Ann Arbor Joint Energy Commission / Planning Commission Meeting 5/11/21

001to order um so my name is john mursky and i'm participating from seattle washington and as chair of the energy commission i'm calling this meeting to order uh it is uh may 11 2021 and um this is i'd like to welcome everyone to uh a joint meeting between the energy commission and the planning commission um 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 please remain on camera just as you would be visible during in-person meetings also mute your microphone when not speaking a public comment will be via telephone only and i'll give those numbers now but also repeat it at the appropriate time for the energy commission meeting to speak during any of the public

002comment opportunities for the energy commission please call one of the following toll-free numbers 888-788-0099 or three 877-853-5 two four seven and enter the meeting id number nine one three five seven eight three four five zero two and these numbers will remain the same for the entire enter year for the energy commission and also that information along with two local dial-in numbers is available on the published agenda in the public notices section of the city's website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 and which is also available online at www.a2gov.org backslash watch ctn so missy um would you start us off with the reading of the land acknowledgement absolutely chamber right i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe

003and wyandotte peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the united states on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous peoples the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807. knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of 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 great thank you very much will we start with a roll call of both commissions or how do we plan on doing that actually right please correct me if i'm wrong but i believe as a working work session for the planning commission we don't have to do roll call is that correct yeah since

004this is a normal meeting of the energy commission though i think we will do a roll call just so there's clear attendance on it so i would suggest that you the energy commission proceeds with their roll call as typical and then i'll follow with the planning commission thanks brad missy you want to lead the roll call then absolutely commissioner hook him i know he's here but i can't see him commissioner mccomber commissioner schreiberg here commissioner cleavy here commissioner levin chair mursky president and as i mentioned uh dialing in from uh seattle washington thank you that was a mistake on my part i am actually gonna read you a role if you could please say the community you don't have to say your address but the community that you're calling in from so apologies so i'm

005just gonna go back through that list thank you so much commissioner hook up president from ann arbor thank you you uh commissioner mccomber commissioner schreiber also president in ann arbor thank you commissioner cleavy president in ann arbor commissioner levin chair murski we've got uh co-chair colin garcia present and participating from ann arbor tonight thank you councilmember briggs here in ann arbor councilmember radina as in ann arbor commissioner zucker present in ann arbor uh commissioner hatcher commissioner mccoy president in ann arbor commissioner george told us he wouldn't be able to attend uh commissioner singleton commissioner kerber here in ann arbor all right you have a forum uh on behalf of the planning commission commissioner mills president in ann arbor commissioner here in ann arbor commissioner gibb randall erin ann arbor commissioner sovay here in ann arbor

006commissioner abrams here from new york commissioner hammerschmidt gary ann arbor commissioner dish here in ann arbor commissioner lee hear from ann arbor commissioner clark here in ann arbor full commission so um was that are you finished then with the roll call okay very good thank you um so missy i think we agreed that we're gonna do um the energy reports and reports from commissioners after the special joint uh session that's right we were just going to do the approval of agenda and minutes and a good public okay right so okay um so would i be able to get a movement a move i should say to approve today's agenda very good all in favor of the current agenda or any any change proposed changes or additions hi oh okay good and anyone opposed so the

007agenda is approved um and then in terms of approval of the minutes can we get someone to approve the minutes of our last meeting for the energy commission i move to approve the minutes of our last energy commission meeting any second please second any discussion all in favor say aye or not okay say yes okay and all opposed and even opposed very good they pass as well thank you so missy i'm going to turn things over to you um for um an introduction of our uh joint presentation and uh the presenter and uh if you could take it from here that would be great sure i do believe chemersky that we had decided to do public comment before i don't see anyone in the queue but we could we could open that up and then

008we'll do it again at the end if you okay okay i'll do that then so um this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes if you are watching on ctn please call 888 788-0099 or 877-853-52 and enter the meeting id 913-5783-4502 again this information is also displayed on the media agenda and on the video feed 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 you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when please speak when speaking please speak to a quiet area or move to a quiet area and mute any television or

009background noise so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments do we have anyone so far we do not okay we'll wait 30 seconds or so but we will have again a second opportunity um towards the end of the meeting or at the end of the meeting any any indication okay very good so let's close that and then move on to our special presentations and um we have um two of them and i think only one is are we gonna do both uh with the planning commission is that the intent yep we're gonna keep the bodies together so welcome planning commission members yes yes indeed uh all right so uh first and foremost it is my really great pleasure to share with you uh some

010of our colleagues and their expertise from the rocky mountain institute well formerly rocky mountain institute now just rmi apologies uh for those joining us today for this session the energy commission is of course thinking about how to holistically move forward the h20 initiative including really sticky work around electrification and so we know the planning commission is also struggling with this thinking about this navigating this landscape all of the above we reached out to rmi uh to our two guests today to give us kind of an overview of what's happening in the electrification landscape to understand the resources that are available to us as we navigate this together with that it's my great pleasure to turn it over to anna sophia and anna sophia has actually been helping the city on numerous initiatives if you join

011us tomorrow night she'll be speaking at a heat pump workshop that we're hosting as well he is the senior associate and their carbon free buildings work at rmi she is exceptionally knowledgeable on this topic and someone that has been nothing short of a pleasure to work with so thank you so much for joining us and we also have brett ridgeland with us who's a manager in the buildings practice at rmi and also an expert in electrification and also because carbonization within the building uh stock so with that i'm going to turn it over i think i'm gonna say different slides yeah i'll show them can everyone hear me okay yes great super and then are you looking at my slide now okay great well thank you all for having us it's really a pleasure to

012be here with you today um i'll get kick us off get started in a moment um and missy could you remind me on the timing here i think we're gonna get through this presentation and have some time after for q a is that right that's correct yep okay super so uh my colleague brad and i here are are here to talk about um carbon free buildings and um as you all know this is a a key um a key body of work that the city has undertaken and so um there are a couple things we'll share today trying to get everyone uh have the same vocabulary but really we're hoping to have a rich discussion and answer your questions after the presentation but uh to start i'll talk a little bit about why why are

013we even talking about electrification what is this whole electrification thing and why is it important then brett's going to talk to us a little bit about what electrification really looks like um and then we're going to offer some advice given our experience about where ann arbor should go in order to tackle this really complicated space um so with that i'll kick us off and um start by talking about electrification um and i won't spend too much time here because um we all know that you are all very motivated uh to decarbonize buildings but i i do want to spend a little bit of time to make sure we're all on the same page on what we why we might want to tackle this this big issue um and for me there are three key issues

014um the first is climate the second is health and the last is consumer protection and i'll talk a little bit about each of these um so to start i'll say um this is tackling the buildings issue is critical if ann arbor is going to meet its its carbon goals so you know if you look at all of the emissions from buildings both indirect through electricity consumption and direct emissions the fossil fuels that we combust in our buildings that alone makes up 77 of ann arbor's greenhouse gas emissions and ann arbor already has some really robust goals um in order to try to reduce these these emissions which are outlined in the um approved carbon emissions plan um but to put this into further context you know this is not just an issue of ann arbor

015this is a state a federal and an international issue as well you know governor whitmer um announced the plans for carbon neutrality by 2050 and today in michigan uh about 20 of all emissions come from the fossil fuels that we combust in our building so we literally or michigan can literally not meet its climate goals unless it tackles this really complicated element of uh the building the carbonization puzzle and from the federal perspective we also have seen a lot of leadership from the biden administration in an attempt to reduce um emissions and this is especially relevant to michigan because michigan is one is among the top five states uh with the highest emissions from building sectors so all this to say climate we cannot meet our climate goals without also tackling building the carbonization and

016building electrification is a key component to that so i'm sure you all are very familiar with that narrative but the thing that has been shocking to me as i have worked more and more in the building space is how in how often we ignore the health impacts of fossil fuel combustion in our building and this has really serious implications for our communities because even before the pandemic we spent about 90 of our times indoors that means that our indoor air quality is the most important air quality that we are exposed to and unfortunately today the epa does not regulate indoor air quality and what this means is that because there is a lack of regulation of indoor air quality often our indoors are two to five times and sometimes even a hundred times more polluted

017than what would be legal outside so that means that if we had levels of pollutants that we are exposed to 90 of the time indoors that would be illegal outside our homes so this has really serious uh health implications one of the biggest sources of emissions inside our homes are our fossil fuel stoves when we talk about stoves usually the pollutant that we're concerned about are is no2 and no2 is especially troubling uh for children um they have many serious health side effects and children are especially success susceptible to this pollutant for a couple reasons first they have higher breathing rates and are more physically active and so they're they're breathing more pollutants they have a higher lung surface to body ratio and have smaller bodies which means that they're proportionately absorbing a lot more

018pollutants and also they have immature lungs um and an immature immune system so these pollutants that are unregulated and were exposed to for long periods of time are affecting our children and other success susceptible people with respiratory illness fortunately there are there are a lot of technology innovations that help us counter and reduce the sort of pollution electric stoves which usually have a bad rep for being slow or or you know antiquated um are a really effective way to eliminate the source of combustion in our homes um and unfortunately we don't have to depend on the technology that our grandparents used today many chefs and many homeowners are choosing to switch to induction cooking which is a form of electric cooking that is healthier because we're not combusting anything it's faster and it's safer so

019unlike a traditional electric stove that heats up a surface in order to cook it it uses induction so only only the pan is getting hot so as you see in this picture um someone could put their hand on the stove while you're cooking um and and not get burnt so this has many benefits and as you'll see throughout our presentation technology has improved so much over time that there are readily available technology that we can use to replace these sources of our missions um so indoor air quality is really bad uh but this also has really see but combusting fossil fuels in our buildings also has really serious outdoor air quality implications a recent study from harvard has estimated that pollution from gas biomass and wood in buildings is now responsible for a hot 18

020000 early deaths in the united states in michigan that means approximately 841 early deaths this is about and nine billion um economic dollar economic impact in michigan and this is definitely an underestimate of the cost of combustion in our buildings um so essentially what this means is that if we only looked at the cost of premature deaths that result from um from outdoor air pollution from combusting things in buildings that is nine billion dollars uh and that's not even accounting for hospital visits um or indoor air quality impacts so this is a very serious economic impact for our communities and also is affecting our ability to meet federal regulations so michigan as as many of you know um has some uh ozone non-attainment areas um including the um the orange areas highlighted in in the

021michigan map here and what we see is that knox which we which we see as a pollutant from burning gas in our buildings is uh a precursor to ozone so it direct directly contributes to michigan's uh non-attainment of uh ozone levels so this is very surprising for people because a lot of people think that combustion of gas for electricity or or coal are some of the biggest uses or sources of ozone and nox but for the same amount of gas burned um in a fossil fuel electricity plant uh and compare that to our home a furnace releases two to five times as much nitrogen dioxide as a power plant so even if we're burning fewer or a less amount of gas in our homes it's a lot dirtier and it's not quite as regulated so

022it has really serious implications for our ability to maintain a healthy outdoor environment and then lastly this is a a really important area to consider it in terms of consumer protection um every time that we make investments and get in fossil fuel infrastructure or a fossil fuel appliance we are making an investment that represents a financial risk for the community so today uh fossil fuel infrastructure so for example the pipelines that are are laid in the community are depreciated at a rate of 50 years um but if we are serious about our climate commitments we don't have 50 years to retire these assets you know and ann arbor has a carbon neutrality go by 2030. this means that these assets are going to have to be depreciated in a much shorter amount of time leading

023to a lot of unnecessary economic impacts for customers and then on the appliance side every fossil fuel appliance you have in your home lasts anywhere from 12 to 15 years that means that before 2050 when scientists have said we have to get to zero across our economy our economy we only have one or two opportunities uh to replace a furnace so with an all-electric option so um if if we don't replace it with the right technology today we might be leading to unnecessary burden by consumers that will have to prematurely replace these appliances so because of climate because health and because of the economic burden it's really important for us to start tackling uh building electrification today and brett will tell you a little bit about what building electrification actually looks like thanks anna sophia

024so and sophia set us up with uh kind of the why behind electric electrification i'm going to dig in here for a few minutes on what we're actually talking about as far as the technology you can go to the next slide this will be a primer we could spend a few hours probably talking about this it seems like every time i talk to a builder or an installer of heat pumps i'd learn new things but this can give an overview of what the technology is and how it works so building electrification that term when we use that term what we're referring to is the replacement of fossil fuels that are combusted in the home by efficient electric equipment and the idea here is that of course that that equipment has to draw its electricity from

025from somewhere and electricity is generated by a source and increasingly um that electricity source is is is going to become clean um if it's not already somewhat clean already we also in this topic of building electrification we also do talk about the conversion of inefficient electric heating technologies to higher higher efficiency equipment so next slide um so when we talk about beneficial electrification we're we're not talking about electric resistance baseboards baseboard heaters that's literally the same technology that's in your toaster um that's not what we're talking about we're talking about heat pumps uh heat pumps use the refrigeration cycle it's the same cycle that's in the in in your refrigerator in your kitchen um essentially the same as as the air conditioner that you have right now but run in reverse and so it it

026it's electric powered and it uses the refrigeration cycle to move heat energy from in the winter time from actually from the cold outside air into your home so even though it's winter time there's heat energy out there and the refrigeration cycle can grab that and move it into your house and turn it into usable warm air so that process uses significantly less electricity than electric resistance and when we look at the source energy so tracing that that electricity all the way back to the power plants um we see that it's generally going to be more efficient than um than burning gas in in your home next slide so the term heat pumps they're actually that term can be used for a few different things um what i was just describing would is air source heat

027pumps and so that's kind of what's starting to see the most uptake and a lot of applications even in in the upper midwest here and that pulls heat energy out of out literally out from the outside air and moves it into your home there are also ground source heat pumps which have been around for some time which is the same thing with the loop and the ground they pull heat out of the ground in the winter time water source heat pumps it's another variation if you have some body of water or some source that is nearby you can pull heat out of that you do also that term water source heat pump can also be used in multi-family buildings as a solution for delivering heat to each of the individual units but in that case

028there's a water loop that has to be fed by some kind of central central plant or central boiler for the building and then lastly heat pump water heaters which is a solution to domestic hot water that's about three times more efficient than than an electric resistance water heater next slide a few pictures of what this looks like so on the top this would be the space heating and cooling and i should note these units all do heating heating and cooling they serve both functions all the way on the top left there that would be the outdoor unit for sort of a residential type mini split system and the one next to it is you know that looks familiar that looks like your air conditioner probably that can be run in reverse and do heating in

029the winter time too if it's designed to for larger buildings you can assemble a number of these these outdoor units in a plant format either individually zoned or tied together to deliver the capacity that's needed and then there are also variations that go through the wall like a package terminal heat pump as as is shown in there so these products all exist on the market today they're increasingly becoming commoditized um i'll talk a little bit here about how they're they've improved in performance for cold climates heat pump water heaters on the bottom there the bottom left is probably the most most common that is seen right now that's a unit that would sit inside your inside your home inside of the conditioned space and it pulls heat out of out of the out of the

030air in your home so in a mechanical room or in your basement pulls it out of the the air in the room and puts it into the water so that's called a unitary system there are also split systems as is shown on the right there where you've got an outdoor unit and an indoor storage tank and so there are a couple of options there next slide so like i said one of the reasons that elect the the conversation for electrification has been heating up recently excuse the pun uh is that the the technology has increased it has improved significantly for cold climates recently and so um you know ground source heat pumps have been around for quite some time that's probably the first time you heard the term heat pumps but now the air source

031systems can you can function and maintain the needed capacity down to negative 15 or even down to negative 30 fahrenheit the there are still in in installations here i have seen often electric resistance that's installed as a backup or if there's existing fossil fuel that can be left as a backup source it's not it's in most cases it's not necessary um you know the anecdotes i heard when the polar vortex went through recently is that because this was the you know the the cold climate heat pumps have sort of just come on and this was the first big test and some people did run out and buy space heaters as a backup but then in most cases they didn't need them because the heat pumps kept up as well as anybody else's furnace did so

032cold climate heat pumps that is it is a special thing um not all heat pumps are created equal there are there's a great database from uh from an organization neat who runs programs in the northeast and they've started assembling with a list of what products work really well in cold climates and classifying them accordingly so it's important to select a cold climate heat pump specifically next and keep going next slide so putting putting this together and sophia talked about the why good high level introduction to what the technology is um so from the city's perspective how do we think about starting to engage the community and first and foremost i think it's important to to emphasize the equity cons considerations associated with with beneficial electrifications and there and there's a couple ways that that can

033and should come into play um for one thing uh looking at the building stock that serves low and moderate income customers and especially affordable housing there are often opportunities there to significantly improve quality of life comfort reduce energy bills affordable housing can tend to have more electrical resistance which is kind of a no brainer in terms of cost of effectiveness which gives me cost effectiveness replacing with heat pumps today um so looking at that building stock as and finding solutions for that immediately is a big opportunity um the second is thinking about the jobs associated so there there's a clean energy transition that's going to happen here and it's it's got this aspect of work that needs to be done in the homes and buildings in our community and engaging those the communities the black

034and brown communities that haven't traditionally been part of energy efficiency um is another great opportunity to level the playing field so i've had conversations with uh with ej focused uh organizations who say you know get us get in at the ground level let's let's be part of the solution um have our communities delivering the solutions to our own communities and and have that be part of the um the wealth and job creation in this next energy uh sort of transition for for the country so engaging those communities early on um as part as as part and contributors of this not something to be done to them after the fact but have them be a driver um next slide and then there is a question here on on prioritization and so you've said heat pumps can

035work really well um they're you know obviously we've got a whole wealth of infrastructure that that's already out there and um the vast majority of homes do have gas so we can look at the building stock and sort of prioritize where it makes the most sense and and think about where we can get some early wins that that demonstrate that the technology works and start to build that capacity in the marketplace with with contractors and awareness with customers so new construction is great application because it's always easier to make these decisions up front you get the benefit of not having to install gas infrastructure to a home and you can design design the home easily to minimize system sizes and things like that so new construction is a great application replacement of electric resistance again

036this is another potential quick win electric resistance compared to air source heat pumps you're going to cut cut electric use by you know approximately um two-thirds and you're going to have the panel capacity required to electrify you you've already gotten plenty of electric capacity to the home replacing delivered fuels you know more of a rural solution i think but again there it's very cost effective and also looking at the gas infrastructure for whether it's you know new neighborhoods or replacement of infrastructure within the community i live in chicago i love chicago we're in the process of replacing every gas line in the entire city because it's aging out and um at the same time that we're also talking about decarbonizing across the country so um thinking about the gas structure question is also important and

037then last but but not least think about the health and emissions impacts that anna sophia mentioned earlier i'm trying to put a value to that so our mind did analysis on for new construction comparing the economics of a mixed fuel gas heated home versus an all-electric home in a number of locations across the u.s and we found that in every location it is cost effective on a net present value today to go with the all-electric home and that includes columbus ohio same climate zone where is where you are and all the way up to minneapolis which is obviously much colder and so um you know we've got a link to this to this study and that we can provide um but the outlook is good as far as economics of new construction yeah and um

038i think it's really important to think about new construction as a high leverage opportunity because retrofits are really hard any of you that have done anything to your house know that it is challenging to do anything and we see that in the electrification space too this graph is just one example of many studies that try to quantify the cost of transitioning a mixed fuel building to an all-electric building this happens to be um a set of different commercial buildings and what you see here is that if you look at the simple payback of some of these retrofit these retrofits to electrification in some buildings you do not get a payback for transitioning to building electrification today so this means it is super important that any new building that we are installing now is is built

039to the quality that we want uh for for our future that said i i do want to emphasize that we expect that these costs will continue to come down over time brett has talked about some of the big technology improvements we've seen over time but one of the the biggest sources of costs that we see across the u.s are actually from soft costs so these are installation costs so cities have a big role to play in helping drive down these costs making sure that installers have the right information the right training so that they are not pricing in a big risk premium into uh their retrofit installations um like brett mentioned there are a lot of really wonderful resources out there uh for cities um that are looking to encourage building electrification in their cities

040and i'll point this one out because it's it's it just came out maybe two weeks ago and it's a really wonderful resource and they flagged four key considerations for for city staff that are looking to encourage retrofits the first is to really think about engaging with building owners before equipment fails you know once a building owner or house owner furnace breaks that's the wrong time to be talking about building electrification because at that point it becomes a a heating emergency especially if this is happening in the winter and there's no time for um upgrades to to the infrastructure and so early engagement is really critical the second is demonstrating to the supply chain that your city is an appealing place to invest either via policy or market sizing opportunity information that you can offer manufacturers

041the third is supporting whole building electrical service upgrade this will be especially important if you're not only thinking about building electrification but you're also thinking about electric vehicles and solar you need to think about how all of these components are affecting the building in a whole whole system um and then the last and really touches on on the point that brett mentioned about an equitable transition you have to think about you how you're providing safeguards to prevent displacement if you're making investments in in the buildings so with that um you know here here's how we see it uh if we were in your shoes this is kind of how we would be thinking about where we would we would focus first and we would start with new construction i know that ann arbor doesn't have

042the luxury of setting its own building codes today but there are ways to incentivize a new construction um to be built right from the start the second opportunity which brett really emphasized was on electric resistance this is a cost saving opportunity today for residents and actually ann arbor has quite a few residents about 22 percent of ann arbor's housing units currently run on electric resistance so this is a great place to start building that supply chain and getting cuffs and getting contractors comfortable with this technology next city buildings affordable multi-family housing introducing this technology when people are replacing their air conditioning as brett mentioned this technology provides both cooling and heating and then probably the toughest nut to crack will be the gas retrofits and we can talk about those um in the questions so

043with that um i'm offering here some some next steps as you're thinking about where to go from here assessing and growing government capacity will be really critical if you are engaging with building owners early and often what does that mean for how much staff and what is what background they need in order to support that you need a productive relationship with the utility especially as you're thinking about electricity service upgrades to specific neighborhoods that are going primarily electric and demonstrating city leadership is also a good way to build that supply chain if you start with city buildings that can be a good opportunity to to help bring down that risk premium that we talked about earlier green zoning opportunities are a good way to get around this building code preemption that you have in the

044city of ann arbor and then i know missy is a big advocate across many many forums but continuing to advocate for regulatory and policy interventions and then lastly making sure the people that are making decisions have the right resources and i'm sure this all feels very overwhelming this is not easy to you know completely transform the way that our buildings run but fortunately it's not the first time in the united states that we've made a big transition um you know in the 1940s most of our homes ran on coal it's hard to believe that today and in just 40 years coal has basically disappeared as a heating source and and electricity has been on the rise ever since so we can do it and i hope that you all consider rmi as a partner and

045thinking through this complicated but really critical transition we've laid out here some of the best resources we've used i think a lot of them will be useful to thinking about how to move forward i think missy can provide these but with that eager to to hear your questions i know we've gone a little bit over missy but feel free to tell us how much time we have for questions uh this is john murski um as far as i'm concerned um this is really important so i don't know that we want to limit um the questions um i have a little bit of glare if people can use their uh reactions and put your hand up i see that commissioner cleavy has a question mark you want to start us off with the q a yes

046i'm one of those who think of rocky mountain institute myself i can't quite get it to rmi these days it's great to see you guys are still in business and please give our our best to your founders my question it really has to do with staging do you have resources or papers or some writings or something you could point me to that addresses the pacing of electrification and the priority of electrification um it seems crazy to put an air heat exchanger on my house and then run it with electricity that's generated with coal frack gas so at some point i have to have access to renewable energy either through a a utility that we have a really good relationship with good luck or some other way so i guess the question is as part of

047your formula or a recommendation on next steps how does access to renewable energy to um you know power the electrification factor in that's my question i can give that a shot if you want and sophia um yeah that is a key question because you do have to think about where your electricity is coming from um the i guess the two things that i i'd stay to that point um i mean for one thing immediately you have one thing in your control which is you can put soul around your house and feel feel pretty good about it um of course you're still connected to the grid so there's that aspect of it but um the other the other part of it is looking at the lifetime of this equipment and so in the time that that

048you have this heat pump installed or the alternative the furnace how many years is it going to be in there 15 20 25 how long do people leave equipment in their houses it's important to look at the cumulative emissions across that and what the grid is going to do across that trajectory i don't in my backpack i don't i don't have exactly what that what the summation of that looks like for um ann arbor specifically but um i don't know we could follow up offline with that and see if if um if anybody's done thinking on that specific yeah yeah i'll i'll add um brett i your i think that the key thing to emphasize here is um you're right building electrification on its own is not the solution uh we're we're thinking about decarbonizing

049the whole economy um and the the overall strategy that we talk about is efficiency of course we need to use less energy overall uh renewables and then electrify everything to run on those renewables and so um because we are on this journey to uh decarbonize our electricity system uh we did an analysis of every state in the us and we found that for 99 u.s residents if you install a heat pump today if you look at the emissions over the lifetime it will save emissions compared to a highly efficient gas furnace and in places like ann arbor where you're talking about much faster pace than what we're seeing nationally those efficiency those emission reductions would happen much quickly over the lifetime of of the technology but the quickest way to do it as brett mentioned

050is to put solar on your roof thank you commissioner schreiberg yeah thank you great presentation um just want to see if you can expand on the bullet point where you said the need for partnership with utilities because i'm trying to think through the incentive structure for utilities and what sorts of partnerships are needed to help accelerate this yeah i think there's um there's there's two flavors of that one would be um incentives for installation and in michigan like like many states is purged energy efficiency regulations it's tied to energy efficiency as opposed to beneficial electrification and so there are incentives out there check them out they're good they'll take a bite out of um take a take a bite out of the price of a heat pump um but it but it varies and and

051um you know it's not going to buy the whole heat pump for instance it's probably not not going to come close right now the other part of so that's part of it link up to with the energy efficiency programs the other part of it is thinking about electric capacity because especially in retrofit application um you may be in a condition where you need to add capacity to the home um or you know at least run 240 volt service to where you need it in the home to these things and so i'm connecting with the utility for to streamline service improvements like that whether needed um is something that could go a long ways towards easing a glide path to electrification that's right and i'll just point out that the second resource on that resource list

052is a is a deck all about utility and city engagement on electrification that you can look at in more detail commissioner calvin garcia you are muted thanks thank you so much for being here i've been really looking forward to this presentation my my question is with regards to the key city staff next steps your first item um about growing government capacity can you speak a little bit more to that you want to take that yeah happy too um yeah i think the key thing here is to understand what role you're expecting the city to play in this transition and then to make sure that your staff is um has the right skill set or is properly resourced to do that so you know one one example would be if the city is supporting um building

053owners prior to their equipment failing which is ideally the way you would do it you would engage with building owners way before they have a problem uh then you would need staff that could support that level of engagement you know kind of spoke the language that building owners speak uh in order to to talk through the these problems with them so i think i think similarly and in the planning process if you're providing uh zoning incentives for for building electrification or or all electric buildings you'll need um you'll need city planners that are knowledgeable about the technology and and and what building owners or building developers should really be providing so those are the types of things i'm thinking about when i say evaluate and consider improving or erupting the capacity of of governments the

054the other thing that i've heard um from other city officials that are trying to deal with this is that um often the the questions end up that you know the buck stops with the city they have to answer the questions and um even down to the level of the technology and sort of convincing um certain parties that it works and the solutions are out there and so to the extent that those resources can be developed and on hand for sort of an easy response we provided in in the resources we did provide links to some resources that have been used in that capacity specifically in other locations and i've heard rumor that there's a michigan specific version of kind of a guide guide book for electrification that should be coming out and and certainly from

055another organization and uh and uh i think that could be extremely useful for city officials but that's good to know if you get word of that if you can let missy know that would be appreciated yep absolutely great i have a comment a brief comment and a question that i hope will spur some thinking and questions potentially from planning commission members just a brief comment and that is that uh it was not mentioned that there are also heat pump dryers in the big scheme of things that's not a significant contributor obviously they're not running um typically um as much as a stove a gas cooktop or or oven for that matter as well as a furnace but i own one they came on the market about five years ago in the u.s i think they've

056been on the market in europe for about 10 years so people we want to encourage people to consider that the question that i had is you talked about starting out with focusing on new construction and you mentioned that there's savings to be had by only installing electrical infrastructure in a new building i'm wondering if it's also possible and maybe someone from planning commission can speak to this whether it's possible that the city does something to maybe change fee structures or something like that for tap-ins on either the gas side which makes it more expensive or on the electric side would potentially makes it less expensive if a gas connection is is forgone or not not used i'm wondering if there's anything that you've heard uh anybody on the call or from rmi or from planning

057whether that's uh something that potentially could be leveraged sarah did you have a comment on that or did you have a different question totally different question totally different okay we'll take years after any comments about mine or yeah on the the gas service question um i have heard that that might be a question about rate basing with the gas utility um so it may be something that rises to the policy level um so that that's where where it might go um and don't forget there's also piping in the home too so it's not just getting the gas to the home but also the copper inside so yeah i i i can see where much of this would be controlled by the utility i'm just wondering if the the city can do anything uh to offer

058carrots or sticks so that we basically with new construction uh eliminate as much uh canoe construction with the double infrastructure of gas and electricity and just move to strictly electrical infrastructure with new buildings does anybody know um whether that's possible that the city can influence that right did you want to speak no but i'm curious to hear uh if people have thoughts on this and i was thinking brett leonard maybe um two brits other breads um so uh uh for those that don't know me i'm brett leonard i'm the planning manager um and um so i think it's a it's an interesting question i will say that i've um i've had more involvement in exploring those related issues frankly as it relates to water and sewer fees at the city um those can be um

059i i'm speculating here but i think that they can be much more adverse to a project than the utility um tap fees which are sort of um while there are some incremental aspects of those that are city related street cuts the like i think some a lot of those are are established by the utility companies themselves so um my initial thought is that it might be possible but i think that because those particular aspects of the development the city has a relatively minor role in those i don't know how beneficial we might be able to incentivize that but every bit helps so um the short answer is i think it's probably worth exploring i i don't know how much of a large benefit i see there yeah okay great oh we i just know go

060ahead sorry i'll i'll just note that something that i've heard some cities do i think this was started in the city of seattle that um also did not was not able to require all electric buildings initially um although they recently uh have was that they first required all building developers to consider the cost and and show the proposal of what an all-electric version of the building looked like and so often building builders would come with both proposals and what they would find out uh kind of being forced to do this exercise is that actually the all-electric version is cheaper and they're like oh well looks like i'm going all electric and this is not something i considered before and so you know perhaps that is an approach um that is just just elevating the cost

061savings because i think a lot of developers um have not considered or do not consider what an all-electric version would look like i think the planning commission has been doing that in recent instances um at least requesting it but potentially a policy change to require it is something we can think about we'll capture this in the minutes um and do a little bit more digging after the meeting so thanks for that exchange um commissioner mills take it away as anna sophia knows i've got a lot of questions um but also for the energy commission too just so to kind of background like we have as planning commission we have been asking inquiring um encouraging because that's what within our current confines and we do have some policies that do encourage um or incentivize um but

062but they have we haven't had very many takers and so that's one of the things like realigning those policies we do have like green bonuses um it's also tied to affordability though and so this is because these things often come up in the same breath and these are dual goals in our city of sustainability and affordability um we hear different some different things when we've asked developers about this um there's different kinds of housing stock new buildings that are being built in the city single-family homes right multi-family like low-rise and then multi-family high-rise the like the upfront cost analysis do you know if that's if it's consistently cheaper across all of those building types electrification um no i don't think it's possible to make it make a blanket case like that um and it probably

063like there's there's so much new nuance to um to cost estimates and i came from the design world an architect and it's it's just you know what what does the supplier have on hand and what's the familiarity or are they intentionally bidding themselves out of something that they don't want to do and um and then also how much presence is there from the manufacturers are they there as a resource to help help these people figure it out so they don't have to put a big risk premium on top of this stuff um so i don't i don't think it's possible to make a blanket statement like that it also you know to recognize the cost um the cost savings it really needs to be done um it done correct and sort of integratively and look

064at all the elements in the big picture but i certainly have i i've heard enough anecdotes out there from you know like in the mid-rise um or i should say load low to mid-rise multi-family sector at least around here it's kind of the wild west of system types right now because they're up pretty darn close and so that's one where it seems like multi-family is is right for a pretty pretty rapid transition and then home building is a different beast because it's so commoditized and streamlined it's a matter of how fast we can sort of transition that market that's not a very good answer and it uh it doesn't explicitly give an answer to the question but um that's that's what i know but i i think it's important to um elevate where these cost

065savings are coming from uh and i think there are there are a couple drivers uh the first is the lack of gas infrastructure so you know it does depend on the you know what the utilities is going to offer the developer um and how much they have to pay to extend the gas lines to the buildings and you know to to develop the the gas infrastructure within the building but the other big driver is only having one piece of equipment for both heating and cooling um and of course that that would be different if the building is not providing cooling um or had not intended to provide cooling or um and so when i've seen several different analysis those are some of the biggest drivers to the the lower upfront costs of all-electric as opposed

066to mex fuel buildings so hopefully that good the idea that we're getting mixed things could be legit it's not that they just don't know that they may come back saying we ran the numbers and it's more expensive i mean what we heard recently honestly on a project is we can't do it on the end units we can do it on the middle units of a of a condo building um and so is that so that that's not crazy it's not just the lack of education it could be that like first based on you know different building types that may be different right and especially in a nascent market and in today's construction market where there's a shortage of everything um i'm i'm not surprised to see fluctuations in prices like that um i just say

067keep pushing on those the savers that anna sofia mentioned and um and hopefully we get more of the success stories and build a market and then it snowballs and and it commoditizes and costs come down commissioner hook um did you want to comment on this before uh sarah goes to her remaining questions oh i've got a hundred questions but myself i'm a building engineer so this kind of fits in my hobby right um the one answer to that question i think you really need to look at is life cycle cost if you just look at it from a first cost which unfortunately a lot of the regulators have to do um it doesn't hunt at residential scale right now but i think if you look at life cycle cost and you throw in a carbon

068piece whether it's a tax or a fear however want to structure it i think any of these infrastructure types will hunt with electrification right out of the box the challenge is getting regulators to think life cycle and actually put that in rules and adopt some energy codes that really focus on that i think we'll see some big changes then but right now you mentioned that michigan is kind of a tough spot because our codes and standards are lagging we're not allowed as a city to do anything differently so we'll have to continue to fight the fight and see what we can do i think one piece that rmi thank you for presenting tonight the one thing you might want to mention too is with the pandemic the number of commercial buildings out there is kind

069of bloated and i think going forward we're going to see less demand for commercial size holdings what i think we should be looking at is kind of like megawatts why do we need all this why do we need all these new buildings um let's retrofit and use buildings that have the capability to perform well as an electrified building and eliminate the buildings that are antiquated and cannot be energy efficient if we start thinking about that mindset i think we'll see a reduction in stock that's related to the size of the city we won't be building as many buildings we won't need as many energy systems to support them and i think will really make a difference from a carbon point of view so just a point of view of a life cycle kind of mindset

070thanks thanks great point i just have a quick comment too mark and then we'll get back to sarah i think um sarah on on the question of uh that you're you're asking here perhaps part of the answer is you know sort of do no harm to future electrification because we know that you know during the next 20 years or so their lifestyle of these buildings the economics are going to change over time so the one thing i think that we can do and you heard it from the first question i have asked is we need to get as much solar up as possible and so on these new buildings that to me the number one question that seems to be relevant is that is the business thing does it face south or does it is

071it solo ready um and those kinds of things you know we've we've seen lots of uh buildings and housing complexes and stuff be uh approved in ann arbor where the the houses are purposely designed so they don't face south and just a slight change of the orientation of the buildings you'd still get the same things you might have to change the driveways a bit but otherwise it you're making all of those houses solar axis you know and and for for future time so i would think you know that would be one of the number one things is you know well if you can't do the economics now does it work at least don't put your roof in such so that you'll never ever be able to put solar on because when the economics do change

072they're not going to change in your favor because you gave up your best option for on-site electrification which is distributed solar on that building um also raising its its real estate value et cetera so i would think that's a question that could help you go forward if you just get that answer thank you thanks commissioner sir uh commissioner mills did you have some other questions and then we'll get to commissioner clark i do but i want to let them up the others go and just to say like in the interest of sharing between our committees one of the the tools the incentive tools that we have is something called a plan project modification which gives some flexibility to developers it used to say solar orientation you got you could check it off with solar orientation

073and we actually changed it to say that's not enough you need to go farther and so like we're really trying like sure we're not going far enough clearly um but i just so you've got some sense of kind of what is in what kind of the the mechanisms that we already have at our disposal or what we're trying to do to better orient not not just orient but like push them over that hump so um any other i mean clearly other commissioners should clearly chime in because i could just keep talking mr clark hi so i was interested a little bit more on the affordable housing you mentioned that um there's an area of opportunity for affordable housing and um like one thing ann arbor does well with our nonprofit affordable housing is has been

074um trying to shift towards all-electric which is a pretty good accomplishment and um i'm just curious about um actually it's interesting because i think our affordable housing uh developers are held to higher standards of market rate here because we have to meet the enterprise green and living or equivalent and so i was just curious if you had any thoughts on um if there are any other cities that have done like required or at least advised or had a score on the enterprise green that they were suggested to receive or if you have a preferred criteria the living buildings challenge or any of those which ones stand out yeah um well i can this area on building electrification and affordable housing is is a growing space um and i'll i'll mention that several housing agencies now

075have commitments to retrofit all their housing to all electric especially because of the health impacts of and all the health benefits of all electric homes but for new development or significant retrofits and the city that comes to mind as a as a as a good example is um philadelphia um they uh look to make it a requirement uh for um for all affordable housing subsidized affordable housing to meet a passive house standard um which is essentially all electric there's some ways to get around it but um they tend to all electric and are essentially zero emission um and they found consistently that there is essentially no cost difference for the developer between meeting the passive health standard versus um you know the standard developments that were uh being built and so that that example is

076not shared in this resource list but i think i can pull it out and send it to missy to forward along if you're interested sorry can i clarify really quick i was asking um if there were any cities that had had market rate um developments required to do a certification similar because our affordable housing already is held to pretty high standards as far as like um going towards electrification and um air quality our score all of that and i was just curious if that was a model that's been done in other cities um or if that makes sense or if there's a preferred set of criteria as opposed to others got it so you're you're you're asking about market rate housing uh unregulated market rate housing is that right yeah just to see if we

077can hold them to the same standard as the affordable developments yeah um it's pretty uh complicated and there aren't very many examples of um of cities taking on a existing buildings there are maybe three or four that use a a tool called the building performance standard um which essentially um it usually only um is used for large buildings which multi-family buildings might qualify under but it requires buildings to meet a progressively tighter standard over time for emissions in new york city uh for example has this so does dc um st louis uh recently passed one as well um and that is something that michigan could do um but it requires a lot of city investment because you essentially have to estimate the emissions of every built thing that you're monitoring and that requires um a

078pretty high degree of mark of um city management and oversight and so we're seeing um we're seeing a lot larger cities tackling this but hopefully um as more and more cities adopt this policy they can um they become more more consistent because you're right there there are a lot of policy lovers for tackling existing buildings um i think we need to be careful time wise um but missy i see you have your hand up um and sarah i knew that you had some questions does he want to go first quickly super quick because i'll talk in the staff updates but i just wanted to flag on that particular point that staff and osi working with a number of other units do have a draft benchmarking and home energy disclosure ordinance which would give us the

079foundational data that we need to be able to track how our buildings are performing so we can elevate high performers and then be much more surgical in helping our underperformers be better performers in that landscape so you'll be seeing that in the not too distant the last question i had really kind of oh i'm sorry it links actually quite well to what commissioner clark was saying which was in terms of specific standards and this is um more about um to rmi about when you say green zoning um i've got a sense of what i think it that means but can you tell us like what you what your intention is by that and like what others have done like what other places would you point us to that we might yeah so since we're short

080on time i'll tell you what the resource is um on the on the list of documents it is number three massachusetts has done a lot on green zoning and there are a lot of cities within massachusetts that have um that have implemented policies at the local level uh prior to being able and they have a similar situation where they're not allowed to um or they weren't allowed to develop their own building codes so it's actually a very similar policy environment so um yeah i'd point you to that resource there commissioner randall i'll be fast one thing we've also heard from developers is that the capacity of our grid can't handle it um and that we've asked them to be able to put solar on top and things like that and that's one way to address

081it but if you're doing a high-rise there's only so much of the percentage you're building that that can tackle and i'm just wondering if there's anything you could guide us in any way in terms of how to either think about how to tackle that question which seems immense or if there are other things that we're just not aware of or thinking about when people raise sales i think that's that's a great opportunity for a conversation with the utilities because the those situations are going to be so localized at the distribution level um and digging into the question too because is it when they say that um you think about winter peak versus summer peak i think it gets quite complicated and um yeah it's probably a pretty granular conversation with the utility i'm not i'm

082not sure i can answer it with a statement okay yeah uh definitely work with the utility um you know and or potentially uh intervene in regulatory proceedings you know the utilities are incentivized to do things like upgrade electric infrastructure because they can rate base a lot of that infrastructure improvement um and if they can't perhaps that's a conversation you can have with the regulator so i'd encourage you to look at resource number two and the existing resource list that talks about that exact issue great thank you mr leonard um i would just like to tap onto the complexity of that that issue commissioner mills had actually helped educate me with some conversations on this matter and uh you know even things that i took for granted for example that a multi-family development on a per

083unit basis might be more efficient than a detached single family in fact we were hearing that from the utility that in fact they program those buildings sort of for a peak energy usage which is higher on a per unit basis that might not be borne out over operation but again the complexity of sizing that service for 100 units with the corresponding shared spaces and elevators and building systems for that building are quite different than 100 separate units and so i just to add a dimension to how complex that that it is and it probably does really rely on almost a case-by-case conversation and probably infrastructure sector by sector conversation with the utility companies thanks for the comment i think that reinforces the earlier comment about potentially requiring studies um because each one of these situations

084um has a lot of different factors and is unique you know how tall the building is whether solar can go on the roof or not what the far is of the building all these things have implications um with the envelope how the envelope is designed i think it might be something that we might want to talk about too is some of the different standards that commissioner clark mentioned um and also anna sophia you talked about passive passive house that's something we might want to talk about at some point my understanding is that generally pretty expensive because the envelope requirements are so tight but you know these are all interdependent uh topics that impact and the energy use of the of the house um so it's it's pretty difficult to come up with uh one or

085two easy rule of thumbs and then apply it across the board to every single type of building unfortunately um that's yes some go ahead um and then i'd like to maybe take one more comment or question and then move on to our second presentation yeah and i i just want to emphasize that um this goes back to the comment on government capacity uh you're right this this often will require a judgment call uh to figure out is is the is the developer acting in good faith um have they made the best effort or or are they not aware of what exists in the market and can i connect them with with those resources um and and your staff may already be uh capable and ready of having those really amp theft conversations across all these

086levels but perhaps there needs to be development in some areas to support that level of individual scrutiny yeah good point i mean this is basically a multi-variable optimization that we're talking about here and gets really complex that's why you know larger buildings are using engineers to do this kind of stuff i think chuck was um you know understands that that uh very well so um i guess um we would like to thank you again um brett and nanosphere for joining us uh it was really i think instructive and maybe a good uh aspect of this was that we may be left with more questions leaving it um than what we entered but that's that's a good thing because you've peaked our curiosity and um we're going to have as missy mentioned earlier this workshop on

087heat pumps tomorrow i think we have well over 150 people that are signed up so maybe we're going to end up with even more questions after that um and um that's our job is to hopefully start to provide some some good answers to all these questions that are arising as we make this journey so thanks again very much and um you're welcome to to join us and continue to join us search with us um with our second presentation um which is a presentation on a solarize model that's called solar faithful and murray i don't know if you're there missy do you see murray by chance i don't see him let's see murray's with us murray i think you wanted to leave yours right maureen i see him now very good okay all right so murray

088um we're ready i think to go ahead and uh do your presentation why don't you start with uh a brief uh introduction i could do that but you'll do it much better than i all right but i'll introduce myself in a minute but before we do i want to do a little audience participation how many here raise your hand belong to a house of worship for instance a church synagogue mosque all right i'm seeing probably about half how many have a next door neighbor or good friend that belong to a synagogue church or house of fortune keep your everybody keep your hands up so that's just about everybody so i'm gonna try to enlist your help at the end of my presentation in the last presentation one of the things people said was getting solar

089on as many roofs as we can so that's what what this is about and working for a volunteer organization a house of worship i i really have free labor because i just ask people to volunteer and they do it i i don't have to pay people to make decisions so that's one big advantage i have so let me share my screen and start my presentation if you can go to full screen that would be great yeah we see it wonderful all right great so here's where i introduce myself you can see all my many roles and i don't get paid for any of those i'm retired i make money as a consultant but i'm president of the genesis board genesis is a house of worship i'll be talking about today i'm co-chair of the genesis

090green team that's how i got my start in this business of solar i'm a member of the ann arbor 2030 district leadership council which is trying to get reduced energy usage of buildings here in ann arbor i'm co-chair of ann arbor solar faithful with which is the organization which which helped us do this project and i'm was also recently invited to be on the ann arbor lmi load mil income working group for solar so i'm going to try to start this with the little four-minute interview i did for the 2030 district and i let's hope it plays if not i have a fallback plan hi i'm murray rosenthal more about me later the important thing is that we're standing in front of the genesis building as you can see this building houses two houses of

091worship saint claire's episcopal church and temple beth evan and this is the one of very few organizations in the world where two houses of worship have an equal partnership in worship today we're going to talk about our solar installation which went live in february of this year 2020. this is our social hall and there's 80 of these panels on the top of the social hall the flat roof there's also an office building on the other side where there's another 80 percent it's 160 solar panels generating a ton of power this is a very powerful model well we're back inside the genesis sanctuary and this is our neutral position where we can hold public events but those panels hold out and you can see the sacraments for the sinclairs and also the the ark for genesis

092so just to give you a background before we're at now to give you my background i'm a scientist i just retired from terumo a few months ago where we made heartland machines and before that i was a clinical chemist and i invented the first hemoglobin a1c test so let's talk about the cost of solar panels those are 160 panels on the two roofs here at genesis will generate about 30 percent of our electrical power when our building is open right now it's closed because of covid but those panels cost money in our case a hundred and twenty thousand dollars but we use the very unique funding model called the investor model where 20 congregates about half from each congregation half from tbe and half from sinclair's provided five to fifteen thousand dollars as an investment

093and they formed an llc so they could take advantage of the 30 percent tax credit that was available in 2019 so that's a true win-win situation where the house of worship only pays for the solar power generated there actually genesis is getting about a 16 discount right now from dte rates now we can't do this we couldn't do this on our own we had a lot of support from an organization called michigan interfaith power and light and they're one of numerous interfaith power and light organizations across the country just about every state has one and the goal of michigan interfaith powering light is to allow its members to practice great sustainability to put solar installations to put leds like in this sanctuary we replaced all the lights with leds a few years ago now right

094now they have a climate voter initiative which they're trying to get people to get out the vote and to vote for candidates it's very important this time of year to vote for candidates who appreciate sustainability and will hopefully draft legislation to support solar panels and other sustainability just like the sum it up hey we did it 160 panels 160 solar panels above our heads here at genesis all right was it everybody able to hear that give me a thumbs up all right all right great all right i'm gonna use an acronym in many of my slides it's how very simple means house of worship but in this case it also means non-profit because nonprofits can benefit for this too and here's a picture of campus chapel on the michigan campus and they have solar panels

095there too although they didn't use the investor model they they got some of the alumni to donate money and they have a solar installation there too oops so i mentioned ann arbor solar faithful it's basically an email group we don't have any bylaws or website or bank account we're just a group of hungry altruistic volunteers who want to get solar on any building any non-profit building we can in ann arbor or washington county actually john recently joined the board thanks john for helping out so this is this is about the solar faithful investor model as i showed in the interview there and there's going to be three parts to my presentation what we did and the next slide has a quote from a very very patriotic american jerry garcia somebody had to do something and

096it's just incredibly pathetic that it had to be us so the second part of the presentation is why we did it and the third is how we did it so here's what we did and these are the numbers you can read them but your images are blocking my views so there's 160 solar panels it's a 64 kilowatt system uh 400 watts per panel and 31 of the consume power and larry kerber who was our installer he said he told us in our quote that we would generate 31 of our power and it turned out for the first year it was 30.6 that's pretty close and that that's first is a normal year we were close so it's actually over 50 because we were close but compared to previous years when we were open it was

09730.6 went live in february last year this is a little closer pic pictures you can see the on the left the panel the panels on the slanted office roof are are actually attached to the roof the ones on the flat roof of the social hall are weighted down by concrete blocks so they can be removed if we needed to do service on on the roof and you can see we have an app and my phone and i look at it pretty much daily to see how much power we're generating from our inverter so why do we need an llc for this investor model well there's two reasons there's the 30 tax credit that we take advantage of our investors and we also have depreciation so this is the way the investor model works eastover power

098which is the company that the congregants formed they bought the panels and paid for the installation and they owned the panels and genesis agrees to have the panels on the roof and use the power and pay east over for the power generated the investors in in east over get a 30 tax credit as we speak they're probably getting their refund this week i hope and genus this pays a little bit less for the electricity 11.5 cents fixed rate for the next 20 years and the current dt rate when i made this this powerpoint pack was 12.5 is actually almost 13.5 now so it's quite a savings dte typically raises rates once a year so we formed this company called east over from the the congregants of saint claire's episcopal church in temple bethlehem and one

099of the one of the investors thought of this name east over and because east over genesis is located on the corner of packard street in east over place so why not name it east over but that's not the real reason is because it's a contraction of our two spring holidays easter and passover so here's why we did it it's our shared climate volatility problem and people like to say global warming but it's not only warming it's the climate is more volatile even we're getting cold snaps just because the the cold air from canada is being dragged down by the by our hotter climate uh we wanted to reduce the carbon footprint of our building that's one of the reasons why we wanted long-term energy cost savings and we are saving money already the first year

100we saved about seven hundred dollars increased property value another reason and genesis sponsors a food bank and it's in a really old 150 year old building in the front of our property called the wisdom house and we we help one to two hundred people with their food every week and why do we do that there's no payback for that we do it anyways because it's the right thing to do and that's the main reason that that we we put solar on there is because it's the right thing to do and here's how we did it and this is a big process but we made it simple for you we have a how-to document so i'm only going to cover the first the first step the other 17 are covered in the document and oh i'll

101give a little detail on some of them but i'm just going to look at the detail the very first step because i think it's the most interesting step so our focus for today is that how investor model there's a federal solar tax credit credit it's not as an energy tax credit it's called investment tax credit and it's been extended through 2022 thanks to congress when they passed that that bill for the our i think it was a 600 or 400 per person payment back in early part of this year they also extended the 26 tax credit two more years so if they hadn't done that it would would have gone down to 22 next year next year in 2023 or i'm sorry 2022 so that gives us some uh a little bit of rope before

102we hang ourselves so you got to get the initial buy-in talk talk to the people in charge talk to your clergy your light leaders your board members about the idea in general terms and since you all raised your hands you can do that or get your friend to do that and make them an offer they can't refuse i mean this is this is like a no-brainer you're going to get solar inc stalled at no cost no donations no payments except for the power that's generated using this investor model you're going to save money in year one and not pay a cent this is a no-brainer so tell them about similar success stories at other buildings and we're going to get to that later and just tell them you're going to explore the idea for now

103this is this we're not forcing you to do anything just think about it so then ask the question may we proceed with a solar power investment group and they're gonna say interesting you may proceed so we took it to the two congregational boards and the genesis board and one of the congregational board one of the investment opportunity open to all members of both congregations but specifically said they only want the the congregants to be members of the investment group so we couldn't go to bill gates or somebody else with deep pockets but that doesn't mean that another church can't you could you can find uh and you know somebody who pays anybody who pays taxes and has some extra money lying around can be an investor and make it an altruistic investment and even make

104some money over the years so we we covered step one in detail as i said and there's a total of 18 steps and they're in our how-to document which is actually on the michigan inner faith power and light website and it's going to be referenced on the next page here there it is and that's uh that's who that's that's sort of you should look for the how-to document but in any case solar solar faithful is supported by michigan interface power and light so that's that's why they put that on their website and that's uh that's another example of win-win where just a informal email group of volunteers is being supported by a large organization and interfaith power and light is a national organization just about every state has has that an office so that's where

105it is and this is part of step 14 this is actually a part of a power purchase agreement we entered into actually three agreements to do this one was a power purchase agreement which shows how much we pay for electricity over the years and buyback which is in the right hand column so the panels are depreciated and after year five uh we have a buyback where they if the congress genesis and the two congregations wants to buy the installation and no longer pay us for the east over for the the power they can do it and there's there's buyback going all the way out to year 20 at which point the panels will be fully depreciated and east overpower will donate the panels if they haven't been bought already and so at genesis we kind

106of run in quicksand because we have to get everybody in the same boat i mean if if we're in a board meeting and some in the vote is seven to one we've got to go back to the drawing board we need consensus i mean every different issue i mean that's that's the way we operate and so to do this we had to only get five different entities to approve it the genesis board the temple beth emmett board the saint claire's vestry the episcopal diocese of michigan which stick their lawyers on us and saint claires had a congregational vote pretty much if you have a church and do this you probably only have to pass one of these i had five it took about six months but hey we did it so there were three parts

107to our presentation here and here's some resources we have that how-to document on the michigan interfaith power light website we have solar faithful here to support anybody who wants to do this we have we have our faith upline our our boards and our clergy who are who supported us in doing this sustainability there are religious tenets that that support sustainability about the earth in which we live our group loves to present just like i'm doing right now just ask us we have communication i'm constantly answered answering questions uh from churches uh your installers are a very big resource use them they are they're great including larry and the government you guys are supporting what we do we have publicity i've i've been asked by many times many times about our installation by our congregants and

108even one of the uh people in the investment group put solar panels on his optometrist office building in ypsilanti so this is generating interest uh there's two articles in the washington jewish news one was in september one in april last month and so far we've saved about 138 000 pounds of co2 emissions equivalent to planting over a thousand trees so what's the path forward so we need your help we want to get this set up like they have in detroit where they have interested house of houses of worship they meet on a monthly basis and they learn about energy savings they can do for their building and we want to set this up here in ann arbor uh with our vast amount of volunteer activity we can do it and we're thinking of starting to

109to get this going hopefully by the fall and we're working with through the 2030 uh district and also michigan interfaith power and light to to support this so if you have a church find out who the green team is if you don't have a green team tell your pastor you need one and ask somebody to volunteer and let's get them enrolled in this all right so genesis was only example there are seven other buildings in southeast michigan who have done done this using the investor model total of 534 panels 188 kilowatts and just a little bit under a half a million in investment and i i did leave a pdf of this because i know it's really busy and if you want to look at the details it's in the same folders as presentation is

110this presentation and here's a picture of ozone house with which john mursky and janet culbertson formed that llc and that was new construction and the solar panels were i think on into day one it's a beautiful beautiful campus there for ozone house so i'm ready for questions thank you murray uh i'd like to comment real quickly or emphasize um before i uh open the floor up for questions that this can be used for any non-profit so it can be used on green hill schools it could be used for a parochial school it could be used for a government or a township building it can be used outside of the ann arbor this is not obviously exclusive to the city of ann arbor this can be used anywhere nationwide i'm working with my brother-in-law in new

111jersey to put it on their house of worship um just outside of new york city so um when you think of this model uh it can be used for by any non-profit that um you know is um owning a building and um using power for that building so think of this in the broadest terms and i'd also like to just point out that um when murray talks about all these steps there are templates for all the contracts there are templates for calculating the costs and you can change any of the variables to see what the impact is um for all the parties so this is really uh something that has been standardized and we have now a bunch of best practices that can be applied and tweaked to any organizationals any organization's needs to be

112able to apply this model so i'm going to open it up to questions commissioner cleavy thank you murray um just a quick comment um over about 25 years ago reverend charles morris and i hooked up with jerry lawson we got a grant from jerry and we founded the michigan interfaith power and light and uh basically in my living room and you know at the time in farmington hills so um i just want to say how pleased i am to see how this uh how this project has happened and you you have far exceeded our expectations for for this and i i thank you so much for keeping this thing going and doing so well so do more it's great we got 12 000 congregations in michigan so let's hit them all and so congratulations good

113well done yeah thanks yeah there's over 100 in ann arbor by itself does anybody else have any questions or comments yes commissioner lee i just wanted to say thank you uh there's no uh silver bullet to environmental sustainability and so i just want to say thank you for obviously doing this and putting together the uh obviously the entire pamphlet related to this so literally from the bottom of my heart thank you hey you're welcome welcome you're welcome and and one way you can you're welcome me is hook me up with your house of worship and and again this this can cross state lines so if any of one any of you know someone um in another state or for that matter or another part of michigan um have them reach out to murray or to

114me or others commissioner streiberg yeah for when the echo thanks and actually i'm the member of temple beth emmett and on the commission didn't even realize this uh existed so this is amazing um i wanted to just ask how you're doing or if the outreach to uh membership of these uh houses of worship is is part of that uh process uh i won't take long in this but i work at the national wildlife federation we have a program called sacred grounds that works with houses of warship to install native plant gardens but the key component is actually you know inspiring and incentivizing people to do it at home so i'm just wondering if they're parallel efforts in terms of inspiring uh home and other installations on solar a great question and you know we we

115do have several houses of worship who over the years with solar faithful have have expressed interest and some of them have done it as i've shown and the the problem is when i reach out to a house of worship a pastor or perhaps a congregant i yeah i email i call but you know i get voicemail i get no response i think i've sent out over 100 emails and called maybe you know made five or six cold calls and i i just get to get stonewalled except for for once so hey if i can i need your help to point me to the right person to make the introduction that's all i need just do the groundwork and make that introduction and once i get my foot in the door they'll see this is really

116a no-brainer anyone else i i also wanted to add something that john had an idea about and i i did have some interest from a condo association a condo association could put solar to at least provide electricity to the common areas maybe the outside lighting so that's another type of non-profit quote non-profit that can benefit from this and if you have a question about whether an organization would qualify you know we would certainly be willing to uh pursue clarification of that matter for you so well thank you very much uh murray and um hopefully you'll get a lot more inquiries right so if you need my email just ask josh mcdonald or missy they can they can hook you up with my email all right very good thanks everybody thank you so that ends our

117formal uh presentations and um i just like to offer to the planning commission that the next point on our agenda is a report from the energy office and the office of sustainability and one of the things that missy is going to cover is some of the broad details of the settlement agreement between the city and dte and so depending on what other topics you have to consider you're welcome to to stay for that i have a hard stop at 8 00 pm your time 5 pm my time so i'm going to turn over the running of the meeting if i may to my vice chair carlene colin garcia and i'll stay on for just a few more minutes um but then i'll leave but missy um do you want to take things then from here

118yeah we have a lot of updates relevant to the conversation today so i'm so excited to have some of our planning commission colleagues with us before i kind of give i'm going to give a slew it's going to be like fire hose style friends just letting you know what's about to come your way but before i do that we have a special guest with us coming on camera right now valerie braider is the city's external legal counsel and i invited val to join us to give the overview of the settlement how would you like to take it away sure so i think as many folks saw the ann arbor city council approved unanimously a settlement of the dte voluntary green power case and it had a lot of what we had really wanted to see

119in it um so i wanted to make sure folks who were very interested were aware because it's good things right now but also the promise of some really exciting things in the future that would not be available but for being able to work with dte under our current law um so the fact that we were able to get it through a settlement is actually better than what we would have been able to get from peer litigation so one of those things is right now the way the voluntary green power programs or the my green power programs work is that residents have sort of access to one program which is backed by certain projects and businesses have access to others newer projects some of which are a lot cheaper than the ones that were built originally

120to serve the residents and that really created a situation where larger users could get better prices than smaller users and under the settlement there will be one pool of projects so it will no longer be that you know businesses get access to these kind of newer cheaper ones and residents don't it will actually be one pool of projects that we'll be able to uh use so that really should benefit residents who would like to participate another big thing that we got was really talking about landfills the landfill solar project and ann arbor's desire to have some community solar type options uh for residents and we've been able to kind of put those together in the dt has agreed to run a pilot program where if you know ann arbor will essentially build the landfill solar

121and sponsor it we can open up part of the project to anybody in dte so any customer in dte would have the option to say i want to sign up for that in the same way i sign up for my green power today they'd get a share of our power and get the same credits and the same costs as as we would so it is truly a kind of equal footing for folks who choose to sign up um to participate in sort of whatever size of the project that we would be and this also makes it a lot easier to have the discussions with pittsfield township about their desire to participate because now it's as easy as signing up for a new program you know compared to trying to do all kinds of complicated work

122arounds it's and again we're able to offer it to residents and businesses so people you know assuming that the project is buildable and is you know comes forward with a reasonable cost so that you know ann arbor wants to go forward will be able to offer that to anyone who wants to have the same solar benefits that we do in terms of ownership and the kind of credits that you would get in the program so while dt will own that program or will own the project um itself on being on the landfill that's probably a good thing for the city because of the liabilities that can come from building on a landfill um there will be that opportunity to participate on an equal footing and get all the benefits of the project you know and

123the cut costs and all that shared just as if you were you know the the anchor tenant which ann arbor would be so that's really exciting because it gives us a lot of control for being able to offer something that we know residents wanted but also people across dt's territory can participate so that was a big win and then another win really looks at what's in the future for uh our ability to really address some of the equity issues and environmental justice issues while looking at meeting our sustainability goals more efficiently and more quickly and right now michigan is one of only four states where you can get the same kind of green attribute for doing extra energy efficiency as you can for building a solar uh field so if your solar panel would have

124generated one kilowatt but your energy efficiency project generates or you know prevents one kilowatt from going under michigan law if you work with the utility you can get the same credit for that um nobody has ever tried that and we really wanted dte to try that with us and they have committed to working with us over the next two years to design that kind of program um we call it a voluntary power reduction agreement instead of power purchase agreement that would let a someone like in ann arbor that's saying look i want to be greener immediately it really invests in say schools uh in your disadvantaged areas or host communities that need new boilers or rec centers uh or things for kids or non-profits museums or other kinds of facilities and make those more energy

125efficient it's great because we know that those that demand means carbon is coming off the grid so not just that we're adding clean generation but we're actually removing a demand that would likely be filled with carbon generation it would also let us again address some of the historic inequities if we wanted to do that and it tends to be quite cost efficient and especially as it may take a while to get things built it can also be a good filler for while you're waiting for that solar to come online you're not waiting to reduce carbon so we're really excited because dt is committed to working with us to try to um put forward that kind of program in the next filing in two years um which would mean it would be available again not just

126to ann arbor but to other customers that wanted to do the same and both the community solar and the voluntary power reduction agreement and other kind of carbon reduction sort of programs are things that you can't get by suing uh you know the public service commission the government can't force dt to offer exciting products to us but um as part of the settlement process dt did agree to do so in the um anchor tenants for community solar space and then for this voluntary power reduction agreement to work with us over the next two years to develop that product so there were many other good things in the settlement too but in the interest of time i won't necessarily go into those unless folks have questions but really puts ann arbor in a great position to

127advance some of its sustainability goals in ways that would not have been possible uh but for that settlement thank you so much al so that's one exciting thing that's moving locally i also wanted to share that we have uh respondents in for our rfp for rooftop solar so we're moving that forward that's for city facilities somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 megawatts of particular we hope to have be installed in the future we're working on a parallel rfp for affordable housing sites uh which is super exciting and then here comes the deluge uh we had worked uh i shared this with the energy commission i believe but we had worked uh with congresswoman dingle to submit a bunch of potential infrastructure asks including a net zero energy fire station we are uh building a new fire

128station fire station four and we've been working with the chief to define that too a net zero energy all electric field uh so we submitted for some funding to support that we also worked with our colleagues at the ann arbor housing commission to submit resources to have all of our housing sites be retrofit to be safer more comfortable all electric and to have generation on site so rooftop or geothermal depending on the assets and the attributes of those that particular set of infrastructure we're looking at that's pretty exciting fingers crossed that that manifests itself excuse me uh i also want to pick up this is where it gets a little crazy in my notes because i was following what rmi was talking about i want to share that tomorrow we do have a heat pump

129workshop i just checked registration we're over 200 now we're at 209 registrants households for that event which is really exciting this is a workshop that will have contractors there as well as rmi and others to talk about heat pump technology and what really is viable here contractors will be present to have questions from individuals but this is part of educating folks coupons actually do in our climate and what does that mean and what's right for you but many of you identified this is a really sticky problem because it's not as simple as i have to help council member rodina understand that the heat pump makes sense he's going to go to the market and then his contractor is likely going to talk about it so we're also working with michigan saves and others on contractor

130training and incentive programs so we get to a heat pump first program where when a contractor comes into your home the assumption is that they are helping you make a switch when electric and that it's actually a hurdle to get to natural gas as opposed to right now it is a hurdle potentially even a boulder you have to put up a mountain to get someone to sell you a heat pump so we need to change that aspect we also are working with manufacturers primarily mitsubishi vane carrier and rheem to look at incentive programs in their training so that they're bringing more product they're training their contractors on their products they're giving more incentives so we're trying to intervene at multiple points in the system last thing to share on that part well actually two more

131things to share we did submit to the governor and ask for new funding from the stimulus that would focus on direct rebates to individuals to do the right thing we're also asking uh our state legislators tomorrow for the same thing right now you can get incentives um you can't get incentives for fuel switching right they go from a natural gas system to a very very efficient electric system you're not going to get support for that so that's one thing we want to rectify and the second is many of the programs we talk about have tax incentives but that doesn't work as we've heard if you're not a tax paying entity and you don't have an llc set up you're low income and you don't pay taxes so why not have a direct rebate to help

132lower access and get money in people's pockets really fast so more people can access this we're working on multiple points of innovation intervention at the federal and state level with a bunch of others on that initiative we also are launching a sticker replacement campaign i am so sorry everyone i really do talk this fast we have a lot i wanted i want to save you some time uh we have a sticker campaign our stickers are in root uh which you would put on your furnace or your air conditioner and it's cheeky and i am happy to share it with all of you and it's basically saying next time i'll be electric and it's a reminder right because when your furnace goes you're not going to make that switch at that moment or your heat pump

133goes so how do you make the commitment in advance uh and so we'll be launching that for a20 week which is so exciting a20 week is june 1st through june 6. we hope you will all join us we have a series of decentralized and distributed events around town i think last count we're at 20 different events and they center on learning something doing something and having some fun around carbon neutrality and equity work the smattering of events we just solidified we're working with ann arbor public schools so we'll be sending a backpack flyer out um and then all pre-k through fifth grade uh we are doing an emergency preparedness initiative with them to help the families create an emergency plan we're going to be distributing little bedside flashlights to all of the use in pre-k

134through five they're fun but they're also really functional if you've got a natural disaster right you've got light you've got access you have a financial disaster and you can't afford electricity for some reason you can still do your homework you can access you can feel safe you can sneak under the covers and read a book at night when your parents don't want you to lots of few things can happen with a flashlight so we'll be distributing those through the school and then we'll be doing a competition a drawing for everyone who submits an emergency preparedness plan they'll be entered for a family of four emergency preparedness kit that they can get which comes fully stocked for up to three days of full supplies materials that they would need we're also working with ann arbor public

135schools to do emergency kit distribution at their food distribution sites uh where we've got our families in the greatest need so we really want to focus on making sure those families have have the resources they need to not just survive but thrive uh gosh let's see so much going on other fun things in a20 week uh we are gonna do meditation which is really key for some of us to like slow our faces down uh we also have a fun event with the ann arbor distilling company they are launching a new drink called tree hugger you might actually see it soon hitting their shelves the proceeds of this drink go to helping to treatment in low-income areas of our community so if you are so inclined to support a local business up on buy we're

136formally doing a launch on saturday of that event and then there are there's just so much we have a mural that's going to be launched for a20 at gallup uh we're recognizing sustainability champions in the community there's a call for nominations if you know someone that we should highlight uh please take a look and again i'll send a link out to everyone excuse me we're launching 820 kits with ann arbor district library so people can do their own home assessments and learn about energy there's so much it's delightful uh last few things kind of round us out we do work uh this is more for any commission colleagues we meet every month with executives at dte and uh our last month's meeting was on grid capacity and hosting capacity so we are looking at uh

137what is where we're tight on the grid where we've got room on the grid we're asking for more data and in fact we've asked them to protect a doubling of electrical demand for ann arbor and they are factoring that into their designs and upgrade efforts because our models that fong on the line has helped us develop so that we will double electrical demand with ev charging infrastructure and with the electrification of work this morning so we do meet with them regularly our building department is also helping us start crack electrification when you fill out a permit we might just know you're getting a furnace but we're now going to understand if you want electric free wet gas so we can start seeing how our interventions are or not influencing the market there is so much

138more but i'm going to stop there that's kind of a smattering of some of the stuff going on it's really good to see your faces and thank you for staying with me for that back over to you coach here come on i was so excited taking all kinds of notes of your update i got questions but i'm going to i'll hold those for another time um like everything that you said was super exciting and i need to submit my sustainability champion application so everyone please think about people in your world and even yourselves and submit submit your nomination okay so moving on to working group updates uh and uh we have a report from the environmental commission which we can we can skip until next month so uh we have the uh which of the

139groups do we have that are in action right now we have the concierge group that's working correct um who who would like to give an update on that chuck you're on the you're on that in that group right yeah we have our fifth meeting tomorrow night um we're making progress we've created a questionnaire that we're going out to various host cities with and had reporting responsibilities for all the members of the task force and so making movement i think we should have something pulled together here i don't want to speak for the group but month or two out we'll have something some outline or some feedback to this group all right thanks all right and uh the the transportation electrification uh committee uh did not have a meeting this week so or this month i'm

140sorry um so there's really there's no update at this point in time does anyone else have another update at um councilman burke briggs you have a question i just thought um i since we were doing a joint session of planning commission and energy commission um i had sent a note to mr leonard today asking about kind of an update on the lighting ordinance and he had sent me back an update on that and i just thought others might be interested to know and kind of where we're at in terms of the status of of that ordinance that that our both of our commissions worked together on it could be terrific i thought mr leonard you might want to just it's a brief i thought you might yeah yeah no no no problem um so the

141um that well work group had put forth a uh outdoor revised outdoor lighting ordinance it was passed by the planning commission some time ago it has been somewhat languishing on my desk the reason for that is some of the conversation that came out of the planning commission was i would say a desire to continue to evaluate whether or not zoning was the proper place for all of the corresponding regulations that were part of that and specifically as it relates to maybe realizing the benefits of it more quickly than zoning would typically provide for zoning is perspective and long and in short i haven't been able to find a lot of good corollary examples that would suggest that there are a lot of opportunities within our legislative framework so the short of it is is that

142it'll probably be proceeding in its current format as adopted by planning commission without any recommended changes and i anticipate that coming to city council either in june or july for consideration are there any questions from either commission on this okay moving on um this is our opportunity for public input the end of the meeting and if uh um for persons who are interested you have up to three minutes to speak if you're watching on ctn please call 788-0099 or 877-853 and enter the meeting i id number this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and 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

143the star 9 on your phone when you hear an automated announcement that the host will uh is allowing you to speak uh when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments awesome we have caller one three four thank you dr stultz and co-chair colton garcia this is ken garber 28 haverhill court a few random comments on the problem of getting developers to go all electric in new construction i really like commissioner hookham's suggestion that we focus on life cycle costs which is also something emphasized in rmi's report on economics of electrifying buildings that mr bridge had mentioned in all seven cities rmi looked at including columbus and minneapolis the life

144cycle cost of all electric buildings was lower than for gas it's true there can be grid capacity issues as commissioner gibb randall mentioned but so far anyway these haven't kept valhalla glenn viridian 211 packard and lockwood senior living from committing to going all electric yeah every case is different but in general it seems to make economic sense to go all electric in new construction i know planning commission sometimes here's developer say that going all-electric will lead to higher utility bills for residents that wasn't true in five of the seven cities that rmi looked at but i think it's true here when i compared gas to electric for my rental condominium i calculated that i'm paying only 64 cents per therm or 100 cubic feet of gas or 100 000 btus they're all equivalent exclusive of

145fixed charge charges that compares to a dollar fifty two per therm for a theoretical air source heat pump assuming an average heat pump coefficient of performance of three so that means my heating bills would roughly double if my landlord replaced my furnace with a split system heat pump i might have made a gross error somewhere but i think wayne appleyard came up with similar numbers when he looked at his home there's been some email exchange on this so my question is why are gas heating bills so much lower than um electric heat pump bills would be in ann arbor is it because our electric rates are so high our gas rates are so low or a combination a combination probably but i suspect it's mostly electric rates dte is charging me about 17.5 cents per

146kilowatt hour assuming 500 kilowatt hours usage per month accounting for six charges as well as the usage base rate that's about 32 percent higher than the national average residential electric rate and significantly higher than what residents of lansing holland traverse city y and dot and chelsea pay yeah rooftop solar can help but we've seen in recent multi-family approvals that rooftop solar only provides a small fraction of the building electric demand if we had a more reasonable residential electric rate the economics of building electrification would be much more favorable so planning commission may not be aware but there's been an active discussion at energy commission in recent months about establishing or moving towards a municipal electric utility to take over from dte apart from better rates a city-owned electric utility should have the ability to acquire

147renewable exit electricity from the grid to power our newly electrified buildings the vgp settlement that with dte then ms braider discussed uh is great but it does nothing to get us to that goal we do know the challenges of doing a muni but we should consider moving forward with at least a feasibility study and i hope this discussion can continue thank you mr garber anybody else missy no co-chair uh we don't have anyone else from the queue all right okay um so uh we are at 8 20 p.m and thank you so much uh members of the planning commission for joining us on tonight's meeting and i think it was very very beneficial and productive tonight and um perhaps we might want to consider doing something like this again maybe on one of your meetings

148um or however you know like just it's i think it's very good for us to be able to like get familiar with each other and um utilize each other as resources in our respective uh responsibility here so uh um i believe we should just go ahead and call uh the close of the meeting and uh is there anybody else who'd like to have a make a comment or who has a question at this point okay so you just need a motion to adjourn we need a motion to adjourn okay thank you commissioner lee any i need a second hey councilmember radina meeting is adjourned thanks so much everyone you