June 8, 2021 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:02] [Music] [Music] do [Music]

[1:38] do [Music]

[2:34] so [Music]

[3:16] do [Music] so

[4:04] it's about him all right we're rolling okay good evening and welcome to the uh june 8th study session okay um now welcome to the june 8th study session of the boulder city council i think we will commence with ryan who will discuss our interpretive services for this evening thank you one moment

[5:00] okay we do have interpretation of our covet briefing uh this evening and a reminder to everyone participating please click mute when you are not speaking and then this is also very important especially for presenters to please make sure that you select a language so even right now if you are hearing language use the icon in the lower menu to select english or to select spanish and a reminder to all speakers to make sure to speak slowly clearly pronouncing each word and taking a breath between sentences we'll do our best to not speak over one another and if you select a english or spanish channel to continue speaking in that one language and to avoid using idioms where we can

[6:02] so again thank you for selecting the language that works for you and remembering to speak slowly clearly pronouncing each word and taking a breath between sentences thank you ryan um we will commence with a couple of brief announcements the first one relates to covet 19 vaccinations we are continuing our efforts to get everyone vaccinated and for more local information on getting your vaccine or to sign up for notifications please go to the link the link below of www dot boulder county dot org slash families slash disease slash covert-19 vaccines we encourage everyone to uh who can and who has not been vaccinated to do so it is for your health and it is for the health of the community our second announcement tonight is with

[7:01] respect to 2021 uh boards and commissions if we can advance to that slide we're continuing to accept nominations for applications to the following boards the boulder junction access district parking boulder junction access district travel demand management and the beverage licensing authority if you are interested in serving on any of these boards and all boards are important please view our boards and commissions website at boulder colorado.gov boards dash commissions and with that i think we can commence with the study session itself um i will turn it over to nuria to introduce the uh the first presenters thanks so much mark and good evening everybody we have uh our first presentation as a covet update and we welcome lexi nolan and her staff and our as our

[8:00] partners in boulder county good evening and thank you for inviting uh boulder county public health to talk to you a little bit tonight we continue to have good news to share with folks um and do you guys have my presentation or shall i throw it up myself i'm happy to do that just a sec great okay can you see it terrific thank you um so this is a presentation uh just some quick updates on our vaccination in cases we continue to look like we're in good shape across the denver metro area about 67 percent of the eligible population has now been vaccinated this is important because we know that you know counties don't have entrance gates so what's happening around us

[9:00] continues to be important and it looks like we are continuing to increase our vaccinations in neighboring counties across boulder county you can see that we have reached over 75 vaccination in a number of geographic areas and those areas that have lower numbers also tend to be less dense uh population areas um in terms of specific individuals um in boulder county we have uh over 73 and a half percent of our popular eligible population has now received at least one vaccination our vaccine rates are declining a little bit but we are continuing to see some consistent vaccinations almost a thousand a day in boulder county and if we look at a breakout by age and i'm going to slow down a little for our interpreters if we look at the breakout by age we see some really substantially excellent numbers

[10:02] for those over 30 years old um at almost 80 percent in every age category which is fantastic our 12 to 19 year olds are now over 50 with at least one vaccine 20 to 29 at 56.7 so we are um if we could achieve these kinds of numbers in the 30 and above age group going into the fall we would be in really remarkable shape as a county in terms of distributions this is a quick chart that shows how many folks we have left in various age and race ethnicity categories to support for access to vaccines the asterisk indicates that it's such a small number that it's not statistically significant

[11:02] and if we look at our cases if we switch over from vaccines to our cases we see that our seven day rolling average continues to decline it's now at about 7.6 cases a day per 100 000 which is excellent you can also see that our cases in all age groups have really substantially reduced even from just a few weeks ago that is an effect of the vaccinations and we are continuing to see some disparities but you can also see that those numbers have declined substantially which is excellent news in terms of distribution of cases among municipalities we are seeing more cases in longmont than boulder proportionally as well as uh in absolute numbers

[12:04] so we are continuing to have uh vaccination clinics both in longmont and boulder and across the county in various spaces in terms of hospitalizations i think everybody remembers that this blue line here indicates a the level at which we would snap back into a more restrictive uh approach to addressing the the pandemic and we are not anywhere near that blue level boulder county is the dark red line and the denver metro average is the pink line above it our deaths remain low um we are occasionally seeing a death that is considered a probable um cova death but those numbers are becoming more scarce those freak that frequency of deaths is becoming more scarce

[13:01] and finally our seven day positivity is now at around one percent which is excellent um we are um seeing uh the replication the reproduction number is continuing to go down it's well below one so we expect cases to continue to decline on this pathway and that's our update for tonight thank you lexi um let me turn it back to council any comments or questions that's a good comment mary bob i think you're up think about lexi good report um just a quick question on the 20-29 group of course many of those um tend to be cu students um when we're calculating the percentage of vaccination for for cu students uh is the denominator the number of cu students who who were resident

[14:00] um before they may have gone back home to a place that's not boulder and therefore those numbers might be artificially low in other words the numerator is people who are actually vaccinated the denominator may be people who are actually not physically in boulder right now i know they have to be vaccinated to return to see you in the fall but does that is there an artificial suppression of that number because of maybe um transients during the summer time thanks for that question that's an excellent question and the answer is yes we think that there probably is that the numbers in that age group reflect artificially low that that number could be quite a bit higher the uh the vaccination reporting often is in relation to a student's permanent address how it's listed in the state registration so it may not necessarily be reflecting on boulder county statistics so we do try to put a little bit of a caution on that 20 to 29 age group and in fact it would it would

[15:00] even relate to 18 and 19 year olds also thanks for the question cu does have a mandatory vaccination requirement going into the fall so we are confident that um even if you know the data system is an imperfect system which we know sometimes it is um that we will be able to catch a lot of those students um as they come back into boulder in august great thanks lexi samuel thanks lexi for being here as always um the one thing that stood out for me from your presentation was i think slide seven which had the different ethnicities and and vaccination rates and it looked to me like younger hispanic population was 25 or 30 points below the average for the county is there a particular focused effort to work on that

[16:01] population which seems to be falling pretty far behind another great question um and the answer is yes um what we are finding is just that we need to continue to provide extra supports to some folks to get access to the vaccine it has less to do with hesitancy than it does with just making it as easy as we can in removing barriers we are working with employers to look at the possibility of bringing vaccination clinics on site for large employers as well as for a particular [Music] employee groups that just might have extra barriers we're looking into also how we can support because we have such a wide age range that's now eligible how we can support family approaches to vaccinations so that a whole family can get vaccinated at once and our community ambassadors

[17:01] that we've been working with over the past couple months which are community-based organizations like el paso el centro um uh peak-to-peak um and some other groups outboulder continue to work with us to put feet on the ground and calls into families and households to make sure that they have all the supports that they need to get access to the vaccines great and just one more question do you have any thoughts about why it's um seems to be a big difference by age because it seems like the older hispanic population is not as far off as the younger hispanic population we think it largely has to do with just the barrier of getting to a vaccine given working hours and so we have made some adjustments in recent weeks to make sure that our clinics that people have access after working hours and on weekends

[18:00] and we're going to continue to support that space to make sure that if if working hours are a barrier to getting a vaccine that we have some some solutions for that great thank you all right are there any other comments or questions from council seeing none lexi thank you so much it's always nice to hear good news thank you thank you ryan am i correct that this that this is the point at which the interpretive services uh terminate that is correct okay um so for those who are using the interpretation services that will no longer be applicable uh going forward um and now i will turn it to nuria to introduce the next presenters thanks so much mark sorry to interrupt mary but before we do that i'm getting a email from a constituent saying that channel 8 is being spotty um so i don't know if there's anything we can do about that or if that's one particular person's problem

[19:00] but i just want to pass that along so folks can look into it thanks so much we'll we'll certainly look into it and make sure that we respond our next presentation is a quick little arpa update i'll share with you that we have created uh for this work across departmental team uh it includes a variety of directors from different departments including cmo representation but we're really happy that that was able to lend us mark wolfe who is going to be sharing the presentation and has been acting as project manager for this particular initiative great thank you nuria uh happy to be with you tonight council again my name is mark wolf senior manager of economic vitality and business services and in the role of coordinating the city's use of arpa dollars we appreciate the time to squeeze in a few minutes tonight we know this is an important subject to

[20:00] discuss arpa the local recovery funds that boulder will receive through arpa and opportunities to support our community in the recovery from covid to begin i think it is important to provide some context related to the entire arpa package and the resources that are available to the community through both the local relief portion of the bill and other provisions hopefully this slide format will look familiar we used this to help describe cares funding and hope you will find it helpful for arpa as well the 1.9 trillion dollar american rescue plan act or arpa was signed into law on march 11 of this year and provided some immediate relief to families and individuals through expanded stimulus payments enhanced unemployment benefits rental assistance and snap and wic expansion

[21:00] additionally arpa delivered expanded access to covid testing and vaccines child care mental health services and direct assistance for health care and emergency workers much of this assistance is administered through the state or the county and i'll return to that point in a moment arpa also provided direct community and economic funding including support for the arts regional transportation and resources to address the digital divide to promote economic recovery arpa expanded the payroll protection program or ppp and the economic injury disaster loan program or idle and established new programs in the restaurant revitalization fund and the shuttered venue grant program separate from everything mentioned so far arpa also provided 362 billion in state and local fiscal recovery funds

[22:00] tonight i will talk about boulder's allocation however it's important to remember and something that staff will continue to focus on that communicating the existing resources and coordinating on upcoming resources with the state and county are critical to ensuring the maximum positive impact on our community members and businesses next slide please now apologies for all the words here but i promise i'll walk through it uh shifting a little bit to the to the local relief portion of this state county and local governments are all receiving direct recovery funds based on the size of population the city of boulder's allocation is 20.15 million and we are scheduled to receive the first tranche of funds or approximately 10 million dollars in the next days or weeks the second tranche of funds uh the remaining 10 million will be received in one year june of

[23:02] 2022 there are many allowable uses for the funds and i won't go into detail on all of them i'm certainly happy to elaborate if there are questions i want to take counsel back to the the local funding provided through cares for a moment and just contrast some some key differences first the arpa funds are much more flexible and thus allows us to better align funding with city and community goals second we have much more time to spend the money in this case all the way through the end of 2024 if you remember the initial deadline to spend cares dollars was the end of 2020 and last there is a specific intent in arpa language to reach the communities disproportionately impacted by the pandemic as of last week we are still uh operating operating under interim guidance from the department of treasury uh for how to use the money uh however we think we're in a pretty

[24:00] pretty good shape and have enough direction to begin to align our funding priorities to our city goals and to ensure our process is prepared to apply the racial equity instrument to all funding recommendations similar to how we approached investment using cares dollars staff is starting with an outline of guiding principles including key funding areas of city organizational and financial recovery community recovery economic recovery and transformative infrastructure with the longer timeline and greater flexibility there is an opportunity to be strategic in how we leverage our funding to stretch impact as far as possible in collaboration with state and regional partners however this will be balanced with boulder specific needs and with the knowledge that there is still immediate need in our community for sustained support our immediate focus will be twofold one to identify fast-tracked efforts

[25:01] that align with community goals including areas where arpa funds can complement phased restoration of city services based on revenue projections and and two to set the table for collaborative efforts that meet the long-term vision of the community this will happen while we continue to monitor and communicate other sources of support and funding that are that our community will have access to either through arpa or outside of arpa next slide please all right and the last slide to give you a brief overview of proposed timing as mentioned we expect to have the first chancha funds shortly our next steps include providing the short-term funding proposals and additional guidance and detail on priority funding areas to support the long-term recovery later in july that information will be prepared in preparation for and in concert with a special atb in august where we will

[26:02] discuss revised revenue projections potential phase service return and the initial use of arpa dollars as funding recommendations are approved and expenditures are made council and the community will be receiving updates through the use of a similar dashboard as cares funds were reported and through other reporting as required by the federal government council will consider the 2022 budget in september and october so there will be another opportunity to visit about arpa funds then and last in preparation for the second tranche in 2022 we plan to continue the conversation about long-term funding transparency and the planning efforts to make transformational impact later this year to close with council support staff will continue to work to identify potential gaps in resources and funding coordinate with the county and other regional partners and provide greater specificity to the goals and priorities within our

[27:00] key funding areas as stated we will provide an update later in july and come back with some initial early areas of potential funding as a part of the larger special atb in august i threw a ton of information at you in just a few minutes so we're happy to to take any questions you might have thank you mark um looking for hands mary you're first then junie then aaron i believe junie's hand went up first ben you're up thanks um thank you for this presentation and i understand this is a an evolving um presentation on how the money will be used um we received an email from the planning board and again i noticed this is a broad overview kind of umbrella not you know not very focused on specific

[28:02] items but i wanted to know if you're working maybe with you know planning board or have have you had the opportunity to see some of the um i guess not necessarily requests but opportunities for um supporting community for instance some of the you know the ask they put forward was maybe helping residents with critical home care home repair needs um whether it's mortgages taxes and utilities assistance so i wonder if this is something that you know you already thinking through or will you be working with the planning board to um to come up with these solutions yeah thank you for your question i'm i'll start and happy to yield uh yeah the answer to this i i think yes absolutely we are researching those uh potential uses of funds we are working very closely with the

[29:00] boulder county funders collaborative through our housing and human services department they are part of our staff team i think we want to be very intentional about identifying the gaps that do exist and investing in those areas so you're right it is a process we we are we know there's still need out there but we want to make sure that need gets to the right places thank you mary oh i'm sorry were you junior did you have more okay mary europe thanks junie for asking that question that was on my list um the my other question has to do with infrastructure and what projects um are there any examples that you are currently considering in terms of the transportation infrastructure and the broadband infrastructure are there any specifics yet or is it still in generalities thank you for the question it i think infrastructure is a really

[30:01] important piece of this there is nothing specific at the moment the use of local relief dollars does allow water wastewater and broadband as potential uses for infrastructure i think the other the other thing that we would like to prepare for is a potential larger infrastructure jobs package from the federal government state and county resources through arpa as well so again it'll be a matter of planning well and determining which projects are in prime position to receive funding whether through our local relief recovery funds or or through other programs thank you for that aaron yeah thanks uh junie elsa asked one of my questions about playing board so thanks for having me um and so it sounds like mark that you all are thinking carefully too about you know there's lots of other funding coming through right and we may

[31:00] be eligible for many different money from many different buckets right so i assume that's that's part of your analysis right right it is i think there's a couple examples of that one is there's grants available to localities for continued vaccinations there's other relief to regional transportation districts so certainly our collaboration with rtd those are just a couple small examples but uh to your point there arp is a very big package almost two trillion dollars and part of our work as a staff team will be to make sure we're not missing out on those opportunities fantastic and then in terms of council's ability to weigh in on what the priorities should be is that is our first real crack at that in that august uh special atv or will there be it sounds like the earlier um updates might be just one way telling us how things are going is that right yeah that's right i think

[32:00] we'd like to outline a few potential early uses of funds again that gap analysis of what the immediate need is in terms of fleshing out the the funding areas in our guiding principles august i think would be the first chance to really get into a deeper discussion great that makes sense i'll just encourage you all to maybe leave some latitude for you know council input you know as we funnel what we hear from the community and so you know maybe rather than presenting us a 100 baked here's how we'd like to spend every single dollar um maybe there'll be uh we could have some latitude for a discussion on on how we spend those dollars yeah i appreciate that and uh one thing i'd point out is that because we're bringing it as a part of a special atb and before the the 2022 budget process i think there will be a lot of good opportunity to to hear from council as to what the community is saying and

[33:00] make sure we're identifying the right source of funds for that whether it be that that revised revenue projections as a part of the 2021 budget or looking forward in into 2022 whether that's arpa or or another source of funding very good thanks so much that's all i had bob you're next yeah just building on that discussion mark that you were having with aaron about timing i'm sure that you guys are already thinking about this but of course we're considering this summer and i think we're going to make some decisions in august about our community culture safety tax and what might get funded there so it would be obviously a shame if we put some things in the community culture safety tax that otherwise could be funded by arpa so i'm sure you guys are are cross departmentally coordinated on that and making sure that what can get paid by arpa doesn't end up in the tax and those things that end up in the tax are those things that arpa couldn't otherwise support yes thank you for that uh point and we're absolutely monitoring the interplay between not just our

[34:01] budget process but ccs across all of our departments and finance is a big part of that conversation great thanks mark any other comments or questions if not i'll weigh in with one comment of my own which is uh in support of aaron's comment uh that there should be some a robust community discussion about these things there should be some opportunity for input from the council and um i would urge you not to uh as erin said bake in uh the final decisions too firmly people do have a a very strong interest in this absolutely appreciate that and and like i said we we have a lot longer to spend the money and so we anticipate um much more process for a good chunk of money okay and with that uh seeing no further comments or questions uh thank you mark um this is a second presentation of good

[35:02] news i'm beginning to really enjoy this study session if hopefully we can keep that going but i will turn this back to nuria for the next presentation thanks so much mark before we turn it over to our guest presenter today uh as we turn to uh all things climate at the moment um our next presentation is really going to be about an excel energy update on the 2021 electric resource plan i i wanted to frame it up a little bit as we have all received a lot of communications a lot of interest in the topic recently and just say that we know as a community that our partners and ourselves throughout the state have aggressive targets to address the emissions associated from our electric use we ourselves have a goal of 100 renewable energy by 2030 and as you'll hear later this evening aggressive grows around carbon emissions as well excel energy who's the

[36:01] electricity provider for boulder and more than half our state their success really in reducing their emissions is critical to us as we think to achieve our goals we are therefore pleased to be joined by alice jackson the president of excel energy colorado to present details on the electric resource plan that they recently filed with the public utilities commission or puc excel's clean energy plan will underpin the necessary advancement of the broad range of wind solar storage and demand response resources in our state excel submission is extremely long and complex and it will take some time to unpack the specifics of that plan and as those details emerge we really expect that there will be elements of the plan that really resonate with our community and others where we may have concern or seek greater opportunity to do more so to be clear to our community members and we thank you for your input and your messages tonight is not a public hearing nor is it an endorsement of

[37:00] ourselves of excel's filing tonight's presentation by excel is intended to give our community and staff a better understanding of their strategies and what this might mean for boulder as we pursue our renewable electricity goal i want to assure our community members that this is just the beginning of that community conversation we're committed to continuing the conversation publicly and providing opportunities for the community to engage in this important topic and share their perspectives and the city as the city is a formal intervener in the electric resource plan and it is our intention to reflect the input of our community throughout every turn of this process so with that i'd very much like to introduce alice jackson good evening thank you mary i really appreciate the introduction it's a great summary to start with because you're exactly right we're at the starting gate on the conversation of what this is going to look like and so i'm looking forward to sharing with you all tonight um what was in that initial

[38:01] filing as well as how the process is going to unfold over the next roughly two years as we walk through the process that an electric resource plan goes through i also very much look forward to hearing your questions this evening and diving in i know there's going to be plenty of them and these won't be the only ones that we run into as far as the conversation and what people are interested in are curious about as we go through the process so happy to continue engaging on this topic whether it's here with you all directly with the community or with the process that we'll be going through at the public utilities commission but before i do that i'd be remiss to say um thank you uh it was this time last year that i think we really were just kicking off the process of having a deep conversation about can we figure out how to go back into a franchise agreement and work together uh towards really deep um carbon reductions on the system really focusing on the environmental impacts of uh the energy sector and how that impacts you all and figuring out how we can come back together and really partner to

[39:00] show different communities what the possibilities are and so we stand here today having an exciting conversation and fulfilling some of those commitments that we made in order to share details to get the filing out there and also to look at what this is going to be like not only for the city of boulder but for the state of colorado i'm excited to dive into some of the details with you all today like i said feel free um you know to write down questions i know we're gonna have a q a when i finish i'm gonna try and move through it fairly quickly so that we can get through some of those questions because i know there are a number of them and then directly following my presentation there's going to be a specific update on the partnership and i think carolyn's going to leave that here um if they're incomplete so let's go ahead and dive in um just some reminder basics for those of you who are joining us new from the community on the next slide um you know excel energy does operate in the state of colorado we have an electric system we also offer natural gas services we also have not on this side but a small steam business that is the longest continuously operating steam business in

[40:00] downtown denver uh and so that is another piece of the puzzle as we serve customers here but we don't only serve colorado we also have seven other states that we have the pleasure of serving as excel energy and those ranged from the upper peninsula of michigan through wisconsin and minnesota over to north and south dakota new mexico and texas so you can see a wide swath down through the center u.s where we're offering our services both electric and gas in many of those different locations the climate opportunities that we have and our carbon commitments that we have made are across all eight of our states i of course am going to focus on colorado um but as we all know it's not just colorado that needs to make advancements it is much broader than us it's not only the us it's around the world so the broader reach that we have the better the example that we can set across all of this drives better climate outcomes for all of our customers all coloradans but more importantly everyone around the world so figuring out how we bring these puzzles together is the real challenge of the day that we

[41:01] continue to look at next slide please when we look at specifically colorado though can we power the economy here oh there it goes um we do have roughly 1.3 billion that we spend in our local economies on an annual basis um and that is really going through a variety of opportunities for our communities whether that's building wind and solar farms or that's operating the transmission and distribution managing the rest of the generation fleet that we have or the pipelines that we have to operate in order to provide heat and comfort to our customers to the national gas system you know there's a variety of investment that we are making in the state we also employ roughly 4 300 employees in the state of colorado and i'm really happy to say and this is a conversation that we had last year with some of the community meetings is that we spend roughly 85 million with diverse suppliers here in the state of colorado and what that means is that these are minority small women owned businesses veteran-owned businesses lgbtq a variety of places where we truly

[42:01] cultivate and we're increasing this number every single year it's a specific focus of ours to make sure that we're putting money back into the communities that we have the pleasure to serve which then in turn engenders the economic development that we all need and look forward to last but certainly not least we are the largest property taxpayer in the state of colorado because of the variety of assets that we have and how we have to operate those in order to serve the electric system so let's ride into some of the carbon numbers next slide please um these numbers aren't unfamiliar to you in fact we released our sustainability report uh just recently i think it was earlier this week to talk about the achievements that we've reached thus far across the corporation so then across those eight states i was mentioning previously we have achieved a 51 carbon reduction from our 2005 levels in 2020 those were the actual results and outcomes uh and so that was a really big milestone for us and a big number that we've been able to cross and we're going to continue to press forward as you know we were also the first

[43:01] utility in the country to announce an 80 carbon reduction goal by 2030 um across all eight of those states and aiming for a zero carbon system by 2050. now good news is also in the state of colorado with the already approved energy transition and generation assets that we're looking at we expect to hit roughly a 60 percent carbon reduction by 2026 um and so that's a really you know good trajectory that we're going on here it's not just like we can go through 2029 and hit that cliff to get to 80 it is a continual operation of transitioning the system and really eliminating some of that carbon from our generation assets but also takes the renewable resources to higher and higher levels in that same time frame in 2025 2026 time frame we expect to be delivering 55 of the kilowatt hours to our customers from renewable resources but as part of 2019's legislative session um a couple of bills came forward that laid out how do we go before the public

[44:00] utilities commission to truly look at how do we achieve an 80 carbon reduction cost effectively for our customers or i should say at least an 80 cargo reduction and bring that forward to the commission for evaluation not only by the commission itself but also by our communities our customers and other interested stakeholders we find that process um the tail end of march um just as we had committed to in our energy partnership agreement to make that filing before march 31 or on or before we did end up making it on march 31st uh in order to be able to move that process forward um so let's talk a little bit about the components of what this comes to next slide please really there are three main components that we focus on when we talk about the energy transition and what we need to accomplish as a state um and particularly for excel energy customers prior to 2030. um now i'm going to talk about the first one because usually it's been an interesting exercise for us to move through to look at what's the chicken and what's the egg

[45:01] transmission or generation by that i mean is historically what you would do is you would cite where you needed a new generation asset and then you would build the transmission to that location and typically those generation assets historically um you know have been the fossil based generation take about four to five years to construct and go through the process so transmission had plenty of time in order to build out to where those locations were going to be located and being decided to be built now though however with the wind and the solar resources only taking roughly 18 months to construct once they have been approved and they're ready to move forward we now have a chicken and egg problem again because the transmission is now picking a tad bit longer for example on the eastern plains of colorado we have roughly 4 000 megawatts of wind resources installed but we don't have a significant backbone to deliver that back to the city centers into where the customers are living and using that we have largely radial lines that are bringing that transmission or that

[46:00] energy back to the city centers and so we have to look at how do you build out a robust network to deliver that energy back but we have to do that now before the assets are actually cited we know where the wind is we have all the wind speeds and the information associated with that we also know where the best solar intensity in the state is we also know where the past couple of erps our developers have bid into the process those resources so with that information we constructed what's called the colorado power pathway which is a transmission solution that routes through eastern colorado across the plains where the wind blows strongly where the sun and the solar radiance is at its highest levels aside from san luis valley because i know people ask about that one um but in order to be able to deliver that back to the city centers we then went before the commission and said here is a backbone of transmission we need to start working on prior to knowing precisely where those wind resources and those solar resources are going to be built in order to meet the needs not only of excel energy system but the

[47:01] rest of the states or some of the other utilities as well in the state so that was presented earlier in march but the other two components that are associated with this plan are two very driving factors first the coal action plan in combination with the just transition elements the reason these two go together is first off we have to decide what we're doing with the remaining coal facilities in the state and i'll get into deeper details on that but just as important of looking at that is looking at the communities that are going to be impacted by this transition how can we help them what do they want do they want to be centers that are focused on energy going forward or they do do they want something else how do we help the employees how do we look at the different factors the tax base um and what can we do in order to solve those problems concurrent with the closures and the transitions that we're talking about so those come together the third component new clean energy it goes without saying that in order to make the transition we have to move to zero carbon resources uh which means we've got to figure out

[48:01] how and where are we adding this wind and solar so those are all three main components that we look at but i'm going to go through a little bit of each of those with you next slide please when we move forward and we look at the next transition this is just a map of the colorado power pathway this is generally where it's going to be going on the eastern plains it's roughly 560 miles of new 345 kv double circuit that will allow and enable roughly 6000 megawatts of renewable resources to be delivered back to city centers so this is where they can interconnect um and you know it reduces the amount of distance that they would have to go it goes through a number of renewable energy zones that were determined in the state back in the early 2000s to mid 2000s and accesses a variety of areas the geography also of this really matters because as you know we have the monsoons that roll off the mountains during the summer times they hit different areas of the eastern plains you don't want everything grouped

[49:00] in one location from a geographic perspective in order to deliver that energy back to the customers that need it so you need a very broad um area where you can have that interconnection and you can put multiple resources in different places this enables that um so we're excited to go through the process this is before the commission right now we expect to go to hearing the later portion of this year probably a decision from the commission early next year and then it will be moving on to the construction phase in order to get it ready for the new energy resources to be added in next slide please let's talk a little bit about the full action plan this is what we've presented to the commission as the initial volley of here's to consider the options that we have we already have plant announcements um that we've made um in regards to retirements we have a small portion of joint ownership in craig one and two um and those are announced to be retired in 25 and 28. hayden one and two we have a larger chair of ownership in but we also have two other co-owners

[50:00] uh in that facility we are the operator um and that is we've announced retirements of hayden 2 and 27 and hayden 1 and 28. um and hayden has been the community that we've been working with a whole lot um to talk about what it is that they would like long term in the transition and i can get into some of those details here in just a minute but that's not all of the plants that we have in colorado that are powered by coal um we have two others pawnee we are recommending to the commission that we converted to natural gas by 2028. um the pipeline for the natural gas resource is really close by it significantly reduces the emissions from that particular facility it also has an end of life of roughly 2041 so it gives us a little bit more time to really uh work on transitioning technology to get to zero carbon fuels that maybe we can burn in combustion turbines it helps balance out some of the costs for our customers and so looking at this conversion it's one of the options that we've presented to the commission as a preferred plan to move forward

[51:01] along with the other scenarios that we've put out there last but certainly not least and i know this one raises angst and ire it depends on which side you're on which community you reside in but this one is we've tried to find the most balanced solution that we can for the overall plan and continuing to achieve the target and in fact exceed the target comanche 3 we are recommending to the commission that we move the official anticipated retirement date from 2070 to 2040 as well as to operate it post 2029 so starting in 2030 roughly a third of its capacity factor meaning that it would only come on in those times when we don't have other resources to fill the gap now we've gotten a lot of questions about this one and we've gotten a lot of concerns from various people saying why don't you just close it now the problem is is that if we were to put this plan into place and we were to close this resource in 2030 we would have to build it's estimated in the modeling tools roughly 500 megawatts to 800 megawatts more of

[52:01] natural gas-fired resources and what we're trying to do is we're trying to figure out the transition for the technology to bring things out of the system and we need to buy just a little bit more time because those technologies are not ready for implementation between now and 2030. we're hopeful that they're going to come forward in fact we are very hopeful that we're going to get combustion turbines on the system that burn hydrogen ammonia or some kind of hydrogen ammonia blend as we go through the process and in fact we've put that directly in the filing saying we're looking for these things the beauty of an electric resource plan though is we go in with a lot of modeling information and the best available information we have at that point in time but they are generic resources and what that means is that we bring to the table known commodities and information based off of pricing that's available from nrel for each of these resources that doesn't guarantee however what resources are going to come out of the competitive solicitation and we go far and wide and we are known here in colorado

[53:00] for having robust competitive solicitations for our electric resource plans in fact there was an article just published last month again about the resource plan acquisition that we did in 2017 and 18 where it said we still show that we got the lowest pricing implementation as well for our wind and our solar resources in the state of colorado that are currently being built and brought online uh nobody else in the country has beat that solicitation and the pricing that we received for those resources we're hoping to see that again we have often beat the nrel pricing but we're also putting the notes out there to various industries saying bring us your creative solutions bring us options to look at so that we can try and drive even further beyond what this initial plan is presenting so let's move to the punch line though if you'll go to the next slide please and the price for the next slide is that we're looking at a substantial amount of renewable resources being added to the system

[54:00] when you look at the numbers here of course you have to start with the baseline the baseline on our system is our customers utilize roughly a peak of 7000 megawatts annually or i'm sorry the peak hour that we have so 7 000 megawatts when you look at what you have to build on the system in order to satisfy that 7 000 megawatts there are a number of different resources you have to have in your arsenal in order to be able to manage the reliability of the system that includes managing reliability through our blizzards through our bomb cyclones through our winter storms like yuri that we had in february as well as during those really hot summer weeks whenever it's pretty intense and there's no wind during those time frames so we really have to balance across the gamut but with the plan that we've put forward you saw the retirement that we are suggesting in addition though as a solution we're looking forward to bringing in and adding wind of roughly 2300 megawatts utility scale solar of 1600 megawatts battery storage of around 400 megawatts

[55:00] dispatchable resources included which is all of our community solar gardens that's the rooftop solar the other options that customers install themselves that's an incremental of 1300 megawatts between now and 2030 as well so a variety of pieces of the puzzle coming together here now that also doesn't mean though that we have no need for other types of flexible resources there's another bucket that we talk about called flexible resources of roughly 1400 megawatts we're hopeful that the bidding process that comes in through that will bring us like i was mentioning hydrogen fired cps more battery storage potentially but right now what the model has selected are combustion turbines to fill that need really flexible resources but they have an incredibly low capacity factor meaning they're not turning on very often they're there to meet the needs of the system when you hit those high peaks when there's contingencies and something else isn't coming through and they also act as significantly as an insurance policy for those three days in a row that you

[56:01] might get a bomb cyclone in when the solar isn't operating and either the wind has gone to the point where it's so cold that they don't turn or you have to freeze off the turbine for a little bit or the wind isn't blowing so those are all options that we have to build in order to ensure the robustness of the system the reliability of the system as we continue to transition through 2030. so that's fine please the pipeline for our customers and for you all oh let's begin one five nine oh something changed in order oh there we go um okay uh so this particular one is the punchline for our customers um i'm really excited to say that the plan that we've put forward we anticipate delivering an 85 carbon reduction by 2030 as well as that's going to consist of 80 of the kilowatt hours that are delivered to our customers come from renewable resources so noria you were talking about the 100

[57:00] target that you have for renewables for boulder that means 20 percent we've got to close the gap on that um your residents are already doing a brilliant job with their rooftop solar and other activities as well as the community solar gardens in the area so that helps even more but that's something that we're committed to helping you all with through our energy partnership agreement and figuring out how do you close the gap on the remaining fortune so that you can achieve those targets and goals that you're looking for and last but certainly not least affordability has to be central to the conversation that we're having um we can't just whole hog go for um all these transitions and then break the bank because at the end of the day we want to make sure that our even our lowest of low-income customers are able to afford the products and services that we are providing because they are life essentials and so there's a lot of pieces of the puzzle here that we have to consider it's incredibly complex as you mentioned it's tens of thousands of pages of materials and documentation and information and models for lots of different individuals to pour over and look at

[58:00] but the good news is is that this will deliver on what it is that we committed to and more in addition to that these targets and goals not only meet um and beat the states greenhouse gas roadmap expectations but they also meet and beat the paris climate agreement guidelines based off of the studies that we've had done and the analysis that's included in there so really exciting outcomes for our customers let's look around just a little bit of process which is on the next slide um on how this is going to work uh oh somebody switched things around on me uh the box slide that was before the one that you were on let's go back to that one there you go okay so this is the the process is going to work at the commission um in our erp there are two phases phase one is what we've just presented it's the modeling the technology it's looking at the different options how are we going to evaluate this what's the forward curve on gas what's

[59:02] the you know load forecast that we're predicting between now and 2030 what are the sensitivities that we're going to look at so really high load forecast so assume excess you know excessive and really high levels of electric vehicle penetration virgins low load forecast where we don't see a lot of transition um so those are all things that we have to present to the commission in this first package individuals parties um you all such as the city of boulder you come in and you evaluate the data and the information we put forward what the commission decides in this first phase is what are the benchmarks of what we have to use and the inputs for the modeling once we receive the competitive solicitation bids they also decide what different models they want to see what different scenarios do they want to make sure that we are looking at as we bring information back for phase two phase two kicks off the rfp process so that third party developers as well as excel and other entities can bring in

[60:01] bids to fulfill the needs of the generation side and that goes into the model under the constructs that were decided by the commission in phase one and then we come to an outcome and an answer that then tells us okay what is this going to cost what's the what are the reliability metrics and what's the ideal mix associated with the different resources that are added so i mentioned before we put forward a proposed plan that was based off of generic pricing that pricing is obviously going to be wrong but when it comes to the actual bids that we receive from the various developers historically we've been very fortunate that the developers bids have actually beat the generic pricing and so that can determine the volumes of the different resources that we add in so even though i said 2300 megawatts of wind if the bids come in really favorable it could be 25 27 if they're not as favorable it could be 2 000 or 1800 same thing for solar and those things are going to balance out um in order to still achieve though a

[61:02] minimum of an 80 carbon reduction by 2030 but the numbers are going to move around a little bit um and that will be determined based on the actual bids that come into the system so we look forward to seeing that in phase two phase two won't kick off until probably tail end of q2 next year so in 2022 the end of q2 and it will take the remainder of the year uh to go through that process and ultimately get to a decision from the commission for the next fusion in the meantime i mentioned the transmission power pathway um that will go through the remainder of this year and probably early next year get a decision on whether or not we should construct that power pathway and then if that approval comes through then we will move into construction for the remainder of 2022 so that when the commission makes the decision um at the end of the day on which resources are going to be built we already have made progress on the power pathway and so those resources can come online ideally within that 18 to 24 month window but then also staggered throughout the

[62:00] remaining time frame when we have the loads and resources retiring off the system and needing the new resources added so that's a lot going into you know the process over the next several months and years quite frankly but that's how we go through the resource planning process to make sure we have resource adequacy but we're also making a very significant transition during this time so let's put the graph slide that you had up real quick and this will show you kind of the trajectory that comes with the transition according to the preferred plan we put forward and you can see what's happening with the blue bars it's showing the percentage of renewables uh delivered to our customers and you'll see that 55 that i was mentioning before and that 25 to 26 time has moved up a little uh because we anticipate new renewable resources coming in as part of this plan and being online we think palin or in some time in 25 but we think possibly even in 24 a little bit but you can see the trajectory of the renewables in the blue and we hit that

[63:00] 80 percent in 2030 you can see what's happening with the coal in the black bars as it's tapering down significantly to about four percent of our overall uh energy production and then you can see the natural gas as well as what's happening with it it's coming down significantly from where we are currently or where we were in 2020 um as well um into the 2030 time frame of being roughly around that 16 of the kilowatt hours delivered and think of those hours as the hours where the wind and the solar is not available or we're at minimum load in order to be able to make the transitions between when the wind and the solar are available during the day so some pretty significant shifts to our overall system this is a dramatic change from where we've been over the past several decades and this is taking not only operational expertise to get there but also significant modeling and technology advancements but this is also not the end game we're continuing to look at how do you transition into getting to the zero carbon system by 2050

[64:01] and that's a strong focus because we need investment technology and time now being focused on that and looking at what can we possibly do in order to make that transition and get there even faster because i would love to see us get there before 2050 but that's entirely contingent on how do we get the technology to advance fast enough as well as customers to respond in ways because this is a two-way street but for customers to respond in ways that allow us to avoid even more of that carbon uh production by varying some of their consumption so there's a lot left in order for us to talk about here but i think we should truly be proud as a state um that we're making these transitions that we're setting an example for the rest of the country on how to look at it and what you can possibly do as well as pushing the envelope quite frankly on that technology side from the physics perspective of making sure that we have a highly reliable system while we're driving these carbon reductions as well as the renewable adds to the system

[65:00] so with that um i am happy to take some questions i know i've dumped a lot on you today and there's many more details we could go into there are many different weeds and turns and corners we could take but suffice it to say um we continue to be here to listen um this is the first cut at an opportunity and the options that we see as being viable we feel like this is a balanced approach to start from for us to take a look at and we really look forward to people's feedback and figuring out what is this going to look like as we continue the transition so with that i'll pause okay thank you alice that's a very detailed presentation i appreciate it um i think we should start with questions from council uh before any comments uh sam i believe you have your hand raised thanks mark and alice thank you so much for being here um i plan to get in the weeds a little bit so um but i'll start i'll start up high and

[66:00] say this is a very different conversation than conversations we've been having two or three years ago so i want to say and acknowledge that this is a huge step forward in the past several years and excel has played a big part in that so i think it's important to start there and levels that that we are talking about doing much better than we had before and now i'm going to push a little harder on some details if that's all right um if we could go to slide i think it's slide seven so one that shows the new resources that are going to be added i'm cheating i actually have some tables up from the erp filing and wanted to talk to you about why the preferred plan that excel is is offering up is not the one that does the most carbon reduction so there are eight scenarios one of which is the current status quo and the other seven which i'm looking at i'm just going to describe it briefly for other council members and the preferred scenario is about an

[67:01] 84 emissions reduction over 2005 and there are some below that but they're also a bunch above that there's one in particular that i think our community would love to talk more about which is scenario two which has an 88 emissions reduction it retires um both pawnee and comanche and stops coal burning then and then there's a bunch of impacts on that and so first what i want to ask alice is you've got these scenarios and behind them is a model for each of the scenarios is it possible for us to understand the other scenarios that aren't even shown here so in other words these show about 400 megawatts of storage new what did the scenarios that show 800 megawatts of storage and the concurrent reduction of natural gas so the the big question here is we'll drill into that one scenario in a bit but when you came up with these

[68:00] scenarios what about all the ones that aren't here like what is it possible for community members or our staff to be able to look at the scenarios that you did not present in the erp so the ones that are so just to be really clear um the to my testimony in the case there are a number of attachments and those attachments give you the details as far as the different resource additions for the scenarios that are presented the reason that we narrow down to these scenarios is because the others are immaterially different and these were the most effective ones for us to bring forward in those manners um also through the discovery process of which you are involved in because you are a party to the case you can ask additional questions that bring forward you know other options or you know opportunities uh to look at different pieces of the puzzle um but then if you're specifically asking about the scenarios that are like your commission or the different

[69:00] um you know corners of the boxes if you're looking at how do you stress it what are the different options that you want to look at those are all included in extensive detail in those attachments the reasons and then if you go to the testimony of john welch and of jim hill jim hill's testimony talks about why whenever we're looking at the different models um and the different scenarios that you run initially why some of them then you drop off the list um and how the ones that we presented then covered the various approaches and pulls of those other opportunities or those other scenarios but you have to cut it off somewhere otherwise there's an infinite number of um presentations that you would have to make sure and so i'll ask about another variable then discount rate so yeah you know one of the things i'm interested in seeing is for a given discount rate what are why did you narrow down you can say i narrowed down because of price or or however you narrowed it down but the discount rate that's used typically

[70:01] in these scenarios is about seven percent what a discount rate is for those listening is how much do i devalue a dollar in a future year that i spend on save fuel versus if i spent it today and so the devaluing is done at seven percent which is much greater than inflation so it makes future costs look like they are less today than than maybe some other people would think they are so another question about scenarios is do you have a bunch of runs at different discount rates or did you just run everything at seven percent and would it be possible to get access to scenarios run at lower discount rates which tend to favor renewables and storage yeah um so i don't know sam for sure um if we had additional runs at the other discount rates i don't remember that through the process um but once again that's a great discovery question to put in to see if there's a different look usually that one's not too terribly hard

[71:00] to update in the modeling to get a better look at what those impacts are um and so that's one that i i think that you should put in that direction and take a look at the the discount rate is typically set at the cost of the dollar um for the utility which is usually the whack um it's what's been used in the past resource plans um and so we've been consistent with yeah and it would be interesting to see other other options because that discount rate as you know materially affects the scenarios that you then look at and call cost effective so yeah sorry i would say one other thing though is we're getting to the point that we've hit a tipping point of the availability of the generation because we've moved to the 8760 modeling um and for those of you who are less familiar 8760 hours in a year we used to model one peak hour in order to determine you know the resources that are needed on the system now we have to model all 8760 because the variable energy resources have different patterns depending upon

[72:01] what season you're in um and so i think the deciding factor at this point sam isn't going to be so much as the the cost impacts of picking a different resource it's really the availability of the kilowatt hours to fulfill the hours of need and the hours where we don't have that generation and then it's a cough comparison between batteries and either cts or an alternative resource um and so that's that's then where i'll tell you what we need is we need to figure out how do you get more hours out of battery storage as well as how do you get more years of service so right now it's seven to nine ish years and then you have to replace that battery i think that would be a better change in order to get more of those types of resources versus having to revert to a ct or some other fossil based generation absolutely agree and absolutely that would lead into my next question so i'll get out of the weeds here in a bit but my next question would be what's your storage price curve right because you may take that from nrel how does that compare with others

[73:01] because it you know as i look at your seven scenarios going forward you've got essentially the same amount of storage you've got exactly the same amount of distributed storage you've got exactly the same amount of utility scale solar and then your wind varies a little bit and your additional combustion turbines that burn natural gas powerful global warming gas goes up and so the reason i'm kind of pushing on this is we're close and your 88 scenario is really good so why don't we go in that direction and why don't we push on more storage to push down the combustion turbines because you could get to i believe what you talked about is your 100 renewable goal by 2035 say now it is a cost issue but i guess i'm pushing back a little bit on the combustion turbine purchases because i understand they fill that last hour's need on the coldest darkest you know least windy day but token

[74:00] batteries and so to what extent can we push hard on getting batteries and how can we make sure that the cost of carbon emissions and methane emissions reflects the price we're all going to have to pay and really the next generation is going to have to pay more than us so i do appreciate what you've done i do want to push on all those variables to push for more carbon reduction i i understand that retiring pawnee and comanche 3 will be a little painful but doing those in the 2028 and 2029 time frame the list in one of these scenarios would move us beyond coal as fast as we need to we could know when we're going to close our last coal plants and so it seems to me and i think our staff will lobby for anything we can do to get to the higher range of this carbon emissions reduction but i think all those things that we've just been bouncing around in the weeds i'll lead into that and so i just want to take the chance to encourage you in that

[75:00] direction and also you talk about needing new technologies in order to get here i kind of agree and kind of disagree under the firm dispatchable there need to be some new technologies but to the extent that you can increase batteries and therefore increase wind and solar and other renewables you can reduce those combustion turbine purchases because my fear is those become stranded assets but 10 years from now we end up paying for 30 years of a combustion turbine that we only use for 10. and so this is a great start i want to say thank you again for it but i think we should push really hard because this is our one bite at the apple for what the next few years and so let's try and get the plan right and not lock ourselves into technologies that will end up stranded so i'll stop there i don't want to dig around in the weeds too much but i think it's important to to acknowledge that boulder loves this start and wants to see as quick as we can get

[76:02] off a call so mayor this is exactly why i love coming and speaking with you all um and hearing your viewpoints because um you're touching on things that um we challenge the team internally on is why isn't there more battery storage in here and we had to dig into that and so i you know it's something that we are definitely looking towards we put in the lowest cost curves um that are available in the us and it didn't change the number substantially uh and so that's where you know it's like okay there's another problem that we're having to solve for that's not selecting that battery storage come in but i too agree with you i i am concerned that if we have to install too many of the cts to meet the reliability needs of the system we end up with some form of stranded asset in the future and so that's why we're trying to balance this out that being said if we get phenomenal pricing on the battery storage when it comes to the rfp process it'll win the day right because then it's not just the price curve

[77:01] that the model is using it's the actual bids and the prices that are coming in from other parties um and that's going to change those numbers it's going to change the carbon um you know expectation uh that we have and so that's something that we're excited and looking at it's about setting this model up correctly so that whenever we do get those rfp bids it has the flexibility to give us those outcomes um so yes thank you for the feedback i really appreciate it i understand and i fully expect to continue to be pushed um as we try and figure out what's the right outcome here all right i see mary's hand is up erin i think you had yours up so thank you alice and um i appreciate that one year has gone by since we first began those conversations and that we are at this point um and um i have three questions my first question has to do with the beginning of your presentation when you were um pointing out how the

[78:02] transmission in terms of renewables is where the challenge is and that's what then becomes the bottleneck if you will um in time i what occurred to me as you were going through that is that that seems to be a kind of um for lack of a better term old-school sort of transmission um using those all kinds of wires and i'm wondering what role do microgrids play in your erp no it's a good question um thank you and the micro grid piece it solves the reliability of some local areas and you can have on-site the distributed generation located uh in those various micro gridding areas um but you still need because of the prevalence of where you build um the most robust the the lowest cost

[79:00] uh wind and solar it's located on the eastern plains if you pull up the wind speed map of the u.s or you look at the solar intensity map of the u.s those are the locations where you can get some of the lowest costing resources for customers but it's not just that resource that we need it's also the ones in the distributed areas that's what the 1300 megawatts that i was talking about contains and those are the areas where you have more opportunities for you know some of that islanding uh some of the micro gridding for the reliability and you know other opportunities for customers that have higher intense needs for you know consistent high voltage electricity needs so that's where those fall it doesn't necessarily come through an electric resource plan process that is more of um a process that goes on a standalone with the communities i think it's an item we have on our list in our energy partnership agreement to evaluate and look at um in the boulder area and so we'll continue to pursue those but they don't typically come through the electric resource planning process

[80:00] thank you for that and then um in the um i was really happy to hear about how you will be working for a just transition and working with communities that are um whose jobs are displaced um from the closure of coal plants and um and that you would be doing it concurrently um you mentioned that you would be asking the communities what they want and so my question is is how much of what they may ask for the communities is within your power and or purview to address now another great question and i'll use hayden as the specific example so we've been working with the community of hayden since late summer last year um to talk to them specifically about what is it that you would want in a transition because that was the most obvious coal asset that we were going to be accelerating the time frame for retirement

[81:00] uh and so we needed to look at not only the jobs at the plant but the tax base because we we fulfill a significant portion of not only the town of hayden's tax base but also the counties um so our first question to them was do you want a shorter term solution a longer-term solution an energy-based solution a jobs-based solution you know what is how do you want us to focus our time and they asked us for a couple of things first off they are very concerned about the tax base opportunities because it pays for a you know in your own community many of the different facilities and services and needs that the community needs but the other piece that they told us is they said we want you to really focus on how you can repower this location so that you don't interrupt the fabric of our community and what that means is it's not just about job count it's about job quality and type so that the individuals that work at the plants or at work at the mines in the area have the same opportunity to stay in the community because they don't want them moving away so when we did that we started looking

[82:00] at if you were to use and repurpose the 1500 acres at the hayden facility what options do we have and we put together a connective options that we visited with them about that range from a wildlife fish hatchery which as you know is not going to have very much tax base or many jobs but it's something that community loves um and there isn't a fish factory in the area yet they are you know have significant tourism funds and revenues that come from fly fishing so it's something that will help their community from that perspective but it doesn't necessarily replace a significant number of the jobs that would be displaced but it's just something they like but all the way to the opposite end of the spectrum of we're currently working on looking at a molten salt battery storage facility and mayor to your point about we need more batteries on the system and to my point about i have a problem with just four hours of duration these types of batteries give us closer to 10 possibly even 12. and it can reutilize some of the facility there it takes a lot of technology of the operators that already live in the area

[83:00] so that fabric of community can be maintained but then we also looked at what are the other options we all know that we have another problem that we have to solve which is the carbon content of our gas pipes we're looking for areas to do a hydrogen electrolysis process and yes sam it is based off of renewable energy you think could generate that hydrogen but then to put that into the gas pipeline to blend and to bring down the carbon content of the pipeline and then last but certainly not least one of the other problems that's consistent in the area that we've had to work on for years is wildfire and how do you do wildfire mitigation forestry management and looking at the different options there's great rail service into hayden because of the fact that we've had to ship full into that area for a long time so how can we repurpose um those particular lines and we're looking at um figuring out how do we build a combustion opportunity where you take the mountain pine beetle kill you ship it from around the state via rail into the hayden area you combust it into a gas and you put that in the pipeline

[84:01] we've been looking at science i personally have visited with professors at different universities to talk about what is the methane emission um from decomposition versus combustion and using it in a pipeline and can you get decreased carbon content from that life cycle opportunity the answer that we've received is yes um we also have one of the reasons that mountain fine beetle kill hasn't been moved out of our forests as much in colorado is because there isn't anyone currently willing to pay for that fuel to be moved out they don't have anywhere to put it and so if we can figure out how we can solve some of these problems now that's the most complicated one for us to address but addresses and if we did all of these solutions which we have space and ability to do on this property it would then allow us to not only replace the tax base and the jobs but it would actually increase them in the community of hayden so these are the solutions we're looking for now what i will tell you is it's not cheap um so i've been on the phone with various agencies um in order to try and figure out where can we get outside funding to come in

[85:00] whether there are grants you know zero interest loans you know from either federal agencies we put in an foa to arpa um you know so we're really trying to figure out how do we drive this transition but at the same time support the communities that are impacted so hopefully that gives you just a rough picture of how we're rounding this out we have a community program and a community advisory group that we speak with on a regular basis keep them updated on what's going on receive ideas from them for the different things that we need to be doing and they'll be intimately involved in any of the process that we go through for whether it's loans or its grants in order to make this successful um so we are working really hard to try and figure out how can we do this this investment if we are successful would be you know it's a 40-year opportunity so it's not something that then the community has to go okay this band-aided us for five years now we have to turn around and do something else then um this gives them a longer trajectory for opportunities in the community to

[86:01] figure out what this is going to look like um it's a i hope you hear i'm excited about it um there are pieces of the puzzle of course that we're going to have to continue to work on and there's a long road for us to continue but it's it's definitely a solution that we can get behind and figure out how do we move that forward thank you very much for that answer i appreciate it um and finally in our next discussion we're going to be um talking about systems change and the role that governments the private sector and non-governmental organizations play in that systems change and how what the levers are for each of those sectors and so i'm wondering um how you plan to align your planning to a systems-focused approach

[87:00] such as what is presented will be presented to us tonight and so um i guess the short question is is will you align your um strategies to be more systems changed according to what will be presented um to the way that the city will be moving forward yeah so i have to admit i haven't looked at the presentation following this one i'm not sure um you know exactly what's in there but what i can tell you is that from the energy sector perspective when you look at things like the greenhouse gas roadmap and what we have to do to achieve the deep carbon reductions across the industry not just the electric industry the electric industry is what the majority of the other pieces are built on and so we are the backbone of figuring out how to do this um and i think that we've done a remarkable job thus far we're not at the finish line but we've done a remarkable job thus far figuring out how do we start changing

[88:00] our areas to align with what has been happening in the others feedback from our communities has been paramount you know conversations that we've had with boulder other communities in the state of colorado have already started that what i call systems change for us but as we then look at the transportation sector it's dependent on us being successful here as we start looking at the building sector and figuring out how do we continue to drive down carbon emissions and quite frankly energy consumption um in those very buildings you know how are we going to do that on the backs of you know a successful outcome in this particular sector i would advocate that i believe that the reason that we've been successful in color or more successful in colorado is not just because my company but it's because of the way that we have our energy system focused and the community that we have that are pushing us to do better uh and so i think that we're on the way it's not the finish line but it's something that we'll have to keep moving on and i'll make sure i take a look at the presentation and i'm

[89:00] happy to discuss with you more specifics about where the city is going um you know as i become more educated on the systems changes you're going to be putting in place well thank you very much and i i would appreciate you know some um perusal of i believe it was a second attachment um if if you don't want to have to read the whole memo um but um i think that that's the key to to addressing the larger um challenge of of climate change so thank you alice and um i appreciate you being here thank you thank you very much uh rachel you have your hand up i do thanks mark hi alice hi everyone sorry my camera is not um available to be on tonight so thanks for bearing with me on that um and thanks alice for the presentation kind of following up i think a little bit on what mary's getting at um i'm personally not able to

[90:00] uh i guess wax wax excel the way that sam is and i appreciated all of those questions um but wondering uh you know i guess it feels like we have a lot of different moving parts and and one is what we are doing um internally as a city and the presentation we're going to get next from staff and i assume that you and our staff uh talk a lot but we're not really privy to those conversations so i just wanted to know sort of maybe from staff if that is um appropriate to ask um what questions they might have about your presentation or sort of what our resident experts might be wondering and so wanted to ask nuria if that's appropriate if if staff have any follow-up questions or can sort of tell us what questions maybe they've been pressing on uh with excel behind the scenes sure and i appreciate the question rachel i know that staff have been

[91:00] working uh really hard in partnership with alice and her team as well i'll defer to jonathan or to carolyn if they want to jump in at this juncture but i will say that following up on mary's uh conversation that we're actually taking advantage and alice is graciously uh sticking around for our next presentation as we uh talk about some of the partnership activities that have taken place so you'll hear a little bit about um from carolyn about the staff side of the uh partnership that has taken place and then we have both staff from our city and staff from excel who are open and willing to continue to talk about those activities they're taking in concert but certainly defer to carolyn and jonathan if there are specific questions they want to bring now or even items that they have been already bringing to excel and want to share uh with council in terms of things that they're looking at more closely

[92:03] thanks nuria um good evening council members i'm jonathan cohen the interim director of the climate initiatives department alice thank you for your presentation um and council members um really appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit about the electric resource plan obviously this is a topic that's really important not just in terms of our partnership with excel but as it feeds into the next conversation i think as councilmember young really referenced um what does the system level change look like and how does energy really fit into that model and so i will commit obviously uh with alice and our team um and her team to really talk a little bit about how we're presenting that systems level approach what that means in the energy sector um i i think the questions that our team has has had on the erp filing i think are in line with some of the questions that um that the mayor asked i think that there will most certainly be some elements of the proposal we're supporting as nuria said in our open remarks i think there are still some questions

[93:01] that we'll want to dig a little bit deeper on alice as you suggested during discovery as we move forward and i think it's really important to recognize that the clean energy plan is not a single thing to collectively support or not it includes a number of proposals and resource proposals and the backstop of those proposals is really set at bill 236 and thinking about how our state is going to achieve the 80 emission reduction versus 2005 levels and moving towards the 100 clean energy resources by 2050 i really appreciated you hitting the piece about the gap that's a really critical piece for our community to be thinking about what does it look like to fill that gap between where excel believes it will be in 2030 and where our community has uh has set its sites to achieve a hundred percent renewable electricity in 2030. so we'll we'll want to explore that a little bit more deeply to understand the tools that we have available to us and how we can wield the partnership um as a tool to be able to fill that gap

[94:01] and so i know we're running a little bit behind on time and so i really welcome the opportunity to dig in deeply with alice your team through the partnership i think as you'll see in the next presentation that we're setting up a nice architecture to be able to bring these kind of questions forward and i just really want to make sure that this is a beginning of a dialogue with our community i think there are a number of questions that uh very smart people in our community have about the erp and how we move this forward and how we as a as a city who is a party to the erp can bring forward those voices in in um in the process later on this year so let me just turn to carolyn is there anything else you'd like to add no thank you jonathan i think the only thing i would offer is i think we'll have a better idea of the schedule around the erp that calendar will be posted towards the end of this month um and so i think at that point we'll be able to set up some conversations with the community to get broader feedback um that will help inform staff's

[95:02] response and and our input into the erp as a whole and so more to come for sure on on that as we get clarity around this upcoming schedule for the whole litigation process okay i do not see any further hands for questions any comments from council before we move on going once twice new year i'm turning it back to you for our next item great and i think we've transitioned really well into the next item uh and i just appreciate alice again for giving us a run-through of what i believe i promised would be a sort of a dense and a lot to unpack presentation but staff also thought it'd be useful to give council brief update on the city excel partnership activities so you're going to hear there's a lot in motion i know that we're intending to give you a high level overview but thought i also put some context for those perhaps that are watching us from home and are new to the process boulder

[96:01] voters approved a new franchise agreement with excel energy just last november in 2020 and by passing that they also approved a new partnership between the city and excel energy the partnership agreement seeks to make significant progress on boulder's clean energy and climate goals and under this deal the city and excel are working together on a modern grid planning partnership really aimed at helping the city achieve that 100 renewable electricity goal by 2030. so carolyn from the climate initiatives department is going to give that presentation and both staff from our city and excel are available for questions so without anything further i will pass that on to carolyn great thank you so much nuria thank you mark and council again i'm carolyn i'm the energy manager in the department of climate initiatives i'm also serving as our partnership manager on behalf of the city and joined by my counterpart from excel if you jennings who's serving to manage the the day-to-day relationship and so i just wanted to provide a brief update

[97:00] to you i did have the opportunity to talk with all of you towards the end of february to talk about our work to stand up the partnership so these are just a few highlights of where we're at in the the last several months um to the next side um actually we'll skip that one next slide and i can come back to that if we have some questions but i think um i want to just talk specifically about um how we really take what was conceived in the energy partnership and move it into projects um i think everybody was familiar with what we called the project a and b list that was attached to the energy partnership as part of those agreements those projects many of them were were highly conceptual in nature others were more discreet in nature so our team has been working really hard to take each and every one of those and provide greater color and clarity to them really what did they mean where are they are they a feasibility study are they something

[98:01] really ready to hit the ground and start to really flesh out what those work teams need to be what those work plans need to be and starting to prioritize those so that we are ready when we um launch our advisory panel and our community engagement this summer which i'll talk about some more in a minute um that we really have enough color to really have an informed discussion around those and so that's really the process we've been in and i'll give you a few highlights of where we're at on those specific projects but we are standing up some project teams to really flesh those out and it's been a really productive partnership um discussions and i think we're really looking forward to also diving into how the erp may support some of those projects as well as it moves through the process again we will be taking these as everything's an iterative process working with the community our executive committee our advisory panel to really iterate socialize design and move these forward and so there'll be a lot more conversation about the projects as they really start to emerge from this

[99:00] kind of visioning and scoping process that we're in right now next slide so i'm not going to walk through all of this in the interest of time we certainly are happy to share this and i'm happy to dive into any specific projects but this is really the what we call the project a and b list consolidated now with some highlights of where we're at we've largely been these into ones focused on electrifying transportation our buildings and cleaning up our electricity supply improving the reliability of the system that's in place within our community really enhancing kind of the customer side renewable and efficiency programs so that we're really maximizing the benefit for our community locally and the overall you know benefiting our community centering our equity goals um seeing how we can put new programs in place to help our community as they seek to improve their own reliability and really how we improve our overall relationships um we know that excel is really ramping up some work in our community and we're having some um

[100:00] you know bumps and growing pains that go along with that but we really want to center our outreach into the community and make a strong reach as we work through this partnership so just a few highlights again you'll see projects here like chautauqua where the we have a great sustainability plan in place we're now trying to division that into what that looks like in terms of discrete projects that stand up that energy plan um you'll see our work on grid modernization really starting to scope out what that system looks like where our points of um interface are going to be um and so there's a few and again i'm happy to talk through any of these more specifically i'll go to the next slide and really talk about one that we really want to highlight that's underway that we're all extremely i think excited to see is our first one percent undergrounding project which is actually underway now this project is being done as part of the north broadway reconstruction project that our transportation department is leading and we're roughly underground the segment that runs from from violet up to highway 36 so that will take down

[101:02] that large segment we know that this has been a priority area for the community both in terms of improving our reliability as well as facilitating um some improvements within that area so this project is underway and will wrap up later this year and will represent the first undergrounding we're also starting to work through potential future projects as well and really understand what our reliability improvements could be and our plan continues to be to publish overall five-year visioning plan for undergrounding later this year next slide this is one i really am very excited to talk about which is really standing up our community advisory panel when i talked to accounts in the community back in february we were just launching this project process we had 94 applicants amazing applications from folks throughout our community both our business sector and our residential sector we narrowed that down and and talked with

[102:00] just over 30 of them through an interview process and narrowed down on our 18 members who we've selected really representing a diversity of experiences again this advisory panel is really representing the customer experience side of the equation um so really bringing how their utility interacts with them and really representing that segment of our community as they provide input to us we will have our first kickoff with the um panel we're targeting late june we're actually bringing on a facilitation organization to make sure that we're hugely successful um and then we'll start to really ramp up that process um during the latter half of this year next slide please you know we've heard a lot um from our community as well we have an amazing set of thought leaders that really in addition to our advisory panel we want to hear from and is in a structured way and really provide them the opportunity to feedback so we are envisioning a number of

[103:01] working groups i want to highlight one that i know is extremely important to our community and it's actually more than one working group and one more than one process but we really are looking to ramp up our engagement this summer around our 100 renewable electricity goal i think as we heard alice talk about we know that we're going to have a little bit of a gap um between where excel is going to be even in their their best scenario and where our goal is and we really need to start diving into how we're going to set our targets make sure we're tracking progress envisioning this so really working with our community as a whole to understand really what does 100 renewable electricity truly mean what are the values that underlie that we often talk about this as synonymous with greenhouse gas emissions reduction but we know that that's not necessarily true so really diving into that conversation standing up multiple working groups to really vision and prioritize some of our solutions bet those through our advisory panel and some of those will turn into partnership projects that we work on with excel and we envision some will be ones that the city takes the lead on because we're

[104:02] we're better suited to do that independently and so i just wanted to offer that as something that the community can expect to hear from us very shortly on as we start to launch that process and call for input and then my final slide i also wanted to talk about our first public kickoff event um which we have haven't scheduled yet i'm really excited to hear where our um coven numbers are going and the opportunity to potentially do our kickoff event in person or at least in a more hybrid setting and so as we get handled that we'll be announcing that the date the venue and the format this will really be the opportunity for the panel for the community at large to meet our panel interact with our executive team and our project oversight teams we'll be able to deep dive into some of the projects so the community can learn a lot more detail than i can present tonight as well as provide opportunity to provide public input again this is separate from even the deep dive we've talked about

[105:00] on the erp input but this is bradley over the partnership so with that i will stop and take any questions from council well i see no hands at the moment um any takers all right does that conclude your presentation or it does thank you any comments from council all right very good um thank you for that presentation it was illuminating to say the least and i think that means we are down to our last item uh in the agenda for this evening maria take it away thank you mark and we're gonna round out the trifecta of all updates on climate initiatives today with an update on the climate action plan um it's no secret right that the world is facing

[106:00] is that a really critical point in confronting and confronting the climate crisis bolder and and i really mean the broader boulder our city organization city council but truthfully our entire community have been long-standing leaders in this arena and the city-led climate action is evolving and shifting to address the challenges ahead it's been exciting in my short time here to learn more about how our staff is approaching the work and how they're doing some really deep thinking on how to continue to be effective in this work with that is having a changing paradigm over time so tonight you're going to hear some new proposed goals that address the latest science the city's approach to developing a strategy for the next generation of climate action work and ways in which our community will be brought together with renewed urgency to achieve our goals so with that i'm really gonna send this to jonathan to continue to frame this and his team for their presentation thank you so much great thank you nuria so much well good

[107:00] evening mayor and council and good evening to our community members watching tonight's discussions uh it's it's honestly a privilege to have this time with you i know we've had a dense conversation already tonight and so we'll try to just continue the momentum again i'm jonathan cohen the interim director of the climate initiatives department we we are scheduled for roughly 90 minutes or so but we have a staff presentation we'll try to get through as quickly as possible knowing we're running a little behind but it's a big topic too so there are several questions for council uh that were provided in your packet we'll have them on a slide near the end so that can guide the conversation um giving much of tonight's presentation from our climate initiatives team our senior policy advisor brett cancairn who's uh in right now and senior energy project manager yael gashan so just to frame this a little bit brett's going to cover some of the key insights from our department's work really over the past two years specifically he'll talk about the challenges and insights related to our local climate work and the evolving role of cities uh in

[108:02] addressing the climate crisis yale then is going to pick up from there and talk about the proposed revisions to our community-based goals and targets specifically the next several months of work we have outlined in your packet so before we get going i have to do what i always do and i want to extend a little bit of appreciation specifically to our exceptional team in the climate department many are here tonight to address any questions um and i i have honestly believe that our community is fortunate to have such a dedicated group of bright and driven staff i've also really been overjoyed at the commitment and collaboration among the city departments on this critical issue of course i need to acknowledge the tireless work of so many in our community and the leadership of course from council on this issue year after year finally the last thing i want to say here is i have to recognize this is the first of hopefully many climate-based conversations with nuria as our new city manager so before we bring in the presentation i'm going to attempt fade a little bit

[109:00] by relying on technology last time we were with you on this topic you might recall we had a i think a skit in some songs by the young women's climate theater group this time we're going to start with a short video so let's let's see if this works [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

[110:00] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right well we got part of it anyway we're just gonna roll with it what we will do is post this on uh on our website and i'll send this out so council can see it the the reason that we wanted to show this video and one of the things i really liked about it at least the parts that we saw

[111:00] tonight is that it illustrates that that climate action takes on a lot of forms uh meaning you don't have to be a climate scientist or an energy expert to take meaningful action on climate the point of the video is to show that our residents our businesses our youth our artists our athletes musicians individuals neighborhoods they continue to recognize that climate is one of the most salient issues of our time so the past 15 years or so of commitment from our community have driven local carbon emissions 21 below where they were in 2005. so those reductions today i think are especially impressive given the growth of more people and more jobs during the same period so that's good news uh that momentum is encouraging and it's important to celebrate our successes and recognize the effectiveness of our efforts and investments but it's equally important to be honest about the risk of what i describe as a shallow transition and that's one where we address some specific problems and their symptoms in isolation but we really don't tackle the root

[112:01] causes and unfortunately the past few years have also been a stark reminder that climate changes are already occurring and they're going to continue to occur which means that both resilience and equity have to become core design considerations so before i turn this over to brown i just want to say that tonight is really calling for three things first is what i describe as a reset of our ambition so in the memo we talk a lot about a bold new climate vision and it's clear that this coming decade is going to require a suite of fundamental transitions in our key systems so if we're going to create the conditions in which people and planet thrive then we need to start designing for a just and regenerative future and we need to challenge everyone in our economy and society to examine what their role in creating that future looks like the second thing is we want to focus on ensuring just transitions mary you picked up on this thread in the earlier conversation while there is this resonance in being bold right now we recognize that climate is a threat multiplier so while we're prioritizing a better

[113:01] understanding of vulnerabilities and how we can best support those that are most impacted you know put simply we live in an equitable society which means the burdens that are created by climate change are not felt equally we're starting to recognize the intersections of climate change race and systemic inequities and so as we move forward we're committing to ensuring that equity is at the core of our work to reduce our climate impact and prepare our whole community for the changes ahead yeah i was going to pick up on thread and give you some examples about how we're putting that into practice and the third thing about tonight is to make sure that we understand how we are building capacity for systemic and what i call joined up thinking so to make sure our efforts are long lasting the memo outlines how we're changing the way we approach problems in solutions within the department and the city so at a high level what i mean by that is we're investing a lot in building capacity with our community and enabling change makers at the same time we're getting better working across historic silos those boundaries between

[114:02] businesses and other organizations public and private sectors individuals and neighborhoods i think this helps us acknowledge the interconnections between our environment human health and the health of our economy and society in other words supporting local climate action is going to have impacts far beyond just climate so to wrap up there are huge questions to be tackled no question not just here in boulder but in virtually every community so the answers to them may at first seem somewhat out of reach but the reality is that like the video showed organizations and individuals are answering these questions every day in positive and innovative ways so as i wrap up my comments um i would say that we are eager to share our new approach for the next generation of climate work including a package of proposed science-based goals and share ways in which our community can be brought together with a renewed sense of urgency we think this approach is courageous we think it's visionary and we think it's collaborative so i want to turn it over to brett and i will see you when we regroup at the end

[115:01] of the presentation for question and answers thanks brett on to you brett you'll need to unmute yourself good is my slide up now yes okay well now you can hear me fantastic well good evening council it's it's actually just such a delight to see some of you that i haven't seen for a year or more and thank you all so much for being leaders in this extremely difficult time i also want to thank and say hello to our community and to actually people that i know are are viewing from many other places tonight welcome and we're honored to have you it

[116:00] is it is really a huge honor to be here and to represent this department of many bright minds capable hands and uh very uh exciting uh ideas that are passionate with all these folks and but to also note that we are really the reflection and the workers of this community this community is what has driven climate action for decades frankly so i just wanted to say thank you and to our community who's been so invested in this i hope that you'll see yourself in the work that we're describing tonight and finally i also just want to acknowledge that we live on and and carry on from the traditions of many others that we uh that the the cheyenne the arapaho the the ute who lived here before us who worked so hard to figure out a sustainable life in their context and that there's much in those living traditions that we still have to learn from so tonight i'd like to actually start though with a little bit of the legacy that this community has been a part of really for over a hundred years i mean think about

[117:01] chautauqua was really a part of this effort to understand the challenges of that time to think and create institutions that could start to work on that we carried that through into the 20th century with all the remarkable work that was done around land use the creation of the open space programs the for one of the first walking malls in the country and then of course our commitment to actually starting to work on things like recycling this is actually the first one of the first curbside recycling efforts in the country started here that's the original eco cycle bus that used to travel around with volunteers picking up the our recycling the remarkable advocacy work that so many residents did around non-nuclear proliferation or work around fracking or scientific community that often stands up and makes itself hurt and of course this decades-long effort to think about a new kind of energy system in terms of climate action itself our work is literally now formally at least about 20 years old it was it was the the lack of our countries

[118:00] signing on to as a nation the kyoto accords in the late 90s that led a few places like boulder to step forward and say if our nation won't do it we'll do it and we literally helped to spawn a whole new movement of community-based climate action we in 2006 we were one of the first to pass a tax in fact i think we were the first to pass a tax on ourselves through our surcharge and electricity that funded our cap programs our climate action plan programs we further we renewed that every two or three years because our community was so committed to that in 2013 our our our kyoto based plan expired and so we started work on a new plan that plan was based on the new science that was currently guiding the goals that we have been living under that said 80 emissions reduction by 2050 but by 2019 we and many other places realized that it wasn't enough and that we had to think through a new approach and that's when we launched just prior to covid the climate action mobilization process that brought so many people out from our community

[119:00] we have not been doing this alone in fact it's a part of the strength of our work that we have drawn on the expertise and the inspiration and the sort of joint effort of many other cities through networks like the urban sustainability directors network the carbon neutral cities alliance which is a literally a global network and so we've we've we felt like we were building a movement that was intended to actually spread and disseminate this work to many many other places but i think now after 20 years we have recognized that it's time to reflect on a few of the core assumptions that were at the heart of how we were approaching climate action one of those assumptions was that if we as a community and a few others could actually start moving out in this way and finding ways that we could reduce emissions and make that kind of accessible to others that other communities across the country would follow and then a second major assumption was that as we did that that aggregated impact of a growing movement of cities

[120:01] would lead to significant reductions in greenhouse gases and i think now unfortunately we recognize that several of those assumptions just didn't appear to be true this was a report that was just finished last year by a group called city scale that's actually former sustainability officials from many cities around the country that looked at how effectively has this work spread to other communities and so and what the data shows is that about eight percent of the communities in the in the country actually have adopted some form of climate action now that represents about 30 percent of the population because as you'll see the blue dots represent the places that have made some kind of commitment around climate action but the red dots let me give you a little bit closer view the red dots are all those places that haven't so somehow our model of how we were doing this how the beacons on the hill were going to somehow lead to this movement hasn't resulted in the way we thought and we've also realized that brett i'm i'm sorry to interrupt did you have slides that we're supposed to be looking at right now oh i'm so sorry

[121:02] they're not they're not uh-huh i was seeing slides oh interesting i haven't i wasn't seeing slides okay i will see what i'm doing wrong right now is anybody else not seeing the slides i'm seeing them i'm seeing them super thank you i'm so sorry sam no no not your fault obviously thank you okay so so what what this report that just this report that i was just referring to just came out it's actually a consortium of climate leaders from a variety of different jurisdictions that we're looking at what has the collective emissions impact been of this city's movement and it it notes that yes it's been an important movement in many ways but that we aren't seeing that significant

[122:00] accumulation of emissions reduction from this work and that's that's not just a few people making that assertion that's what our science is showing us so this was the last major report that the u.n body of climate scientists called the intergovernmental panel on climate change issued was in 2018 it was called the global warming of 1.5 degrees and it was the report on how we were doing from the paris accords that were passed in 2015 by 197 nations and basically that report said we're not going nearly fast enough and in fact emissions reduction will no longer be enough to stabilize climate we now have to start growing very rapidly a carbon drawdown sector and finally because we have not moved quickly enough we have to start preparing our communities for very significant climate change unfortunately that trend that was noted in 2018 has continued the un issues a report every year called the emissions gap report that has basically shown that the nationally determined contributions just the commitments are themselves not

[123:01] enough much less the amount the action that's actually taking place and in the reports that were just issued they said that we would actually we will soon have to be achieving something like a 15 emissions reduction year on year between now and 2030 if we are to achieve that keeping our warming below that two degree threshold so we know that unfortunately this is leading to is creating a climate emergency i i don't want to dwell on this but i think that we feel that it's our responsibility and our role as a department to share with you and with our communities where climate states change stands and where it's headed and we know this isn't something that's happening in other places it's literally happening at our doorstep in fact these are these are photographs from last fall in fact the one with the horse trailer is from carolyn elam where she was helping to evacuate horses at just north of town now it's interesting in a certain kind of way though

[124:00] not exciting that that map on the right is a map that i showed council in 2013 it's a map that was produced by the national academy of sciences that said what would be the increase in fire incidents for every one degree celsius increase in temperature if you look at that portion on the mid right that says j 656 percent that's the projected increase in fire incident in our territory in our area for every one degree increase celsius and we're starting to see that phenomena take hold of course it's not just things like fire it's also the things that those fires caused the terrible smoke conditions we had for weeks are not just temporary inconveniences these are these are incidents that cause long-lasting health impacts that we need to start planning for and managing for and then we just have these kind of wild and sort of unpredictable swings last fall for example you probably remember october it's record lows in october 26th and then a week and a half later a record high so i'm going to close this

[125:02] part because i know it's difficult but important for us to i think be honest about where where things stand we are not really prepared for what's coming yet not just us but really almost anywhere in our societies yet this is a report that came out from the union of concerned scientists that was talking about what will the heat conditions be in cities at the mid in the mid century and it projects that by mid century about a third of the communities over 50 000 people in size will be experiencing over 30 days of over 100 degrees in temperature there are only three places in the lower 48 that can experience that now two are in deserts in california and one in arizona so it's clear that we have to both prepare for what's coming and we have to find more effective strategies to start stabilizing climate we believe after consultation with a lot of different places and parties and looking at our own experience that the fundamental

[126:00] element of this is thinking about it from a systems perspective there are really two areas we think that we need to reconsider our climate action both the scope of what climate action is and the the focus of our actions so in terms of that scope in like when i joined the city in 2013 climate action was entirely about managing energy systems decarbonizing our energy systems it's still obviously extremely important all those things that we have been doing and need to continue to do more and all those things that alice's team will hopefully really put the pedal to the metal on but now as we've said we also have to prepare for the inevitable climate change that's going to take place for decades to come and as jonathan was emphasizing we have to do that in a way that recognizes both the historical inequities and works in every way possible to create an equitable outcome going forward in terms of resilience we are already starting to ramp that up in a variety of ways this is work we're doing with

[127:00] boulder county to start to take that question of how do we absorb adapt and transform these change factors right down to the neighborhood level and so we will be hearing a lot more about this work in months to come in terms of resilience itself it's about integra in terms of equity itself it's about integrating core concepts like inclusive representation in all the things that we're doing equitable distribution of the benefits and costs of what we're doing funding allocations that recognize the historical inequities and ways that we actually also start to represent the generations to come now there are a few other insights that i just want to review because i think they help us shape about our next steps and where we go again we started with energy systems that was and i think we've made in many ways progress obviously what we've been hearing about from alice tonight is is a part of what our community has helped to create we've also realized however that it's not just about energy systems it's about what it's about our material economy frankly it's about all the energy and all the other emissions that are

[128:00] embedded in all the stuff that we keep using but we're also finally realizing too that it's about how we have managed our ecosystems not only because our ecosystems are a part of how they bring carbon out of the atmosphere but because as we deforest and degrade agricultural lands we actually release a lot of carbon as well so these have been and in 2016 we called them out as the three primary focus areas of climate action however we've come to realize that surrounding those causal factors are other dynamics that hold those causal factors in place things like the market things like the knowledge and technology that's available things like the policies and laws that basically set the stage that the rules of the game and of course just our norms and culture so and all of those are interactive to one another so that's in some ways good news you can actually make changes in the market by changing our cultural norms and social behaviors you can change the way we have knowledge and technology by changing our

[129:00] policies and laws so now we start to see that these things are interwoven together that the causal factors of climate change energy systems material economy ecosystems are influenced and shaped by those larger forces and so what we're suggesting through the presentation in the memo is that we need to start focusing even more because we have been to some extent even more on those fundamental systems drivers so i know that's a little abstract so let's try to make it more concrete let's talk about a particular instance getting off methane natural suppose so-called natural gas why do we have this problem well in part because of these system drivers in markets for example methane is cheap it's cheap for a whole bunch of reasons that have to do with subsidies and other ways that we have made it cheap that was a priority for our society for a long time it made a lot of sense but it no longer makes sense however it's still the way the system is working knowledge and technology let's take the

[130:01] example of how we get our homes off natural gas and onto things like high efficiency heat pumps we ran a an adoption program in 2014 i'll talk a little bit more about but we've soon discovered that there aren't good solutions to all the cases in which we want to change out that natural gas we need more of that knowledge and technology to do that in terms of policy we still have policies that are enabling and supporting the build out of the infrastructure to use methane gas when if we didn't want that to be used then we shouldn't be building that infrastructure and finally things like norms and culture like people you might be one of them say like well i just can't imagine cooking without my gas range even though as you may know the the science and the the health analysis recently has been showing that the use of of natural methane gas ranges in homes is one of the biggest sources of indoor air pollution that's causing a lot of health problems so then how would we use a systems approach to actually get at this issue well in terms of the sort of market failure of making methane really cheap one of the ways is by

[131:01] subsidizing and making more more affordable that heat pump technology so that's what we started to do in 2014 and learned a lot about what it would take to make that heat pump choice the choice that people would make there's also this issue again of getting better solutions in place so we work with manufacturers like mitsubishi and have started to actually stimulate them not only developing new technology but bringing technologies that they've already developed in asia or in europe into our marketplace in terms of laws and regulations we need coordinated action to start making the transition to these electric options the way the system works whether that's massive electric ready work across all the houses to make sure that they have the electrical panels that make it ready or finding ways that we remove all those tax loopholes and subsidies that are currently making gas cheaper than it should be and finally we need to be doing education and outreach and starting to talk about what it really means to continue to use gas and how much healthier we might be if we weren't so this isn't just

[132:01] about the strategy that the city uses the the the argument is actually that there is a systems-based approach for every sector of our society now i'm not going to try to go through each one of those tonight but i did just want to illustrate this a little bit more by taking one of these sectors let's just think about ourselves as individuals how do we act in a way that actually changes systems well in the case of the market we have seen very very significant examples whether it's apartheid or others where when individuals start to work together to do boycotts bycots or other forms of investment or disinvestment that can move markets it's one of the reasons why coal investments in some places are no longer going forward because the bank of england pressured by its shareholders said we aren't going to continue to invest in those also in terms of knowledge and technology our community is a perfect example of this kind of systems action where people say you know i have the resources to be a part of a pilot or i'm going to adopt a new technology that might be a little bit more expensive or maybe i'm not sure that's going to

[133:00] work exactly the way i wanted to but i know that if we can make this work it will be a game changer in the broader market in terms of policy and law obviously first step vote but there's lots of other levels of how we can engage in that policy process both locally state level and nationally and finally in terms of norms and culture we need to be visible to one another we need to engage one another both directly face to face with whether it's letters to the editor we need to have conversations with each other about what we really want and that includes by the way listening well to others who have views that aren't the same as ours so let's just talk a little bit about what this looks like in practice and again we're going to be building on things that we've already been doing but starting to focus even more in those places so i would call out one of the really frankly game-changing pieces that the city of boulder and boulder county initiated about four years ago was the colorado communities for climate action up to that point boulder and boulder county we would sometimes form together to try to have an influence on the state policies but when we finally realized we need

[134:00] more of our local jurisdictions coming together around this and we started to say would you come together would could we form a common policy agenda and in fact started with 5 then 7 then 14 and now it's over 30 i think almost 40 communities around the country the state and we are having a significant policy influence at the state level legally uh you might remember that in 2018 we did this audacious thing along with the county again of filing a lawsuit against exxon and suncorp that's in fact a picture from the new york times from 2018. well as it turns out that was a pretty good strategy that other people are using and some of you may remember last week major decisions handed down both in europe and in here that's actually putting the oil companies on notice that they are going to have to start making significant changes in terms of the material economy we've started to map the flow of resources through our community on the left you see all the different ways that resources enter our community and then it starts to go where does that go how can we interrupt that passageway

[135:00] to the dump and turn it back into something we can use in one form or another i'll give you an example of that just today we announced that we got a hundred thousand dollar grant from the carbon neutral cities alliance and we're in a finalist in the bloomberg philanthropies area to start working on creating a circular economy around woody biomass that comes out of our force both urban and uh wildlands and that can be then turned into biochar that biochar then becomes an amendment that we can use in both our urban forestry and soil work to capture more carbon and starts to create this virtuous carbon cycle in terms of energy i think you've heard a lot this evening you can see how i think influential boulder continues to be on excel and in that way on the rest of the service territory around a whole bunch of things in fact through our partnership we are going to probably be the first people to start looking at tariff-based financing a mechanism to spread the cost of these kinds of transitions over longer periods of time making that much more affordable for a lot more

[136:00] people and really pushing forward on this electrification this electrification website that just launched was again a consortium of groups that hadn't normally come together but which are now moving in that kind of systems-based way in ecosystems i'm really excited to report we've been doing some very interesting work we founded a new entity the city and urban sustainability directors network formed a new entity called urban drawdown initiative so that we can stimulate this work not only in boulder but elsewhere around the country in that partnership we have just created a new tool with the trust for public land that will actually enable communities to start doing carbon management within their urban landscapes and we actually were the ones who helped launch a whole national initiative around scaling up urban forestry as both a climate action but also as a community recovery and public health initiative we i want to note by the way that one of the systems areas that we weren't working on that came out of our community engagement was financial systems and the economy and so i think most of you know

[137:01] last week we launched a six-month forum called economy climate and community where we're bringing in some of the world's recognized leaders in the issues of economy to talk about how we move the economy from be from being a cause of climate change to being a part of its solution and then finally another area that was brought forward by our community is around comprehensive planning about land use now land use is one of the favorite contact sports in our community so we're not going to take on all of land use within the climate action program but i would say that we are on the path towards one of the major comprehensive plan updates in 2025 this is going to be an extremely important time for us to look at all the ways that planning and land use shape our ability to both reduce emissions draw down carbon and prepare our community for all kinds of different climate effects so it's going to be a very important process and i expect that a lot of our community will be deeply engaged with that so with all of this i just wanted to say we're we're moving on things we've already

[138:01] been doing but we're creating opportunities to take that to the next level and i think one of those important places where you can see how we'll move this forward is in the kinds of goals we set and the kinds of targets that are related to those goals and with that i'd like to now turn it over to our colleague yael geshan to talk about our goals and targets in the process for moving forward thank you brett oops let me just keep sharing screen great thank you brett um mayor members of council in our community thank you i'm mia algiershan a senior energy project manager in the climate initiatives department um can you go back one slide thanks brett um so brett just walked us through the importance of focusing the city's actions in support of achieving these larger regional and national climate goals so i

[139:01] want to walk us through how these insights have supported the proposed framework for new goals and targets next slide sorry um so the science is clear brett just did a really good job of explaining that the amount of carbon that we can emit to remain under 1.5 degrees celsius of warming which is our carbon budget is limited we must remain under that 1.5 degrees to avoid the catastrophic levels of warming and as this graphic shows we are already at 1.1 degrees at our current rate of emissions we will exhaust our carbon budget in about 10 years so what does this mean for setting targets it means that we we must move quickly so for even an even 50 chance of staying 1.5 degrees below the global emissions need to be cut by almost half by 2030 to reach net zero by 2050.

[140:02] for a likely 66 chance of staying within this carbon budget the global community must get to net zero about 10 years earlier by 2035 or 2040 and it's really important to note the equity related considerations here so this isn't represented equally across the globe the higher emitters must move much more quickly and also equitably take responsibility for their part so based on this the wealthier higher emitting regions should really push for more aggressive net zero dates next slide as i just explained because we're not equally responsible for climate change the responsibility should be distributed relative to those who are responsible for causing it the wealthiest 10 of the world's population are responsible for over 50 percent of the current emissions whereas the poorest 50 are only responsible for 10 of emissions those most

[141:01] responsible must support those most vulnerable to the impacts so those that are least responsible don't end up having to pay to fix the problems and suffer the consequences next this graph illustrates annual emissions per capita so you can see that the u.s is at the top at in 2017 that data is from 16.2 tons per person boulder from 2019 is at 13.7 so not too far behind and then you can see china the european union the rest of the world in india all shown here as well next so as far as capacity to act boulder has ranked fourth out of almost 400 cities for economic performance as measured for job growth average annual earning and gross domestic product gains as well as total jobs at new businesses the capacity to act is greater here than in many other places which further supports the direction we're proposing

[142:00] next slide given boulder's responsibility and capacity to act we're proposing to get to net zero emissions by 2035 which aligns with that likely 66 chance that i spoke of of limiting warning under 1.5 degrees these are new the the new proposed targets that we are presenting tonight are shown on the right previous targets under our 2016 climate commitment show emissions reductions targets on the left for 2020 2030 and 2050. the new proposed targets are based on today's science so net zero emissions is balancing any carbon that we emit into the atmosphere by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere and carbon positive means that an activity goes beyond achieving those net zero carbon emissions to create an environmental benefit by removing additional carbon from the atmosphere and all of the science-based pathways to stay below 1.5 degrees require some form of carbon dioxide

[143:01] removal despite aggressive emissions reductions so using carbon sequestration to offset our carbon emissions will be fundamental in reaching net zero emissions by 2035. next slide so as our learning has evolved we have new insights and we're proposing changing how we measure success um one of the key insights that we've come to when we've presented in this memo and tonight is that cities can't do this alone and the success of a few cities alone isn't enough so change should really yield the greatest system scale impact rather than the optimal impact within a city boundary and this is a really big shift in the paradigm and so perception and tracking of success needs to be more fluid in the future which would allow for these system skills dynamics to guide further and future opportunities another big insight really um that we've been having in our forming around tonight is that it's really not

[144:00] just about mitigating our emissions and we have been talking about this for a number of years but adaptation is a core pillar um integrated with the equity design principles and these are really the core pillars now of this evolution and climate action work and lastly we're proposing addressing gaps in previous carbon accounting by targeting systems behind both production and consumption based emissions the city will make more headway towards systemic change that incorporates not just our energy transportation and waste systems but also how the community spends its money and the consumption chains the community can influence next slide so now i will discuss some of the proposed objectives and targets under the focus areas that we've been mainly working on i will walk through regenerative regenerative ecosystems energy systems and circular materials economy and as brett spoke of the integration of land use and financial systems into our climate action plan

[145:00] is still um in its early stages and under development so they're not presented here tonight but you'll definitely be hearing more about this area as the year year progresses and especially as we move towards our comprehensive plan update and i also just want to note um there's a lot of detail here and attachment d on page 50 of your packet has a lot of that detail or most of that detail on these focus area objectives targets and progress measures and i'm definitely not going to go through all of them but i will provide some highlights so next slide so based on this new framework these are the objectives under the ecosystems focus area they really span from increasing carbon sequestration to carbon-enhanced ecosystem services while some of these objectives are integrated into our work this new framework moves the resilience and equity design aspects of the ecosystem work to a much greater focus for example designing actions to maximize equitable ecosystem benefits as a core objective

[146:00] so next slide to put this into context and with a more concrete example the objective of maximizing equitable ecosystem benefits has these targets that you see here associated with it relating to increasing the tree canopy and reducing urban heat islands urban forests can both capture significant amounts of carbon and creating shade is a crucial strategy for addressing the growing growing urban heat challenges we will be facing by way of example related to these targets boulder had approximately 16 canopy when we measured it last in 2013. we know we've lost a substantial amount of that because of emerald ash borer and many of the extreme weather events like early and late snowstorms that we have we're now probably around 12 or 13 percent so starting next year we'll be launching a major community climate campaign around regrowing our urban canopy with the initial goal being 20 and hopefully going beyond that through

[147:01] these actions particularly focusing on planting in high risk and vulnerable populations we hope to reduce both average temperatures but particularly reduce summer extremes by three to five degrees and in this and all the focus areas it's actually i just wanted to really note the intersectionality of these objectives so for example tree planting programs not only reduce energy needs for cooling but also have proven to improve mental health and community trust next slide so on to energy systems the objectives really they've remained consistent in many ways in our many many years of working in this area for example moving towards 100 renewable electricity is an existing target and will remain to be one and that's reflected in establishing a safe healthy and resilient fossil free energy system other objectives related to our building stock and construction are evolving to reflect the changing approach to our built

[148:01] environment through high performance buildings and our building codes what's reflected here has a much more central focus on integrating equity to make sure energy is affordable and provides solutions that meet the community's needs and all these objectives will be implemented and designed through this equity lens in fact our affordable housing providers are already leading the way on providing all-electric and low-carbon solutions next slide so bringing the energy system objective to an example here of ensuring equitable and affordable access to energy and you see here the targets that are associated with it and they reflect the needs of of accessing basic heating and cooling clean mobility and fossil free electricity so today more than 10 of colorado colorado residents spend 10 of their income on energy bills and our aim is that by 2035 that number is 4 or less some of the work we're

[149:01] doing today around providing free or lower cost solar garden subscriptions to residents with low incomes are moving towards achieving this target additionally equity in the energy space is one of the goals of the excel partnership that you heard about tonight so we will see more action in this area as that work unfolds next slide and the circular materials economy this objective um the direct the objectives in this area really reflect an evolution from our traditional zero-waste goals to a framework for circular materials economy as we've gained a deeper understanding of the impacts of consumption and material manufacturing and disposal so while the first steps for establishing a zero-waste community focuses on what we do with material after it has been consumed and waste has been created a true zero waste economy must transition from what it is today which is linear to circular where waste and pollution are designed out communities keep products and materials

[150:00] in use as long as possible and extract the maximum value from them and natural systems are regenerated the objectives here reflect this new paradigm by focusing on circular economy and buildings and repair and reuse of goods on top of our existing waste diversion efforts there's also a wonderful opening here for entrepreneurship and innovation and so bringing sorry next slide bringing this one into an example one of these new objectives is supporting a circular material in supporting the circular materials economy is making repair reuse and remanufacturing easier and more accessible so this will be tracked through community and these entrepreneurial partnerships sharing platforms such as what exists today at the resource tool library and supporting efforts to ensure that materials and products are designed to last with the ability to recycle reuse repair or remanufacture at the end of product life a lot of ours there

[151:00] next slide so bringing it into the milestones that we're proposing in our packet and here tonight um we are proposing to return to you later this summer with a resolution that will adopt these new climate goals in the fall we'll be sharing progress of our work over the past few years as well as looking forward at the evolution of these strategies and in december we would return to council to review the funding strategies that would be needed to support this work and onto communications and engagement the boulder community is an essential partner in achieving the city's climate goals and the city anticipates offering several engagement and communication opportunities to make sure that the community's voice is reflected in these efforts and there's a shared understanding of this new approach to climate action communications and engagement events will track these milestones but it will be ongoing and flexible really reflecting the need for continuous refinement of the city's

[152:01] climate action priorities and strategies some engagement will be more targeted and there will there will be a variety of tactics to ensure the engagement is inclusive and accessible and my next slide is about our environmental advisory board so we had a chance to have a to present this information and have a great discussion with our environmental advisory board last week and it was past the deadline for this packet so we wanted to share it with you here tonight on this slide are the themes we heard and discussed with the board and i won't go through reading all of them but i do want to highlight a few one in particular the systems focused versus individual action you know making sure that we're not just focusing focusing on systems and disempowering the importance of individual action and we've really tried to highlight that balance here tonight it's not an either and or conversation it's really a need for both

[153:00] another one to highlight is the alignment of local policy with the focus on systems change and how we prepare for climate change and we brought this up with you know that the land use piece and how we're making and aligning major decisions around things that are happening across the city in our community and how we're preparing for climate change based on this new framework and then another key theme is the um which is a big focus of this meeting is the importance of carbon drawdown and ways in which the city can expand these efforts and there was some exciting conversation around partnerships with the university and federal labs to stimulate innovation around carbon capture um and utilization and this is another area that's really growing in our work and we're very excited to continue this conversation over the year with our board as these strategies evolve next slide and that wraps up the end of our presentation we do have some count questions for you that were in the packet so at this point i believe i'll

[154:01] hand it back over to council member wallach to walk through the questions for council all right uh first does anybody have any specific questions uh based on the presentation zebra aaron and juni and sam and miraby okay so uh well let me start by saying thank you for an extraordinary presentation and analysis of the problems that confront us and you know the what you've all put together the way you've been thinking about it is truly impressive i haven't seen anything quite like this as i've read other things um around the internet in the world so really i'm impressed and thank you so much for what you're bringing here to the city uh so can actually gail is it possible to go back to the presentation a handful of slides back on the circular economy please

[155:03] there we go uh the next one things so the the last bullet point here is about materials and products are designed to last with the ability to recycle reuse repair or remanufacture at the end of product life by 2030 and it was it's a little unclear to me to the extent to which we have control over that right like i get about the use of of sharing platforms and entrepreneurial partnerships to promote repair and reuse but to what extent do we have a city as a city have control over how materials and products are produced in the next nine years yeah that that's a great question i can i can start to answer it and if any of my colleagues want to chime in um you know to me i guess what i would say in relation to that is you're right as a city ourselves we don't have a whole lot

[156:00] of control but i would say in our regional collaborations and some of the work that we do through our partnerships and things at the state level that there might be some other levers that we can pull and it might be through policy and through incentives and through regulation that we could collaborate across the region with um but when you start to look globally it feels a bit overwhelming on how we would actually impact things that are coming from you know china or india or other parts of the world where a lot of our our goods are manufactured so i don't think it's an easy one to tackle i think it's one that we see as as necessary to change the systems here i don't know if we have a lot of clear pathways in our mind but i know jamie harkins is on the line if she has anything to add or any of my other colleagues i will pass it along sure hi everyone i'll just weigh in really quickly i think y'all did a really good job at um answering that question this will be something we'll be exploring in the years to come i will say of those levers that brett

[157:00] outlined the policy here i think will be uh the one that will take target first at least for our city lever to pull um and we work closely with state partners like recycle colorado and just right here in town eco cycle to try and influence some state bills that are being developed for future legislative sessions around the right to repair um and end market development so we're really i think for this one in the near term it will be on that policy front um as we explore more ways to do this in the future so that's what i would add thanks thanks for that jimmy always nice to see you uh that was it that was my only question i'll have some comments later thanks juni i think you're next thank you and i just want to say thank you for a great presentation and um i really enjoy brett's section very much and my question is actually in relation to that i wanted to know based on your comment about heat pump technology you mentioned it

[158:01] and it's slightly i don't know if you responded to that earlier but i didn't capture it you mentioned subsidies is there a requirement as of right now that new constructions are required um to use heat pump technology or is something that we're considering i just wanted to know a little bit more about that i'd like to defer to my colleague carolyn elam who's our energy pride manager and who's been working very much on this carolyn great thank you juni and that's just that's a great question i think we've been very um cautious in our our code development to not dictate the technology solution um but rather to set performance-based standards and leave it to our very insightful and um thoughtful architectural and design community to really design those solutions heat pumps tend to be the technology of choice for our residential homes and

[159:01] meeting our code but they are not mandated through our code thank you actually that's the only question that i have thank you junie sam great uh thank you mark and i want to say thanks very much to jonathan brett yale and carolyn i mean this is a really comprehensive framing of a very complicated far-reaching problem so it was a great setup for us to talk about there are too many elements to address tonight but it's a great way for us to think about it i want to come down to an accounting question first um i believe most of our work has been done relative to a 2005 baseline so we've looked at emissions it's been percentage below 2005. i see in here that the baseline will be shifted to 2018 i was curious about what the thinking was about the 2018 shift and then

[160:02] after we're done with that i'm going to come back to embedded carbon but what about the baseline year and yeah i believe sam is referring to the um the carbon and body carbon reduction goals relative to the baseline i'll just start with the baseline year um so for instance on page seven of the packet we've got reduced emissions 70 by 2030 against the 2018 baseline and so the first question is are we going to shift our baseline from 2005 emissions to 2018 emissions great i'm gonna um hand it over to lauren tremblay who's on the call and she's our colleague who's the architect behind a lot of this work hey oh yeah so my name is lauren tremblay i'm a sustainability analyst of the climate initiatives department and the reason for the shift to the 2018 baseline was working under ickley guidance so really the recommendation is that cities shift away from a 2005

[161:00] baseline to align closer to a 2018 baseline they were really asking for really between a 2016 and 2019 ideally baseline was 2018 being the ideal and that was really just because a lot of cities are starting to get into this work now where they're starting to analyze their annual inventory and emissions it was an opportunity for those cities to be able to kind of look at their current conditions and start from there and the recommendation is also just due to the fact that the ipcc report came out in 2018 and a lot of the forward-looking that the report was doing was really looking at like based on the current status now in 2018 where will her carbon budget be into the future so it was really trying to reset the baseline to align with that 2018 timeline um so that's really where um the race to zero campaign is pushing cities to reset their baseline too so we're doing that to really align with all the global communities moving towards under that guidance

[162:00] got it and my only concern really about that is not shifting the baseline per se but how do how does our community adapt to we've been telling them we've done 21 you know carbon reduction and now we'll be at you know a few percent at best when we do 2018 so it might be something to think about you know how we're going to bring the community along with that change because we might get it but others might not the second thing i wanted to ask about is carolyn what you were starting to talk about which is embedded uh emissions so what does it take to get our iphones and our cell phones you know what's the emissions associated with transporting them what's the emissions associated with um cement oh sorry concrete and basement foundations and so on so it's a really important question but one of the things that the memo said was doing that is going to make it look like and truly is um doubling the emissions that are coming from boulder

[163:00] and so if we're making both of these shifts at once how are we going to square it with previous progress how we're going to square it looking ahead i think to me the challenge becomes all of a sudden we reset the zero on 2018 and now we've got double our emissions it seems like we need to be clear with the community what's going on there and then you know these targets 70 percent by 2030 against a baseline which essentially doubles from what we did two years ago is extremely daunting so i i guess the question is how are we going to use these two changes and how are we going to bring the community along with that yeah i'm going to if you don't mind me timing and again that's a really great point it's one we're really thinking about as we move into looking at

[164:00] incorporating consumption-based emissions into our inventory into the future i'll also add that we're looking to include sequestration of our urban forests and trees into our inventory process as well so there's a lot new stuff that's being integrated and i completely agree with you that it's going to be a lot of learning that goes along with that but we're going to be working through the actual inventory process to segment out that information so that it's very comparable to prior years so we'll be doing kind of an old break out the consumption-based emissions um as kind of like apart from our kind of historically how we've done our emissions accounting and then you can kind of see a comparison kind of trending over the years so you can understand what that trend is being they can also look at what the consumption-based emissions are now that we're starting to accumulate those and incorporate them into our accounting mechanisms so it's a really great point and we'll try to do our best to try and segment the data in a way that's really comparable uh year over year just because we have such a wonderful history of doing our inventories

[165:00] that we don't want to lose that value of being able to track that trend over time so that's certainly a great point that's an excellent answer too thank you for that and it also applies of course to accounting the transportation emissions from in commuters which is something we've heard about for a long time but um having the old style tracking the old numbers the previous numbers and then the new numbers broken out you know in additional categories i think will be very helpful on that so that's great i have one other question um and brad it goes to your example you talked about divestment and talked about you know some of the financial levers that individuals have i would point out and then ask we as an institution have those levers as well and so to what extent does this kind of rethinking and reframing to systems change how are we going to incorporate that with our financial processes so not only where do we keep our money but kind of advocacy for public banking

[166:00] and other things like that so writ large how is the city as an institution going to look at some of those actions that we need to take that aren't just direct about carbon emissions but are more about the systemic change i entirely agree sam and i think it's one of the reasons i i want to also in this regard talk to judy speak to junie's question we have power through procurement and i was just on a call today with some folks who are talking about carbon transactions if muni start to step into the game around making carbon transactions it could be a game changer on a lot of levels so i think that there's a lot of power in terms of both where we invest who we do financial business with and what we buy and that's one of the reasons why we launched the forum on economy climate and community because we need to normalize this as being a legitimate a part of our strategies and i think that a lot of places might not have seen that as being something that they should or

[167:00] could do and so i don't think that we're going to leap into this i know certainly our financial controllers don't want us to leave it there yet but for a good reason we want to know how this works and we also want to see that others are coming along with us so i think we're starting to try to have start that conversation not only here but also in a lot of other places great that's all my questions thank you okay we have next up a mirabai followed by rachel and then mary and then this evening's master of ceremonies so remember bye thanks mark um thank you steph thanks for a great presentation uh i guess my biggest takeaway is how urgent this issue is um something i personally feel i've been aware of but i don't know you know our whole community is so appreciate you bringing it up um i guess my question is this i understand that you know what i'm about to talk about is part of our charter so it's not like you can go do anything about this um your bells but it's something i think you can help guide from

[168:00] my experience on council and so my question is that seeing right now as our open space is partially used for um in our water precious water rights are used for uh growing hay for raising cattle which from my research and understanding is uh animal husbandry is some of the biggest producers of greenhouse gases is there i guess desire within staff to help guide council in the community and start using our open space in different ways where we're not killing keystone species and we could start bringing in animals like the buffalo who work with keystone species or regarding the carbon sequestration uh from again information i've had is that it works with keystone species as well as things like hemp farming that take far less water really helps with carbon sequestration so is there a desire for staff to try to kind of

[169:01] adjust the old way of thinking of how we've used our lands to update them seeing as again from the way you put this presentation things are pretty urgent so i hope that thank you thank you thank you bye i i it's a great question and i think it's one of those things like you said that we're going to need to be looking at what our charter objectives are with some of our land uses but we have actually already started down this path following the prairie dog ordinances that were implemented this year we are supporting a community collaboration that lindsey crank and others are a part of to look at how we manage lands in the context of agriculture with prairie dogs and other species to see how we can optimize for that now we've also started a relationship with one of the cu ecosystems labs to start to look at landscape scale management just to look at how we use our water to be able to sustain landscapes that can hold more water because the capacity of our landscapes

[170:00] to hold and transpire water is going to be critical to cooling us so i think that we're just starting to move that a lot of that work forward i think a lot more is going to come in the next couple of years great thank you brad i appreciate it uh rachel you're next thanks mark um and thanks for that question mirabai um i appreciated it um first i want to say it is really an honor to live in this city that is working so hard on this issue and to be on this council that's taking part in this uh important work so i want to thank staff and community members and also um a shout out to council colleagues some of you will be rounding off of council in a few months and you've been so instrumental in this work and i just want to say you are all very appreciated um so then i have a couple questions and there may be a little bit in the weeds so i'm sorry uh hope that's okay um and again thank you all for bearing with me that my camera is not on um so at the state legislature today and

[171:01] i think maybe over to the governor's desk i think that the state lifted preemption on plastic span so i just wanted to know what we might be able to do beyond whatever the new state requirements are and whether we could request an analysis of that and a report back on actions we might want to take on that front before too long yeah rachel let me take a swing at this one honestly because it's an extraordinary thing when i can't get a word in edgewise with my colleagues so i i appreciate so much that you're tracking uh the state legislature today was a pretty significant day not just in terms of the plastics bill but a number of other bills on the energy side so just for those of you that are watching that maybe don't track this as closely house bill 1162 phases out single-use plastic bags polystyrene cups and containers and reverses as you said a law that prohibits municipalities from taking action around plastic pollution

[172:02] and i think it's been regarded as one of the most comprehensive plastic pollution reduction bills passed in the country and in fact marks uh the first time an interior state has taken action to phase out plastics pollution so i just wanted to reference the significance of that so just as we think about the analysis the final version of the bill pushed back the date of that preemption repeal to july 1st of 2024 so we have a little bit of time to think about um evaluating the best options for boulder to to further our plastic pollution in our community and the impacts of plastics globally i wanted to just mention that in flag for our community and council the really incredible metabolic report that came out just two years ago that really starts to look at that circularity of our materials flow and just to kind of key in on that systems level thinking rather than just focusing on providing recycling options for single-use plastics incidentally generally roughly 10 percent i think or less

[173:01] a plastic waste we generate um i would say societally not just here not in boulder or above that uh that we generate actually gets recycled properly so it allows us to think about not just reducing plastic waste pollution by cleaning up our supply chain focusing on the role of single-use plastics and product packaging and ultimately incentivizing innovative packaging solutions and so i think what we would start to look at is options for local ordinance to tackle other types of plastics similar to what other cities have done around styrofoam or utensils and straws plastic lined coffee cups so i think we have some really interesting opportunities there and also look at some extender extended producer responsibility rules that we might be able to look at uh kind of going back to uh the comment that aaron made earlier so how we can influence though that kind of systems level approach through this particular bill that was a long answer and i apologize i just wanted to let you know that we are absolutely on that and to recognize that our zero waste

[174:02] approach and reducing and minimizing our waste and thinking about the circular county is a key component of our climate effort i love that answer thank you um and it sounds like we can't really do anything until 2024 in terms of preemption lifted is that true i think that's right but we between now and then uh our staff is really going to be identifying and evaluating the best options for boulder um and and i think that's going to be a really critical piece of what we've been looking at for a while so we can bring back some ideas as we move forward on reporting out on our zero waste work awesome thank you that's exciting okay next question um if i understood the presentation correctly it sounds like some of our previous efforts were not exactly widely replicated around the nation and bob yates likes to say we aren't a leader if no one is following

[175:00] so given the urgency here i'm assuming that we want to make sure that our decisions are going to be impactful and replicatable replicable so looking first at building codes i'm worried are we setting standards that they will be um affordable and that we will have builder and owner buy-in because i assume we don't want to make requirements so onerous that other cities won't follow or that we drive uh you know middle income um households out of the city so that's my first question on that front camera do you want to take that one sure um you know it's something rachel we we think very um carefully about whenever we introduce a new building code and um we do and and will as we look to the next code update try and do an extensive analysis of the cost implications of any changes i will say we are very much aligning our building code updates with what's happening

[176:00] nationally and internationally so so we're really seeing a trend uh kind of centering around these performance-based codes so they are being replicated we don't actually while we have the most aggressive in the country for a long time i think we're really lining up with with many others and trying to build those lessons learned so we're definitely going to be very cognizant i i do know that when we look to like our affordable housing our multi-family units um some of our up-and-coming commercial spaces they're really largely exceeding the requirements in our code they're moving towards all electric um really that the cost of technologies are coming down and i think that's really telling of where we're going to be heading and so um we will definitely be paying very close attention to that is and we will be talking to you about that as we start to move into our next code update which is scheduled for 2023. okay um and then sort of along the same lines um and and following up maybe a bit on on aaron's question about the the

[177:02] circular economy so and i and i appreciate that that the affordable housing units and and um the more just industrial or um other side and maybe the million plus dollar homes are exceeding or and meeting the requirements but i am worried about the you know sort of everybody in between that um and so if repair costs go up because we require that people buy products that are you know built to last and become more expensive i just want to make sure we're looking at how we expect that that sort of average homeowners who maybe are um are stretched to just make mortgage payments in this expensive town will be able to keep up so that i guess that's my second question is how are we um ensuring that are looking at that yeah and i think one of the things i would highlight rachel is um for uh a decision we made in our last code cycle um was really not to ratchet down the

[178:02] code requirements on repair renovation you know smaller renovations to really encourage the retention of existing homes and so i think we would continue to see some trends where you know if we see that having a negative impact on our homeowners um as they have to make decisions about their existing homes i think that's the strategy we would continue to employ it's something we're trying to be very cognizant of as we really um leverage our equity tools to really understand what the impact is some of the decisions we're making on not not just like you said on on the affordable housing but on our market rate homes as well awesome that's helpful thanks um and then i think my last question when we look um at the i think you called it consumption piece um so not the energy system not the buildings um and and i get that historically um you know we focus sort of on building codes in the builder it was an obvious place that cities had

[179:00] control and so we looked at things like electrification of buildings and appliances and things like that but beyond looking at land use as we consider the climate crisis and we know that there are so many other factors that are implicated like food waste and meat and dairy consumption and gas lawnmowers and xeriscaping and water issues and our travel habits and owning second homes and infected trees that are left to spread disease and things like that so my question is what sort of policies are we looking at outside of like planning and transportation codes to sort of create some of the um broader level and maybe it's both systems you know a system that's creating individual level changes um and and ideally would be um duplicatable so are we looking at codes that get at some of this stuff that cities don't maybe historically look at

[180:02] i'll take a swing at that first and then that'll buy a little bit of time for some of my colleagues if they want to give a more filled out answer i think as we start to work our way into thinking about consumption-based inventories and the approach of focusing on impacts that are primarily in production i think it might point to a need for you know cleaner production and extending the life of items in some cases reduction of demand i don't i don't think that we really thought uh far enough along about the policies that would get us there and the role that the city might be thinking about so we might be looking at targeting carbon intensive consumption categories targeting life cycle phases around production with highest emissions supporting shifts in consumption to activities with lower emissions and the city's role in that could be promoting it could be funding could be education and outreach developing programs and services and demonstrating i think with our own practices what i will say rachel to that is that

[181:00] this is an emerging body of work that actually is quite exciting and you heard lauren trembley uh talk a bit earlier about how this isn't something that boulder is facing in isolation we are partnering up with a number of communities through italy through the urban sustainability directors network and other coalitions to think about how do we actually start to calculate our emissions and be able to report out our emissions in a consumption based way what does that really mean back to sam your question earlier about how we articulate uh those impacts and then what really are the roles for the city what are the potential programs and policies and so i would say it's yet to be determined on the policy side fair enough thanks mary you have waited patiently the floor is yours thank you mark and um thank you staff this was probably the most riveting um memo that i've read at least in this term it was

[182:00] absolutely um fascinating and exciting to think about um at a systems level how things need to change in the whole idea of theories of change and how critical that is to be able to solve problems so i really really really appreciated the memo thank you very much um i'm not sure that i have i have tons of comments and i've been sitting here trying to figure out how to turn those comments into questions so i think what i'll do is i'll just wait um for the comments part rather than try and figure out how to turn my comments into questions so um are we ready to go there mark or no no i had a couple of quick questions okay thanks um uh one just just as a clarification for me the new targets that you've been setting are are inclusive of emissions from consumption as well

[183:05] i think i see more unmuting there she is yeah so we're aiming to focus our targets on right now our current mechanism for accounting so they'll be following historic trends of how we've done our accounting but we do have separate targets set for consumption-based submissions that follow again the science-based recommendations for how we should be setting targets for consumption-based emissions so i believe that's a 50 reduction in consumption-based emissions by 2030 and an 80 reduction by 2050 i believe so we'll be addressing and tracking those but just in a little bit of a separate way okay thank you i i originally had a question on some of the equity considerations and adopting new policies but i i think rachel got to those so my last question is we heard a detailed presentation this evening from alice jackson of excel um

[184:00] in reading your memo i was you know struck by first it's it's thoughtfulness but it was also quite frightening and it had a very strong sense of urgency to it having heard the excel presentation this evening do you think that their program for moving forward is equally reflective of that sense of urgency that your memo presented to us i i'm not seeing anybody jump at that one mark it's a it's a great question and and i don't want to deflect the the question but i think going back to at least what i hear you asking is does their um proposal in their electric resource plan and their clean energy plan sufficiently meet the pace and scale of work that needs to take place i'm going

[185:00] to answer it this way and say that energy decarbony is our energy supply remains a critical factor in our ability to address the climate crisis that is i think that's a known quantity not just here locally but but globally i mean that is really something that i think every community is really focusing on how do we achieve net zero emissions in the time frame that science tells us that we need to get to we know that it's a challenge we have to meet but it's a challenge to which we have answers and i think we're confident that it could be done in a way that getting it at zero is technologically and economically possible so the question is i think goes back to something sam was saying in his remarks which is we need to continue to push we have continued to play that role as a community with our utility provider and i think it has shown that moving towards things like massive electrification shutting down fossil based units moving away from fossil based methane gas

[186:03] to other sources of energy those are critical in our ability to meet the goals that we have not only laid out as a community but that are required to to address the climate science so i i would say that it is absolutely a step in the right direction we are having a different conversation today with excel than we were just two years ago and i often think back a decade ago about where we were in terms of renewables in terms of emissions within the electricity sector and we've come a long way but we have to continue to push there are still questions with respect to where excel is going questions around their investment in in natural gas questions around the pace in which they are decommissioning those fossil-based units the impacts to the communities that they serve these are all questions that we want to dig into not just with our community but how we work with our partners through cc4ca and through our coalitions to continue to apply pressure not just

[187:00] to excel but all of our utility providers i think it's a critically critically important piece and the last thing i'll say on that is that um alice talked i think uh she was responding to mary's question about how excel's work is really reflected in the systems based approach and what i do appreciate in analysis remarks is recognition of the comprehensive nature that energy plays so starting to look at things much more comprehensively in terms of just electricity supply but how it fits in with decarbonizing our buildings how it fits in with decarbonizing our mobility systems so taking that approach i think is is important i think it's again a really critical step in the right direction i think we as one community and our partnership communities are going to continue to play a vital role in in making sure that we can be as aggressive as we possibly can because these targets are not just ambitious um they are necessary jonathan thank you for that answer and keep pushing um i think we can now

[188:01] turn it over to counsel for comments and i think mary has first dibs on those okay thanks mark um so first i just wanted to start it by start off by saying that what one of the biggest things that struck me about this memo was the focus on social economic and environmental and it struck me that that's how our comprehensive plan used to be based on and we moved away from that into the sustainability framework and perhaps in 2025 we may want to consider going back to the three-legged stool um so that's a comment with respect to um looking at um it was page 14 where um you illustrate the global emissions per capita

[189:00] and how the poorest communities um actually have the lowest emissions rate and the richest communities have the most emissions so um my comment is in in looking at how to develop systems that work look to the people who have the lowest emissions for solutions instead of going out and playing saviors to the poor communities look at the communities for the assets that they bring to the table that they have a lot to offer in terms of solutions because they have already had to do um a lot with very little so um so i think that's that's an important um perhaps in the category of insights um that you presented um

[190:00] also um to the the comment that the environmental advisory board made about not um disempowering individual action made me think about how after the the sugary beverage tax there was an organization that went out and showed all of the different soft drinks and then right next to them how much sugar was in them so it was a visual um representation of what the harm that those drinks could do in terms of your health and so similarly um one of the way ways of empowering people um to individual action would be to take a similar display and show say for example um a compostable cup plate and fork and

[191:00] what is the embedded petroleum in those so you know we consider ourselves being virtuous for using compostable um products but they have embedded petroleum so you know what what is what is the embedded petroleum in those versus carrying around a cup that you refill or a bottle that you refill something like that and along with that to look at what a purchase of a toaster um going and buying it locally versus ordering it from amazon you know what is the the the petroleum that is attached to something um based on how you purchase it so just just thinking about how to raise awareness about the simple things that we do every day have consequences and the impact of those things that we do

[192:00] in terms of the partnerships and and and finding out how to change our systems is to look in look at partnerships in unlikely places like instead of just partnering with a whole bunch of environmental organization partner with organizations like the poor people's campaign black lives matter to to get some insights into what communities want what communities need and how much of that is replicable um at different scales um the one of the things that i thought was very interesting in your memo was the comment about choosing to expend dollars on programs or efforts that yield the greatest system scale mitigation rather than optimal within city boundaries and um

[193:00] to that made me think about well there might be a whole bunch of um policy barriers to doing things like that um so for example with affordable housing funds we can only spend those within the city boundary but what if our affordable housing funds could be spent county-wide we may get more affordable housing county-wide but less within the city boundaries so what kind of policies um present barriers to that kind of um in that exam specific example revenue sharing um and then one of the thoughts that that came to mind as i was reading the memo is um i i saw a gap with respect to migration um climate migration and how you know the people will be moving inland from both coasts and northward

[194:02] um while inland from because of sea level rise and northward because of rising temperatures and desertification so how does that impact all of what we're we're talking about here all of these systems changes and and what does that mean in terms of um how we move forward um and um and then just kind of a a a general comment about how um i found like i said before i found the whole systems um analysis and and theory of change just really fascinating and kind of a broader comment about what other um of these intractable seemingly intractable problems can we apply this sort of thinking to and what comes to mind is homelessness and how can we apply the systems level

[195:02] um collaborative theory of change um to homelessness because yes you can um it's important that people have something to eat every day and to bring people um that are camping say for example lunch but that's not going to provide any kind of systems kind um solutions so to apply it to other problems and and perhaps and i'm sure that staff is already thinking about what other problems this kind of thinking can be applied to so um that's all the comments i have and um thank you i really really really appreciated this memo and um and the urgency behind it and all the work that you're doing um so thank you sam i see your hand raised indeed thanks i'm i'm gonna just pop down the list of questions real quick as the

[196:01] start so i think the answer is pretty much yes to to all of these the most important one being the new system based goals and targets because i think it is time for a reset i think we're behind where we need to be thinking about this the urgency that's in the memo it captures what we need to be thinking about as far as our goals and targets and it has seemed to me for since the climate mobilization action plan kickoff that we really needed to address that concern and so yes to to the assistant-based approach yes to bringing it back to us in august to formalize those through a resolution i think we need to adopt that and you know start to bring all of us along as well as our community along with why we're making the change what the change implies how consumption is a really important factor in what's going on so i would say absolutely

[197:00] uh i think we need to adopt new goals and targets progress indicators and then communicate them and communicate the urgency that's in this memo i think the way that equity is embedded into the thinking about how to design the programs we have the conversation with carolyn that building codes it extends to everything and it's not just class it's race as well so i think having that at the core along with resilience and of course emissions but emissions has been kind of how we've approached this historically and that's only gotten us so far so having the equity design principle is critical if we don't have it we're we're only going to make superficial progress as brett said yeah see it in august absolutely um the framework for clarifying the roles of cities i the only thing i fear about the system level thinking is there's a lot of things in the system that we only have influence over

[198:01] and so we can't use the fact that we don't control housing policy to ignore our role in homelessness as an example and in climate we can't you know ignore the fact that we don't control the whole let the fact that we don't control the whole financial system stop us from doing what we can so i think one thing when we do this system kind of approach and system-based thinking is we need to prioritize first and foremost what we have direct control over so i think we want to be careful not to fall into a trap of talking about all the external influences like in commuters saying we can't do anything about that well we can you know plenty of people will work here who don't live here so i i just want to caution that while we take this systems level approach we don't then shirk some direct actions which might be hard and might be controversial that we need to address and take so that would be the only question about that and then specific

[199:01] strategies i mean i think we probably within you guys within the climate initiative department have a really good handle on all the detailed strategies on carbon sequestration energy transition you know what buildings need to do to be better i would say that we need to bring in departments which aren't going to love being brought in like of course the financial group and they have very good reasons for being conservative but we need to move that part of the organization forward things like utilities right not just obvious things like water conservation but things like if we're going to build a detention structure on south boulder creek to hold flood waters how can we do that in a way that uses the best kind of concrete that we can when we're doing that building you know bringing in concepts like that which may raise the price three or four or five percent and everyone's very sensitive about that

[200:02] but also we want to make sure the embedded energy in that in the embedded emissions in that project are taking into account what you're pointing out for us in the memo so i think you know specific strategies why i can't list them all but how we engage other departments within the city which are our direct responsibility for the actions they're taking how we get buy-in from those other departments and how we help them see like the fact that procurement is incredibly important is something that everyone in the city will have to be city organizations gonna have to understand in order to be effective on this so i think you're right on track with everything you're doing it's going to be super hard and you're going to be asked even within the city organization to work on stuff that you only have influence on and not direct control and that's where um the city leadership not only council but you know the lead department heads

[201:01] and everyone has a responsibility here so i think this is great thank you for bringing it to us and i think you're on the right track and look forward to hearing about it in august thank you sam aaron is next but uh jonathan could i ask you to put up the slide with the five questions that you were looking for council direction on just so we can all see them yeah although sure give me just you frank i wasn't going to answer every single one but brett can you bring that slide up okay aaron so yeah and and the reason that i'm not going to address every single one is because i think fundamentally you all are absolutely on the right track and you're doing amazing work you're looking at this from a i'd say a visionary perspective uh about what's required to to meet the the demands of the climate crisis that

[202:00] we have in front of us so i you know thank you so much for the work that you're doing um i thought sam's comments uh were very good so i generally agree with those i think just the one the one caveat or caution that i want one to offer is that um you know there was in the memo you know you laid out you know the sphere of control by the city versus the sphere of influence versus the sphere of interest right so you know there are things that we can do uh there are areas where we can do things directly there are areas where we can influence like you know legislative policy for example and then there are things that we're interested in but but we have very little that we can directly or indirectly make a difference on and and so when you when you come back to us with targets i i would also in addition to the the numbers i'd also like to hear a little bit more about the how right because uh a target in the abstract without any kind of sense of how we get

[203:01] there you know we we can say yes to it but but i would feel a little uncomfortable saying yes to you have a lot of targets right like that you've outlined here um and some of them very aggressive and we need to be very aggressive but i i i would hope that we would have some sense of of how we would get there obviously not every detail that's gonna take years of work to figure out how we're gonna get there but some sense of how and and keep in mind that you know like sam said we can't use the fact that something we don't have direct control over an area to we can't use it as an excuse to throw up our hands and say well we can't do anything but at the same time there are areas where we have a lot more control over it and i think we can we can be more aggressive in the areas that we do have a lot of control over and the things where we have more indirect influence um you know then if we set a really aggressive target but but we only have a one percent influence over whether we get there i'm not sure how useful that is so we don't want to end up with a bunch of

[204:00] stuff that we just missed because there's no way that we could we could make that target so anyway just to cross the the need for urgent action with uh how we get there and what we what we have the ability to implement so just love to see a little bit more about that when it comes back in august aaron thank you for those comments that's really helpful feedback and i would just point out we we tried to move in that direction um in the packet uh in attachment d we start laying out a little bit of the focus on the objectives targets and progress measures and i think what we'll use is some of that foundational information that starts i think on page 45 i'm looking at the packet right now just start to flush that out a little bit more in terms of answering your questions so i really appreciate that feedback yeah thanks so much yeah and i did look through that it had a lot of good stuff in it so maybe a little bit more thanks so much all right rachel okay thanks mark um i i will be brief i agree with aaron that we are on the right track

[205:00] um and and don't have a lot of feedback for the specific questions um wanted to follow up on brett's wonderful description of land use as contact sport in boulder i do agree that land use is a as a big deal as we move forward with this and we really shouldn't shy away from looking at land use and its impacts on on the climate crisis and relatedly i hope this isn't isn't too far afield but since the memo mentions gearing up for the 2025 comp plan revisions um one thought i have just for staff to take or leave is whether the comp plan is really it's properly limited in its scope to land use so the opening sentence of our comp plan um says that the comp plan comp plan guides land use decisions in the boulder valley and you know given we already weave in concepts like equity and transportation and climate resiliency

[206:00] i would challenge us to think about whether our big guiding document with the county should broaden beyond the specified limited focus on land use that seems sort of like a 20th century approach um and we probably need a 21st into 22nd century lens as we face down what is an existential climate crisis so um while you're looking at that i just want to flag i think that the comp plan if that's gonna remain our our you know soul sort of bible contract with the um and vision with the county that that um it should be broadened so that's all my feedback thanks thanks rachel juni thank you um juni i think you're muted yeah that's too bad um yeah thank you for

[207:01] this presentation and and all the updates and from what i heard is or next update or code update will be in 2023 or 2025. is it 2023 or 2025 so the the building code the energy conservation code will be 2023 so we'll be uh before council in 2022 20 late 2021. yeah um i i thought the presentation was great and all the questions i think it's again i think it's hard to answer all of them because the presentation was quite long but i would say for me it would be my only advice would be to definitely keep on or keep on leaning into the color collaborative efforts between the city and other surrounding cities because as we know climate change and climate resiliency and sustainability

[208:00] it's not something that boulder itself can solve by itself right it's something that will require a lot of us together and i think having the support of other cities around or neighboring cities actually will make all work a lot more sustainable and a lot more effective so i think and that's great i see that in in the memo as well i think that's very important and you mentioned again i really appreciate the fact that you mentioned um you know some of the work with the u.n again what we see here in boulder it seems it's a microcosm of what's going on around the united states when it comes to global emission and it takes all of us together to really make a dent so i really appreciate that as part of the presentation and i think just to reiterate something that i heard earlier from brett when it comes to the um heat pump technology and i did get an answer earlier that

[209:01] it's not something that is recommended or or that it's not something that is required it's not required um but maybe i i don't know the inner working and the inner processes of how you know of how you work with these different organizations when they come and trying to get um you know the process of the building code process but what i i thought to myself maybe that's something that should be strongly recommended especially if we're providing subsidies again we really i think it goes back to something i heard earlier from aaron um we really want to make a change and make a difference so we can't just um i guess suggest and also just hope that performance standard um you know it's i i remember the comment that was made is performance-based standard it's either you meet it or you don't need it but i think having those strong recommendations you know from the beginning might really be helpful

[210:00] in helping us move forward so i really think this was a great discussion and thank you for all the work that you've done thank you junie amirbae i think you have your hands up thanks um so i'll just make mine very brief same thing it's kind of hard to answer everything um it's a big encompassing but yes completely support the work that you're doing would um to see this continue to move forward with as much uh effort and support that the city can provide i guess this same thing that i'll kind of jump on is collaboration and buy-in so buy-in i think is going to be the biggest thing that we can try to do and you know it's probably done through education but just kind of thinking of examples um basically going back to world war ii and victory gardens and girl scouts and boy scouts and you know they would collect 10 and it was like the whole us bought into world war ii to help support

[211:01] the soldiers and and the war efforts and it's like if we could do that but for the climate instead and trying to maybe i don't know if there's any way to use tactics from programs like that that used to work um but just that education and really trying to get a lot of people on board because i think that's the only way it's really gonna make any difference and again then my only you know framework is i really hope that instead of killing animals we can um start adjusting how we do things because if things are really just this dire killing animals for growing grass to me just seems ludicrous so really support the work you're doing and really excited to see this as it progresses so thank you all right in the absence of other hands i'll make a couple of comments i think uh first i want to thank staff for an absolutely eye-opening presentation um it's a new way of looking at at this issue uh and i think it should be much more widely adopted uh

[212:02] i would focus as aaron indicated on things that are specifically achievable i would radiate out what can we do in the city that we can control what can we do with our sister cities what can we do in the county then what can we do in the state um i think that's where we will leverage our efforts to the greatest extent possible and have the greatest impact and i would urge you to focus it that way um but other than that i think uh uh you are on the the right track and this is going to be a hopefully a seminal moment in our city's approach to dealing with climate change and establishing good climate action programs so i thank you again are there any other comments all right if that is the case then i believe we are concluded for this evening and i am declaring this uh this meeting

[213:02] adjourned not as expeditious as as uh adam does it but uh you know we do our best um so thank you all and have a good evening thank you all good job regardless mark thanks everybody thanks everyone so

[214:07] [Music] you