001hey everyone um my name is john mursky i'm chair of the energy commission and i'm calling this meeting to order at 6 06 p.m so i will read some introductory remarks first welcome to the meeting um welcome to the february 9 2021 electronic meeting of the energy commission this virtual meeting is to affect social distancing and to mitigate the spread of the golden 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 speeding speaking public comments will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call one of the following toll-free numbers 888-788-0099 or 877-853-5247 and enter the meeting id [Music] eight 913-5785 four five zero seven these numbers
002will remain the same for the entire year for energy commission meetings this information along with two local dial-in numbers is also available on the published agenda in the public notices section of the city website on the broadcast of the meeting on ctn channel 16 and at t channel 99 and finally online at www.a2gov.org backslash watch ctn so missy would you kick off the meet of the meeting with the land acknowledgement absolutely chair mursky i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including the ottawa ojibwe and botawatomi and wind out 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
003by 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 thank you missy so would you um next lead the roll call absolutely uh uh can i have one second to make sure we don't have any commissioners in the queue yes we do so let me just promote them here okay and i have a fear chuck is on his phone cause i know he's had some technical difficulties so uh if that's the case chuck please feel free to raise your hand and i can promote you uh here we go uh commissioner hookum commissioner mccomber commissioner schreiberg
004here and by the way bridgette said she was having trouble getting in commission is she okay great i'll admit i'll take that i'll take that offline thank you for that uh commissioner cleavy here leave here mr you froze on us for a second oh sorry question 11. vice chair coleman garcia here council member briggs council member radina here commissioner zawker commissioner hatcher i am here commissioner mccoy here commissioner george here commissioner singleton here commissioner kerber commissioner you have before thank you very much um next point on the agenda is approval of the agenda uh do i have a motion to approve the agenda well moved [Music] mr george thank you second anyone i can't second commissioner mccoy all in favor aye aye all opposed motion carries unanimously um next is approval of the minutes and
005i'd just like to call everyone's attention or remind them that the minutes can be found um on the um calendar for the previous meeting so if you look at this meeting you won't see them but if you look at the previous meeting you will find them there and i'm wondering if i can get a motion to approve the minutes it's all moved can i get a second okay second so uh so all in favor aye aye anyone opposed no one's opposed passes unanimously um by the way i looked at the minutes um missy to you and your staff they you did a good job thanks so um this is now an opportunity for public input so people have an opportunity to speak for up to three minutes if you are watching on ctn please call
006the numbers that i mentioned before i'll read them again 888 788-0099 or 877 and enter meeting id 913-5783-4502 this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select color callers that have their hand raised 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 automatic message announcing that the host is allowing you to speak when please 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 so um i just got a text um missy from bridgette let's see what
007did she say she's tried multiple times to get into the meeting i can see her and hear everyone but no one can see or hear me i think uh i sent her an email and commissioner mccomber if you can hear this if you're listed you might be our ecology center guest can you just respond and tell me if that's you or change your name so i can uh move you over thank you i'll take that offline and uh chair mursky we do have a number of folks ready for comment i'm going to ask uh phone number last three digits to talk and you will have three minutes to address the commission hello hello okay um so my name is virginia my address is 4818 hillary court in ann arbor and i'm a student here and
008i'm here to demand that this city transition to a public power utility and municipalize its energy the benefits of municipalization are endless whether it's reliability more affordable costs or giving back to the community public power utilities far outpace private ones in sustainability and convenience they are not for profit are community owned and support strong local economies but something that i particularly like to emphasize is that municipalization reduces carbon emissions between 2005 and 2017 public power utilities reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 33 percent in light of the a2 0 plan being put in place we as a city have set a goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 to address the increasing threat of the climate crisis one of the most integral aspects of this plan is to quote power our electrical grid with 100 renewable
009energy end quote and yet instead of a public power utility that will move us towards that goal the energy in ann arbor has been monopolized by gte this raises many concerns for one the dte is a dirty fossil fuel provider as of december 31 2019 59 of dte's energy came from burning coal compared to the average utility that only uses 23.4 percent coal and to put this into even more perspective only seven percent of dte's energy came from wind and solar power if we want a livable planet and to achieve what the ages zero plan has laid out we need to increase our usage of renewable energy and cut down our usage of fossil fuel maintaining dte's monopoly is not going to achieve that municipalization is essential to promoting energy and democracy across michigan and
010crucial to help us combat the climate crisis other proposals to reduce emissions such as the community choice aggregation require a lengthy legal process which is not only inconvenient but also still reliant on dte with a municipal utility we don't need to rely on dte's dirty fossil fuel power we can create our own renewable energy here in ann arbor in my entire life i've seen climate change devastate communities i'd like to raise the fact that millions of young people's lives and futures are on the line the future of our planet is on the line municipalization will be the first step in transitioning towards an equitable just clean future thank you thank you very much you see i think you said we had a couple of people we do next uh caller with the last three digits
011998 you can unmute caller with the last three digits 998 you can unmute hi can you can you hear me now yes thank you great thank you very much my name is zechariah farah and i'm a student at the university of michigan ann arbor and i'm a resident on south division street you may have received a resolution that came from the student government at the university of michigan and i was one of the sponsors of that resolution and i'm calling also to talk about municipalization because i feel very strongly that this is a great idea for ann arbor and that it deserves a complete investigation to see if this is a feasible idea for our community i know that growing up as a young person as the previous speaker said is a really scary thing
012these days i have laid awake at night before just thinking about what i'm going to do as i grow older with the climate crisis looming and you know some of my best experiences with my family i'm just remembering from earlier this year i was watching the planet earth documentary series and instead of being really proud about how we're protecting our environment i was just horribly depressed about how we're destroying it we know that we have 10 years left according to the ipcc and the united nations and right now according as we get energy from dte we are not pursuing that timeline because dte wants to transition to renewable energies by 2050 that's 30 years from now and we know we don't have 30 years we have 10 years so not only is dte not working
013on the timeline that we need but we have no control over that whatsoever with the municipal utility we would have that control i as a resident would have my voice heard finally as the previous speaker also stated uh sixty percent of the energy that comes through when you flip flip that light switch comes from the burning of coal that is whole wholly unacceptable in 2021. sixty 60 that's far too high of a number and you know as i said i'm a student at u of m i studied abroad last year in germany in germany um that percentage of coal is much lower and the percentage of renewables they use in those communities is very very high it's over thirty percent in some areas dte uses only seven percent renewables so once again we are lagging
014very far behind other countries that are comparable to our own this is why i strongly support the idea of municipalization and i think that the energy commission should fully explore explore going about this legal process which is uh outlined in the michigan constitution um the idea of cca is very exciting to me as well however uh i i throughout my entire lifespan um there has just been very little movement in lansing and i think that uh relying on movement there would be a very foolhardy plan because if we're not able to get cca passed an entire section of the 8-0 plan will just fail so at least exploring other options and having a backup plan for if cca is not passed i think is a terrific idea it's a very prudent strategy as we continue
015forward in accomplishing the eight to zero plan after all the age of zero plan is a living breathing document so even though municipalization isn't part of that right now it can be thank you and thank you thank you for your comments missy yes uh we have yep uh we have phone number ending at 8 2 0. hi can you hear me yes we can thank you hi my name is phil bianco i am a resident of ann arbor in ward 1. i've lived here and worked here for about eight years now and i'm calling also to speak in favor of energy municipalization or public ownership of the energy utility in ann arbor i think the people who spoke before me made some very good points about why it makes sense financially and in terms of
016ecology as well and sustainability i think it makes sense to do this both to advance affordability and reliability of our energy here in ann arbor and also to make sure that voters and citizens and people in this city have control over energy utility and i think it's one of the best things that we could do to invest in our community and potentially create a lot of good well-paying union jobs as well i think that yeah so i just wanted to speak in favor of energy municipalization i think ann arbor is very well positioned to lead on this issue in a way that a lot of municipalities and a lot of larger entities as well are not able to do and i think perhaps more importantly if we are going to solve the climate crisis and
017really make a dent in that locally i think we have to take power away from polluters like dte which have a financial interest in uh doing the opposite of the things that we need to do to solve the climate crisis so that's pretty much all i wanted to say i really hope that the commission uh seriously considers and does recommend a feasibility study um for municipalization in ann arbor thanks thank you for calling in and thanks for your input you see do we have some more people we do we have a handful more and i i believe that someone i accidentally lowered their hand for them so if i did that please no it was not advertising please raise your hand again and we'll put you back in the queue uh so caller ending in
018283 you should now be unneeded hello can you all hear me yes we can wonderful hi everyone my name is katie cooley i'm an ann arbor resident i live on 731 packard and i have been an ann arbor renter for two years now i am here like previous speakers to express my opinion regarding the municipalization of ann arbor and its diversion from dte energy for nearly a year now we all have been forced to reconsider the role that the air plays in all of our lives the air which most of us take for granted we now realize has the possibility to spread things like cover 19 in our communities of course we've all generally realized this before but now these days we are really forced to pay direct attention to the air in which we
019breathe this is quite a new thing for most of us however for people like me i've been thinking about the air for a little bit longer a few years ago we realized that i had asthma and since then i've known what it feels like to live for days and days on end feeling like i was breathing my last gasp of air at every moment it's honestly a really terrible feeling and i wouldn't wish it on anyone else your chest constricts and you're really unable to focus on the most basic things in your day-to-day life it's an awful experience i know what it's like to live in polluted air i know what that feels like i also know that if we don't commit to cutting ties with corporations like gte that care more about shareholder profits
020than my lungs the error will get worse as previous speakers have stated around 60 percent of dte's power is sourced from coal as opposed to just seven percent from wind and wind and solar cte will never be motivated to care about our community's health or the quality of the air we breathe as a corporate entity ann arbor needs to cut dte out of the picture so that our future and our air doesn't feel like my present reality i ask you to commit to cleaner air and healthier communities thank you thank you for sharing your thoughts this sounds like we have a few more we do uh caller ending in nine two zero 9-2-0 can you guys hear me i'm so sorry about that that's all right yes we hear you fine thanks beautiful well thank
021you all for the opportunity to speak this evening um my name is sam limerick i live in ward 3 near packard and hill and i'm a graduate student at the university of michigan i'm like everyone else i'm speaking in support of the city taking steps to critically reevaluate the living carbon neutrality plan as embodied in a 2-0 this the 8-0 plan as it currently stands relies wholly upon community choice aggregation as as we've already heard as a way to decarbonizing our local electrical grid by 2030 i i think that a comp a continuing partnership with ete whose timeline for carbon neutrality is 2050 singular replies upon cca which faces significant uh hurdles in lansing the decarbonizer grid is fundamentally at odds with our our stated goals as a community and i think that a publicly
022owned electric facility and consequently local control of our energy mix is in our reach today unlike cca um municipalization has a strong legal uh footing in the state and in ann arbor uh city code and i think that um we should uh join join the crew more than pretty michigan communities like like lansing actually and our next door neighbors in chelsea already enjoy the benefits of municipal utility um i'm going to use my home sound of austin as an illustrative example to describe what i think would be some of the benefits of a new utility um i'll highlight three tangible benefits renewables mix cost and resiliency and community health that often has seen and then try to connect them to our situation so i mean as of june 2019 uh austin energy's generation mix was
023at 43 renewable energy and this is deep in the heart of texas where uh things are like texas and austin energy invested heavily in this renewables mix in direct response to climate protection resolutions passed by the city in 2007 and 2014 and that to me that's what local control is all about it's about listening to constituents and appearing that they want a renewable energy mix which i know we all want in this room um and then let's let's move to cost um pt's residential electric rate is 17.5 cents uh 17.51 cents per kilowatt hour and that's 32 higher than the u.s average and it's actually 42 percent more than what our uh our neighbors and chelsea are paying through their municipality who they paid 10.7 cents per kilowatt hour like what's the deal with that
024where is that where's that extra money going and in taking back to austin i mean they beat the texas state average on cost and they did this while soundly beating us up here in ann arbor with respect to the degree of local control of a renewables mix um we'll hear some more stories from other communities that have used have seen uh tremendous cost savings from industrialization and presentation you'll see later on and i'll just take it back to community health and resiliency now in a year where utility bills have become particularly burdensome a public utility will allow us to live our values and not shut off people's power in a warming but you know still in some parts of the year sometimes very cold world like today um empathetic moves like this are a great
025example of the way a public utility could grow our communities resiliency our collective ability to weather the storm of climate change and a global pandemic and i posed a question to the commission in all listening does resiliency or regard for community health drive dte's operations today would they'd invest in company time or energy in this space are they keen on facilitating the transformative change we know our introduced and must undergo their uh stated carbon neutrality goal of 2050 contributes this um so let's step into the leadership role we all know ann arbor can step into on the issues of sustainability and think about creating a mutual utility thank you all for your time and thank you for your insights you see caller ending in five three three we should hear you now 533 hi can
026you hear me yes great uh my name is roshan i am a graduate student at the university of michigan and an ann arbor resident uh right here on dewey avenue and i would like to echo everyone who has spoken before me um there's obviously a strong case to be made for a municipal utility purely on climate grounds we've heard plenty about that but i also want to emphasize how impactful a municipal utility could be for energy justice so energy affordability has always been a justice issue we know that lower income people pay extremely high proportions of their income on utility bills but the pandemic has sort of thrown this into extremely stark relief last year i worked for several months with a mutual aid collective serving washington county we were mostly just focused on redistributing
027cash money to help people meet their basic needs i worked their finances so i saw every transaction over a period of several months and it was dpe bill after dce bill after dte bill um it was frankly a little bit shocking and i'm someone who's worked in energy energy justice for for a minute now people are struggling we're currently on the brink of a utility ratepayer debt crisis the national energy assistance directors association estimates that there could be as much as 40 billion with a b in utility debt owed nationwide by march by pursuing a municipal utility not only will we achieve lower electric rates which will relieve some of that immediate burden on people in the first place but we can democratize solutions to debt relief and shut off moratoria for example in lansing
028the public utility there has declared a shutoff moratorium that extends past the moratoria that have been declared by the investor on utilities in terms of duration but also in terms of reach the moratorium declared by the industrial utilities such as dce is very limited it's limited in terms of agent income whereas these utility moratoriums declared or shut off moratoria declared by the public utilities are universal municipal utilities can also efficiently deliver state and federal funding in order to help rate fares as we've seen in lansing and in los angeles which have delivered cares act aid directly to ratepayers to help pay their bills energy is a human right we need it to survive municipalization is a step towards realizing that right for everyone thank you and thank you next up we have caller at last
029three digits 772. hello can you hear me we can okay great hi my name is rowan tucker meyer i'm a high school student i live on stanford road and i strongly urge the wall to support public power and make a plan to municipalize ann arbor's energy i completely agree with everyone who's spoken before me i think the energy commission is serious about bringing ann arbor into the 21st century and fulfilling the goals which were set out by the a20 plan and you have to start working towards energy municipalization it's hard to see how we could possibly transition off of fossil fuels when we are basically at the mercy of whatever dte chooses to invest in which is to say whatever will deliver the most profit to their shareholders rather than what is actually best for
030our community and our planet now a public power utility on the other hand would be accountable to the citizens of ann arbor who would have more input regarding where our energy comes from and i think major structural changes like this would be immensely important in our fight against catastrophic climate change so i'm so glad to see that the energy commission is looking into it so i hope you do everything that you can to make an arbors power public thank you and thank you how are we doing missy we have a few more okay good all right uh let's see next up we have caller ending in zero five five caller zero five five you have the floor hello can you hear me we do hi everyone uh my name is evan redmond i'm a ward
0313 resident and a former candidate for ann arbor city council and i am also calling in on behalf of the exploration of creating a municipal energy utility the number one reason for municipalization is that it's the fastest legal way to renewable energy dte lag behind and to be carbon neutral by 2035 and very far behind ann arbor's plan to be carbon neutral by 2030. and there are lots of other callers that have already talked about why it is a good moral position to meet the supplies but it's also in the city's long-term economic interest to acquire a municipal energy utility if you'll indulge me in economics there are two main types of costs there's fixed costs which are costs that are constant regardless of how much is produced and there are marginal costs which are
032the cost per unit produced so for example the cost of building an auto parts factory is a fixed cost and the cost of materials and labor that go into each part is the marginal cost so say hypothetically that dte camaro uh massively shifts and does a 180 and promises 100 renewable energy by 2030 instead of its current goal for some time after 2050. in this case the fixed cost would be the creation of windmills hydroelectric dams and because these resources are renewable only the only marginal cost would be the occasional labor of maintenance so once the fixed cost is paid off it's free electricity for everybody right uh no of course not dte is a for-profit publicly traded company who has a responsibility to generate value for its shareholders and that money comes out of
033our community members pockets if we let dpe continue down this path they'll essentially be selling ann arbor something that is free for them to produce the upfront investment needed to form a municipal utility would pay off in the long run by both doing our part to avoid the worst effects of climate catastrophe but also ensuring our community has very low cost renewable energy that they control for generations to come thank you very much thank you next we have caller 947 hello can you hear me yes we do great um hello and good evening my name is eric eric williams and i'm an ann arbor resident and a student at the university of michigan i'm also calling in today to voice my support for the immune municipalization of the ann arbor electric electricity utility over the
034years as i've continued to expand my understanding of climate science and the climate crisis we currently face i found that it's it's pretty easy to become kind of disheartened and overwhelmed by the many obstacles that we as kind of a nation and global community must overcome to ensure a brighter future for our world um especially true when thinking about kind of politics at the state and national level where i often feel there's very little as an i as an individual can do to help guide the united states to a more sustainable future but i think municipalization would help to change that entirely giving ann arbor residents such as myself the ability to choose green and sustainable energy sources an option we really lack with dte and the very reason behind this kind of overwhelming climate
035crisis is uh in very large part due to the actions of energy companies especially those who utilize best quantities of fossil fuels dte is easily one of the worst offenders in this regard with 59 of their energy coming from burning coal well above the national average of 23 consequently it's evident that dte does not truly care for the future of ann arbor residents or the long-term health and well-being of our planet as a whole else they surely would have already begun a more meaningful transition to renewables municipalization of the ann arbor electricity grid would give ordinary residents like myself the power to choose what kind of future we want for ourselves our grand our children our grandchildren and every future generation to come and i think it's uh this idea it's especially telling that so
036many young folks have called in today we are we are very concerned about our future um my dte energy bill was due just today and i absolutely hated having to fund the destruction of our planet through the burning of coal and fossil fuels especially as gte continues to use its money to invest in natural gas and oil pipelines right here in michigan this is especially frustrating even more so considering how much more we are paying for this dirty energy blend from dte than we could be paying for a public utility this climate crisis is urgent and we absolutely cannot wait for dte to change as it really exclusively serves the interest of its shareholders not the people of ann arbor as a passionate and concerned resident of ann arbor i i implore you all to
037consider municipalization and in doing so help to ensure a better future for our community thank you for your time and we thank you next up we have caller last number or digits 340. uh good evening members of the energy commission and my fellow ann anarborites my name is dr lauren sargent i have been an ann arbor resident for close to 40 years and i'm speaking tonight in very strong support of a municipal utility way back when i was in college i was a member of the clamshell alliance and in 1978 our call was energy democracy and public power democratically controlled and decentralized renewable energy does that sound familiar i cannot believe that in 2021 my um college kids are staring down catastrophic climate change and we still don't have it public power that is but
038here in ann arbor we do have the power to make it happen we can form a municipal utility the michigan constitution and our own city charter provide for it while theoretically compatible with options like community choice aggregation for sourcing renewables cca requires the support of the michigan michigan legislature have you met the michigan legislature recently we don't have two years or four years or six years to hope for a legislature that will come around to our point of view and we don't we simply don't have time we do have a commitment here in ann arbor to the a20 plan with goals of a hundred percent renewable energy we also have a proud tradition of taking on long-term responsibilities to improve our own community and contribute to the greater good even when other entities with more
039power and more money refuse to do so that is exactly the position that we're in right now earth day ecology center recycle ann arbor green belt affordable housing millages aaps sustainability bond and most recently the a20 plan we cannot put all our eggs in baskets that we do not control but fortunately we can own our own basket a municipal utility run by us in line with our climate goals accountable to the citizens and not shareholder value as dt is a dte is and must be if not us who if not now when right now dte is laying gas pipe in our city under our streets they're not putting down geothermal they're also installing a gas plant on u of m's campus not geothermal not solar not wind the writing is on the wall it's very
040clear we have a choice to make we have the power to do it let's do it thank you next up we have caller ending in 661. hello can you hear me yes we do hi everyone my name is gus teschke i'm a resident ward 5 for over 20 years i live at 313 montgomery um i'm a member of ann arbor indivisible we're a local chapter of the nation national indivisible organization and we're focused on helping to counter threats to our future you know that's like donald trump and climate breakdown and we voted recently to support exploring municipal solar and wind power because we see that as the best route to zero carbon emission for ann arbor's power generation we don't see community choice aggregation as likely to deliver clean power that we need by 2030
041you know as part of the 8-2-0 plan uh we know cca is currently illegal we know we have to overcome opposition from at least epe consumers power and the republicans and maybe more but i want to focus on biden administration's goal of carbon free electricity by 2035. i suspect everyone is aware of that and of course dte wants to burn coal until 2040 and which is a huge problem for all of us and who knows how long dte might burn gas and so what if biden shuts down dte's plants in 2035 their their fossil fuel burning plants are rates ann arbor ratepayers like me going to have to pay for these plants or will dte go into bankruptcy i'm a little concerned about this um and other individual supports exploring municipal power now and we
042will act to support that we will follow the energy commission's progress um we urge the energy commission to explore municipal power and do a feasibility study quickly we don't think we have to go along with such obviously bad decisions and bad planning and the high degree of uncertainty that bte is showing us transitioning municipal solar and wind is what we need to do we hope you will take serious steps thank you very much and thank you a caller with last digits one five two and apologies if they already went that is totally possible at this point uh about 152. can the commission hear me yes we can i'm sorry one five two now yes we hear you uh hello commissioners um my name is jeff irwin i am coming to you from my zoom bunker
043at 2542 bellwood on the southeast side and um i just want to thank you for volunteering tonight and being a part of this commission i i especially having to you know go through these long meetings it's a it's a it's an important service so i want to thank you for that and i also want to let you know that as your employee in lansing as your state senator i'm always happy to come back and talk more about some of these issues i work a lot on energy issues and i love what um you guys are pushing from the energy commission i'd love to come back and talk to you about cca industry distributed generation and everything else uh but i did want to come tonight to let you know that i'm really excited about this
044conversation around municipalization when i look around the state of michigan at the communities that have municipalized i see two consistent themes one is that their power is cheaper and two is that their power is greener and i know that i want cheaper and greener power and i believe that people in ann arbor want cheaper and greener power we probably all want that and so i just want to encourage you to support a thorough feasibility study because this idea of municipalizing our power here in ann arbor is a big huge and expensive endeavor but the only thing that's more expensive than doing this is not doing it and so i encourage you to um walk this path to characterize this opportunity because i think that if we do the hard work to characterize the opportunity we'll
045find that we can have cheaper greener power and serve our goals better so thank you for your service and thanks for the opportunity thank you very much next we have caller 134. okay thank you dr stultz and chair mursky ken garber 28 haverhill court i agree with the previous callers and they're tough acts to follow and my guess is that several commissioners would also seriously consider a muni for ann arbor but one place is on everyone's mind boulder colorado that city spent 27 million over 10 years on its muni effort with little to show for it no we don't want to repeat that experience but what happened in boulder is not what will happen here first let's look at boulder in 2011 it amended its city charter to authorize immunity the charter language required that
046muni electric rates be no higher than those of excel the local private utility at the time of transfer and those rates had to cover costs plus 125 percent of debt service in 2014 when boulder formed its muni xl sued on the grounds that boulder could not meet those charter conditions five years of litigation later the city settled with xcel dissolving the muni that's boulder okay what about ann arbor our charter already authorizes immunity and without boulder's rate limit or revenue mandate dte certainly will sue but not based on that rather it will claim a local franchise under the foot act a 1905 michigan law that grants private utilities a perpetual franchise if they had one at that time dte has claimed that an 1895 city contract with michigan electric company to power 161 ann arbor
047street lights is that franchise agreement so under the foot act dte will argue we cannot take its assets that'll be its lawsuit completely different than the boulder case now i'm not a lawyer but i see an opportunity here yes 20th century courts have upheld footage franchises repeatedly but the 1963 michigan constitution says that no franchise can be longer than 30 years dte so-called franchise here is almost 130 years old to my knowledge the foot act has never been tested in court against the 30-year franchise limit which became effective in 1993. if dte invokes the foot act which it will and we win which we could we not only get our muni but we nullify all of dte's footage franchises there are dozens of these probably only dte knows how many suddenly all these cities and
048townships are open to competition and dte will have to negotiate franchise agreements with all of them or lose these markets cities can get franchise fees from dte and can also negotiate for clean power so as i see it our ann arbor muni could unlock competition for electric power through much of the state thanks and we thank you and we have our last caller representative robbie everybody can you hear me yes we can awesome hi everyone thanks for having me on today i'm coming to you from the state capitol actually thanks for all the work that you do this has been a fantastic conversation and i'm just calling in to agree with all the previous callers and our state senator i have uh for many years been a very strong supporter of municipalization uh and i
049do believe that it is uh the most cost-effective and uh also one thing that hasn't really been mentioned is it is the most reliable form of ownership for power if you look at utilities across the state and uh the speed at which they get uh blackouts recovered um it is much better in municipal municipal utilities uh public ownership matters it matters for uh cost of power again i'm in lancing right now the lights that are on today for me are provided by public power and one of the comments that i just made is around the issue of home solar dte is fighting home solar tooth and nail they have a one percent cap they want to kill home solar in the state of michigan in contrast the lansing board of power and light is providing
050incentives they're telling their their citizens we will give you five hundred dollars a kilowatt hour up to two thousand dollars if you install solar on your homes the contrast it could not be clearer between what we can achieve when we work together through a public utility versus what dte has created in terms of its investor owned monopoly and its for-profit driven business model which will not place uh clean energy at the forefront it will not place social justice and equity at the forefront we the people can stand up and own our own power and place all of those things at a much higher level thank you for your consideration of this issue and for hearing me today we have one more uh caller ending in 519. hi this is rita mitchell and i am a
051long-term resident of ann arbor i live at 621 5th street i support community-based municipal power because it will allow local control of the types of energy sources it will provide local jobs local accountability and transparency as an additional benefit we can make it support our goals to spare trees of radical trimming which is an additional environmental benefit we can integrate the services with current city utilities and work for efficiency we can set the rates in situations like those presented by the closer 19 pandemic we as members of the community can make positions that help assure that all have access to the energy services that they need lastly our power decisions can be made in a way that support environmental justice that is our due diligence with the implementation can assure us as owners and users
052that our energy production will not have unintended negative consequences of polluting the air water and earth locally and for others in our region and state i urge you to proceed as you've heard from so many speakers that have wonderful information and wonderful goals please let's look at it if this is the time thank you caller ending in 519 that was 519 right yeah five one nine actually uh miss mitchell jumped the q which is delightful five one nine caller 519. hi can you hear me yes we do hi my name is ian mark um i'm a resident of ann arbor my address is 1811 independence boulevard calling in also in support basically full support of energy utility municipalization i think it's awesome that the conversation is happening hard for me to follow up on all
053the previous callers i agree with all of them um i think they've done an exceptional job of covering why it is important um in terms of addressing the climate crisis i think this could be an incredible step for not only ann arbor but also a tipping point for the state and similar efforts across the country in aggressively and rapidly decarbonizing our energy network i think the time has passed for any half measures or wasted time on addressing this crisis the planet itself is at sake and ann arbor could play a key role in taking local action on climate change but another point i wanted to bring up was um reliability which i appreciate uh an earlier comment on but i very vividly remember a little over two years ago when dte contacted all their customers
054telling them to please set their thermostats no higher than 65 in the middle of january when we were getting record temperatures of i believe negative 26 in detroit um which personally i found infuriating people could have died if their grid had gone down and people have lost power um i mean what exactly are we paying a premium for if we can't count on our power when we need it most and if it's going towards um you know someone said previously 59 of their power going to burning coal and polluting our environment i personally find that very very frustrating um and i think it really underscores the importance of taking democratic control over energy grid so i really appreciate you giving me the time to speak and hearing my two cents on that thank you thanks
055how's our cue looking to see it is cleared so i want to thank all of the callers um for your engagement and for sharing your views with us um i don't know if we um what i'm gonna do is um just move on to the next gen item and allow commissioners then to comment on the presentation as well as on caller's comments um all at the same time at the end of the presentation if that's okay with everybody very good i see some knotting heads i also want to call everyone's attention to the fact that council member um briggs joined us um several minutes ago and um she informed me the text that she was listening in much earlier than which she appeared on our screen so we thank her for joining us as well
056so next on the agenda um is um the energy report uh i'll go really fast for folks uh as kind of an update we are moving forward beautifully with the aging and place efficiently program we've brought on our two part-time contractors that are phenomenal so uh you will be seeing some material very soon also our 10 000 trees initiative we met with nurseries recently and we'll be unveiling our first bulk buy program which mirrors the solarize program here shortly we're using local nurseries obviously uh climate smart trees and the co-benefits are are perfusive in that space so really excited for that last week we uh formally kicked off the public comment period on the energy benchmarking and transparency work for commercial and multi-family uh infrastructure so if you would like you can uh read that
057it's on our website there's a short video that gives you an overview of the draft ordinance which was formed with the task force and then there's also a link to insert public comment so please do take a look we also uh re-energize the time of marketing work so there's a small group of us who are that that was pretty close to the finish line we're just bringing it back and the intent is to bring the benchmarking with time of marketing forward which for those who may not know and are listening that is about energy use disclosure for single-family homes so we would have pretty much the majority of the built infrastructure disclosing energy use transparently at the same time uh we had our first solarize event now i think we might have had our first
058two solarize events i think we had our last one uh this following weekend but those are going swimmingly well just like last year uh gung-ho in terms of distributed generation rooftop if you're interested or you know people are interested please have them go to our website and sign up for events we are also starting to look at organizations that want to host a solarize event so normally it's been neighbor to neighbor but if your organization for example the sierra club uh is interested we're exploring possibly doing something with them for their membership so let us know if you're interested in that on tuesday night council will receive the energy criteria and principles that the commission adopted for formal consideration uh so we'll see that would be for for formal adoption we continue to move aggressively
059forward on the city's energy strategy which mirrors a20 and goes really deep into the actions that we'll be taking as well as contingencies i know a few public speakers talked about that i assure you your staff are planning many many contingencies for the strategies in a20 so that is moving forward and then i did want to share we're launching an equitable engagement process with others throughout the city to really work with frontline and fenceline communities to understand how they define equity and what equitable engagement means to them as opposed to what we might think that it means from uh candidly my place of privilege so we'll be working with them and then using that input to inform a lot of the decision making that osi does last night we kicked off the budget here we
060go it'll be a great ride uh you can catch us in that budget presentations in the last six minutes of the budget and our council members did a fabulous job bearing a lot of information and the last thing i'll put forward is uh we're standing up some earth day activities they will be virtual this year there's a lot of coordination that's happening but again if if you or any of your partner organizations or home organizations are interested in joining us we'd really like to have a strong stance with heavy youth leadership uh around earth day this year rapid fire uh yes um news from commissioners amber i saw you raise your hand well i just had a quick question for missy i was wondering if um for the energy market at the time of ordinance
061if that's still planning to come forward with um the rental and the commercial piece or if we're just moving forward with a single family home one they're all gonna come but they might stagger a little bit uh in terms of process so getting them to legal for example will stagger just so one can move before the other but the intent is actually though to bring them to council as a full suite great thank you yeah other commissioners news from commissioners mark do you want to give a quick plug on the glrea series that you've initiated which is on i think policy issues too which fits with a lot of the comments tonight yeah the great lakes renewable energy association is launching a new seminar series that will happen once a month um there are we're
062lining up speakers chuck is going to be speaker in in march thank goodness and we present a version of the presentation he did the energy commission last week or last time we met um we're kicking off the session this thursday and uh if we're going to be have a policy uh uh presentation that's basically talking about how um what happens in the intervention process so the the organizations that uh are involved in rate cases against utilities it seems like it's sort of a black hole um but utilities have to get permission from our the public service commission supported by the legislature and the governor of course which covers the rate cases and organizations can intervene against them ann arbor has intervened uh great lakes renewable energy association is a regular intervener et cetera so we're
063going to try and unpack that onion and explain it in easy terms so people in the solar community can understand what's involved in going going against the utilities on rate cases and those kinds of things we'll also be having these going to happen once a month they're booked right now almost through the year um missy's going to give a presentation on community choice aggregation later this year and uh we're going to be showcasing ann arbor's uh solar program with julie um as an example for other communities and uh i don't know if any other people know that and i was preparing a handbook so this the solarize ann arbor program could be replicated in other communities and i think that's an outstanding model um we'll be doing one on municipalization um and um working with
064a number of municipals that are doing green power um and uh how they do it and how those that don't self-generate like chelsea um how do they do green power here's the the inside story they they don't they send a big check to dte every year and buy green power from dte but um so yes so if anybody's interested if you're a part of glrea you're already getting the notices um anyone who hasn't got the notice has sent me uh i guess i can send them to josh and you can release it out to the energy commission for anybody who's interested in participating and joining in on those sessions again it'll be seven o'clock this coming thursday and then it'll be the second uh thursday of the month going forward thank you john for the
065opportunity yeah i'm sure and i think um if you go to the glrea great lakes renewable energy association site then you can find more information there too um other commissioners very good silence is golden so we will move on to our first um main point on the agenda which is a presentation um from the group ann arbor public power and i think um we have a caller that's going to step in and make that presentation correct busy uh commissioners can we actually rejiggered the agenda which is fine we can go to the presentation but i think it's really important to kind of set the stage for the work that's coming forward please um we'll get to that i guess after we'll we'll keep it but what we want to express is that thanks to the
066hard work of all of you and the chair and the vice chair we've identified a year of learning around different energy options that we're going to go through and so we'll talk about that later on the agenda we've identified lots of topics we kind of listened to previous meetings where people were talking about different techniques different technologies different policy frameworks and so we want to start today and the conversation with h2p2 will start that conversation we will go through a year though of exploration and next month we've already locked in the city's energy attorney to come and talk about the legal landscape you heard some references to the foot act she's going to come and talk about that and what's actually been legislated and what's possible and not more factual as opposed to advocating for
067one approach or another so this year worth of learning is also going to inform the energy educational series that we're trying to create for our residents and so we're excited to go on this journey with you from staff's perspective tonight's presentation is the kickoff of that journey about learning about different approaches to the energy system so with that uh give me a second to move over the folks that we'll be presenting question for you go on missy um does does that mean that that's um things that could move faster for example um there is legislation on community choice segregation stuff going on so we don't have to wait for a year to engage with that i hope no we're gonna try we'll talk about that in the session how to sequence the content there are
068some things where i think they're more learning there are some things where staff very clearly need and want uh support from the commission on and so we'll try to sequence things in a way that sorry i'm looking to move people over don't think i'm ignoring you in any way uh to looking to sequence things appropriately so that we can get the feedback in a timely manner and then for things that aren't as clear move forward so again we view this as a learning opportunity and staff will not be presenting any resolutions to you unless it's something that we need support on okay so i think i have everyone moved over except for maybe zach and i don't see him on the line i think he's not gonna be able to join so it should be
069whoever you have great do you need me to advance your slides or do you have them okay i will need you to enable me to share screen i'm not confident i can do that right hold on okay i'm not going to be able to do that this is not my zoom account so i can't but let me download your slides from what we got earlier so why don't you introduce yourself how i do that yeah thanks first of all i just want to thank everybody who already gave comment um for the amazing breadth and depth of knowledge that was brought forward in their commitment to a just future um the people calling into this meeting to make public comment demonstrate why public power is an amazing opportunity for our community um and we're also very
070excited that this is apparently the kickoff in an ongoing educational series and we are all really looking forward i think to sharing and learning together um with the osi and with the rest of this community so thank you um and right on time we're doing this in a pdf very nice i am but i'm not skilled enough so view how do we get it in slideshow page display uh you guys are watching the ignorance here nope you i'm gonna go ahead and download it again because clearly i have it in the powerpoint because that's super easy wow well i'm tagwin john hi i'm greg woodring um and we are here from ann arbor for public power as you saw uh our logo on that little screen there i guess let's start without the slides let's
071uh let's just wait i think oh yeah that looks awesome fantastic thank you so um what is ann arbor for public power uh anna for public power is a coalition uh with members from many local organizations including dsa sunrise movement indivisible the climate action movement at u of m washington 350 ann arbor beyond bernie and many others and we are united by our belief in a green and publicly owned future and furthermore we believe that these are inextricably linked we don't think that we can build a sustainable future while building private profits for shareholders our goal is to democratize decommodify decarbonize and decolonize our energy sources thank you the problem is that dte our local energy provider is not transitioning to renewables fast enough to meet global or local emissions targets dte uses dirty power
072most of their power comes from fossil fuels and most of that is from coal they're still actively investing in fossil fuel infrastructure and according to a 2019 report dte is the third dirtiest major utility in the united states and dt in anagar and ann arbor have incompatible goals looking forward um the a20 if you hit the little next sign something will pop up the a20 carbon neutrality target date is set for 2030 that is in nine years from now um president joe biden has set a target date for carbon free electricity nationwide in 2035 however dde's target date for net zero emissions is in 2050 and down to the next slide we'll see that they don't even have a possible plan for achieving this goal um they're planning for at least two of their coal
073generators to remain in operation until 2040 they are currently constructing a one billion dollar brand new fracked gas power plant in sinclair county um haven't ruled out building another one and frat gas is often advertised as a cleaner option or some sort of a transition fuel however depending on the amount of gas that is leaked during the production process the amount which scientists who spend their lives studying this believe is often underestimated um frat gas can be just as dirty as coal so to meet that 2050 emissions reduction target they are relying in part on technological wishful thinking um and inventions that don't exist yet they wrote that in order to achieve their 2040 target retention date they will rely on uh co2 reduction with new innovations but the 2030 plan um the 2030 date
074for the ann arbor 820 plan is much more finite um our plan states that we have to power a grid by renewable energy 100 um by 2030 and this simply can't be achieved under dt's current plan so that brings us to why we're here tonight we believe that the answer to this problem lies in a process called municipalization next slide please so what is municipalization well in essence it would mean transitioning from our current system of having a private energy utility to a public city owned municipal energy utility now municipal utilities are nothing new most people get their water or sewage through a municipal utility in fact municipal energy utilities are not particularly rare in the united states more than 2 000 communities across the us get their energy from a missile energy utility and
075over 40 of those municipalities are in michigan next slide please and that is no mistake municipal energy municipalization is a process explicitly protected both by the michigan state constitution and conveniently by the ann arbor city charter next slide please so why do we think that a municipal energy utility is the best option for ann arbor well we know that it is both reliable and affordable but further it allows us local control and to invest in our community and it allows us to be environmentally responsible and meet those goals that we know we have next slide please so what do we mean by reliability well in essence a public power utility loses power just about half as often as a private energy utility nationwide a public power utility is a loses power for an average about
07674 minutes per year in comparison a private energy utility loses power for about 136 minutes per year however just looking at the nationwide data does not quite tell the whole story for michigan if you look at this graph we have dte on average loses over a thousand minutes of power per year meanwhile the city of lansing a municipal energy utility loses just a bit over 250. that is a quarter of the downtime that a public power utility experiences in comp comparison to our private energy utility next slide please is also a cheaper source of energy on average across the united states public power utilities pay an average of 14 percent less in energy rates than their private energy utility counterparts however once again the nationwide data doesn't quite tell the whole story for ann arbor
077if you look at this graph we have ann arbor's dte energy rate is about 17.51 cents per kilowatt hours meanwhile our next door neighbor of chelsea's cents per kilowatt hour is about 10.15 that is over 40 percent less in their energy rates that they pay just a few miles away from us next slide please but we don't believe we should do this just because it is a cheaper better source of power though honestly that's probably reason enough we also feel that it is important that we have a local control over our energy future with a municipal energy utility we would control the rates we would control the source of power and we would control when our infrastructure is updated next slide please and furthermore it invests in our community now i can get into the
078jargon about how your average public power utility does give back more to their community through a system called pilot then uh private energy utilities give to their community through taxes and that's true public power utilities pay about an average of 5.6 percent of their operating revenue through pilot back to their community meanwhile your average investor owned utility pays only 4.2 percent of their operating revenue back in taxes but it's more than that through a municipal energy utility we would create a massive investment in infrastructure in jobs in our community and the city would have the power to ensure that those jobs are strong union jobs we could build modern reliable infrastructure and a resilient energy grid all on our terms next slide please and finally and as the speakers alluded to maybe most importantly it
079is the environmentally responsible choice now we know that dte currently stands in our way of doing a lot of the things we want to do build more rooftops solar and distributed generation however and dte could waive the rates that the state put the caps that the state puts on those things however they really have no incentive to do so a municipal energy utility simply wouldn't have this issue but it's more than that ann arbor is a community committed to green energy and we could say that every bit of energy generation that ann arbor builds would be a hundred percent renewable allowing us to reach that 2030 energy renewable energy target on our own terms without having to rely on any outside factors next slide please and this isn't a fairy tale municipalization is a process
080that has taken across this uh taking place across the us with success many times in long island in 1998 the city municipalized their energy utility they now serve well over a million customers and reduce the city's elect their customers uh electric utility rates by 20 next slide please it doesn't stop there though winter park florida formed a public power utility in 2005. the city made so much money back in excess revenues that they were able to massively re-haul their energy infrastructure investing in underground lines which massively reduced their outages next slide please and finally and probably most inspiringly jefferson county washington voted in 2008 to establish their municipal electric utility just like we would have to do they bought out their local private utility and were able to transition to a 97 carbon-free electricity mix
081one of the cleanest mixes in the country soon though hopefully to be beaten by us at a hundred percent next slide so what is the path that we see for ann arbor to join these success stories the sustainable and fiscal ones well we think that ann arbor is right for me was right for municipalization for a variety of reasons for one thing municipalization is legal as we've touched on the annaber city charter and the state constitution both explicitly authorized municipalization unlike boulder colorado which one of the previous commenters mentioned is often brought up in the conversation of municipalization in ann arbor um however the boulder fight was long and legally bloody in part because they didn't have the kind of explicit legal language that we do ann arbor already has a public utility our water
082system and our sewage are municipally operated this is not true in many communities across the country but it is true here which demonstrates that our local government has the ability to provide these services to its citizens and to to meet our needs there is a strong local commitment to carbon neutrality in ann arbor both the city of ann arbor and the university of michigan our largest employer have set very ambitious carbon neutrality targets and perhaps most importantly we think that ann arbor has the expertise and resources to make this happen both materially and socially ann arbor is one of the most highly educated cities in the country it has demonstrated over the long term our commitment to being environmentally sound so if we can't do this here we can't do it anywhere but it's happened
083elsewhere so we think that we can do it here with amazing success next slide please we also believe that municipalization is in alignment with the proposed a20 energy criteria and principles looking at the core criteria municipalization will allow us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through our locally controlled energy source blends and increasing local solar municipalization will allow us to add new electricity generation including as mentioned by a commenter by perhaps incentivizing local solar or building new generation elsewhere which we would then own as a city it also democratizes energy access allowing our communities values of equity and justice to influence our local energy both in generation and distribution looking at energy principles municipalization is that's the most local control you can get looking at an energy system and we all know that local control enhances
084resilience whether you're talking about an energy system a food system or a school system municipalization is scalable cities of many sizes have utilities and as ann arbor grows our municipal utility would grow with us and we believe that ann arbor can be a role model for new public energy utilities across the state of michigan next slide please we also believe that cca can combine community choice aggregation and municipalization are complementary the renewable resources identified and secured for a cca could be distributed by a municipal municipally owned grid and if ann arbor is successful at establishing a mutant school utility we could provide power to adjacent communities we also think importantly that our timeline is simply too critical to put all of our eggs in one basket when it comes to the climate crisis cca is
085not legal in michigan and it is not likely to become legal for at least several years we would like to work with cca advocates and strengthen energy democracy and access in michigan across all its forms next slide please however we know that this process will not be without challenges there will be costs stranded cost separation and reintegration costs transaction costs costs startup costs legal fees and opportunity costs however there will be costs associated with any path that we take to change the energy landscape in our community it will take time on the scale of years again this is something that it shares with every process that we might undertake as a community to make our energy future more sustainable we will face opposition from dte dte is not going to want to give up the
086ann arbor market however as we have touched upon earlier we believe that the legal basis for their argument is flimsy and it is a case that we could win and we will win um we know that it's been a long time since a municipality has in michigan has created a public power utility which is all the more reason for ann arbor to do so the state needs a test case we need to break the monopoly um in the stranglehold honestly that our large electric utilities have on the communities of the state and we believe that the benefits will outweigh the costs we don't we think that not doing something on this issue will cost more in the long run speaking of costs next slide please one of the first costs associated with this process will
087be a feasibility study and we believe that this feasibility study is likely to cost about 120 000 what we get for that 120 thousand dollars will be a much better perspective on exactly how much it will cost to start up and operate a municipal utility as well as a better understanding of the legal framework involved so where do we come to this 120 000 estimate well in 2017 decor iowa with a population of 8 000 paid 70 000 for their feasibility study for establishing a municipal utility the next year in 2018 pueblo colorado population 112 000 paid 122 thousand dollars for their feasibility study and just two years ago chicago population 1.7 2.7 million paid 120 000 for their feasibility study so we think that 120 000 will get us a feasibility study which will
088give us a lot of the answers that we need to begin this process as a community to secure sustainable and community controlled energy generation for us and for the people who live here for many years and we think that we owe it to ourselves into the future to find that information and answer these questions thank you very very much and let us know if you have any questions for us right now i thank you very much that was a great presentation um i would not be surprised if we have a lot of comments and or questions from commissioners i'd like to open the floor i can see all of you so go ahead mark a couple comments one i want to clarify that the first speaker on the phone um i think mixed up uh
089community choice aggregation and dte screen power program that a cce a would would not require ann arbor to buy power from dte community choice segregation builds on the electric choice program that was authorized under republican governor john engler and is still in effect today and the second part of that i guess is um the working and fighting the legislator on this doesn't i don't find that a scary prospect we took on the solar taxation the city of ann arbor the michigan municipal league the michigan federation of cities the public schools um and numerous others were against us and we ended up with a unanimous bipartisan vote and got solar taxation done i think the issue is um selling it to uh communities that don't look like ann arbor and there's not a lot of them
090out there that would like to do that and there's a bunch of municipal utilities out there including the one that i'm sitting in now in my 100 solar house in harbor springs that would be more than happy to sell green power from their their cell their staff their excess generation under a green power program as as i would think some others would as well so i agree that the cca and municipalization is not mutually exclusive i would say um they're synergistic and and these are two paths that we should we should look at i would say that we can we can start you know monday um working with the legislature we have two people who are very interested in this and uh and uh and begin to look at how how that um the other
091part i think uh i remember our previous city administrator john mursky and i had a meeting with him talking about this and and i remember him commenting about how different it was to come from austin to ann arbor and how much he didn't really fully appreciate the benefit of the municipal utility he said that they would routinely at the end of the year get a to 100 000 surplus uh what funds flowing into the city from the municipal utility that was totally unbudgeted and unplanned um there was always a there's always surprise phones and stuff so he was rather shocked when he got here and realized that uh that was no longer an option for him so um anyway i just wanted to clarify uh those those two things thanks thank you mark would people
092raise their hand at the bottom of the screen um i saw um maybe robert um george's the the next person and then travis and i think mike also indicated um his that he wanted to speak so um robert go ahead uh thank you mr chair um first i just want to thank you both for jumping on and giving that presentation um i've had the privilege of speaking uh with a member of your coalition and um hearing more about uh how all of this would work and the functionality behind all of it um but again uh big kudos to someone uh not far out of uh college myself that it's always great to see uh youth activism especially around such a pressing issue as climate change so thank you again for that um uh my question
093relates to chelsea um i'm very unfamiliar with that i know commissioner cleavy mentioned that a second ago um so i i guess you know to the both of you and you know commissioner i'm sure you can jump in there too um about uh how chelsea's works and um you know if there's anything we can take from them that would work here chuck can you speak to that i see your hand up or is that what you raised your hand for or did you have a question or comment we also i believe have a couple other members of our coalition who are now involved in the call here who could give comment maybe ken um or sam or another member of atp2 might be able to comment uh more about chelsea as a specific example um
094robert can you if they if they can respond then missy can recognize them um they're already elevated i think ken just unmuted yeah thanks tegwin um i'm i'm elevated because um i just did some of the statistical work that showed up on the presentation slides um so i calculated chelsea's um electric electric rate um based on its um utility website but i cannot answer uh robert's question about um how chelsea works i'm not familiar with the ins and outs of uh of their operation so maybe chuck is yes or i can too i they i we did a study with chelsea uh like five years ago looking at solar um there when the impetus there was they half the city council was driving electric vehicles and they couldn't get them charged so they wanted to
095do solar um chelsea does no self-generation um they buy a hundred percent of the power outside they're probably more of a typical municipal utility and you know that's an option for us we we could be in this municipal utility buy power and and you know buy buy green power buy brown power buy whatever power we want um it's you know that the trick is if you're gonna self-generate it's a it's a business and you gotta be smart about it so and ever i'm not sure we'd all be happy with having you know gas powered facilities in ann arbor and all the stuff that's going to go with it but um you know this this this could get really easy if if the university of michigan joined with us in a municipal utility um we could
096uh this would move along very quickly or would agree to put up some money in the lawsuit or to pay for half the study this could move along quite rapidly so um i i would think uh chelsea would be a potential customer from her green power from ann arbor and supposed to uh that's looking at the other way because they they buy the green power from dte right now and it's upward to three hundred thousand dollars a year just to buy green credits so missy indicated earlier that this is um obviously a learning process and um you know some deeper dives on some of these topics i think would benefit all of us um because we obviously want to make a good decision and not regret um where we what we've done five years down
097the road and don't look we don't want to lose five years robert did you have any other follow-up or is that yeah i just had one other quick unrelated question um so the presenters um you know you mentioned uh the potential legal concerns there um i was just thinking i i do i deal with a decent amount of contracting in my uh day job and i was just curious you know what what type of contractual obligations the city in the university you currently have i'm just unaware of what the legal um concerns there that you kind of alluded to for more of a contractual angle like is there a certain amount of time that the city has committed to purchasing power from dge um that we must uphold for um just uh on that lines
098and it doesn't need to be super detailed just any uh quick explanation robert i'm going to take that one and say we need to pump that for the energy attorney to really talk about the legal ramifications i think that that needs to come from from expertise okay councilmember radina thank you mr chair uh and and thanks to the speakers also i wanna uh echo robert's comments about how grateful i am for all of you to be involved and to be willing to put together a presentation and come and talk to us um this is something that i've been interested in studying a lot personally and i've had a lot of conversations with some of my constituents and other elected officials about it um and i think you know i'm a i'm a former customer actually
099of lansing board board of water and light and and you know enjoyed my service there um and and the responsiveness of the the utility to the to the community um i think one of the things that i have struggled with and that i really appreciate from your presentation is that you know lansing board of water and light established their municipal energy program in 1892 and so we don't have a recent example of what that might look like in in kind of our modern modern times and so i appreciate you pointing us to long island winter park in jefferson county i will continue to do my research there but i have struggled personally to find some of those recent success stories so to the extent that you have additional information that you could share about those
100three examples i would be really grateful to look at that i'm particularly interested in some of the the initial startup costs and things like that um i know that a feasibility study would speak to that um more uh more closely to our kind of local situation um but you know as i'm considering even what um what this might look like going forward and looking at the fact that you know we also have a covet budget system that we're recycled that we're dealing with right now um trying to just kind of do all of that math kind of on the front end to the extent that i can as i'm as i'm weighing some of these factors so if you have more information about that that would be great as well but i just also wanted
101to thank you again because i really appreciate the presentation on the conversation tonight thank you travis um yes certainly we can forward on more information regarding those examples i believe that that information did come from the american association for public power which has a lot of information about those types of success stories and so forth and i appreciate that you alluded to the fact that a feasibility study would answer a lot of these questions i think as we've seen there's a lot of support in the community and a lot of interest in this it is a very feasible uh path forward it seems and uh it seems prudent to and fully investigate that and get those answers that we need commissioner schreiberg mike yeah thanks i want to echo the the thanks to the presenters
102who i think did an excellent job of laying out something that this commission's been talking about off and on for probably a decade or so but this was maybe the most focused um you know effort to bring that to bear that i've seen my question is really around the the timing because i i'll tell you one of my the hang up that i've got for for this is that the time that it would take to form this which you know is measured certainly in years if if not more um is time that i don't want to waste when we can be working directly on the solution so i you know and i realize there's a short-term long-term thing but i'd be curious from the presenters or others on the commission how you balance those things
103the urgency that we need to reduce emissions right now and the time and effort in the legal fight over many years it would take to create this because you know i'm i'm there in concept but i i've got a practical concern about about timing yeah we share that concern i think that that's a big part of the reason why we said that uh cca and municipalization are complementary approaches uh you know we owe it to the future generations to fight this battle with every tool we have um and yes uh municipalization is not a short process it can be uh done in a realistic time frame that allows us to get to those energy goals that we want um but that does require urgency on the form in the form of city cooperation and we
104really hope that we'll get that type of cooperation moving forward so that we can use every tool in our disposal to make sure that the future generations have the sustainable future that they deserve and i guess i just add i see a concern that i have is timing but also you know the limited pool of resources of city city resources in time to do that and i just think there's a there's a balance there maybe i'm stating the obvious but there's you know that you know time that goes into that can't be can't go into other other program time so i know it's not a full zero-sum game but they're you know time and time and resources are limited within the city as well so just to comment on that but thank you um commissioner
105hookem and then commissioner kerber broken microphone sorry okay so then we'll move on to um and and um commissioner okam if you would like um you could potentially might be good now chairman no check yourself so if it's very very short you could put them in into chat um please do not use the chat function you should not be using the chat function that is not allowed for oma please do not use the chat function ah okay yes uh chuck if you want to email me i would gladly read them okay there we go so we'll move to uh commissioner kerber there yes you know i can understand solving ann arbor's problem this way and and our word's quite unique has been pointed out quite unique and not every municipality would have that same uniqueness
106um i tend to really want to see the idea of energy choice everywhere in michigan not just in ann arbor and if if what we do can apply additional pressure to loosen up the monopoly stranglehold what's been referred to as the monopoly string hold and i think that's a big win for ann arbor for other municipalities and for the state of michigan and hopefully the rest of the country because we're not the only state that suffers from this stranglehold it goes on all across the country all across the country so having an impact here is just a step it may be a good step but not a complete step we have to do bigger than that thank you commissioner kerber um i'm going to recognize commissioner mccoy next and commissioner streiberg and york if if
107you have other comments leave your hand up if not then take your hand down go ahead amber yeah um thank you for the presentation um i think as some people know i'm a part of the ann arbor for public power group so it's really excited to see this conversation at the forefront here um i just want to explain a little bit like the reasons that i'm excited about it are um i think i've mentioned a couple times um on the call i think that we really need to be focusing on things not just that bring us to clean green energy which i think can easily be a lot of our focus um but also on things that touch on many of the things that the public comments around affordability and resilience and that's the way
108that we truly center um environmental equity when we're thinking about our policies i think those things are really important elements that are not brought by all plans but again emphasize the important uh importance of working um together with a couple of different things um and also as mentioned um i really appreciate i think i feel like in especially in michigan people have this sense that dt is inevitable as i think i've mentioned before at energy commission meetings and so i think you know really trying to explore the this and other options and pushing against that against the status quo is like the really big bold moves that we need and the type of moves that um ann arbor has a history of doing um i also wanted to address a comment that was made over
109email um i so robert said earlier how um he appreciated how this is like a youth driven movement which i also really appreciate seeing young people present um in the coalition of people across different ages that are part of this group um there's a comment over email that this needs to be driven by um taxpayers and i just wanted to say that like to me i read that as um homeowners so if i misinterpreted that please correct me um but i just want to make a comment that renters even though we are not the ones directly paying taxes our rent pays taxes and then some and i think we should really um not encourage conversations that exclude um a huge group of residents in ann arbor in this case the majority of residents in ann
110arbor um and especially exclude um create a conversation that's only around wealthy white um and elder older skewed older um people in an army so i really think it's important this conversation with everyone who will be a voter um and i'm encouraged to see that here today commissioner i mean councilmember briggs thank you um mostly just a comment for me um just wanted to say thank you for this outstanding presentation i appreciate the background the um the uh acknowledgement of the challenges um within you know any framework that we move forward with and also just sort of practical what are the next steps so it's really good um piece also many thanks to all the commenters that that called in um to share their thoughts as well and um i'm looking forward to sort of
111the the series of educational um pieces that are coming forward so that we can kind of put this in the context of um hearing from some legal advice next and and just um i also appreciate uh the the comments around not putting all of our eggs in one basket i think that's really important um what we need to we need to make sure that we um we're exploring a lot of different options that we get to a successful outcome for our community and as amber mentioned for everybody in our community um other commissioners commissioner cleavy i just want to pick up on what mike was saying and it's the question of the the cost of this um is it it would these 120 000 be borne by the office of sustainability and innovations budget or
112because we have a water utility is this something that would be you know done under their budget and under their responsibility uh or some other part of the city i mean how i'm trying to figure out how this would happen dropping 120 000 and missy's budget right now i think that people's eyebrows would go up but we do have a water utility i wonder is that an option uh is that part of the conversation i guess as far as i know it is the one someone from the group want to comment i i don't know if there's a source really identified um i i'm aware of the municipalization effort in decorah iowa and my understanding is that was essentially privately funded primarily by a local philanthropist is there any idea from within the a2p2 group
113as to what the source of those funds would be or a proposal where they should come from we have not um made a budget right now with how to raise 120 000 ourselves i think that we as an organization recognize that there is a lot of private money in this community and if in order to access that money to pay for this it would need to be funneled through our group um that's something that we are open to and i think we're investigating right now those sorts of legal frameworks that we would need as an organization in order to engage in fundraising um i also am curious um and i think a lot of people in this group are about how to potentially access um some of the general funds in this city like the
114kinds of funds that went to like buying new electric ford mustangs for our police force for example um very cool but um i think that as a community um they're you know i think that some of the values that our community holds would be open to some of the like general funds of the city being used uh for a feasibility study like this i don't think that we are interested in all of this coming out of the very important work that the office of sustainability has already budgeted it for um so i think that there are a lot of questions to be pursued there and if anyone on this call has information or ideas about that please reach out to us great other commissioners questions comments anyone yes um carlene i would welcome information about
115the process for the feasibility study uh you know what's you know how does it get kicked off first plunk down on the cash and then what happens or like what's what's the process and that would be really informative if you could share that uh with with us yeah so as you saw in that slide that referenced the feasibility studies that have been done elsewhere there are organizations that do these types of things in fact two of the most recent feasibility studies were done by organization called new gen um i'm not an expert on city process so maybe someone else could step in more on that but i imagine the process would probably be some sort of bidding process where those types of organizations would make an offer and the city would accept one of them
116if i'll i'll just comment um if indeed the city were to take a lead in this then that would be exactly right i mean if it would to be through private fundraising through an upper public power then you could decide how that would be um you know whether you issue a request for proposal and then evaluate those or whether you just short circuit the whole process time wise i mean that would be something that would be probably up to you guys um so that you know that's that that remains open um well my recommendation would be to provide as much uh structure to this as possible because just the rfp process is an entire process in and of itself to understand what questions to ask and in order to get bids for so um i
117i would advise you know that to do that kind of research ahead of time which would serve the city and city council as far as um making it more uh easy to make decisions and this is part of what we went through for having the approval of the uh electric vehicle readiness ordinance there's a tremendous amount of work that went into it ahead of time anyone else's questions yes um commissioner i was just going to um second that discussion on request for proposal process if it's a privately funded request for proposal that someone or a group would bring into a public entity and say this is how or you would municipalize something the rigor that's done on competitive bidding analysis and rfp analysis and the questions that need to be asked make sure you have
118experts in the fields of electricity and others so that you do ask the best quote right questions so that you get the information that you really need so that you get a feasible cost because if you do not get the costs right up front or the feasibility up front you could take the city down a path that would not be wise you know so if you take say the washington municipality and the fact that they're renewable right away you have to understand that the major source of electricity in that area is from hydroelectric generation and so you have a very natural abundant renewable energy source there so you want to look at other municipalities that have been formed in areas like hours with similar infrastructure like ours with similar um diversity of supply right so
119make sure that you're looking at those and make sure that if you would happen to get private funding that you do do a rigorous rfp process as if you were doing it from the actual city of ann arbor and understand and follow that type of process so there's a lot of technical details in here that are even outside of the realm of legal politics everything else because you have to set up your own utility you have to staff your utility you have to understand the technical requirements of owning and maintaining an electric distribution system and that's even before you start deciding whether or not you're going to add your own generation within the city of ann arbor if you're going to buy a generation from outside the city lots of things so mark's just back
120nodding so i know this is a very daunting task and so you can't look at the elephant you have to think about taking this in chunks and bites and you also have to set up a project plan with exit ramps off when you may have and what criteria you're going to use to make those decisions like is this the best right use of ann arbor's resources and talent you know to uh commissioner kerber and uh commissioner uh cleavy's points you know is it better served for us to look more in the policy realm to get more of a global change in the state of michigan or do we continue just to you know focus our energies on um just the city of ann arbor so those are my preliminary thoughts but thank you very much
121for your time and your research you know thepublicpower.org and institute for local self-reliance are also places where there's a lot of information on municipalization so it's very trendy right now in the country thank you for the time thank you um missy did uh you were you able to get any comments or questions from commissioner hook um yet no okay okay chuck do you want to try your microphone one more time i see you're working no go too bad you calling on the phone so i think um do we have anybody else um so i'm going to offer some very few comments from my side um first of all i think this is a beginning of a really great um conversation where i think we can learn from each other and um i think a lot
122of the the guidance that came out of this um was hopefully very helpful to the group and i can see that um you know conversations outside of this forum are also going to help inform us and i encourage those to take place i just want to point out a few things that haven't been brought up um so on like i think slide number three i'm talking about dte's energy resource split pump hydro is shown as 9 but pump hydro really isn't if you think about an energy source it's a battery um in a sense it is an energy resource but the energy that is disposed through pump hydro is coming from some other source so you want to take that out of there and show what that is without pump hydro you know the general
123picture doesn't doesn't change um but just to to to get that right um and um yeah i think i can skip my other comments there were a lot of really good comments and like i said i really encourage um all of you and all of us to continue this discussion and as missy has pointed out um we're looking forward to the presentation next month as well as potential other presentations it could be that we look at cca it could be that we have dte come in here and talk about what what they plan to contribute to the 820 plan um so on and so forth so there's lots lots of options open to us over the next couple of months so cameras i think commissioner hookah might be a muted i heard a ding from
124his no no he did light up though he did right okay okay chuckling on the phone chuck yeah we didn't we didn't sabotage you on purpose chuck okay so um it's um approaching 8 o'clock and i realized that many of you have other commitments this evening i mean we have some other interesting things going forward so i'm going to bring this agenda point to a close um again thank everybody and um the next topic is energy commission meeting topics and there's been some communication on that already so hopefully we don't have to spend too long missy do you want to take the lead on that yeah and forgive me here i'm just uh moving people around in the space so uh chair mursky apologies are we on policy or are we on topics um according
125to the agenda um energy commission meeting topics is nest uh i'll share my screen for you all but as the preface for this uh as we started we are really excited about the ideas that commissioners have kind of talked about for a while and we've had uh really great presenters come in and talk about a topic here or topic there and i think i shared with you at a previous commission meeting one of the things i really want to work on from the staff perspective is creating an educational series and chuck uh took us through some beginning of the kind of understanding the grid and how it functions and so there's some technical things about how our energy system operates and then there are of course questions about the levers we have what policies should
126or could we explore uh what technologies how viable is geothermal in our region what kind of geothermal what's the role of distributed generation how about virtual power storage agreements have a virtual power reduction agreements like there's all kinds of things right and we talk about them a lot in osi and we talk about them a lot in our professional circles and you talk about them a lot as well and we know we have really strong community support for some of these ideas but what we don't think we've done a very good job in at least from the sustainability office side is paint the ecosystem and let folks know there's actually a lot of things that we can explore and there are some things that we can't yet but we could and so we want to
127understand sort of where our foundational laws and legislation is where there's room to move where there might have to be change and then what levers again we could pull so we went back through some of the previous commission meetings and then we had a meeting with the chair and co-chair and we just started to dump ideas in what are things that we've heard and so what you've got before you is a list of topics and i will share my screen if that's okay with everybody to show the list and i think i'll leave it to your discretion chairmerski on how you want this conversation to go um i think we could quickly see if anyone has any ideas um i believe what we had talked about was i can take suggestions you can send them
128over to me after and then at the next commission meeting we might actually vote um on the topics in priority order for you so this is hard to see let me blow this up i will not walk through all of these but i'll just pull out some kind of exciting ones uh they're in alphabetical order there's no prioritization i promise so we broadly thought about financing and jay is really interested in offering a lot of uh excitement around the concept of like how we finance the space we're doing a lot on beneficial electrification i've heard talk in the last meeting about the green belt so i've already reached out to the green belt coordinator to come and talk about the intersection of green belt acquisitions with renewable energy generation as i mentioned we've got our
129energy attorney who is going to come and talk about legislation but there's others right how the grid works 201 so can we give commissioner hook um more time and some others to really talk about the system itself and how power moves um i mentioned some of these fun things at the end virtual we've got power purchase agreements which uh for us often look like most tangibly things like um oh i just totally do a blank on the solar uh solar and houses of worship so we're faithful thank you uh is a version of a power purchase agreement but there are other mechanisms that we can use on-site the city released its rf oh i forgot to share that we released our rfp for on-site solar two weeks ago for about 1.2 megawatts of rooftop solar
130in ann arbor very exciting we're working on a parallel for the housing commissions but that's a different right that is a behind the meter generation what about uh something like community solar so we've got lots of topics um some of these things are things that have not been done yet here some of these are emerging like a virtual power reduction uh agreement is something we believe we are only one of four states that are unable to do so i've asked the energy attorney to talk a little bit about why this is something we think we could do and what that would look like and um some of you may have seen a large corporation reach that has a goal of being carbon neutral has moved past kind of a commitment to offsetting their emissions and
131investments in renewables to actually doing a management of load profile so they're bringing in storage to help manage loads so when they're actually pulling from the grid they know they're generating at that same time and they had to do that through a virtual power storage agreement so there's a lot of things that are here i'm going to stop talking and see if any commissioners are really excited about a topic that is not listed that they just want to name but before we do that um i i'm going to step in um so i'm i'm going to open things up back up and i'm going to open things up with the following comments for your consideration and that is um we had a little bit of communication um like missy mentioned osi and carlene and i
132about how to handle this and our thought was at one time well we're gonna try to do some kind of force ranking tonight and we decided that's probably not a very efficient way of doing it and there may be other ideas that people provide tonight or um if in looking at this you come up with other ideas um then we'd like to have you submit those so um what we would propose to do is if anybody has anything that they want to say tonight that's really important then we would recognize that but the intention is then is to give this as essentially a homework assignment that everybody review this finalize the list then give you some time to do some kind of force ranking we'll provide some kind of process to do that so that
133when we come back um for our next meeting um we have at least an initial force ranking um and i don't think it's necessarily important that we rank um you know the top um um a through you or whatever the the list ends is that we first get the first five or so and we plan around those and then if there's some new things that emerge then we can also review the force ranking going forward so um if um that's okay with everybody um i would would open up the floor for a few minutes um and then hopefully we can move on so anybody have any comments they want to make right now commissioner hook up still don't hear you chuck can you give me the last three digits of your phone number i know
134there's no way you can because you can't talk let me see if i have your phone number really quick because i think i need to elevate your phone if you want to um go on i might not be great at counting on the phone if he would raise his hand maybe right yes i think i have him so i got you hold on okay give me mccoy do you want to go first while they're figuring that out and then we'll circle back to uh commissioner okay too much i technology i got two computers and a phone and i can't connect so i apologize for that and um i'll just say you know i could talk a lot i think you've heard me talk a lot i'm experienced in a lot of the buckets a lot
135of the items on the list right now and i let's just say this way my largest customer is mppa michigan public power agency and i worked with all the munis i think chelsea on down holland lansing you name it we've worked with them i can talk a lot about history of working with them what their thought processes are where they're headed renewables the whole gamut i can talk a lot about ccas i've worked out in california um i i guess it's one of those things where do we start right and what's going to be the biggest uh dent going forward obviously the thing that comes to mind right out of my my mind is energy efficiency we can all do that today no rules no laws no policy we can do it right now and
136make it make a big difference so some of these others have different uh benefits and costs i can bring a lot of that to the table and i'll just stop there i mean this is a great start um i think a lot of people have said it already let's look at the alternatives let's let's lay it all out i think we need to be cognizant of economics technology and time they all have constraints what do we need to break those constraints how do we move forward in a pathway that makes sense but let's do it pragmatically let's not do it out of passion let's do it out of a well-studied process going forward somebody made the point that we're an educated community let's use that educated body of knowledge and make this look like a
137semblance that has success to it and we have to define what success is that's really critical too so i'll just stop there and we'll go forward thank you um so um commissioner mccoy then commissioner hetcher then commissioner then council member bricks yeah this is a little different than some of the things that are proposed um but i think it would be helpful um for everyone to hear a presentation just around energy justice and energy democracy i'm thinking like either organizers like the energy democracy organizers for the michigan environmental justice coalition or maybe having u of m's dr tony reams um talk a little bit about energy efficiency and the intersection of justice i just think it's something we talk a lot about but not everyone might not know about and we have a lot of
138expertise um very close to home thank you teresa hi yeah um in the grid 201 section there's nothing in here about distributed energy resources and so the federal energy regulatory commission had put an order out in 2020 for order 222 which requires rtos to build tariffs that allow distributed energy resource aggregation and then that access to the wholesale markets right and so we're in the midst of figuring out what that means but when we talk about distributed energy resources not necessarily generation resources um because batteries are not generators there are seats but something on that der topic der aggregation in that grid 201 series would probably be helpful because there may be opportunities depending on how the der aggregation plays out over the next couple of years councilmember riggs yeah thanks um so in terms
139of kind of what i'd love to see um coming next it sounds like it's valerie brader who's coming next month is that right and talking a little more extensively about sort of municipalization but also kind of the legal framework uh legal considerations and i guess i'm not sure i'll just i'm not sure exactly what she's going to be talking on but talking about but i think it would be helpful for our community based on all of the the calls that we got today and maybe forgive me if this has already happened in energy commission before um before i joined on but obviously our the carbon neutrality plan that was adopted by council last year had sort of a framework of community choice kind of is our strategy moving forward and i think really explicitly having
140a conversation around that and some of the trade-offs of of how where that feedback came from what the what what led to that decision um to to include that sort of framework within our plan because um we're obviously hearing a lot from the community about um sort of either having a dual strategy or another strategy and i i guess i would i'd love to see us um very more quickly diving into that conversation and and really building um strong understanding from for myself but also for for others in the community about um why our the our you know our current plan lays a certain path in front of us um we still have some hands up that those may be holdovers um except we see commissioner cleavy i think yours is new your mute is
141still marked there you go energy grid 201 i i think you know we have an opportunity we have an awful lot of hydropower just sitting in and mothballs i know chuck has raised this issue a number of times but perhaps under the energy grid 201 we could have a you know whatever whatever the latest thinking is on hydropower and ann arbor if if it's viable um add that that in and certainly if we're gonna look at municipalization or cca it seems like our hydropower uh capabilities should at least be considered um that's okay with you commissioner phoebe i'm going to propose that as a separate topic that fits elsewhere and looking at the city actually does generate quite a bit of hydropower and so i think that warrants its own discussion with the experts in
142that space and the other one is is the 2030 district um seems that behind the meter solar and and 2030 district is the logical place we've got an awful lot of commercial operations and again whatever path we choose to go down this is going to be well beyond just residential power and municipal buildings and and uh figuring out how to how to do this we could do behind the meter commercial power now do it get somebody to move on it anyone else i think what we see here is a lot of material to cover a lot of learning cycles um but obviously um we have a sense of urgency we need to have a sense of urgency that was made abundantly clear by the callers and so we need to also have a lot of
143action cycles um so again as i mentioned um missy will figure out um how to get something out this this document um maybe we can have a call in the next couple of days um we welcome additional additions um one that i might throw out there is that we anticipate getting a carbon neutrality plan from the university of michigan sometime around the end of this month and so what is the intersection and independencies between what we do and what they do um and we don't know that yet but um we will knew that know that hopefully um here in the next month or two so that's another another thing we can talk about collaboration exactly so um take a look at this we'll get this back out to you we welcome your comments on new
144topics maybe how to bundle these and um then maybe we'll figure out a way to also have you force rank these very good good i it's been a really great meeting i really appreciate everybody it's you know been great from the public as well as from all of you i'm really encouraged by this meeting so um missy we i at least i'm missing it on my agenda but i know we wanted to talk about it and that was on um policy aspects um i don't see it on the agenda but i think you're able to talk about it correct i am and i have um i have updated the agenda on legistar although you're not this updated file because i honestly um got recommendations very good i printed it out about 24 hours ago or
145so no that's fair so um the way this is gonna have to well first let me let me say i'm i'm not sure how this fell through the cracks oh craps that was freudian the cracks uh we went back and looked and we didn't see any correspondence so i'm sorry this is coming a little 11 59th hour basically what happens for those who may not have noticed or seen previous emails the the commissions get asked as do staff for recommendations of policy that often it's state policy uh at least for the last four years has been state policy uh now it is also federal policy that we want to see uh promoted or enhanced or changed very candidly if necessary and the various commissions uh kind of bring some ideas forward they can be voted
146on by the commission they often aren't they're just kind of ideas they then get put together with all the commissions across the city a staff ad and then they go to the council policy committee for review and prioritization and then counsel that committee themselves will determine what the top priorities are they will then go to our lobbyists uh to support and push for so uh of course the energy commission is really really important the good news is we as staff are laser focused on energy so we had a lot of the ideas kind of already present but what i've got before you um is an updated memo and i will happily circulate circulate this to folks the problem is we we have until thursday to finish it which means i have to finish it thursday
147so i have to get comments back for you pretty much tomorrow morning to make this work so i've taken all the comments i've received from people and organized them so thank you so much to the commissioners who've shared this is wide ranging concepts i think we ended up with 27. um ideas that we have everything ranging from supporting the types of legislation we talked about today um to changing our tax uh our tax incentive the itc the tax credit to being a rebate right so more people can access because they don't have to have a tax appetite and or they don't have to have the upfront capital to make these investments to adding the state itself having its own additional tax rebates so we're continuing to lower the costs and then there are things uh
148that came out from the ev landscape really critical here things about parity with registration fees um allowing direct sales to customers um per uh the motor vehicle franchise act and so there's a there's a lot here what i wanted to do what i would love to know is if anyone has something that they're like chewing on that they didn't get a chance to check to share and this is your moment to name it and if if no one does i'll send this out immediately after the meeting so folks can then just write back to me um anybody have anything to throw out real quickly i had just sent a meeting or an email to you like pretty last minute missy so i just wanted to confirm that you sucked out it yeah i definitely have
149that um amber yours is the only one that's not fully in here yet but like i put placeholders for it so i'll get that in before i circulate it to everyone okay very good missy i'm gonna throw one out that just came up um in the webinar that i participated in earlier today i don't believe it's on the list and that is um third party um demand response um bundling um so in the state of michigan um utilities are the only one entities able to do that and in other states there are third parties that are able to do it um i don't know um how much uh benefit that brings in terms of um innovation and things like that i mean the basic policy is is is there but um whether the third party
150brings a benefit that's something to at least look into um commissioner george and commission councilman briggs uh thank you mr chairman uh just a quick question um uh as i'm uh still somewhat new to the commission um historically uh maybe this is a question to you mr chairman or missy uh what is the commission's stance and the city's uh lobbying position on nuclear ben on nuclear power the commission took a vote on that several years ago um and um my recollection is i was new on the commission at the time was that um we were opposed to new at least certainly new nuclear power i don't remember um commissioner cleavy do you remember if we took a position on um existing nuclear power i don't know if our position was that we we encouraged the
151city to um just support re-licensing of furry two um because they were going to do a bunch of expansion there and through through a bunch of efficiencies they were actually able to increase the power up with there um and that uh you know that we were in support of of them looking at bringing fermi three online at some some point in the future because they they're one of those six utilities in the nation i think that actually has been uh authorized to um chuck and probably do this better but six utilities in the nation they've been licensed by ferc to do a new nuclear power plant but they don't have any plans to to do so um the uh if you remember the dte said that they really appreciated uh our support but they just
152assumed not acknowledge it because uh they didn't want to uh this was such a sort of a slam dunk re-licensing so they thank you very much but um they didn't accept our support for their idea but um i would encourage anybody who's interested this to go take the tour out there it's very interesting going to furniture and looking at seeing what goes on out there it is a the largest source of renewable energy in the state and it's just been re-licensed john can i add to mark yeah go ahead please check so thanks for the compliment mark i designed and built for me amongst the thousand other engineers so thank you for that so burma 2 is re-licensed it's uh licensed ex license was extended to 2040ish um fermi 3 is it was a license
153approved by the nrc but the boiling water reactor that was configured for that project never made it through nrc so it's pretty much parked right now it's still a viable license that could be acted upon but it's going to take a fair amount of time to bring back um unfortunately what we're seeing are other nuclear plants in the states expiring in their licenses and so we're going to lose nuclear power that was part of my presentation last week but i'd be happy to talk more about what we did in the past and what we could do going forward robert okay yeah i was just curious because i know that and the rush to try to get to as as green as possible as quickly as possible and you know looking at what's happened in japan
154and germany with the closure of the nuclear plants there with replacement with coal i was just curious what we were doing locally or like what our local position was so i don't i don't want to get in a prolonged discussion obviously it's late but i did i was just curious on that if nuclear was at all mentioned missy in that document that you we can dig up that old resolution and and send it around um just one one comment if i may well i have the floor and then um councilman briggs and then um missy stoltz wants to speak to again i think um i i would i would encourage all of us to also can do lifelong learning outside of commission meetings i had a email exchange with another commissioner earlier this week about
155resources and we traded resources there's a lot of just tremendous material um you know on youtube on um podcasts um blogs etc and i i really encourage you to to look up on some of those topics if you have something that you're particularly interested in you can email me or um or missy and we can trade uh resources but i want to encourage people to do that outside the the context of these meetings because there's just sometimes there's just too much to cover in the meetings so councilmember briggs yeah thanks um i just wanted to give a little bit more um background um on the about the policy committee which council member redanna and i both serve on um i was um surprised i guess that there actually wasn't more prioritization on the list because
156it's a very have really long list of policy priorities for the city and um our lobbyist uh obviously has repeat for a very limited time with our lobbyists and that's actually one of the things that we're planning not well maybe not planning it's being presented as an option of of where we might cut our budget this year for for covid um as well so we might might it's potential that we might scale back a lot more um my understanding in terms of how staff uses it is is more of an opportunity that if something arises um it provides a little bit of freedom to be able to jump in on an issue that might become current as well so i guess a longer list is not necessarily bad i guess i would just ask dr
157stoltz especially to maybe take a a look at what our our long list is and make sure that there's not anything on there that's been sitting around for a long time that maybe shouldn't be there anymore um or is contradictory um in any sort of way um with with our with our goals i haven't looked through that lens and you'd be able to do it a lot more effectively and if there is then certainly let us know so that we could um serve in that and then obviously remember that we are serving on that committee so we are happy to keep pushing um as much as we can for our limited uh uh lobbying power to to focus on certain issues i don't have a question commissioner um if the if the lobbying budget is
158cut um i know the office of uh sustainability innovation has testified um in partnership with glrea and a number of things in lansing stuff would that curtail that no it would okay so it's more just kind of how our external contract with a certain firm um yeah well i would think on renewables if that happens there's a number of organizations i won't i can't speak for the ecology center but i certainly can speak for glrea that you know we'd be happy to step up and and hop out even more on renewable energy things and we work closely with the house so um you know that happens then then you know i can see five organizations represented on here who who lobby and uh perhaps we should all get together and see what we can do
159here yeah black missy um and then carlene yeah just procedurally to let folks know the way that we are thinking about bringing these recommendations forward since we won't have a formal vote of the body is it'll come through osi so we will do that prioritization of that ranking based on that that's for the policies the good news is uh having worked on it a lot today i can tell you we don't have a lot of conflict uh but there are things that are low-hanging fruit there are things that are more complicated so we'll need to strategize a bit so i promise to do that and then i wanted to share uh chair murky to your point about lifelong learning the intent really this is the previous agenda item for me but the intent with the
160training series is i hope we actually turn them into short pithy videos that go on a website for people to be able to access and so we're kind of in some ways um the this body with osi staff get to do a deeper dive but the intent really is that we make these much more digestible nuggets that sort of live for our community to access so i just wanted to name that we're hoping to really build a training infrastructure if you will for new commissioners for our residents and others to get up to speed and stay up to speed because the landscape's moving fast if i can riff on that real quickly one thing we might consider doing missy is when we're going to consider a topic um as pre-study if people are able and
161um interested look at these one or two resources and then we're going to take the topic and we're going to look at it particularly from an ann arbor perspective so if you want to look at it generally there's going to be a lot of general resources in the public domain but then you know whatever that topic is what is what is a particular interest in terms of ann arbor and its circumstances and the policy situation in michigan and so on and so forth so maybe we can sort of pair those up and provide resources for people to look at outside of these meetings do double piggyback on missy and you john it would be really uh convenient for us to have a shared document that we can that we can uh post our our resources
162you know and uh share with the commission members the um like reliable and um verifiable information for each upcoming discussion topic for our meetings or anything else and being that we are such an educated community we're very capable of organizing them in a in a very logical fashion to share great idea um i missy did we talk need to talk anything else about policy okay so any other ideas out okay um so we can go on to um the last big chunk but hopefully we can keep this brief we have um committee updates um i don't think all of these committees are up and running so i'm just going to recognize people who raise their hand who want to give a committee update how about if we handle it that way i think we're all
163either tired of talking and listening or whatever but i think we had a lot covered a lot of great material so we don't need to cover anymore so um what that leaves us with then is um the second uh public uh comment period and i'm going to read the directions again sorry for having to hit the replay on this but again this is an opportunity for people to speak for up to three minutes if you're watching on ctn call 888.7880 or 877-853-5247 enter the meeting number 913-5783-4502 um this information is on the agenda it's on the video feed as well um and staff will recognize you one by one using the last three digits of your phone number um and in order to electronically raise your hand plus star nine and missy then we'll see
164that and we will recognize you um please state your name and your address at the beginning of your comments might have a little bit of a delay not too much and yet tara mursky okay what i'm going to do is um missy if you can continue to monitor that that would be great and then i'd like to open it up for items for the next agenda i think in a sense we've already covered that but if it's not in the realm of the topics that we've discussed i'd like to recognize anybody that um wants to throw an idea out anybody have anything that they'd like us to consider you do have one person in public comment oh i do okay great you want to recognize him last three digits 627. hello can you all hear
165me we can hi i'm connor davidson i'm a resident of ann arbor in ward 5. i'm calling to speak in favor of energy municipalization um i've been living in antarctica for about 10 years now and paying dp directly or indirectly the entire time as some of the people who called in at the beginning and as presenters mentioned epe is more fossil fuel dependent on other utilities and across the nation and has no near-term goal to change that we're a historical moment where we don't have any time to waste burning carbon and it is appalling to me as a resident of the city uh that we are spending our money to give it to a corporation who is working against our own goals as a city who you know we who pass the eight to zero
166plan and have a lot of goals around the natural environment and dte is using their profits to promote fossil fuel consumption and lobby against decarbonization and just as an example of what dt is using their money for the detroit metro times investigation in 2019 found that every customer bill from dte is inflated by about 13 a month just to fulfill their investor obligations that's money that all of us in ann arbor are spending that we could be using to install solar wind power or repairing the barton dam but instead that's going to someone who probably lives outside the community they're doing all this but we don't have a choices if we offer the municipal utility we'd be able to control where that money is going and do things that align with what we want to
167do as a city with the a20 plan and i fully support municipalization and i hope you do as well great thank you very much anyone else can see yep caller two one five yeah hi can you hear me yes you can wonderful um my name is matt sarah sweeney i am a graduate student here at uh um and i have actually i've been in ann arbor for quite a long time i was here for undergrad as well so i've been around for about been an ann arbor resident for about eight years now um and i like so many others tonight i'm just calling to speak in favor of the um the call for a study on municipalization um an enormous amount of really great points have already been made and i don't know that i
168have anything more that's very unique to add but i did want to say that the presentation that a2 public power gave tonight was really really i found incredibly effective and um really robust and convincing um and i mean especially in demonstrating that you know super effectively i think that dte's goals are just totally not aligned with what ann arbor um is you know supposedly committed to um i also wanted to note just like listening to the public comments earlier um was pretty remarkable and i and i hope you all take seriously the support from um state representatives um erwin and robbie they're you know the way i see that at least is they're trying to do what they can to make this politically safe as you know as politically safe as possible for you um
169and i think it's really important to recognize that you have those uh champions at the state level um so i just wanted to you know sort of emphasis re-emphasize what they're saying um and i think one last point that i wanted to make in response to uh one of the commissioner's question earlier about you know making sure that this can get done in a reasonable time frame um municipalization does indeed take a while uh but we know for a fact that dte is not doing this on a reasonable time frame um so it just seems like moot point to me you know if we're sticking with with dte we are assured to not be doing it on a reasonable time frame um yeah and i think just lastly you know this is an enormous win
170it would be an enormous win for energy democracy um and i think that is really critical for uh for you know fighting climate change in the coming years um and so i hope you take it seriously thank you we thank you anyone else missy yeah caller with the last extension two four five i hear that someone else is still speaking is that right no there is some background noise but go ahead we hear you okay okay uh well good evening members of the energy commission and chair john mursky i am kathleen murphy i live at 315 linda vista street in ann arbor that's ward 5 and i work with ann arbor indivisible and recently i've been following the work of ann arbor for public power i'm a committed environmentalist worried very much about the future
171of the planet and the fate of all living things i have been tremendously inspired by ann arbor's commitment to carbon neutrality by 2030 as well as the very impressive work of the a20 project i became intrigued with the concept of municipalization when i learned about those cities in michigan and around the country that had tried it i wondered how this concept could be helpful to the city or to the ace to zero project to reach their goals more efficiently municipalization is a concept that seems oriented toward the future it combines a full commitment to clean energy with the empowerment of the anna republic to own and control their own electrical grid thus it seems to offer an additional pathway for achieving ann arbor's and a20s carbon neutrality goal by 2030. yet municipalization or energy grid
172poses many challenges that need further study many of those have come out tonight the ann arbor for public power group seems willing to take on that study i was excited to see their presentation here tonight and i hope that you energy commissioners were also now that the biden-harris administration is trying to aggressively deal with the climate crisis the political environment for meeting the climate crisis head on is improving it's possible that municipalization might find additional support in this new political environment so i joined with those who have spoken up earlier from municipalities to encourage you energy commissioners to seriously explore the possibility of a municipal electric utility in ann arbor thank you very much that's all the public tutors is that it i would just like to respond and say we we are inspired by
173all the speakers tonight i mean we really appreciate it and um i'd like to remind everybody that um when we started first talking about a carbon neutrality plan for ann arbor the date was 2040 and then there was a lot of input and it moved up to 2035 and then when it was voted on by council was moved up to 2030. so um this this whole process of engagement and passion and reason and um everything is is a good mix and i think um the fact that we had all these voices tonight was really important and we're going to look forward to a lot of other voices on on related topics um here in the coming months and hopefully that will enable all of us to plot a reasonable plan going forward and make good
174choices um that we can really enact quickly so i want to thank again all of the commissioners comments as well as all the people that called in today it was a great meeting i think um so i truncated the discussion although i don't know what needs to be carried on much longer agenda items for the next meeting any new ideas going going gone so uh it is now 8 39 p.m and i adjourn this meeting thanks everybody tonight for your commitment to this topic and these topics and i look forward to our meeting next month you