1. 20241120 JSC Minutes for Approval — original pdf

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JOINT SUSTAINABILITY COMMITTEE REGULAR MEETING November 20, 2024 MEETING MINUTES The Joint Sustainability Committee convened in a hybrid meeting via videoconferencing and at Austin Energy Headquarters. Board Members in Attendance in Person: Kaiba White, Chris Maxwell-Gaines, Charlotte Davis, Anna Scott, Marissa Bell, Haris Qureshi Board Members in Attendance Remotely: Diana Wheeler, Amy Noel, Lane Becker, Rodrigo Leal, Christopher Campbell, Heather House Board Members Absent: Yure Suarez, Natalie Poindexter, Melissa Rothrock City Staff in Attendance: Zach Baumer, Braden Latham-Jones, Angela Baucom, Sara Norris, Amy Everhart, Lisa Martin CALL TO ORDER Chair Kaiba White called the meeting to order at 6:07 pm. 1. Approval of minutes from the October 23rd, 2024 meeting of the Joint Sustainability Committee. • Commissioners request edits: o Notation standardization o Discussion item #5 of land acquisition has no content underneath it. Please revise to say “the committee discussed the item” in lieu of leaving it blank o Clean up the consistency of how the commissioners are referred to (first initial and last name, or other). Please standardize throughout. • Approved 12-0 on Qureshi motion, Maxwell-Gaines second. DISCUSSION AND ACTION ITEMS 2. Recommendation in support of the city pursuing a Low Carbon Transportation Materials Grant (moved up from 7) a. City is pursuing this. Discussion of letter in support. Vote would be to add the JSC to the letter with the intention of having other local organizations sign on as well. Due date is Monday.  b. Diana Wheeler moves to approve JSC signing onto letter and Anna seconds c. Unanimous approval 3. Recommendation on Austin Energy Generation Plan (moved up from 6) a. Lisa Martin with AE presented: Resource Generation Plan last one was adopted in 2020 and a lot of new risks have been identified, including growth in population, data centers and AI, changes in weather and climate impacts, and changes in the ERCOT market. Council in 2022 directed AE to update the plan, and since then AE has been working on the process to update it along with a 40 member stakeholder group representing a diverse group of Austinites to move towards meeting the full range of needs in a reliable and affordable way. The plan will be published and shared next week in draft form and will be voted on by council in December. The plan itself focused on addressing risks by starting with prioritizing customer energy solutions. Once those are maximized, looking at how to address the additional risks. Solutions may include new technologies related to things like batteries, natural gas-based solutions. Goal of being carbon-free by 2035. Looking to stay on top of emerging technologies to help achieve the goal and replace things in the portfolio that are not carbon-free. Will require exiting reliance on coal power, but in the meantime, working to reduce impact of that source as they foster a culture of innovation to identify new and emerging technology solutions. As transportation turns more electric, they will be looking to meet the rising need associated with that. b. Discussion: a rising cost? i. What are the cost assumptions being used? Is the modeling assuming a flat or 1. Response: Some models completed internally and some by a third- party. They are displayed on Speak Up Austin site. Used real-time data to set the base for the assumptions. Looked at the current going rate of carbon-free solutions. Baked in some assumptions for inflation. Some numbers associated with battery cost projections didn’t change substantially. All models are wrong, but a lot of them are useful when making decisions. The purpose of the modeling was not to choose an approach, it was a policy-based document to set a direction for how to meet the changing landscape. 2. The proposed plan explicitly aims to exit coal. 3. We are working currently in a local supply deficit which creates local reliability risk and affordability risk. The risk of outages is shouldered by the customers. We could mitigate additional risk if we work in a certain way. The first question is what can we reduce? Let’s change from megawatt reduction to ghg avoidance. Next question is what else can we do? The attention is on mitigating remaining risk. ii. What are the risks associated with batteries?  1. Duration is 2-4 hours. In situations like summer days, the need exceeds that duration. 2. Lithium ion battery technology is changing and space/infrastructure design issues will also change as the technology evolves. 3. Ultimately landed on the minimal amount that would move the community towards clean energy goals while still meeting the near- term risk. That gap from batteries can best be met by natural gas with limits around that use. iii. Location of peaker plants has limits. What have you considered? 1. There is not currently a location identified. The current plan has a prohibition on any type of natural gas generation. AE is trying to create a more flexible policy to allow them to meet the challenge in a new way. The siting happens in the implementation phase, so is not part of the current process, but there is effort to look at available space within the city. It would need to go before Council before it got that far. iv. What is the demand and reliability gap? What timeline are you forcasting this for? And what’s the lead time for something like a peaker plant? 1. Lead time could be 2-3 years on the short end. It could take longer depending on other practical factors. 2. The costs signal a reliability risk now. It would take another bad summer or winter to put us back on the edge. 3. Battery storage is a very important part of this solution. It doesn’t help you for extreme lengthy and ongoing demand that exceeds voltage supply. It will work for the first four hours, but then what? You can estimate the number of days where this resource is useful by looking at days in Austin over 100 degrees when people are making difficult choices about running their AC. v. What has been done in terms of air quality modeling? 1. Local air quality is included as a consideration. Modeling included consideration of trade-off between costs and emissions. vi. What is the price spread on the options? 1. Projection shared for 2035 average monthly residential bill increase and modeled by Portfolio #. Identified that several exceeded the current standard 2% affordability increase limit, but that does not lead to the exclusion of current plans, in part due to the affordability  increase limit not necessarily being an accurate projection in light of current information. 2. The current plan allows us to do everything up to the last step. Local generation that can last longer than a batter can solve the problem of load zone separation. It would mitigate the risk, move the risk off the customers, and would use the cleanest energy possible while only relying on other local generation measures when those energy solutions do not meet the demand. 3. Part of the modeling includes solutions for reducing peak demand from commercial customers. vii. With regard to the idea of adding new natural gas plants, is part of the idea to retire existing plants in favor of more efficient new plants? 1. The ones being proposed are far more efficient and create less emissions as a result. We have four that are 1980s technology. We run them now because that’s all we have to meet the need. On a normal day, the new plants would replace the need for the older ones. The older ones remain in the case of demand exceeding the limits of cleaner forms of production. It would only be for a few days out of the year and the net result is a cleaner solution. viii. ERCOT could, in theory, direct us to run plants in circumstances when we aren’t meeting those conditions? 1. ERCOT’s job is to make sure supply meets demand. We don’t have to turn on our generators just because. If there is a circumstance when there are about to be outages, they take action to consider all solutions and they can provide a directive to ensure reliability. They only take that action when there is no other option to protect against outages. The criteria under which they can do that is under extreme reliability risk only. ix. If we have sufficient local generation, and ERCOT does not take action to create reliability across their coverage area, have we fixed things effectively for local customers? 1. Making our local grid more reliable is strengthening the overall grid. ERCOT doesn’t own anything, it is instead the overall picture of interconnected systems. x. Are the social costs of emissions and localized air quality considered in the modeling? 1. AE recognizes that there are social costs that are raised as part of the list of things considered among the trade-offs. xi. Does AE intend to have numerical goals in the next plan for energy solutions? 1. These are still under consideration, while also making sure AE can be flexible enough to adjust to meet whatever new needs arise. There will be some numerical goals in the plan, and how they fit in and how AE navigates that in the shift is under consideration now. c. Discussion of the resolution: i. Discussion resulted in a recommendation to add a WHEREAS to include consideration of cost as a major factor for community members.  ii. There was discussion of items added and edited by Chair White. iii. In Be It Further Resolved regarding affordability goal, the intention is to change from consideration just of cost per kilowatt-hour, and rather at what the customer actually pays, and Haris recommended pointing that out explicitly, so clarifying language was added. iv. Discussion of advantages and disadvantages of including prescriptive language regarding renewable quantitative goals and nuclear power option. d. Chair White moved to approve, Haris seconded. 10 in favor, with Diana Wheeler abstaining. DISCUSSION Norris, Austin Energy b. Questions: 4. Heat Pump Survey Response and Strategy – Zach Baumer, Office of Sustainability, and Sara a. Presentation of slides by Zach Baumer and Sara Norris i. On the emissions metric, where is that mostly from? 1. It is mostly residential, single family. About 70% of our residential single-family space is natural gas heating. When you zoom out, about 50% of residential units are natural gas, which likely includes multi- family properties. ii. For new construction, what about the building code option? 1. AE is in the process of adopting new code, but they are unable to mandate that new construction be electric per state legislation. However, AE is pushing for a provision in new code for everything to be electric-ready. It is significantly cheaper to go all electric from the start, but it can’t currently be required. Retrofits can be more expensive as opposed to installation at the time of new construction. iii. On slide 9, no change locally for emissions, can you clarify? 1. It’s a relatively small impact overall. There are impacts at the utility scale, but no local emissions reduction. iv. Regarding inverter-based use recommendation, is AE requiring that? 1. AE does not currently require anything. They adjust recommendations to SEAR rating and the inverter-based has a higher SEAR rating. v. If other upgrades have already been done to the home (insulation, sealing ducts, etc.) can you still get the higher whole-home incentive?  1. Most people are making the decision when they are facing an immediate discomfort. It makes more sense to make a distinction and make the whole-home incentive higher vs. the isolated installation incentive to avoid those situations when possible. 2. When they consider incentives, they also consider stacking incentives. In ideal circumstances the whole-home incentive is designed to cover the delta between the ultimate difference in cost. There is also a low- interest loan that can go towards home upgrades. They also need to have space for incentives for people who are having to replace their systems to help them opt for the most efficient option within their grasp. 5. Austin Climate Equity Plan Implementation Update – Braden Latham-Jones, Office of Sustainability b. Questions: a. Presentation of slides by Braden Latham-Jones i. Is the Implementation Plan to be published in March have to be adopted by City Council? 1. The resolution already directs the creation of this plan, so we do not need Council adoption of the plan. ii. How do we make sure this plan has teeth? 1. We do need some accountability step and we are open to hearing recommendations for that. iii. Is the process for narrowing down the items to be prioritized something the JSC can see? 1. That is an option, and we started with the EIP to lead by taking JSC priorities into account first. iv. Chair White recommends that would be ideal that a sustainability and carbon analysis is a part of future City considerations when a contract or program is being developed. The staff support request for sustainable purchasing personnel is a prime example of a fundamental barrier. v. How have you been thinking about how this plan connects to the budget process? 1. That is part of why our timeline is starting the year off strong. If we complete prioritization in the first part of the year, it will give the City Manager an idea of what it would take to get this done as they enter  the budgeting process for the next year for both the City Manager and Council. 6. Update from Austin-Travis County Food Plan on Food Plan Implementation Resolution - Marissa Bell a. The Food Plan was officially adopted in October by City Council and Commissioners Court. The Food Plan Implementation Resolution set forth by Councilmember Fuentes established direction for implementation planning with instructions to return to Council in March 2025 with specific information and set a five-year timeline for revisiting the plan’s progress. b. The Food Policy Board identified priorities based on short-term working goals and will return with written recommendations related to specific strategies in the plan in January. c. The Food Policy Board is preparing to have a role in establishing a coalition to oversee plan implementation, and a dashboard to track progress in a public forum. d. Questions: Bond? i. Has work been done to identify funding recommendations for the Climate 1. Working groups within the Food Policy Board are being established now to write recommendations. 7. Update from Austin-Travis County Public Health Commission regarding draft recommendations for Community Health Workers, goals and priorities for 2025, and public health weather-related issues and flu season – Natalie Poindexter a. Natalie Poindexter is not present. DISCUSSION - Addendum 8. Discussion of process of identifying and acquiring land in accordance of City of Austin Resolution No. 20240814-024 on Creating a Dedicated Land Acquisition Fund – Charlotte Davis a. Rodrigo Leal presented: i. Transportation and Land Use with Natural Systems Work Group discussed putting together principles and recommendations around the Land Acquisition Fund. There is a desire to increase transparency and one way to do that would be to have a clear prioritization framework and a clear process outline for the steps the City would take to manage the fund. They have also identified an opportunity to align with the ACEP. The groups would like to ensure that equity is considered and the fund will consider communities who need to be prioritized due to disproportionate impact. The groups also identified relevant community partners, including local small businesses and cooperatives, workforce development organizations, non-profits, and community-based organizations engaged in environmental and climate justice work. ii. A recommendations document was shared with the JSC. That will be sent out via email as a follow-up to this meeting. 9. Update from Resource Management Commission on Austin Energy's Solar for All grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Charlotte Davis a. At September meeting, Tim Harvey from AE presented. AE was given a $36.1 million grant. The gran will lead to installation of expanded solar infrastructure that will be owned by AE for the first 15 years, after which it will be owned by the customer. They are planning a lot of community and stakeholder engagement to determine the who, where, and how of the installation. b. Questions: i. Have there been any dates mentioned? 1. Not yet, but they will be circulated to the commission when received. FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS Braden Latham-Jones to bring additional presentation on how items were identified to go through the prioritization process for the ACEP Implementation Plan. Working Groups will review Land Acquisition Fund recommendations document and share comments with staff for future review. ADJOURNMENT White adjourned meeting at 9:44 pm with no objections.