Sustainability Committee

Minutes of the regular meeting of the Natural Resources and Sustainability Stewardship Advisory Committee held Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 4:00 p.m. at the Ogden City Municipal building, 2549 Washington Blvd., Ogden, Weber County, Utah. Members Present: Joe Linford Bill Hackett Bonnie Christiansen Heather Root Kenna Hill David Stevenson Jay Lowder Members Excused: Adam Tobey Pearl Marden Stephen St. Peter Julie Ray Chase Wilson Rachel Ballard Ex-Officio: Amy Mabey Leesa Brinkerhoff Guests: Shelby Stulz, Utah Clean Energy Kevin Emerson – Utah Clean Energy CALL TO ORDER / WELCOME / ROLL CALL • Joe welcomed the committee members and called the meeting to order. • Leesa called the roll. APPROVAL OF NOVEMBER 21st AND DECEMBER 12th MEETING MINUTES • Joe asked if there were any changes to the November 21st and December 12th meeting minutes. There were none. All approved unanimously. DISCUSSION OF THE COMMITTEE’S ROLE AND PROCESS IN ADVISING THE MAYOR AND COUNCIL IN MOVING FORWARD WITH HB 411 • Joe opened up the discussion regarding the committee’s role going forward with HB 411. We haven’t had any more direction from administration or the council. He asked the committee if they had any thoughts as far as the best way to approach it or what the committee should do to organize it. • Bonnie suggested the committee look at the presentation given to the council and look at the points of benefits and concerns and address them. Some have the ability to be addressed, but some do not. • Heather suggested going a step further and propose how to solve their concerns. • Bonnie said the item regarding the role of government may have been assumed that government is not involved with the utility process right now. However, it can be explained that, no matter what rate case you have, the government is involved in some level. This may be an opportunity to explain the process as an informational item. • Amy agreed that information items would be helpful. Also, there is a meeting on Monday for the community stakeholders. It might be helpful to provide monthly updates and have the committee help with concerns, action items, etc. There may be more formal requests from the council or mayor. Right now, we don’t know what the path will be, but will start navigating on Monday. • Heather and Bonnie brought up the population RMP services, which is believed to be 55%. • Bonnie said there is a cost of the study that needs to be paid for. Some of the cities have suggested the cost be divided by population, or population and/or energy use. She feels there is a way to look at it in terms of what can people do initially and not just look at it as population, rather what the energy use is in an area. 1|Page • Amy said we’re asking them to consider our demographics and income levels. • Bonnie agreed saying the energy consumption may impact that as well. • Kenna thinks the Education and Outreach Subcommittee can be involved. There seems to be talk of a coalition with the Sierra Club of Utah in that they’re trying to rally up community leaders to attend events, city council meetings and specifically helping with HB 411 as it moves forward. Kenna asked if the subcommittee can participate in this and meet with some community leaders. Amy said she feels educating the public is going to be an extremely important part of it. • Bonnie asked if the committee can work with the Ogden City marketing arm to possibly do a joint press release or something similar to explain the process we’re going through, so that people understand well in advance there are opt-out options, how energy works, and the process of the Public Service Commission. • Amy said the council communication staff has put together information on what’s happened with HB 411as well as the Energy Wise Community Program. Amy has heard that this could be a 3-month process or a 12- month process to get to the rate study. • Bonnie said she had heard the rate study is expected to take 18 months. She asked if RMP will physically be able to make it happen with the large amount of communities involved with this and, if not, is there a way to negotiate. These will be good things to bring up in these meetings. How do we work hand in hand and be respectful of each other. • David asked how we can benefit from what other cities are already doing and how can we learn from them. For example, is there public information to keep everyone up to date? • Amy said, at this point, they sent out an email and a survey because there are so many things to delve into. There are other cities that are ahead of us and had pre-existing goals prior to this legislation. • Heather asked if we know how our city dovetails with potential state efforts. Amy said she will add this to her list of questions. • Bonnie asked who is going from the city. Amy said herself, Jay, Leesa, Mara, and some from our facilities/management services area. Bonnie asked if any council members are participating. Amy said not right now because we’re trying to figure out the structure and how this will work. • Bill asked if the council has some plans as to how to be represented at the table and is there anyone designated to do these. Jay said Amy is the representative for council and he is for administration. Bill asked about the other cities in northern Utah and his hope is Amy and Jay can act as a bridge. He added that he feels the committee is fortunate HB 411 appeared at basically the same time the committee was formed. We can have input to the many issues that will come forward in the months and years. Bill said he seeks a fully consultative relationship with regard to HB 411 and welcomes specific requests to help them understand and research where we can be of specific service. He doesn’t see our goals being in opposition. • Amy said the next request coming is regarding air quality. Amy would like to bring the request letter to the committee to discuss it and determine if there are clarifying questions to take back. • Kenna suggested that the committee members, being citizens of Ogden, feel like part of their job is to deal with issues they feel are not being addressed and can be requested to be brought before council and administration. • Joe agreed and feels the committee’s approach needs to be balanced. He also feels the council isn’t sure yet how they want to use the committee. • Amy agreed, saying new committees have growing pains as they feel their way through. • In addition to some items already raised, Joe proposed a point of contact for heading up HB 411 efforts. If we do that, he feels the logical fits are the Air Quality and Climate and Sustainable Energy Subcommittees. • Bill feels the Education and Outreach Subcommittee should be involved too. 2|Page  • Kenna feels that questions from subcommittee meetings can be brought up when presenting updates during the monthly committee meeting. • David asked if it makes more sense to have the chair of the Sustainable Energy Subcommittee be the spokesperson or have the 2 committees recommend who should be the spokesperson. • Joe feels the Air Quality and Climate Subcommittee to be the point of contact and work in conjunction with the Sustainable Energy Subcommittee. • Heather said there may be an issue of workload balance as the next request from council will be air related, so she suggested giving Air Quality and Climate one and the Sustainable Energy the other. • David suggested giving the Sustainable Energy Subcommittee the new air quality directive. • Bill said a designated lead person is a good way to move things through group channels. • Bonnie said she is chair of both committees and that her and Kenna have been talking about Kenna taking chair of the Sustainable Energy Subcommittee. Kenna doesn’t currently chair a committee and would be happy to do it, if the committee is ok with it. Joe asked if all were in favor. All agreed that Kenna will be the new chair of the Sustainable Energy Subcommittee. • Joe asked the committee if they want the Sustainable Energy Subcommittee to be the contact for HB 411. He put it out to vote and all agreed it should. • Bill asked if this person would speak for the entire committee all of the time. Joe said he envisions it to be a leadership role and all the other subcommittees will have input. • Joe asked if there’s anything else on HB 411. • Jay said he views it differently. He said he thinks it’s important for the committee to realize the magnitude of what they do when they’re asked to do it. He feels that it wasn’t a good thing that HB 411 came up right at the conception of the committee because it’s kind of derailed the committee with it being the primary focus. Now that it’s in motion, it comes down to the city’s resources to make it happen. He reminded the committee that they represent everyone in the city, not just the people who come here and voice their opinion. Jay told the committee that he feels they have done most of their job on HB 411. • Amy said she will provide monthly updates on HB 411. • Jay told the committee that there’s a big desire for charging stations and feels the committee can research this. • Amy said we have incredible expertise in members of the committee. • Joe said one of the committee’s initial priorities was air and climate. HB 411 came along at a time for us to fulfill a step toward it. Being proactive with HB 411 will help the committee to advise the council and administration. UPDATE ON ENERGY WISE COMMUNITIES PROJECT • Kevin Emerson and Shelby Stulz of Utah Clean Energy (UCE) joined the meeting to update the committee on the Utah Energy Wise Communities Project. Joe turned the time over to them. • Shelby distributed 2 documents to each committee member. One was titled “Selected Local Energy Efficiency and Resilience Goals”, the other ”Best Practice Strategy Options for Local Energy Efficiency and Resilience Goals.” • We are in the third stage of this project, which is to create a strategic implementation plan to address the established 3 goals. 3|Page • We fully established the energy consumption baseline for Ogden. We are approximately 90% complete on the goal selection through the assistance of our committee. • We’re still working to establish our community-wide goal, which we expect to solidify at our next steering committee meeting on February 10th. • We have selected our municipal, commercial/industrial, and residential goals. The municipal goal is to focus on energy use intensity for the current and future Ogden municipal facilities through an energy performance contract. In order to decrease the usage, an engineering firm has been secured to evaluate energy use for each of the facilities they are going to be doing upgrades on. Then, they will propose a retrofitting plan for infrastructure to meet the goal of a 5% reduction in energy use. • The commercial/industrial goal is to focus on the Ogden City commercial and industrial facilities to increase participation in efficiency programs by 5% by the year 2025 as compared to the 2018 baseline. For the commercial side, this would be 79 new total electric projects, which is approximately an increase of 13 projects per year compared to what currently is being done. In addition, it would be a total of 236 new natural gas projects by 2025. This is approximately 2 more projects per year. • The residential goal is for Ogden to increase energy efficient upgrades to residential properties by 25%. This will be done by property owners and managers participation in energy efficiency programs. Another component of this goal is to increase participation in qualifying program by 50% by 2025 as compared to the 2018 baseline. • Shelby offered to answer any questions. • David asked if the success and baseline for the commercial/industrial goal is based on the number of projects or the quality, and how they are getting these folks to say yes to doing another project with RMP. Shelby said we’re just getting ready to move into the implementation phase and will be examining what the best strategies are for increasing the participation in these types of programs. One strategy is how to make Ogden businesses more aware that these programs exist. David said he is pleased that they are doing efficiency audits and giving incentives to do it. In his previous experience in project efficiencies, the most important thing to him was how it will affect the facility by reducing overall emissions. He asked, of the 79 participating businesses, how many will measure the reduction of their toxins. David and others interested in air quality would like to see this at the forefront of these projects. • Shelby said UCE is taking feedback from committees to draw from best practice strategies of what Ogden feels is most important in terms of moving forward to these goals. The goals they have right now were set as a quantitative measure to know if they are achieving energy reduction. • Kevin added that the level of detail David asked about somewhat exceeds the scope of the project. It’s focused on capturing energy savings, such as natural gas conservation projects. • David said, when most facilities need to make a big change, they need a permit from the state and often the feds. In order to complete the permit application, they already know what the savings are. Many times, we’re not aware of what those savings are. David asked if UCE integrates these savings in their commercial/industrial projects. Our committee would love to know this information to support projects in knowing all the good it does. The number of projects has far less importance compared to those that impact quality. Kevin said their main project outcome is to deliver an implementation plan that works to decrease energy consumption. • Heather said it seems like the goals are very modest and asked the reason why. Kevin said they were numbers that the steering committee felt were meaningful and not overly ambitious, and could create a momentum that could be built upon later. Some folks in the steering committee encouraged higher goals. • Joe said it sounds like modest goals were set and once achieved, could be set higher. Kevin agreed. 4|Page • Jay said it helps to change the culture, so we can do bigger things in the future. • Heather asked if, in the implementation plan, we can state the initial savings successes and demonstrate an ongoing snowball effect that would encourage other successes. • Shelby said this is a pilot program with one of the key tasks in the implementation plan is to identify subtasks to highlight community success. Ogden is the first city in Utah to do it. It will be expanded to other Utah cities. • Bonnie suggested creating goals that have a better stretch to them when working with other cities. • David said some projects are massive, so it’s hard for us to get our head around the smaller numbers. He suggested that UCE may help the committee understand what this means. • Kenna asked for an example of what one project looks like. • Kevin said they vary so much. It could be as simple as this building receiving a basic assessment for the building to run efficiently or could be at a hardware store replacing its lights. • Amy said she understands some of the goals are from ESCO projects already complete and these are in addition to them. • Kevin said there is well more than 5% ready for Phase 2. • Jay said our water operations projects saved $57,000. One thing we did was to simply reschedule our control system to power our pumps to come on at night when the rates are cheaper. Another was changing out one of our wellheads to the new efficiency pumps. The conservative figure for our savings is around 18.8%. • Bonnie said it’s good to see that we’re doing some of these big projects, but they seem so conservative. WSU does more than the 5% goal in just what’s scheduled out to be done. WSU has reduced its carbon footprint and their utilities by over 30% in nine years and saving over $13M. It depends on what you count. When we did the light bulb exchange, we served over 480 families, 50.1% of which were low income. We completed this in a matter of 12 weeks. We gave them LED light bulbs in exchange for other light bulbs. Bonnie said it will be helpful to know what counts and what doesn’t toward the larger community goals, as we plan to do this project again next year. • Shelby said we’re getting into the development of the implementation plan, adding that it’s hard to plan and design goals that she won’t be working on. We want to keep things specific enough that whoever is going to take this on once it’s developed, can hold the assigned people accountable. • Kevin said all feedback is on the table. They’re bringing ideas into the process, but the plan itself needs to be better defined by community members and experts to make it as impactful as possible. • Jay said the more feedback we can be get, like that UCE has provided to us, the more accurate we can be. • Heather asked, if we encourage people to go to the community meetings, what can we tell them to expect and will it be provided in the context that they can provide meaningful input. • Kevin said they are going to provide snacks, distribute paper copies of the strategies to read, and will be coaching people through what these strategies mean for the community plan and end goals. We will keep it on a higher level on getting feedback from community members, and ideas for strategies we haven’t thought of. • David said there are certifications and standards out there for buildings that are energy related. He asked if it’s part of what they’re considering. Shelby said we can consider it for part of the municipal and commercial/industrial goals. Kevin said we can consider certifications or public recognition. • Shelby said they are holding two community feedback meetings. One is tonight at the main library at 6:30 and the second is scheduled for Tuesday, February 4th at the same time and place. There is a steering committee meeting on February 10th and we will present what we’ve learned from the community meetings. We’re hoping 5|Page  to have a draft and timeline for the implementation plan to present to the steering committee the first week of April. We will present to the Sustainability Committee for input. SUBCOMMITTEE UPDATES Education and Community Outreach • Kenna has been having conversations with other organizations and trying to partner with them by getting lists of events to support things that are already happening in Ogden. Also, we’re trying to determine the best way to educate the public on HB 411. We’re partnering with the Sierra Club and their coalition. Kenna was approached by Level 9 Sports. They take care of the bicycle valet and recycling garbage at the OFOAM festival at Ft. Buenaventura. They tried partnering with Pepsi to take care of the garbage and recycling last year, but they didn’t bring recycling bins, so everything was put in the mainstream garbage. Because of her membership on the committee, Kenna was approached to see if she can help with volunteers to man the recycling stations. Kenna wants to contact the Ogden Downtown Alliance (ODA) since they handle the recycling for the downtown farmer’s market and ask them if they’d be willing to take it over or assist with reaching out for volunteers. • David asked when the event is happening. Kenna said it’s the last weekend in May and thinks it’s a 2- or 3-day festival. • Bonnie said the GOAL Foundation is putting together an event around sustainable events. Bonnie will find the contact information and forward it. David said, many times, there’s already a budget for events to include waste and recycling and just need assistance pulling it off. He said we should check with them to find out how we can help. • Jay said the committee should support the city’s events. Ft. Buenaventura is Weber County and they have their own event coordinator and budget. ODA is contracted by the city to run our events and make the downtown prosperous. • David said ODA has contracts for these events. If we approach them for their help with a non-city event, they will be denied on budget requests. He feels the resources we can gather from the city are probably not going to participate. • Kenna said maybe we can facilitate as somebody who looks into what resources exist within the county. There are planning meetings coming up for OFOAM that she can provide the dates for. • Heather said that partnering with the Sierra Club will reach a narrower group of people, but maybe we could dovetail. • Jay said we have to be careful who we partner with. • Amy said the county and city are very different. Government/Private Partnership • Joe said he needs to get with Stephen and hopefully have something for the next meeting. Air Quality and Climate • Bonnie has been talking with some people about the Community Climate Action Plan. WSU will possibly be willing to help us. She’s talked to the Forest Service because they have a lot of climate data to help with the resiliency part of it. She’s also talked to Weber Morgan Health to see what’s happening with people using the health services. All are interested in helping us. • As far as air quality, we’ll wait to hear about what the council hands us. 6|Page  • Jay said we are leading other communities with our Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) garbage trucks. Three weeks ago, our Fleet Manager attended a conference and found they are just now releasing information on electric trucks. Electric garbage trucks will cost about $600,000 each. A charging station is estimated to cost at least $1M. The trucks will be smaller, so we won’t be able to haul as much. • Heather asked if we can get natural gas from renewable sources in northern Utah. • Bonnie added that our energy grid is moving more and more toward renewables. An MIT study found that single electric vehicles tend to have less of a climate impact than do CNG. She suggested looking at it in terms of how it pencils now and later. She said WSU uses cutting edge vs. leading edge technology and encourages the city to find someone who’s done it first. • Joe said with the 7-year life span of the trucks, we will have new technology. Water Quality, Supply and Conservation • Bill is continuing his personal research to try to get up to speed on water issues. • Bill needs to set up meeting for the subcommittee with Jay and the Ogden City water engineer to learn more about water production. Bonnie said she can probably meet during the workday, but prefers to do it after the summit. Joe said after the business day is better for him and Tuesday’s are generally bad. Bill is interested in understanding the aging water infrastructure in the city and to view the water master plan. Solid and Hazardous Waste Reduction and Recycling • David suggested we have Gina Hughes present to the committee on recycling. She is the Solid Waste Supervisor for the city. We can do it two ways. She has a smaller version on You Tube that’s posted on the city’s Facebook page or, we can have her present in person which would be about 30 plus minutes. The committee agreed that we should have her present in person in the next 2 to 3 meetings. • David had a meeting a couple of months ago with the subcommittee, Jay, and some city folks. • Recently, Adam asked the city for numbers. We’ll make sure that gets presented as well. • David wants to propose a Pollution Prevention Award that would encourage the industrial and commercial folks to give them incentive to do more projects like the ones UCE presented today. He pulled some materials from other municipalities in the country who have these types of programs. He’s still researching what he wants to present to the subcommittee. He will present to them first and get their feedback before presenting to the full committee. He feels the Education and Community Outreach Subcommittee will probably have a lot of ideas to educate on this. Joe said the Government/Private Partnership Subcommittee will have an interest too. Sustainable Energy • Kenna is planning to attend the Energy Wise UCE project meeting on February 4th and will help be the HB 411 Point of Contact (POC). Open Space • No updates at this time. INTERMOUNTAIN SUSTAINABILITY SUMMIT / COMMITTEE MEMBER ATTENDANCE • Joe asked who wants to attend and how we make that work. • Bonnie said this occurs on Thursday, March 19th and Friday, March 20th. Thursday is the day we’ll have our keynote and is the bigger day of the two. Friday is workshops. 7|Page  • Joe asked what the best way is for the people to sign up. Bonnie said she needs each attendee to complete their own information. She will send a link to a Google doc form. Once complete, Bonnie will determine the cost and produce and invoice to the city. COMMITTEE OPEN DISCUSSION • Kenna said there are a lot of events coming up and asked if we could use a shared calendar, like Google Calendar. There was a suggestion that we put it on the next agenda. DELIVERABLES FOR FEBRUARY 27th MEETING • Joe said it’s important for the committee members to read through the meeting minutes and provide input as appropriate. • A few of the subcommittees haven’t been meeting. Joe said it’s important to have something to report each meeting to keep things moving. • Kenna suggested emailing the deliverables to committee members. Joe agreed. ADJOURNMENT • Joe thanked the committee members and the meeting was adjourned at 5:54 p.m. NEXT MEETING Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 4:00 p.m. __________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Jay M. Lowder Joseph Linford, Chair Ogden City Public Services Director Date Approved: 02/27/20 8|Page