about how this uh rfp is coming along and if we could potentially have any sort of public input session or just some amount of public visibility into what that draft uh rfp would look like before it goes out to bid just so that as a community we can all kind of be engaged in this process together and make sure that we're all doing this uh in an open transparent way that allows us to kind of have that uh engagement that's really needed to run this sort

014of campaign so i really appreciate all the work that everybody's been doing on this and i appreciate the chance to speak thank you so much thank you for calling in and for your thoughts and questions that's your risky that's all okay great so uh anyone that um did call in uh or wants to uh provide public comments you'll have a second opportunity at the end of the meeting so we have an interesting agenda in front of us as we've already heard actually from some of the callers and the first uh topic is going to be solar at or on city facilities um and that's going to be uh initially a presentation from staff i believe missy and then um consideration of a resolution uh so i will turn things over to you great well i'm

015going to turn it over to semi barr who is on the osi team and has been spearheading a lot of this project and i also want to acknowledge that with us we have mark and scott uh two of our well the two bidders uh for the project so sami is going to walk us through it and the team is available to answer questions so send me a video thank you missy and thank you to the energy commission for allowing us to take some time to talk about this project to install uh solar on various city facilities uh my name is jimmy barr energy analyst in the office of sustainability and like missy said um we're joined by mark derogi from homeland solar and scott amaduri from enter logics we'll elevate them uh after after i

016present quickly and we can have more of a discussion around this um so i'll be reviewing high-level elements of this project um after which we can go into that discussion with our vendors so um the intent uh isn't to really analyze each design but but go over more of the overview uh you all have have access to this slide deck and if there are more detailed questions we can we can get into those um later on so uh we'll start with with a review of the interlogix work and then uh their portfolio and then switch over to homeland so early last year uh the osi staff worked on uh the creation of an rfp uh to to solicit designs for solar on various city facilities and in uh in the spring we selected two firms

017uh for those various sites um homeland for for a package of park sites and endologics for some of our larger uh municipal sites and then throughout the second half of 2021 osi and city staff worked with these two firms to devel develop designs for our various sites and and iterate them based on um feedback gathered so the intent is as far as the timeline goes is to have some of these uh at least some of these sites online by 2022 uh this year though supply chain issues are leading to long lead times on many of these so that's a consideration to have in all of this so overall we're looking at putting solar on uh 17 sites though some have some of those sites have multiple arrays on each because of things like multiple meters

018and things like that which which actually ups the number um the the uh motivation here um much of the motivation is around our 820 goals and the first strategy of a20 which is powering uh the grid with 100 percent clean and renewable energy and as we know from our energy principles uh we're targeting um local and resilience are our uh high priorities when we're thinking about our energy grid and this project really hits on both of those things in various ways so across the various sites we have we're looking at uh multiple array types and they're really based on the site specifications and and that's been part of that iteration with city staff so some of those uh are ground mount systems car ports rooftop mounted systems and we even have a floating solar option

019which is which is quite exciting we're also looking and at including things like energy storage and ev charging at these various sites uh where they make sense sort of hitting on on other uh other ones of our sustainability goals around around electrified transportation and resilience and that clean grid as far as our financing options go our our partners at enter logic and homeland um have helped us look at the various type various financing options so from upfront payments to uh a ppa option with with varying levels of down payment in the first place and then 20-year ppa options as far as um these are enter logic sites uh so we've got six sites um you'll see seven locations on the map that seventh is um up here in the northwest that's our water treatment plant

020the floating solar option that's on the retention pond behind wines across these sites um we have uh the the um total capacity between 3.2 and 4.3 megawatts uh up to 4.3 megawatts depending on that floating solar option these are uh all rooftop and ground mount systems other than the the floating solar option um there are more uh those types of of arrays rooftop and ground mounts tend to be cheaper than carports um and the larger sites having these larger consumptions give us more of an in a an economy of scale and uh present pretty pretty competitive cost per watt figures i'll call out this greenhouse gas reduction number 2700 uh metric tons just for context um that's approximately equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions uh from our entire city fleet in in the year 2020

021so it's a very significant amount and and we're excited by the prospect of of offsetting that amount of emissions i'm gonna skip ahead to our homeland uh sites so these are our the park sites i mentioned so we have 11 sites across here but like i said some have multiple meters so things like the golf courses we have both clubhouses and and barnes maintenance areas and pumps all these things are on different electrical services and different electrical meters so um they'll they'll they have a arrays designed for each um we also have some designs that uh we have multiple uh design options for some of these sites so things like a a cheaper option to a more expensive expansive option um and that gives us some flexibility depending on our funding amounts so this slide

022gives us a good summary over what those options look like um we have between about 0.8 to 1.15 megawatts depending on the that sizing and that's going to cost somewhere around 1.75 to 3 million dollars depending on those options carports are more costly like i mentioned uh it's engineering designs and sourcing materials for those make them significantly more costly but from working with um park staff and the parks advisory commission both expressed uh um you know interest in maintaining uh as much ground space as possible for programming you know one of the great things about our parks is there's uh there's places to to run around and do activities and um in some cases putting ground mount systems in there just just wouldn't make the most sense based on how those spaces are programmed so

023in conclusion um [Music] this is really fitting into our goals in a number of ways one we're maximizing on-site renewables this is a massive expansion of distributed generation on on city facilities also this this gives us to on the this gives us the opportunity to unlock recurring savings um for for various operational uh investments we can make in the future so um by paying for these upfront or by doing partial ppa options we can actually achieve uh energy rates that are that are lower than what we're currently paying for and that delta can be used in a number of really exciting ways um to further various various climate goals we have here the the estimates based on um based on the financial elements run by uh run by our two firms show something uh on

024the order of 15 million dollars in savings in the next 25 to 30 years over the lifetime of these systems this also shows great city leadership in the space of of local distributed generation and local energy generation uh the first year electricity generation a conservative estimate based on these uh based on these models is almost 5 million kilowatt hours which is over 12 of city usage electricity usage that's based on 2018 numbers which it's actually reduced since then so it's it would actually be a larger percentage even than that um for and and that would be for a cost of around 9 million uh dollars and and that's a pretty uh competitive cost per watt um also the the annual greenhouse gas reduction uh from that would be uh almost 3 500 metric tons of

025co2 annually which is about uh which is quite a bit more than than that figure i quoted um around the city fleet which is um closer to 3 000 metric tons of co2 uh emissions so as far as the next steps go uh we're working through prioritization of these sites with the help of of city staff and um as as uh city council uh debates uh arpa funding uh we'll have you know we'll be able to sort of plug in that that prioritization um understanding that we've that we've developed in order to to see uh where this project um might end up so with that i'd like to thank you all and i'd like to elevate mark and scott from enter logic and homeland uh who can speak to this work um at a very

026high level and and also um are great with with uh the overall concept so i'll do that and also would love to hear questions and comments from commissioners if you have them uh do we have any additional presentation then or do we go directly to questions this is scott imminently with analogics we do have additional material that we can present but no no need that we have to and more a question of following your direction go ahead um yeah i'll just i'll make a couple comments um and i think this is probably germaine uh for a variety of reasons uh number one uh for the reason we looked at third party ownership of this projects and third-party financing there is a federal uh or a series of federal tax credits and other tax advantages so

027the federal investment tax credit drives us to having third party ownership uh from our experience both uh nonprofits that can't utilize that uh municipalities and and even corporate off takers don't have the uh necessary the ability or the capability to monetize that internally so that's one thing we are uh we built into the financing mechanism of this to give the city a lower cost of delivery power under that regime the second part of that is that um a lot of the buildback better um proposals had uh increasingly stepped up that investment tax credit none of those have been successfully passed yet but we are uh continuing to watch buildback better and would pass any of those past savings on to the city in terms of a lower finance cost and lower deliberate cost of power

028under that those regimes last point around that uh and again is is just kind of what we're seeing globally across the the the everything is uh the the challenges with supply chain we have put this together with pricing based on what we know today we know there is no guarantee of future prices until we place orders on key equipment and as as recent events have played out even shipping costs are going to be um somewhat uh in flux as as we all deal with the increase in uh cost of uh of fuel in particular so i guess i'd say you know for a variety of reasons time is of the essence we want to give the city the best benefit of this and we'll pass on any future cost savings from uh improvements investment tax

029credit uh or improvements in supply chain costing i'll just add to that while we didn't go through every single slide in the deck in the packet you can see each of the sites and the initial designs we just thought that was going to take up so much time to go through every single design and design option but if you have questions the team is here to answer those questions i'll make one one more comment too and i think this price speaks to both our portfolio and the homelands as well um many of the sites we wanted to go larger and solar we weren't able to hit a significant percentage of the overall consumption that is limited somewhat by dte policy on net metering we can't go um we can't go off-site we can't go necessarily

030um you know on an off-site kind of regime uh and again that points to sort of the prior discussion on on establishing your own public utility that that does probably give you guys some flexibility that you don't have currently with the dte regime uh that's point one point two uh again on site we were limited by not just what was available from a roof tape or ground spot ground space we were also limited in some locations uh from the existing mechanical structure of the roof and our ability to add more weight by adding solar onto the roof so again we were always balancing that as part of our design i'm sure mark would say the same thing on on their designs as well so um council member race yeah thanks for um presentations we're interesting

031um i didn't you kind of briefly mentioned the the floating um solar the water treatment plant which sounds interesting i wasn't sure if there were going to be other types of installations there as well and then i was curious i'm not sure you know um i didn't see that one kind of in the in the chart i wasn't in terms of um that installation i'm not sure what sort of power needs the water treatment plant um has but um what are there additional advantages to that location in terms of you know security for i just wondered if you could speak a little bit more to that installation yeah so the thank you for the question the water treatment plant uh uses a very significant amount of electricity and as scott noted there uh are constraints

032based on on uh that site in particular so using that that um that uh retention pond for additional floating solar uh would would increase the uh capacity uh greatly of that site certain considerations there um there are considerations there uh when it comes to um certain uh nesting birds in particular uh so we decided uh to in in uh collaboration with nap natural area preservation uh we talked about you know how how we could um display the the efficacy of floating solar and uh increase the capacity of the solar on site overall without negatively impacting that habitat scott do you have anything to add about that floating solar uh just one more comment and this is um probably not as qualitative but it is uh part of what is being done in california in particular

033um in california the addition of floating solar on reservoirs in other areas has been shown to have a reduction in the amount of evaporation so it does help uh provide a benefit to um reduction in algae and reduction in in evaporation again very very much an issue in california with the droughts and extended droughts there but there is a benefit to it in addition to just the solar production this is just the graphic so this is behind wines in the water retention area this is where we modeled the floating soil you see the plant obviously over here and then for the plant itself there's roof mounted and ground mountain systems if you can jump ahead um i think on slide 27ish there's a photo of an example yeah oh sorry this is a different deck

034my bad i think you you you passed over it uh i didn't even look yep of a floating yeah uh there we go bottom right thanks councilmember riggs do you have another follow-up question no uh commissioner calvin garcia thank you commissioner mursky my question uh is with regards to the um ability to have enough production that will offset as much of the load as possible and that um you know considering that the constraints um with our utility and then looking at opportunities in the future for a micro grid um like how that works and if that's any if that's part of the design already at this stage for um uh the designing the um the solar arrays to be able to be expandable in the future maybe to save some money now at the beginning

035um just wondering that's my first question my second question is are you seeing um significant price increases these days going on with um with materials especially considering what's going on right now yeah thanks so uh prices are increasing and i'll let um scott and mark if if they have additional comments on that uh speak to it because i know we've seen with the supply chain that that occurring scott sure do you have anything to add on the uh expandability of these arrays yeah i guess you know two twofold one is um all of these systems that we put in the larger ones at least uh we we did put an option for energy storage there so with that energy storage effectively that building has the ability to be islanded or have its own mini micro

036grid associated with it um we did not look at yet integrating in say a backup generator against that so again each building has its own uh conceptual microgrid that it can do on the side of it larger scale as as as you guys look to say a district energy or district microgrid that is something that certainly makes sense in particular if we look at wheeler center with the larger ground monterey that's going to go up there with gte on the on the landfill that is a great opportunity for a much larger microgrid really the kind of fundamentals come down to both a regulatory policy question and then also just a physical interconnection how do you isolate that we know from some work we've done with cuyahoga county and in cleveland as an example they are

037also looking at their own district energy plant to service the downtown region again we're very very much focused in on on a downtown region a specific region to be able to connect to that we continue to watch sort of what's happening from both a technical perspective from a cost perspective and from a policy perspective um and certainly would want to make sure we can enable as much as we can but right now we focus in on what we can do within current policy constraints and do it sort of all behind the meter in building on on cost in particular steel costs have escalated yet again today so all all the key components that are steel-based like racking is going to continue to increase um all the major commodities i think are still stable but uh

038it is a daily fluctuating price right now uh that we're seeing on that the biggest risk right now i think on top of all that is just again shipping costs so things that are even landed in the us uh to get trucked from uh california to uh to ann arbor is going to be a different cost today than it was just yesterday just with the the increasing fuel costs thank you very much uh yes thanks for the presentation sami first of all i had a few questions i'll start with kind of an easy one um with the floating storage how does that work in the winter when the pond freezes over is it so functional yes it is uh it's actually uh the mechanism of it or how it works uh it is a plastic

039thing essentially all it does is just bubble to the top it sits on top of the ice um it is designed and has been deployed this technology even in uh call it wetlands that have a marsh area that evaporates so it can sit on the ground as long as that ground is relatively flat it's still fine um but again it is designed to sit on that kind of a regiment environment cool cool very cool um and um i don't know who's the best to speak this i saw on one of those slides that you are considering uh battery storage i was just wondering like if you could speak a little bit towards that a little more like is it at every site and how does it compare to the energy the daily energy requirements at

040the site um where the batteries are located yeah certainly uh it was not at every site we focused in on on the analog side and then i think mark had some kind of focus on uh some level of critical load and and what sort of the effective or the cost-effective approach with batteries are um typically we're looking in and and pjm as well on where there are the largest demand charges and how we're able to effectively address those from a cost perspective with batteries uh we didn't try and cover we didn't try an island we didn't try and take any of these facilities fully off-grid we just don't have enough physical space on on building to go do that with a combination of it batteries and solar but we did focus in on on where

041we had high demand charges on facilities and we could cost effectively address that with batteries at the current pricing we continue to watch as you say we continue to watch battery pricing too battery pricing was going through a pretty good decline until the last couple years now despite all the plants being announced in the u.s they haven't ramped up the production so we expect battery pricing to come back down again in 2023 and 2024 uh but really it's it's still at a at a somewhat high price right now that's a good tee up too to say what we designed for is battery ready for every site so not all sites we're ready to deploy the battery but we're designing the system so that we can when the time is right uh so we don't wanna

042we don't wanna preclude that gotcha okay last question um so regarding um some of these are at carports and is there a consideration to have those available for charging cars and also can we count like if we start charging cars does that count towards the amount the dtu will allow you to offset or no does that count towards your total that are allowed to generate i should say yes yeah hopefully i can hope you can hear me um yes the load that's added by charging evs would be part of the dte load that could be offset as long as it's on the same physical meter at the site um so generally with car ports it it provides kind of a convenient place to put car chargers so for any of the city park sites where

043we're contemplating car ports we're we're assuming that some number of car chargers will go in at those facilities thank you george thank you mr chairman um given the history uh the city has had uh with some of the installations of solar projects i i wanted to ask uh if the workers that are going to be handling and installing these solar panels licensed journeyman or registered apprentices i don't know if missy or you or simi could state that uh the contractors is that you speak to them yeah sure sami yeah so the requirement of is unequivocal that everyone has to adhere to michigan law and michigan policy full non-stop right in terms of who and how uh regulation and what's required within that we have uh this contract was before the responsible uh purchaser response got

044a trip on it you're gonna help me thank you lots of words in my head uh that said though we have asked both scott and mark and they have agreed to fill out all the the documentation even though they don't have to so that we can have that be part of uh the process when we come forward to council so i don't know that i can answer that specifically i'll give space if mark and scott want to but we are going to do all the documentation because we want to respect the fact that while this predates it by almost a year we recognize that's an important sentiment to the community uh yeah at least from homeland's point of view we are licensed electrical contractor and follow all of the regulations and uh would comply with

045that certainly yeah as will we awesome thank you very much thank you commissioner peck yeah thank you i just want to follow on noah really quick i'm very intrigued about how these things manage to uh survive the winter and the ice um but rather than trying to and visualize that i'm just wondering in the winter uh it's in the ice the ice isn't uh thanks to global warming isn't safe enough to walk on probably um but you got your panels out there and they're covered in snow how much have you calculated how much generation loss there is given the number of days that are likely to obscure the panels with snow yeah our um our methodology is using a very proven technology we model and simulate every single one of these arrays every one of

046them has a a snow loss factor associated with it it's essentially a monthly factor but it takes a location specific weather data and a specific design does a simulation looks at a weather normalization over the last um i think it's the last 50 years worth of noaa data and looks at sort of an average energy production from that we then apply a soiling or a snow loss factor so there's a loss factor associated with just dirt uh so if it's a dry month a typically dry month it's going to have a little more of a factor of dirt that would accumulate on it you know in particular if you think of desert southwest you have a lot more of that in michigan you have a lot more rain it cleans the panels there is a

047additionally a factor there that looks at the impact of snow as you pointed out global climate change um likely will reduce the amount of snow we have on that in those winter months but again we have modeled that fully um i think it's a 35 40 loss factor in in january alone just because of the fact that we have snow on the panels thank you very much a real quick comment to that there is a unit within the university of michigan that has developed a coating that is supposed to reduce um snow accumulation on panels i don't know how far along they are um i don't think it's um reached the market yet and i don't know what the economics are but that might be something that um we may want to look at at

048some point in time certainly yeah we'd love to collaborate with them and figure out a way to even test some of it on a real life system actually just picking up on that wanted to show that we have talked to that unit and scott mark will put you in touch so far uh their research is phenomenal for one year application but they do have to do a reapplication every year so they're working on a longer term application otherwise you have to reapply the substrate or the surface coding annually so not they're not quite ready for commercial viability we thought we were going to bring it into solarize from day one but not yet commissioner peck did you have a follow-up question no okay uh did anybody else have any questions i have a couple of

049quick questions hopefully in comments um first of all uh it sounds to me like um there were no that the size of the units are constrained by physical constraints not based on any kind of load and therefore adding electrical load through electrification um or ev charging really would not have enabled us to install larger arrays is that correct i think it depends on um it's a site specific thing so for instance uh vets park has a very large load um that could accommodate almost anything but other sites are are fairly limited in the load and then we we just match that pretty easily with a certain number of panels sometimes what i'm wondering is if we electrify first would that allow us or at a later point in time would that allow us then to

050add additional solar to be able to power that load uh yeah sure i don't think you necessarily have to electrify first if we're doing it at the same time for instance adding ev load we can go through with dte certain assumptions on uh how many miles are being driven and how many chargers are being used and we add that that capacity in the beginning it's more relevant for the park sites for the larger sites the sites that enterologica is working on that we're site constrained that's space constraint for sure but for example the farmers market we could vary we have a lot more space so we just don't have high usage hence why we're looking at adding some chargers and others to increase so park sites tend to have more flexibility yeah quick quick exception

051of that though i think it's the airport right so at the airport we're we're driven really on the hangers uh and again it's not as high volume of an airport as as most ones that have commercial traffic but again you know if there is ev charging added there uh it would support larger load we were more uh there's more land available than we have actually usage there okay good um a couple of other just observations um just something to look at you don't have to respond um there's going to be a fairly loud tall building that's going to be built near the farmers market i don't know if there's going to be any shading issues probably not it seems to me it's probably too far away but might be something that's just protecting um one

052other thing um are we re-roofing in any of these cases and my understanding is that when re-roofing is done that if insulation is added to the re-roofing then that cost of re-roofing can also be applied for the federal tax credit is that applicable in any of these cases i checked with a tax accountant because i was looking at that from my own home and that was that was the ruling yeah i think um go ahead scott mark um i think that uh on the shading issue for farmers market we did model that uh building and it caused something like five to seven percent loss so some amount uh not not a not a huge impact right and um yeah and then the second what's the second question again proofing eligibility for ipc installation yeah so

053we're not cost and eligible for the for federal tax credit yeah we normally say you know we are not tax advisors however we are aware that many customers and organizations do take that uh credit when they find they they need to replace the roof kind of as a condition of putting solar on it so a good example of that is actually the maintenance barn at cobblestone you know the shingles are are really in bad shape so if this was a normal commercial client then sure they'd be able to uh to monetize that uh roofing cost and include it on the for purposes of the iitc so so it sounds to me like that may be an opportunity um particularly like i said if insulation is added then i think um it's pretty clear that that's

054eligible for the tax credit but we're not a tax paying entity yeah i know but you're we're using a third third-party finance for the ppa if we do it that way right right so so we we have done projects that way uh and there is different private letter rulings from the irs on how much that roof is cost is eligible for that investment tax credit the strongest argument is doing uh white roofs with a bifacial module uh so a module that produces this energy on both the front side and the back side of that getting the reflectivity off that white roof that drives a lot of it um again like mark said we are not tax advisors but we have worked with a number of different investors to make sure that we have full itc

055eligibility for that okay and then i'm in the case um where we have third-party financing on these um are are these going to installations going to revert to city ownership at x years down the road how does that work yeah all the ppas have a term to comply with irs rules we typically don't have a um a you know it's like a dollar buyout they have a a a buyout that's based on a fair market evaluation and a calculated value that preserves our itc eligibility otherwise it looks like a capital lease and the irs treats it very differently from an investment tax credit perspective but it is a an industry standard um publication on on how you structure these uh we followed that guidance and and follow that contract as our draft contract um but

056again it's it's a it's a well-proven methodology we we uh analogics has done 12 megawatts of ppas in ohio alone uh everything from universities to uh to communities um and municipalities right okay then i have one last question missy would you mind putting up slide 21 i think it's easier if i if everybody can see the slide you'll understand my question um this relates to homeland and the difference between the min and the max um so on the right hand side um if i take the the min and the max um it's there it seems to me that the incremental cost going from um min to max really doesn't make sense especially um if you consider that in a sense there's an opportunity cost um so what what um what i you know if you

057look at the the cost per watt um the cost per watt goes from 209 to 255 but if you just look at the cost per watt for the incremental fifty thousand kilowatt hours um so you're going from one point um eight four one um megawatt hours to one point eight nine one so that's roughly 50 000 kilowatt hours um the cost for that additional 50 000 megawatt hours is really really high and um you know if if if we were just floating in money then spending an extra seven hundred thousand dollars um to get that that money or maybe it's not seven hundred thousand where is the the cost okay yeah it goes from 1.7 to 2.9 million so it's actually you know 1.2 million dollars more to get just a minimal amount of additional

058generation and it seems to me that 1.2 million dollars would be much better spent on some other way of either generating electricity or electrifying or insulating or something else so i'd like uh or mark to comment on that yeah i think the most logical explanation is there's probably a typo in one of those numbers so i should uh go back and take a look at it the you know the cost is going up quite a bit because generally by to increase the uh to go to max we're talking about adding carports basically so you are talking about adding you know fairly expensive equipment to the sites but having said that you're right i mean you see the the kilowatts dc is going from 843 to 1.15 megawatts so the kilowatt hours produced should go up

059uh concurrently so i i'd encourage staff and all of you to look at that i mean all of the numbers may be pegged to the same mistake but if you look at the irr the irr drops dramatically and that that drops for them for the whole the whole investment and the same thing for the npv and if you just look at it incrementally um it uh to me it unless there is a mistake it would be it would we would be foolish and and council member briggs i would ask that when this comes to council that this be scrutinized that we really do not want to spend an incremental amount of money for relatively low contribution in terms of generating power and what we should be doing is using that incremental cost or that incremental

060expense and applying it to something that gives us much better return on our investment yes i think that first row is is the usage it's the initial energy so what hours about fifth row down that is actually the difference of energy production so it goes from 980 000 to 1.3 million ah okay okay yep yeah still i mean this the point still applies yeah yeah a general comment on that we've we've uh see me and missy and i have talked several times about it so carports are um a relatively expensive way to do solar so there's no doubt about that and um you know if you're looking at it on a marginal basis it's not going to look very good so it there are certain sites for instance leslie science center where that's pretty much

061the only option there are other sites where we can decide it's going to be up to the city to decide if they want to put carports there there are some places for instance fuller fuller park is another place where there's really not any ground opportunity so your only option is kind of a fairly expensive way to do that i think at one point scott also had a carport option for city hall i believe and uh so you're correct it is it is uh if you have a better place to put your money where you can get more value out of it that's a discussion that you know needs to be had exactly that's that's the opportunity cost question if i spend you know a million dollars on this where could i spend a million dollars

062and what would the benefit of that million dollars be or whatever it is so okay that that's that's it and missy i think you want to show us um unless there's any other questions or comments i'll make one one last comment uh back to your your point about the roof i guess i'd say i'd encourage the city to consider any buildings that need a new roof uh to look at a hybrid solar roof third-party ppa ownership for that tax credits again just something to put into your planning process as you look at those great so um missy or simi would you like to introduce the resolution of support happy to introduce the resolution of support so let me pull it up here uh in light of i'm not gonna take for granted i think you

063all probably know this but uh right now this project was up for consideration for american rescue plan act funding and that went out to public vote uh this is a project that is as you can see while we have to make final decisions a lot of it sort of chicken and egg between knowing how we're going to fund it so we can determine how how to move forward in terms of which sites and and which designs or we go which sites and designs then figure out how to find it so we're sort of in this interesting moment um but what happened last week as the city administrator didn't send some initial recommendations to council for consideration council is going to move forward with making a determination in the very near term about how to allocate

064arpa funding and this was a resolution for consideration by the body uh that basically outlines the process the resolve clauses are that the anar energy commission recommended city council submit our funding without identifying a specific number to support the project that is literally it do i have a um so missy what what's the plan if i may i'm sorry i didn't talk to you about this um we have a first and second reading or is this uh basically um limited in terms of controversy and scope that we would potentially vote on this tonight what was your um what was staff's thought on this 100 percent up to the discretion of the body we weren't sure if you would find the presentation to be controversial um this is symbolic would go with council just to say

065that the the energy commission is supportive of the project so i think sequentially i i don't know i might actually tee up councilmember briggs i'm not 100 sure when council is gonna take this up i think it could be as soon as their next council meeting it might be longer so uh if the body is supportive of the resolution potentially passing it tonight would be uh good timing yeah i would say i i am not sure if it's gonna come at the next meeting or the following meeting but um i would agree that um if it's if there's support it might be beneficial to to pass this tonight yeah especially since we need monthly and council means every two weeks that would make sense that we act on this tonight do we have any comments

066or questions from commissioners or additional comments from staff with regards to the resolution so i have two um and i'll leave this up to staff as to whether or not they make sense um so my understanding is that um in the whereas clauses this potentially could be strengthened uh by having two whereas clauses one that would indicate the amount of co2 emissions that would be reduced there's i don't think i saw anything indicating what that was just the number of megawatts and the second is and this is i think one of the unique elements of uh this particular investment with um arpa funds is that by installing this we also would get a reduction in our um annual or monthly energy costs which reduces expenses to the general fund and so we actually get a

067financial benefit that general fund expenditures go down and i don't think there's very many other arpa funding opportunities that actually have a positive impact on the general fund of course i don't know what the net savings are based on the financial models that are being considered here and then of course the discussion that we just had about the incremental cost between the min the medium and the max installations from homeland also impact um what the savings would be in terms of metric comes tons of carbon i think the three and a half that was the minimum um that you're 3500 i think that was the minimum right mixie i think that's right i'm it's hard for me to toggle between oh somebody's telling me there are 404 all right i will update it if that's

068okay with you all i'll go for the the median i'll pull the numbers it's just hard for me to go between screens so you just hold it so i think showing the minimum there is uh or or at least or something that's in the range there we are something like that um and do we do we have a figure on slide 21 that we can or not me i guess is not on slide 21 because we have to look at the two to combine but is there um cindy can you provide us a figure that what what the what the total net savings would be at least in the minimum case i mean councilmember briggs i do you agree that and missy that this this is potentially important i think that we that we provide

069that information to council because council is going to be looking at giving money to this versus bridges versus uh affordable housing um those have obviously a lot of benefits but they don't have an impact on the general fund mia sent me a note that it's 440 or 400 metric ton co2 for the base case with without the floating solar and kind of medium homeland scenario okay [Music] the minimum will be about thirty four hundred thirty four simmy yeah yeah i'll go 34. john were you kind of advocating that maybe you look at this as like a capital improvement scenario where you model you take take these competing ideas maybe min max at lesley and figure out what the best solution is because it's not apparent when you just look at the numbers on slide 21.

070um would you advocate that that happened very quickly here to help facilitate that i think i think i mean my recommendation to staff would be that staff does that and presents that to council when they make a final recommendation i think we could still vote i mean this would be my my but this is up to the this is up to the body um that i think we can still vote on a general uh resolution of support which is basically the way this is is worded um and we can still process tonight because otherwise if we wait um we since we only meet monthly this is not going to get in front of of council so i would recommend that you know this is something that we generally want to support and some of the

071details need to be worked out by staff um in conjunction with city leadership and council as to what exactly is the best combination of solar installations put it that way you see you want to put the resolution back up okay so we have that and then the operational cost savings uh what i would propose is that we leave the wording as it is and that staff work on trying to come up with some figures so that that's quantified for council um when council considers this against other alternatives how does that sound yeah we have so the question really becomes on final design so you're right i want to go to council happy to put those in and it's different because it's not one fund right water fund has its own fund general fund has its

072own fund so it really does depend on final design but great point yep yep can we get a motion on this does anybody move to consider the resolution in a second and then we can have further debate i should have done that first sorry i moved to consider this resolution and a second from so we have a a motion from commissioner garcia in a second from commissioner peck and commissioner juno uh i apologize that i um sort of reversed the order of this but do we have any other comments or uh questions with regards to the resolution seeing none uh let's take a vote then all those in favor of approving the resolution as it now stands in front of us as opposed to the way it's uh was posted in legistar um everyone that's

073in favor say aye and raise your hand hi and all those opposed and any abstains commissioner kerber who is a homeland employees so thank you very much i thought about that early and forgot so thank you so we have one abstention and um otherwise i'm unanimously approved so i miss you get to count on that very good okay one down two other topics to go so uh missy um or do we turn it directly over to uh zach for the green rental uh housing presentation yeah i'll take it to zach i just want to frame that this is an action that is an a20 under our energy efficiency strategy three category um this is something that's really really important as i know uh some of our speakers mentioned because we have a lot of renters

074in the community and we have a really strong foundation around rental inspections that we can build upon and so i just want to take a moment um also thanks to me for the great work he's doing but also turn to zach and really appreciate the national level leadership that he's bringing to this discussion and thinking creatively so uh zach's been leading a task force of stakeholders you are the first public engagement around this topic officially starts tomorrow so you are uh his dry run and with that uh zach can you tell us a little bit about the work on grade rental housing certainly um good evening commissioners it's a pleasure to be here thanks for having me back this time to talk about a different building policy and this time it's focused on rentals let's

075see here i'm going to assume you can see my screen please stop me if you cannot but the name for this policy is the imaginative and inventive green rental housing so let's get into it i'm going to start with some background about why the green rental housing program has been an area of focus for the office of sustainability and innovations i'll discuss how the current policy recommendations came about and then we'll look at what the policy recommendations are um including what that the timeline has been and is going to be and what upcoming engagement we're doing um also just to clarify um the where that i put in there is a bit of a misnomer it's mostly all virtual it just i wanted to wear in there it fit i had the why how everything

076else so uh moving on um excuse me to set the stage for this conversation it will help to identify a few things one is that when examining the greenhouse gas emissions that ann arbor is responsible for according to our most recent inventory we see that about two-thirds of those emissions come from buildings and when we examine the residential buildings in ann arbor we find that more than half of all the housing units available are currently rented and finally there are no um there are currently no existing rental housing initiatives related to climate change specifically and so with these in mind um when the a20 plan was developed and action specifically targeted at rental efficiency was included under strategy three and as missy uh just mentioned strategy three is broadly to improve the energy efficiency of

077our buildings citywide but that's not the only 820 alignment the green rental housing program also helps in a way fulfill the first action listed under strategy 2 which is to get off of fossil fuels completely and we must electrify wherever possible to fully realize a20 um and just briefly while it might feel redundant for this audience i want to state for those who might be watching and aren't already familiar that a20 is ann arbor's plan to achieve a just transition to carbon neutrality by 2030 and it was unanimously adopted by city council on june 1st of 2020 so uh we have not only a climate imperative to support these strategies but also a local directive from our leaders okay so how did this come about um before we even started designing ann arbor's green rental

078housing program our first step was to understand as much as possible about how to build such a program and so over a year ago we participated in a rental housing cohort with rmi formerly rocky mountain institute to specifically examine policy pathways for rental policies since then we've also participated in a rental efficiency learning group this is actually still ongoing with the usdn and ac triple e which is the american council for an energy efficient economy um and um so we wanted to learn as much as possible about what what it takes to to get a policy like this off the ground and for it to be as effective as possible um concurrently during those cohorts and beyond we also examined how other cities across the country developed their rental programs where they exist or where

079they developed efficiency programs and their housing programs and what their lessons learned were we we looked at what they learned and from their experience and growth about how to best leverage our program i will note that there were some cities that used things that weren't specifically applicable to ann arbor but we still were able to learn from those programs and adapt them for what makes more sense here in ann arbor so once we were equipped with what we had learned through that previous groundwork we began looking more closely at the particulars here in ann arbor and this really helps paint the picture so some of the information that we found were that there are about 31 and a half thousand units rental units specifically that are spread across 8 500 properties when we look at

080those properties the median year built for those is 1964 and some of those properties date back to the 1850s and so that means that a vast majority of the rentals that are on the market right now are were built and a time before modern building codes um a couple of other things to note is that um over half of all the rentals are single property owners um and then just to kind of help round out the picture through in there that um how how a lot of those rentals are managed so um about 40 of them all are self-managed and about 60 of them hire a manager of some sort um and so as we explored some of the learning groups um we also looked at other cities um and then we examined ann arbor

081um and then i would start to then it was time to start building our own program and so we invited representatives from a broad spectrum of perspectives to partake in this task force there were tenants there that included the inter-cooperative council the ann arbor tenants union the housing caucus of geo the graduate employees organization we also had landlords that included the washington area apartment association avalon housing there were representatives from multi-family properties and from greek housing properties and this group convened over eight months starting last june um and met through just this january um and so here's kind of a quick overview i'm gonna dive into each of these but these are these are the primary policy components that this task force uh developed through lots of discussion and um so we'll get into those

082first being the occupant weatherization and i appreciate the question that uh preceded this presentation um yes it is already in the code uh i unfortunately am unable to speak to why it is not why it feels like it's not enforced but i do want to highlight that this is not intended to be a primary driver of the success of this program the other policy components that i am about to unveil are you will see going to be where the greatest impact comes from the occupant weatherization policy component was was tied in because the rentals right now are on a two and a half year cycle so if this is passes council and goes into effect on january 1st of 2023 that means that there will be some rentals that between now and the time that

083they are inspected on their natural cycle will wait three years before any of these um policy elements would be uh enforced and therefore this is sort of a bridge to gap that um and what it specifically allows is for tenants to do either temporary or permanent weatherization in the in the unit where it needs to be done without concern of penalty and this was brought up during the task force by some tenants that expressed experiences with certain landlords that left them feeling like they would be penalized either through their um forgive me um security deposit or through extra charges at the end of their lease for having installed these these measures and so this is just a basic protection for those occupants who do want to do some basic weatherization and that's pretty much occupant

084weatherization so we'll dig in here a little bit to a little bit more of the meat of the program one high impact component is going to be focuses on the efficiency of the appliances that are in the unit and so this policy component sets a minimum standard for appliances um there will be a the approach to getting these replaced is called time of replacement the deadline for full replacement is 20 30 so it currently gives about eight years for landlords to upgrade their appliances but in the meantime you will be required to replace them with energy star rated appliances as they go out so either through age or regular wear and tear if a furnace or a water heater or another appliance is being replaced anyway um this requires that it be replaced with the

085energy star rated model um the reason this was incorporated is because a majority vast majority of building source carbon emissions come from the energy that is required to heat our space and our water in in residential spaces that can account for upwards of 60 of the the total um energy use and so uh this is a high leverage uh policy component to to bring that energy down and to reduce the load on the energy on the grid as we electrify but also makes it more affordable by reducing the energy costs for tenants next up is an efficiency checklist there are two different pathways that landlords can pursue rental efficiency and one of them is by following this prescriptive checklist which it sets an energy efficiency target for rentals it also gives landlords choices and certain

086flexibilities in how they can achieve these targets there is we are lucky in ann arbor um missy mentioned also that uh we have an existing rental housing inspection program here in ann arbor um but primarily they include safety components um i'll show you an example here of this is just a snapshot of the existing pre-inspection checklist just to kind of give you an example of the types of things that are already included it's kind of hard to read here so don't don't strain your eyes too much but uh what you you can see here are things that are targeted at basic safety like storage restraints near combustion appliances uh that makes sense uh making sure there are secure locks on the doors that makes sense and while these are certainly important and they're on this

087checklist for good reason perhaps you can see that they don't think that this existing checklist does not currently include things like energy efficiency and electrification both of which have great impacts on the comfort and affordability of rentals for the tenants so um that's uh the prescriptive checklist is one way to do it i'm going to hop over to another screen here to give you an idea of what is on the prescriptive checklist and holler if you can't see this but um this is a long checklist i'm going to go through it briefly just to give you an idea of what the landlord could see if this is the pathway that they choose there are point values assigned to each action item that are on this list and those point values were chosen to reflect the

088difficulty and or cost with executing that item and this checklist calls currently for a minimum point value of 65 points there are over 173 possible points that that that any particular unit could achieve um a lot of this prescriptive pathway is is based on um on code codes that are already in existence or have been written as model codes um including several that are listed here and we included on this checklist an option or an exemption if you will for having met any of these existing certifications so that's if you have a passive house uh certification you have exceeded or met all of the things that are on this prescriptive pathway we won't require you to do this checklist if you can show your passive house certification for instance and so any of these others

089would also qualify but let's uh let's take a look at few a few of these items so here's a section focusing on insulation for instance um insulation in the attic in the exterior walls in the basement crawl space um what the requirement would be and the the point value and and you can tally up your own score at the bottom what you see here is the maximum possible uh and i want to explain that that says nine and if you were to take out a calculator and add up all of these numbers above it you would get a number greater than nine however um you wouldn't be able to do that on this checklist because you wouldn't get a point let's say if you had r50 in your uh in your unit you would get

090three points for r50 not one point for our 30 and then two points for r38 and then another three points for our 50. uh you would just get the one line item and so that's why it uh that it the maximum on this is nine i also want to point out that there is a target minimum um this is not a required minimum because the whole point of this checklist is to offer that flexibility to landlords about how they may achieve their overall minimum point value of 65 points if for whatever reason landlord is unable to get points from this section they can get make up those points in another section and so i just want to explain what that target minimum means but here are some more um action items for them certain air

091sealing requirements to if you were to get the points for the air changes per hour that would require a rating from a certified raider or assessor but there are several things on here that you can do that would not require you to to get that so you can wherever visible you can caulk and seal windows and doors around the house you can replace all of the light bulbs with leds and so you can see as we go through here a number of different point values for a number of different [Music] action items um there is the incentive here to replace the um appliances even though that is a separate policy component that has already been called out as a requirement that is for time of replacement like i said or by the year 2030. the

092reason they are also in this checklist is we want to be able to give landlords who have already done these items a chance to collect the points that they would earn for doing those otherwise so that's why you see appliances also on this checklist as i continue scrolling down sort heating sources and cooling sources get certain point values you'll see that we there this is the only point where you will see gas given any um point value on this um checklist gas appliances i mean and that is only if it is over 95 efficient um the reason this was included on here um is in to cover for instances where maybe somebody just put in an efficient furnace uh right before this policy um we don't want to have to force them into a position

093where they need are incurring the cost of replacing this new furnace in order to get points um but we do are going to require that it be efficient um so that we are using as little fossil fuel as possible if any at all but you will see here that there is a strong preference for electric appliances so that we can continue pushing towards satisfying that second strategy of a20 which is electrification in terms of the distribution system there a lot of losses come from poorly insulated or poorly sealed ducts and so we want to address those you'll see that there is a zoned item here where there are a surprising number of duplexes or multiplexes where where one or more units don't have any control over the temperature of their own unit because there's only

094one thermostat for the entire building and so we want to encourage individual control over temperature um and then again just kind of scanning through here things like insulating the hot water pipes you can get points for we this some of the flexibility of this prescriptive checklist comes from the some of these unique ways that folks can that landlords can achieve points so by attending an energy conservation class or encouraging your tenant to do that that is a we wanted to award that um with some points uh certain things like putting carbon monoxide uh alarms in the unit which are required for new building permits but are not retroactively required um so there are still a lot of rentals without that and um i'll say again that the this uh this entire green rental housing policy

095is targeted at the health the safety the comfort and the efficiency of rentals in ann arbor and so there you do see health components on here in having conversations with landlords and looking at plan reviews of new projects that are proposed in many cases for rentals city compost is not given that is something that landlords wait for a request from tenants on and so we want to as we encourage our waste streams as we consider our waste streams we want to encourage compost to be a given and then there are bonus points here for innovative measures so if you are providing your tenants with say bus passes instead of parking passes great um sealing up windows on old historic homes where there are certain restrictions on replacement replacing the windows great um and then a

096few other few other things here like motion sensors on the lighting to kind of reduce the reliance upon positive occupant behavior remembering to turn off the lights in other words and then finally there are water conservation points there are three points that are required out of this that do not count towards the overall 65 the overall minimum of 65 points but that are easily attainable and that we would like to see applied in each rental unit jumping back over to the presentation um that's the efficiency checklist uh we discussed that great okay so now um the alternative to the efficiency checklist is a performance pathway um this is another way that we are offering landlords flexibility and how they achieve the efficiency recommendations this would involve a hers rating at the landlord's expense but it

097does give landlords very specific specific items on how to tighten up the unit and increase the efficiency and so there is that payoff it maximizes the investments that are made at that unit and the requirement is that you would fulfill the items that are listed on your uh your your hers rating that you get from the rater um the final policy component is this efficiency disclosure and this is simply just making explicit that the results of your efficiency in terms of the green rental housing policy are publicly available this is not a surprise or anything that is new you can already find the results of any rental housing inspection on the city website we just wanted to make sure that it was clear that these components would also be made publicly available let's take a

098look at the the timeline so starting at the beginning of last year um this is when we were doing the rmi cohort we were beginning some best practices research um and by quarter two of last year in june we launched the the task force uh it was in i believe uh august that we began the usdn learning group um which continued is still continuing through today um that gold star is where we are now in 2022 we are launching public comment and as missy stated previously it is going for going out tomorrow um and that will we are gathering as much information as possible i will remind you that everything i've i'm presenting here is still a draft so even that checklist and we are seeking public comment from anyone uh in the city of

099ann arbor all anyone and everyone about the where they see room for improvement or what they think is good um or anything that we missed so that this policy can be as effective for everyone involved as possible um we're doing the energy commission presentation right now and after we do conclude the public comment period in mid-april we'll collect all the information that we got from that all the questions that were submitted all of the suggestions and if there's anything that requires any major change to what i'm presenting on here we'll bring the task force back together to take a second look at it and review it before passing it along for final legal review the usdn learning group will be continuing on and as will the public engagement um we will hope to have everything

100buttoned up by the end of 2022 so that we can launch full bore at the start of 2023 beyond that we will the implementation process will also involve um check-ins for program develop program unveiling so as uh as more and more people participate through the inspection process uh and we get more real world feedback um we'll make adjustments as as necessary okay now for this when uh thing i want to just throw out there that we are doing two public presentations they are the same so you don't need to attend both they're just on different days of the week and at different times of day just to maximize as many um opportunities for people to engage as possible there will be a survey posted to the city website tomorrow that will accompany these presentations and

101that will be the survey that we are the ways that we are collecting feedback as i already mentioned the engagement will continue beyond program launch we want to make sure that it is as effective as possible and then we're also doing a number of one-on-one um check-ins we'll be meeting with landlords throughout the city individually to make sure that this this policy is satisfactory and can get is as bulletproof as possible um and hope for a smooth clean launch in january 23. and at this point i'll happily take some questions from you thank you for your time we have questions for zach uh thanks zach for the presentation well done you've done a lot of homework here a lot of great lessons learned um you've widely sought data from other cities that's all really highly

102commendable um so really well done um presentation wise everything looks fine to me but the one piece that i keep coming back to is who's gonna implement this and who's gonna enforce it i'm sure you've faced this question before i'm sure it's coming out down the road here a little bit 23. just want to make sure that you're kind of watching how you're committing um this will be a pretty big program to implement if you have 31 500 units that have to be looked at in a couple years timeline that's a lot of people involved in a lot of information that's going to be flowing so just maybe you could comment on your thoughts there and and what kind of a size group you might have that would be question one and then who was

103part of the task force you've had um would be good to comment on thank you pretty great questions thank you uh commissioner hook um the um the exist this the excuse me the green rental housing policy as written is designed to be incorporated with the existing uh rental housing inspection process so um we already are inspecting on a two and a half year cycle that gives our inspectors approximately 9 000 units inspected per year and these these requirements would just be tacked on to that um and so there will in that in that period between when council may decides on this if they do choose to pass it part of that six-month delay in launching the program until the start of 2023 is so that we can get our inspectors up to speed and make

104any necessary staffing changes um and to your second point um we asking who the task force was we practiced throughout the task force and agreed upon at the beginning of every task force meeting chatham house rules which are to share the ideas that were presented but not the names of the individuals and so while task force members are welcome to identify themselves as participants in the task force um we are going to respect their um their their identity by not revealing that so um not not to sound uh uh i'm hiding anything or whatever whatever but um um the task force members are welcome to identify themselves but like i said this uh what we agreed upon at the beginning of every task force meeting thank you other questions or comments councilmember riggs yeah thanks

105um i wanted to there was a stat that you um presented at the beginning um that i want to make sure i understand was it just around 50 of all rental units are you said single owner what what does that mean single property owners and so um that means that um that the owner of that unit only owns only rents one unit that's what i thought it meant i just want to make sure because that's i'm surprised at the number i would have thought um okay so so and it's 50 over percent 50 of our rental properties that only have just there's just one okay yeah okay and so that leads i guess to the um next question so within and which is where i assume there'd be the most pushed back in around this

106from landlords the upgrading of um you know upgrades that need to be done within eight years right is that and so the only thing that sort of exempt from that if you don't have energy efficient appliances would be kind of that if you had gotten a gas heater that was 95 efficient or more is that right everything else would need so you know dishwashers or water heaters or heaters or any everything needs to be done within the next eight years is that right correct okay um and does this include if there is a if this is an owner-occupied rental as well uh so there is a already a mechanism at the rental housing services to identify which units get inspected and which do not which are owner-occupied or not owner-occupied and these uh requirements would

107fall under that same purview so so if it's being inspected at all by the city it would need to be it would need to meet these standards um if there has already been a mecha if uh determination that it is not being inspected by the city then it won't need to meet this okay um and are we um since a lot of these appear to be you know more kind of folks who consider mom and pop operations um that may not have you know a fair amount of um money set aside for kind of upgrades within the next eight years are we anticipating um trying to do bulk buys or anything that might be sort of reducing these costs or you know how are we anticipating that great question um the osi loves bulk buys

108and we would will pursue that opportunity wherever possible we've seen that success through the likes of the solarize program and we've already begun exploring ways that we could tie that over to things like heat pumps and other appliances um so certainly there there will be assistance wherever possible um we are going to continue tenaciously pursuing any funding opportunities possible um i will mention that should the climate millage pass in november that there could be some funding opportunity available through that as well to help offset the delta between the cost of replacement and the more efficient unit that said we we've looked at what that delta is between the cost of replacement and the more efficient unit and on most appliances it's just a few hundred dollars um so about 300 maybe for the water heater

109or for the furnace it's a little bit more than that but overall the the cost demand for the standard replacement the the cost demand over the standard replacement is not great um and i just wanted to also make a quick clarification um this is nuance but i just want to point out that it's 50 of the properties are single owners not 50 of the units and so um it just makes more sense okay that makes more sense um and i guess i mean this is obviously super important um i i just can imagine you know this there's the tug here between um the affordability of the lack of affordability that we already have in our community and kind of a rapid push to to do a lot of improvements and in homes that are obviously

110likely to be passed upon down onto tenants um so oh and then um the energy conservation class point thing i was wondering is that something we're anticipating having classes that are we anticipating hosting classes that tenants could sign up for because otherwise it seems like there might not be much consistency to the classes that people go to in terms of information that goes out yes we have been exploring certain classes that have already been offered by some of the organizations that we've worked with such as rmi or the usdn and incorporating those existing classes into our own but we also want to be able to offer that flexibility to tenants and landlords to choose which works for them and so if if this is to move forward there will be a list of classes that

111you can attend um sometimes they're offered through the epa sometimes they're offered at the county level and so we want to we're trying to offer as much flexibility to this as possible okay well thanks um impressive work thanks for the update do we have other comments or questions i i have a few um questions and comments um i don't exactly understand how this works um is this a mandatory program or in order to get a green rental certificate you need to get 65 points so you could still be allowed to rent in the city of ann arbor if you just blew this whole thing off or you had a swiss cheese rental with 50 year old appliances um and got 5.0 points whatever is explain that to me i didn't understand that uh thank you

112chairman it's a great question and an important clarification the way the green rental housing program has been designed is that all rentals will be required to meet some to meet each of these standards the checklist is an alternative option to a performance um uh pathway so you can get a hers rating without needing to do the checklist and satisfy the recommendations that are being provided by the hers rater or you can get the prescriptive or you can follow the prescriptive checklist and just get your point minimum but you will have to do one or the other in order to get your certificate of compliance to rent was that clear to anybody else that was not clear to me so i would ask that in preparation for the public sessions that you make that very clear

113in the documentation um and granted this was i mean you know i didn't have a chance to look at this in detail i looked at it late this afternoon um but that was not not clear to me so i think that's really important um and there's probably a host of other questions that i have i'll throw some of them out in comments and i don't necessarily expect answers so uh there are a lot of rating systems most prominently lead which is probably the one that's best known by lay people that has like silver gold platinum um was there any consideration of having a silver glow gold platinum type of um rating where someone could get a higher a higher certification level was that is that something that's possible or um even contemplated um yes uh

114we this was something that was explored what we decided was that the city's not interested in being an independent raider or um uh being able to identify how well things qualify um we we just want to set a we want to be as simple as possible that is in response to what we heard from some landlords which were that there is already a sense that the rental housing process is already somewhat confusing and or burdensome and so rather than make certain like different qualifications we streamlined it and stuck with one and just said meet these qualifications or not great question okay so another question is the question posed by mr garber and that is we have as i understand it a requirement um if i wrote it down correctly in section 8 5 28 that

115already requires a certain level of compliance and improvements and it sounds like that's not being enforced whatsoever um based on well i can't say whatsoever it's not being enforced um broadly or uniformly and i'll just give a 30 second anecdote my nephew is a phd student at university of michigan he rents a part of a 2200 square foot home built in he and his roommate occupy one floor there are four people with significant others on the second floor and in the winter time they split the electric bill the electric only bill and it is they their share is one half it is 300 a month so that's on on top of gas so there are probably people that are sitting up there in a drafty room that have um electric uh baseboard or you know

116strip heaters or space heaters that are running constantly in order to generate a 600 um electric bill and so what i'm wondering you know and they're doing that probably because the home hasn't been weatherized so what i wonder is are we putting something in place that is well put maybe put it differently do we have something that really should be enforced and really will get us a big benefit and what is going to ensure that what we put in place is any better than what we have right now good question the uh unfortunately it's gonna it's difficult to uh speak to this uh anecdote that you that you provided without knowing more information it's it's very possible that it did meet the weatherization requirements and the inspector saw that um that those requirements were satisfied

117um but i mean there's a 19 yeah it's 120 year old and so that's that's where i think the leverage and the difference comes um it enters the picture with this green rental housing program because it takes a far more holistic approach than relying on some weather stripping we want to be examining the entire building and if every building is required to meet these either the prescriptive checklist or a performance pathway then we do believe that there that the the science and the data is there that it will improve that standard for rentals that are like that um and i i i feel for um this relative of yours it's something that we heard a lot from tenants during the task force and um that kind of rental is particularly where a lot of this

118policy is focused uh we really wanted to we worked really carefully to balance um the the the tug and pull between elevating the the quality of of rentals in terms of energy efficiency and comfort um without burdening um landlords and like commissioner briggs already mentioned um that's that's something that's important to consider when it's not a large company and even if it is a large company we're not trying to burden them with with extraneous costs um this this program isn't about um burdening anyone we we just want to make sure that there is a standard expectation um if i may i'll i'll share um in response to to the to what you shared uh chairman risky that there are some tenants who sign a lease and without knowing what the energy expectations are and get

119into the unit and learn that they're paying 350 a month for um for their energy bills and that's precisely what this agreement housing program is is aiming to address that is energy burdensome to many residents where the rent is already somewhat prohibitive for some residents um the rent cost alone adding that unexpected energy cost on top um is it's really important for us to to address that as much as possible and so that's why we're trying to walk that fine line of making sure that we're bringing up the standard rentals without burdening but also um improving the overall experience for both landlords and tenants so just one other general comment i'll give a brief example i'm when we refer to the checklist that's this form where you get different points correct correct yes so um

120i have um a specific request and that is that that be provided to commissioners it was not posted um so no one was able to look at it and a concern that i just saw on looking at some of these is a landlord could put solar on the roof could put two kilowatts one kilowatt on the roof get 20 points and someone else could do a lot of ceiling work and go from an ach 50 of six or seven to three and get a handful of points another example is um a a landlord can install air conditioning and get points and i have it sitting here on my desk and many of you have worked with saul griffith and i know the city has interfaced with him electrify america or whatever it's called as his

121or his his organization and he's basically recommending that no air conditioning unit should be replaced period that we should go directly to heat pumps and so we're giving people points to do something that really never should be done they should we should be encouraging them to spend an extra 500 and go to a heat pump which would then also provide air conditioning um and you know provide the benefits during the heating season where the gas usage is dramatically reduced so i think there's just to me a lot of questions and i'll leave it at that and i'll turn it over to commissioner hookum to provide some additional questions john you kind of stole my thunder because i was doing the math with the with the checklist and kind of to tie a few points together

122i think that your nephew's house does he get a christmas basket every year from dte because they probably really like him as a customer but you know that's the negative side of this right the positive side of where we're headed here would be that same house the 1901 house to using that checklist if they threw a few modules up on the roof did a couple other little things and continue to be an energy hog doesn't really accomplish what we're trying to to get through and i think the checklist is probably going to be the route that's chosen by most people we need to make sure that those loopholes don't exist and i'd advocate that we have a sharper look at that and in the implementation side here coming up to really make sure that we

123don't have loopholes and that it really accounts for what we want it to do which is making a change um back to your first point john you asked the question of compliance and so i have a neighbor who's a land baron and owns quite a few properties i get dragged into many of them to help them fix various things i can attest to you the 1901 house your nephew's in is not different than a lot of rental units i've been in and so obviously the compliance side of our of the the notice the ordinance that ken cited earlier has not been implemented and will will that question that you raised be answered which is can i the land bearer next door keep going what prevents him from keep going what prevents him from not upgrading

124um what ordinance what what compliance action what what threatened what threat exists if he chooses not to do that does he get evicted as a rental owner i think we really need to think about that as to how this this movement really gets affected because if it doesn't we just kind of languish then we don't win out and this is a big big area of greenhouse gas reduction we can get as a city we need to make sure that that whole program of getting there works and is not a bunch of loopholes that people work around so thank you thank you to address uh council member briggs's point about affordability and you know this there's a balancing act um between burden and burden to the renter and um what the rental cost is but then

125also what is the utility cost and then what is the transportation cost and what is the time and transit cost so someone can save rental costs in in ann arbor and live in ypsilanti and then be commuting every single day and you know waste an hour or more commuting and so you know affordability has to be looked at holistically and um i think you know that's one of the questions that i think is really important in looking at this whole program and council looking at it and deciding what the implications are this isn't just something that's a simple uh comparison this is is is going to be relatively complicated um chuck i assume your question was asked correct you didn't have a follow-up okay any other comments or questions i assume we have a couple

126of other renters here but i i guess no other no other comments at this time correct okay good um we also have a resolution uh that is posted to legistar for our consideration uh could you put that up let's see so there is a preamble or something like that there we are here yep hopefully people had a chance to look at a memorandum uh can we um get a motion to consider the resolution and a second right uh so we have a motion from commissioner garcia in a second from commissioner mccoy any discussion or comments about the resolution did you scroll back up then missy or down i should say i guess so it's a short resolution any comments or questions so i i have a personal opinion um and that is um i'm not

127willing to uh vote in favor of this because i have a lot of concerns with the resolution so i'm going to explain you know my vote up front um you probably picked up on some of those comments um i recognize that based on the timetable that was presented by zack i'm i believe that if we don't approve this tonight then we still have um the opportunity for the public comments and everything else to happen and still vote on this um at our next meeting um so that that is my my position i don't know if anybody else wants to comment on their vote uh before doing so well this is a first reading right john is the first reading right well we we did vote on on the other one so yeah this actually from

128a staff's perspective we would prefer that you not vote on this tonight which is meant to be a first reading because we want to go get public comment and be able to bring it back with the revisions based on okay so um this will account then as first reading and we will bring it then back to uh the commission based on staff's recommendation how's that stop very good okay we have one more point other than updates and that is a second reading of the resolution in support of workforce housing and i submitted an updated copy of that so let me see if you can bring that up while i talk and that was based on comments that uh an input that commissioners gave during the first reading um and um those were included in the

129meeting minutes and then the same resolution was considered by the environmental commission and i watched that i didn't participate in it but i watched it and i had an exchange with uh chair brown uh vice chair mitchell and one of the commissioners and um made some changes um and those are generally noted in the right hand column so those are sort of details what i would what's not noted in the right hand column are just a few things that i think are important the many of the whereas clauses were reordered so that they are grouped um in a way where they make more sense so you know a lot of the ones related to statistics on the growth of enrollment and things like that those are all grouped together um the same thing about what

130the implications are and relative to the climate action plans that the city has the eight to zero plan and the pccn recommendations those are grouped and so on and so forth um so those are changes that are reflected in here there are still a few things that in my view need to be refined and this is something that um would then for example you can see at the bottom of the pages displayed um xxx jobs that's something that um we need to get i mean the staff or council um needs to get from the university before um finally uh finalizing the the wording of the the resolution before it goes to council assuming that is indeed the case um so um without me just rattling on um what i thought i would do is um

131open this up for discussion we already had a first reading and so we've already voted to consider the resolution and we had a second so do we have any additional comments or thoughts i reread it actually myself and there's a couple of things that maybe i thought we could um add to strengthen the resolution um i think it was uh that is um now in the title but there's two other places um that i think it probably belongs in the resolution um it's in one one resolved clause but it probably could go on another one um but i can get into those details i'll open it up for other people's comments or questions if that they want to offer their their insights so it looks like councilmember bricks i was just gonna share that um

132not specifically related to this um resolution in front of us but just the i think different commissions are taking different approaches to this i know transportation commission when um they reviewed it essentially didn't provide feedback on you know line item changes or substance to the um actual resolution itself and more gave kind of bullet point kind of talking points around um thoughts around around workforce housing and transportation so um you know i don't know what the original lead sponsor of this how how um she'll end up taking this into account um but um i think it's that's correct i know i i know having spoken to councilmember as well that she's appreciative of the the work that energy commission is doing on this yeah um she has seen this latest update um i shared it

133with her and um i sent an email to uh chair mills of the planning commission and asked what um they were doing and i shared this version and i've not heard back from her so i don't know if anybody knows what planning commission is doing with this no okay so um what what i would recommend is um in the final um where uh resolution resolved clauses they're in the first resolve clause um and it reads um the city administrator will provide an opportunity to um provide workforce housing and you know i i think um given that we have an 820 plan and given we are calling for um both at the university um for net zero um that we include something that says provide um net zero or net zero ready maybe is a better

134way of putting this i don't know if uh commissioner peck has as a preference one way or the other um you know if the zero code is adopted at the state level and that's adapted at the city then that would that would essentially mandate um knew how any new building to be net zero um i don't know uh if staff has a has a position on whether net zero or net zero ready is important in some of these these resolve clauses or not uh so my understanding is the university isn't going to build new buildings unless they're net zero um obviously they're ones like the new hospital tower going up that was designed you know years ago really the starting and so it didn't really unfortunately didn't get designed that way it will be made

135net zero uh as the geothermal heat pump plan builds out but you know they just the new building the first new building after the commitment to carbon neutrality is being built and it is being built um i think net zero uh so i i don't know that for sure actually but it's being built low carbon um and of course uh it will be net zero eventually um so so missy missy as everybody saw just typed in net zero energy uh missy there's another use of net zero probably should also say net zero energy and the second to last resolved clause right in front of the affordable or third third to last additional units of net zero energy affordable workforce housing right there yep and i think maybe in the in the title there's also net

136zero mentioned but not net zero energy and that should probably um yeah right after 2000 units exactly yeah the other thing i'd like to point out is i you know i think i've said this before but i'm pretty sure the university's gonna be just fine with this okay you know there is a lot of talk about um doing this kind of thing anyhow so there were um based on environmental commission uh input there are two whereas clauses added one recognizing the university for announcing um the new there it is right there um the construction of the new um net zero lead gold undergraduate housing on north campus that's going to be 700 net new um units and those are going to be net zero um and then um also there's a warehouse clause that recognizes

137some of the things that the city has been doing also to improve housing availability oops yep thank you so my recommendation is is that this is uh we apply the 80 20 rule in this case it's probably more like the 90 9010 rule that this will be scrutinized by council and by staff before this is acted on so unless somebody has any other comments i would recommend that we take a vote on this okay so we have agreement on that so could i get a show of hands and voices all those in favor of the resolution um as we see it um please say i or raise your hands anyone opposed no one opposed any abstentions very good thank you it passes unanimously thank you very much so we are now on the downhill ramp

138osi reports thanks chamberski um there's as always a lot going on i'm going to send to everyone after this uh the entire list serve the newsletter that we sent out this week to residents because that's kind of the easiest punchiest way to see what's going on within the office um i also wanted to share i think zach left us before he could share this that the checklist and materials for the green rental housing are on the websites will also circulate to all the green rental housing website there's a story in m-line 2 that has a link to that but if you want to dive more deeply in before the next discussion uh please do so and zach mentioned we are really trying to get a lot of public feedback and doing outreach so that launches

139tomorrow really excited to see where that goes um i also wanted to share that our very own commissioner peck is going to be doing an event with us on the 16th we put this together i can't even believe this yesterday morning i actually organized all of this uh it's an opportunity to hear about the most recent intergovernmental panel on climate change report that dropped last week uh pretty dire findings from that analysis but pax agreed to do a presentation kind of overviewing the main takeaways and then corey connolly the climate and energy advisor for the state of michigan is going to join us to talk about what it means for michigan and how we can get more actively involved in the state's climate work we'll of course have local stakeholders but we wanted to kind

140of talk about this at different scales so please circulate that widely it's not just grant or work for anyone in michigan or more broadly that wants to participate we also wanted to share uh in terms of the energy assessments the options analysis the feasibility study and the seou advancement the rfp has been drafted for those we've had some experts kind of help us look at language thank goodness um you know we have wonderful input from the commission the resolutions that were passed actually gave really great direction and lots of other cities have done this so we've been able to pull from rfp language from other places currently that rfp is in legal for final review and then it will be released for bidding uh we are making sure to be really thoughtful and intentional in

141the drafting of that rfp i anticipate it will be on the streets in the not too distant future but that is for both the options analysis and for the traditional feasibility study we're also working on the microgrid assessment for the sustainable energy utility that's taking a little bit more time that's more nuanced because it's not just a microgrid study it's a microgrid study with two utilities and so there's different kinds of technical questions so we've got some experts that are helping us really make sure we frame the rfp in the right way and i want to call out uh commissioner how come he's been helping quite a lot uh in some of that space so thank you very much chuck really appreciate it and then just ending on one piece of good news that you

142won't see in the newsletter but i want to share with you all since last month we heard about the bryant neighborhood project we found out uh not too long ago that we successfully won a solar moonshot award and so we will be helping two residents uh get solar or free and there are two residents that suffer from pretty high energy burden and we're potentially risking losing their home and this will stabilize those homes for them and so they're getting energy for free and we're really excited about that i just wanted to share and i want to call out again community action network for their incredible partnership in that journey those are just some of the punch points newsletter coming soon enjoy the way too many pages i think it's eight pages of updates of things

143uh that are going on in osi thanks jim thank you missy missy would you be willing to comment on the questions that were asked by callers in terms of uh plans on the feasibility study and timetable and things like that or do you want to comment on that at a future time or do what's your stance on that yeah i i don't know i have much more to add than the the update that we shared that the rfp will be public um and you know everyone will have access to the rfp and to bid on it should they be interested that timeline is um as soon as possible while being really thoughtful and intentional we've had really great um i assume most interest is in the more traditional feasibility study based on the commenters that

144did call in that there's great templates i mean these studies have been done so it's it that that portion was actually quite simple to draft itself um we are we understand the urgency around this we also understand this is potentially the biggest decision that the city will make and so we want to make sure that we frame the rfp the right way and get responses in the right in the right manner that are going to be robust and really intentional and purposeful so we can make a good decision so we're trying to go fast but with purpose in a space so i um i've shared with council members too our office is is not going to show fidelity to a set time we're going to show fidelity to an outcome uh updates from commissioners like

145commissioners are approaching their bedtimes uh so working group updates um as far as i know um there's only one working group um commissioner calvin garcia do we have any update or any news from the transportation electrification working group uh the no really not really the electric vehicle readiness ordinance is still um under the process of being updated and um there's really no news to share okay and then an update from the environmental commission um i i guess the um workforce housing um okay so uh this is the second opportunity for public comment um so persons may comment for up to three minutes if you're watching on ctn please call four eight 888-788-0948 seven five excuse me eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven and enter the meeting id nine three seven six

146seven five one six eight one nine this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hands one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand please press star nine on your phone and you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area meet television for background noise so that we may hear you clearly and finally state your name and address at the beginning of your comments all right caller ending in one three four welcome back mr crapper uh thank you dr stultz chair mursky ken garber again 28 haverhill court good presentations tonight on green rental housing i have my suggestions

147and i'll try to attend one of the public sessions thank you for holding those i want you to know that a week from tonight the planning commission will consider the site plan for maple cove 2 70 apartments in three buildings proposed for the corner of miller and maple the developer intends to use gas heating planning commission now has final say over projects like this that are not seeking a zoning change so its vote on tuesday is final approval is pretty certain for the last two years i have been doing planning commission public comment to urge developers like this to switch from gas to heat pumps i'm typically the only one raising raising this issue in some cases they've actually done it not because of me they couldn't care less but rather because they need rezoning

148to go forward that's not the case here um how much does it matter according to the american gas association the average michigan household requires 103 million btus a year for heat that's a hundred thousand cubic feet of gas or one thousand therms at 13 kilogram co2 equivalent emissions per therm a conversion factor that takes into account upstream emissions that comes to 13 metric tons co2 equivalent emissions per household per year just from burning gas multiply that by the 70 units and you get 910 metric tons co2 equivalent emissions per year from this project just from gas combustion for perspective mr barr in his presentation tonight on city solar called out the 2700 metric tons of co2 equivalent emissions that will be offset by the city facility solar project great gain for sure but maple cove

149ii this one small apartment complex if it proceeds with gas heating will wipe out fully one third of that gain that's how big an impact gas combustion has on greenhouse gas emissions and these emissions are locked in for the next 50 years so i guess my larger point is that a lot of our work is being undermined by new rental developments like maple cove 2 that employ gas heating you can say well there's nothing we can do right now about developers who insist on gas i'll have something to say about that at a future meeting in the meantime i'll be there next tuesday pleading with the maple cove developer a guy named mo kashim to switch out his gas furnaces for an air source heat pump system i'm not hopeful on this thank you for

150your comments do we have any other callers missy we do not chamersky okay i just wanted to mention one thing i forgot to mention it earlier to commissioner peck's statement about u of m building codes there's actually a webinar tomorrow at 11 a.m it's called the u of m um climate action webinar series campus buildings and emission reductions and it's my understanding that they're going to present their building stamp proposed building standards based on broad recommendations that were in the pccn report and it's my understanding there's going to be a deeper deeper dive in the uh implementing a20 webinar series that's put on by the 2030 district next month so if anybody is interested in details of those shoot me an email and i will get you that information at least how you can register

151for those i should have announced that earlier any other comments or questions before i join the meeting seeing none thank you all for your participation missy thanks for your staff for their presentations and sacrificing part of their evenings as well as yours and um at 8 25 pm i'm adjourning this meeting thanks everybody and have a great rest of your evening you