Austin Energy Utility Oversight Committee (AEUOC) Meeting Transcript – 11/19/2024 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 11/19/2024 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 11/19/2024 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [9:05:06 AM] >> I am Leslie pool, the mayor pro tem of the city council and also the chair of the Austin energy utility oversight committee. We are here convening today, Tuesday, November 19th, 2024 at 9:06 A.M. [9:06:07 AM] We have a quorum present for this committee of the whole for the Austin energy utility oversight committee. Let me lay out for you all how we will proceed today, and then we will get to our business. We have a number of speakers this morning who are signed up to speak on item for the accepted procedure to this point has always been five speakers and committee meetings, which is different from council meetings. Seeing the number of people who have signed up today, I will be breaking with precedent and allowing these additional people to speak. You will each have two minutes to speak. It looks like we have more than about three dozen speakers, so that would be a significant amount of time, which means you all will also be waiting to the end to make your [9:07:09 AM] waiting to the end to make your your presentations. If you are down at the bottom of the list. But we will hear from every speaker who has signed up to speak today for two minutes. And I appreciate you all to make your comments. Then we will move to the business of the meeting today. What I would like to do is encourage you all to listen to the presentation that Austin energy is going to make, and we will take the speakers up after the presentation. So I will move to the next item on our agenda, which is because we're moving public communication to later approval of minutes of the September 24th, 2024 meeting of the Austin energy utility oversight committee meeting and I have a motion from council member harper-madison and a second from council member qadri. Are there any changes or corrections or objections to the minutes as presented? Seeing none and [9:08:09 AM] presented? Seeing none and seeing none from the people remote, those minutes are adopted. We will move to item number two. Discussion and possible action. Approve the 2024 Austin energy utility oversight committee meeting calendar. Have you all had a chance to look at the meeting dates that are recommended for next year? I commend them all to you. I maybe will watch them from home. Are there any changes or objections to the dates as presented? Is there a motion to adopt? Council member vela makes that motion to adopt, and council member qadri seconds again. Any objections or changes? Seeing none. The calendar for 2025 is adopted. Now we will hear from our general manager, Bob khan. He will give us a report and operational update and some [9:09:10 AM] operational update and some information on our awards and recognitions. The innovations that Austin energy has been working really hard on. Yes. Good morning, good chair vela, mayor, committee members. >> I'm actually I have a bunch of stuff I'm going to talk to you about this morning. I'm very, very excited about this. First one, the geothermal pilot project that you've probably seen all over the newspapers that we're bragging about. This is just evidence of us continuing our leadership in energy innovation. Last week, we announced a first of its kind advanced geothermal project. It's a five megawatt project in partnership with geo energy to bring additional carbon free energy online. Next year. It will do so by tapping into heat stored deep underground. We're going to go down two miles. They say it's going to take about 45 days. We'll see then then using a closed loop system with supercritical CO2 instead of water as the heat transfer fluid to produce electricity. With [9:10:11 AM] to produce electricity. With this new technology and the potential to scale up energy production, this geothermal effort will change the energy landscape in Texas and create a more reliable pathway to a cleaner, greener grid. While we're already the most environmentally sustainable utility in Texas, far exceeding statewide and national averages, you know we're at about 70% carbon free. Ercot and the rest of the country is at about 40%. We always seek new ways to produce clean, reliable energy for the grid. This pilot project will be located near our existing nacogdoches biomass facility. The next thing I want to talk about is an award we received for our get ready. I know you've heard about this. Get ready. Stay ready outage prep campaign. As you may remember, Austin energy produces a campaign to help our community get ready and stay ready in case of an unexpected outage that campaign has helped bring [9:11:14 AM] campaign has helped bring 140,000 new, unique visitors to our outage web page. And it's also increased enrollment for outage alerts by at least 65,000 customers. One of the things we've had issues with was getting people to sign up for text messages when there's going to be a problem, so we have 65,000 new customers out of our 578,000m. Sign up. That's a pretty big percentage. So that work has not gone unnoticed. Esource, a utilities focused consulting, research and data science company, recently awarded this campaign to get ready, stay ready campaign first place at the utility ad awards. So this award comes after source benchmarked our outage web pages as number one, number one out of 93 utility websites in the United States and Canada last year. And this isn't just against other mas, which is a big deal, but this is across co-ops. The big ious were number [9:12:14 AM] co-ops. The big ious were number one out of 93. That is something we really need to be proud of. I'd like to publicly thank our team for continuing to put our customers and community first. So what are we doing in the community? It's a busy time for Austin energy out in the community. In addition to the stakeholder work we've been doing for the last year, probably on the research generation plan, which you're going to hear more about later from Lisa martin and Linda rife. I'd like to highlight a few coming in recent events that are that are going on. First, we had our winter pop up events at our utility customer service centers December 5th through seventh. Customers can pick up supplies for their emergency preparedness kits and winter preparation tip sheets. Some examples are they get solar phone chargers, insulated covers for outdoor faucets, and composting bags. We're doing these events in partnership with Austin water [9:13:14 AM] partnership with Austin water keesom and Austin resource recovery to help community members take steps now to prepare for the winter season. The second thing we're doing in the community, we just had this a few weeks ago is our community connections resource fair is held in late October and it connects customers struggling to meet their basic needs with resources in the community. There are 144 vendors that were brought together and provided support services and information in one place. So some examples of some of the services that we provided at this fair were health, vision and blood pressure screenings, food services and housing assistance. More than 25 city departments staffing 50 booths with information about city services were in one place for all of these people to see. Nearly 1600 community members participated in this year's fair, making it the most attended in the 12 year [9:14:14 AM] the most attended in the 12 year history that we've been doing this. Third, the electricity electrify expo at the circuit of Americas. It's North America's largest electric vehicles festival. It promotes E rides of all kinds, electric cars, bikes, motorcycles, scooters, and even water crafts. Our electric vehicle team had a booth there and it was packed for two days. Staff got to talk and to show customers how easy it is to use chargers for their cars and encouraging attendees to consider electric transportation as part of our electrification efforts. Overall attendance at the expo increased by 28% over last year, even though it was one day shorter. Finally, on December 1st, we're going to have the holiday season kickoff by lighting the 58th annual zilker holiday tree. Each year, our crews take pride in assembling the tree with more than 3000 energy efficient light bulbs and just the right way to [9:15:15 AM] bulbs and just the right way to create the iconic swirl pattern. And that's going to remain lit until January 1st. So just a couple more things I want to mention. So before I finish my report. So over the years, many of you have worked closely with Elton Richards, vice president of our electric systems field operations. You know what an asset he is for our utility, our city and our community. He let us know that he's leaving energy Austin energy next month, and I'd like to thank him for his dedication and service and job. Well done. And the last thing I want to mention is this is chair Powell's last official meeting as chair of this committee. And I'd like to thank you for your guiding hand during the time you've been the chair. Thank you. >> For thank you so much, Mr. Khan, and congratulations to Elton. >> Enjoy your retirement. I hear it's a great it's a great new [9:16:16 AM] it's a great it's a great new role. >> I've been trying to do that. >> I think we all try. All right, let's see the next item. Yes. I had a question, if I may. Oh, sure. Fire away please. Yeah. I just was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about with the geothermal and sort of when that will come online and how you see that helping with some of the challenges that we have been talking about in the gen plan. >> Yes, it's going to come online sometime next year. It's five megawatts, which is which is small. You know, our peak load was a little over 3100mw. This year. It's a pilot project. We think it's going to be very promising. And if it does work and we'll wait to see, you know, when they start sending us power, we plan to expand it. And you know, it's free fuel, right? It's free fuel and it's carbon [9:17:18 AM] It's free fuel and it's carbon free. And so that goes along with our generation resource plan. >> And so what you know, assuming it does work. Yes. What is the expected capacity that we could build out in that area? >> I actually do not know the answer to that question. It's the pilot is five megawatts. But I think we'll just have to see how that works and go from there. I don't know if Lisa has an answer to that. We can always get back with you on that. That question, it looks like staff's coming up there. >> Okay, here comes Mike. >> Hey, Mike. >> Hi, Mike. Vice president, energy market operations and resource planning. There is currently land leased out in that area that we believe has the potential to do up to 400mw of geothermal because it's in a good part of the state with good heat. And then there's additional land in other areas of the state that could even go even larger. So it's a very large potential, a very large [9:18:19 AM] large potential, a very large opportunity. If this is successful. >> And what do you mean by the land is leased? We already lease it or no. >> The developer that is working on this has has leased land up and around the area. >> Okay. And is and in the Austin area is geothermal possible given our. >> So it is possible in the Austin area you have to go even deeper because you have to go deeper to get to the heat in order to make it work. And so that just adds an additional cost. And so it could potentially get to the Austin area at some point. But that's not where we're going to target early on okay. >> Thank you. And then I also wanted to just thank Elton for his work. I've worked with him often over the years and I've appreciated working with him. So thank you. >> All right. Any other questions for Mr. Khan? Yes. Council member vela are there other I know that that there are geothermal plants globally. >> I think if I'm remembering correctly, Iceland, I think is most of its electricity from [9:19:20 AM] most of its electricity from geothermal. But in terms of Texas and the United States, are there examples of large scale geothermal plants in operation? >> I know that this is the first of its kind in Texas. I don't know about. Across the country. Mike, do you want to? >> There is a research project in Texas down near San Antonio at the southwest research institute for geothermal. And San Miguel has recently announced a different type of geothermal that they're looking to develop. There is geothermal in the United States. It is done mostly through water, and it's generally out in the west and northwest where you have geysers and you have heat closer up to the surface. So this would be the first of its kind in Texas. And then yes, you're correct. There is geothermal throughout the, the, the globe mainly in Iceland where they do have that heat very, very close to the surface. And so they're able to utilize water and geysers to produce electricity. >> Great. But I guess the pilot project is notable just because [9:20:21 AM] project is notable just because it's going so deep to get the heat. >> It's an enhanced geothermal closed loop system that uses supercritical CO2. A lot of the geothermal that we've seen out around the planet uses water. And so and not necessarily a closed loop system. It might just run water through a fracked rock to produce the heat. And the steam. And so this is a little bit different with that closed loop system, as well as using supercritical CO2. >> All right. Great. We look forward to hearing more about it and appreciate the initiative. Thank you. >> Any other questions? Thanks so much Mr. Khan. Appreciate your report. We will move now to a staff briefing and process update on the gen plan. The resource generation and climate protection plan. This will be Lisa martin, deputy general manager and coo, and Linda rife, president of rifeline. And as we begin today's briefing, I want to start with an acknowledgment of the 40 community stakeholders who participated in this process. It's an impressive group. They represent thousands [9:21:23 AM] group. They represent thousands of people across our community through their organizations, and it's a broad swath of organizations and community groups. If you are a stakeholder who participated and you are here today, could you stand to be recognized? Your contribution has been incredible and much appreciated. Thanks for volunteering your time and giving vital Lianes who's on the phone? >> That's it's Ryan. >> Can can you turn your Fuentes and I can. >> Are you able to hear me? >> We can't see you, but we can hear you. Are you able to turn on your camera? Council member alter. Ryan. Alter. >> Well, I am, I'm at a red light, so I guess I can do that. Technically. Council member Fuentes and I flew in this morning to be here for the gen plan discussion. We did not know that we would not be taking public speakers ahead of time. We're both in route. I know [9:22:25 AM] We're both in route. I know there's another briefing from Austin energy. Is it possible to get that one first so that we can be present for this discussion? >> I'm looking around here for folks who are waiting to make their comments and presentations. I don't see any disagreement with that. Can you give us an eta, please? Five minutes. Oh, okay. All right. Well, why don't we let me finish my thank you remarks to our stakeholders. And then we will thank you. Council member Ryan alter and hopefully you will all get here quickly. Again, I want to thank all of the people from our community who participated and volunteered their time and gave vital feedback on Austin's resource, gen plan. The plan is better today. As you all know, there's been a big shift in the focus of the plan since we began this conversation about a year [9:23:26 AM] this conversation about a year ago to where we are today, and I thank you for your efforts. You have made a difference in our community, and I also want to thank Austin energy and my colleagues on this dais for digging in to try to find a way to move through some pretty dense underbrush and pretty technical conversations in understanding what we are faced with, recognizing the changing landscape that we will be facing in the future, and getting ourselves prepared and linking arms across this community to do this in concert. Because frankly, given what we will be facing in the future, literally, I think the only way we will be able to make progress is if we do this as a community standing together and supporting one another in this effort. So thank you. Let's see. We were actually not going to take the financial [9:24:30 AM] not going to take the financial highlights and operations highlights briefing today in recognition of the amount of time we were going to be spending on the gen plan. And so staff is not prepared to make those briefings. Is my understanding. Let's do that. Thank you mayor. We will recess for this meeting for ten minutes to await the arrival of our colleagues. Council member Ryan alter and council member Vanessa Fuentes. Thank you. We are in recess at 925. We will be back at 935. Thank you all. >> And she also extended the. [9:35:08 AM] >> And she also extended the. >> All right everybody, we are reconvening from our recess. It is 935 and we have let's see. Ready to go all right. So miss martin, we will bring you back up to the podium to make a presentation on the gen plan. Thanks for being here today. >> Thank you for having me. Good morning, chair pool vice chair vela and committee and council members and mayor. I'm Lisa martin, Austin energy's chief operating officer, here to provide you the latest update on [9:36:08 AM] provide you the latest update on our resource generation and climate protection plan to 2035. So I've used this slide several times, but it's a great reminder to me to take a moment to think about that. We're we're working to build a bridge. We're working to figure out how we fulfill our future energy needs. And it takes a lot of people to build a bridge and to do it right. And so thank you to all the community members. Thank you for helping to recognize the stakeholder group, also to the electric utility commission, all the Austin energy staff, and everyone who has shown an interest in the work that we've done and what this bridge looks like depends on the work that we are doing today. And so I'm really excited about all the effort that we've put into this, and I'm happy to present to you essentially the culmination of the work. If I were to summarize the mission of the 2035 plan in a single sentence, it would be what you see on the screen here. We have to meet Austin's rising energy needs while enabling an equitable, clean energy transition that reflects our community's values, the community values reliability, [9:37:09 AM] community values reliability, affordability, and environmental sustainability. And getting there takes a lot of hard work and consideration. Consideration of tradeoffs. We want to start with what is the problem we're trying to solve? We've been talking about this for months in various ways. And of course, it's a pretty complex problem. And so it's hard to summarize it on a single slide. But we do our best here and you'll see things that you're familiar with. So certainly there are increases in extreme weather. And there's the risk of additional climate change and climate risk that is exacerbating the problems. We have growth in population, but also growth in the form of things like data centers. And I, growth in electrification. So more electric vehicles and electric appliances. We've also recently retired some local generation. And then there's a lot of ercot market changes that we've talked about time and again that are creating price and reliability issues and financial risk. If I were to tell it in the form of a storyline, it would sound a little bit like this. So if you start with where the plan, the [9:38:11 AM] start with where the plan, the last plan, the plan that we're currently under was adopted. That was in March of 2020. So just four years ago. But a very, very different energy landscape than we have today. And so a number of things have happened since that time, which is why we are embarking on a plan to 2035. Now, one of the commitments of the plan to 2030 was to retire some of our existing generation. The decker steam units were older generation and it was time to retire them. We retired the first one after the summer of 2020. That was 300mw of local generation that was retired. And then that next winter we had winter storm uri, and we know what that did to our community and the fear that it put inside of everybody. It also created significant ercot market changes and increased energy costs. We were originally slated to shut down the second decker steam unit after the summer of 21, but having just gone through winter storm uri, we wanted to keep it to make sure we could get through the next winter, and so we ended up retiring. It after the winter in 2022. In March. [9:39:12 AM] the winter in 2022. In March. And so that was an additional 425mw retired in total, 725mw of local generation. That was 50% of the generation we had locally within the Austin service area. After retiring that unit, we started seeing and this was also around the time when it was harder and harder to bring in renewables from other parts of Texas, increased congestion on the lines, and we started seeing those cost impacting our customers. In 2022, congestion costs were equivalent of $135 million, and in 2023, it was another $150 million. And those are costs that get passed directly to our customers, and they really don't get anything in return for it. They're just it's like taking the toll lane on mopac because you you can't you know, sit in the regular traffic, you can't get where you need to go any other way. And so that's also the ercot market telling us that there's local reliability issues and an increased risk of outages that transmission congestion of course, comes at an extreme [9:40:14 AM] course, comes at an extreme cost. And then we also were in the face of rising demand and energy usage for some of it's for great reasons, like more electric vehicles. But we need to make sure we're preparing for that growth. So it's not any one particular event that put us where we are today. A lot of things have changed and created the current state where we need to set back, reset and figure out what's our plan to 2035 to serve our community in the best way. And it's our responsibility to do so. We have to adapt to the changing energy landscape. We want to make sure we expand upon the achievements of all of our previous resource generation plans, but we need to do this in a very thoughtful way to provide to our customers and our community clean, affordable, and reliable energy. With that, I'll pass it off to Linda rife to talk a little bit about the community stakeholder workshop. >> Good morning. I had the honor of working with the stakeholder group that you honored earlier. [9:41:14 AM] group that you honored earlier. Thank you, chair pool, very much for doing that. They spent a lot of hours here. We actually ended up with five workshops to hear from a group of diverse voices on a reliability, affordability and environmental sustainability and you're going to hear some results of their work. So the first meeting was in June. The last meeting was last Wednesday. So over the course of the whole plan development, they were part of it. As you talked about, this came from a diverse group of organizations. We ran those. We got those organizations from some people that we knew, but we also asked all the council members if they had people that were interested in reliability, environmental sustainability or affordability and created worked on that as well as the auc. So we tried to gather as much input as possible. If you look at all five workshops, we had jelly bean games, we talked about s'mores. We've done all sorts of fun things, but these are some key takeaways. Reliability is the community's top priority. It doesn't mean it needs to be [9:42:16 AM] doesn't mean it needs to be perfect. None of the three standards got a five, but it did come out on top when a lot of different ways. Equity continues to be a major theme, and Austin energy has added that to their values. The impacts of outages disproportionately affect vulnerable communities. We heard that a lot. Decisions made from the resource generation plan will need to minimize risk and maximize benefits for the ercot market. Market Austin energy is facing a tough balance between all the needs, and the workshops have been a real eye opener. Overall, a good process. Those are actually words that we heard from our stakeholders. And then we ran last Wednesday the values, objectives, the flexibility of the plan and some toolkit concepts and in general, there was the right approach. There was a lot of discussion about what else needed to be added to the plan and what needed to be taken out of the plan. So we did hear those as well. The key takeaways doctor weber spoke to us on workshop two. Just as a reminder, we're in an unprecedented electric electricity consumption where [9:43:16 AM] electricity consumption where simultaneously expanding and decarbonizing, we have to work on both the supply and demand side of those equations. Do your best to clean up the rest. And then Austin energy has an opportunity to improve the financial health of the utility, which benefits all of our community because we all know that that helps our budget out. And then the key lens through which energy options should be considered is trade offs. Hence, we got into this. More documents where the value statements are the words that you see in yellow or blue in the energy equity one are words that came out of workshops one and two and three on on workshop four, we actually provided some statements to the workshop. Individuals there got feedback and then updated these to reflect their concerns. So on reliability of value statement that is a major driver in this plan is providing consistent and predictable electric services that will power our community as [9:44:17 AM] that will power our community as it continues to grow. Affordability. Assessing the impacts and promoting fairness of costs for customers. While continuing to provide the public power benefits that enhance our community quality of life, and then maintaining flexibility in support of clean and innovative technologies and programs while taking a holistic assessment of community environmental impacts and new is energy equity. Evaluating expanding access to the services Austin energy provides so they can reach those who need it most. While reducing the negative impacts of our operation on the community. We did the exact same thing with the updated objectives on reliable mobility, affordability and environmental sustainability. These are the objectives that will drive that plan. The we took the words again in yellow. We provided the feedback. We drafted them. Our Austin energy drafted them, provided feedback. And then this is where we ended up. So again you will start seeing about the limited exposure of vulnerable populations, limited impact of bill increases, reduce emissions [9:45:17 AM] bill increases, reduce emissions and other environmental impacts as much as possible. So it's a lot of trade offs that need to happen with all three of those. The next thing I'm going to do is show a video here over the past few months so you can see what worked. >> Stakeholders from key community groups, stakeholders learned the basics of building a generation plan, assessing risk tolerance and how to balance affordability, reliability and environmental sustainability. Community stakeholders heard from industry professionals about the energy landscape Austin energy is facing, and how our utility functions within those systems. Everything from ercot to transmission and distribution to our own employees on our customer assistance programs and services for the medically vulnerable. >> Austin energy is doing better at listening to the messages that we conveyed here at these workshops. It was good to see that they are making every effort to improve their their customer programs. My district [9:46:18 AM] customer programs. My district and district three and district four have populations of marginalized communities and people of color that really need more involvement in the process. >> Community members have unique insights into their own needs and concerns, which helps us craft solutions that truly resonate. >> Reliability is a life and death situation. Am or pm? There are a lot of people relying on oxygen, electric wheelchairs, other means that have become more and more manufactured automation. Everything plugs in in my house. >> Understand that this that we are part of something bigger when we make these decisions and that to a certain extent, like we're in the situation we are [9:47:19 AM] we're in the situation we are with climate change because it has always been there's been all these reasons that continuing to use polluting energy sources has been convenient or affordable, or helped with the reliability or whatever. And now we're like, up against, you know, catastrophic climate change. And I don't use that term lightly. >> We are already a national leader with regard to the work that's being done by Austin energy. And so for us listing the environmental component at the same level of affordability is simply because there's already a good job. >> Our numbers for affordability were 8.6, reliability nine and environmental 7.2. We basically, you know, had a discussion about the definition of reliability, similar to the first group that spoke. And basically for most people, reliability is the number one thing. I think we're all triggered by Yuri and the and if that hadn't happened, maybe our numbers would be a little bit different. When we think about an outage being an hour versus, you know, 3 or 4 [9:48:20 AM] hour versus, you know, 3 or 4 days like that was, I do want to make sure that we're capturing at some point in this, the impact on we talk about marginalized communities, but I don't think that we really talk about the small business and local operators who are trying to sustain every day and just make the tacos and do the things the right way, but also with rising health care costs that are at 1,722% increase over last year. >> So I just want to make sure that we're including in the discussion when we talk about marginalized communities that we're including our small, as our chamber calls them, mom and mom and pop and pop shops that that they are part of that discussion as well. >> The goal is for these conversations to lead to community supported goals that will ultimately be considered by city council. We appreciate everyone's collaborative spirit during these workshops. We thank everyone who took part in these workshops to help shape a bright, sustainable future for our community. Together. >> As you can hear, we heard lots of voices, lots of diversity, lots of opinions and trade offs there. Just wanted to give you a little bit of input [9:49:21 AM] give you a little bit of input into seeing what happened and how we got here. So thank you very much. >> All right. Thank you Linda. So as you have heard, and you know that we have had great involvement with the community, we've also brought in a lot of expert industry stakeholders to help support our process and answer questions along the way. And so that's what's summarized here on this slide. And then there was a lot of analysis thanks to the electric utility commission and Austin energy staff. We spent many, many hours going through many models and data. You've seen some of that. I know some of you are certainly very interested in that. The whole purpose of that effort was to really dig deep, to understand what the tradeoffs are of the various approaches that we can use to solve and meet our future energy needs. And we looked at dozens and dozens of different ways to do that. So understanding trade offs and looking at a resource plan needs and so what does that actually mean in terms of a [9:50:21 AM] actually mean in terms of a resource plan. Well the resource plan is made up of three major things. The first is the values and the second is the objectives. And those are come from the conversations with the community. They're informed by the community's stories and their the what they've shared with us during the stakeholder workshops and also our checking in with them to see if we heard them correctly. And then you can't just stop with what are your values? And what are your objectives. It's what are you going to do about that? And so I'm calling that the toolkit today to help make it a little bit more accessible, really the toolkit. Think about it as, as what tools are you putting in your toolkit to prepare, provide the flexibility and help you manage the trade offs and the changing conditions that we anticipate we will expect over the next ten years. And so, you know, this framework aligns with the guidance that we received from doctor weber, who said that effective policy design keeps trade offs in mind. And is outcome based rather than prescriptive. So when I talk about toolkit, what are we [9:51:24 AM] about toolkit, what are we talking about? There are four major categories that we put into those toolkit that are necessary to meet our current day challenges. And to help us reach our ultimate clean energy goals. And the order is important. So we start at the top. We prioritize customer energy solutions first, and then we layer in additional local energy solutions to mitigate the risks that are remaining. And we also want to continue to our good work on the path to achieving decarbonization. In order to do that, we have to make sure we foster a culture of innovation so that we're positioned to adopt emerging tech as it helps us further our goals. If we broke that down a little bit further, you see that there's a myriad of tools that we're proposing to put in the toolbox to help us fix things, mitigate risk, make things better. So this is kind of an all the tools in the toolbox approach. Let's walk through it. Prioritizing customer energy solutions is first. That's all the things that you know and love. The programs like energy [9:52:25 AM] love. The programs like energy efficiency and demand response. The best way to serve our customers is to not have to provide them power to begin with, because they don't need it, because they've got efficient and comfortable homes and places to work. It also includes things like really, really local solutions like rooftop solar and customer sited batteries. Then when we wanted to max that out, we want to do as much as we can in this area. So we hired a third party to say assess what the potential is. And once you put all that in and we do further analysis, you still need more to help mitigate the current day reliability and affordability risks and to work on our way towards our decarbonization goals. And so that's where you layer in additional local solutions, things like work on transmission import capacity so we can bring in more power that is clean from other parts of the state. It also includes things like utility scale batteries and more efficient Peaker units that would be used only when needed. And we also want to make sure that as part of a local [9:53:27 AM] that as part of a local solution, we have blackstart status as a utility. I'll talk a little bit more about that later. We want to maintain our status among the elite utilities in terms of our aggressive, clean energy goals. I don't know of any utility across the country that has a goal that's more aggressive than carbon free by 2035, and there's only 1 or 2 that that match that. And so we want to maintain and reaffirm our goal of carbon free by 2035. We have to exit coal in order to get there. It's the biggest barrier in our way. And along the way we'll continue to use reach. We also want to adopt remote wind and solar and other carbon free technologies that will help us get there. But right now, today, I don't see the path to carbon free by 2035. Given the technology that's available today. And so this last bucket is incredibly important because we need to continue to stay on the cutting edge of what's happening with emerging and evolving technologies so that we can adopt those game changers when they become available. And there's a lot of examples here. Bob talked about the pilot [9:54:28 AM] Bob talked about the pilot geothermal, and y'all discussed its potential. There's opportunities as nuclear continues to evolve in various ways and more and more as you see up there, what's become very clear throughout all of our work is that we need flexibility to be able to move forward and address the risks that we see today. So once you, max out the customer solutions and you bring in the additional transmission, you really still have only two technologies available today to help you fill the local gap. And those are utility scale batteries and natural gas Peaker units. So I want to talk a little bit about what those are. And I've put them side by side here because as you saw on the last slide, I think we need both of them. So but just let's start with what are these tools. So you see batteries on the left hand side. These are, you know, technology that can store and discharge energy usually for [9:55:28 AM] discharge energy usually for about 2 to 4 hours. That's what we're seeing here in the ercot market. And you can have a utility scale installation, which is like what you see here in the photo. This is 150 megawatt utility scale installation. You can also distribute batteries throughout your service territory and put some of them in substations. So each one of these units is about the size of a tractor trailer. And I had the opportunity to do that for Austin over the last or about five years ago when I was working on the Austin shines project. So I know what it takes and what it's like to do work with batteries. There's a lot of really exciting opportunities there. There's a lot of challenges to overcome as well, but I do think that the trade offs there are worth it. And so I do think battery storage should be in our portfolio on the right side. You see this is a picture of the decker site. And so the existing Peaker units are circled. There. And they're sitting next to the decker steam units which are the two that we retired and I was talking about earlier in the presentation. To [9:56:30 AM] earlier in the presentation. To be clear, when we say natural gas Peaker units, we're talking about these more smaller, more modular units. And by their nature they're only run when needed. When demand is high. Much earlier in the process, we were looking at larger units like combined cycle units, and we talked about having the ability to convert them to hydrogen. We're not we've pivoted away from that. We've heard the concerns about the size and the scale of those types of units. And what we're talking about is natural gas Peaker units, which again, are much smaller. And so we want to remain open to the newer, more efficient, which means less emissions. Natural gas Peaker units that run when necessary to maintain reliability and to keep costs affordable for our customers. There are trade offs associated with all of these technologies, and so batteries are highly dispatchable. They can be turned on and off very, very quickly. They can be cleaner if they're charged with clean energy. They are duration limited. And so once you run out [9:57:30 AM] limited. And so once you run out of the power that's been stored, you have to charge them back up before you can use them again. There are upstream considerations like critical mineral mining practices to consider. And then there are also some regulatory risks. You know, with the new administration, I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen with the tariffs or the incentives, but it's something that we'll have to consider as we move forward, because it could change the dynamics of things. Peakers are also highly dispatchable. In this case, they're blackstart capable. I want to pause and just talk about that for a second. What that really means is that if there's a grid blackout emergency, these units have the capability to turn on without power from the rest of the grid. So they they're the first units to turn on and to help start, rebuild and restore power to the state of Texas. And so as the capital city, we think it's pretty important to have that as a tool in our toolkit. The speakers. We're talking about are newer than the ones that we have built today. Some of the ones we have today are from the 1980s. And so they would be more [9:58:31 AM] 1980s. And so they would be more efficient, they would produce less emissions. So on a normal day, you'd be using these speakers before existing units and we'd have a cleaner solution. There also are upstream considerations. You have to think about like methane leakage. And of course they are fossil fuel burning. And so they do produce emissions. If you look at a solution that has both, consider it like a hybrid car. You've got both batteries and speakers in your toolkit. You use your batteries first to minimize the emissions. You use the batteries whenever you have a short duration need. When your duration need gets longer, you've got your speakers there to help fill in the gap. The diversity of the tool is going to overall improve the response and you're less vulnerable to any one of the disadvantages listed above. For the single tool. We also I had several of you ask me about how do you take those trade offs and put them into numbers. So here we took some modeling and we essentially maxed out all of the demand side management. We put in remote wind and solar of 1800 megawatts. We included the [9:59:34 AM] megawatts. We included the standard transmission capacity increase and we said we wouldn't retire our existing generation. We kept all those things the same for the purposes of just looking at the difference between batteries and speakers. And so what you see here is the trade offs in the three main categories. So when you do the batteries 325mw of battery solution, the cost. This is the Orange bar. The red bar is $400 million of increased costs. When you look at the blue bar you're looking at less emissions. So 0.9 million metric tons. And then the difference really here, I mean, there is a trade off in costs and emissions, but the difference here is whether or not we have a solution that can bring down the reliability, risk hours and so when you look at a combined hybrid solution, you see a more balanced and get more middle ground approach. When you look at a solution that just has clean technology, the batteries, the energy efficiency, demand response, local solar, all of those things have to get much [10:00:35 AM] those things have to get much more in quantity to bring the reliability risks down to comparable levels. And the cost ends up being $1.5 billion more. So really the thing and those and those quantities are higher than what our study has shown is the maximum possible. So we really have to think about all of these things as we look at what kind of tools we put in our toolkit. >> Quick question chair, is this slide that you're presenting is different than what we were shared via email. Because I don't see the slide that you had with just the two, with the economic impact, the 400 million, that one, it's the same slide. >> It's got an animation on it. And so I wonder if you were sent a PDF okay. Okay. So we can make sure that you get this version of the slide. Not a problem okay. >> Thank you. >> All right. So again quantitative and qualitative trade offs to consider as we look. But the hybrid approach really putting all the tools in the toolkit is really what we [10:01:35 AM] the toolkit is really what we what we recommend. So what's our path to adopting the 2035 plan. Well last night we had this discussion with the electric utility commission. And received their feedback. Today. We're looking forward to hearing your feedback. We're going to incorporate that into the proposed draft plan that we're working on now and post that next week. And then the electric utility commission will vote on their recommendation on December 2nd. And this will be sitting as an item for your consideration on the December 12th council agenda. And in the end, all of the work, all of the effort, all of your time and interest, we want to build a 2035 plan that will power us into the future. We want a plan that everyone is proud to say puts Austin energy and the city of Austin among the elite and forward thinking. We want that we have the cleanest energy portfolio in Texas, and certainly one of the best in the nation we want to. Its industry leading customer energy solutions. It's one that you can say promotes reliability, [10:02:36 AM] say promotes reliability, affordability and sustainability. It's protecting our most vulnerable. It's resilient to extreme weather. It's flexible and innovative, built to adapt to changing conditions. And it was informed through extensive work with the community. So we want you to be proud of it. We certainly are proud of it. I'm very proud of the team that we've worked with, and I thank you for all of your time and consideration. >> Thank you, miss martin. That represents a whole lot of work from the public and from our staff, and we all very much appreciate everyone's effort being brought to bear on this really important topic. I'm I'm going to go ahead. Yes. >> If you're going to kick it off, go. >> I'm going to kick off with a couple of questions myself. And then I'll call on council member Ellis and then the mayor for some questions. And then we'll work through other questions that may that you all may have. So let's start with this. Can you explain more about what might happen if we had another winter storm uri and we didn't have enough dispatchable generation available? >> Yeah. So during winter storm [10:03:38 AM] >> Yeah. So during winter storm uri, ercot said that we weren't they didn't have an appropriate like across the state supply and demand risk. And what really happened to utilities that didn't have sufficient dispatchable generation was extreme financial risk. Brazos had to declare bankruptcy immediately. And so we've done analysis to say what could happen, and it could cost our customers, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars to be able to have to provide that to ercot. Almost immediately. And depending on what your technology mix is, we've seen numbers that have been as high as $1 billion. And so that could really put Austin energy and the city of Austin in extreme financial straits. If we don't have sufficient dispatchable energy. >> So you're saying it's not just financial straits, but it's also the lack of the dispatchable energy. So you also would be sitting freezing. Yes, yes. Thanks. And in the models, did you find an overall pattern that you can describe as you [10:04:39 AM] that you can describe as you shifted the numbers around in the various calculations? Were there any patterns that emerged in those various outcomes in the modeling? >> Well, certainly we saw that we started to ask ourselves, what what do we need to make sure that we address the reliability, affordability risk while still working towards our clean energy goals as aggressively as possible? How do we balance all of that out? And so certainly, whereas in the beginning we were looking at modeling, shutting down all of our existing generation and putting in over 1000mw of hydrogen combined cycle generation, we certainly shifted away from that. We heard a lot of concerns and we said, what can we do to maximize clean energy solutions and then use the minimal amount to fill the gap. And that's where we started talking about the natural gas Peaker units. And these are smaller, more modular units. Think about them. They're like they literally are jet engines. But instead of being on the side of a of an airplane wing, they're connected to a generator. And the ones that we're talking about would be more efficient than our existing [10:05:40 AM] more efficient than our existing generation as well. >> Great council member Ellis. >> Thank you. >> Chair, I've got a question about the demand side. So on the user's end of this, what programs or further incentives are being discussed to help people use less energy, thereby conserving what is already in production? >> Yeah, absolutely. We have, as you know, decades of experience in the customer energy solutions side of things. And there's always opportunity to do more. A lot of the low hanging fruit has been taken care of and so but we need to do more about managed electric vehicle charging. That's on the forefront. Also, customer sited batteries and really just finding new ways to help the customers understand how they can help themselves and adopt the programs that we have. >> I appreciate that. I know over the past three years, since Yuri, there were a ton of folks that had reached out to us because they were interested in [10:06:41 AM] because they were interested in purchasing rooftop solar or batteries to be able to help them in times of need, and we kept hearing complaints about the inspection process and the turn on turn off process. Are any of those details being looked at as as folks try to conserve energy and, and keep their house on the grid and be less of a drain on the grid for everybody else? >> Yeah, yeah, your staff actually has brought that to our attention. We've heard it in other ways as well, but we know it's specifically important to the constituents of district eight. And, and so talking about making the customer interconnection process a little more streamlined to try to remove some of those barriers, we've incorporated that into the plan as well. Okay. >> Thank you. And I have a couple others, but I know folks may have other questions. So I will hold those and see if someone else covers them. And if we come back after speakers, I'll continue asking questions. Fair enough. Thank you. >> Thank you mayor and then council member Ryan alter. >> Thank you, madam chair. Address if you will help me understand how this plan plays a role in helping us cease [10:07:41 AM] role in helping us cease operations at fayette by no later than January of 29. >> Yeah. So, fayette, the coal emissions at Crawford are is the biggest barrier to our aggressive carbon free by 2035 goal. So we reaffirm our commitment to exit coal as soon as we can. And then it also provides the ability to figure out what you can do to responsibly replace that generation that you would be shutting down or exiting from, so that we can make sure that we can maintain affordability, low costs for our customers, and also reliability that that toolkit of all of the above really is what we need to be able to find the right replacement for shutting down fayette. >> So I want to say this back to you. Make sure I get it. You believe that by by doing utilizing this plan, it creates the opportunity for the tools that are necessary for us to [10:08:42 AM] that are necessary for us to achieve the goal of getting out of fayette, but before, on or before that date. >> That is correct in our current plan does not allow us to do that as easily. >> Yeah, because I'm sure you all have heard over and over again how high that priority is. So that's that's it seems to me that needs to be a key part of how we're looking at this. Yes. The other question I've got relates to the Peaker, the replacement Peaker units that you talk about. The concept of the Peaker units or use them when you need them. That's right. And that's part of the name for Peaker. But making sure that they're not used so that you're generating and selling. How do we how do we make sure we stay in the lane of what those Peaker units are actually for. And we're not actually going to utilize those Peaker units for something other than just when you need them. You use them so that you can generate electricity and sell it. [10:09:42 AM] electricity and sell it. >> Oh okay. I understand the question. Yeah. So the Peaker units, as you mentioned in their name, it's literally about running them when the peak demand, when demand is the highest fundamentally the way that they work is they come on kind of as the unit of last resort. >> But I'm talking about concern about them not coming on as the unit of last resort, but being utilized in a way so that you were able to sell more electricity, which. That's right, I understand, but but that's not the purpose of this. And it wouldn't fit in my view, into what the concept to the, the, the smaller, if you will, of what we're trying to achieve in terms of. That's right, electricity production, running them more than you would need them to is really a mischaracterization of how we could operate them. >> And so really, you run them when you need it, when the demand is high and then everything that is generated, basically all the costs of running a generator gets passed [10:10:43 AM] running a generator gets passed on to the customer. All the revenue from running a generator gets passed on to the customer, so the customer ends up paying the net of those two things. As a municipally owned utility, our job is to serve the customers, not to do anything beyond that. So the plan can have limitations on how we run these units, the right guardrails, if you will. It could come in a number of different forms, right by their nature, they're going to be run less. We know that a Peaker generally runs 12% of the time. It's less than three hours a day on average. But you could put run our limitations last night the commission was talking about putting emission limitations on them. We can we can do things to put the right guardrails on there. Fundamentally, as a municipally owned utility, like, again, we don't do that. We don't operate that way. But if people are concerned about it, limitations are possible. Those are the guardrails. >> Okay. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you, councilmember Ryan alter. >> Thank you very much. I want to talk first about the [10:11:48 AM] to talk first about the reliability piece of all this. Okay. And you know, you showed your video. And when we're talking about reliability, at least when I talk to people about reliability, it generally seems to be primarily just day to day. Keep the lights on. Right. My power went out. They texted me, tell me my power went out. And we have issues with that. Right. And that's primarily because of our distribution system, our equipment transformers, power lines, vegetation, things falling on the lines. Right. We don't we don't see day to day power losses because we don't have enough power generation. Right. That's a fair assumption or a fair characterization today, the reasons that the power is out is, is, is not because we don't have the right. >> We haven't had the situation yet where the power has gone out because of a generator. >> Right. >> And so then there's the other looming in everybody's mind, and [10:12:51 AM] looming in everybody's mind, and mine too, of looking back, whether it's winter storm mar last year, winter storm uri, the year two years before that, I can't even keep track of this long duration Ann days in that case, on end. And when you really do, then have life threatening results from that and we saw it. People died because the power went out. So I want to start with uri for a minute. And the chair talked about uri and whether dispatchable power where that fit into that, when and when you were talking about what happened, ercot ordered 20,000mw of load shed statewide, correct? >> Yes. Lots. Yes. >> So we're 60, 70, sometimes 80 now thousand. So we're talking almost a quarter of or more of [10:13:51 AM] almost a quarter of or more of the state's power consumption. Ercot told the market, including Austin energy. You guys need to start shedding load and that's why people started losing power all across the city, myself included. Had we had 200mw of Peaker plants that would have gone into the ercot market, right? It wouldn't have gone straight to my home or anyone's home here, and we still would have had then best case scenario, 19,800mw of load shed. And so while these speakers would have provided a financial benefit, just like fayette did, fayette really saved our bacon from a revenue perspective. It would not have kept the lights on. Right? These 200mw of speakers everyone's lights were out, save for maybe 1% would have still been out. Is that not a fair assessment? >> That's a fair assessment of winter storm uri. [10:14:51 AM] winter storm uri. >> And then looking at winter storm Mara, I remember you or someone saying, you know, we got hit by an ice hurricane and in that instance, people lost power for days on end because we had a third of the city's tree canopy fall down, often on people's power lines. And it took days to get that back. And that issue, I think is, you know, why we called for more undergrounding. And that is something that I still think we need to really prioritize to, to make a more reliable system. But once again, in that instance, had we had 200mw of speakers nobody's power, who lost it because a tree fell on the limb would have had power, right? So when we talk about these events that have triggered these feelings of a [10:15:52 AM] triggered these feelings of a need for reliability, the solutions we're bringing forward are more economic in nature than they are actually keeping the lights on. And so that then takes me to looking at the information that that you guys presented to the PUC about what we would see from a reliability perspective. And, and there were the reliability risk hours charts, right? These bar graphs and line charts of what happens within that. I know some of the members asked about the a subset of that and the reliability risk hours are not necessarily hours that someone would be without power. Right. There are other considerations. I think there's a lot of economic considerations in there, but it's not an unserved power metric. >> Reliability risk hours are the hours when you're sitting on [10:16:55 AM] the hours when you're sitting on the edge between the lights being on and the power being out, and all it would take is for one thing to go wrong. And there's a number of things that could go wrong at that point. So it's extremely highly elevated risk. Sure. >> From a, a, a fully unmet systems need when that question was posed, we have. The very under under one portfolio portfolio. 17 the first time we meet not we don't have the true power balance. That's 2031. And under the scenario 15. And just for reference, scenarios 15, 16, 17, these are the heavy battery solar demand response efficiency. We wouldn't have true unserved met hours until 2035. But even taking that to the side for a moment, looking just at the underlying data of the reliability risk hours [10:17:56 AM] the reliability risk hours comparing to today, because that's if we did nothing here, we would continue on the 2030 plan, right? That would be the mandate that you have, the instructions you have to continue. And so if you look at the reliability risk hours under our current plan versus any of these scenarios, scenarios 15 scenario 16, scenario 17 adopting those scenarios have less reliability risk hours aka are more reliable than our current plan. They might not be as reliable as building the gas speakers. And that's we'll talk about that some more. But they we would be moving in the right direction from a reliability standpoint by deploying some of these technologies. Local solar battery, energy efficient and so on. I mean, you look at next [10:18:56 AM] on. I mean, you look at next year you'd have 34 hours versus 27 hours. You look at go out to 2024 under our current plan or in 2034, 150 reliability risk hours in these plans, zero zero and one. So we're not talking a little bit. We're talking a lot, a bit. If we change our current path now for fairness and scenario 14, which is the one with the speakers that also brings you to zero, right? Because now we have this additional generation. But what I find to be most fascinating in the data are then not just comparing to today, but comparing to the scenario 14 that has the speakers. And under that scenario comparing to 15, 16 or 17, which has these once again, a lot of local solar, a lot of batteries, a lot of [10:19:57 AM] lot of batteries, a lot of demand response in every single year between now and 2034, except for one year. The more reliable system is the one without the speakers. It's the one with more demand response, more energy efficiency, more local solar and so I'm trying to wrap my head around why we're saying the most reliable system is the one with the speakers. Now, in 2035, I think you, as very well aware. Then it shoots up, right? We retire sandhill, we retire decker and all of a sudden reliability risk hours go through the roof. And so then when we average everything, it can skew those data. So. Why from a reliability risk our perspective if we took the [10:20:58 AM] perspective if we took the decision point off of the table of, of retiring sandhill or decker saying that's ten years out, we don't know what technology is going to look like. Maybe the geothermal pilot is a huge success. Maybe the small modular reactors come, you know, who knows why from the reliability risk perspective, are we saying that the Peaker option is the best option. >> So thank you for the question. And the walking through it long preamble. You you were digging way deep into the modeling and I appreciate that me and my staff are certainly happy to sit down and work with you on any of those things, but you talked about a lot of things in the beginning. Look, outages happen for all kinds of reasons. And so winter storm uri was an outage. That was because ercot mandated it. There was a supply and demand imbalance across the state. Right. The risk to Austin for another winter storm uri that [10:22:00 AM] another winter storm uri that this resource generation plan could help support is to avoid the liquidity risk, the demand for immediate need for cash that could be hundreds of millions of dollars. You also talked about winter storm Mara. That was distribution. Frankly, distribution outages happen for all kinds of reasons. Cars hit poles, trees come into the lines, equipment fails. That's more something that we also address. Not in the resource generation plan. As much, but in things like the overhead hardening and undergrounding feasibility study. I imagine I'll be here at the beginning of next year talking to you about that work as well. A big part of our strategic plan. What I'm trying to focus on and recognize with this generation plan and this proposal is to avoid something that, as I'm thinking about it, maybe it's called summer storm Austin, where it's a situation where we don't have sufficient supply here to serve our customers. And one of those reliability risk hours heaters to we have power outages here in Austin, where the rest of the [10:23:01 AM] Austin, where the rest of the state is moving along and the way that would happen comes down to something that's also technical. I think you'll understand it in some some of you already do, I know, but voltage support. So if voltage is like water pressure, you have to have enough of it to get power across the system. And when you don't have sufficient supply and local voltage support, then you run into a problem where you can't necessarily serve your customers. And so in August of 23, we had a situation where ercot called us and said, you need to turn on those decker peakers we were keeping them off because of a we'd been running them a lot because of a it was a it was a really hard summer, but we were trying to reduce the emissions and stay within our limitations. And they basically required them to come on reliability, unit commitment. They say you've got a reliability issue and if you don't turn those on, the next thing you're going to do is start turning people's power off. And so that's the situation that is described by the reliability risk hours. And there's lots of different ways [10:24:01 AM] there's lots of different ways to bring reliability risk down. And there are trade offs in doing so. So the scenarios that you're talking about, the various approaches that were studied that have higher levels of demand response, energy efficiency, local solar and whatnot, there are trade offs. Yes. It brought down the reliability risk hours, just like a local Peaker did, but it did so at a cost that was $1.5 billion more and it's using values counting on demand response energy efficiency, local solar and customer sided batteries. Beyond what the nv energy insights has said is the maximum potential that you should count on within Austin. So I don't really want us to. I'm not going to stand up here and propose that we bet on more people making their homes efficient or, you know, everyone agreeing to their thermostat being turned off at that particular time. It's just simply not enough. >> Sure, I know it's not by itself enough, and that's why we [10:25:03 AM] itself enough, and that's why we have to pair it with the solar, with the batteries. And, you know, you talked about the cost difference. Yes, it is cheaper than or going to build this. Additional gas generation is cheaper. But once again, if we if we compare to today to our current plan, the cost of the heavy battery, heavy solar option, you all have it 10.9 or 10.8 million or billion dollars and today's is 10.5. So we're talking a couple hundred million dollars. If under the extreme weather scenario, it's again a delta of about 500 million for even one of them, it's cheaper. But in the high congestion scenario, which I think is incredibly likely, we're seeing congestion all across the state and nobody doing anything about it fast enough. It's then 2 billion or $1 billion cheaper to go with the solar. The batteries locally than it is what we're currently doing. So we are [10:26:04 AM] currently doing. So we are already going to be saving the customer. It's a question of how much under our current our current numbers. And so I don't think, you know, people hear a billion, 500 million. You know what what does that mean to the customer? Right. That's what people really care about. How much am I going to be paying in my electricity bill? Every single month? And I thought it was really helpful that you all showed that chart of what is going to happen to bills over time under these various options. You know, showing that we all know bills are going to go up. It's a function of inflation. It's we have to defease our debt. It's a we all know it's going to happen. We try to limit that because we want Austin to be an affordable place to live. And it's not just about how much rent you pay. It's not just about, you know, the cost of food, it's how much [10:27:04 AM] the cost of food, it's how much you're paying every month. And the utility bill, especially in the summer, is incredibly high. But looking once again at where we're projected to go today under our current plan, ten years out, it's a if you inflate adjust for inflation, $55 increase if you go with the portfolio, 15, which is, you know, heavy battery, heavy solar, $57 increase, $2 over ten after ten years. And so from a cost perspective, we are meeting the current projection of where we are in where we think bills are going to go. And so I think it's really important to put it in perspective of what this actually means to the customer, because that's what they ultimately care about. You also talked about the liquidity problem and the liquidity problem. I think we've seen both [10:28:05 AM] problem. I think we've seen both from a the uri winter storm issue. We've also seen it, as you mentioned last summer, right. The summer risk and the analysis that that y'all performed under our current plan, looking back at uri, it's a $1.278 billion liquidity risk. We would which is we got to avoid that. That's that's terrifying. That's reserves times many. We have the opportunity to reduce that by under portfolio 15. It goes down by $400 million. Under portfolio 16 it goes by down $1 billion. It's actually cheaper under portfolio 16 290 million. Is your liquidity risk versus the portfolio with the gas speakers at 444. So there are even more cost effective methods from a [10:29:06 AM] cost effective methods from a liquidity challenge. And that carries through to the summer. Looking at the back casting of our summer liquidity under the various portfolios, we're saving more than 50%. And in every single instance, more demand response, more efficiency, more solar batteries is cheaper, less liquidity risk than it is under the gas plan. So once again, I struggle sitting here to understand how we can say the plan Ith the speakers is the most reliable, is the most affordable, and now, certainly we all acknowledge as not the most energy or environmentally friendly, right? It's we have seen the charts of the emissions. You talked about the difference in the emissions. And. I think it's really hard for [10:30:15 AM] I think it's really hard for people to conceptualize what, what is a million metric tons of CO2, right. It's 6.2 million versus 7.2 million. What does that mean? Well, I think what's really important is it means that there's a million less metric tons in district one or in district two, where these power plants are always located. If you look at the history of our city, holly Miller, sand hill, decker, all east Austin. Right. These are not going to be located in Westlake in tarrytown. If they're not so. We have to set ourselves up. For. Not continuing to pollute these communities. And I, I was going to ask you and you brought it up [10:31:18 AM] to ask you and you brought it up what happened in last summer with ercot calling a ruck? We weren't planning on using them. And ercot picked up the phone and said, you have to do it well. We can put all the guardrails we want on these speakers and ercot tomorrow. The minute we buy them, could say, hey, I know you're not planning. It's not within your guardrails. You got to run it. We have that authority and it may be for an hour. It may be for three hours. But what's to stop that happening day after day? And I know it's not common. I know ercot doesn't like to do it. But if we find ourselves with the energy needs that professor weber was showing us, where we are outstripping our generation is not meeting demand. You can imagine that happening more and more and more. And so there is one way we can be sure those speakers don't run is by not buying them. It's the only way. And what I. What I want to also [10:32:21 AM] And what I. What I want to also highlight is the rmr situation. So rmr reliability must run. Are you familiar? What's going on? I'm you must I'm sure in San Antonio with their. CPS is trying to close some of their generation units and ercot has told them sorry for liability purposes. We need you to keep these units in the mix. And they are working on a plan to come to some agreement. But ultimately, and this is the question we have with fayette, right? We need ercot's permission to retire a generation facility. Is that not a correct ercot has to approve the retirement of all. >> Yeah, yeah. All retirements. >> And so if they say for reliability reasons, we want you [10:33:21 AM] reliability reasons, we want you to keep it, then whether or not we say we want these speakers for one year, five year, ten year, whatever, they can always say, sorry, we need it. This grid needs that extra generation. So you may want to get rid of it, but you can't. And so. As I look at all the various priorities reliability, affordability, environment I just I can't get there. I don't I don't see it. And so the last piece I want to address, you talked about the DMV study and the DMV study analyzed proposed or potential energy efficiency, demand response possibilities within our load zone. And what really concerns me as it relates to the [10:34:25 AM] concerns me as it relates to the DMV study is if you look at one of the questions in the in the response about what was assumed in, what were your assumptions in getting to these numbers and the assumptions were our current programs plus potentially adding water heaters and battery storage and. I. I, I think they're really missing the potential, the potential outside of our current programs. I spoke with professor weber, who, you know, shares this concern that that from a demand response perspective, Austin energy has deployed a program that is not. It's yesterday's thinking, right? We don't pay people for actually doing demand response, right. We pay them to [10:35:25 AM] right. We pay them to participate. You get $85 for your thermostat. You get however many dollars for participating for the year. But if you have an emergency call, you can turn your thermostat right back up. No financial penalty and you don't. You see that that that very marginal benefit one time a year. Other utilities will pay for performance. So prices spike. We need you to reduce your energy. We're going to pay you X dollars. And people do it. I have a brother in law, lives in Arizona. Gets it on his phone. Yes. Participate. No. Not participate. The price signal matches the need. And I think we're we're missing that in the commercial program. We do that. I think it's really fascinating that we see the benefits of the commercial program, where we match the price signal to desired result, but we're not deploying that from a residential perspective. And when the professor and I talked [10:36:26 AM] when the professor and I talked about what type of potential and kind of going over various modeling, we are potentially leaving hundreds of megawatts on the table from a demand response perspective alone, from an efficiency perspective, once again, we're not DMV was studying under our current restrictions, not under doing something new, something innovative, something bigger. And so when we just a accept that this is the top, this is as much as we can do. Well, that's only if we keep doing what we're doing. Instead of thinking outside the box, deploying new technology, new ways of thinking about this and so looking then back at some of these proposals, we could prioritize. You know, we talked about prioritizing demand side management, energy [10:37:28 AM] demand side management, energy efficiency. So if that's what we want to do, then why not over the next few years really do that and say, here's our goal. We're going to all the portfolios 15, 16, 17. They're all the same when it comes to batteries, demand side management, energy efficiency. Let's prioritize those. Let's set these goals. We don't have to make a decision on whether or not to deploy this additional gas generation. We can see how much local solar maybe we decide we want to up the solar standard offer so that we get a lot more uptake, both from a residential and a commercial perspective. And that is very likely to be more cost effective than potentially spending $150 million on these Peaker units. So. I think there's a there's an artificial urgency. We have the tools to move forward over the [10:38:32 AM] tools to move forward over the next few years, prioritizing the things we want to prioritize and make an ultimate decision about doing something that's not consistent with the values, the desires of this community. And so I'm sorry to talk at you. I had less questions than I did statements. And that is my apology. But I think it's. I think it's critical. I just I can't I look at what's going on now at the federal level. We all know what's going on at the state level. We don't know what the regulatory environment is going to look like a year from now, three years from now, we've got to do more like we no one else is going to do it for us. And it's my generation. It's my children's generation that are [10:39:32 AM] children's generation that are going to feel it. And I just I can't live with myself if I'm not doing everything possible to be part of the solution, instead of continuing to be part of the problem. >> Council member Ryan alter, thank you. Thank you for your comments and I think we all share them. We are all hoping to bring this to a good conclusion and make decisions that will benefit all of us. Now and into the future. I would like to offer. Thank you for your statements. >> I'm not quite finished and I appreciate having the opportunity to be able to finish here in just a second, if you would. We have lots of time today, and so I don't really appreciate being interrupted, but I would like to be able to finish. I'm sorry, this is council member Ryan alter. >> I am the chair of this meeting. >> I have the floor, and until I yield the floor, then you may have it back. But this is unacceptable that you're cutting me off because you don't agree with what I'm saying. I just I know this is. This is not okay. I'm sorry. I have the floor. I [10:40:33 AM] I'm sorry. I have the floor. I have not given up the floor. And to be interrupted because I would like to like what I'm saying is, is not okay. >> You are characterizing a position that I do not hold. What I was going to ask was we allow the staff to answer the questions that you are asking, and to respond to your statements so that we can also hear from the other members of the dais so they can also participate and then we also will be hearing from the community, and we will take a round of questions and make statements from the dais after. We have also heard from the speakers. So we have a lot of work in front of us. We all agree with that. Council member and if you would like to conclude your statement and ask any questions, then I will move to the next two council members who have indicated that they have questions, and then we will take the speakers and continue with the appropriate process of this committee meeting. [10:41:34 AM] this committee meeting. >> Well, I think this issue is of vital importance to pretend like it's not 1040 in the morning and that we don't have the day to give this the level of importance that it deserves. I wholly disagree with, but. I've been knocked off my train of thought, but I think I think it's clear part of the process here is to be able to speak with our colleagues altogether. Right. I, I don't have the opportunity to talk to everybody like you do. And so this is my chance to be able to have this conversation. And we have to do it publicly. And that's great because this affects the public and so I look forward to continuing this conversation as [10:42:38 AM] continuing this conversation as a group, continuing to show the importance and the level of impact and significance of this decision. Because it's a generational decision. It's not just a generation plan. And I appreciate the work you've done, I really do. I think you're you're really trying to solve a very difficult problem. I just don't agree with the solution. And it's my hope that we have options and opportunities that this dais can work out to allow for us to put forward solutions that meet, meet the moment. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Council member Ryan alter and I wanted to point out for everybody the information that has been discussed here and that council member alter has been talking about was presented to the auc and presentations last night. [10:43:38 AM] and presentations last night. The larger body this dais has not received that information yet. And so I wanted to make sure that everybody understood where where that those details were coming from, because many of us on the dais here were a bit at a loss to know what he was referring to. We will get this presentation. It will be provided to us, those who want to look at it right now can look at the backup from the auc meeting last night. But again, this was information that that we had not yet received. I appreciate the digging into those details that my colleague has brought this morning, but I did want to explain to everyone that we need to do some of that reading ourselves to be able to respond appropriately and is there any comment or response that you would like to make miss martin, at this point, give you some time for that and then I will call on council member zo qadri and council member Alison [10:44:38 AM] qadri and council member Alison alter, and then we will go to speakers from the community. >> I I'll just take a moment. I'll just take a moment to reiterate that prioritizing customer energy solutions is the top most goal, a priority in terms of the order of operations and doing the most we can there. And our teams have years of experience in these programs that include local solar and customer sited batteries, electric vehicles, energy efficiency, demand response and more. And they are always finding new and innovative ways to increase that. But I can't stand before you today and propose a plan that puts too much weight on that one tool in the toolbox. The risks that we experience today are real. The market is telling us that ercot is telling us that they wouldn't cause a unit to come online if they didn't absolutely have to. There are certain criteria that they use to determine whether or not it's a true reliability risk. And so what we're proposing to [10:45:39 AM] And so what we're proposing to you is a plan that gives all the tools in the toolbox that are necessary to meet the unprecedented growth that we anticipate and the changing environment. It's the most responsible plan and the speakers that we're talking about, including, are really a bridge to a clean energy future. And they are part of what is necessary today. They're smaller, they're modular. They like I said, they're jet engines. And when we don't need them, we can get rid of them. We can sell them to someone else. The ones we have today, we purchased from another utility. So, you know, it's not like it's a forever thing and cleaner than today's generating units. So it would result in a cleaner solution. So I'll end there. >> Thank you. And I also wanted to remind everybody before I go to council member qadri and then council member Alison alter about the dates that we have, the future dates which you had already talked about in your presentation. But just to remind everyone, the Austin energy resource and generation plan [10:46:40 AM] resource and generation plan isn't yet released. So that will be released on November 27th. So we don't know what that plan contains. The auc will have a special called meeting on December 2nd. We have a work session December 10th, and I will pull this item for discussion. So the public will have an opportunity to comment on the plan at that work session December 10th. And then we have a meeting with public input again on December 12th, which is the last meeting of the year, and that is when this item will come for additional conversation and a vote. December 12th. Do I have those dates right? I do. Okay, great. All right. Let's see. Council member zo qadri, you had a question and maybe a statement. >> Yeah, I had two questions and a statement. The first question, could you answer how carbon capture carbon capture affects impacts cost? [10:47:41 AM] impacts cost? >> How carbon capture impacts costs. >> Yeah. Yeah. What impact cost does it impact cost. >> So carbon capture technology there's a number of different ways you can do it. And it's still in many ways emerging. It's not widely used commercially today. And so what we would be the plan includes the concept of carbon capture under culture of innovation. And it's kind of the item of, of, of, you know, if we get to the point of 2035 and there's no other option, we can't get rid of the speakers because we don't need it. We either want to get rid of them because we don't need them anymore. We want to have replace them with a different technology. We want to replace it with a cleaner fuel. Maybe there's another 2 or 3 other options that I haven't heard about yet, but if there's no other that hasn't even come to be yet. But if there's no other option available, carbon capture is there to try to say that we're going to do our best and clean up the rest. And so I can't speak to what the cost will be at that point in time. [10:48:43 AM] will be at that point in time. The technology is evolving all the time. >> Got it. And then staying on the on the conversation, I know that's been brought up. Are there are there any cases of speakers using carbon capture? Is that even a possible thing today? >> There's not a lot of units that are using carbon capture in general. It's just not a widely used technology yet. It's something that is evolving and on the forefront that we want to keep our eyes on. >> Got it. Okay, great. And then and then my comment and I appreciate you answering this questions. I just wanted to make a general comment after the presentation. Just to, I guess, show my interest in in looking at, you know, nuclear being an option in the portfolio. So I appreciate those on the dais who might also support that. I know it's something that's come up with talking to some folks at the ledge, so I'm just interested in seeing advanced nuclear being an option in the portfolio. >> Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think that it's important to note our current plan has a prohibition against any new [10:49:44 AM] prohibition against any new nuclear. And so we're trying to recognize that nuclear has changed in a number of ways, and that there are potentially opportunities that we should consider for the community. And to add to the portfolio is diversity even more? Yeah, great. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, councilmember Allison alter. >> Thank you. First, I want to appreciate my colleague Ryan Walters discussion and having dived into the material from last night, which I have not yet done, and you raise a lot of really, really important questions. You know, if we're going to go down whatever path we choose, we need to make sure that we really understanding what the tradeoffs are and exactly which problems that we're trying to solve. And I think I think we're at a closer place to understanding what those challenges are than maybe we were at a year ago in a, in a broader community. And I and I appreciate that maybe a little bit all over the place, because my colleagues have covered pieces of what I wanted to cover, you know, as I understand it, the gen plan that we're [10:50:46 AM] it, the gen plan that we're going to be presented with is going to be a toolkit, which is somewhat different than what we had before and may or may not have particular goals. And I want to express some concern about that insofar as at this point, I think we agree on everything but one bullet. And then there's a question of how much emphasis we put on other bullets. And I think community is really asking us, and I think we've we've heard from the experts as well, like we need to do more of the demand side management. We need more of the batteries. We also have to worry about the transmission and the demand response. I think there's more to be done than what we're doing. You know, I've owned an electric car now for you know, nine years. And I think we got, I don't know, five years in before we figured out we could charge it at night and, you know, set it up and, and, you know, if you're not the most [10:51:46 AM] know, if you're not the most technologically, technologically savvy, you don't have that. I mean, you can set up a system with the car dealers and make them eco certified if they, you know, spend 15 minutes with each new electric car owner about how you do these things. So you, you know, help the environment and manage your energy totally apart from that, I mean, they're just they're just things that we could be leaning into. And I think what we've heard from the community is that we want to lean into all of those things, and I'm going to need to see a commitment in this plan that we're not just taking what DMV says and saying, you know, that's enough, and that's our that's our limit. So I want to see those. The other thing that I think is missing, at least as this is presented, and at this point you're presenting it to us with the with the speakers included, if their speakers included, they're going to go somewhere and they're likely to go in district one or district two where we already have our plants. And I don't think we can plan and we can put forward a [10:52:48 AM] plan and we can put forward a gen plan that has those without a very clear sense of what that means for those communities, or a plan to address the impacts on whichever community where those would be sited, particularly from the emissions it will be an increase in emissions. It's a reality. If the financial arguments are there, as Austin energy is saying, there should be some money there to invest in those communities to offset having those speakers in those places, both from an emissions standpoint and just from a quality of life standpoint. And there's many different forms that that could take. It could be a huge, you know, tree planting. It could be carbon capture situations. But I think we need to have a clear path that wherever those are going and they may not go in district 1 or 2, that's just what I'm assuming from the existing infrastructure. You know, we need to be planning for that. [10:53:48 AM] need to be planning for that. And we need to be linking up with the northeast planning or other planning processes that are going going on as we do that with respect to the carbon capture. And this is something I think that that I asked you to add in the toolkit when we met. You know, there's different aspects of the local air pollution. And, and I don't know that we have a full sense of the magnitude of that. Were we to add the peakers. But I know there's the greenhouse gases and then there's the other air pollutants of the nox, etc, how you know, what amount are we talking about? And this may be in the documents from last night. What amount are you talking about that we would be asking our community to add, if we were to pursue the speakers. >> Are you are you talking about nox? Yeah. Okay. And so what we modeled included speakers that include scr selective catalytic [10:54:51 AM] include scr selective catalytic reduction. Essentially it's technology that's kind of like a catalytic converter you'd put on your car if you were trying to reduce the emissions coming out of that. And it it essentially works directly to reduce the nox emissions. Depending on, you know, it can be up to 95% of the time. Usually it's 90, 85, 90% of the time, a percent of the emissions that are coming out. And so those types of emissions controls are things that we've already incorporated into our analysis. And we would be committed to making sure that we included and continuing to look at what other types of emissions controls and air quality components are, are available to help the community. We've asked our teams to look at what could we do with existing and other programs to benefit whomever has to live next to, you know, the infrastructure that is needed to serve our community? The site is not something that is known at this particular time. It's [10:55:52 AM] this particular time. It's there's just no way to assume it. It's an analysis that happens further on. The next time we would return to you to say, can we build, you know, this unit in this location, but we know that there are lots of programs like our weatherization program, our home energy solutions program, partnering opportunities with other city departments and whatnot. The most important thing, I think, in that case is we don't want to presume what the community would want out of that, and so we'd want to continue to have the conversation with the communities that would be most affected by this, to help them define the solution. I think it would be not only part of any permitting process, but certainly part of any, you know, city process to make sure that we're figuring out the best possible solutions moving forward. So yeah, absolutely. Guardrails, controls part of all of it. And I also just wanted to address you made a statement, a broad statement that it would just increase emissions. I want to be clear that new Peaker units would be more efficient, [10:56:54 AM] units would be more efficient, less emitting than existing units. So today, when we have no other options other than to run our 1980s Peaker units at decker or the ones from the early 2000 at sand hill, we would have a different option to run a cleaner solution, and it's only on the days when the peaks are at the highest that we have to use all of the speakers to make sure that we're out of the deficit, and the risks that we're currently sitting at further, further, having these units would allow us to further and reach our goal of exiting fate in a way that is achievable. And so certainly that's the largest amount of emissions in our portfolio today. And so it's really about looking at it holistically. The plan as proposed today and as informed as will be informed by your feedback, does present a cleaner solution and a path to a cleaner solution than we have today. >> Thank you. You just brought up several other things that were on my list. So let's start [10:57:56 AM] were on my list. So let's start with, you know, we you talk about how this would be cleaner. And I think I've been asking you for a long time to clarify this replacing or not replacing. And what I'm hearing is we're adding it, but we would use it under certain circumstances and it would be rare in your view, that we'd be adding all of them. But there's still, you know, there's still this question about could we, you know, decommission the other ones? Would we be able to or are we just adding additional emissions? And there's a complex dynamic with ercot that I would like to understand better. And I've heard you assert it, but I'm not sure that I fully follow how that path works out. So maybe we can have some conversations about that in the future on that. You mentioned fayette, and that was another thing that I wanted to mention in the toolkit. You know, we've heard the mayor mentioned [10:58:57 AM] heard the mayor mentioned January of 29. You've heard you say, well, as soon as possible, you know, our prior plan has it already done? I went out to fayette, and at this point I'm not hearing that this is getting us out of fayette. It's continues to just be a wish list and so, you know, I'd love to see if there's a way along this way that you have to make reach some milestones on exiting fayette along the same time that you're moving along the path to speakers or, you know, there's just there's a lot of uncertainty there. And I and I'm not I'd like to be more confident that we are really leaning into that. So I would ask that we could have an executive session about fayette before we make this gen plan decision. I agree that if we got out of fayette and we were not using our other peakers and we were transitioning people to electric cars, and we were moving people into buildings and [10:59:58 AM] moving people into buildings and we were powering that with the speakers on net, you'd have less emissions. I understand that and agree with that. But there's a lot of IFS in there of things that are happening and, and in, in the plan. I would really like to see some milestones of achieving certain things, even at the same time that you may have an ability to explore the speakers if that is the route that the dais decides to go in, I will not be able to support speakers without having. I know for sure we need to be able to see milestones on these other things so that on net we are reducing emissions and we I think there's a way to do that. And we've talked about this and you've said that, but I'm not hearing what that path is yet. And so maybe, you know, if we can and maybe you could speak to this now, can you break down for the speakers what the different stages are? I understand that under the current plan, you [11:00:59 AM] under the current plan, you can't even take the next step. But, you know, with a lot of different decisions, there's many, many different decision points and there's certain dollars attached to different points. And we have technology changing and a federal environment changing and all sorts of things. It would be really helpful to know what those touch points are and what the estimated costs are at each point. So we know you know what I don't want to get a point where we have said, oh, well, we spent this much money, so we have to do something that we don't really need to do anymore. And so as part of that plan, we need that. I don't know if you can speak at all to those stages for the speakers. >> Yeah. So you talked about a lot of things in there. And, and that's okay. And, and so we are at a deficit in terms of being able to serve our community today without the costs. The extreme cost and the affordability, I'm sorry. And the reliability risk that we face. And so you talked a lot about trying to figure out how [11:02:02 AM] about trying to figure out how do we get out of fayette. Right. You you with the tools that you have in your toolbox today and the plan that we have today, the path is, is it's I don't see a path. Right. It's very, very hard because that unit is there to help, help not only from a reliability perspective across all of ercot, but also it it keeps the it's there when the cost when demand is really high. And that's the only time when we run it right now at its peak levels. Otherwise we run it at its minimum levels. And so the tools you need more tools in your toolkit to be able to enable that. Right. And you're saying, but I want to make sure that we add those tools in in a very thoughtful manner. Right. And so the time to act is now, but it will take time to actually get to the point where something is built. And so you start with the battery storage, right? That that is a something that can be done a little bit faster in a number of ways. Those physically, they can be [11:03:05 AM] Those physically, they can be built faster. And then but in the meantime you start down a path of while you're doing your maximum customer energy solutions, as much as you can, keep working on all of those programs and figuring out, you know, new and innovative ways to add to it, but you can't really wait to start on the last piece of it because there's permitting, there's siting, there's analysis, there's the infrastructure components of it. And yes, there can be stage Gates along the way to say, before we get too far down this path, where do we stand? Is that risk still there? Do we still need to move forward? Is this the right tool to put in our toolkit? And so I just want to also remind you that that, you know, those decisions come before you as a council. >> So and I would feel a lot better if we had marked down a sense of what those decisions are and some ballpark of what the costs are at each stage and some sense of timing, I know it will shift, but absent that, it you know, it feels like we are authorizing all the way through. And, you know, a year from now, [11:04:07 AM] And, you know, a year from now, something could change dramatically or, you know, we'll know maybe if the geothermal is working or, you know, like there's things that may shift in either direction and we may we may need to do that. So I think I think we need we need to know those things in order to make our decision. And that needs to be built in to the gen plan that certain other goals have to be met as we're meeting these other things so that we can be, you know, we're presenting to the community as if we're doing everything. But I think there's still skepticism about whether we're going to go far enough on demand response. If we're going to go far enough on solar, we have programs in place that can get us there. But I think we need to be able to prove to the community that we're reaching these levels. And I think something that provided some guardrails along that lines would would be helpful in that. And if we can also understand how long the speakers life span [11:05:11 AM] how long the speakers life span is, I mean, you said, oh, well, we can just sell them. But then we also said that ercot can tell us we can't decommission. So which is it? >> Okay. So you know, infrastructure has a lifespan that as long as you're maintaining it, it can stay. So a lot of times it's, you know, decades if you will. But the point is, is that these aren't units that once you like, you're stuck having because they are smaller, they are more modular. As I mentioned, our existing Peaker units we purchased from other utilities when we had a need to buy them. And so similarly these these are these are jet engines, right. They're highly mobile. They were put on the side of a of an airplane and they fly from here to New York. And, and so we can't if we don't need them then we can sell them right. Every time you look to shut down a unit, ercot assesses the reliability impact to the grid. And if they if there is no other way than to keep that unit running, then they say you have [11:06:11 AM] running, then they say you have to keep it. That you know, is something that they're assessing down in San Antonio at some plants right now. But if we put the right tools in our toolkit, then we will be able to keep what really in the you know, scenario that we're having is right now we're talking about having these units to I get the new replacement kind of confusion. Think about it. On most days as these new units would be replacing our existing units. Right. And then you'd have your existing units as backup for the worst kind of days. Right. So that's ultimately the cleaner solution. And maybe there's a path as as technology evolves, the flexibility that we need to be able to say, look, there's a game changer, something has happened differently. Now we need to figure out what's the path to retiring those units. And so whether it's the older units or your newer units, we're not locked into anything. And so I hope that helps. >> Yeah I mean I think the models assume the other the old [11:07:12 AM] models assume the other the old ones get retired. And so that's what I'm, you know, I'm struggling with how we deal with this ercot piece here because I think it's a very real reality. So again, I would like an exec session on, on on fayette. I would like us to make sure that we are making as part of this plan, even if we don't have the exact steps that we're taking. But certain commitments that we're making to wherever these are sited on the efforts to address any emissions and any quality of life impacts, I want to really be able to understand and see guardrails on the speakers. If we were to proceed with that and, you know, understanding kind of how we're addressing the emissions pieces and not just ozone, but also the other pollutants, and it'd be very helpful to have some more information, again, about how [11:08:13 AM] information, again, about how you make this dynamic with ercot and the ability to shut them down kind of kind of happening. And then as we do the toolkit, it needs to not just be, okay, here's our set of tools like we need to have. We're not going to have goals. We need to have something that's going to help us see that we're moving in the right direction and that we're accelerating and moving. We've pushed that and done that in every generation plan to date, and we have been able, with a lot of these to achieve the goals. There are times when you won't be able to always achieve the goals, but I know that if we don't set the goal, we're not going to. We're definitely not going to get there. So I'd like to see all of those things happen as we move forward. I may have more questions after the speakers, because I know that they're going to bring a lot of information, and I appreciate everyone being here with us. This morning. Thank you. >> Thank you. Council member Alison alter and thanks, everybody for digging in and some good questions to kind of lay the groundwork. And now we're going to move to hear from the speakers. I'd like to rely on the city clerk to call the [11:09:16 AM] on the city clerk to call the names here or Amy, will you be calling the names? But I'll call the names. >> But I think thank you. >> I just want to I also have questions, but I'm happy to ask them after the speakers. Right. >> That's that's. I think where we're moving at this point. We're going to take the speakers and have a second round of questions from everybody after we hear from the community, usually we would be hearing from the speakers before we talked, but because there were specific questions about the nature of the presentation, we kind of shifted things around a little bit this morning. So now we're going to move to hear from speakers we have about, what, about 36 or 39 speakers. Everybody will have two minutes to talk with us. I will then come back to the dais for any additional questions that my colleagues here will have. If there are any additional statements that people would like to make a brief statements, then we will do that, and then I will remind everyone about the [11:10:17 AM] will remind everyone about the future dates for engagement, because we haven't yet seen the plan, and we want to make sure that there's ample time for input and discussion. Once we see the plan. And as a reminder, the plan will be released November 27th. So yes, we will wrap around and I'll your name is on my list to call chair. >> Would you could you share with with us the list of who you have in the queue, who resume council member questions when we when we continue after speakers? Sure. >> If you all will just indicate who wants to speak, then I'll just call you. >> I know council member raised. I just don't know what the order is. >> Right. And I will call that out. Okay. And then I think council member Ellis may have an additional question. >> I did, and I'll see if any of it's covered with other council member questions. So maybe just plug me into the back of that list. >> Everybody will have a chance to weigh in because council member Alison alter also said that she had some questions and I haven't even looked down this [11:11:19 AM] I haven't even looked down this way recently, and I'm sure there's some additional. So I'm glad to see so much engagement. It is very important. Let's see. Okay. Let's move to speakers if you would help us. Speaker is Al Braden, and after Al is Olga tumanova and then kaiba white. >> If you all could come down toward the front, please all come to this front line of chairs as your name is called, and then grab the podium, Mike, and each of you will have two minutes. >> Mr. Braden, thank you for being here this morning. You have two minutes, sir. >> Good morning, mayor pro tem pool, mayor Watson, council members and Austin energy staff. I'm Al Braden, a district seven voter and Austin energy shareholder. I want to thank you, chair pool, for extending to all the rest of the speakers. This morning. I think there's a lot of people in the community that that are engaged in this program and want to have an opportunity. So thank you. My solar ce gas snow shirt is now nine years old, and I really, [11:12:19 AM] nine years old, and I really, really want to retire it. I also really want to make sure that Austin renews its commitments to solar. And now batteries in the new generation plan, and that it rejects any new fossil fuel burning plants. Right here. I've got a picture of Chris Riley. He was one of Austin's visionary climate leaders, a council member in 2014 who led the fight to say that we wouldn't have any more fossil fuels after 2030. That plan moved into 2035 that we've all agreed on. Unfortunately, council member Riley is no longer with us, but his legacy carries on in many of the climate leaders on today's council and many of those newly elected. And he lives on in Austin's environmental movement. In 2015, a delegation of city leaders went to the cop 21 Paris climate agreement, committing the world to fight climate change. Here's council member pool, mayor Adler, commissioner Shea and former auc chairman [11:13:19 AM] Shea and former auc chairman Michael Osborne, among others. Paris symbolized a world effort to stop the global climate temperature rise at two degrees and 1.5 degrees. If possible today. Oops. Today I turned off the picture. Today we've already reached that 1.5 degree lifetime limit. This year. Right now, the world's oil and gas ministers are meeting at cop 29 to put a Petro friendly face on business as usual. It's up to us locally to take action to minimize emissions. The auc is that my two minutes? By golly, time flies. I support the auc and I support all of your work on this effort. Thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. And we shortened it. We're sticking with two minutes because of the number of speakers. But so just a heads up to everybody to try to keep it within those two minutes. The next speaker please. [11:14:20 AM] please. >> Next speaker is Olga tumanova. >> Good morning. Chair pool. Vice chair vela, mayor Watson and council members. My name is Olga tumanova and I live in council district nine. I'm here today to urge you to prioritize renewable and non- fossil fuel based energy sources and updates to the Austin energy resource plan. I'm an environmental science student at the university of Texas at Austin, and I believe that it is essential for us to recognize the importance of setting forward on a path that leads us to more sustainable energy portfolio. Acknowledging the scientific basis and consensus on climate change, we must recognize that continuing to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at the rate we currently are, is going to continue, devastating our future and making it more difficult for us to implement climate change solutions. We must take the decisions we make today as an opportunity to set ourselves up for climate change mitigation in the future, and invest in the renewable infrastructure we inevitably will need to rely on. There is no doubt that infrastructure for renewable energy and batteries will have to expand in the future. A fossil fuel dominant portfolio [11:15:20 AM] fossil fuel dominant portfolio will fail to provide net benefits for our community, as we will continue to experience rising temperatures, worsening air pollution and more extreme weather events. We can take the necessary steps today to continue making the energy transition more feasible for our city in the future, and recommit to staying on track with the Austin climate equity plan. We need to recenter renewable energy as something for our community to take pride in. We have the opportunity to genuinely serve as a leader in the renewable energy transition and build up our city in a way that prioritizes the health and well-being of our community. But this requires a significant re-envisioning of the way we generate our power and fuel our city. Notably, swift action must be taken to finally retire the fayette coal plant, which Austin energy had failed to accomplish by the end of 2022. This coal plant accounts for an absurd three quarters of Austin energy's greenhouse gas emissions and retiring. It must be a top priority. I am asking for you to reflect on the steps that must be taken for our city to genuinely follow through with our climate goals and ensure that we make the decisions to create a more livable, cleaner. Austin, I urge you to commit to a full transition to renewable energy in the updated Austin [11:16:21 AM] energy in the updated Austin energy resource plan. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. >> Thank you. Next speaker. >> Next is kaiba. >> Wait. Eaten? Might and Philip martin. Good morning. My name is kaiba white and I'm speaking on behalf of public citizens Texas office and my four year old son, who I think isn't going to speak after all the climate crisis and our local air pollution are worsening and you're being asked to repeal the commitments in the Austin energy resource generation and climate protection plan. The plan that you're going to see next week eviscerates the existing plan, the commitment not to build more fossil fuel generation gone carbon free by 2035 there in words. But impossible to achieve because there's no chance they will shut down methane gas generators that are less than a decade old. Trajectory for reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the planning period. Gone. Increasing renewable energy goals over the planning period gone. Specific goals for local solar gone. Energy efficiency and demand [11:17:23 AM] Energy efficiency and demand response goals gone. There will be no benchmarks so that you and your predecessors can reasonably assess if progress is being made. Instead, we will have a list of technologies to use as they see fit a list that will include both methane gas and carbon capture, which is a false promise. In this situation, carbon capture is a complex, expensive, and energy intensive technology that is only feasible for certain types of power plants that run fairly consistently. I've been unable to find a single example, an example of carbon capture on a Peaker plant. This is an even more implausible solution than the green hydrogen proposal. You got from arco last year. These this technology wasn't modeled for this update because arco deemed it not technologically ready from the onset. Arco has dismissed the option of significantly ramping up rooftop solar to deployment. But they're betting our future on much more expensive and much less effective technologies. You should also know that carbon capture won't reduce nox emissions. It will increase them [11:18:25 AM] emissions. It will increase them because you will have to burn more gas to run the equipment. Any plan that sends more kids to the hospital isn't affordable or sustainable. I call on you to reject this proposal. >> Thank you for your comments, miss Wyatt. Next speaker, please Marc Philip martin and then Mary Michael and then Camille cook. If miss martin and miss cook will come down, go ahead. >> Good morning. My name is Philip martin. I live in district three. >> I have also lived in districts four, five, six, seven and nine over the 40 years here in Austin and pleasure to see you, Mr. Mayor. I've never visited you here before, but it's been great working with you in the past. In the past, quite simply, using potential these peak emitters is a very dangerous environmental decision. I work now with the environmental defense fund. It's pretty easy to see, and our name was not on these lists of community groups that you've seen up there. It is pretty easy to see the danger and the [11:19:26 AM] to see the danger and the reckless decision of moving towards with natural gas speakers they they pollute 1.6 times the sulfur dioxide you see in existing power generation. I will offer that if the city council, if this body decides to move forward and mirror governor Abbott and lieutenant governor Dan Patrick in going forward with fossil fuel based generation, that will be the headline from this decision. There is a lot of good work done in this plan. There's a lot of work to be proud of. There's things that can be fixed. But if at the end of the day, there are natural gas speakers included in this plan, that is the headline. That is what you will be accountable for. To all of the members throughout the city of Austin. So I just want you to be mindful of that. There are ways to move forward in a cost effective, reliable, environmentally safe way that achieves the power needed during those peak hours without needing to go into something that pollutes more. I urge you to pursue that path and take a responsible decision for this city and for the people of this city. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. Next speaker. >> Next speaker is Mary martin, [11:20:27 AM] >> Next speaker is Mary martin, then Camille cook, then Adrienne Shelly. >> Good morning. Chair pool vice chair vela, mayor Watson and city council members. My name is Mary Mikel and I live in council district seven. I'm speaking today to voice my concerns about the future of energy in Austin. The choices made in the Austin energy resource plan will determine if Austin reaches the goal of being carbon free by 2035 council members, I'm asking each of you to support a fully carbon free, clean energy plan for Austin energy. I'm 22 years old and I'm very concerned about climate change. My concerns about the environment have motivated me to advocate for clean energy, and they've also brought me to intern with public citizen. With public citizen, I've gotten to see the potential for clean energy in Austin by using gis to determine solar energy potential for city of Austin owned buildings. My estimates show that the city of Austin owned buildings implemented solar. They would have the capacity to generate 38,000 megawatt hours of solar energy, a year. To put this into perspective, this is enough power to. This is enough to power roughly 3800 homes for a [11:21:28 AM] power roughly 3800 homes for a year. My analysis only studied a portion of city of Austin owned buildings, but the results are incredibly promising for rooftop solar in Austin as a whole and demonstrate the need to tap into this energy potential. We're so lucky to have a climate that is suitable for solar energy. We're also lucky to have a municipally owned utility. These two factors put Austin in an amazing position to be a leader in rooftop solar. More rooftop solar in Austin will accomplish so many things besides just doing our part to slow climate change, it also creates green, well-paying jobs, increases energy resilience, and can reduce energy costs during peak times. If the Austin energy resource plan chooses to keep fossil fuels over expanding clean energy, we will lose our potential to be a leader on this. Considering the recent election results, it is likely that we will not be able to rely on the federal government to enact climate action. Many are feeling hopeless about the future of our climate, but I am not because I know that there is power in local action and the city council has the power to move Austin towards a clean future. Regardless, at this point, it's up to us to take the bold action, the bold climate action that the world needs. So I'm asking you to support a full [11:22:28 AM] I'm asking you to support a full transition to clean energy in the updated Austin energy resource plan. It is imperative that we focus on expanding rooftop solar batteries and energy. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. >> Thank you. Next speaker, please. >> Good morning, chair and vice chair vela. My name is Camille cook, and I'm a member of district three. As everyone here knows, this update process has dragged on for a long time. There's been a lot of information to sort and sift through, and so I wanted to highlight a few pieces of information that I that have come out of this process and I think are important and don't want anyone to miss. First, in the public input survey that I conducted last August, we saw that 66% of austinites said that they would be willing to have a higher energy bill in order to have cleaner energy. The people of Austin care about a clean future, and care about having normal weather that allows for the environment and our lives to prosper, especially in the polarized politics of today. We're not going to get a clear directive from the people in that second in the modeled portfolios from ascend, one of [11:23:29 AM] portfolios from ascend, one of the consultants I hired to model some portfolios, we saw a graph that showed that a zero emissions portfolio would increase reliability faster than any other modeled portfolios. We see immediate reliability benefits from investing in more batteries, local solar and demand response, and energy efficiency than investing in speakers. Lastly, echo hasn't modeled anything related to carbon capture yet. They are still apparently relying on it to help reach their carbon free goal by 2035, even though I'm not sure how we can be carbon free by 2035 with new peakers without having some carbon capture involved. Carbon capture is incredibly expensive, has not been extensively tested, and requires massive amounts of energy. Even if carbon capture somehow takes off as electricity demand increases, we could end up in a situation where people, data centers and carbon capture facilities are competing for electricity. If we create even more competition between the people, industry and the climate, no one's going to win. If we don't build any new peakers, then we will also not need to build any new carbon capture facilities. Why spend millions of dollars building new peakers and then spend maybe billions of dollars on carbon capture [11:24:30 AM] dollars on carbon capture facilities, all to avoid emitting carbon? It doesn't make any sense to me. All that money could be going to more energy efficient homes, schools and buildings. So a proper solution is to future proof as best as we can. Trump is coming into office and will be eviscerating all kinds of climate commitments. We need to listen to the directive of the people. Please support a full transition to clean, renewable energy. >> Thank you. Thank you so much. >> Next speaker is Adrian Shelly, then Raphael Schwartz, then Becky Halpin. >> Hello. Chairman. Pool. Vice chair. Vela. Mayor. Watson. Council members appreciate the opportunity to speak today. My name is Adrian Shelly. I'm a Williamson county resident. I work here in Austin. I'm raising two children here, two young boys. Both of them have had respiratory challenges in their young lives. And I come at this issue with an interest in public health, clean energy and climate change. As the director of public citizen's office here in Texas, I'm privileged to be able [11:25:31 AM] Texas, I'm privileged to be able to work on these issues, and I enjoy a position on cape cod clean air council advisory committee. And from that perspective, I would just like to share a reminder that we are in a tenuous position as regards compliance with federal air quality standards right now. We've been in near nonattainment for the ozone standard for quite some time. The particulate matter standard is being reduced, and we face a non-attainment designation there as well. These are designations that will bring decades of work and hundreds of millions of dollars in a regulatory necessities that will affect everything from transportation, planning, permitting, and opportunities for federal funding. We are looking at building Peaker plants here, but I think we need to appreciate that what we consider peak demand right now in just a couple of years, will become the norm. The projections statewide are frightening 150gw of demand by the end of the century. If we [11:26:34 AM] by the end of the century. If we continue to invest in fossil fuel generation, you know what we hope to only run for a few hours a year now will become necessary to run more and more hours. We don't need to be part of the problem of prolonging the life of fossil fuel generation. In this state. We can be part of the solution. We've got a clear mandate from our voters here in Austin. They want us to retire fat. They want us to invest in clean energy. And you all have an opportunity to do that. >> Thank you. Thank you sir. Next speaker, Raphael Schwartz. >> Then Becky Halpin, then Richard Halpin. >> Hi. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Raphael Schwartz. I'm an electrical engineer. I live in d2 in south Austin. I'm nuts enough that I chose to watch many hours of the eoc presentations and staff. And I think staff overall did an admirable job assessing and presenting what's really a dizzying array of scenario options and modeling given the scope that they defined. But what really struck me was what [11:27:35 AM] what really struck me was what wasn't modeled was sort of missing from the discussion, just to name a few things. Pollutants and carbon emissions were not translated into costs. Austin energy uses social carbon costs in other contexts, but that was ignored here. Fugitive methane emissions are ignored here. Also, these numbers are probably significant enough to erase the climate benefit of gas over coal plant. The third thing is the fact that speakers themselves emit significantly more emissions. Carbon emissions per unit energy. According to EPA, probably 60% more than baseload gas plants wasn't looked at or mentioned. These three things alone. If arco had included them in the modeling, which wouldn't take much work, would completely flip the analysis on its head. I was also really disappointed to see that Austin energy left out the solar growth projections from the potentially huge new solar standard offer program for community commercial solar. It's not modeled in the projection of future local solar, which is unfortunate because it makes the solar numbers look worse and it seems like a big oversight. I'm [11:28:36 AM] seems like a big oversight. I'm youngish, I'm really fortunate and healthy. I did grow up with asthma. I still have some challenges exercising and poor air quality days. It's really minimal impact to my life right now, but the stuff is really real. Austin will enter ozone non-attainment zone and I know a lot of people already mentioned, but it's clear now than a couple of weeks ago that no one is coming to save us regulations that were looking to help shut down fayette will probably be shelved. Tailpipe regulations will definitely be scrapped, and a lot of the federal climate subsidies will absolutely be gutted. At the same time, battery costs are plummeting. Community solar program here is ramping up so respectfully, I want to ask council to simply consider taking a wait and see approach, not making the more drastic decision to shut down. >> Thank you sir. Your time has expired. >> Excuse me, I just wanted to ask the speaker. I just want to ask the speaker if you could email me your remarks. I wanted to understand the numbers at the beginning. Thank you. >> And, sir, if you could just go ahead and send it to all the council members, we would all appreciate that. Thank you so much, miss Halpin. You're next. [11:29:36 AM] much, miss Halpin. You're next. Two minutes. Yes. Good morning, I'm Becky Halpin. >> I'm representing third act Texas. This is a group of old people interested in the climate issue. Austin energy is adding another gas plant in their toolbox. But this is not a benign tool burning fossil fuels endangers us here in Austin. Climate driven drought is becoming more frequent and deeper. We are now suffering what amounts to permanent water scarcity. Many places in the world are going dry. There's no reason to think this would not happen or could not happen to us. We are not special if this happens, people will leave. It won't matter how much affordable energy we have. If we don't have water, people are not going to be able to live here. Gas plants are not affordable for every cheap electron they produce. They add other costs to Austin energy customers. For example, [11:30:38 AM] energy customers. For example, the cost of homeowners insurance in Texas is up 51% since 2018, and this is all due to climate related weather disasters 2023. The cost of homeowners insurance in Texas was an average of $4,000, and that doesn't even count what it's probably going to be this year. Much higher. And renters are not protected because the cost of this has passed on to them by their landlords. The cost of food is going up because of weather related events, disasters and changes. Austin energy does not have to worry about any of these externalized costs, but as council members and mayor, this would fall under your wheelhouse. Balance, reliability, and other costs to Austin energy customers from climate driven events. >> Thank you, miss Halpin. >> Say no to new gas. [11:31:39 AM] >> Say no to new gas. >> Thank you. >> Next speaker is Richard Halpin, then Becky Smith, then Eileen Mcguinness. >> It's miss Smith and miss Mcguinness, are you here? Come on down to that front row. Thank you so much, Mr. Halpin. Two minutes. Thank you. >> Chairwoman. Good morning, chairwoman pool. Vice chair. >> Vela, mayor and council members. I am Richard Halpin, a member of the Texas alliance of retired Americans. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. One of my recommendations is you require an independent analysis of this year and a half long process to determine how it could improve with the energy world in a. Tornado of change, this generation and climate plan will need upgrading regularly. That cannot take another year and a half with the PUC marginalized at key points in the presentation at the at the electric utility commission meeting last night, I heard a dispensable battery storage idea that could reduce over a million tons of toxic waste out of our [11:32:41 AM] tons of toxic waste out of our atmosphere. That is what we critically need. As you know, a previous council proposed no more fossil fuel burning in our community because as you all know, fossil fuel burning heats up our climate, creating unhealthy summer days. And the waste poisons living that poisons living. Things like children, adults, food crops and more. A controversial item is a staff will propose. Oops, these things about technology. Here they go. Well, I'm just going to have to hoof it from here. They're going to propose a new gas plant, and they're not telling us how much the mortgage for that 20, 30 year mortgage is going to be. And it's going to be a lot of money. And the ideas you've heard today, more solar batteries and other things are far more affordable for us. We will live with a legacy of those new gas Peaker plants. We already have two Peaker plants. Why not just tune those up, make [11:33:41 AM] Why not just tune those up, make them do better, make them more efficient instead of spending, as you know, chair pool buying a lot of stuff like that is really expensive. And the mortgage price will then be a stranded asset. The thing will be out of date in ten years, and we'll have 30 years left to pay for it. Thank you very much for your attention today. Please. No more fossil fuel burning. >> Next speaker, Becky Smith, then Eileen Mcguinness, and then Craig nazer. Mr. Naser, come on down. >> Good morning. >> Thank you for this opportunity to address you. My name is Becky. If your name is Richard or Becky, you're going to hear from a lot of us. Apparently, bad news. I am not your constituent. I am neither a customer of your utility. I live in Houston and my electric utility does not have a human or a humane face. The good news is 8847 of the members that I [11:34:41 AM] 8847 of the members that I represent as members of clean water action do live. Here are your constituents and our customers of your utility. Our mission. Since founding in early 70s is to protect the environment, our health and community quality of life. We oppose any new gas, electric generation. As a part of your electricity plan moving forward, we know that climate change is water change. We also know that you have a great brain trust here in your utility that has access to creative problem solving, has done so before, and has all the technical answers that certainly I do not have. And some of you great questions and comments here. And studying the data, modeling going forward, your job and the opinion of my members is to provide the priorities the priority here can be forward thinking, forward moving technology approaches, interacting with customers for customer demand and response, [11:35:44 AM] customer demand and response, and what we're at here is the intersection, the heart of the intersection of a very capable utility. And the future of environmental justice and equity, not just for Austin, but for the generations of also my ten year old growing up who will probably want to move here sooner than I'm ready. Thank you for the opportunity today. Please prioritize clean, healthy energy. No new gas generation. >> Thank you, miss Smith. Next speaker. >> Good morning, Eileen Mcguinness. District nine I'm here today to ask you to commit to a carbon free plan on behalf of our children's health and climate. As the parent of a nine year old austinite, I'm deeply afraid for his future. I fear that if we continue down this path of fossil fuel dependance, he will grow into adulthood. Facing a world of climate collapse and civil chaos. I'm also today as owner of local nonprofit the parents climate community. I started this group [11:36:44 AM] community. I started this group because love for my own child has made me aware that all of us adults living in this time of climate crisis have an obligation to protect what we love and to help all kids thrive. Investing in new Peaker plants that will likely operate in east or southeast Austin when possible, site near decker elementary school is not the way to care for children, and it's not a trade off that we should feel comfortable making. Children of color here in Travis county are already bearing a disproportionate burden of the health impacts of air pollution. Being hospitalized for asthma at triple the rate of white children. How do we reconcile putting new gas plants where children of color live in play with the climate equity plan that the city council passed three years ago? I'm asking each of you to put kids first by supporting a full transition to renewable energy. It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes all of us here in Austin acting from our highest values and out of a deep sense of our intergenerational legacy to [11:37:46 AM] intergenerational legacy to safeguard children's and community health. Thank you. Thank you. >> Greg nazer, then Carol Smith, then Shane Johnson. >> Welcome, Mr. Naseer, you have two minutes. >> Hello, city council. My name is Craig Nasser. I am the conservation club and I am the current chair of Austin environmental Democrats. In both of these organizations overwhelmingly do not support a new any new gas fired power plant that I have one owned, one house in my life and what I did rather and I'm a retired musician, don't have much money, and I invested in a house in making energy efficient during winter storm uri houses, just like mine across the street, got down to 35 degrees. Mine stayed at 55 degrees. I put a greenhouse on back. The sun came up and my back room went up to [11:38:48 AM] up and my back room went up to 60 degrees. I had a little camping solar cell. I put it out there. I plugged my phone in my plug. My phone stayed charged up the whole time. Demand response. Why did not these people have a lot more money than me? They did not upgrade their houses. Demand response is something we're missing here and we need to do more about that. I think that's very important. The other thing is the changes in our climate are not going to be linear. You can't model them in a linear way. They're going to be non-linear and a heat wave, a long heat wave at a very high temperatures can be far more destructive than any winter storm uri. That's really important to remember. Some of the upgrades I've made really couldn't help me during a winter storm uri, so we need to have the energy. And also when a heat wave comes in, we have lots of solar. There'll be lots of sun, [11:39:49 AM] solar. There'll be lots of sun, so that is one good thing to do. I just, I, I like our socialist energy company and I think they do a lot of wonderful things. But I just think this new Peaker plants, gas plants is a mistake. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Mr. Nasser. >> Carol Smith. Then Shane Johnson, then Carolyn Croom, Mr. Johnson and miss krim, could you come? >> Good morning, chair pool and vice chair vela. And mayor is not here, but city council. My name is Lynn Smith. I actually go by Lynn and I'm in district one here in Austin this year marks 50 years that I've lived here in Austin. And I'm sorry to say, this is the first time I've ever gotten up and spoken to you all. So thank you for the opportunity. I've heard a lot of really hard work has gone into this plan, and I appreciate the work that you all have done, as [11:40:49 AM] work that you all have done, as well as for the resource plan. But I stand here representing my children, my grandchildren, the rest of my family, neighbors, many people who can't be here today to say we cannot add any more fossil fuel gas emitters. No more emissions in our climate. I, I urge the council to strongly consider all of the measures that we could be taking to reduce demand and all of the innovations that we could do to find better sources that won't continue to destroy our planet. I've seen so many changes in the 50 years I've been here from being able to ride around in a non air conditioned car all year [11:41:49 AM] non air conditioned car all year without a problem, to being able to swim in the local creeks that are now dry or polluted, to being able to breathe some fresh air. And now I see the haze hanging over the city. Have to limit my activity to before noon. A good portion of the year because of heat. I was here for that winter storm. Please protect the environment every way that we possibly can. Thank you, miss Smith. >> We appreciate you, miss Croom. >> Next is Shane Johnson, then Carolyn Croom, then Katherine. Either one. >> Come on down. Welcome, miss Croom. You have two minutes. >> Good morning. I'm asking everyone on this oversight committee to support a fully renewable energy plan, which avoids resorting to future fossil fuel plants. Austin energy committed a few years ago to not buy or build new fossil [11:42:51 AM] to not buy or build new fossil fuel power plants. So what happened to that commitment? There's no urgency to build new gas plants as council member Ryan alter has stated, there are plenty of options to produce and conserve energy. As detailed in the excellent proposed resource plan produced by ucs resource planning working working group. I have with me last month's utility bill insert Austin energy rights. We know our customers care about the environment and well-being of future generations. Austin energy continues to lead in sustainability with programs focused on renewable energy, energy efficiency and emerging technologies. End quote. Austin energy needs to rise to the occasion and continue to be the leaders they claim to be, and that we want them to be. My family is in the process of changing our gas appliances to [11:43:52 AM] changing our gas appliances to electric appliances, to reduce our use of fossil fuels, we want Austin energy to stick to its commitment to 100% renewable energy, so that our households energy comes from renewable sources. Our electric utilities should not go backwards to an old polluting technology. Do the right thing and insist that Austin energy continue to commit to no more fossil fuel plants and to recommit to a fully renewable energy plan. Thank you. Thank you, miss crane. >> Mr. Johnson, thank you. >> You have two minutes and call the next two after Mr. Johnson. >> We have Carolyn Croom, Catherine Elliott and Clarissa Martinez. >> And we heard from Carolyn. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. Yeah, I have some handouts I handed to them as well for the dais. We had a little trouble printing. So just three copies for now. We'll follow up with more. So we gathered petition signatures from around the city asking Austin residents how they feel [11:44:53 AM] Austin residents how they feel about the new resource plan update. And 1314 austinites signed our petition asking that we pursue a clean energy plan that does not build any new fossil fuel generation. So please only vote on a plan that does not commit to new gas plants right now. Don't have too long. So I'll just emphasize a couple of points. Austin Austin energy's own data shows we do not need to commit to new peakers in this resource plan update. We don't have a critical reliability need right now before we retire our current gas plants and new peakers won't address reliability for a few years. Even like miss martin was saying, we need to build batteries as soon as possible, not to mention our current peakers already provide the blackstart capabilities we need. One thing I want to highlight too is that even though the site is not confirmed, there are essentially only two sites that would really make sense to add [11:45:54 AM] would really make sense to add speakers at the decker site. That is literally, literally across the street from an elementary school and sand hill and Dell valley. Either one would double down on the legacy of polluting black and brown communities. We cannot make a decision that takes us back ten years, ten years backwards from our community's values and climate goals. A decision to approve this right now would be the nail in the coffin of ozone attainment. Even with selective catalytic reduction mentioned earlier. And this does not even take into account there's no modeling on the impact of ras resilience as a service that will proliferate. Small natural gas plants at critical load around the city, and how that's going to impact air quality load things like that. In other words, committing to new gas plants right now would be deeply anti equity. Please vote the right way. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Johnson. >> Next is Catherine Elliott. Then Clarissa Martinez, then Anna Scott. >> Do we have our speakers I'm Clarissa come on down Clarissa. [11:46:54 AM] Clarissa come on down Clarissa. Welcome. You have two minutes. Okay. Good morning. >> Chair pool vice chair. Vella, council members. My name is Clarissa Martinez. And I live in council district three. I'm here today because I oppose building new power plants and I'm worried about the future of my future children who won't have the same opportunity to experience the connection that I had to nature that fundamentally shaped who I am. Growing up, I spent every day playing in the lush forest near my house, and the beauty and peace that I found in it inspired a lifelong commitment to preserving the environment as a child, I never fully realized how privileged I was to be surrounded by this, but having access to a healthy environment should not be a privilege. It should be a basic right for everyone, and building new plants puts this at risk. Now, as a student at UT, I've come to understand how fragile that ride [11:47:57 AM] understand how fragile that ride is and how critical it is to take action and protect it. Like many of my peers, I'm deeply concerned about the future of energy issues and pollution in our city. As students and young people, we are overwhelmed by the worsening climate crisis. The burden of inheriting these challenges is heavy, and the recent election results only deepened the sense of hopelessness about climate policy. We can no longer rely on federal regulations to protect our communities from these polluting power plants. If they won't regulate it, you must. If they won't protect us, you must. That's why we're looking to you, our local leaders, to take bold, decisive action. Now, the burden of this crisis shouldn't fall solely on the shoulders of my generation and those that follow. We pride ourselves on being one of the most Progressive cities in Texas, yet we continue to support and fund projects that harm our community. We must focus on maintaining and expanding our commitment to carbon free energy rather than opening new polluting power plants. I urge you to prioritize the health, safety, and future of our community by supporting a [11:48:58 AM] of our community by supporting a full transition to clean, carbon free energy. Thank you so much. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. Next speaker. >> Thank you so much. My name is Anna Scott. I'm a resident of district nine. I'm a climate scientist, and I'm also a commissioner on the joint sustainability commission. Though these views today are my own, I'm really concerned about this resource plan on an economic basis. I am concerned that this is going to be saddling us with expensive legacy equipment. That's going to be quickly out of date and will cost us money and emissions that we're going to regret. I'm concerned we're going to be back here in ten years thinking we wish we would have done something differently. There's a number of details in this that I'm hearing about that really concern me. In particular, I have heard and don't know if this is true, but that we've ignored distributed resources and that we've assumed flat and not declining costs for renewables. Again, I double click on on that one, but I think this obscures the fact [11:49:59 AM] think this obscures the fact that if we take a step back and look at how we've come to this process in the past, historically we've done a terrible job in forecasting our energy futures. If you look at where we were ten years ago, we thought that we would have 20% growth over the next 15 years, primarily due to data centers. And we thought we'd have really expensive renewables instead. Today, we've had flat demand and we've had an order of magnitude drop in renewables. Today, battery packs are coming out of China at like $50 a kilowatt hour. This was unthinkable even just a few years ago. And indeed, renewable energy and battery developers are making money. Lazard reports that utility scale projects are experiencing internal rates of return of upwards of 20%, including a Corpus Christi project that's forecasted a return of nearly 30% over its lifetime. That sounds like a really great investment to me. These battery energy storage systems are also firming up our grid in the summer, and saving Texas ratepayers hundreds of [11:51:00 AM] Texas ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars today. We're not alone in facing this choice. Other utilities are facing this, and over 90% of new capacity installations are for renewable and batteries. I urge us to follow that trend and double down on cheap, reliable renewables. Thank you. >> Next speaker is Brenda bursts. Then Norma Cortez and then Rosana torres. >> If you all come down, that'd be great. >> Hello, pleasant. >> Good morning to each of you. >> I'm Brenda burgess, district nine. I do believe Austin energy, our community owned teamwork utility company, has the capability to make a decision, especially when recognizing the support in the community for us to all move forward together, not engaging in any future. You know, construction on something that [11:52:01 AM] construction on something that will use fossil fuels. No coal instead as a springboard, use Austin energy's gift to us in 2014, ten years ago, the use of solar credits to customers in order to move forward and focus on the positive. Because any other choice to build any new plants is risking the health of our environment and every citizen. And that health I refer to is not just of our health. Now, but also going on data that's proven internationally that the exposures that individuals have now shows up in their grandchildren to generations later. We have the choice to stop this. We've got cities that have made these transitions and have had remarkable results in Australia, Washington, tocopilla, Chile and they did it. Chile did this in [11:53:03 AM] they did it. Chile did this in such a short period of time. I mean, it's remarkable to hear the discussions in those communities. And I think that with the recognition of the support Austin energy has with this community, in the concessions we are willing to make, that we can move forward as a team and recognize better results using especially all the added data that we have from other communities on this path to help our world be healthy. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Next speaker. >> Next is Norma Cortez, then Rosana torres, then Susan Lippman. >> Well. >> Good morning. Oops. >> I lost my document. Just a second. >> Good morning, chair Powell, vice chair vela council members and mayor Watson. My name is Norma Cortez, and I'm a resident in district two. [11:54:03 AM] in district two. >> I'm here. I'm here today because I'm concerned about the future of energy issues in our city. Energy choices are made. Energy choices made in the Austin energy resource plan will determine whether the Austin community can meet our climate goals and reduce pollution. I'm asking each of you to support a fully carbon free and clean energy plan for our utility. We can't rely on federal regulations to make the changes we need to retire fayette and other fossil fuel plants, local action is needed more now than ever. We should not add another polluting power plant in Austin. As a participant in the stakeholder. As a stakeholder in the Austin energy resource plan, I learned that amongst the challenges faced in meeting the energy needs, the city is not doing enough to facilitate our transition in support of a clean energy plan, thus helping our [11:55:03 AM] energy plan, thus helping our communities, environment and to stop pollution affecting families. The stakeholder group was very clear in stressing to Austin energy that the most important challenges we faced were to have reliability and affordability of energy sources. We also stressed it was important to have environmental sustainability. There are still some challenges that need to be addressed, however, those are being worked through that said, it's relevant and important to face these challenges for our community. There are many residents such as myself, that are retired folks living on a fixed and limited income. We struggle to navigate making choices regarding paying our utility bills, paying paying for our medications. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak and supporting a full transition to clean, renewable, renewable energy. >> Thank you ma'am. Our next speaker, please. [11:56:04 AM] speaker, please. >> Rosanna torres, Susan Lippman, and then Jen Krieger. >> Good morning, chair pool. Vice chair. Vela. Mayor Watson and council members. I'm Roxie torres, an Austin resident. For 11 years. I live in district one with my five year old and partner. I'm a senior designer at rewiring America and an electrification nonprofit that helps Americans save money, improve health, and build the next generation of the clean energy workforce. >> I'm here today because I care deeply about Austin's goal to achieve 100% carbon free clean energy plan by 20 2035. Austin is a city where families thrive. Children grow up surrounded by nature, and residents take pride in their health. Forbes came out with a with a recent number where we were celebrated nationally as one of the healthiest cities, not by accident, but because we care about each other and the environment, which makes Austin special. But our health and our environment are at risk. Fossil [11:57:06 AM] environment are at risk. Fossil fuels pollute the air we breathe inside our homes and across the city. I think of my child breathing air in a home with a gas stove, each meal cooked on gas, exposes children to harmful chemicals, increasing the risk of asthma to up to 42%. Beyond our homes, fossil fuel pollutes and pollution is in our air and contributes to 350,000 premature deaths in the us every year. I can send your references to all these numbers. We're a city that values healthy choices with some of the lowest smoking rates in the country. Shouldn't we also protect our air from pollutants as harmful as secondhand smoke? Shouldn't we be able to choose clean, safe energy that reflects our community values? We have all the clean energy solutions we need to replace gas plants. If we're still considering Peaker plants, we're not pushing hard enough for the clean, healthy, healthier future. Austin deserves. Imagine Austin as one of the healthiest cities in America and a national leader [11:58:07 AM] in America and a national leader in clean energy, a beacon for a sustainable, healthy future. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you for your time. >> Next speaker, Susan Lippman, then Jen Krieger, then Kevin Fincher. >> Good morning, chair pool and vice chair Vila and the council members and mayor Watson. I'm my name is Susan Lippman. I live in south Austin near slaughter lane and in D five. And I've been an Austin resident since 1967. I'm here to ask that you pass a resource generation plan this year, and that we stay on a path to carbon free energy by 2035 and add no new fossil facilities. I want to appreciate both the council member alter's, my council member, Ryan, for being so specific and getting in the weeds, and Allison for asking for specific and goals and guidelines for our plan. [11:59:10 AM] and guidelines for our plan. >> I want to emphasize, as others have, that I see a powerful downward trend in the renewable resources that we need. The solar and the batteries. I've emailed all of you yesterday with links and data about that battery storage down 80%, solar power reliably free during sunny parts of the day for much of the year. Pretty much everywhere. As predicted by a Bloomberg analyst in the fifth. I could say much more about that, but other people have done it too. In the 57 years that I've lived in this part of Texas, I've seen droughts, fires and floods, and I survived winter storm uri. We should remember not only that, we had a terrible power failure, but that winter storm uri is a manifestation of the extreme weather, the extreme cold, as well as the extreme heat that climate change generates. And so now we start to see planetary [12:00:10 PM] now we start to see planetary boundaries starting to destabilize. Austin must do its fair share of transitioning off of fossil fuels. If we don't, do we expect other cities and countries to take up the slack for us? We have a one sentence. We have an urgent moral duty to live up to our part of this doable challenge. Thank you. Thank you. >> Next speaker I don't think Jen Krieger is here. >> So Kevin Fincher and then David Levesque, and then Matt creel. >> If your name's been called, please come down to the front so you're ready to go. Welcome, sir. You have two minutes. >> Good morning. Chair pool, vice chair, vla, mayor and committee members. My name is Kevin Fincher. I'm the CEO and president of the Austin regional manufacturers association. I am a district eight resident, but I represent a constituency of individuals that are in all districts. Manufacturing is a significant generator of middle income jobs in the backbone of the American economy. In the [12:01:13 PM] the American economy. In the Austin Travis county area, we have over 2200 manufacturers that employ over 72,000 employees at an average wage of $126,000. It is imperative that Austin adopt a plan for reliable, clean, dispatchable energy to support this growing economy. Austin is at the forefront of manufacturing innovation, from semiconductors to evs and to aerospace. We can also include modular nuclear reactor manufacturing to that list. We have a manufacturer in Austin that is currently manufacturing these. This new technology. So recent technological, technological advances and a reassessment of nuclear as a clean source of energy has ignited significant investment and an advancement. Most recently, the bipartisan passage of the federal advance act has shown the commitment to advancing nuclear as a clean, reliable source of energy under the existing 2030 plan, Austin energy is prohibited from exploring, and I quote any additional nuclear power generation resources, unquote, under the proposed 2035 plan, [12:02:14 PM] under the proposed 2035 plan, that prohibition has been eliminated, and we support the new plan as a pathway as we move towards new, cleaner technology and allow a runway for energy to adopt these newer technologies. Thank you for your time. Have a good day. >> Thank you. Sir. Next speaker I see a prop coming up here. Looks like a solar panel. Can you all see behind that? Okay, you have two minutes, sir. Welcome. >> Good morning, fellow citizens. I'm David from safari. I'd like to introduce you to the world's first all in one solar panel made right here in Austin. Safari is cutting the cost of rooftop solar by more than 20%. And over the next few weeks, we have an opportunity to make a decision that will improve our economy, help thousands of families, and help Austin keep Austin clean for example, portfolio 16 and Austin energy's resource plan calls for 860mw of local solar. This would generate [12:03:16 PM] local solar. This would generate approximately $1.7 billion in installation revenue to local solar companies, with 50% of that paid for by federal incentives. Approximately 100 new installation, maintenance, and manufacturing jobs would be created. Electricity prices for all Austin electricity prices for all Austin customers would be held under the 2023 state of Texas low income customer electricity burden of 5%. By reducing our four cp demand on ercot. Furthermore, the $450 million that Austin residents spend on dirty power would be reduced, and most importantly, the air we breathe will be cleaner for generations to come. Today, I'm asking city council to consider economic development, clean air, and international leadership as a position as a clean city in their decision today, I'm asking you to be the heroes that our children need. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, sir. >> Next is Matt creel. And then [12:04:17 PM] >> Next is Matt creel. And then Hayden Baggett. >> Mayor. Mayor. Pro tem council members, thank you for your time. My name is Matt Creola with opportunity Austin. I'm here to support the resource and generation plan opportunity Austin supports investments in infrastructure that enhance the efficiency and reliability of services for commercial and residential customers. We believe governments should invest in electricity projects that prioritize the reliability of our grid, while keeping costs low for customers. Everyone here understands the importance of reliability in our electric services and the improvements. Austin energy is proposing are vital for the future of our region. We appreciate the work that has gone into this balanced plan and encourage you to approve it. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you so much. Next speaker, Hayden Baggett. >> And then Matt Weldon, and then David, Ron, chair pool. >> Mayor Watson council members, thank you for the opportunity to [12:05:17 PM] thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Hayden Baggett. I work for the coalition for clean, affordable, reliable energy, and I'm also a district nine resident. Let me start by saying the stakeholder process was engaging, informative and the end product is reflective of the group's diverse values. Therefore, I'm asking you to support the generation toolkit that Austin energy presented to you today. This resource plan will prioritize a healthy local generation mix and transmission investments to fulfill four critical missions for the utility. First, this plan will curb existing affordability concerns by leveraging local dispatchable generation. This generation, in the form of both battery storage and low capacity factor Peaker units, will offset load zone price separation. Added transmission import capacity will also reduce congestion costs. Second, the new resource generation plan will improve service reliability by increasing our local generation profile and transmission infrastructure. Local peakers will provide blackstart capability, voltage [12:06:19 PM] blackstart capability, voltage support and prevent forced outages. Third, this generation plan will result in a more equitable outcome for all electric customers. The lens of energy is trade offs, and rather than fixating on a linear path to 100% carbon free, this plan will tackle reliability, affordability and reduce emissions relative to where we are today. The last reason is why I call this proposal the Austin energy insurance plan. This plan will stabilize Austin energy's financial standing and thus improve its long term viability. This plan will also provide safeguards as Austin energy exits fe. It portfolio modeling shows that plans without a combination of local dispatchable generation result in significant liquidity risks. This plan, however, will make the necessary investments to preserve public power in Austin. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Next speaker, Matt Weldon. >> Then David Ryan, then zo Cole. >> Good morning. [12:07:21 PM] >> Good morning. >> My name is Matthew Weldon. I live in council district six. I've raised three boys in Austin over 26 years, have an educational background in chemical engineering, and am very sensitized to climate change effects from observations from my childhood home in Colorado at the headwaters of the Rio grande, I served a term on the PUC where I was a lead cheerleader of the policy that became reach reduce emissions affordably for climate health. I bring that initiative up in large part to congratulate you and Austin energy for its execution and for years of success. I posit that this program is the largest, most cost efficient and effective emission reduction program in Texas. I enjoy saying that, but it's more a reflection of how little we're trying in Texas and the fact that we have very limited control over the fayette power plant. Less than 50% of it is under our influence. I additionally posit that reach has no identifiable downsides to the state of Texas, but delivers a list of benefits in terms of health, environment, and economic positives for Texas [12:08:23 PM] economic positives for Texas based energy production. Of all kinds. And I say that more for the benefit of others outside this room. But it is relevant here because portfolio discussions this year are focused on three broad metrics net present value and then seemingly a part emissions that are associated with a given portfolio as a variable to capture sustainable sustainability concerns. And an assessment of lost load to capture reliability. Creating metrics of evaluation is a key work of the council. Assigning dollar values to emissions and loss load is easily done and using only the data from Austin energy and EPA figures for social costs and carbon subsidy rates paid by the state of Texas to mitigate nox and the significant. And I would posit, market distorting figure that the PUC places on lost load. You can put all the scenarios on a common cost rubric and if you do so, it shows that the portfolio is 16 through 17. Are your best [12:09:24 PM] is 16 through 17. Are your best options. Renewable energy makes sense as an investment. Thank you for your attention. >> Appreciate you next speaker and David, Ron and zo call then mariama ba very good. Welcome. >> Thank you. Good afternoon chair pool. Vice chair vela, mayor Watson and council members. My name is David Ron. I live in council district five. I'm a local musician and improviser. I'm a native austinite and this is my first time speaking here at city hall. So I'm very excited to be here. I'm here because I'm concerned about keeping Austin a livable city. I was born here in Austin 35 years ago, when the number of days over 100°f was 17 days. Last year, the number of days over 100°f was 80 days. So that's 1 in 5 days. Last year it was over 100. We're now living in a time where my main activity in Summers is going to Barton springs, or hunkering down inside, or in the winter. It's being scared that a crazy storm [12:10:25 PM] being scared that a crazy storm will come in and that I'll lose my power. So I'm very worried that if Austin keeps getting hotter or the weather gets more erratic, I will have to leave, which I don't want to do. My parents still live here. My cat and my girlfriend still live here, and Austin is my home. So to stop temperatures from increasing, we have to stop emitting fossil fuels, building new Peaker natural gas plants would lock us into continuing our emissions for carbon, and would go against our current climate plans of having no new fossil fuel generation. Additionally, I just wanted to bring up the fayette coal plant. I know we're all aware of how sticky and difficult that situation is, and I applaud you and can encourage you to continue working on that. I know it's very difficult, but it is 80% of Austin energy's carbon emissions and uses 5 billion gallons of water a year. While we're in a critical drought, I urge you to push Austin energy to create a resource plan and approve one that focuses on clean, renewable energy, battery storage, and phasing out fossil fuels. Thank you so much for the [12:11:27 PM] fuels. Thank you so much for the work you do, and thank you for your time. >> Thank you. Next speaker. >> Zo called and mariama ba then Haley Lockett. >> Hi there. Good morning. My name is zo call and I'm a UT student currently studying government and sustainability studies and smart cities. And I reside in district nine. I'm skipping my university classes today to ask you to fully support and prioritize a forceful commitment to advancing carbon neutrality in Austin, which naturally requires rejecting proposals that further entrench Austin in fossil fuel politics and power. Given the 2035 plan, it is imperative that the city of Austin take every opportunity to advance renewable energy production and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially through improvements in the transportation, energy and waste sectors. Any failure to take advantage of such opportunities will greatly hinder the city from achieving its carbon neutrality goal. Even more, though, doubling down on fossil fuel power could hinder the city from being energy secure, fossil fuel energy has proven unreliable, unreliable in many circumstances, like during [12:12:28 PM] many circumstances, like during the winter storms when some terrestrial plants froze over and were unable to function, or during recent hurricanes when offshore extraction temporarily shut off in both of these situations, renewable energy played a key role in helping meet energy demand, thus investing in the advancement of alternative energy production methods rather than fossil fuel sources becomes essential for reaching a more secure energy landscape in a continually changing climate. Furthermore, though it is crucial that Austin take every opportunity to reject new fossil fuel energy infrastructure proposals, such energy sources would massively inhibit the possibility for, and likely result in the postponing of Austin's 2035 carbon neutrality goal. This very ambitious goal must be met with equally ambitious efforts, Austin does not need to be added to the list of cities that fail to meet their climate goals, because of a lack of commitment and sufficient planning, Austin is ideally positioned to achieve resilience in its future. As long as truly smart, prudent and thoughtful decisions are made in the present. Thank you for your attention. [12:13:28 PM] attention. >> Thank you so much. Next speaker. Welcome. >> Good afternoon, everyone and council members. My name is mariama ba. I'm a student at the university of Texas at Austin, and I'm in council district nine. I'm here today to state my concerns and hope for the future. As a college student and human rights advocate, I feel a profound responsibility towards shaping the future that prioritizes the health and well-being of both the environment and young children who will inherit this Earth. That's why I believe the city of Austin must fully commit to adopting clean energy. Clean energy is a proven pathway towards sustainability. Countries like Denmark and Germany highlight this success. Denmark gets nearly half of its half of its electricity from sorry, from wind power and Germany showcases the solar [12:14:30 PM] Germany showcases the solar energy can thrive even in less sunny climates. These nations have reduced carbon emissions, created green jobs and enhanced energy Independence. It's long overdue to shut down coal plants as Texans, we have unparalleled access to renewable resources like wind and solar. These resources are abundant, reliable and capable of meeting our energy demands while reducing harmful emissions that contribute to climate change and health issues. Research consistently shows that fossil fuel pollution disproportionately harms young children, leading to higher rates of asthma and developmental challenges. I can't imagine a future where we knowingly choose to subject our young and most vulnerable to these avoidable damages, vote for clean energy, transition into clean energy is not just a technical decision. It's a profound moral obligation. I assume that some of you all have children, nieces, nephews and even grandchildren. They deserve [12:15:31 PM] even grandchildren. They deserve better by embracing clean energy. We protect our environment, safeguard our health, and create a future for our youths. Thank you so much. Vote for clean energy. >> Our next speaker, please. >> Next is Haley Lockett. Then Ben sutterby, then Delilah Ramirez. >> Good afternoon. My name is Haley Lockett and I'm the current campus organizer at moveon and a senior at the university of Texas. >> I speak to you today as a representative of the student body that couldn't be here today, as well as a resident of district nine. It is an honor to stand before you as we unite for clean energy. I urge you to support a carbon free and energy and clean energy strategy that reflects the needs and values of the citizens that you represent. The climate crisis is no longer a distant threat. It is here now. We cannot afford to delay the transition to renewable energy anymore. Austinites are already bearing the big impact and cost of past inactions, including the [12:16:32 PM] of past inactions, including the polluted air and impacts of the warming climate. Building a new methane gas plant will only with only vague promises of transitioning to green hydrogen. Another source of air pollution is not the path forward. We must invest in solutions that prioritize health and sustainability for our collective futures. The extreme weather makes it challenging for many Texans to work and live comfortably. As you can tell from my voice, I've had a cold the past couple of days and I've experienced firsthand how poor air quality worsened by pollution can affect the health of not only myself, but many others, that we care about. The air quality for the past week has been rated fair, defined by the acu weather as generally acceptable for some. Why should austinites be subjected to fair air quality when we can do something to make it excellent? Adding another polluting power plant in east Austin should not [12:17:32 PM] plant in east Austin should not be a consideration today. Climate change is driving up electricity bills every summer as rising temperatures demand more cooling costs that I, along with many other residents of Austin, feel strongly about. My past summer bill was nearly $600. Thank you. Vote for clean energy. Thank you, thank you, Mr. City. >> You have two minutes. Welcome. >> Hi, my name is Ben sutterby. >> I'm speaking on behalf of myself. Although I'm a proud d4 resident, a proud member of ac 1624. I'm here to tell y'all basically what I mentioned at the auc. I've been going to those meetings for months now. I mentioned last night the political will, which is on display here today. The political will in our community is for major investments in renewable generation, storage, for it to be union built and run. That's where the political will is. There is not political will for, you know, generation based on burning things. People [12:18:33 PM] based on burning things. People don't want that. So there was a lot of discussion last night about the about the Peaker plants. And I understand that there's lots of concern about the financial implications of when demand is spiking high, the costs. And I think we need to ask more questions about some other options that exist for addressing those types of vulnerabilities and adding some more stability, particularly on things that I haven't heard much conversation about. Large scale geothermal storage. We've talked about a pilot plant for generation, but what about storage in that in that sense, storage doesn't just have to be batteries, although that should be a great part of our mix. If we deploy that right now and do a major investment in that, we can have allow ourselves some more time to see what's happening down the road and not have to implement any kind of fossil fuel technologies until we see what the landscape is on [12:19:33 PM] we see what the landscape is on technology, and especially at the federal level, for regulatory and financial incentives. One of the benefits that were mentioned last night and today about these, these Peaker gas plants is the blackstart you know, that they can start when the grid is completely down. But I haven't seen people talk about that. Batteries and other types of green storage have that same ability. They have the ability to do that. And not only that, they have the ability to accept load when those scenarios. >> Appreciate you being here. Our next speaker, please. >> Delilah Ramirez, Paul Robbins, and then Ryan Pollack. >> Mr. Robbins, feel free to come on down to the front row. Thank you. >> Good afternoon. My name is Delilah Ramirez. I live in district nine. I'm a government, and international relations double major at UT Austin. I'm here with the hopeful knowledge that you all understand the urgency of requisite and producing any possible tangible and consequential change in our approach to climate efforts as we head into the next few years. [12:20:34 PM] we head into the next few years. I'm not here to comment extensively on the state of national affairs right now, but we all know that a fossil fuel and oil business executive and CEO is now our potential new national energy secretary. This should give a clear image on what the future of national energy regulation policy is going to look like as we progress through the next four years. I'm here to remind you of the responsibility that you have taken on to protect this city from hostile and regressive policy that fundamentally impacts our most vulnerable communities. It's well established in environmental science and public health research fields that low income racial minority communities disproportionately bear the burden of the effects of carbon pollution and climate change. They're the first ones likely to be met with the emissions led off by the nearest power plant. They're the first ones to have their lives devastated by extreme climate events that we've seen, and they're the last ones to receive the resources necessary for them to be able to [12:21:34 PM] necessary for them to be able to survive these events. I've heard and I've watched and I've felt for many of you and those adjacent to you, the pride that this council and our mayor takes in suing against and fighting against and defying a very Republican state legislature that we have and I share that same pride as well. I know that the EPA rules on carbon emissions earlier in April lit a fire under arco. And they were a daily reminder of just how much of a burden that fire is on the city. Unfortunately, Austin energy is going to likely see a reprieve of that pressure as we move forward and the new administration. Do not accept this reprieve. >> Thank you so much. >> Do not remain complacent in this. >> Thank you. Next speaker Mr. Robbins. >> Last three speakers are Paul Robbins, Ryan Pollack, and Austin wells. >> Welcome, Mr. Robbins. >> Council, you're being asked to agree to a generation plan that adds new natural gas capacity. While an effective [12:22:35 PM] capacity. While an effective energy efficiency measure is ignored. The resource management commission recently asked council to approve something that Austin energy repeatedly ignored. Heat pump water heaters in the new energy code. Austin energy has repeatedly been averse to this. Understand that conventional electric resistance water heating is profoundly expensive to operate, and it's profoundly inefficient. In the last ten years, the utility has added about 68,000, all electric water heaters, which adds about $14 million a year in costs and about 24 cumulative peak megawatts of summer demand. If these if these heat pump water heaters had been installed while [12:23:38 PM] heaters had been installed while I and other commission members brought this up during the 2024 code revisions, we were told by the city that what we proposed was illegal. However, the state of California has been doing this illegal activity for two years. So I don't get it. So in essence, I am asking you to please consider the requirement for heat pump water heaters in the new energy code code to be an essential issue in the generation plan discussions. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Robbins. Next speaker Mr. Pollack, welcome. You have two minutes. >> Afternoon, y'all. >> Ryan Pollack, district nine resident here representing the international brotherhood of electrical workers. We [12:24:38 PM] electrical workers. We appreciate our inclusion in the stakeholder meetings. We do believe that the prioritized prioritization of austinites needs as a stakeholders, determine them to be as accurate, and we support them fully. Those priorities are, in descending order, reliable, affordable and carbon free. We would also add, as a community priority above those three, Austin energy status as a municipally owned public utility. That being said, we're not yet confident that the enhanced geothermal systems and their potential with respect to the resource generation plan has received due consideration. This summer, I was invited to join the department of energy's geode symposium to create a roadmap for the viability of the recent advances in drilling tech and enhanced geothermal methods. Last month, I visited the sage geode sage geosystems pilot site in Christine, Texas, and like pretty much everyone else, I've been learning a lot about geothermal in a very short amount of time because of how quickly this is advancing. I can't express enough how incredible the potential of [12:25:38 PM] incredible the potential of these systems are for energy storage. The amount of questions it answers for with respect to renewables, transitioning workers away from the oil and gas industry, and much more. In speaking with engineers, there's no hesitation in their confidence that the current pilot projects will be successful in their capability of doing the things that they theorize they'll be able to do. This stuff is only a couple of years away from being deployed at scale, and I think we're all going to be shocked at how fast it will scale. It should, in the near future be cost competitive with natural gas. Without gas's volatile pricing or regulation. We'd love to discuss this further with both Austin energy and council, and we're all ears to the hurdles that may still be in place. And we want to affirm that ibew, ibew is dedicated to the priorities I mentioned, but we're not satisfied that geothermal has received the consideration. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. And I think this is our last speaker is Austin wells. Mr. Wells, welcome. You have the clear distinction of bringing us home. You have two minutes, sir. >> Hi, there. Yeah, my name is [12:26:39 PM] >> Hi, there. Yeah, my name is Austin wells. I'm a student representative at ACC. Good morning to all of you. All afternoon. But yeah, I'm here today to speak about some climate initiatives. So in September 2021, I know the city council adopted the Austin climate equity plan. The city made a groundbreaking promise to our residents to achieve net zero emissions by 2040. This pledge was not just a vision, but a responsibility to protect the health of our community, the sustainability of our planet, and the future of our children. However, the decision to build a methane power plant system directly contradicts to that promise. Methane, while often labeled as natural gas, is neither clean nor sustainable. It is 2525 times more potent than carbon monoxide, and as a greenhouse gas, it leaks throughout its production and use cycle, undermining any claims of climate benefits. The city may lead the state in clean energy. However, investing in a methane plant today locks our community into decades of fossil [12:27:40 PM] community into decades of fossil fuel dependance when we should be transitioning to exclusively renewable energy sources. As a student leader, I see firsthand the passion my peers at ACC and beyond have for protecting the environment. We are the generation inheriting the consequences of today's decisions and we are determined to create a future that prioritizes sustainability and equity across our campuses. Students are leading cleanups, advocacy, advocating for renewable energy, and championing the climate justice movement because we believe in a clean, livable planet for all, and we want to see Austin stand as a model of environmental responsibility that reflects our values and our aspirations. Rather than investing in outdated energy practices, I urge the council to embrace sustainable solutions. This includes investing in renewable energy, improving energy efficiency and supporting community driven solar initiatives. With all that said, if a methane power plant were to be put next to ACC, we would be very much against it and to put it next to an elementary school [12:28:43 PM] it next to an elementary school where those students don't have the voice that college students have is very wrong. >> Thank you so much. We appreciate you being here today. Are there any other speakers? Miss Everhart? Okay, great. >> That concludes our speakers. >> Thank you so much. Okay. We're going to go back up for additional questions. I have council member Fuentes, then council member harper-madison and council member Ellis. >> Thank you. If we can put up the slide deck online, I want to reference the slide about trade offs. Under normal conditions between the three portfolios that are referenced in the presentation. I don't know what slide. Oh, slide 35 is the number on it. >> Does everybody have access to the slides from the auc presentation last night. So I think that's what you're going to be talking about is that right. >> I think this is from today's presentation. Okay. >> Very good. Thank you. We didn't have the other information previously. Thanks. Proceed, please. [12:29:45 PM] Proceed, please. >> It's just the trade offs under normal conditions. I want to walk through that particular slide. As that's getting pulled up. I just wanted to ask a clarifying question. Is it 23? There we go. Yes. That's it. Thank you. I just want to understand, if we were to build new Peaker plants, is my understanding that ercot operators could ask us to use them on demand, and that we would have to comply at that order. Is that right? >> So when you have generation in the market, you decide when it runs. It's really part of the market is it's what's what's most efficient. Which units run first. Right. Clean energy all first. And then Peaker units right. Then use some baseload generation and then peakers you [12:30:46 PM] generation and then peakers you use kind of as a last resort. It's in their name, right? Ercot would only tell us to turn on the unit if there was a, a reliability concern that is right there happening right at the moment. And the unit could actually solve it. They're running an analysis in the background, as are we, to determine whether or not that's the, the saving the saving item right there. And that's what we were talking about earlier. We came, we came. They required us to turn the units on. Once in the summer of 2023. But it's not that ercot gets to decide when the units run. It's really a market driven function. >> Okay, but last year, ercot asked us to turn on one of our generation generators, and we complied. So that is, you know, if we build new peakers, I just want to make sure we're all understanding that is out there and that it has happened. In fact, you just said last year it happened and that it could potentially happen with these new peakers it it happened because we didn't have sufficient voltage support in [12:31:46 PM] sufficient voltage support in our local service territory. >> And so if we built new units and we combined that with the battery storage and all the demand side management, we're looking to meet all of our needs under a myriad of conditions.so that that wouldn't be the case, right? We'd be in a situation where we're in control of providing the cleanest possible energy, and then these speakers are only used as a last resort when the demand is the highest. That's what we mean when we say as necessary. >> Okay, I thank you for clarifying because you're saying to meet our own local demand. So for this slide, just walk me through. I want to understand you mentioned that with the three portfolios portfolio 18, 14 and 19, what the savings would be in the cost. So if we went with portfolio 18, which is the full that is the battery, the local storage, then that would be about 9.4 billion. But if we went with portfolio 14, that's about 9.1 billion. And [12:32:47 PM] that's about 9.1 billion. And portfolio 14 is the one with the speakers. So that would save us 300 million in net costs between those two portfolio. >> So the intent of this slide is really to talk about the trade offs that come with all the different technologies. And there's a lot of different ways. Right. This is just an example of numbers of quantities. Right. The plan doesn't get very specific. And say build this amount in this year or anything like that. This just shows a relative when you're keeping a lot of things consistent. This shows that there are trade offs between cost and emissions and reliability risk. >> Yes, absolutely. And I think this is helpful in making this this decision because we're being asked to sign off on whether or not to include speakers as a tool. That's right. In meeting our goals and having a better understanding of the trade off with this specific tool is important. So here you're saying if we add the speakers, we would save on costs. But the other thing I want to [12:33:48 PM] But the other thing I want to draw our attention to is that same scenario we would go from a 6.2. Is this metric million metric tons? That's correct. To a 6.8 million metric tons in emissions. So if we're if one trade off is, it'll be cheaper and costs. On the flip side, we're also looking at point six more and million metric tons of emissions. Can you provide more insight as to what that entails? >> Yeah. So what this what this looks like is saying that to put it into relative perspective today, our portfolio produces between two and a half to 3 million metric tons per year. And so if we were to take our existing portfolios and take those numbers and, you know, and continue on the current path, then you multiply that by ten. And so say 30 million metric tons. And what we're saying here [12:34:48 PM] tons. And what we're saying here is that as you move forward and you start to put in additional other local solutions, you can come out with a cleaner outcome. And so this is, you know, a much smaller six point. I know it looks like a lot here, but if you put it in relative to where we stand today, six point, you know, in the 6 or 7 million metric ton range is a much smaller quantity. >> And so I should add context. The reason why I'm asking this, particularly honing in on this, is that we know that one of the locations that these speakers may be located is in sand hill. Sand hill is in district two. So when we're talking about adding point 8 million metric tons to an area where these peakers will be generated, I'm specifically concerned about the surrounding community. I have neighborhoods within three miles of where these Peaker plants could be located. And I know you all have mentioned you have not selected a location. It could be at or in district one. It could be a totally different location, but just under fully understanding. And for my colleagues reference what the impact it would be to add this tool to our portfolio. [12:35:50 PM] add this tool to our portfolio. I just want to hone in on what does it mean when we add 0.8 more million metric tons with these plants? >> Yeah. So we didn't model a particular location. That's not something that comes into play in this level of the analysis. This is not from a particular plant in any one place. This is saying that the portfolio that Austin energy could look at in the future, one of the ones that was modeled, would result over ten years in 6 to 7 million metric tons. And what I want to point out, that's really critical here is that if you look at the plant and its emissions on its own, then you're really kind of missing the bigger picture. And I think we need we all need to take a look at the more holistic picture of what this could enable. Essentially, we are being asked in the electricity sector to do more and more with supporting the needs of the community when it comes to data automation, transportation, more electric vehicles. We're talking about things like the upcoming project connect needs all things [12:36:50 PM] project connect needs all things that benefit our community and help for a cleaner outcome. So we've got to look at it holistically, and if we're going to be able to reach those rising energy needs in addition to additional population growth, we need to be able to respond to provide the cleanest energy sources possible. And so, you know, it comes with a balance of looking at things holistically. And if I could tell you that we could meet all of those needs, then than I would if I could tell you, we could just do it with existing tools, with our existing plan. We would, but we don't see that as being feasible given the technologies that are available to us today. We need to do more. We need to do more quickly. We need to do more now. We frankly, we needed to do it yesterday and I'm there with you on that. >> And I think, you know, I think it was referenced earlier. I agree with what everything you've laid out here with the one tool in your tool kit being the Peaker plants as an area of concern. And so that's why I'm really honing in on this [12:37:51 PM] really honing in on this specific detail. And it was one that you all have also highlighted for us in this presentation. And I want to understand, you know, certainly want to get us going in meeting our 2035 goal. What is the urgency in us having this tool activated or providing the authority to explore this tool of adding Peaker plants into our portfolio? What is the urgency there of having that decision before the end of the year? >> We really need to take action. The problem we have is multifaceted, right? And it's the local reliability concerns. It's the congestion cost. And frankly, it's the continuation of having high emissions projects in our portfolio that they stand in our way of our clean energy goals. So we need to make sure we can meet the community's needs of balancing affordability, reliability and environmental sustainability. And we need to do it in an equitable way. The values and the objectives in the plan set that path forward, and we can't wait to take action because we [12:38:52 PM] wait to take action because we know that we're going into a time of continued and rising energy needs. So we need to address the problems we have today, prepare for the future, and do it in a in a cleaner way than we're doing it today. I hear you on this. >> I'm struggling with understanding the Peaker component on it and how that that particular tool strategy helps us. And having that decision made before and actually having this decision made within the next three weeks, the other in my concerns are here. I want to outline my concerns for my colleagues. One, there is the legislative regulatory risk. We are going we're about to have, you know, new leaders at the federal administration. We don't know what that looks like. We don't know how that will potentially impact how we regulate here locally. So I'm concerned about that. Two, I'm concerned about the impact to our community and the surrounding individuals who would live next to wherever [12:39:53 PM] would live next to wherever these Peaker plants are located. And the third component is that we do lose control by having these Peaker plants in our generation portfolio. You know, we mentioned earlier that ercot last year asked us to generate and we did. And that was for a local supply issue. But what's to say that that authority and oversight can extend to other instances? We don't know because we are entering into an unknown regulatory period. And as you've highlighted, there are a number of new energy technologies and sources with ai, with data centers happening all across our state. So those are where my concerns are with this potential proposal. I respect and will be looking at the plan that you all propose later this month. But the Peaker plant, as a tool is a concern to me. >> Yeah, I understand your your views and I think it is. It's a complex problem that we have to collectively solve. I would [12:40:53 PM] collectively solve. I would encourage you to also think about the fact that when we if we build something, then we have control over it. We get to say how much it runs. We get to put the guardrails on it. There's a need that is being shown in the market right now. If we don't build it, someone else will, and then we don't have controls over how that's run and how it's affecting the environment in the community. If we don't take action now, then we won't be able to enable more electrification and, and, you know, more electric vehicles and electric appliances. We want to holistically look at how we can make the community a better community. And the tools that we're asking to allow in the toolbox really help us look at this holistic set of values and objectives as to as the community helped us understand that are so important to them, and energy equity is a really important component of that as well, and it's baked into every aspect of the plan. I think that I don't want to be standing here before you in 2027, in the [12:41:54 PM] before you in 2027, in the middle of a heat wave, saying, yeah, we are facing local outages because we didn't take action with the tools and the technologies that were available to us. I think that some of these, these technologies are modular. They're small. They end up being cleaner. And you can it's a decision that is a smart one to make. Now. And I think that that looking taking a step back and looking at the big picture really helps to get us there. Thank you. >> And I yes I agree with what you're saying. The issue is and I think we're all for us taking action. You know, we want to double down on our efforts with solar, with battery storage, with demand response management, all of those things. But one of the taking action of the tools would add, you know, natural gas plants, even though they're smaller and they're more flexible and they're dispatchable, and we can put safeguards and we can put, you [12:42:54 PM] safeguards and we can put, you know, key milestones to help control is that at the end of the day, this would have an impact to our community, to the surrounding community, wherever they're located. And I want to have a really good understanding of what that looks like. And I want to also think through, is this the right approach and do we have to decide at this within the next three weeks, when so much is still unknown? We don't. We have to ask for permission to retire certain generations and so, you know, there's still that risk as well from bringing on new natural gas plants. Thank you. >> And I just want to remind all of you that a vote on a plan in the next three weeks does not give us permission to go build anything, anything we were to build. We'd have to come back to you for approval. So this is really just setting the policy of which paths we can consider going forward. Thank you. >> Thank you. Is council member harper-madison here? If not, I'll come back to her. Is she on? There you are. I was I can [12:43:56 PM] on? There you are. I was I can see you now. Yeah, I was looking for you on the dais. There you are. >> Thank you, I appreciate it. I just want to first acknowledge that I really appreciate the dialog that's taking place so far, both by my colleagues and representatives for Austin energy and all the all the public that came out to express their concerns and care for our environment and our fair city. This is a complex discussion. I think at the end of the day, we all have our environment and quality of life at the top of mind. I really appreciate the last commentary from Austin energy clarifying. Excuse me about the levels of control we can implement, and most especially appreciate the commentary around energy equity. And so with that, I think my colleagues have expressed most of my concerns. I very much [12:44:56 PM] of my concerns. I very much appreciate what's been expressed as concerns and questions and look forward to the continued dialog. So I'll just keep it to commentary. More than questions. I one. Want to thank a special thanks. Big thanks to district one residents and our community leaders who participated in the feedback and engagement around the next gen plan. It's super important. And if you know there wasn't another topic you know, we get so tied up in talking about zoning cases and some of the other what feels pressing. But this is you know, evergreen literally, this is you know, we're talking about generations and generations of impact and perpetuity. So I want to also recognize, I appreciate that my colleagues made mention and that Austin energy made mention in some of our public testimony, made mention about considerations around equity. And, you know, where historically energy production takes place. You know, we definitely can't ignore what our [12:45:57 PM] definitely can't ignore what our historic impact has been on communities of color and lower moderate means. I think the impacts have been reduced with new technology and new demand strategies. But the old approach of placing power generation and communities of color and lesser means is not lost on anybody participating in this discussion. As a caveat to that, I just want to make certain that we take the opportunity to highlight how frequently the question of equity and care and concern for communities of color and low or lesser means has come up during the course of this conversation. Because I do frankly feel like oftentimes it's forgotten and there's some cherry picking that goes on when we make sure to highlight those concerns. So I hope we can get some more consistency across the board with policy making and with contributions from our [12:46:58 PM] with contributions from our communities, our expert staff and researchers. They've already referenced to us the existing power line infrastructure, the location of other generating assets and how that will likely direct where any generation will go. And this is significant for communities like mine in northeast Austin that frankly, still sit in the shadow of the power plant. I want to make sure to highlight. Also, Austin energy made mention of shortages and how that how those impacts are implicated during extreme heat, inclement concerns and how that affects people of lower lesser means. Young folks, old folks in northeast Austin and recognize that the ability to generate enough power has direct impacts on something that we're working very hard on and have been for the last six years. And we were able to achieve something that hadn't been [12:47:59 PM] something that hadn't been achieved before. We had the opportunity. The district one team and our partners over at Travis county, we've been working closely with them for going on two years to be able to establish this interlocal agreement between the two entities. And, you know, with the work that we're doing with our friends over at Travis county, we've been able to establish the northeast planning district, which will be a playbook that, you know, like our concerns around the environment exist in perpetuity. And, you know, it's not lost on districts two and one that our communities, our are the most ripe for future development. And more roofs and more people and more need for energy. So I appreciate the use of the word holistic, and I also appreciate the use of sort of strong language in recognizing that those two things can both be true at the same time. I think the northeast planning district, for folks who aren't familiar, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to [12:49:00 PM] please feel free to reach out to team Dion. We're happy to elaborate. There's lots of information online about the northeast planning district. It's extraordinarily important for the future development of true east Austin. East of 183. It's a tool that's intended for our long term investments, just like this one that we're discussing today. And I'd like to make sure to see Austin energy staff really commit themselves to this collaborative approach and identify ways that their next gen planning aligns with those shared efforts as well, because it is critical and important. I, I, I think it's just as important to recognize how these considerations will increase our investments in demand management strategies like geothermal cooling systems that, frankly, are already in place in whisper valley. I, as a layperson, to discussions around energy production, thought I was asking a wild and crazy question when I brought up before my colleagues and at the dais [12:50:01 PM] colleagues and at the dais questions last year around geothermal cooling, and I'm just so happy to see pilot programs coming forward, I I'll give my team a little bit of credit, both as the result of us bringing forward the questions and frankly, as the result of the folks at Austin energy already having been diving into innovative strategies. And, you know, whisper valley is just down the road from the power plant, and they are experiencing a great deal of success with their geothermal energy production in the communities. And as those communities expand and as we're having the opportunity to work directly with habitat for humanity, for those expansions and putting real emphasis on true affordability that comes adjacent with environmental concerns and considerations, I think it's sort of the first of its kind. Us moving forward with both of those things being true at the same time. I want to make certain that we take the opportunity for Austin energy staff to come back with us on recommendations on how the [12:51:02 PM] recommendations on how the utility will pair any new power generation construction with serious and profound investments in the communities where they'll exist. And, frankly, adjacent to other development and revitalization considerations. It just makes sense to not be duplicative here. So I hope that, you know, this is a real integrated process where all parties are at the table. I will argue that if we are going to build new power generation and communities like d1 and like d2 communities, frankly, with a history of receiving the pollution and industry that other parts of Austin historically refused to accept, then we need to do so. We need to do more rather to offset those impacts, including with community benefits, mitigation and other infrastructure. True infrastructure investments to communities that have been [12:52:03 PM] communities that have been suffering with benign neglect and disrepair and frankly, been ignored historically, especially as we move towards those communities developing, we need to make certain that we make our impact felt on current residents and that we don't, that we don't give the appearance of only making investments for future residents, because that would just frankly, be a slap in the face. I hope that we improve the lives of those people who are already there today, and that will come tomorrow. I will not argue that our resiliency and affordability requirements do not demand new generation, but I will also say, frankly, that the math speaks for itself. So I leave us with, you know, I'll leave my commentary rather with a question for staff, which is can you please speak to some of these points that I've made today? As you see appropriate and share how you plan, how you all plan to address them and [12:53:05 PM] all plan to address them and very explicitly collaborate within the northeast planning district considerations. >> Yes. Council member. Thank you. You started talking at length about energy equity, and I appreciate your view because you raised up a number of different ways that that our decisions impact the equity and the most vulnerable of our populations. It's not sometimes people just talk about related to what the bills they have to pay. Sometimes, you know, sometimes talk people talk about where someone lives in relation to a polluting source. It's also about who's most impacted when the lights go out. And I think it's that holistic view has to be taken into consideration every step along the way and through the values and objectives that are the foundation of this plan. We have that in there. It's our guiding light and we heard that from the community time and again, an equitable approach. I've mentioned before, there's no [12:54:05 PM] mentioned before, there's no this is not the time or the place where you would decide where something would be sited. But an equitable approach would take a really hard look across the entire city. Our entire service territory, actually to figure out, is there the right place to put this, and what are the trade offs associated with all of those things? And no matter where it's located, we need to make sure that we're a good neighbor to whomever we're at. So whether it's new generation or even our existing generation working with the community to figure out what is it that that that is, you know, concerns them, what can we do together to offer, you know, a better quality of life for, for our neighbors in that sense? And so I think all of those considerations are key to taking a responsible step forward. I think we all acknowledge that the problem before us is now. It's multifaceted. Austin energy. It's our mission to provide the response to providing clean, affordable and [12:55:06 PM] providing clean, affordable and reliable energy in growing energy market or growing energy environment. And we've done a very thorough review here. We've tried to provide you with a very multifaceted, flexible, responsible plan that will help lead us into the future. And we we've built it based off of listening to what the community has to say, listening to all of you and your staff, our commission, and then of course, the Austin energy staff, collaboratively working together, city of Austin and Austin energy has long been a leader in a number of spaces. Customer solutions demand side management in the environment. Our goals. We continue to be that leader and we don't plan on stepping back from that one way. >> Thank you, I appreciate that and I'll leave you with this. You know, I haven't seen any hard numbers and it kind of just occurred to me. So my staff will will run down some numbers as well, but I think it would be helpful for just for the frame of reference, for context, for [12:56:09 PM] of reference, for context, for us all to recognize the difference between inclement weather related health and wellness effects. So I my observation, even as a layperson, is that when we're talking to our constituents, they're significantly more impacted by extreme heat than they are extreme cold. So I know we keep making mention of winter storms, but, you know, there's 19 fan drives all over district one as we approach summer months. And, you know, the effects on people's medication regimens on asthma, health and wellness in general, most especially for the elderly and infants, newborns like I would love to see hard numbers on how many more people are directly affected by heat related inclement weather. We, we see, seem to singularly focus on cold weather related concerns. And I, you know, folks who can bless at [12:57:11 PM] you know, folks who can bless at ac at 76 or below are, you know, living the high life. It's frankly a privilege. And I got a lot of folks with window units or no hvac system at all, and they're literally dying when it's hot. And so I'd love to see what some of those hard numbers look like and get some data around statistically, what's the comparative impact if that's something we can include in future discussions? >> I think we need to prepare for inclement weather of all different types. It certainly impacts. Yeah, absolutely. And you're absolutely right to call out the hot weather, often the cold weather gets, you know, the spotlight because of the winter storms that we've had. But but the summer heat is, is certainly no joke. And it impacts our community and it impacts our electric grid. And we really need, you know, all the solutions to be able to get there. I do want to suggest, just as you're talking about and [12:58:11 PM] just as you're talking about and looking at equity and energy equity as a, you know, as a whole, we took a lot of time working through and looking through the Texas energy poverty research institute survey that they did across the state of Texas, and focusing in on one of the districts that reflects or represents our our area. And we learned a lot about how energy equity impacts lots of different populations in a number of ways. >> Thank you so much. >> It was taking a note on that. You said Texas energy policy, poverty, poverty research institute. >> We'll send you a we'll send you all a link. >> Thank you I appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Thank you chair. >> Thank you so much. Council member. Council member. Ellis, you were next. But you had asked a question and council member vela has it and he's got something. And then we can close with you. >> Oh, we can go ahead. >> Okay, great. Council member vela. >> Thank you very much. Blackstart could could you? I know I've heard that term thrown [12:59:12 PM] know I've heard that term thrown around a little bit. I have kind of a vague sense of what it is, but could you talk about that a little bit. What what is blackstart. >> Yeah. So blackstart capability is the ability for a generator to start up without the support of the external grid. And so that's not normally what is necessary in day to day Wright. Our power grid works. But in the extreme situation which we all have to prepare for is an entire ercot blackout emergency. So the entire state is down, ercot and transmission owners and generator owners like Austin energy have a collective plan to restore power to the state. And so when I talk about blackstart, I talk about what types of units have blackstart capability and are allowed to do that in the ercot market. And right now it's units that that have fossil fuel or not natural gas units like peakers. But also hydroelectric, which we don't have any of that or that [1:00:12 PM] have any of that or that opportunity here. And so those are the basically the lifelines that would allow us to be part of a solution if we experienced a blackout emergency. It's a really important characteristic to talk about. >> And the combined cycle units that we have are those blackstart. >> No, our decker peakers are blackstart capable, right now, but those are the oldest units in our fleet. >> Okay. How many speakers. And actually, let me before I go down the Peaker question route, our batteries can batteries be part of a blackstart capability today in the ercot market, black batteries are not a viable resource for blackstart. >> The technology concept is there with some modifications. You have to build it specially, but it's not part of ercot. I think it has to do with duration. [1:01:13 PM] duration. >> Got it. And so in the event of a of a disaster again, which I think we avoided by minutes by minutes in 21. So it's not an academic discussion. That's right. That would be essentially a series of speakers around the state that would all kind of coordinate, turn on and kind of jumpstart the grid. Again, I'm sure I'm missing up a lot of technical discussion there, but is that essentially what's going to what would happen? >> Yeah, there's a series of generators around the state that are designated as blackstart. They have the blackstart capability. And yes, they would jump start the state and we could jump start our restoration here in Austin if we had that, if we had blackstart capable units, got it. >> How many speakers do we currently have? >> We currently have four at decker and six at sandhill for a decker. >> And what is the megawatt capacity for that that combined kind of Peaker. So we have ten total speakers. Yes. >> Each one is about 50mw. [1:02:15 PM] >> Each one is about 50mw. >> Each one is about 50mw and ranging in age again, I you know, I don't need to know the exact years, but from kind of when to when the oldest ones are from the 1980s, four of them. >> Then another four are from the early 2000, and then the last two were we bought from another utility and we installed and completed 2010, I believe. >> Okay. >> And the again, please correct me if I'm wrong, but the newer ones being more efficient and again more efficient in their use of fuel, less polluting. Thus, in their emissions than the older ones. Is that correct? That is correct. Would new peakers again, we're talking about theoretically, but would new peakers replace some of the older peakers, or would this be an addition to the ten that we already have? >> So in time, I hope they would replace it. But in the base right now we're operating at a deficit. And so if you think on a normal day, any new peakers which would be more efficient [1:03:15 PM] which would be more efficient and less emitting, they would replace, we wouldn't have to run our older 1980s technology. And so we would run the newer ones, the cleaner outcome. And then and then the only time when you're talking about additional is when you're the highest need, where right now we have we experience extreme reliability risk and cost. Instead, we would be having all the resources available to offset that reliability risk and remove that cost. >> So again, assuming an addition of speakers to the fleet, basically the newer ones would be more used than the older ones and the older ones would be there only in the event of an you know, extreme demand situation. Essentially. That's correct. >> And we saw that result in our modeling. >> How long can a Peaker run? >> How long can it run? As long as it has natural gas coming to it, it can run. >> And the natural gas. What is the situation with our natural [1:04:17 PM] the situation with our natural gas supply to the speakers that we have at sandhill and decker right now? >> So Austin energy uses firm supply contracts to make sure that that supply is available when we need it. >> Can you explain that? What is a firm supply contract? >> Yeah, it essentially means that there's kind of an order of priority. People essentially, you pay a little bit of a premium to make sure that it's more guaranteed to be there. This was really I mean, on a normal day, it's not that big of a deal. But but it's really important to have in extreme situations when there is a shortage. So for example, during winter storm uri, when you heard about concerns about supply, we didn't have, you know, natural gas supply. We didn't have that problem because we had firm contracts, which means that when the gas companies have to determine how they're going to stop, you know, scarce resources, they start with the interruptible first. And so firm is more of a, you know, a [1:05:18 PM] is more of a, you know, a guarantee of reliability. >> And the gas, the natural gas is supplied via pipeline. >> It is and we and we have multiple suppliers to our plants for added diversity. It also helps us keep the costs down because now there's competition. >> Now typically though our speakers how long would are we in practice right now running a Peaker. Again, my understanding is about what 12%, 15% of the of the time, right? >> That's that's right. A Peaker fundamentally typically should be running ten, 12% of the time for just relative awareness, you know, quick math or whatever. It's less than three hours a day. But of course, it's more during certain times of the year when needs are higher. But on relative about six weeks out of a year is what I think I did the math and right now are you asking how our our units are running. Yeah. >> And also I guess my, my question would be how long could they run? I mean, again, I know [1:06:21 PM] they run? I mean, again, I know it's an engine as long as it's got fuel it'll run. But there has to be kind of an upper limit that these don't seem to be. For example like fayette coal plant or, you know, the combined cycle gas plants where their their baseload, you know, they're kind of designed to run 24 over seven all the time. If you ran a Peaker 24 over seven for, you know, 30 days, 60 days, I mean, is it well, yeah. >> So that that type of wear and tear, there's just not made for that. Right. Think about again they're like jet engines. So you're not going to just, you know, take a flight and go, you know, for endless and endless Wright, they're, they're intended to be highly, highly flexible. So you start them up and shut them down whenever you need to. So that's what we mean when we say they're highly dispatchable type units. What I, what I meant when I was talking about the fuel supply is that they're just, they're there to provide through the long duration events that you might you might not otherwise be able to control or mitigate if you only relied on shorter duration batteries or you know, weather dependent supply and when we [1:07:22 PM] dependent supply and when we talk about shorter duration batteries, what kind of durations are we talking about? Two hour and four hour batteries. >> What's the maximum for like let's say a long, you know, what's the most battery duration that that Austin energy could purchase, right now? >> I mean, it, four hours is what you're seeing in the ercot market or two hours. Our batteries right now are two hours. And sometimes you'll see one hour, two hour, three hour and four hour. That's really the realm of where we are. You know, it's a matter of footprint. The you know, the more you you just have to build multiple four hour battery, you know, for to get longer duration and hope you don't need them all at the same time. >> And if we do exhaust our batteries once we drain them, how long does it take to recharge those same batteries? >> So it would take the same amount of time to recharge them. Four hours usage is four hours charging. They're not 100% efficient, but it's four hours and a little bit more. [1:08:26 PM] and a little bit more. >> Got it. Turning to the current demand response goals. And again I appreciate council member Walters line of questioning around the demand response and again, it makes a world of sense in terms of trying to maximize demand response. Whenever you can. But, you know, in how much can we we're talking about peak demand. And again, please correct me if I'm wrong because like I said, I'm not an engineer. I'm not an electricity professional by any means. 3000 megawatt peak days demand in Austin. Is that about correct? >> Yeah. We hit a peak of 31, 35mw last year, and that's your top tier. >> Summer day is going to be around a 3000 megawatt. That's right. You know, assuming that we had really robust demand response capability where we're really just kind of getting every single air conditioner programed to, you know, cycle [1:09:27 PM] programed to, you know, cycle off for five minutes. I mean, what does that look like? How much could we clip off of the city's demand if we got everybody on the same page, all the office buildings, all the you know, all the residences? Is there any kind of sense, theoretically, of what that number could be today with our demand response programs, which which are robust? >> Right. There's a lot installed, but when you actually hit the button to say what can be operationally realized, we can reduce our demand by about 40mw. And in the potential study, I think that number I'm looking I think it was around 270. Is that about right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. 250mw over the ten years. Over the ten years. Not that it could you can just say, oh I need that tomorrow. Yes. >> But again, assuming an even more robust demand response program at some point we could get to the, you know, hundreds, maybe multiple, hundreds of megawatts as part of our demand response capability. >> Yeah, we're what we're [1:10:28 PM] >> Yeah, we're what we're looking at right now is about 270 looking at our standard solar offer. >> What again let's for the sake of argument, assume that it's great and that, you know, we really are able to roll it out and it's taken up on a widespread basis. And basically every big box store in Austin has a bunch of solar panels on top of it. What kind of solar, you know, megawatt generation capacity again, in a in a very successful scenario, are we looking at in terms of the standard solar program, the assessment that included the standard solar offer scenario resulted in 35 additional megawatts by 2035. And what are again, we had that 3000 megawatt day, 3100 looking toward the future, what are we anticipating in a decade, let's say, what would our kind of a peak demand, [1:11:30 PM] would our kind of a peak demand, you know, our 110 degree kind of summer day. What is our our anticipated kind of peak megawatt usage in Austin? >> It's really going to depend on electricity growth. When doctor Webber did some analysis he had some. And also how we manage the demand some. He had a doubling to in the 7000 range. But really when we're looking at high load growth, we're thinking it could be about in the 4004, 4500 range. >> Okay. And I remember and I'm glad you mentioned Michael Webber because one of his comments that, you know, that that stuck with me was he kind of went away from the use of the term carbon free and started talking about carbon neutral as a goal, as opposed to carbon free, because he was saying that, you know, we can get down to a 90% carbon free kind of universe, right? In terms of our generation capacity. But he was like that last 5% or so is a very expensive in terms of the [1:12:33 PM] very expensive in terms of the cost that we would incur. And B has you know, reliability effects as well. And right now, what is our percentage in terms of renewable energy, percentage of well, carbon free energy, carbon free energy generated Wright is a 75%. So right now we're about 75% carbon free energy. How much of that is a nuclear plant? >> Oh 2,222% all right. >> And so we've got about 25% of our and how much of that is, is and again, I think, you know, we've talked a lot about the peakers, but I think the elephant in the room is fayette. How much of that carbon power is fayette? >> It's a large majority. I've heard people say numbers as high as 85% in terms of carbon emissions that that, you know, so assuming again, comparing the [1:13:35 PM] so assuming again, comparing the speakers to fayette, what does that what does that look like in terms of again, thinking about, let's say a year of carbon emissions from fayette versus a year of carbon emissions from an array of speakers? >> What is what are those numbers look like as a, you know, yeah, I can talk about it in terms of portfolio as a whole, knowing that fayette is the largest. >> Right? So right now in a year, our portfolio is about two and a half to 3 million metric tons of carbon emissions. And what we're looking at and we're modeling for the future, we're talking about I think it was between 6 and 7 million metric tons over ten years. So it's a tiny fraction. >> I mean, the carbon emissions from the speakers, we're talking about a tiny fraction, especially in comparison to the coal, one of one of the main features of a Peaker unit of Peaker units is to help enable [1:14:36 PM] Peaker units is to help enable us and ready us to exit coal until there's another technology that can come in place to fill the gap. Well, I, I very much appreciate it. And last question here. Could we. I'm not. Could we stairstep this plan in the sense of before speakers are going to be on the table? Can we see a battery build out, you know, and just would that be an option from Austin energy's perspective? >> I, I don't know if it gets lost in the communication. So I just want to reiterate and be abundantly clear about it. Right. The problem is now and the order of operations is really critical, right. Customer energy solutions demand response, energy efficiency, local solar customer sited batteries, beneficial [1:15:37 PM] batteries, beneficial electrification, all of those things. They come first, right? We also need to work on transmission tends to have a in Texas it could be a 5 to 6 year lead time. We talk about batteries. They could have a 1 to 2 year lead time. Natural gas speakers could take a 2 to 3 year lead time. So we can't wait and see. We have to take action now and start taking the steps to see. Is that risk still there every step of the way? If it is, then we need to continue on our path to getting those local solutions here, here and now. So the timeline doesn't work. To wait. And yes, you do the customer energy solutions the transmission, which is already underway. It's well underway. You add in the batteries and but you can't stop there and just hope that in a few years we're not going to need additional supply here. [1:16:38 PM] need additional supply here. >> Well, again, I appreciate it. And I just want to say one of the things I know we haven't talked about affordability a lot today, and I know that that's it's kind of its own conversation, but I represent quite possibly the poorest of the council districts and a huge number of my constituents live in very old, very leaky and inefficient apartments. And they have absolutely no control whatsoever over any, you know, they have no demand response. You know, they they cannot do that. Their apartments are not going to do it. They are just completely vulnerable to the, you know, the cold winter days and the hot summer days. And that is a major consideration of mine. You know, obviously affordability in terms of housing. We've talked about that, you know, good god, we've talked about that a lot. But affordability is just a major consideration, especially for [1:17:38 PM] consideration, especially for our most kind of vulnerable, that they can't put solar panels on their house. They can't do really anything. They just have to pay the rent and survive. So that's going to be a major part of my thinking moving forward on this resource generation plan. >> Thank you for bringing that up again, because it is incredibly important. Part of the problem of the solution, and it's the first thing that people understand is, is what hits their electric bill and what whether their energy rates are going up or down. The more people understand about the reliability and environmental sustainability, it really does have affordability impacts. And we need to make sure that we take that into consideration so that we can mitigate the risk for the community. >> And I appreciate that. And I just want to say that I think that, again, just for multiple reasons, we're likely to see increases in electricity costs over the I think the question is, are they going to mitigate small increases or are they going to be large increases. So again, I just want to be honest with the public. I mean, we have to invest in our grid. We have [1:18:38 PM] to invest in our grid. We have to, you know, continue to improve our systems. And that's going to take money. I know we talk about bearing electric lines. That's going to be extremely expensive, necessary. But expensive. So again, it's the question is not really you know, if the rates are going to rise. The question to me is how much are our rates going to rise. So thank you. >> Thank you. Council member vela. So council member Ellis and then a question from council member Alison alter. >> Thank you. I appreciate the thoughtful questions from all of my colleagues. I wanted to ask a very basic question as far as ercot's process, is it the same whether it's speakers or batteries? Do they get involved at the same level of when we turn things on and when we turn things off? Batteries versus speakers, yes. >> So ercot looks at resources as a whole and their their rules apply to everything. So whether you're building something new or you are shutting something down or you're, you know, there's a reliability issue and you need to run it right then and there. [1:19:40 PM] to run it right then and there. Ercot has a part to play in that process, okay. >> And they manage which ones go on and off at different times. >> The ercot market does that. It sends the pricing signals to indicate which ones go on and off. >> Yeah okay. Thank you for that information. I know that balancing affordability and sustainability is a big question. How far off are we? Is there a way that we can lean more toward the environmentally sustainable options, or are those just to expensive to be part of the recommendation to lean heavier on the environmentally sustainable aspects? >> So what we're proposing is to lean as heavily as we think that we responsibly can on the cleanest options that are tools in our tool kit. And then we look to say, is that enough? Or do you need more? And so, you know, I can't stand here and represent to you and recommend [1:20:40 PM] represent to you and recommend to you to build a plan that is, you know, hoping on saying we're going to work as hard as we possibly can. We do work as hard as we can. And our track record has shown it and more innovation will come. Right? So it is all about as much as we can on the cleanest solutions first. And then when you the analysis says there is still risks to be to be resolved and to be to be mitigated, there's still growth to be served. And that's where you start to add in the other tools in the toolbox. >> Okay. Thank you for that information. And I wanted to add my voice of support for mitigation efforts. I, I hear my colleagues talking about the constituents they serve and any sorts of concerns that they have about emissions and things of that nature, and hope that regardless of how the plan moves forward, that we keep our eyes on mitigation and try to do what we can to provide clean air for people to breathe, no matter which district people are living in. And then any other [1:21:42 PM] in. And then any other investments you wanted to talk about as far as day to day reliability, I can I can speak on behalf of the folks that are on Austin energy that are in my district, and nobody likes to pay higher bills, for sure. But paying higher bills and having outages is something that gets people talking. You know, they want to make sure if they're footing the bill and they're supporting these other initiatives moving forward for better reliability and more predictability. They really want that guarantee that says we're going to have minimized outages and the ones that are are going to be out of our control. So can you talk a little bit about anything like aging infrastructure repairs or other sorts of plans that you have in the mix? >> Yeah, absolutely. We spend a lot of time talking about reliability associated with local generation. But your point is that we reliability is multifaceted and so it's also about investing in our our distribution wires, our infrastructure as a whole. It's about investing in our, our plants to make sure that they're reliable and available. When [1:22:43 PM] reliable and available. When necessary. And all of that is part of our our plan. And I want to be clear that there's been some questions about, well, if you make investments in these, you know, as, as councilmember vela was just saying that their investment has to be made on the generation plan. If you make these investments, what are you not doing? And I just want to make it clear it's not an either or situation. What we're talking about on the generation side is really about offsetting costs that are directly passed through to our customers, and by doing that with some investment that helps them go away and stay away, as opposed to being continual costs passed to our customers, we still have the ability to invest in our wires, and we'll be coming back to you in a few months talking about overhead hardening and undergrounding feasibility. >> Okay. Thank you. That does it for my questions for today. And I appreciate all the questions my colleagues have brought and the commentary that our speakers brought to us today. It's given us a lot to think about. >> Yes. Thank you. Thank you. [1:23:44 PM] >> Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Council member, council member Alison alter and then council member Ryan alter. And then I will close. >> Thank you. I will try and be quick for the process moving forward. I understand that the report is supposed to come out or the plan is supposed to come out next Wednesday, which is right before Thanksgiving. And then there's a very quick turnaround for the eoc in order for us to vote on December 12th. We've known this for a really, really long time that these were the timings of when we needed to do it. So I wanted to ask if there's a way to accelerate the release of the report without jeopardizing the quality of the plan, to really think about doing that so that our members can provide us their input the best that they can under the circumstances. Again, if it won't compromise it. But if you're just waiting for, you know, to run it through the city manager or you're waiting for somebody to sign off on something, if we can try to accelerate those reviews and, and respond quickly so that we [1:24:45 PM] and respond quickly so that we can get that out sooner, I would appreciate that. I don't know if that's going to be something you can look at. >> Yeah. We have looked at the schedule to see how quickly we can get it out. We are actively working and shaping the plan based off of the feedback we received last night, with feedback we received last week, and the feedback you all have given us, a lot of feedback that we need us to incorporate today. We need to do that meaningfully so that when you come, when you see it, you see your your comments reflected in the plan and, and anything we can do to accelerate it, we will. But I expect that it will be coming out on the 27th. I do the very best we can, but we're working all day, all night and all weekends to try to get it out to you all. >> I also wanted to build off of what council member Vella was saying because I think it goes back to my request earlier of, you know, we need to have some sense of what these decision points are for the peakers, how much they cost, and the estimated timing. I know it will [1:25:45 PM] estimated timing. I know it will shift, but we need to be able to see that because, you know, as you said, we're we're allowing you to explore it. But in order to allow you to explore it, I think there's a lot of heartache at the notion of giving up that we're not adding any more carbon. And so we really need to have clarity that we're really going to be able to be assessing risks in real time as we go, and that we're not going to go. You know, six months from now and you'll be like, oh, we spent X amount and we can't go back. Now that we know why happened in the world. And I don't know exactly how you do that, but you've told me that we can do that. So I'm expecting to see that in the plan. Thank you. >> Thank you. Council member and council member Ryan alter, a quick follow up. >> Councilmember vela made me think about the time it takes to do some of these things in terms of whether that's build your demand response capacity, energy [1:26:46 PM] demand response capacity, energy efficiency, local solar, right. It takes under your models. We don't dump it all in in year one. Right. It's a lot of different. And so my I guess the question I have for you is given that time to really build up those assets, all of them. Under the current model or portfolio that you all are looking to, that includes the speakers and looking to move forward on. Once we hit 2035, if we wanted to go carbon free. Is it safe to assume we wouldn't have the solar and the battery or whatever other technology built up in those ten years so that we could just say we're going carbon free, like, you know, take that drop off or or I'm thinking about what we're setting ourselves up for the [1:27:47 PM] setting ourselves up for the next ten years. Does that make sense? >> I'm not sure I follow the question. >> So will, if we go forward with what you're proposing, and we'll see more details come next week. But will we have to some degree foreclosed our ability to be 100% carbon free in 2035 because we can't just say, okay, now we're going to drop sand hill off decker off these peakers off and we don't have, you know, 1000mw of solar behind it to. Does that make sense? >> It does make sense. Yeah. And the answer is no. We're not setting ourselves up for that. I need to reiterate and make it abundantly clear that we don't pick a portfolio. The plan does not say build this much. And this year build this much, and this year build this and this much year retire this and this year. Right. It doesn't get that prescriptive. That prescription assumes perfect insight of what's happening in the future and perfect knowledge of what is [1:28:49 PM] and perfect knowledge of what is still evolving and emerging in terms of technology. So the plan needs to provide the flexibility not only for emerging tech, but also to change and adapt to changing energy landscape. And that's where I kind of started my conversation this morning about how different the energy landscape is today compared to it was when the last plan was adopted. So the idea that we would, you know, it's really important to recognize that, that we're talking about making decisions based on the best information we have at the time with the looking at the risks that we're experiencing now and in front of us, and then thoughtfully considering every step along the way. What's the next step to take, and how do we do that? So we also will become will have another refresh of the plan. The commission last night asked for, you know, in every couple of years, a technology readiness assessment just to kind of keep the pulse of where things are going. Right. We're doing that all the time. But can we do it in an organized way to say, what are the game changers? [1:29:50 PM] say, what are the game changers? Right. What what things have changed that we need to adapt to? It's really important to remember that we're not locking ourselves into a situation where we're dependent on any one technology moving forward, that we're giving ourselves the flexibility the needs and ultimately to reach our carbon free goal by 2035, which I just want to reiterate is the most aggressive from all the utilities I know in the country. >> All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I have one last question that I'd like to ask before you close us out. Sure. >> Go right ahead. >> I just wanted to ask if we can work directly with Austin energy. So with the committee that I chair, the housing and planning committee we're going to bring forward as a future item discussions around really thinking through how we can make green roofs and solar roofs, sort of the standard, most especially for multifamily income restricted multifamily commercial structures. Et cetera. I'd love to be able to [1:30:52 PM] cetera. I'd love to be able to work with Austin energy as a partner to just sort of talk through, logistically what that looks like, what cost implications look like. Is this the kind of thing that is beneficial enough to people, you know, producing these developments for them to do it on their own or for us to incentivize them or will this be another tool that we need to codify as a requirement? Being able to talk through that with you all would be very helpful. >> I anticipate that that Austin energy will be all over that and would be very willing city manager to have those conversations with you, and the general manager's out there nodding. Yes. You bet. Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you for that. And, miss martin, you can have a seat. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Oh, okay. I just wanted to say a couple of things. First of all, how proud I am of the work that Austin energy has done over the last year and a half with an extensive stakeholder [1:31:54 PM] extensive stakeholder engagement. The customer surveys the expert input. We've heard over and over again that is climate risk and extreme weather increases. Our constituents want reliable power, and that makes a heck of a lot of sense to me. Austin energy has some of the most ambitious sustainability goals of any utility in the country. You heard miss martin just mentioned that. And as this body oversees them and we want as we oversee them, we want to continue to build resilience and sustainability into our energy future. Let there be no mistake about that. At all from anyone. It is key to the energy future for our residents and our businesses here in Austin. I believe as policymakers, it's up to us to set the goals, colleagues and for the experts at our utility to chart the course. This is something that [1:32:56 PM] course. This is something that doctor weber discussed when he was here a couple of months ago. You'll get the best outcomes. We will get the best outcomes. Our city will get the best outcomes. If the council, through our policy making and decision making, allows for flexibility, creativity and innovation. And those are three paramount values that we have been hammering home, at least in the last two years. If not longer. Flexibility, creativity and innovation. So, as Austin energy makes its final recommendations for the plan, and having heard from folks here today and last night and throughout the stakeholder process, that went for a year and a half or more, here's what I would like to see included. And maybe this is my last request of you all before we get to finally considering the plan in a few weeks, I'm looking for flexibility that keeps cost effectiveness and [1:33:56 PM] keeps cost effectiveness and system reliability top of mind as we face continued expected growth of evs, data centers, and population. An innovative approach that allows for emerging technologies including advanced nuclear, geothermal and solar battery pairings. Maintaining Austin energy's blackstart utility status. And thank you council member vela, vice chair vela for bringing up that topic and having us dig into what exactly that means, so that we could have a broader appreciation that blackstart utility status is important. So if there is an ercot wide emergency, we can re-energize as soon as possible, maximizing demand side programs that incentivize energy efficiency, demand response, and local solar. And darnit, I've been working on that local solar [1:34:58 PM] working on that local solar stuff for the entire ten years I've been on this dais, and before pursue the cleanest energy options available and responsibly manage any residual emissions to maintain Austin energy's status as the most environmentally sustainable electric utility in Texas. We have that status. We want to maintain and broaden and deepen that status, and I want our community to understand that that's our status so that they are not confused over whether we are doing everything in our power to work toward a clean and sustainable energy future. So that's it for me. For what I'll be looking for in that in the report, in the recommendations. And so in closing, I want to thank everybody for all of their efforts. Everybody who came here today and spoke to us and in the past and will in the next couple [1:36:00 PM] past and will in the next couple of meetings. And so let me remind you all, when those meetings are for additional public input, the Austin energy resource and generation plan will be released on November 27th. And if they're able to release it earlier, I am sure that they will do that. November 27th is the target date. It won't happen any later than that. The PUC has a special called meeting for December 2nd. The council will have a work session on December 10th, and as I mentioned earlier in the meeting, I have already indicated that I will pull this item so the public will have an opportunity to comment on this plan. We will have a council meeting on December 12th. This will be an agenda item, and I think since it's coming from a committee, it's automatically nonconsent, so we do not need to pull it. And just a reminder that all of these dates do allow for public comment. Murray I think that's it for the [1:37:02 PM] think that's it for the oversight committee meeting today. I again thank everyone. It is 1:37 P.M. And seeing no objection, I call this meeting adjourned.