001e e e to the November 10th 2020 electronic meeting of the energy commission this meeting is to affect social dist distancing and mitigate the spread of the co9 virus we intend to conduct this meeting similar to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are any technical issues public comment will be via telephone only to speak um during the public um comment um section please call and we're going to use the two number that we know work 9723 I'll repeat that 206 9723 or 8477 again I'll repeat that 213 338 8477 um this information is also available on the published agenda on legistar and in the notice a section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting via CTN Channel 16 or AT&T channel 99 and online at www2 goov back.org
002backwat CN so Josh could you take the roll call yes uh let's see commissioner cloven Garcia here chair mki here commissioner Gerber here commissioner Cy here commissioner shriberg here commissioner hookham I'm here council member Hanner here uh commissioner Singleton commissioner Singleton he's here yep okay he's just muted muted uh let's see commissioner Cy did I ready do Cy did I already ask for commissioner Cy yes okay we'll keep going uh commissioner L and then commissioner George here um I'm sorry I'm not gonna be able to turn my uh video on for this meeting uh meeting's R really long uh in Detroit uh with work today my apologies do we have a quorum we have a quorum I think and here's one more Bridget M Bridget mumber okay so um first of all um hopefully everybody
003has had a chance to look at the agenda um I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda can we get an approve and such a motion Bridget moves we have a second from Chuck all in favor of the approving the motion as published please say I or indicate with a raised hand that you approve I great anybody opposed all in favor and none opposed so the um agenda is approved so approval of the minutes um so I don't recall seeing the minutes did I miss them or yeah so John and this gets to the emails that we've been going back and forth on I am currently working with Thea to get everything updated on legister and have that all set up including with CTN so I'm hoping tomorrow we'll have everything up okay
004so we will have to approve the minutes then at our next Mee hi I don't know if anybody saw ember's email but she said she was stuck in the waiting room of zoom and looking to be let in yeah I did see it I'm not seeing and I just emailed her back asking what name she's under um but I guess we can I can do is admit a few people and see thank you okay so um we will now move on to uh public input or public comment so this is an opportunity for persons to speak up for up to three minutes um please call 206 337-9723 or 213 338 8477 and enter the meeting ID 7397 so I'll repeat that 96825 97 7397 and um this is also on the meeting agenda and City
005staff will select callers that have raised their hand um one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star n on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments Josh let us know if we have anyone in the queue I'm not seeing anyone right now John okay I'll wait for another 10 seconds or so and then we'll have an opportunity at the end of the meeting for additional public comment so let's go ahead and move
006on Josh maybe um interrupt yourself or or me or others um in the next agenda item if someone dials in just in a few seconds um the next uh point on the agenda is the energy report um by the way the agenda is a rather skimpy one today so hopefully the meeting will be short and we'll have a number of other things that we can talk about that are going to be up on the agenda for the next meeting but Josh you want to start um with um energy news from the office of sustainability and Innovations yes um so I have been working with Zach and our office uh to get uh our website updated um and we have if you remember from last meeting we took a whole bunch of updates from around the
007office put it into a file that file is also attached on the agenda um I'm not sure if uh John just because we don't have a lot uh going on in this meeting whether we want to co maybe go a little bit more in depth sure on that piece of it okay so let me um let me share it with you all okay I I will start off by uh saying and John we we had a conversation about this beforehand um so I'll go and introduce the the topic um I think uh John carlen and Bridget had a uh meeting uh I believe it was about a week ago maybe a little bit more now um a phone call talking just about some general kind of energy commission things how the energy commission really interacts
008with uh OSI the off sustainability Innovations um and so I think uh that uh there's some interest uh to maybe rethink the way that uh that the office and the commission interact um specifically around the action tracker item um but Missy will be coming she couldn't make it to this meeting um but she'll be coming to the December meeting uh to kind of address that further with that said I'll just go ahead and get started on on some of the things that we've been working on uh within the office um so energy benchmarking and disclosure um theia and Zach in the office have mostly been heading that uh I know that uh we had a subcommittee that basically addressed specifically the uh buildings and built environment that talked about this uh they have time set
009up now at this point um and I know Jan Culbertson that was part of the subcommittee as well as Wayne Appleyard are on that um so they're basically getting a whole bunch of stakeholders together in a room uh to think about and kind of talk more about uh you know what it means to to have and specifically this has to do with benchmarking so what what it means to have kind of transparency and uh information available as far as energy disclosure goes in the commercial sector um and multif family um before you leave that topic Josh I think um it's important um to share um one of Missy's comments during the phone call that you referenced we had a week ago about this topic um the commission knows that there's a draft ordinance for um
010single family residences that would require a home audit um energy audit and disclosure at the time of marketing and Missy indicated that um um she had had discussions um and with a number of people um that were politically well connected in the city and um the feeling was that rather than introduce um individual ordinances for one sector at a time um that it would um be much more likely to gain widespread support politically um with council members as well as um among residents and stakeholder groups if all of the energy benchmarking um disclosure audit type of ordinances for all sectors meaning single family multif family commercial and Industrial were introduced as a group so there's been some um banter back and forth emails discussions um as to why that's been delayed and so the the
011call was made that um we would finish all these and introduce them as one one group um to um as a proposal to council at the same time all right yep um so the the next uh major item on uh on our updates for the things OSI is working on we have this Renewable Energy Efficiency electrification and Equity movement so uh we're calling it reform re 4M uh and this really came out of the electrification work that we were doing um so we had a I think I might have brought this up in in one of the earlier energy commission meetings but we had a number of convenings uh with uh stakeholders specifically uh contractors uh other cities uh in the Great Lakes region um that are all looking to uh to kind of do
012something similar to to go towards more electrification really to just kind of start introducing the idea of electrification try to figure out what the program would look like uh and kind of collaborate uh with members of of those uh convenings um and so we just wrapped those up uh not too long ago it was probably a couple of weeks ago now um and we did some followup uh phone conversations so uh we're really starting to think about how can we uh apply what we've learned uh with reform and uh specifically how do we uh how do we kind of move forward with with everything that we've learned from that side uh there's an interest specifically to look at uh lowincome areas um so Bryant community Center has been something that's been pitched as an idea
013um because the the whole the whole idea being that if we try to help those who are obviously most in need those that that have the hardest time to try to Electrify um we can kind of create a template that works for everyone um so that's one thing that that is currently ongoing J could you talk a bit more about the renewable energy part of that Ram four yeah of course um yeah totally so we we took a look at at a couple of different systems so we looked at electrification so specifically in terms of heat pumps um we looked at what would we do if if we paired uh those heat pumps with uh solar panels and then using those heat pumps solar panels and then Energy Efficiency upgrades the home um could we
014basically bring down the cost because there's there's two different costs for electrification there's The Upfront cost of actually getting the system which is generally more expensive than your traditional uh Natural Gas furnace for example um and then there's the ongoing cost of uh natural gas versus uh you know electricity as far as just the the cost to to power um your heat pump versus if it was a furnace so those are two challenges we've been looking at very seriously and one of the things that uh you know I think um Fong and our our uh part of our our staff OSI she was thinking about you know can we go ahead and partner these things together she did some modeling and we looked at it um and it seems like like uh it makes more
015financial sense if you're able to partner something like an electric heat pump with uh solar panels uh because it just brings down the cost I basically you're generating some of that electricity through the solar panels um and you're not necessarily paying for that on the grid like you would be otherwise so um so yeah so we've been doing some work around that as well I mean as of right now it's all very preliminary it's it's kind of just looking at everything that uh that we gain from these convenings and trying to figure out if we can put together a model so is the electricity from the solar powering the heat pump that would be the idea yeah that's the idea yeah it'd be offsetting though good thank you yeah is there any other questions okay
016we also have a uh solariz so we talked about this last time uh the kind of Julie solariz uh events that she's holding there was also some consideration as to how we can kind of develop uh what is happening as far as solarise goes so whether we can include things like uh heat pumps within the bulk buys uh battery storage systems in the bulk buys um and so that's something that we're looking at now hey hey Josh before you leave that um during the commission meeting and also in some correspondence and communication after the meeting um there were requests and um an indication that there might be cost information that um would be shared um is there any final decision on that and when might that be yeah um so the latest that I've heard
017uh I think that uh they were they were looking at the the potential um for basically disclosing a price range um and that kind of got to some of the questions that came out I think of the last convening and that that price range would have variables listed inside of it so that way people knew roughly what that price range could be when they're looking at things and what the variables would be to actually uh you know basically affect the the bottom line um so something I I worked a little bit with uh Julian and I I think that that's what they're going to go with can can we note in the meeting minutes um that we would like a clear decision on that sure and um um a date by by which we would
018know when the decision will be will be provided so if we I don't necessarily want a a date I mean it would be nice to be given a date right away but at the very least a date by when we'll get a date if you understand what I mean yes yep yep yep just finish real quick and then I'll open it up um the other thing is um there was also discussion about um um battery or storage options and whether or not that was really a let's say good return on the dollar invested from a climate perspective from a greenhouse gas reduction perspective yep I can oh I think John might have [Music] froze wait a second here I think John just power at his house and his battery hasn't kicked down yet yeah could
019be while we're waiting for John I think um there were other people stuck in the waiting room with me uh and so maybe at least one of them I think wanted to give public comment so whenever appropriate it might be good to check back in with that yeah let me see I think I actually see maybe someone with the so no one's in the waiting room anymore I put everyone in just because we were having that issue um but let me see maybe I do say raised hand here we go caller 134 are you there yes thanks Mr McDonald um Ken hi um I don't want to interrupt um your report so I'm we could I could talk later whenever you think is appropriate oh no if you want to if you want to go
020ahead and and jump in now it's a while we wait for John um all right um yeah I'm apparently uh being placed in the waiting room makes it hard or impossible to um see the uh star nine um indication I don't know I'm just guessing um anyway um I'll make my three minute comment um last month I smoke to spoke to the commission about the fact that DTE Energy is the third dirtiest major utility in the country DTE needs to clean up its act uh but I know it can't simply replace coal and gas with Renewables overnight I'm not that naive I know the transition will be extremely hard it's simple physics consider energy density defined as the amount of energy per fuel unit weiter volume when Humanity transitioned from biof fuels to coal and
021then from coal to crude oil and then to Natural Gas each time we stepped up from a lower to a higher density primary fuel source that's why we did it for more concentrated energy never before have we attempted to go from a higher energy density to a lower one why do wind and solar have such low energy density their capacity factor which is actual versus maximum electricity output is poor most wind turbines only work 20 to 25% of the time and voltaics even less in cloudier climates like ours no more than 15% so as Renewables take over from fossil fuels we need storage to fill in the gaps that means lithium lithium ion batteries in the short term maybe something like pumped Hydro or compressed air for long-term storage commissioner hookham is an expert on
022this he's reviewed these Technologies at previous meetings hydrogen generated using clean power electrolysis and stored in salt Doms is another alternative none of these is cheap we always hear that wind and solar have become cheaper than fossil fuels for electricity generation that's true in the narrow sense the so-called levelized cost of energy is lower that's the lifetime cost of generating electricity over the total electricity delivered but the levelized cost doesn't take into account storage or land use large scale Renewables for full-time electricity generation are still not even nearly competitive in the marketplace here's my point we can't wait for the market to solve the climate crisis there's no time for that we need mandates as part of a World War II scale or Marshall Project type mobilization no one in government is talking in these
023terms certainly not Joe Biden because we've avoided acting for so long and Global heating is a delayed effect we're now in an emergency requiring immediate and radical emission cuts to just avoid overshooting the Paris targets three three or four degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels which is where we're headed at best give us a world that in my opinion is not worth living in even stopping at two degrees barely possible at this point will bring a myriad of disasters that will make today's fires droughts floods and hurricanes seem benign young people feel robbed of their future and they're right my generation squandered the gift of time and destroyed that future for them to S to salvage anything we must start the conversion right now this minute both at the personal level and at the policy level
024as for policy let's take some risks at the local level invoke home rule modify our building code to mandate that new construction and major Renovations be all electric form a solar power Cooperative to build new clean energy gener H clean electricity generation and storage and establish a municipal electric utility state law permits all of these nationally we must reorient our entire economic system towards reducing emissions and since the wealthy are by far the highest emitters the top 10% in personal wealth are responsible for half of all emissions that means drastically reducing economic inequality this will not happen voluntarily or probably at all given the entrenched nature of consumer society and growth capitalism so I can only dread our climate future I won't be around terribly much longer but to the young people serving on this
025commission and those on the call tonight I can only say I'm sorry I failed you thank you thanks Ken I'm back sorry about that Josh I just like to U make a quick comment on the our speaker thank him very much for his his input and coming forward um so I I agree with most of it I encourage him to take a serious look at um the experience of Boulder Colorado trying to become a municipal utility what that required and what happened um and uh encourage um you know more people to get into energy law graduate from the University of Michigan with with the law and go to work for um on the public sector side helping us to win that battle because Boulder spent over $880 million and they lost and and uh you
026know an arber is looking at that and several people looked at that price tag and said you know well we don't have 80 million dollar to fight over this and especially if we lose so um you know we gota we have to be even more creative in some of our thinking um on this and and the other pieces is that part of this equation which um we're not looking at is is carbon removal and adaptation um how how what we can do to adapt you know uh I know this there's uh it's apparently it's controversial I didn't think it was but controversial to paint our roofs white in an arbor um um oddly enough some people uh don't go along with that idea um but I think there are things that we could do at
027the local level for carbon removal communities are doing this there are technologies that are available and having an Arbor's Economic Development people um kind of engage on on uh how what what are the emerging businesses in carbon removal what do they look like and why aren't they coming to an arbor to launch their businesses or do those so you know I think a lining ourselves across uh broadening what we think about is energy um and looking for opportunities to uh grow businesses here that are world leaders in carbon removal technology um is something that the economic Vel mment arm of this city could be doing um my sense is that uh perhaps John and and uh Steve might want to educate the economic development side of the house about those kinds of things because uh
028my sense is that they're not on board with sustainability like the rest of us are and um we might see more opportunities there to remove carbon and buy ourselves some time um with the the in in those Industries then trying to figure out how to get to te to put in more solar so just a comment a comment to your comment Mark briefly there is a um entity within the energy Institute of the University of Michigan called the global CO2 initiative um they are looking at various um CO2 sequestration opt options as well as um use than um for those industrial uses of of that CO2 um I um had a couple of um web webinar or not webinars I say um Zoom meetings with them and um put Jan Culbertson touch with them Jan's
029head of the 2030 District um which you know involving the commercial and Industrial side of the city um and she's also an architect so one of the one of the opportunities um is the use of CO2 sequestering concrete um obviously you know we're not doing a tremendous amount of building in the city if any one is it's the university and hopefully that's one of the things we can put pressure on the university to do is when they do build to use their um concrete favored by their own Institute um but that that's um one option um and of course there's other carbon sequestering building materials too um so as um building codes change and practices change hopefully we can make some progress along this L yes I think that's it you have those guys perhaps
030come speak to us give a presentation on what they're doing would that be worth doing yes can you note that in the items for the next agenda yeah we could do that I know the I'd really like that uh personally speaking as someone that works uh for a union that does a lot of construction work um that is a big issue for us we are you know big proponents of moving to a green uh economy and infrastructure as fast as possible but as I'm sure everyone's aware uh that uh concrete emits a lot of CO2 emissions so if there is an optional alternative I would love to hear about it and learn more right we can do that and I know um John I think Susan fancy used to do a lot of work in
031this Susan works for that um correct Susan works for that particular inititive yes so might be worth reaching out okay I'm getting a message that my internet connection is stable again so um if I drop out just carry on without I want to just really quickly make sure was there anyone else uh just because of the the technical difficulties of the lobby and and and not being able to star in from the lobby is there anyone else who wanted uh to comment during a public comment that wasn't able to you can hit uh star n if you're on your [Music] phone okay um if you do just go ahead and we can stop and uh give you a chance to talk so uh other programs that we're working on uh electrification of vehicles um so
032you currently working with the DDA uh to get more Vehicles specifically electric vehicle Chargers so they're looking at about 100 plus uh level two Chargers um I think the the next Up's on that front and this is mostly being work being done by Simi uh in coordination with the DDA uh but they're looking at some of the cost analysis and some of the the different types of structures uh that are necessary to um to advance that side of things Josh do you know where the current count it's it's in the 20s isn't it or right around 20 yeah you know I don't have it off the top of my head because um I'm trying to think I know parking structures have uh quite a few the the um downtown library one so I'm trying to
033think if we include the parking structure we don't um but yeah we'll go with 20 I mean that sounds ballpark uh Josh while we're on the topic of um EVS I sent an email earlier I'd heard a rumor that the city was looking at buying Teslas um is that a true rumor it's true it is yeah it is a potentially true rumor it's on the agenda for for this next meeting Monday yeah um I know part of our sustainability goals have to do with um sustainable labor and uh full disclosure I actually own Tesla St but um they're a company that um doesn't use union labor um has is that an issue that has been discussed as part of that decision I don't think it has um I think the conversation and I I'm very
034it's kind of periphery peripheral conversation I kind of s on the outside of this but um from what I've heard they were looking at specifically uh police cars and cars that would be able to fit some of the equipment and policemen and everything and I guess the Tesla was the one that was chosen as being fast and and meeting some of these different criteria um I don't know I don't think that the labor component of it is is known or at least has been looked at but it's something I can definitely um pass along um I just wanted to briefly comment on that and I appreciate Bridget you bringing this up um I know that uh I I've had conversations with um a couple council members about issues around this uh that this might get
035pulled to the agenda uh I know that the labor the hon Valley area labor council is going to come out with a statement tonight against the city's purchase of it um and especially considering uh that there's a an American unionmade Alternative uh with Ford with the Ford mon uh that is comparable in price range um obviously you know I don't know the details on performance and so forth that would you meet meet the the city specifications there but um from what I'm aware of you know there is an resourcefully and uh properly sourced alternative uh electric vehicle on that so but I just wanted to make that cor Josh I have a question too yeah well is it part of the I didn't look at the plan so um does the Tesla include a power
036wall solar power wall to each power those cars with a power wall or are we just buying Teslas and power with them with coal and Frack gas yeah I don't think that there's a a power wall That's included did you have so using an American Alternative would be smart I mean if they have a power if they bring a solar system with them that's one thing but if it's just a one electric vehicle versus another our our Council questions are due on tomorrow at noon and so I was just getting ready to send them off and so I was waiting till after this meeting because several of the things that are on our agenda are are you know pertinent to to our work here including the chapter 55 changes for solar height which is something
037I just want to get two minutes somewhere during this meeting about but yeah they say Teslas and then they say we're in for a couple of Tesla charging systems also 5,000 each and so um I have all kinds of questions around this item I don't know who some of the other folks have been talking to on Council about it but um uh I can't believe like I can't believe that there's not an alternative and so I know that the contract required a uh I mean I have all kinds of questions one of them is um are are we getting in a situation with the OSI budget where they're going to be subsidizing these Fleet purchases and that's a new thing for us and so that's one consideration and then the other is just how how
038how was it that Tesla roast the top of this Choice when we've been buy buy we've had the bolts and then of course there's bolts and then the Ford products that were mentioned and so you know I'm not exactly sure what I mean it says in the resolution who these vehicles are for um but I'm not it doesn't really say why Tesla is an outstanding Choice other than it meets certain basic requirements and we're also by the way simultaneously replacing uh um many of the police cruisers with the new Ford hybrids which are supposed to be amazing because they have a big battery tray in them that runs all the gear and so most police car time is idle time and it they don't idle time anymore they run the battery down then they idle
039to charge the battery right so these new Ford hybrids are pretty awesome in my opinion after reading through the descriptions of them just now so I I don't know I I I as soon as I I saw it I thought that's really like a that's really like a bad look like a billion dollars for for climate change and then we start buying Teslas you know it just doesn't R even though the price is very comparable I mean the Tesla is they're used there 36,000 and they look at these Ford hybrids and they're about the same so it's not it's competitive on a price consideration but the the unit consideration jumped right out to me because I I have I know a lot of folks who are really down on Tesla for their labor practices and
040you know and also the sourcing frankly and this is a obviously we we talked about this many times that you know all all the concerns around the sourcing of these rare Metals you know for these batteries so whatever I don't know yeah we're gonna buy we're gonna talk about buying Teslas next Monday I saw your letter thank you for writing that I just saw it blip in during my earlier meeting so thanks for pointing that out Bridget so so Jeff I hope that the in the analysis there doing apples and apples not apples and oranges on on emissions because you know if we're charging Tesla's batteries with coal and and Frack gas um that makes that that makes no sense at all so you know I don't know how we're comparing Vol versus Tesla versus
041you know the the Ford stuff but it seems that the emission stuff um we got a looking at local emissions is just part of it looking at you know the The Fugitive emissions that are coming in we're not if we're not accounting for dte's emissions to to send us the power to charge these cars um then all we're doing is trans transferring the emissions from an arbor to someplace else yeah I'm I don't I don't see the breakdown but I could certainly ask for that yeah it should be you know be able to do it with in our our emission study and the stuff that we do on on uh you know the Anis plan for our our emissions greenhouse gas emissions stuff but my understanding is that we don't capture um the emissions that
042DTE generates to generate the power they send to us we only capture it at the end use so if we're charging batteries and running police cars you know with with batteries in an arbor and powering those bar battery get them charging them with with frat gas and coal um I'm not sure how we're we're subsidizing DTE you know it seems a little nuts to me why don't we just spend money and put more insulation in our buildings instead well it seems to me this is kind of the same conversation John was having before he uh you froze up um that's the economics of batteries when you charge use solar power to charge a battery and then use a battery to charge a car you're really introducing significant losses in that whole process and even though
043it may be feeding DTE there is a benefit to knocking off daytime energy even if it's only moving it to to the evening they still net loose because you know you're taking the most valuable solar power and offsetting the most expensive generation from DTE so they don't win from that and I also think it's important when you think about the economics of this that solar is the only way to go if you're charging from DTE you're paying perhaps twice or three times as much the lifetime the cost of energy for solar power today is probably onethird of what it is if you're buying from DTE and there's even a special rate I believe that would apply for charging an EV Fleet with that compensates you quite significantly for export during the day so it really
044could make quite a bit of economic sense just to skip the extra battery charge the EVS when you can even during the day or sell your current to DTE during the day which basically offsets other eration including the the gas that you're talking about with the wellhe head emissions it offsets that even though you are buying back electricity in the evening at a much much lower price so I think this whole area should just be investigated better including any alternative but if but if the idea is just to get an electric car and not charge the solar I'd say that's not a good idea you're probably going to have a garage and that garage could have lots of solar on it you'll probably have other areas where the buses are are charged you can have
045lots of solar there as well I will say um one of the things that I looked on at early on uh there's a site South Industrial uh and it's it's where the Housing Commission is and there's a lot of land there we were actually looking at potentially using um kind of a whole allinone so basically solar carport charger with battery system uh to basically charge all of the electric vehicles for the fleet specifically I think this was for public works at the time um and then the other place that makes a lot of sense is wheeler because wheeler is where Fleet is uh and so we have you know there's a I don't know if you guys are familiar with wheeler is a building but it's kind of a barn looking building um and out
046in front there's a rather large uh parking lots and so we were thinking if we go ahead and do uh overhangs like basically you know protected parking lots that are really just kind of double as solar panels uh you know and then have batteries and that and have that charge so there there are a few couple you know a sites that we've looked at the potential for uh specifically building in um you know the the whole system an all-in-one battery charger with a solar system that actually charges the car directly um I don't think uh by the way these in particular don't don't have that feature but I know it's something we've looked at in the past but I say that just just to summarize my point of view you're going to Electrify the police
047cars and other buses around the city that you need to do it with solar power you don't want to do it by just relying on buying energy from DTE that would be the wrong thing to do as for what Mark is saying very long well and also Jeff I think you know that this is a cart and a horse thing I mean I think the way to look at this is how do we Ma how do we have us take our solar asset and use it most effectively so when we're starting to look at cars and stuff um having that help Drive the Drive the decision what kinds of cars as opposed to oh we bought electric cars now we got to figure out how to charge them that's you know to me that's that's
048we got a cart and a horse problem here um so we've been talking about wheeler for a long time um the the decision on Wheeler let's maximize the solar that should be a main driver on now what do we do with with vehicles for the city and if we're buying vehicles that aren't we're not charging at the wheeler station then why not and and and you know how do we just how would we justify doing that so you know we're killing two birds and one stone but let's you know if we're going to make a decision about Teslas I mean for me the question is how is Tesla going to be charged at the wheeler Center and and is that a better deal than a Ford or something else um and then all these other
049questions about Labor and everything come come through but ultimately this is about emissions so how can we put people to work and not generate emissions how can we have gender equality and Racial equality um in a in a renewable energy Society that's tied to sustainability all those things have to be tied together if we make these incremental isolated decisions about what cars we're going to buy we're going to find ourselves stuck and and I can tell you we're going to be stuck we're going to be stuck charging our stuff all El we're going to have electric ordinance where we're doing want to make the whole city electric DTE couldn't be more happy oh boy we get to sell more gas gas and coal they're asking for a second thousand megawatt natural fra gas plant right
050now in Lancing with the Public Service Commission a second one and they and and they're capping solar at 1% so as soon as they get 1% of the amount of solar that they they need they will not let anybody else hook up or if they do they'll charge you at a rate even below the current rate that they're talking about now we we need a go alone strategy here like the caller called in and part of that is we got to be smart about this we own e wheeler we can put solar on Wheeler we can do this tomorrow if we can't afford it let's get a third party fing financer up here to do it for us um and let's pack it in and and get it done well there's even some locations oh
051uh Jeff did you have something you wanted to say you know about the electrification so we talked about the DDA operations and they're talking about 100 L2 Chargers and these parking structures well I hope that the solar panels are going up on the top floor of these parking structures for these L2 Chargers and you could park for free there and charge for free or whatever you got to park on top right underneath the solar panel or we got to run the wiring down through the structure whatever however they determine their you know needs analysis or demand analysis for their parking these EVS but um there's no way we should be hooking 100 L2 Chargers up to the grid fulltime like I would love I mean if people are parking their cars for their downtown offices
052or whatever that's during the day the solar should be going right into those car batteries so I have a few comments if I may um I I I would hope um that Council as well as OSI um looks at this carefully and lays out its rationale um first of all um we should also not let um perfect become the enemy of the good um the union of concern scientists regularly updates um how clean electric vehicles are when they're powered from the grid and in 201 2018 an electric vehicle in Michigan was the equivalent of a 49 m m per gallon um internal combustion engine that is dramatically better than equivalent internal combustion engines so um this is something that we need to consider the grid is getting cleaner and it could be that Anarbor will
053at some point in time in the future as well as the DDA be able to access renewable energy whether it's solar or wind or whatever I don't think it really matters whether it comes from GTE or whether it comes from the landfill or whether it comes comes from something on top of Wheeler so I would hope that um OSI lays that out um I haven't seen I looked about three four months ago as to whether the union of concerned scientists had updated their figure and I assume it can it also um takes into account those guys are smart enough to look at um fugitive emissions from methane um if they didn't that would be you know really concerning I assume that they're smart enough um the second thing as far as tesas are concerned one
054of the things that I would hope OSI would also present as an argument to council is what is the likelihood of other vehicles coming on the market in the foreseeable future and if there is not another Market um another vehicle again we should think about the the various tradeoffs that we have with um all these other things like labor and so on and so forth and you know it would be in my view irresponsible to wait until 2025 if we can do something next year if there's not a um an equivalent vehicle coming on the market if there is one coming on the market and it's coming on the market next year then that would be a good reason to wait for a year and buy another vehicle that uses um labor that um adheres
055to the standards that the city has set so there's a number of different things that we need to consider here and um I I would recommend that we not beat this topic to death I think um Jeff and and others are raising um questions that the city that the OSI needs to be able to provide to Council in order to make an informed decision yeah and the energy commission can help with that too yeah and just to kind of piggy back off of that you know um Jeff to your point so we had looked a long time ago at doing uh solar panels on a parking structure and there was concerns about a sale effect so when winds kind of pick up and if you have the wrong angle solar panels can get ripped off
056the roof uh there was an analysis done that basically showed that the winds could gust up you know strong enough to actually pose a risk so we are looking at other ways to do that um but on the other hand you know there are places like water treatment plant wastewater treatment plant where they have really low rates as far as the cost of electricity and at locations like that for example you know you're you know you might get better bang for the buck if you're doing uh solar panels they uh you know charging electric vehicles directly um since a lot of times you'll be able to to make up that cost a lot quicker um so I do think again to John's Point some of this has to be looked at in more detail um
057and just figuring out where it makes more sense to use what type of application um and you know again uh in full transparency I I wasn't uh very involved with the Tesla decision in particular because it's you know I worked on some of the stuff uh a couple of years ago but nothing's too recent so I can definitely take that back as a question to OS I when you speak to Wheeler and and like the water treatment Waste Water treatment so on um I talked to Dr staltz about that because um you know I wanted to prioritize uh critical infrastructure buildings for the city as part of our resilience also not just the sustainability so hopefully we can we can keep that prioritization in in in Focus as we look for places to harvest you
058know solar energy yeah I mean my my number one location every time there's any type of improvement is generally those three and in part it comes from a greenhouse gas emissions standpoint as well so they just you know those water tream plant Wastewater Tre plant are the largest producers of greenhouse gas emissions for the city um and Then followed by wheeler and City Hall City Hall's yeah go ahead well no just like you know we just I just got out of a card meeting and we're talking about Gelman and and the dioxin and all that and water treatment and you know um if we end up having a UV because we can't keep the dioxin out of our our water intake in the here on river we are doomed from energy perspective because those that
059UV energy drain is insane and you know you know Wastewater treatments going through there right now with the cryptos gum they put in a small Trojan system and I'm sure they're I'm sure their energy Bild just shot right up yeah so yeah it's really critical that's where kind of analyzing the different situations what makes most sense how can we incorporate solar where maybe you know you hook up the solar specifically to to the UV operations you know thinking outside the box a little bit bit um I think a lot of times we can if we look a little deeper we can figure out what makes most sense for each site it's a great Point Josh can we move on yes let's move on um so bikes uh this is kind of a uh a discount
060program uh that Simi has been working on as well uh mostly through ebikes so using all these different electric bikes um and there's uh as it says in this kind of summary uh you know they do discounts uh for these elect bike so you can go and get a discount um I think semi's just basically been adding more and more types of bikes to to the discount list which is really nice and you know electric bikes are they they have that uh the possibility of of going electric if you need to go a further distance or you can just use it some of these bikes you can actually just use it as a conventional bike so it's really nice because it allows you to go a much further range than a a traditional bike would
061and and with a discount um green rental housing so this kind of falls into some of the disclosure work we've been doing um you know and I think there's just a lot of stakeholder engagement uh work that's been uh you know underfoot currently it kind of wraps up really closely with uh specifically energy disclosure uh and ensuring that we're incentivizing uh certain types of uh buildings as far as you know envelopes and other things of that nature um okay other things going on 10,000 tree initiative this is another one that I haven't been very involved with um I know that uh we're looking for someone to actually coordinate and manage this um the 10,000 tree initiative so basically as it says we're trying to plant 10,000 trees offset kind of getting into a more natural
062form of sequestration as we were talking about earlier hey Josh on that on that front we should use our green spaces we've got all these green spaces around the city that we don't use at all they're just land that's that's not used there's tremendous amount of opportunity there for sustainable food for trees for um landfill um or not landfill but Wastewater sludge uh use nobody's doing anything with it where's the holistic plan and I would continue to harp about that yeah that's a great point we had great success with the food Forest up at Arrow by arowood Leslie Park and we've had two work sessions and it's almost all in It's amazing And they have an extended plan to run you know to get fruit and nut trees all the way down the side of
063there along the Leslie Park Golf Course fence and so I think that uh I hopefully we're in a year and then next year into that project that it'll act as a teaching site for that and say look what we're doing here and it doesn't take that much to stick some trees in there if you have people committed to maintaining them yeah no I think that's a great and I think if you're able to uh kind of like you guys are talking about if you're able to combine you know two different things together so for example fruit trees in certain areas or whatever you know where you're able to kind of uh I think that's a a great use of land so that's just to keep this in perspective um I read the University of Michigan's
064um presidential commission on carbon neutrality report related to bios sequestration two interesting facts um wetlands are actually here in the Midwest the best um ecosystem for sequestering carbon um and actually some entities are converting Agland into Wetlands um as a bio sequestration methodology um a second um interesting fact all of the uni all of the trees on the University's property here in an arbor 18,000 trees the total amount of carbon that they sequester is the equivalent of 150 cars um traveling for one year only 150 cars and that's every tree on all of the University's property here in an arbor so when we're talking about um sequestration um at least during using natural means at these trees this is not something that is going to solve our CO2 problems it's something we want to do
065um because it has a lot of other ecosystem benefits as well as human health benefits but we shouldn't fool ourselves that um by doing this we're going to be you know making a great contribution to reducing our greenhouse gas inventory well this is where that presentation that we were talking about earlier as far as sequestration might be really informative to let us know what you know how those Cycles work and I was really I saw a presentation actually from Susan fancy um probably more than two years ago now and was really Blown Away by some of the work that they're doing over there mark did you have something John to be fair those those trees are are existing trees I think we're talking about new trees which will you know sequester carbon throughout their it
066is but the the total carbon that is that's estimated to have to have been sequestered in existing trees on UL is emitted by 150 cars in one year oh so it's not just how much they do that in in a year the total from for the life cycle y for for their the total amount that they have currently sequestered is the equivalent output of 150 cars in one year wow I was surprised and that's a study that the university missing you were surp it was so low that I surprised you I've been harping on about natural capital for a while but then I know other other folks I know in the you know on the environmental fringes have said you got to watch it with that because then you know however they're putting the numbers
067on sometimes it comes out low and you realize hey that land's cheap I'd rather put a high-rise there or whatever and or a grocery store and so the natural Capital value isn't always calcula way and sometimes it's dangerous to put a figure on on something and let it have more of an intrinsic natural value right right interesting I don't know I don't know uh it really it really shines when it comes to storm water though sorry I dropped out for a second again I didn't hear all that so just keep I'm going um for the next one Aging in place efficiently program uh so cvan Arbor actually got a a grant for this and I think at this point we're just looking for people to help run it um so it's kind of in the
068design phase and we're looking to hire two- part-time funded uh coordinators basically um other things going on uh a20 ambassadors um so we had that meeting I think it was last month now uh where we went over you know some of the material for the ambassadors that we'll be bringing on um there is and I think when talking to Missy a little bit about the conversation John that you that you had with her along with Bridget and carlen um you know she had suggested in this example for to share a um a questionnaire that had come out from this um with the energy commission so I think she was thinking about something a bit more informal as far as uh you know us bringing or OSI bringing different tasks to the commission and then having
069the commission kind of respond to it um so I'll be sharing a a questionnaire that goes along with the a20 ambassadors program uh with the commission uh so that way everyone can take a look I think you know if you guys can respond within two weeks I'll I'll put it into to the email that's not the application is it form it's a different form isn't it uh I think I would have to look at it a little closer the applications I mean it's like a job application what yeah no I think this is actually a question references yeah I think this is actually a questionnaire but let me I'll send it over to you guys okay and that way you you'll have it because this is one of those projects where I'm kind of I'm
070peripherally involved but I haven't really been um deeply involved in the creation of it and then finally uh public engagement updates uh so climate coffee conversation happening November 12th at 8: a.m. uh there's a a zoom uh link here um if anyone would like to join us um there'll be someone there'll be a couple of us we're probably going to rotate uh in and out of these so every month there'll be someone different who's coming to the uh and it's kind of just like a coffee hour people have questions so we can answer their questions by the way that's going to be a monthly that's going to be a monthly monthly yep thanks John that's right monthly uh there's also a transportation Power Hour November 12 um so if anyone is interested in this uh
071Simi has been having a hard time getting people to sign up for this so please spread the word let people know about it um I'm sure he he'd love to have a decent turnout as far as attendance goes so another thing Sim's working on uh yeah and I think we pretty much worked our way through all the major topics were there any things that Commissioners had as far as events that maybe we should put on here or other other Commissioners should know about um I sent out a notification there are two webinars that might be of interest um one is um tomorrow from one to two financing options to deliver carbon neutrality um there's going to be several large entities talking about um in particular related to the university but potentially also related to um
072larger um customers like the city or industrial entities um how um they can Finance their carbon neutrality plans um and then on um on the 19th I think it is um um towards it it's a webinar called towards adjust an equitable carbon neutrality plan both of these are being put on by an organization I'm affiliated with called car voices for carbon neutrality whose mission is to um accelerate and to Catal ize um carbon neutrality at the University of Michigan I sent an email out just before 6 o'cl I'm gonna be on that second panel too but yeah it should be good um Josh the GLA annual meeting is going to be Saturday December 5th um Dan scrips the chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission is going to be speaker and Jagger Shaw is coming
073in and he's going to be the keynote speaker and it's all Zoom based this year so you can sign up at gl's website but it's that's that's going to be happen on the 5th wonderful I'm excited about being on he's I listened to his weekly podcast along with two others and it's really great too he owed me money because I invested in sun energy it went up it went up to $35 a share and dropped the the junk Bonds in about two weeks I me holy crap that was after he left I think yeah it was after he left that's his answer too well I wasn't there hey Josh one one last thing the link to this report um in legistar did not work for me it was broken okay let me um yeah sometimes
074if you don't uh finalize the copy there's some funky things that go on let me look into that um I can get it live for you in if you guys want I can just send it yeah would you just send it out as to you right now that way you that' be great yeah we all right and I think that pretty much does it as far as uh news notes and updates then did we have any updates from council members from Council haer or from any of the other Commissioners um I I could just say something briefly about a few energy related things that are on the next council meeting um C1 is uh changes to chapter 55 the rooftop solar energy systems um it's a height waiver and currently it's written that it changes
075um it they allow up to uh 12 feet above says sorry rooftop solar energy systems May extend up to 12 feet above the surface of a flat roof when determining the height of the building and so I'm going to assume that they mean the height of the building caps at whatever it is and how they you know they have a fence around the AC Air Handlers and all that and this can be 12 above the surface of a flat roof so hopefully plannings um you know our building and development is fine with that language um my question was um what about folks who have you know pitched roofs which also have rooftop solar applications on them uh somebody's right at that 31 feet or whatever and then they start putting panels on there they're going
076to be 316 or 318 or whatever it is so I I just asked put that in my Council questions I didn't know if anybody had any insight into that um but right now we only discuss the rooftop solar as part of a flat roof um and the other part of the changes are to uh solar energy systems and um really not requiring people to come back and do a complete site plan resubmission and so on for solar system that we wave the we describe some things it can't do it can't increase impervious surface you can't remove Landmark trees and can't remove required parking things like that um but but it was being styed by the the the area the surface area that was allowed and so I think these are good changes I'm just not
077sure if for the the height variance we should also include pitched roofs so just wanted to share that that's the biggest thing plus the Teslas um hey Jeff if you need your if you need energy uh commission assistance don't help don't hesitate to to ask us that's what our mission is we're supposed to support you guys I don't think we've ever faced a question Lately from commiss from Council um on these kinds of topics don't hesitate to call well thanks you know I'm not sure I'm G to be on energy commission next two years um I we put in for different things and we're still sorting it all out who ends up where and I didn't get some of the ones I asked for and I was given some I didn't and energy commission wasn't
078part of that mix unfortunately so I'm not sure because I I actually enjoy it and I I know I missed a couple but um uh it's tough because sometimes it falls right when our our Gman stuff is happening but um you know I've really enjoyed being on here and learning all the things that that are you know I know it's going to be critical and I feel like I kind of maybe the next two years it' be the better two years now that this now that our E2 Zer plan start a rooll and all this stuff's happen and I feel like I could contribute maybe more in the next couple years so we're going to see how it all shakes out next Monday I I don't know if they're fixed until we vote on them
079or what it looks like the process is being run differently this year than my first than it was two years ago so if I don't see you next year thanks what you're do I just Jeff I just would like to make sure though that you understand what Chuck is offering as as in terms of like really what our role is regardless you know we really it's we hope that you're able to continue being part of the the energy commission and if you're not to please convey the message that this is what we're here for to offer you know information advice I mean the members of the commission are like extremely experienced and knowledgeable and that's what we're here for for exactly these types of questions well um yeah thanks thanks for saying that um I
080you know it looked like what the memo that preceded this resolution and these changes it it made it sound like it had gone through our subcommittees and everything and um we' take a look at that but maybe that's not accurate this did not go through the energy commission I think it went through planning and yes I don't know if the the the restrictions apply um to um residential um zoned areas or only commercially zoned areas or or I mean I don't I don't know the details but um you know just to reiterate Chuck's and caren's point um we would be potentially a second point that you could go to not only the staff that come to energy commission for um clarification of any questions that you might have yeah I'm reading through it again in
081in the full full body text here and it they were treating it just like it was had to do with height area placement under UDC and not really so interested in you know but they talk about anticipation it says under current code this proposal would trigger a full site plan review for the site making installations of solar structure possible cost prohibitive which it would be staff anticipates other possible sites in the city have similar considerations that make ground Mount difficult to install rights I mean maybe I don't know what the hurry is on this maybe maybe uh we'll have a conversation Council and I'll say look can we ask energy commission to take a look at this I don't know what changes would be made it we this is really been designed to loosen it
082up and allow more solar installations so that's the important thing to me but um I I I urge people to take a look at it and send me comments between now and the 16th if if that's helps it's it's on there as C1 um I can share I can share it with anybody who needs it feel free to ask or or I can share with with all energy commission if you want to see it thank you Larry that might be something you might um be able to help on or also check um as well possibly Teresa I'd like to see it I'm not aware of what the issue would be so yeah I'd like to read it yeah I'll share it to you I'll share a link to in legar right now thanks thank you
083and thank you for your service the commission so I guess we can go to um updates from the various um working groups and um also from me for the environmental commission Josh you want to lead us through that yeah sure um so we had a really good meeting on Renewables uh in particular looking at a whole bunch of projects uh that I'm working on and this kind of gets back to the conversation we were having earlier uh Jeff about you know just different sites uh trying to figure out what makes sense for those sites as far as solar battery Etc uh I think that there was a conversation that came out of it specifically towards batteries um and I think that might you know Chuck if you or Larry or someone else who deals with
084batteries um I I think it might be worthwhile going through even for the whole commission to really understand the use case for Batteries applications things of that nature um because I think it came out that uh the batteries aren't always you know I think we always it's almost like a go to and it really does have a specific application so um that's something that came out of it um yeah and just a whole bunch of uh kind of follow-ups so just every time that we have a different type of uh application that we're doing or or something that I'm I'm working on um I'm going to be tapping into the Renewables uh subcommittee for help uh specifically one of the things Chuck and I know you weren't able to be there for this one um
085one of the things that came out of it was uh talking about the water treatment plant looking at uh batteries for Peak shaving at the at the water treatment plant um so trying to see if that yeah I I do energy storage value analysis almost daily um so yeah be to help be super helpful um yeah so I think that's that's the major updates from enables unless anyone has anything else they want to add okay uh building and built environment um we kind of already went over this uh but there was uh again uh theia and Zach uh who are OSI staff are working on energy disclosure specifically for commercial and multif family uh they put together a um I guess a set I think there's four meetings that they've already uh put together and
086and basically they're stakeholder meetings uh so they're going to be including and I can't remember what the total number is at this point um but probably 10 to 15 people in those roughly um trying to get feedback uh and I think uh weighing out app yard uh the previous chair for the commission for the energy commission as well as um Jen Culbertson who is the chair of the 23 District we'll both be attending those um were there any questions on that one um Josh maybe input for Missy's um presentation in a month and that is um what role if any would the energy commission have with regards to developing a proposal for conier servic which is a service that would basically service primarily the buildings in the built environment although it could also get into
087other areas potentially like transportation and things like that but mostly it's intended for yeah that that's an excellent question it's one of those things where I think um at least I have seen it as the foundation to a lot of work that we're doing I think if you're reaching out to someone and you have a contact you're you're able to give them information as far as this unbiased Source they can go to it really helps to in a lot of the work that we're doing um and I find a lot of importance in moving that forward so I'll make sure to pass on the message thank you of course um let's see other things going on community outreach so we talked a little bit about uh this uh you know the A2 Zer ambassador program
088um I will be sending out that uh file for the energy commission's review I could pass it out only to the uh community outreach subcommittee but maybe the whole commission I don't know John if you or anyone else has a preference um I would send it to everybody for their for their information okay I would agree okay yeah I can definitely do that so my understanding is that at least one commissioner has um signed up um from what I understand more people have signed up for the program then there are slots um currently planned at least that's my understanding and so the intent is that um it will be offered um hopefully multiple times going forward is that your understanding as well John yes yeah my understanding is that there's going to be uh yeah
089like you're saying kind of multiple classes of ambassadors or yeah so it's going to be kind of a rolling thing um okay great uh so next One Transportation electrification carlen John anyone else on the transportation side want to give an update I have one update and that is um about the schedule for the EV Readiness ordinance um we had been informed and our um objective was to make sure that the changes to the ordinance were complete in order for it to be uh included in the November 16th city council agenda for its first reading and we just uh were informed late last week on Friday that it did not make it apparently the legal depart Department did not complete its review of the ordinance so um we're told that the next meeting for the first
090reading would be December 7th but we don't know exactly if that's going to be 100% certain so but that's that's all I can tell you at this point and by the way um beyond that carlen you want to just um talk about our work with simy and work on the strategy paper and and overall strategy just real briefly there is a list of um of actions that can possibly be undertaken uh by the city in its uh Transportation electrification initiative and right now the the transportation location committee is looking at this list we're looking at how to categorize it and prioritize it at this point in time uh and we've been working with Simi on this for the past couple months and we're continuing to do so so um yeah that's about that's what we're
091currently looking at right now and um that's that's just considering this list now just our last meeting was canceled because of the election so we're meeting again in another week well well we have a pretty aggressive schedule actually I mean we're we have it every other week's schedule and so that was also recently established and since because of the because of the election um this last week we um we skipped it and we're going to be meeting again next week thanks and then John environmental commission environmental commission very briefly um in our last meeting we voted to update our bylaws um we had a presentation of the an arbor greenhouse gas inventory I was had been previously presented to the energy commission Mark I think it was you raised the question about fugitive methane emissions
092and um Josh um hopefully you can answer this I I re requested it in an email but I don't recall seeing an answer my recollection is that Thea mentioned at least to the environmental commission that there's an estimate of the impact of fugitive emissions in our greenhouse gas inventory yes that's correct John yep so um yeah I don't know how far we want to go down this rabbit hole but there's definitely an estimate yeah and obviously those estimates of what the impacts are range significantly and because methane is so potent it could make a really big difference but they are indeed included in our inventory and you know as time goes on I'm sure and as those estimates become more accurate um then we'll better be able to reflect um that impact and um again
093I can't speak to it theia can maybe that's something um we talk to her about in the future I don't know if it's through the entire supply chain I don't know if it's just emissions within City boundaries but there is there is an element in the inventory that uh considers fugitive emissions so the The Fugitive emissions that are included are uh natural gas so if you have a natural gas plant for example there's estimates as far as leakage on that side um and then there's some very rough estimates as far as uh every so much as far as units of usage uh for CCF how much is you know the chances of how much are actually being off Gast um so there are some very rough estimates the problem is that there's like John was
094saying a wide range as far as what those estimates really are and what what so the University of Michigan for example they have a uh you know students who are working on specific specifically these problems uh and we've relied heavily on on their estimates for some of the numbers we use um DTE has other numbers that they use for their natural gas plants and what the fugitive emissions are um I think we strayed away from using those specifically um but you know there's again there's a lot baked into it um but yeah but to John's point they they are included so a couple of other things that might be can I respond so I think the question of the fug of mishes comes down to you know a couple things it's and and it and
095mainly where Anar replaces its chips um so you have mentioned this numerous times John that the these the Energy savings reductions the emissions reductions that we've had in an arbor over the last 5 10 years come almost exclusively from DTE going from coal to natural gas so you know we most of the what we've accomplished to datee is has is because of them because of we putting insulation in our houses or making our building codes better or doing better cars or none of that you know we throw up a few high visibility solar panels and you know we we talk a lot but this comes from DTE going forward there's no reason to believe that our emissions won't be tied very closely to what DTE does going forward as well so the question is you
096know given that reality what can we do to impact bte's emissions as a as a as a community we can certainly we can we can do resiliency things all those kinds of things we're going to need to do anyway but in terms of raw emissions reductions is there something that an arbor can do um in partnership with DTE or are we really doing it all alone so for example one thing we could do is begin to to question why DTE or what would it take for DTE to provide provide us with clean gas and I've supplied you and many others here with examples of other places that are doing using blockchain analyses and stuff um DTE has a biofuels green fuels program um there's things that could be done to Green up dte's natural gas
097system um and reduce their fugitive emissions they don't have an incentive to do that it's not going to come from the Michigan Public Service Commission the city of an arbor could turn to DTE and say we want clean gas we want this to happen what do we have to do and to begin that process and I think tracking and and accounting for the emissions is the first step so we know what we're talking about and I I just say I put it on the table that if we're going to be talking about spending our tax dollars to buy pre cars and and electric vehicles and do all this other stuff if this is an emissions problem what can we do to make G DTE provide us with lower emissions gas and electricity that is generated
098from lower emissions gas especially when they can buy it they can use blockchain this is a bunch of different things that they could be doing and I don't sense that we are engaging with DTE on that subject that was one of the reasons why I wanted us to talk have a presentation on the rate case that's going on at that Michigan Public Service Commission I I haven't heard it from Jeff I haven't heard from the mayor I haven't heard from anybody else that we are engaging with DTE Energy on the subject of of we want our electricity to be generated with clean gas they could buy a block of it and plug it into their thing and and charge and you know basically dedicate it to us they could do this and we are in
099a position to put some pressure on the city to say do that go talk to DTE and find out how we get cleaner gas and start the discussion that's my point without data without without us having so if we're using an estimate and Jos is saying that we don't like dte's numbers okay well then let's put our own numbers out there and stand behind them and if DTE argues with them then let them give us better numbers but I would think we should engage on this and be clear about it when we moving forward and it comes down to dollar for dollar spending money in a lawsuit suing DTE to make him give us green gas or buying you know green cars that should be part of the analysis that's my point ccil member here
100when I get data that's my point we we should be using fact-based decisionmaking well I I'm gonna I agree with that and I'm gonna just point out and share another link with everybody that we do have another resolution here ca1 it's on the consent agenda that reauthorizes a city administrator to direct purchase natural gas and choice electric for all relevant City facilities right um and it only talks about giving him the flexibility to do that it doesn't it speaks to purchasing power and savings and contracts more than it does the nature of the gas or the electricity absolutely but it says this is coming out of OSI so I'm not sure if that if that means I should assume this has had the review for the things you just spoke to it has not it
101has not I can actually speak a little bit to this um because I handle some of the natural gas purchasing site on Constellation so we do have uh Choice natural gas um and constellation does actually offer uh green uh I guess alternative green gas offerings uh which we have actually looked into as an alternative one of the one of the problems we often face um so I can give you a very simple local example of uh green gas so our landfill you know it's basically off gasing methane uh we've put a landfill gas generator on it we're able to capture that methane and actually turn it into something uh that then you can use into you turn into electricity basically um one of the issues that we found with the offerings that constellation has they
102just don't have uh enough for us to actually offset all of our natural gas with green natural gas so you know what they're supplying doesn't meet the demands that we have um I will turn over really quickly to say uh even though we might not be looking at Green natural gas there's a lot of things that we're doing right now to look at uh Renewables and alternatives uh for natural gas period right so electrification for example making sure that we don't have natural gas to begin with because there's always going to be some sort of leakage um and then trying to figure out with DTE so landfill G uh the landfill solar project I'm trying to figure out the landfill solar project uh negotiating that currently um and then seeing you know and there are
103things that you know aren't ready to really be talked about but there are definitely conversations going on uh on multiple levels uh that kind of address some of those those conversations some of those things you you raised commissioner McCoy yeah I just also wanted to amplify what Mark said but also push back a little bit in that like I think part of putting pressure on DTE is going to come from stopping talking like d our relationship with DTE is inevitable so like we we know that a20 is talking about Community Choice aggregation we've had two months of public comments where people have mentioned Municipal utility you know and I think you're right that we need to hear more about the rate payer case we need to put more pressure um on getting DTE to push
104for renewable energy but I think some of that pressure is going to stop talking about like I said that stop going to stop talking about is if we have to have DTE and the more and more we look into these alternative options that could be you know not only more um energy renewable energy but also more affordable to an aror residents the more that pressure is going to come as well I should also mention really quickly Markus I saw the email that came by as far as the rate case goes um we're currently in litigation so we can't really talk about it publicly um but I have talked to Miss as to you know what we could share and what we couldn't share and at what point could we do maybe a presentation so that's
105definitely something that we've looked at as well okay just um to finish things up um primarily for council member haer um it still may take a while to get the council but a rough draft is nearly complete of a um changes to the UDC um for Heritage in Landmark trees um so that's in the natural features working group of the environmental commission um and then finally of general interest maybe to Commissioners the solid waste Resource Management plan was approved by city council and um the top priority um for the solid waste working group of the environmental commission is to work on um construction and demolition solid waste so um something we've talked about in the environmental commission but probably not here is that um all of the greenhouse gas emissions um um that we estimate
106for the city are based on the tonnages that we measure um both compost you know that go to landfill and what the composition of that is we do not measure construction and demolition waste so all the waste that goes from construction sites um are not included um and we know it's really significant and 100% of it goes to landfill so that would be one of the things that we will be working on first of all trying to get an estimate of how much that is and then talking with stakeholders about what it would mean to try to divert some of that and how we could um put that potentially in an ordinance so that's it from the environmental commission so I think the next point on the agenda is public comment again correct I have
107it right in front of me I could pull it up and um then we'll take um agenda items for the next meeting after that so for public comment um I think we all know the Spiel this is an opportunity for people to speak up to three minutes please call 206 9723 or 38847 s enter the meeting ID just a second I have to get that sorry meeting ID is um 96825 3797 and then um press star n to raise your hand and you will be recognized by the last three digits of your number so please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments Josh do we have anyone you're muted thanks John uh oh yep I see two people raise their hand oh and there's another person uh 327 327 you are
108now should be able to speak are you there okay 327 we can come back around and see if uh might have some technical difficulties here uh look like they're muted scen the black shows them they muted can you unmute them Josh or yes give me so I can ask them to unmute um but I think they actually have to do something on their end to to officially unmute let me see if there's something else yep yeah they're not unmuting I'm not exactly sure what uh whether it's star9 or something else I have to touch does it say John how how they unmute um no I don't know how to do yes there we go hi um this is Twin John I also am here on a non phone number um I live right now at
109um 1218 wines drive and I would like to make a comment and um Echo some of the things that some of the the commission members have said already which is that I don't see a lot of point in attempting to negotiate with DTE for a better mix of Renewables or lower rates unless we are actually willing to do something else um DTE thinks that they can charge whatever they want of us um that they can limit the ability for our citizens to generate their own power and contribute that to their communities um and I don't think that that's a value that a lot of people in an arbor share and agree with and I think that an arbor has a lot of resources and being willing to stand up to DTE to operate our city
110based on energy sovereignty um and to demonstrate to the entire state of Michigan and the region that these these giant poor profit energy companies are not the you know the only alternate the only option they're not the end all Beall um would be a move that would benefit not only us but also the entire Region's energy sovereignty um and it would certainly make negotiating with BT a lot easier because right now they hold all the cards and unless we're really willing to demonstrate that we will do something other than ask nicely over and over and over again um they have no reason to give us what we want thank you energy commission members for this very interesting conversation um and I will now end my comment thank you I'd just like to say thank you
111for those comments and I think that they're are right on I'm lucky enough to have a a a summer home in Harbor Springs haror Springs is part of a four Community uh group now Harbor Springs pataski charoy and Travers City that are all Municipal Utilities there's 42 Municipal Utilities in Michigan um Lancing Border Water and Light Etc even Chelsea electric an arbor is not a municipal utility um if we were we could do this ourselves and there are Municipal Utilities Holland electric and others that are well along the way to going getting 100% uh Renewables and also in a position to generate renewable energy some of which around people's houses and some of it centralized and sell that as green power to third parties so DTE is not you I I couldn't agree with you
112more again I'd ask you to take a look at what happened in Boulder because this process is expensive and it requires a long dedicated legal fight and I think I agree with you I think an arbor is the community that is should do it and we should do it now and declare this and sharpen our lawyers pencils and get at it all right we do have uh 013 if you could unmute and I think it's uh I just found out star six to unmute for anyone who's oh there we go hi I'm Ian piol I live at 2016 Pauline Boulevard um I'm also here on uh calling in on a computer um mark thank you for your feedback to on Tegan's comments I would also like to Echo um my support for looking to alternatives
113to bargaining with DTE um just looking at what their priorities are which are increasing profits for their shareholders um they're not going to be moving to what they see as non-economically viable renewable energy in the near future um the even the renewable energies that anabor already has including our high H Electric dams they're and are distributed solar Community solar they're actively taking steps to hinder those they're buying like below Market rates for for hydro as well as distributed solar um and I agree it's not going to be easy the the boulder example um makes that painfully clear but I'd like to say that I'd like to make the point that it's not going to happen if we're just going through the private Market with DTE so we we at this point we need to do
114it and that means taking the the tough road um yeah thank you for having this conversation um I'd like to make a point on the electric vehicle discussion that um it'd save a lot of money as well as like not having to worry about um whether we're using fracked gas or solar generated energy to not be buying more cars for the police um especially I agree that we should be looking at unionmade or us-made materials for our renewable sources um but with all respect to those unions uh the cops historically have made it their their pastime of um abusing unions and keeping them keeping them down um so I think it's a little hypocritical to be thinking about purchasing unionmade vehicles or a police force that oppresses them thank you so much for uh hosting
115this meeting and I'll yield my the rest of my time thank thank you for your comments Josh do we have anybody else we do uh let's see one I think 134 you just went uh hello hello hello y can you hear me we can hear you okay this is RNE Apple Yard phone again from out in the hitter lands um couple of things first of all um I think it's really important to realize that carbon removal is sort of the the butt end of things that it's always going to be more expensive to remove carbon that you put up there as opposed to ones carbon that you have not put up there and so we really need to continue to work towards more Renewables and uh getting away from burning things um the person that
116called early in the meeting I think had some misinformation about the um capacity uh percentages for wind in Michigan which I looked it up on the web and it says the average is 36% and I know most of the stuff that's going in now are on taller towers and as well uh over 40% um but the other thing to realize and it comes into your discussion about supplying uh renewable energy for charging vehicles Les and I I would hope that all of you on the energy commission will read the paper that the EV uh subcommittee put together on why uh requiring that is not a good idea because among other things uh in the winter time we uh get less uh between a third and and a half of the amount of solar that we
117get in the summertime I've looked at my solar array and that's what I get so it would make that you would have to have a very oversized array and batteries for probably a week or two to really do that um otherwise most of it in the winter time you're actually going to be getting from DT anyways and so you're adding a real expensive item a bunch of batteries uh that aren't really going to work very well so um I'm a strong believer that the grid is your friend it's the ultimate Battery Source and you need to work on on DTE to get uh the rates to work out better um and uh I'm glad that somebody uh talked about how trees aren't really a very good answer um I have information about when you install
118a one and a half inch caliper tree which is what goes in in new site plans and it takes 10 years for it to really sequester much of anything so planting 10,000 trees would be good for a lot of reasons but sequestration isn't really one of them uh I'm also a little bit disappointed that uh legal hasn't stepped up and uh reviewed the EV ordinance which was largely complete several months ago uh but hopefully um they will come through for us um so and I might suggest that um I think it's very difficult to get away from DTE completely uh we have uh the because of the foot act they have a quote unquote franchise that lasts forever but I think the uh Constitution allows us to collect franchise fees and somebody should look into
119trying to negotiate getting a franchise fee from them which would basically allow us to um get funds for doing all the work that we necess we really need to do to try and reduce our dependence on them might be an easier route to go um they have a I think it's C10 or something like that is there um tariff for collecting fees that are required by local municipalities so that might be a better route to go and uh I think that's it so um goodly listening to you all and have a good night great thanks Wayne good hearing from you uh and then finally uh caller 134 if you could unmute yes thanks missioner McDonald Ken Garber 28 have your Hill Court thank you for the opportunity to speak again I'll be brief uh my
120thanks to the caller Mr alard for correcting me on wind capacity Factor um I also appreciate commissioner cley's remarks on being more active on the DTE rate case and on engaging with DTE to obtain clean electricity and green natural gas uh at least for municipal operations to start um thanks for that um at the same time I agree with commissioner McCoy and with the callers twin John and Ian peaw on the benefits of simultaneously exploring municipalization commissioner cevy twice has raised the painful Boulder utility municipalization history I have reviewed that history Boulder is definitely not an experience we want to repeat the city spent over 27 million in litigation with Excel the private electric utility there with not a lot to show for it at the end however Boulder and an arbor are different in
121the boulder litigation the central question was whether the boulder City Charter authorized a municipal electric utility that question was never resolved with some courts saying yes and others saying no the Boulder City Council basically caved in after eight years of litigation and dissolved ITS m Municipal utility in exchange for a better franchise agreement with Excel and um higher levels of M of renewable energy by the way renewable electricity however unlike Boulder City Charter and our Charter expressly authorizes a municipal utility no doubt DTE would find other grounds to sue to protect its local electric franchise but they would probably rest on shakier legal ground my point is the situations are fundamentally different with an Auber benefiting from a city Charter much more favorable to municipalization we might want to get an expert legal opinion on
122this thanks just like to say thank you Ken I I agree with you and I'm glad you read it and that's why I encourage people to look at this um $26 million is the that's you know about the kind of money we're going to have to come up with yes I think we do we used to be a municipal utility we gave up the right to do that we turned it over to DTE we can get it back it isn't going to be cheap but it's going to take uh take a clear view and people need to look at the boulder experience to see a couple things one being why after spending $26 million they quit so if we're going to go down this this the Avenue and I think we should then we have
123to be dedicated and committed to doing this and not be bought off at the end with some you know Green Watts thrown our way to to a sage whatever hurt feelings we have this there's only one way to win this and thing and that's we do it and we become a municipal utility so thank you for reading it and thank you for your comments I couldn't agree more so I'd like to offer an alternative to that path um right now uh energy uh is limited to 90 90% of the energy is Monopoly energy you have 10% freedom of choice this is something that's legislated it's legislated in Lancing it's been a possibility if we can get the money out of our politics that we could go from 10% energy choice to more than 10% and
124even 100% energy Choice other states have done this we wouldn't be the first state to do it Illinois has already done it I believe Ohio has already done it um and I don't see any arguments against having a a free market to energy access where you can make the decision whether you want to have green energy or whatever DT offers so it could be done but it's hard to do because they are able to influence our legal process and corrupt our legal process because of money so you got to start there and it would be certainly a lot less expensive if there was just reforced DTE to compete and then maybe they would wise up and do more green energy because it would be in their best interest because if they don't they're going to
125be on the losing end of that competition when you take competition out of the mix what you end up with is a lack of innovation a lack of cost control and certainly you know the ability to just say I don't care about what the customers think because they don't answer to anybody that's that's the problem so I think there are other paths but in order to take those other paths we need to have a different legislative action in Lancing that is uncorrupted by the money that DT uses so Larry I just um I appreciate the idea of uncorrupt taking money out of politics um I'm not could hold my breath on that one I was at the involved in the early Electric Choice Movement when John nler was chair Governor um and uh the company
126I work with small bus Association in Michigan we we were very active in in being pro-choice and and wanting to have that those caps there it has been capped at 10% for quite some time now um both the Democrats and and Republicans seem to uh not want that kind of comp comption but one downside of Electric Choice which um I thought was an unforeseen consequence was when you allowed any more choice to come into the state we didn't get green Choice coming into the state we got a lot of brown power purchased on the spot Market um that washed into the state and um we had you know we had utilities that that were unable to to do green stuff because of choice was really in their way they were competing against the worst of
127the brown power um and spot market prices um and so it's it's you know I think competition is great I think the competition between DTE and the 41 Municipal Utilities in the state um if we get that that's the kind of competition I think makes makes a lot more sense because we don't need more Brown unregulated power there there were there were Watts coming into Michigan from outside called they were calling it biofuel basically it was coal sprayed with veget vegetable oil and burned and called called biofuel and you know that's that's one of the negatives of choice so well you know I think if you look at municipalities all across the state they all charge less than p and consumers their rates are definitely lower if you look at the energy choice that 10%
128a lot of it's our school system and if you look at the rates that they pay it is considerably less than what you pay if you're if a DT customer or consumers so energy Choice may not always give you the green energy choices although what you were talking about was then and not now now we're talking about Renewables being the cheapest alternative and you just brought up the topic that what's going on with DTE is wanting to build yet another natural gas plant yeah they're doing exactly the opposite of what they should be doing so I think you know I've heard A very wise person say if you want to bring them to the table you want to change the way they behave you have to start giving them a little bit of pain and
129the idea of taking 10% to 20% to 30% to 40% is not in my mind has no negative consequences for rate payers and could have significant benefits to giving them a little bit of pain and making them act like a better environmental citizen choice raising the cap to 25% for green choice would do exactly that yeah I agree with you totally I mean I think it's got a better shot to be honest than trying to become a municipal Energy company here my my opinion I don't know for sure um to try to wrap this up um and sort of also move to the next agenda items for the next meeting uh I what I propose is that you talk to Missy about when we can have um or potentially dedicate an entire meeting to this
130topic because this keeps I'm coming up time and time again um I recognize that the city is having sensitive discussions with DTE um I recognize that it is highly political I recognize you know all the pitfalls associated with this um but we know that this is a topic um with residents we've heard several of them talk about it today and um we shouldn't tip toe around it too much longer it really deserves to be something that we address um head on um address with our wide eyes wide open um so if you would make a note of that um I would like to address one other item that was brought up by Wayne Appleyard to council member Hayer um council member haer um you um heard um Mr Apple Yard indicate that we have a
131delay um with um not only one but we've seen now many times with ordinances going through the attorney's office and um being delayed um I would state from my experience um professionally um having also done a lot of work in the area of Performance Management and lean Enterprise and other kinds of things that um best-in-class entities look not only at the quality of the work and the cost or the cost implications of the work that they do but also the lead time in getting that work done and in something like um a20 plan and where we're trying to bring emissions down and as Wayne um has reminded us on other occasions it's the area under the the curve the emissions versus time curve that's important we need to do things quickly and we can't accept
132in my view um the situation that we've had for all the time that I've been involved with the energy environmental commission where things take forever getting through the attorney's office and I know that Missy has had now support of additional um Council in the energy area but in general I think council members have to look at what is the city losing where things are sitting in cue or in process in the attorney 's office and in my view it's significant that we're losing a lot and um that means potentially more resources or it means making um choices um that we potentially haven't made in the past but we are waiting waiting waiting and waiting in a case where you have a climate emergency is really detrimental to our our interests and I'm sure it is
133in other regards as well so you don't you can comment on it I just want I'm happy to comment on it because I couldn't agree more because you know the the Ken Garber helped me write an ex when and so did you folks write an excellent electrification ordinance and it got lost forever months and months and finally I said what has happened to it well he I was told that it got pted back to OSI it was on Missy's desk so I had to call Missy and say what's going on with my electrification ordinance like are we gonna do it we gonna do it and fight it in the courts are we gonna sit on it and hope the state acts which is not going to you know and the same with pollut or pay
134right and so what like when are we going to lead on this and I no I absolutely agree that things are getting lost inlegal I know we have a new attorney who I actually I'm I I mean I haven't really had any problems with any of our attorneys outside of the great delays that these things take but um you know we have a new person who I actually know outside of I didn't know they were being hired and he contacted me about some uh more social based resolutions that I'm working on he's going to be working on me with them and so perhaps it's just a matter of uh uh trying to continue to cultivate these relationships with our legal staff and say look these things have to be prioritized and I can't you know
135he our legal staff and Mr Posta particularly acts as the client for the whole of the body and so I have not made the um you know I'm not taking the steps that I'm sure some other Council people do to get his ear uh because I like to speak as the the from the whole of the body is what we were told but clearly that's not how things get done I've learned that my first two years here and so the next two years I'm going to do what I have to do to try and get things done uh in a more timely manner because it is an emergency and you can't claim it is and say it is and ask people to get on board uh and and then have you know B one part
136of the city uh dragging it all down so uh thanks for saying that and uh I agree I'll see what I can do to move these things in the future and does anyone know what happened to that electrification for new construction ordinance that we had floating has anybody heard from it it's like it it's like it fell into the ocean and I I'll be honest with the council member aner I also I mean we have a solar RFP we have many things that have been you know yeah just like you said lost in the ocean are you assigned are you assigned a staff attorney for these projects internally we are assigned one yes uh but it's just it takes a long time uh you know they look at things and then it just takes a
137long time it's a it's a very long process I will to to John's point we do do have uh thankfully now a special legal counsel uh that has a specific uh eye towards energy uh which was it's a huge Improvement in many ways um but obviously there are still processes we have to go through and that has been depending and you know I want to respect the you know the attorneys and their process but it is it can be frustrating for sure yeah I asked at the last meeting there was a talk about um uh um releasing various priv memos and uh some of you may have heard that conversation and I'm all for it because I think what you know unless it jeopardizes the city let let's let people see what they're working on
138and um along with that was a question that I had can I go search through other previous memos to find out what the legal positions were could I have done my own legal research say on the electrification or any other uh uh accommodations or restrictions we tried to put on building and you know as an example on the Building Trades over the years and it didn't really sound like they keep Master list of these memos in fact they basically said they didn't and so um one of the things I'm going to work on my the next two years is looking at um creating a unified way to view our City's assets and that assets would include the legal advice that we receive as a council and and organizing that better um and organizing some of
139the things around our GIS assets and organizing some other things around internal assets and uh I Derek was really on board with it he's setting up a meeting it would really help him a lot especially building and planning and and constituent services and so anything energy would like to see as part of that uh uh please let me know because that's just I just try to pick a project that I can actually work on for the next two years outside of the regular policy things because I I'm gonna have great is clear from these assignments that some of us are going to have greatly reduced policy Authority so just one last comment on this um every every professional that I've worked with in my whole life including legal at my former employer Bosch had to
140give due dates if you're a professional you give a due date or at least you give a date by when you would give a date so you know I can't tell you tell you now but in a week I will give you a due date and then and then you deliver according to that due date and if you have to put in more time you you still meet that due date you just don't simply say I'll deliver it whenever I think I can deliver it it's just it doesn't I I've never heard of a situation where you can't where you get away without giving a due date and you also have transparency um in terms of your lead time on things and when you know what what is what is my inflow work what's my
141outflow work and I just don't see that level of accountability and transparency in the attorney's office and it's it's going to kill you know all the things we need to do in a20 because we can't just afford to wait for everything and we we will have a lot of things that we have have to do whether it's contracts um reviewed or whether it's um new ordinances or whatever we we need to have um there has to be a change in Paradigm in the way things are done in terms of getting legal input so so John i' just like to throw two sentences is that this is the legal staff we would need or we would be using if we decided to go become a municipal utility so that's part of the question about are we
142really ready for anything like that given given the legal team we have now and that it uh so just threw that out there commissioner mcoy yeah I just wanted to Echo your first comment too um because I actually thought we were going to do have more that conversation around DTE and like how things have been strategized and planned a little bit more at this meeting based on the conversation from last meeting so I just wanted to Echo like Josh um you know seeing when we can have that conversation um because it seems like we've been putting it off for a while um and I also got a message that there was a public comment someone who wanted to give public comment in the waiting room which maybe they got L and I don't know if
143we finished with that portion but if that's an option I think there's someone else if there is someone we should recognize the person is someone else uh if you want to raise your hand we can call on you star Nine Star nine oh there we are okay ah can you hear me yes oh great thank you very much um I want to thank you uh again for letting me make a public comment here I'm a student at U ofm my name is Zachariah I'm in my third year an undergrad student and I just got finished taking a chemistry exam actually which is why I couldn't be here earlier I just finished it up um but I I heard that uh municipalization was something that was um gonna be discussed here tonight and I just want
144to uh express my support for this idea I have a really strong interest in um for a couple reasons uh first of all as part of my um my education at U ofm I actually did a study AB broad year in the city of fryberg Germany where they have a municipal utility um they produce a lot of energy and there's actually a few different cities around that have their own utilities that are able to produce so much energy they produce more energy that they can actually um consume so that they end up selling it to neighboring areas neighboring countries and actually neighboring states and cities and they end up making a good amount of money for the residents and it seems like a really great um really great deal for for everybody there who's invested
145in that system I also had the opportunity to um uh study one time in Quebec as well and they have their own uh provincial utility Hydro Quebec and once again that was um now that they have control over how they produce their energy um the the province can you know choose how they hire people um what kind of energy they produce and they can actually sell it to other places and I think that's a seems like a really great idea a really great deal for the residents there and they end up producing more energy than they need as well here in over there in Quebec and they end up selling it to the United States and make a good amount of money from that so um it seems like a really smart way to have
146um consistent income for for a government um it's like another and also to have control over H how the energy is produced um and another thing I'll say as the last thing here um I'm as a young person I'm very very very concerned about about the future in terms of climate change I it's one thing that I feel com really powerless about and and I look online to see what kind of like how is my energy being produced and and I'm a consumer from of of DTE Energy they say that they produce or 60% of the energy that they produce is from coal that's just not acceptable today in 2020 that's not acceptable and it seems like it's putting my future um at risk at Great risk and I think that um having a municipal
147utility is a great way to be able to control how we produce our energy here in an arbor um but uh that's all thank you very much for letting me make public comment here thanks Zach thanks Zach I just like to say one thing that um the the other 40% comes for DTE does comes from methane uh and fra gas and the methane fugitive methane that leaks it is causes more environmental damage than coal so if you we'd be better off going back to DTE and asking them to do more coal and less Frack gas that's the position that they got us in now so you bet I think the options uh are moving forward on municipals uh great idea we'd like to why you come spend some more time with us and maybe we
148can get you on a committee or something to to talk about this and do this there's a solarization subcommittee John mury actually entered into the energy commission and got on by volunteering for a subcommittee and worked on that and uh and got himself into the commission uh that way and now's his chair so there's a pathway we'd love to have you in so please bring your studies and uh and uh we you can be part of the discussion about this' be great thanks thanks Mark and and I agree and Josh um if we do have this as a subject I would like some consultation with Chuck in advance um Chuck has unique insights and expertise and we hear his voice as a part of the topic so yeah I've been pretty quiet about this whole
149topic I could go in a lot of directions and speak for a couple days probably on this but let's talk about that in a minute when we talk about the next meeting John let's do that right now so the first thing um that we have as a topic um and these maybe um Josh you can talk to Missy and give some feedback to us as to um which topics we um entertain um on which dates but um certainly this is one um the whole topic of Municipal utility um um Community Choice aggregation all these interrelated topics with um how is our energy generated um and what influence do we have um just on our own but also in coordination with other entities around the state like other municipalities um and with our state um Representatives
150Etc another one that we talked about um was um This Global CO2 initiative um in carbon sequestration and bio sequestration I think that's um one set of interrelated topics um and um those are the two that I had noted I think I missed a couple any others from JS that you had noted or from others Commissioners yeah so uh Miss's gonna do a presentation most likely in December as well I'm talking a little bit about the the relationship with OSI and the energy commission how they work together I will say on the the municipalization and ccas um the office has obviously been looking at this for a very long time um I you know and Missy I think in large part doesn't feel prepared for us to really be engaged in those conversations but I
151think uh in talking to you Chuck I think there's even some uh 101 kind of things that we can all learn from as far as the grid how it works uh and then maybe get a little bit more into some of these things uh that I think would be super helpful um even if it is next meeting so I know we've done a lot of research on ccas and and you know it's in our plan and have looked at uh a whole bunch of different um ways to implement ccas uh throughout different states and everything so um yeah we're definitely looking at these things for sure any other topics from other Commissioners council member hater that you included if there's something from your side okay um I think that's it um so I thank everybody
152um Commissioners um council member mner thanks again for your service on the commission thanks to members of the public um that listened in and that commented um it is 8:10 pm and um I call this meeting to a close thanks everybody and e for