Environmental Sustainability Council

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY COUNCIL ENERGY TRANSITION SUBCOMMITTEE Thursday, March 7, 2019 at Thomas Jefferson Middle School Library MINUTES CALL TO ORDER: Members: Tim Stevens (Chair), Thomas Cash, Jon Ward, Andy Skallaris, Erika Myers, Dan Sze (city council liaison) Ongoing Business EV promotion within City. The committee discussed Erika’s proposal to conduct EV awareness events at the Saturday farmer’s markets in August. Erika explained having several vehicles available to show interested individuals how to charge them. Also, ETS would recruit volunteers to answer questions from the public on the benefits of EVs, cost issues, etc. The committee also discussed a letter to DVE (Scott Reamy) requesting financial help to purchase four EV buses for our school system, and for help with providing charging infrastructure, for both the school buses and for individuals living in multifamily housing who want EVs. Other issues – state legislation; Tim provided updates to the committee on the status of the Solar Freedom bill (endorsed by ETS). The bill did not receive necessary votes to pass out of committees within the state’s General Assembly. Opposition was from Republican members who appeared to support views promoted by DVE (Dominion Virginia Energy). The relevant committees did vote to support a bill introduced by delegate Tran that would provided limited ability for localities to share the output of a rooftop solar facility on one building with a non co-located building. The legislation was supported by DVE because it did not allow for financing of the solar facility to occur via PPA, meaning that the locality had to purchase the solar facility with taxpayer money. It appeared that the bill had support from Alexendria, who was looking for funding from the General Assembly for their CSO infrastructure costs. Solar Freedom would need to be re-introduced in the 2020 General Assembly.