EWEB Board of Commissioners — March 7, 2023

0:02 full agenda. So, I'm going to get rolling here. Meeting for EWS. Start off first with a facility and safety awareness and meeting logistics briefing. First of all, thank you for attending the this evening's board meeting. Um, ew management and subject matter experts are here with us in the room and virtually. During tonight's presentations, remote presenters will appear on the screen. Please make sure to speak loudly and clearly so everyone can hear you. Stands are invited to sign up at the table at the back of the room if they wish to provide public testimony. Visitor access is limited to the board meeting room and the restrooms which are through that door. An emergency such as a fire alarm exit through the glass door at the back of the room unless it is not safe to do so.

0:48 An alter the alternate emergency exit is located at the rear of the building just beyond the restrooms. During evacuation, follow staff's instructions and stay together for safety. Tonight's meeting will be recorded. The recording will start when the meeting is called to order. So, all righty. Um, the meeting room will be muted during the break. Aside from that period, virtual participants on screen and the public audience will be able to hear conversations in the room until the meeting is disconnected. That part, I'm going to ask for an agenda check. I know tonight's meeting is long. We will try to keep it rocket and rolling here. Okay. Not seeing any um any items. We will move on to items from

1:33 board members and general manager. Start looks. Oh, thank you. Um several things. I did a tank visit at 40 and very informative and I'm very grateful that staff did that for not only wanted to but neighbors. I think it really was was a good PR thing. um attended Carl's retirement, Carl Horning Stern. He's he was the rock, you know, and he's got I gave a blank check when I came on this board. Hopefully he never cashed it, but uh he's a great guy. Um had uh American Rivers group take me to uh we went to lunch and they wanted me to hear that what their position was on the Snake River dams and I listened. I didn't say anything because I don't think we have a position, but just either way, I just wanted to make sure that that's public.

2:19 And then lastly, um, about the, uh, state of McKenzie report, I'm kind of feeling a little left out. You know, my passion is the water. And, you know, to me, it's an annual report. It's very important and it has some very significant things in it. And um maybe in the future if I if I don't hear objections if we wanted to put this on even a 10-minute agenda item rather than stuff it into correspondence. I'm kind of feeling that there's some questions that I would like to have a dialogue with rather than the email dialogue that I had because there was some significant things in here I picked out of this that I think would warrant uh further consideration. You know like like the tent plume plume and that that tenfold increase in the river. um those things to get even more than just reading. So if that could be something in the

3:05 future, I know it'll be another year, but uh kind of like to get that on the um I also attended the um the tour of the water storage tank on and um I really want to thank the staff arranging that. I think it was really helpful. It was also interesting to talk to some of the neighbors who were also on that tour and just hear what their um thoughts were about the whole process and everybody was generally really positive. Um, and I also attended Carl's retirement party and I just want to say that um, he was such an important part of Ew Webb and

3:50 um, he failing and enjoying many nice things and I know he's not listening to this to this meeting but uh, he all his work was really appreciated. McCrae, do you have anything? Uh, I'll just uh, reiterate the same. It was I appreciate the tour of the water tanks up on 40th. That was super helpful. Thanks to the staff there. Uh Carl's going to be missed and appreciate his careerlong dedication to the work at Eb. And um I would be supportive of adding some time on next month's agenda to talk about the state of the watershed report if the rest of the board feels like that'd be appropriate. I I think that would be valuable.

4:44 Let's jump at that for next month. Thanks. Okay. And then um I had three items. I attended the um the tank review as well with my kiddo and it was fascinating to see the difference between when they were doing the ground work versus where we're at now. Um, I really appreciated that staff put that together and I think the neighbors appreciate it as well. And then, um, last week at the beginning of the week, uh, attended the APA legislative rally in Washington DC, met with a number of the delegation and senators. Really fascinating. Talk to them about the Columbia River Treaty, the Wamtt Dams, and supply chain

5:31 issues. So anybody wants to hear more about that, please let me know. I'd be more than happy to share. And then um also attended the Elhog dinner, the appreciation dinner, um where Matt McCrae represented for award on all the work river. Um so it was a it was a great dinner. I'm glad that we got to participate and um I'm glad that the groups that were recognized there including the the work that I think Matt went on for maybe a half an hour listing off all the partnerships and the the groups that were up forever, but welld deserved. Um, so that that's it for me and I'll turn over to Frank. Yeah, thank you, President Carlson. Um, I'll just respond to the request. I I

6:17 don't think that we have any objection at all to having state of the watershed be an agenda item. Um, it's an important part of our investment. Um I would just remind commissioners really also that any correspondence item is for discussion and for question um not just agenda items themselves. That's that's why we present those. Uh in fact in this case we figured that there may be some questions that come up and in some cases correspondence is used to inspire some thoughts and ideas and questions that maybe we do have on a future agenda. So, um, we'll note and put it in our recurring items to have that agenda item going forward. And if, uh, commissioners

7:02 want to have more discussion beyond the correspondence discussion this evening, we can certainly add it to next month as well. That's it. We will turn now to public input. We have seven up so far. You understand? And do we have the two that were on the phone before? They have not. They have not. Okay. So, we'll call through this. So, first up, I have um I'm going to list the order and some of them are are not present. So, we'll skip and move them to the back if they're not here yet. Um, so it'll be Britney, then Deborah,

7:47 then Jim, Joshua Korn, William Smith on the phone, and then um in the room, Max Libre, and Will Rutherford. So now I'm going to read the public input uh preamble here. Your name is called, please come forward, clearly state your name and optionally your address or ward. Each speaker will be offered three minutes to present their testimony. Please keep track of time by watching the timer at the front of the room or by listening for an audio notification when three minutes has elapsed. If you are participating by telephone, remember to unmute your call. Press star six if calling a landline or simply use the unmute button if calling from cell phone. After all testimony is heard, each commissioner will have an opportunity to speak if they choose.

8:32 Although by policy, we do not engage in a back and forth dialogue. Please note that failure of commissioner to speak shall not be construed as support of or opposition to any speaker testimony. When a question is presented by a speaker and the board does not provide an answer, an e web staff member will contact the speaker so the question can be addressed at a later time. Okay, I think that does that. And so do we have Britney? Jim New is our first. Jim is first. Okay, we are going to skip ahead then to Jim New and we'll rotate back at the end if for some reason uh other two are able to make it. So, Jim on the line, are you here? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. Okay. Um, EW web commissioners, general

9:18 manager and staff, my name is Jim New. I live in Ward 7 and on behalf of 350 Eugene uh and the environmental and social justice organizations, I want to thank uh general manager Lawson and staff for taking the time for presentations and receiving input at both of the IRP meetings both virtually and in person last month. The town hall meetings were most informative and staff did a great job in presenting the information in a very uh understandable way and we look forward to receiving re responses to our written comments and questions and to further discussions. Also want to thank climate policy advisor Kelly Hail for reaching out to 350 for our input into the climate guide

10:03 book. We think this will be a valuable tool, an educational frame for the public to get acquainted with all that e-web provides to its customer base and will uh be an asset in educating the public on cleaner home energy resourcing and practices. So once again, thank you for all your time. Appreciate it. Thank you, Kim. Okay, next up, Joshua Korn. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay. Uh Joshua Korn, Ward 2. Um, and first of all, I I want to thank the uh the board and the commissioner and the general manager of EWB for being a

10:49 trailblazer years back when um when you when you first voted and enacted the um the first optin program for smart meter um or advanced metering infrastructure as you call it. Um and uh and you know it's opened a pathway for uh other other areas like um Maui to have similar programs now. Um now I know you changed that uh a few years ago. Um but I want to also bring to your attention that um and this continuing from what I was saying last time is that the the effects of uh

11:38 electromagnetic radiation, RF radiation such as from smart metering infrastructure are um these are these are factors environmental exposure to toxins of all types are um are cumul relative um and in general and and the um when one person might not have a reaction to a certain level of the of these toxins, others might. And so um so it's important to keep up with the the FCC um is was ordered last year on um federal court decision 20-1201025

12:27 um to review the real science showing harm from RF radiation. And um and I think it's really important to uh to to really um accept that that as any environmental poller knows there are liabilities for the type of of exposure that um that that you're putting on the public when installing such infrastructure. and and um and and the um you know, a lot of us out here in the community really um value the jobs that were lost when um when this type of infrastructure was put into place and the meter readers largely were um taken

13:13 away from employment. So, um, well, I I I know a lot of us community members are voting for bringing those jobs back and and having a more sensible um old school um metering infrastructure that protects the the public of of Eugene. Thank you. Thank you. Right. Next up, we have William Smith.

13:58 There we go. All right. Sorry about that. Um, okay. Thank you, William Smith. Ward one. You've heard me talk about fiber optics a few times now and I'd like to step back and look at some basics that can be helpful. Uh water, electricity and light. As you may know, uh the backbone of the entire internet is fiber optics which are flexible fibers of glass that carry light that has been converted from electricity. uh and it carries that light with with um with a huge amount of information in it or bandwidth which is why it's called

14:43 broadband. And uh fiber optics um emits very little if any radio frequency radiation which makes it much more healthy than wireless technologies and makes it much harder uh to hack people's personal data. And once it's installed um into homes, businesses, and schools, it costs very little to maintain. Uh so the big savings uh that result can be passed on to customers cutting their bills in half which at least which is why um

15:29 uh I guess um you know towns like Hillsboro actually is actually offering basic service at only $55 a month and $10 those who qualify. Um, and each of these fiber optic connections offers stunningly high performance access to the internet at one gigabyte per second. Uh, which which truly helps close the digital divide uh that concerns so many people in this community. uh by by opening up ways for everyone to participate uh more equitably in society and the economy by enabling high performance access to

16:14 education, tele medicine, ecommerce, worldclass virtual reality and gaming and so much more. Uh so when you add it all up along with the deep cost savings it it make uh that get reinvested into the community it makes sense why Chattanooga was able to measure a $2.69 billion return on investment and why over 10 years and why Hillsboro is now fully and many other cities are fully committed to the fiber the fiber optic connections for all. Please, please consider that and the role you can play as as the as the electric power board played such a key role in Chattanooga. Thank you.

17:01 Thank you. Okay, I'm bounce back. Has anybody joined? Okay. All right. Well, we will turn to the folks in the room. Max Libre, I apologize if I'm pronouncing your name incorrectly. I don't have any big technical thing to talk about. just complaining about the billing system that we have. Anyway, I do my billing. I have several apartments and I have them in my by name. It's very frustrating to work your system. Uh it's all set up with a password and a lot of other garbage and everything. And I do it individually and your program allows for a return to go back. You put it in again, but when you hit return, it shuts off. Uh, the other thing is that your

17:46 receipts that you put back online show that I've made my payments have no address on them has a 2000 number sequence in it doesn't which means absolutely nothing to anybody except for whoever wrote the receipt. Appreciate it if just had an address on it so I could respond to that. Put it in my right places like tell the IRS I actually paid the bill. Uh, one of the things that's very nice is you have some new music. Oh, the other thing is on your u accounts uh you have a lot of white space and it' be nice if it was crammed a little closer together so you have to continually uh go down the line to fill in little X's and stuff. Uh the other thing is it's very nice if you have some new music on your system. Unfortunately, it

18:32 is very bad for hearing aids and a lot of us old people don't like those very very high tones. be nice if you could calm them down a little. Anyway, I'm just an individual. Thank you. Good evening, Will Rutherford. I'm a vice president resident. Um, and I might be able to cut this short this evening. My subject is is Carl Motor and I understand he had his uh retirement party sometime a few days ago. I hope that residents were also

19:18 included in this. Some residents uh I had no knowledge of it. That's not sour grapes. It's just a statement. Okay. But what I wanted to do was acknowledge what Carl has been for the McKenzie watershed and the water quality. And while I'd like to acknowledge and highlight the things that he's done, please understand that standing behind him or beside him there's a whole lot of are a whole lot of people who are doing excellent work supporting the efforts that are going on up in our wershed. But singularly, Carl and I began our relationship back in 2011. And that was shortly after what I called

20:04 the big bang. And I'm sure that some of you in the room were around then. But uh there was quite a contentious relationship between Ew Webb and the citizens of the river at that time. And it was argumentative about who was the steward. and and it the the thinking of the day before 2010 was somewhat combative. Eweb would drift the boat down the river and they'd be pointing out at people hollering, "Don't cut that brush." And it was and nobody had authority to do anything really. But it it ended up in an attempt to pass a riparian ordinance

20:49 asking for a 200 foot uh foot setback from the river which of course was on the other side of the highway in many cases. It was a a rather uh unfeasible proposition. Um, and like it or not, uh, EW Webb was either tangentially or directly involved with that. Doesn't matter. We don't have to dig those bones up. But it resulted in a very humorous Lane County hearing. There were 400 people in the Herring House downtown and all of a sudden nobody could hear anything because the uh, communication system, the speakers all went bad. And of course the technical answer to that was it's all

21:35 the clothes on the people in the audience sucking up the soundwave so you can't hear. And shortly after that they decided to abandon that meeting and the whole thing melted away. And Roger Gray uh chair at the time said uh in summary somewhat days later I think we'd rather educate than litigate. And that kind of also spawned an organiz Oh, done it. Okay. Anyway, thanks Carl. Thank you. I can never get this done in three minutes. Okay, last try. Okay. All right. Last call. We will close the public

22:20 hearing and open up to any commissioner comments. you to everybody for coming to speak. Um I know that past we have some um with customer service um and I know our billing system is relatively maybe anyway just would love um on other complaint like that update. Sure. So there there are some challenges uh with the existing billing system and whether it's a combination of billing

23:05 resentment or payment processing. Both of those are are important. There are a few situations that are hard to handle uh with the existing system. For example, how we handle lie payments or now the water payments. um that's not as clear as we would like and how we process sort of the situation he described which is a multi-unit or multi-tenant situation. Um it's also a big driver for why we're putting and working on a new system. And so we're hesitant to open up and modify two systems at once, especially because we're going to have to deal with some data transfer um and data cleanup over the next year or so to get ready for the new system in 2024. But there are some

23:52 challenges. There are some certain situations that that aren't not as clear or um not as easy as we would like. That's a big driver for what we're doing. Thanks all for coming and participating. We'll move on next then to the approval of the consent calendar A. Does any of anything from consent calendar A? Consent calendar A. All those in favor of consent calendar A. Okay. Pass unanimously. Moving on to consent calendar B. Move to pull anything from consent calendar B.

24:39 Adopt consent calendar B. Second. Any discussion? Anything? Oh, just just one comment just for people who may happen to be listening in. Um we do really appreciate the commissioners questions on these items before the meeting. Uh questions uh tend to start coming in from commissioners anywhere from Wednesday or Thursday of the week before um up until Monday. And so for those who are listening in this we we do get a number of inquiries from commissioners and we appreciate those clarifications and those questions and their answers are published um and attached via link to the agenda. So on

25:25 the website so thank you. Thank all those in favor of consent calendar B I pass unanimous. Okay. Next up we have Eb enterprise solutions implementation contracts. Good evening, commissioners. For the record, Travis Gabe. I'm the uh chief information officer. I have with me today uh the other sponsors on the EES

26:12 program, chief customer officer Judah McGee and chief financial officer Deborah Hart. Um what I thought I would do, this is about the fourth presentation I think that that we've done on the EES program. I thought I'd do a little bit of review of where we where we started or where we left off um last September and then talk a little bit about the implementation uh basis of it of the program for where we where we are. So um we left off in had done the goal 4C in 2022 was to select the software vendor um which we did was uh SAP and had board approval for that in November of two. At the same time that that approval was happening, we released the RFP for our implementation partner

26:57 and that was released in Q4 of 2022 and then we wrapped that up in 2023. So um we had a team of folks here at e web a review team similar to the way we did the applicator or the software tool uh reviewed seven written responses from seven different vendors. We selected to three um who came in and provided oral presentations for their approach to implementing something of this magnitude. Um we were able to reach out to references and evaluate their pricing options and as you can see deote um was selected as the vendor uh from Eb. They had the right balance of scope, schedule, budget but then the people that they brought uh we felt was a really good fit with with our staff here

27:42 at Eb. So that was that process. The other piece and I probably missed it the program director services. So we'll talk a little bit about that. Um we had on and I know you've read um a lot of this information was in the backgrounder but we had originally used a kind of a generic project management contract that we've got at e webb for using a program director to help us select both the software and the solution implementation partner. As this project has become more focused and we've really seen the responsibility of that program director, we felt that contract just wasn't the right contract for that type of work. And so um as we said in the background, we had done a consent item to have some increase on that. I think it was about

28:27 three million over the next three years. We cancelled that task order. We we'll reduce that contract and use this one is what we'd like to do is use this contract that's very focused and specific to EES. And it's not just a program director, but it's project management, excuse me, quality, excuse me, quality assurance manager. um additional staff augmentation around EES specific or this type of specific implementation. And so what this slide's supposed to depict is really that partnership between e webb and deote. You can see at the top we have the program director. Deoid's language is two in two in a box. Others use box buddies but our program director will be tied directly with the deoid program director. They'll oversee all the work streams of the implementation.

29:14 uh the project managers will roll up to them for the different work streams and so they have a a responsibility and that's what to build a dedicated contract to complete this work. So, my last slide, uh, moving on. What we're asking for is board action tonight to approve the program director services. Again, program manager, project manager, QA manager. Um, and that's with Avant, Avantamp Consulting. And then we're asking to authorize a general manager or designate to approve the Deote contract. And the reason we're asking for that approval is because we're still in negotiations. We're negotiating in good faith. um we just don't know the timing of when we're going to come to an agreement if that

29:59 aligns with the board meeting and we want to get started on the project as soon as we can as opposed to delaying up to a month. Hold that to the board to discuss that too. So what we're looking for here is, you know, we talked about puzzle pieces in the last presentation is to to really be able to place that implementation puzzle piece so we can get uh started on this work to implement our customer and finance system. That's I would hand it back to you uh President Carlson for comments, questions. Thank you for answering my premeating question on the WHAM contract. I blew through all of these and so that was eight million bucks for five six years ago and and I I reading in here where um

30:46 these systems don't integrate with each other and it creates silos and things such as that and uh those are words way beyond my comprehension by the way. Uh that that aside, um what assurance I mean this is a $16 million contract plus, you know, a couple other What assurance do we have because I know when Wham went out, it wasn't smooth like we thought it would be. Um what assurance do we have that that's not going to reoccur? You know, it's a great question and I think that a couple of things that we've done this time and I I don't think many of us were around. I don't know if you were here, Deborah, for the I was here. Frank was here. I can explain a lot of the Go ahead. Um, we've done a lot of things I think different and this isn't me playing armchair quarterback. I wasn't there. Um, it's easy for me to, you know, to

31:32 speak to the now and and not the then. You know, we started change management early on. We've been we've been working with um the teams. We we put together a strong change management or a strong change agent. Um, what's the word? I'm network. Thank you. I'm an IT guy, right? Network should come to me. um a change management network or a change agent network. We've been talking about the change. I think that this this shift that we're making with finding the right program director and using the right contract and and having people that have experience with utilities implementing this type of solution is is a big different or is a big change that we've made this time. I think we're a lot more methodical. You know, one of the other things that we did as part of our change agent program is we did a wham's lesson

32:18 learned and so talked to people that were here during the WHAM implementation. Found out what good things what went well and what didn't go great and trying to make sure we sidestep those landmines as best we can. I think the sponsorship from the top down, the entire executive team is fully behind this and all working really well together. And I think the sponsors across IT, customer and finance for this is is a big piece of that. Um and then the approach that Deoid's taking is seems to be a really good synergy and working well with the web. Last question. Do you have an estimated timeline where this is going to have a functional life? You know how many more boards are going to have to approve replacing this? What five years, 10

33:03 years? Just an estimate of how long do you think this will be functional? No, that that's a great question. you know people when they when they purchase an integrated suite of tools like SAP it's it's a lifetime and now that means you have to continue to maintain it and and the reason that we've selected this type of product that's fully integrated is because we can upgrade it all together at the same time as opposed to upgrading WAM that then that technology doesn't fit with CIS and and so then you can't upgrade WHAM because it's going to break this connection and so this is a very um intentional decision to go with something like SAP um it's being hosted in the cloud. We at a minimum will have to take updates no no less than once a year. So this is the long haul. Thank you.

33:57 So I noticed so the aid consulting went from 3 million to 5 million. We originally budgeted three million for that program director and now it's at five million but he's doing more work. Yeah. Actually the so the three million was there was three years left on that contract the the program project management contract. So we increased it to about a million a year for the remainder of that three years and that's the one that we're cancelelling. This project will go back and I and I missed that. I apologize. You know, this is 2023 through 2028 is this herculean effort to implement the full suite of tools. And so that's why we went with the five years. Both of the contracts we would be leaning into for not just a program director at a million a year. That's up to up to a million a year, up

34:44 to 5 million contract for program director, project management, quality assurance, potentially data conversion, um staff augmentation. And then the implementation partner we're only scheduling two years. Yeah. So sorry. So he's going to be program director and all that suite is going to be on board for five years. This one's going to be on figure it'll be implemented after two years at 16 million. Yeah. So this is customer finance. Then the next phase of the program is enterprise asset management and mobile work management and then potentially HR as well human capital. So the the products are is a five-year

35:30 implementation. This is the big phase one which is big right the customer and finance pieces. I guess the last question I have is in my limited time on the board, I've seen contracts come in and then on a consent calendar, I see an increase in contracts. Are these locked in numbers or are they going to come back and say, "I need another $3 million in two years to complete the con the scope of work that I've contracted for at 16 and five." guys paused to make sure I didn't interrupt you again. So I did a good job that time the six so the contract with deoid is a fixed price contract for the for the implementation of that the where

36:15 that in skew is change orders if e webb decides we have to have this widget or we need this then there's potential that the the change orders but um back to my original presentation I don't remember this but back in May of 2021 we talked about 90% out of the box that we need to adjust our business process to fit into the product. We're still committed to that. So, and that included the the estimate from Deote included some of those customizations. So, their price shouldn't change unless we change scope. All right. Thank you.

37:14 Uh, thanks very much. I'll be really brief. Uh, Travis, when I first came on, you took some time to help me understand the need for this and kind of what the path looked like to get us there. Um, so I feel like I have some understanding of of what we're doing here. I just want to say I like the the need is clear to me. the benefits are obvious. Um, this is a huge investment, but it it seems to me having had a couple conversations that this is the, you know, the right direction to go. Um, I'm fully supportive and I guess it it just can't happen fast enough. Um, so appreciate the, uh, long-term commitment on behalf of this team and looking forward to having this system running. Thanks. Okay. And I see this as an action item. So

38:00 what action do you need from us? Yeah. So what we're asking is for the board to move to approve the AVC consulting contract so we can um sign that and move forward and then asking the board to move to authorize the general manager or his designate to sign the the contract once that's complete. Do those need to be two those need to be? Yeah, they're two separate. Okay. All right. I'll move to approve the program director services contract with Evan Consulting not to exceed $5 million over five years. Second question. All right. All those in favor say I. I.

38:46 Unanimously. Next up move to authorize general manager is or is designate to approve the implementation contract with delay not to exceed $16 million over two years. Okay. Any discussion? No. All right. Move your right along. Let's vote. All those in favor say I. I. All right. Thank you. Good luck. Thank you. We'll keep in touch on it. Next up bond issuance on the screen. Yes. Okay. I'm not going to stay up here all night

39:35 this one. I I hope not you all have a lot of material to get through. Uh so thank you. Uh I am here to talk about a potential 2023 bond issuance for the water utility. Rob Freight is our new general accounting supervisor, general accounting and treasury supervisor and he's with me uh this evening. Erin Palmer is also on the line, uh, our fiscal services supervisor. And then if you have any questions about what we're doing with the money, Paul Mcola is here and can answer those questions. Uh, so should you authorize us to proceed tonight? This is a this is an outline of what the process would look like. I know

40:20 that for a couple of you this is um new and that for others of you this is a refresher beyond the team from e webb finance. This effort is supported by our financial advisors at Piper Jaffrey uh underwriters at RBC and then our bond council from Foster Garvey. We've worked with all of uh those organizations on our most recent issuances. Uh the dates up here are tentative. We are waiting a date to get on the city agenda uh and we're expecting to uh have a time sometime in April. The process can move quickly though and so are highlighted touch points that you all would have along the way. Uh so tonight's that

41:07 first touch point and we're bringing forward uh your consideration a resolution requesting the city council authorize for issuance of water utility revenue bonds uh for new construction. Uh from there we need the city council authorization and we anticipate a date in April for that. And then following city council authorization, a public notification process applies and it's an opportunity for voters to petition to have the issuance on the ballot. And that um requires 5% to proceed with public election. uh at the May meeting, possibly June, again working out the final timeline, management would bring a supplemental resolution to the board

41:52 requesting authorization for staff to go ahead and proceed with that bond issuance. Uh the preliminary official statement would come to the re come to the board for review in June as a part of due diligence procedures. There's not an action item for you all. We just provide that for you. to do your due diligence. And then bond sale is slated for early July. With that, I'm going to pass it to Rob to talk a little bit about the climate right now for issuance. There are numerous factors to consider with UE's bond issuance. Uh one of those is the US Treasury rate historical

42:39 trend. US Treasury securities serve as the benchmark for the bond markets. On the graph, you'll see gray vertical lines. Those represent recessions. Since the recession in 2020, we have seen rates increasing, yet they are still in the lower range of the historical trend. Interest rates are forecast to remain relatively flat for the first half of this year and decrease slightly through mid 2025. Another factor is anticipated market liquidity which is forecast to peak

43:24 during the summer months of this year as indicated with the bars within the green rectangle. Strong market liquidity can benefit Eb's bond pricing and result in a lower total interest rate for the offering and scheduling during the summer months can optimize Eb's offering. Yeah. And so um with that I'd like to answer any questions uh or hear any comments that you all have. management is recommending approval of resolution 2306 uh to seek authorization from city council for this borrowing.

44:15 I'm going to jump in. I'm in the quarterly report. I know we have the of the metrics around debt coverage and I'm just curious how this impacts the the where we stand in in terms of coverage. We clear this are we still in the target range you will still be in the target range for debt service coverage and this was um forecasted in the long-term financial plan uh that you last saw. Great. Thank you. Any other questions? Just to follow up on what Sonia just said. So that includes the 43 and the 77 million that we're going to go. So that's what 110 million we're going out for in the next few years. And our debt coverage ratio will still within

45:01 what is it two? Yes. So for so the water utility did model the borrowing that we believe will be necessary to get us through uh the secondary treatment plant. So, and to support the capital plan uh that was presented last July and the rate increases that were in there were sufficient to support the necessary debt service coverage. Thank you. My question is just on the timing of the the Lammit water treatment plant. I know that we still have a ways to go with that, but we anticipate that we'll have enough ready within the next three years to and that money. This will part of this will fund early

45:48 expenses in the mama treatment uh plant and then also other type two capital. Water storage being a big piece of that. Um, so again, how much are we are we looking to issue in bonds? Uh, 43 million is what we're 43 million this offering and then we'll need to borrow additional funds to complete the secondary treatment facility. That's some years. Okay. Um, these are revenue back bonds. Is that correct? They are. Or they will be

46:35 Can you just talk talk to me about the high liquidity and why why summer is or is it just that the mark you think there's going to be a lot of capital in the market in July? So RDC, do you want to go back to that slide? Our underwriters actually um gather a great deal of information for us and this is one uh this is something that they um do as a matter of routine and they see liquidity in the market with uh in highest for Oregon in June and then uh nationally in July. So that means like bonds have come matured and they and they need to re read reinvest. Exactly is what that means.

47:20 Exactly. Um and then I guess the last thing I would have is is relationship with the city of Eugene and us needing council approval. Are our two entities bond ratings tied? So when we Okay. So when we go out for bonds, it doesn't even though they have to approve it, they uh it doesn't affect their ratings or their uh their bondable. We're rated separately from them and them from us. This is their revenue back bonds. It's not something that has to deal with compression and those types of you.

48:07 Yeah, just briefly, um, one of the things that I've learned in the in being in this role is that it's, um, really difficult for us to save money on the front end in order to finance projects, and so we end up doing this kind of, um, borrowing in order to fund projects instead. Could you just give us the 60-cond overview? I'm just thinking for people that are asking like, well, why didn't we plan for this? Why didn't we save money on the front end? It's not really feasible, and that's my understanding. And can you just give us the overview of that just for folks who might be having that question? Um, that's a good question. And we do fund a great deal of our capital uh with what we call rate funded capital. And so typically our type one uh projects are

48:52 funded with uh um with rates. Uh on our larger projects, our type two and then our strategic projects. One of the advantages to bond funding is that then we match the cost of that project with the use of that project. Um so that is one reason why we like to do those larger projects with bond funding theory that the payers are the people getting the use so they're paying for it in the time. Exactly. Right. And the other part is I understand is that if we set dollars aside, we can't actually acrue much in the way of interest on those dollars if we were holding them aside for a major

49:38 investment. Um, we uh we have constraints around where we can invest and typically see very low yields. We also have a good credit rating that allows for us to borrow at low rates. Right. Thank you so much for the clarifications and um I'm certainly supportive. Thank you. Thank you. Question for Frank. So, we don't have our land use approval to build this yet. How comfortable are you going ahead selling bonds and spending money because we got kicked to the curb last time on land use approval? Are we assured and were we 100% sure we're going to get that approval or where are we on that? Um,

50:23 I'm I'm really confident in the land use process that we're involved in. uh we're not just looking at talking to the city of Springfield. We're involved in the facilities plan that's also coordinated with City of Eugene and the county. So I I feel confident with that. I I would also point out that only a portion of this is going toward the second treatment plant. There's there's a lot of this is going toward water storage and other capital projects. So not all of this bonding would even be at at risk and and could be flexed into other projects. 20 million I think 19 million going to this. So that but we're we're comfortable confident that we're going to get that approved. Yeah, I I I feel really good about where we are uh where staff is and also where the coordination and the um the work is

51:10 with with Springfield. Thank you. Okay, I'll second again. Thank you. All right. Um all those in favor say I. I 60 $60 million we've approved so far. Okay. All right. I'm keeping track. I'm sorry, but productive here. Does that include getting up to 100 million calendar contracts too?

51:56 What? 10 million on just on water. Yeah, the fist pass is $10 million there too. Water line on 95. Well, to get anything approved, I just need John Brown to make the motion and need a second. And apparently that's the process. You take it without me. All right. Go for it, Frank. Great. Thank you, President Carlson, commissioners. One. So, President Carlson, commissioners, EW staff, members of the public, I appreciate the annual opportunity to take a step back and give you some perspective on EW Webb's organizational

52:42 performance. our results, our challenges, and our opportunities. I also appreciate the opportunity to thank you commissioners uh for your leadership and to thank staff for their leadership, hard work, and accomplishments throughout the year. E Web has an obligation to serve our community 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. That obligation doesn't end tomorrow, doesn't end next week or 10 years from now. It's perpetual and it's forever. I reinforce this ongoing obligation because it off it's often easy to see the immediate, the here and now. The work that we do on pipes, pumps, tanks,

53:29 water treatment, poles, wires, transformers, generators, answering customer calls or emails. That work is critical to achieving our mission. But it's more difficult to see the efforts that support that work. Purchasing, finance, information systems, security, workforce support, power purchasing, support services, field services, building and renovations, customer solutions. The list goes on. It's even more challenging to appreciate the work that ensures we meet our ongoing obligation in the future. We invest in the watershed, offer a multitude of customer programs, manage $1.3 billion worth of assets, and

54:15 meticulously plan the performance and analysis that's needed in all areas of the organization for that ongoing purpose. It is a significant part of our job to ensure that we can continue to meet our mission and adhere to our values over the long haul. By definition, our strategic work should support the development of sustainable community benefits. Therefore, we plan and execute work that positions the organization to meet future challenges and opportunities safely, reliably, environmentally, affordably, all while recognizing the importance of community and organizational culture.

55:00 2022 was an incredibly productive year for EW Webb as we achieved virtually all of our primary annual goals along with many additional accomplishments. Because of people, we were able to keep the flow flow of electricity, water, money, information, collaboration and ideas. Despite experiencing many of the same challenges appearing across our society, including supply chain limitations, especially in raw materials or technology centric parts and contracting, inflationary pressures,

55:45 workforce scarcity in selected fields, cyber and physical security threats and challenges, polarizing social viewpoints. E Web is a strong organization. Both the water and electric utilities continue to be in good financial position. We pay attention to and prioritize safety and reliability and had one of our statistically safest years in the past two decades. A team from the IBEW, Union Stewards, and EWE management reached an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement to guide our relationship over the next several years. We are good stewards of the environment considering both the impacts of the environment on our products and services

56:31 and our impacts on the environment. On significant or impactful decisions, we analyze the alternatives from a triple bottom line perspective as exemplified in the decision to develop a plan to decommission the Liber hydroelectric project. We've expanded our lead green program. An e webb team worked through a robust process to select SAP for utilities as the basis for our information systems technology platform going forward. When you process millions of transactions, including the processing of over 1.3 million bills alone each year, information systems are fundamental

57:16 pieces of continuing to fulfill our organizational objectives. Ew Webb's public outreach in 2022 was significant and outstanding, led by our communications team who were instrumental in projects like the East 40th Reservoir, the IRP, the Riverfront Headquarters sale, and countless other projects and programs from emergency preparedness to new lead green products. Finally, we don't rest on our laurels. In 2022, hundreds of employees participated in continuous improvement projects. Improvement being a key ingredient in many of the transitions the organization

58:01 is driving or facing inside and outside the organization. So you have had a great year but once again the work is perpetual. What still needs work? All of it. Sorry. Particularly, we need to continue to cultivate an environment that is inclusive, ensuring we are equitable in our approaches and outcomes and that we demonstrate our respect for diverse perspectives as more of our processes and technology gets modernized. All right, speaking of technology, as it gets modernized, we need to improve our cross- departmental and leadership communications on the basis

58:47 of decisions and directions. And recognizing that we will continue to experience upward pricing pressures, we need to be good stewards of our customers money, making investments that support our continuing mission. Before I dive into the operational and strategic results, I'd like once again to thank you commissioners for your leadership and guidance, the e webb workforce for each of their own contributions to our ongoing mission and for their collaboration and teamwork. Our local industry partners like Lane County and the city of Eugene, our suppliers and contractors, and finally those citizens that provide us with constructive ideas, perspectives, and feedback. In a world that seems so polarizing,

59:34 it's rewarding and encouraging to to see and witness people who while they celebrate their differences, they are respectful to each other and work together toward a common goal. It's not just what we accomplish that matters. It's how we get it done that's equally important. Thank you. And I will dive into the results themselves. So we had eight goals this last year. The first one uh is around operational performance. And so um this year I decided to divide our operational performance up into our

1:00:19 values. So looking at safe, reliable, affordable, environmental and community. Overall it was a tremendous year operationally. Um I mentioned statistically one of the best years from a safety perspective in our history. Um statistically as well as when you look at things like our uh preventative work good catch reports at 129 opportunities uh reported this year other than COVID years the two previous years um the years before that were 28 and 59. So almost double good catch which is proactive preventable preventing of accidents occurred. So many statistical

1:01:05 um improvements um and success in the area of safety. Also when we we think about safety a lot of times we take think about physical safety. Just wanted to also mention that um physical security is important piece of that. Thank you you and your team. Um also the the cyber security group is also important. So um you know Ken Baldwin is at our physical security and then Ed Penn along with Joel and Mark also work on our cyber security side which is unfortunately becoming more and more of a threat to organizations especially those with critical infrastructure like Eb.

1:01:50 Reliability has been a really interesting evolution over the past few years as we've moved to a little bit more of a holistic approach to reliability. Um, some of the individual statistics as you read through the report uh had some mixed results. Um, our frequency and duration of electrical outages was on the high end of our 5-year average. Although if you continue to roll that average, you're going to sometimes be on the higher or the lower end of that window. um still outstanding performance, but we've looked at electric now as a source to switch kind of approach including generation, power management, transmission, distribution, as well as as customer feedback on power power quality, building and renovation responses, etc. And we take a very

1:02:36 similar approach on the source tot side of of the water utility where we look at watershed, we look at treatment, distribution, customer feedback on water quality. And so we've we've seen a number of improvements such as valve turning on the maintenance side. Um but still see opportunities when we look at this holistically for areas to continue to improve. Customer service was specifically mentioned in in the 2022 goal partly because the organization had created some challenges to our customer response the year before. Um and the the customer service groups uh bore the brunt of that. And so call times for example dropping below a minute in their

1:03:23 response um while taking 120,000 calls throughout the year was a significant improvement well below our benchmarks. So thank you Julie to you and your team and and Greg um you and your team as well. reliability also when we we think of that we can't just think about the the traditional infrastructure we also um significantly pay attention to our information systems for example how we execute projects the uptime of our systems and our applications and you can see uh some really strong results from the the information systems teams affordability um while we've been affordable for a

1:04:09 number of years. Uh we did have a rate increase this year. Um however, I would point out that we we are financially strong. We had uh finan a good financial year from both the water and electric perspective. This gives us headroom to be able to make prudent investments. Uh we are not in a situation where we are making desperate decisions which is always uh dangerous in the long term. Um but as you can so budget adherence was really strong across the organization from a cost control perspective. Uh there are certain things that are variable like water years and so when you have a good water year you can generate more secondary revenue on the electric side for example. uh but we have seen continued strong results uh

1:04:55 from a budget adherence and also uh from a net income or change in net position as the financial people would describe it. But as as commissioners know uh and anyone who runs any organization of any size, supply chains matter. um inflationary pressures, workforce and labor uh environments are changing and we have to uh make some significant investments and also uh we have some legacy challenges such as uh the Leeberg decision and the financing of of that. So there will be continued rate pressures going forward and the stewardship of the finance is going to be critical for e webb

1:05:41 from an environmental perspective a significant amount of work and I don't want to touch on too much of that because um Kelly will share some of the results later um but when you think about the number of programs that we introduced some new ones including our lead green programs and the fact that we made significant investments that you approved in the watershed which is incredibly important to both to both the utility from a drinking water perspective, but also uh to the community um in in the Mackenzie Valley. Um you know, for example, we planted 500,000 trees, which is an incredible number, and 165 stewardship agreements with local land owners um to voluntarily manage the help us manage the wershed

1:06:27 and work together on that. Um and then just through our normal programs um and and Greg and the team u working with customers on uh new solar projects on both rental projects um over 15,000 kilowatt hours saved and that's that's in the first year alone. We don't project out farther than that and over 4,000 metric tons of carbon reduction just in those programs. And so um the UB operations had an x x percent and part of that was as I was waiting for 44% reduction in e-web operational um reduction versus our 2010

1:07:15 community um is another area where um e webb being a communityowned um utility plays a significant role in the in the community and one of the things I wanted to mention in this particular because Last year we actually expanded this value to include culture and organizational culture in particular. Um you know we did a tremendous amount of work in continuous improvement and and that kind of falls into different categories like process mapping. Um I was going to answer the commissioner Brown's question. What's the difference between WHAM and the new the new approach? Um WHAM was approached as a technology or an IT project. Um, EES is approached from a business perspective. We are looking and in fact if you notice

1:08:01 this and I think Commissioner Barroski Barski brought this up goals coming and going from an from an annual reporting perspective. Last year was a lot about and ees last year was a lot about getting the technology selected. This year is very much about working with the integrator. In that process um we have mapped out over 212 different process maps for ASIS conditions that now has to be mapped into a new technology. So we are approaching this much differently than we did um in the 2014 2012 um time frame. a lot of process mapping standard work which is what was inside the boxes in a

1:08:48 process map. Um diversity equity and inclusion was something we made a lot of progress internal to the organization but we still have policy development work which will take place this year. Um but overall a lot of of work um done in the area of community and culture. Finally just the ad hoc things on the list. Um you know the wildfire mitigation plan. We did a robust residential customer survey which which gave us some really informative results and especially when you start taking a deeper dive into how our customers feel about certain things. launched a product line, energy efficiency and

1:09:34 conservation, water conservation. Um, some of the numbers on the water conservation side are pretty pretty staggering when you look at the millions of gallons of water uh that are saved uh through things like leak detection um efficient toilets and valves and and other programs that we offer. And then um you know really the the customer assistance programs um were were pretty amazing as as well. Um when you look at the amount of of money roughly $1.6 million just through the the the e-web programs alone. So really significant effort to help our

1:10:21 customers overall from a goal perspective. Won't really touch on all of these save if you have any questions about them. Um but we had overall some major sections to the goal goals eight major goals and then some some sub goals within those. Um, and as you can see, for the most part, those were were achieved. Um, and such as the SAP selection, um, on on the previous page, you saw work around the union contract, preparing for that integrated resource planning. You'll hear more about that later in this meeting, but we're able to publish our our base case to develop

1:11:07 future sensitivities and scenarios around operational resiliency. Um, electric master plan still needs needs some work. There was a lot of planning that took place within individual components uh transformers, certain things within transmission and distribution. Um, but that uh will come together in a little bit more holistic way. uh this this year. And then goal seven was more around educational on the rate design. A lot of work to take place in the next few years around rate design. Um we are internally working on a plan for rate design that we can share with the board later this year which will probably lay out around five years

1:11:54 worth of of rate design work for the organization and the board will play a really critical role in that. And then um we did sat line orders. That wasn't last year, but we failed on that one, but I put it I put it yellow because we almost we got it done, but a little bit late. Finally, commissioners, I I again wanted to to thank you and and sometimes it's when you get a chance to take a step back and just collect the the different activities and and help that that you gave the organization this past year. You there were some major decisions um decisions or endorsements or

1:12:39 guidance, however you want to look at that. Um, you know, I think East 40th, Leeberg, wildfire mitigation, strategic plans. We made some some changes to that, the whole headquarters process, integrated resource plan develop, and board policy. Then on top of that, which included a number of different policies that you worked on and and then just the oversight and direction. I'm not even going to list those. There's so many different things that over the course of the year you provided guidance to the organization on. And so thank you for all the guidance and oversight and and really definitely I know staff feels this um we really appreciate the opportunity to to answer your

1:13:25 questions but also appreciate um how you conduct yourselves with each other in such a respectful way even when you have differences of opinion which is a really great example that you don't always see in today's society. So thank you And with that, there's a lot of staff around, so any questions come up, I'll figure out who to point to or who to call on. But, um, again, thank you, Commissioner. A great year. Thank you to the organization for I I can't remember a year where we got as much done done done as we did this past year. And like I said, in state of utility, it wasn't just what we got done. It was how we did it. So,

1:14:12 thank you. I must have just ded you're exhausted. It was such a hard year. You're exhausted. I I'll start if I may. I just like to compliment you and staff and everybody here for doing an exemplary job. I mean every year it seems, you know, there are some years that a little challenging to sit here and keep your spirits, but uh it's it's getting easier and easier uh to to dedicate this time because of you and your leadership and and the professionalism we have around this room and and everybody watching and involved. So, thank you very much. Um the one thing that came out of the strategic and operational quarterly goal, it's because I I had a pre question was the staffing

1:14:58 issues. So many things aren't getting done because we don't have the people to do them. And I'm I'm glad to see that we're trying to get ahead of that and we're trying to adjust that, but that's a little worrisome. I know we went through that about 12 years ago or so when we I said we overhired to to to do that. And um but uh I just want to make sure that uh stay ahead of that because you know we got a lot of highly technical jobs and highly skilled jobs and uh I want to make sure that we don't lack for for that. So thank you very much. very good report. Thanks regulation. Yeah, you thanks for noticing. Um I I do think that I don't know that I've ever been with an organization that had all the resources that it it needed. Um we

1:15:44 do because of the assets that we we manage there. We do make trade-offs between the operational and the replacement for example and different work that we have to do. Um, and I I think we do recognize that there's a lot on our plate. Some of that is because of the age aging of the system and the o and as well as the strategic opportunities that we've put on the organization's plate. And so we'll continue to have to balance both the resource side such as you mentioned and try and get ahead of that. There's a lot of work to do there, but also how much we're asking of the organization at any particular time. So, I think it's both of those dials that we have to pay attention to. Thank you.

1:16:33 Um, pretty exciting time to be part of this organization. There's so much that's going on and um, what I really appreciate is your leadership and also the participation and of the major endeavors that we're taking on. It's amazing how many big things that we're working on sometime. Um and I just want to comment that in the four years, five years, whatever that I've been on this board, um things just seem to keep getting better. They keep seeing professional. I think that um our communications team has done a fantastic job in reaching out to the public and helping lead us through the whole um

1:17:18 That's why I want to shout out to them. I think they did a fantastic job with that. Um, just to be part of this. So, thank you. Yeah, I I agree. Our communication, Steve, this year did. So, Jen Connor's is the supervisor of that group. Erin, Erin is is here. that, you know, Adam and his videos of Leeberg was just I mean, you you look at all the volume and the quality of work that that group has put out the last year. It compared to where we were even a couple years ago. I remember one of the first comments that Commissioner Barovski mentioned was about outreach and getting ahead of things and it it you know that that doesn't fall on on

1:18:04 deaf ears and especially when you deal with such complex topics and issues that that we have and so I thought that group had an outstanding year. I thought that the people who support them in those messages and that also did a did a really great job. But Liber is an example, East Horius as an example, the IRP, you know, those are those are all and th that work is continuing uh because we have some subjects that the community cares about and we need to be transparent. We need to be open and we need to listen and communicate. So that it's been a really big help organization.

1:18:49 Thank you. Thanks to all. It's been Yeah. I still can't believe how much I mean I can feel it in terms of all of the meetings and the board packets. I also am just impressed that every month you all make a novel. I that read the novel. So thank you. Yeah. I think I I want to just really appreciate staff one last time. I I think that there's a lot of work ahead of us and it's almost I I feel like oh you're just as good as the next thing you do that you do because there's so much in in front of this organization. Um but it it's very valuable to have have a board that is so productive um a community that cares about it. You know

1:19:35 I I think that we do live in a very passionate community. Um, and it's an exciting I think you said exciting time to be part of. There's days I'm not sure I would describe it that way, but I I really do think that we have a great group of people. And um, you know, the one comment about Carl that that I w I I said to Carl, um, I went on the Carl tour last week or the week before, several different celebrations of of Carl and the one thing that I mentioned to him was the legacy aspect of what he's done. Success breeds success and Carl is a great example of that because we now have an incredible group of team dealing with water quality and watershed issues and a number of other things. So you he

1:20:20 started something others will continue to build on that. So really looking forward to that. Thank you. Oh did you? Yeah I got a couple. I was about ready to run on. I'm sure Matt's gonna chime in as well. Um, again, I'll echo what my other commissioners have already said regarding the professionalism and the and the uh great work of all the staff that have gone into helping us be along. Um, you know, one thing for me is there's in this community there's polarization around a lot of things. Um, and

1:21:06 I'm lucky enough to be able to say that when it comes to some of the polarizing issues, climate, let's just take climate for for an example. I feel real comfortable that we are one that helped to end the polarization. We have we have the answers. When people come to us and say, "What are you doing about climate?" You've given us the answers to say, "This is what we're doing." and and they can't and people say thank you for that. Um I think that that's something you know 10 years ago if you had said ew you know oh what what are they doing? Oh the other lights go on the the water comes through and now we we're a a large partner in a in a

1:21:51 very important conversation that's going on in this community and the community around the around the world. And it's it's nice to know that we're doing it professionally and with uh really good staff. Um you know, the other thing that comes up, you know, after you go through and look at all of those things, we did make a lot of decisions this year, right? But we just made the decisions. Now the action part of it comes through, right? We made a decision on Leeberg. We have to implement it. made a decision on EES. We have to implement it, right? We're leaning towards making a decision on second water treatment plant. Need to

1:22:37 make sure that we implement these things in the way that we hope to be able to do it. Um, so yes, we did a lot of hard work, but for me, I think the hard work is is going to be coming up to staff and to the rest of the organization to be able to implement those decisions that we've made. Um, and I have fa faith that we'll be able to do it. we made the hard hard decision not out there with shovels, you know, digging up a levy. So, uh I look forward to the implementation part and uh yeah, thank you. And McCrae, I didn't mean to overlook

1:23:24 you. I I keep looking down, but I haven't seen anything. No worries. Not at all. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Commissioner. Um just one concern. Commissioner Carlson apparently is getting a novel every month and I'm just getting like charts and tables and so I'm super confused. Um, so I'd like to get whatever she's getting. Um, and beyond being ridiculous, I I I do want to say it's just huge honor to work with a team of such uh, wildly smart individuals uh, steering this ship. So, thank you for uh the opportunity and and and to my board members as well. Um you know what what an honor to work with you all and and I uh will second the the

1:24:09 value of our ability to respectfully disagree. Uh that's um it's really what makes this all so workable. So, thank you all. Um that's all I have. All right. Well, I guess we better get to work then. So, No, I appreciate the comments. You know, we we know that there's some organizations, I think we all know, that do plans really well and then they execute poorly. Um I I think that um this organization has really two different way, two different operating modes. And actually Rod Price and I were talking about that this afternoon with Ann. We have a a an organizational

1:24:54 culture around keeping lights on and water flowing and information flowing. So it's a very sort of here and now. It's all about execution. And then we have another piece of the organization which is very much about the future and planning and analysis. So we have really much different operating environments. And so decisions are important, plans are important, so is execution. And we need to be able to do both. And that's culturally that's a challenge and that's something that we're talking about internally. How do we facilitate both of those? Thanks for thanks for making our point.

1:25:41 Next to the climate guide book part one content overview. All right, good evening. Thank you so much for having me here tonight. My name is Kelly. I am EW Webb's climate policy analyst and advisor, and I'm thrilled to be here. Um, this is the first part of a two-part series that we're going to be talking about related to EWB's climate guide book. Um uh I'm here in part one to talk a little bit about what is the purpose of this new reference document that we're creating for web staff and community members. Uh what is the purpose timeline and the versions

1:26:27 associated with the climate guide book and then we'll spend um some time this evening going through the document structure. Uh there is so much planned for future versions but we'll talk about what's included so far and where we want to head. We'll spend a little time going into some technical detail that's in a planet city which is related to e webb carbon intensity uh and then we'll touch on some of the public outreach that has been conducted so far and leave plenty of time for questions. In part two, uh we'll focus on some specific details related to the greenhouse gas inventory of K webb's operations and some of the reporting uh of results related to our voluntary commitments that we have included in uh the city of Eugene's cap 2.0. So more to come. Uh and I just

1:27:15 wanted to quickly notice uh that while I'm the one up here uh in front of you all today talking about this, this is actually a very large undertaking by many staff throughout the organization. So uh there are several folks that are available for uh answering questions, a lot of subject matter experts. This really pulls together the work of many many folks throughout the organization and I have really appreciated the support from staff to provide data and um results and talk about these things. So, thank you to them. Um I wanted to just you've heard a little bit about the climate guide book before tonight. Um I wanted to just reiterate that this is intended to be a reference document and it's really not intended to be a position paper, if you will. Um 95% or

1:28:03 even more of the content that you'll notice included in the guide book um is really about things like reporting data and results of programs, providing links to other resources and studies and information. Uh consolidating information and talking about things that are happening in the industry. Um and as you know it's it the idea behind this guide book is to be that reference document on how e webb is addressing climate change. As you just saw, the quarterly reports really give a snapshot of all of the work that's being done in the organization. And the guidebook is intended to supplement that by providing the climate lens. If somebody wants to understand all of the work that's relating to climate change specifically, they can look through this guidebook and understand some of the connections

1:28:49 between the information that's being reported and things like the quarterly report and understand the impact as uh it has on climate change. We're really trying to provide that transparency and that one-stop shop for folks who want to know more about our climate change performance. So, quick point on timeline. In January, I was here talking like a little bit about the introduction to the guidebook and what it was intended for. In February last month, I came and gave you a sneak peek at some of the content, the principles that are included in the guide book. uh and we incorporated a lot of your comments uh the public comment that came out from that and that's included in what you'll see before you tonight, the draft of version 1.0. And

1:29:36 again, this is also a sneak peek. You get a a month's uh preview of what we plan to include on our website next month. So that's when we plan to release this document fully to the public. Uh and then over the next year, we will be adding additional content. So, I ask you to please be patient with staff. We know there's so much more to come and this is really just the beginning. So, be patient as we build this document out over time. And we plan to have a significant annual updates in April of each year where we'll uh conduct a new greenhouse gas inventory of results, report on new data uh for the CAP 2.0 uh from the city of Eugene, etc. Those types of things that will be planned on an annual basis. So I won't spend too much time on this

1:30:22 slide. Uh again the the structure of the document is really focused on our climate change policy. There are the five areas that you all have directed the general manager to take action on. And those are here and they represent each of the chapters. And as chapter one really talks about the purpose and the intended audience and the structure of the document. I'm actually just going to go directly into chapter two. And as we go forward tonight, what I'd like to do is touch briefly on what's included in each chapter, um where we're going to head and what we're planning to include in future versions and then uh I'll touch on a couple of items of note if there's something that I really want to bring your attention to. So as we dive into chapter 2 um you'll notice that the

1:31:07 intent here is to really lay the groundwork of what is the context in which we are all operating in related to policy on climate change. And that policy spans from the global and the federal level all the way down to the local Eugene level. And so there's two main components to this first chapter. There's those policy summaries with links for more information. And we hope to as we move forward add a how does this relate to e webb kind of paragraph under each one of those areas so that you can understand the specific regulations or rules that e webb will need to follow under those um particular subjects and then we also in this chapter include those principles that you saw last month. A couple of key items of note. There's a lot of work happening right now on regional

1:31:53 electricity markets and we will continue to work in that area as the Bonavville contract administration uh sorry the Bonavville Power Administration contract is going to be renegotiated over the next several years as well as things like the um uh Western Resource Adequacy Program, the RAP and the EIM, the um uh these new markets that are happening in in the west as those things continue to move forward as well. Um, so I already touched on a few of these things that are coming as well. I'm going to push on to chapter three. So in chapter 3, we focus on our power supply and our transmission decisions. Uh, currently what's included in version one are results from previous studies that

1:32:39 have taken place over the last three years. Um, and where we're going is, as you'll hear later on tonight, we'll be continuing to iterate on our integrated resource planning process. We'll include additional information on those analyses, the sensitivity studies, and as we continue to move forward with that, we'll um provide more information and links in the climate guide book. Um, two quick key items of note in this um, particular section. The first is that these studies that have been conducted over the last several years, they do provide uh an estimate of what we expect from our load and that has um been e excellent work from our power planning staff as they look to see and make projections on what's happening with electrification. And those existing

1:33:26 analyses include things like electrification from EVs and some uh residential and commercial building heating and and other um uh sources of electrification. But one area that we'll need to focus on moving forward is how does electrical excuse me, how does in industry uh fit into that picture? Just in the last uh two months, we've had several inquiries from industrial partners or large customers telling us about their corporate greenhouse gas reduction goals and asking us to partner on how we can help support their customer decarbonization efforts. And so that's a piece of that load forecast that we'll need to continually iterate on and revise over time. Uh and then the second piece here is a just a piece about EW's planning uh excuse me, EW's

1:34:13 carbon intensity. And I'm going to just touch on this briefly, but in this section in the um power supply and transmission section, uh the SD15 climate change policy has a specific goal. It talks about by 2030 uh um on a planning basis that we should have over 95% of our annual energy coming from carbon-f free resources. And it was interesting because a a a large customer recently reached out to me and asked the question, if you're fully implementing your policy, shouldn't I be able to decrease the zero for your emissions uh from the deal? And I thought that's a really interesting question. And you, you know, it might be um I recognize I guess that it's highly

1:34:59 unsatisfying, but the answer is actually no. Um these two things don't necessarily uh relate to one another in a one for one and uh we can be fully implementing our policy and we are by including this as a requirement in our integrated resource planning process to have uh that 95% carbon-f free resource goal baked into that planning process and we can still have variable emissions. So that's what you see here on this chart. This is an emissions factor as reported by Oregon Department of Department of Environmental Quality in their GH reporting program. And you can see on the bottom, this is from 2010 to 20 uh 21. And what the um unit is, it's metric tons of greenhouse gas

1:35:45 emissions per megawatt hour. So if somebody like Eb when we do our greenhouse gas inventory, we take the total megawatt hours that we consume and we multiply it by this factor and we get the number of emissions were responsible for from our electricity consumption. But you can see that it's bouncing around um over time. And it's not this nice decreasing number. And that's because of something really important to bring up that on the left, the policy is really based on a planning basis. While on the right, we don't have control over all of the things that go into building that emissions factor. Those actuals, that emissions factor is based on actual load and actual market purchases that our power planning team and and our um

1:36:30 real time and uh short-term market uh power, you know, power planning uh folks are actually making decisions in in um real time and and that load our customer load is actually based on two things we don't have a lot of control over. The first is weather, right? And we can make projections on what is going to come from weather. Um, but we don't control that at all. And weather often leads to differences in customer behavior. But customer behavior is even more. It's driven by technology changes and new equipment adoption rates and things like that. And so while we don't have control over um load, weather be behavior, and in some cases those market purchases that we need to make in short time to

1:37:16 make sure that we're keeping the lights on. um we do have control over the planning basis. So I want to just say that even though it's not quite satisfying and we do want to look at this over time, it does make sense that we've set it up this way because uh it you know we're trying to focus on the areas where we do have control and can make um good decisions. Moving on to chapter four, that's the customer decarbonization chapter. There is a lot of information in this chapter so far about our green options programs and what we offer for residential and business customers. There's also two uh technical appendices that relate to this concept, the customer decarbonization chapter as well. the one um that I was just referencing, the carbon intensity guidance uh appendix C will give

1:38:02 greenhouse gas uh emissions factors for people to use in their own carbon footprinting activities and also and the appendix D that I'll touch on here in part two about EW's commitments uh and how we're proceeding with our commitments in uh Eugene's CAP 2.0. um we are a contributor to community uh emissions and so those also relate to how we as a community are supporting customer decarbonization efforts uh beyond just our borders. Um and I'm not trying to be too flip with what's coming, but there really is so much right there's so much to come that it was too much to put on this on this one slide. um because this is the area of the guidebook that I can see will have the most growth um over the next year.

1:38:49 Uh as we think about our customer programs and we think about um our you know uh board approved diversity, equity, and inclusion policy, we'll need definitions and metrics regarding how e-web programs can reach and support diverse segments of our customer base. We'll need to, as Travis was talking about earlier, uh figure out how e webb enterprise solutions, the ees transformation of our technology systems will enable our ability to deliver drinking water and electric services in a dynamic future. As we think about things like demand response or energy efficiency and our our transi transition to new technology will help support that. As we think about our rate design analysis and um think about how that will incentivize customer behavior and

1:39:35 put the right price signals for the uh types of behavior that will reduce emissions. These are all the components that will come into play uh as it relates to this chapter. So there's there's so much happening there. And then the other uh key item of note here is that um in the public outreach that we've done to date with more than 15 different organizations around the community to tell them about the climate guide book, this is really the area of focus that most people brought up and would like um to partner with EW on. How can we bring federal money that's coming from things like the inflation reduction act into our community? How can we prepare to bring that money here and support customer decarbonization efforts? Moving on quickly to chapter five. This

1:40:22 is about climate impacts on e webb and it focuses on resiliency um and adaptation and there's a lot that's included so far. many reports that are technical in nature and talk about what we're doing both on um mitigating hazards wildfire and and the um regional partnership that we do with city of Eugene and city of Springfield in the natural hazard mitigation planning process. There's information on specific climate projections for Lane County uh that has been done by some really well done science by the uh Oregon Climate Change Research Institute on what can we expect from uh changes in temperatures and and drought and and water conditions. And um we know that uh in

1:41:08 terms of items of note and what's coming, there's a lot coming here as well. you'll know that um one of the goals for this year was to have a a board approved resiliency policy and that might need to take a look at some of the definitions that we've included in the guide book so far about resiliency and how we're moving forward with that and maybe have additional areas of focus as we move forward. Um there's also really exciting work happening in our partnerships with the University of Oregon and um the forest carbon lab offering that we we offer to look at how we can increase sequestration within our wershed and in the working lands throughout the state of Oregon. So really exciting partnerships there. More to come on that. I'm going to actually move along through this chapter very quickly because that's the focus of chap of of

1:41:53 part two of tonight's discussion. We'll talk more about EWB's internal operations and GH reductions then. And I'd like to just finish up with a little bit of information about appendix C. So this appendix, you'll notice in the draft guide book that um some of this will still be written between now and when this document is published in April, but the intent is that the readers of this appendix will be more technical in nature. These might be folks like myself who are responsible for doing a greenhouse gas inventory of their own operations or uh are curious about how this work can um you know how they can use this information in their own organizations or in their own homes to understand their carbon footprint and where they can take steps to reduce that. Um, you'll notice the title here

1:42:38 says EWB's carbon intensity guidance, but it's not EWB's guidance. It's information about how this is being talked about in the industry. There's a lot of existing protocols and resources and information on how you do carbon accounting. Uh, and there's published emissions factors. And again with back to the point of what the guide book is intended to do is to bring all these resources together into that one-stop shop so that people don't have to go to DEEQ's website and EPA's website and over here to World Resource Institute website. They can have all that information in one place. they can understand what those established best industry practices uh are from those protocols, what the guidance says there and then how those information or how

1:43:24 those emissions factors are in one place and they can uh use those uh in in their calculations moving forward. What I wanted to just call your attention to is that there is, you know, in some areas of the country, there's not a lot of difference between different emissions factors that are available to a particular set of customers in a utilities territory. Here in Eugene, we're not uh you know, we have some unique situations that give us very different emissions factors. So, what I wanted to do is just call your attention to the difference in scale in some of the emissions factors that will be referenced in this particular appendix. The first you saw earlier, this is the um e webb utility specific emissions factor uh for our particular owned resources that are used to serve our

1:44:09 load. We provide data to Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and then they uh provide these uh uh uh emissions factors to folks in the state. Uh again, you'll notice the unit here is metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per megawatt hour and the years on the um bottom here run from 2010 through 2021. And you'll notice that there are differences here. And the primary number that probably jumps right out there is 2019, right? What happened there? That was not based on any differences in the way EW Webb ran our operations. That was a actually a poor water year and that was reflected throughout much of the region. And you'll notice that um when you you see the other emissions factors I'll I'll show you here that it also

1:44:54 increased in 2019 um at the regional scale as well. And so you know it's it's helpful to know what e webb's utility specific emissions factors are but e webb is not an island unto itself. It is part of the region and we uh buy and sell power within our you know with many partners and we are operating here in that yellow section of the map. It's called the Northwest Powerpool. It's actually recently been renamed to the Western Power Pool but um this is uh information from the United States Environmental Protection Agency and they put out this information about the recess resources that go into providing power in this broader region. So this yellow section

1:45:39 is one of the largest regions in the in the country. These are the places where utilities regularly trade with each other. And while we're used to having very clean electricity here at EWE because we have um access to the Bonavville Power Administration, which is p primarily hydropower, the region is actually dirtier than you might think. Um 19% coal and 21% gas. So when we go to the market and need to buy um power from that market, uh this is where we're buying it from and these are the types of resources that are there. So when we think about how e webb's utility specific number compounds to that regional average number in in orange on here, you can see that um there's a significant difference. And so it's

1:46:24 really important to know which emissions factor you're using when you're doing a carbon footprint or a greenhouse gas inventory because it can significantly change your results. And then we also know that the carbon intensity of our power really changes depending on the time of day and the time of year. And you've seen that through, you know, the IRP discussions where we know we're a winter peaking utility. And sometimes that um, you know, the cold snaps that come through can have a very high carbon intensity. And so it's also important to understand how that non-base load rate or that's the technical term but what that really is meaning this gray bar on the chart those are the that's the carbon intensity of some of those peak emissions for our region. So again the

1:47:09 orange bar on this chart shows the that regional average emissions factor for this yellow region here the Northwest Powerpool. And the gray bar on here shows what they call the non-base load rate, which are those resources that don't go to serve base load power. They're the ones that have a lower capacity factor and are brought on to meet peak needs. And you can see that they're significantly higher still than the region. And so we know that those peak times of day and year really matter from a carbon perspective. And so when we think about managing peak from a cost perspective or from a utility perspective, um there also needs to be

1:47:54 in the back of your mind that doing that is also good for the climate because we know those peak times tend to be the dirtiest. So with that, uh my second to last slide here is just that we've also been bringing this message about this climate guide book to many different organizations throughout the community. We've had initial conversations with 15 organizations so far and we plan to continue that public outreach plan throughout the rest of the year. Uh our goal for phase one of our public outreach plan is really letting people know that this exists. We want it to be used and we also want to hear feedback um as we plan out uh the improvements and expansion of this content is something our community that I'll open it up for questions or comments. Thank you so much.

1:48:51 All right. Um, well, thank you. This is certainly comprehensive and I know that you're just getting started. Um, and it's really helpful to have all of that information in one spot, especially because we can talk about all the great things that we're doing, but here we kind of have the the data or the information to back it up instead of us just saying it's one of our our key values or something. So, I appreciate that there's a place where look for that specific information. I guess thing that I'm wondering about is um it's it's pretty technical um and it's pretty dense because it needs based on what it is and I'm just

1:49:37 wondering about its um appeal the average person that wants to dig a little bit emissions and things like that is there a um is it is there an idea that they'll be like little summaries or I'm just thinking for some people it might be a bit daunting you know because it is technical so but but maybe that's who it's for people that want to do but I guess I'm just wondering about it like wide appeal that's a great comment and I really appreciate that um if there are ways that we can make it more accessible to

1:50:23 folks I would welcome that kind of feedback. I know that um one of the things that I have struggled with as I've worked with people to pull content together is um you know there are different intended audiences for different sections. Obviously, some of the appendices are very tech technical in nature and the intended audiences are are the people who are familiar with those concepts or and and need to go find those pieces of information and and um and provide some of your guidance there. um some of the uh initial public feedback that I've gotten um in terms of how you know reaching out to to the groups that we've talked to so far you know and one of the pieces that's not

1:51:08 there yet is there's going to be more graphics more um uh you know visuals that will come to accompany things so that there can be more diagrams to help people understand concepts so it's not just the technical words but people could see a picture or understand how something works for example on the distributed generation concepts or um you know um in some of the other areas um and I know that uh some of the other feedback we've gotten has been how can we especially in the uh customer decarbonization section where we have some summaries on programs maybe make some of those um reference sheets to to be able to see all the incentive programs we offer in one place so that

1:51:54 people can kind of um uh get a picture of that and and know where to go um to to find all of that in in one place. So there are some of the ways that I'm I'm thinking about that, but I welcome additional feedback if you think there's ways to make it more accessible. And I also think that one of the other key things that we're thinking about is when we make this available to the public, um we hope to and again because the intention was it for to be more less of a novel, right, that you all want to read uh from start to finish. Um by linking the individual chapters where people could just click on a chapter and and go kind of straight to the source, it'd be more of that encyclopedia style.

1:52:40 And we hope to again add some some graphics and photos that we didn't have time in in this first sneak peek. We wanted to give you kind of some of the meat of the content and then we hope to work with the communications team to add some of the um additional components. I was just I I was trying to think of a parallel to because there's aspects of this that are missing. There's parts of this that it's new and I think I made a really good point that this is this is a guide. It's not meant to be an editorial or a position paper. It's an encyclopedia. Um and one of the parallels that I could make and it came up really in this meeting as well is the state of the state of the watershed report which is

1:53:27 there's a there's a very specific subject that this organization deals with. Um, and there's a number of people who play in that arena and it's encapsulated into a report that provides information on that topic. And if you read that report, it it can get down in the weeds as as well. And I kind of see a parallel with the climate guide book going forward where it's it's a lot of the work we're doing. There's there's parallels across the the organization, but it's applying that lens to the work that we're doing in a way that then will become sort of routinely updated as we go. It's going to be very meaty probably. We'll have to extract things if there's particular aspects probably that we we

1:54:14 want to we want to pull out. I suspect there'll be some executive summaries and some other things for interpretation, but it's really designed to be a technical resource um more than more than anything else. And we'll see how it evolves because I think that's a great point. Um I think when you get one out there, you're going to have to say how is it being used and and go through a continuous improvement process on on it as well. But I could kind of draw a parallel between the the um state of the watershed report and then something like this where it's a collection of information. One of the other things that we have, you know, thought hard about and are still willing to, you know, ex um evolve

1:55:00 our thinking on is just we already have our website. We already have a lot of other reports and documents that cover a lot of this content. And so we didn't want to make this activity a kind of box checking. we didn't want to regurgitate a lot of the same information. So, one of the things we have struggled with is how do we reference things and provide the links to them and provide additional value to really say okay what's happening here? What is you know what is this document that we produce that has many different reasons for producing it related to utility operations and then what is the climate lens that we can see that document through and how can we provide kind of an upfront summary of this is a link to this either section of

1:55:46 our website or content or report that we've developed and then why does it matter related to climate change and what else do you need to know about it to make the right connections between you reading this report and understanding impact. So that's one of the other areas that we're trying to differentiate between other mediums of information that we're providing that might uh have less technical audiences in mind. Great. Well, I appreciate that it's a living document and you're just kind of starting to see where it's going to go. Thank you. Well, kind of along those same lines as I was reading it, I was thinking about maybe the the different hats that wear and and read the report, you know,

1:56:31 everyone as the commissioner and having it all in one place. Um, being able to reference certain aspects when we go and visit out the public. Um, I really appreciated um, you know, I appreciate where we're going. Um, you know, another one is obviously looking at these different organizations. I I did the greenhouse gas emissions report for the University of Oregon. We had to delve into the differences between the emissions factors of the e web base versus um the region and what that looks like. And some sometimes it hasn't been it wasn't very easy to get and we had to reach out and get an updated one and then we were using one that was years old. So I'm excited for groups that would look for that. Um and and businesses too. businesses will be um

1:57:17 using this. I know in my own work I've had to do reporting for customers on our um emissions and so trying to find the information so that I can say this is how much you know energy roughly went to support your customers you know your um your orders. Um, so I I think about how, you know, businesses will utilize this and I also think about how um just the average citizen, hey, can I some other utilities I know have um and I don't know, maybe maybe I didn't see anything in here, but maybe this will kind of become a tool we use or something, but you can plug in and say, okay, I used x amount of um kilowatt hours.

1:58:05 what does that translate into for my greenhouse gas emissions? So, having that or having the ability to think about what that means and then what do I do with that um as we go into the live green, move green, you know, now I know my impact, now what can I do to change it? So, those are the different places that I see and I'm really excited for. Yes, it's a lot to cram in there and there's a lot of different uses for it, but I can see the vision of where we're going. So, thank you. Are we going to track who's downloading this and what where they're from and and backgrounds and things such as that? I mean I I know there we we I hope we have that capacity because I know that in my

1:58:52 industry you that's very well done just just to see what the uh acceptance is and who's downloading it and what their backgrounds maybe is it other utilities or is it common citizens and things like that. Are we going to track that? It's my hope. Yes, definitely. Uh we're working closely with the communications team and we'll figure out what kind of reporting we have access to given our current IT situation and um I know it's fairly easy to track total number of downloads but I don't know how easy it is to track uh where it's coming from. So maybe there's some organizations and we'll investigate this that if you want a report that they basically ask for your email address or information about you

1:59:38 and they'll email it to you as a prerequisite to getting it. I believe we we'll look into a number of different things for tracking that would be I don't know enough about those details. So I'll follow up and and let you know. Yeah. wanted to have more information about who I think when the city first enacted the toxic rights to know I don't think anybody asked for that information for six years everybody so that's an aside um the other thing is the idea of the executive summary is very good because we're already at 80 pages and you said a ton more is coming and there's the old analogy it's a drink out of a fire hydrant you know there's so much you can take and so I just was wondering how much more volume do you think you're going to add to this uh to to we've got 80 now. Are we going to add is it going

2:00:23 to be 150 page document or do you have any idea how big it's going to be? I don't know exactly how how big it will over time. But again, my goal is to make it easy to find the section you need and you can just click to that. And my goal is also to keep the sections short, right? So, you'll notice that um in all of those climate policy sections that there's many different bills and and laws that are talked about there, but each one is two paragraphs, right, with several links. And and that's the goal is to not regurgitate all of the content, but to provide a a short framing of what the issue is, how it relates to, and provide the links and information for people to dive deeper if they want. That would be excellent. I think the executive summary thing because if it

2:01:08 gets too big, it's going to turn the lay people off. If all that group, they'll be into it like can't believe, but if you want to engage the populace, you need to keep it simple and bring it down. But I think it is highly technical and I think it's an excellent tool to have. So, thank you very much. We're just building out that encyclopedia. So we have a few of the chapters now and we'll have a few more chapters to be added so that when people go to look at the B chap you know B encyclopedia then there's even more content there uh and go through all the letters. So thank you. Maybe to that point maybe there's some that focus on maybe those different business here.

2:01:54 Don Broski. Um, thanks and thanks for all the work. There's an executive summary. It's five pages, but it is an executive summary. Um, the thing that that came out to me from your presentation was the fact that we'll have real numbers to work with. uh you know in in this conversation in our community there's things thrown out all the time, right? Oh, we're we're 95% clean, but you just showed us that one a true kilowatt hour, how clean a true kilowatt hour is and how true how clean a a peak kilowatt hour is. and

2:02:41 being able to link those when we're when communities and our organization are trying to hit goals. Now, if you say, "Oh, well, we're trying to hit a goal." Well, Eb's 90 5% carbon-f free, so we're we only have 5% more to go. Um, and then when you're tracking those goals and saying we want to hit this mark as opposed to 2010, having those those numbers there is real important. I think it's going to be something that's just really valuable because it'll be a true tracking that you can say, yeah, you use this many kilowatt hours or this many megawatt hours, but half of those were the repeat

2:03:27 time and half of those weren't 95% carbon free. Half of those were 40% carbon free. And so, are you actually hitting your targets? So that was something that I think is just jumped right out to me for your in your uh presentation and being able to articulate that to the people who are trying to set the goals and and monitor attract the goals of industry, of city, university, an organization like ours to say, are we actually doing it? Having those those

2:04:13 numbers and that real data, I think, is is real important. We'll see some of that in the in the next presentation. That's what I got out of it. It's like, yeah, we're supposed to be, you know, we're on this glide path, but we're really not gliding that way. We're going the opposite way because we have the real numbers now. Um and then again you said that the the area that you heard the most from stakeholders was chapter 4 and how how do we get there? What is our best way to get there? And so that kind of goes to something that Sonia said is if we can boil that down and say this is the way

2:05:00 that you can get there. This is a way that you can get there not have to go through four appendix premises. You know, if a if one of our consumers or one of our resident or apartment complex says, "I really want to lower my greenhouse gases." We dig down into the appendices. But if we can make that concise in chapter 4 with two or three or four strategies that actually move the lever even during peak times. I think that would be something that would be helpful. Your comment actually is is uh about having consistent numbers to work with is is very similar to what I heard from

2:05:46 Eugene Chamber in the conversation I had today actually um about just having access to consistent reports and established um reference documents and established numbers that we as a community can be helpful. Matt, do you have any comments? Yeah, I'll I'll be brief. Thank you, Sonia. Um, thanks for this work. It's I uh Yeah, well, it's really solid and appreciate all the effort that's gone into it and I recognize it's a broad group of staff that have uh contributed. So, thanks to you, Kelly, but also the the many around you who have um put a lot of effort into this. Um, quick question about the the

2:06:33 principles in um, chapter 2. I think those are a super helpful reference and um, in terms of uh, our partners understanding what EA web is trying to do and what we're prioritizing. I'm curious, Frank, if if there's a plan for us to um, review or revise principles. I know we had a fair amount of conversation at our last meeting. Um, but I'm just wondering what the process looks like for revisiting those. Yeah, Matt, thank thanks for the question. I I think right at the beginning, Kelly pointed out that a bulk of this is supposed to be around information and technical reporting and

2:07:18 that type of thing. the the reason that the the principles were part of that one section was that part of SD15 does call out that we will support certain policy. Um and so we we recrafted those to be a little bit more policy centric incorporating your feedback from before. Um, you know, I I can I I can sort of lean into the board on that one, Matt. I don't have a In some cases those are developed um as we're in Salem and when we're looking at sort of what the latest particular issue is. If

2:08:05 the board feels more strongly that you want to have more of a guiding hand in that um we can develop a process to do this. These these are not policies themselves but they're more of a here's how we would go about as staff implementing those policies. So there's a little bit of a differentiation there. So I don't I don't have a strong feel if if we do want to get into policy um direction from the board on that then we would want to have a formal process um so that the board at large is driving that as opposed to a particular individual or commissioner or staff

2:08:50 member. I don't have a field. Yeah, I know that's helpful. Thank you. Um and then my other comment is on chapter 4 which is um also really helpful. Um I think when we look at the programs that we have for customer decarbonization I know there's the the several programs that were just um developed and glad to see reporting on you know how those are progressing. That's really helpful. Um and uh but I think there's a wider set of um actions and incentives that EUB is taking to support decarbonization. So um you know we have efficiency incentives,

2:09:36 we have electrification incentives, right? Like we provide incentives for people to switch to electric heating system if they're so inclined. Um um so I think reporting on those and and I know we you know we already report on them regularly so maybe it's just pointing at where the reporting is on those in our quarterly report. Um but the you know the rate of electrification um anything that I guess that can help us understand how effective those programs are are being in supporting our customers uh desire to decarbonize. um adding those here I think would be useful and that's all I have and and again thank you for the um the work this is really solid.

2:10:22 Great. Yeah, thank you so much. Um yes, chapter 4, so much more to do. Uh I'll leave it at that because we only have a few seconds left and I know it's a long meeting but so much more to come. So, thank you so much for your comments, your support, and um do you want to just dive into part two or do you want to go ahead and take a break? Oh, I'll ask a break. Okay. Yeah, let's take a break. Get into the next section here. All right. So, 10 minutes. We're going to come back at 7. Still late. We have lots to do. So, order. We'll get finally time for part two.

2:11:08 Right, welcome back. Thank you so much for uh having me back again. Uh for the record, my name is Kelly Hail. I'm Eve's climate policy analyst and advisor. And we just talked about the first part of our climate guide book set of results. But um I'd like to in in the second part I'd like to start by uh giving some information about our greenhouse gas inventory results. So um usually we have traditionally done this in December each year and uh it's been kind of a lag between you know we would have presented the 2021 results in December of 2022 and we've decided to move that to again this kind of March April time frame and because of that slight couple of months delay now we get two years out of the

2:11:53 deal. So we're going to talk today about uh results from both uh calendar year 2021 and 2022. We'll um talk about the results towards EWEB's goals. Uh we'll focus on the emissions covered by uh the goal that you all included in the SD15 climate change policy and we'll talk a little bit about what new emission sources will come. And then we'll finish up tonight by talking about where we stand on web's voluntary commitments as part of the city of Eugene's climate action plan 2.0. Leave lots of time for questions and comments at the end. But drum roll please. You know, if you take nothing else from today's presentation, I would hope that um I leave you with the message that we are on track to meet our

2:12:39 goals. We have already started to meet some of our interim goals and we are well on our way to meeting uh the rest of the commitments that we have made publicly as part of both our climate change policy as well as our commitments as part of the city of Eugene climate action plan. Uh we'll go through what that means in the in the rest of tonight's presentation, but um overall we're making good progress. Uh and we do see some opportunity to refine some of those commitments over time and and maybe make some of those goals maybe more specific or more targeted for certain time frames. We can we can discuss that um over time, but we are on track. So just to uh reframe what that first goal is um you know as part of SC15 there is a goal that says the e

2:13:26 webb's operations will reduce our scope one and two emissions relative to a 2010 baseline by certain milestones. So uh we'll talk tonight about the 2020 set of results and the 2030 results and we know we'll need to create a roadmap to get to carbon neutrality by 2050. But um we have to understand what this goal really says. And I wanted to just you know if I could circle here what scope one and two means. Let's review that so that we know what it is that we're talking about and what it is we're not talking about. And what is the method that we go through to understand whether we're on track towards meeting this goal. And the method that we use is doing a carbon uh footprint. You might hear people say carbon footprint or greenhouse gas inventory. Those two technical terms mean the same thing. It's taking a

2:14:12 measure of the impact of your organization. And it's it's not rocket science. It's simple multiplication math. You take a unit of business activity, you multiply it by an emissions factor, and you get a set of emissions that are resulting from that business activity. Um, and we'll talk a little bit about that. But why would an organization bother to do a greenhouse gas in the first place? There's several different reasons. The first is you'd want to understand how you're progressing towards your goals. You want to understand where you have opportunities within your organization to reduce or change emissions and live up to your values. And you want to figure out ways you can save money for every, you know, dollar we don't spend on fossil fuels. Uh we also don't release greenhouse gas emissions into

2:14:57 the atmosphere. And we want to reduce our risks uh from climate change and uh from potential regulation in the future. So those are lots of reasons why you'd want to do this. And uh I wanted to just you know I promise we won't go too technical um but there are some carbon accounting rules that I want to just reference very briefly um because there are regulations that govern how you do this kind of math. So this diagram comes from the World Resource Institute. They have a protocol for how you do carbon accounting for entities like EWE. And um you'll notice up in the cloud there are different gases up there. Those are the gases that are included in the Kyoto protocol uh which are you know kind of the established greenhouse gases that um

2:15:44 you would measure in an inventory. CO2 is obviously the big one carbon dioxide. Ew webb is also responsible for emissions of methane, CH4, nitrous oxide, N2O, hydrofluorocarbons which are the HFC's and SF6 which is uh an industrial gas that is used in a lot of electric utilities in circuit breakers and um you know our policy says that you'll focus you know we'll measure our emissions from scope one and scope two and so what does that mean? Scope one are another way of calling that is direct emissions or I like to think of them as owned emissions. These are emissions that come from owned equipment uh and facilities. And so we have the

2:16:31 most control over our scope one emission sources. For EWE, there's three sources. We have emissions from our own vehicles. We have emissions from fuels combusted in our owned buildings like natural gas. And we also have some of those process emissions from uh our own asset infrastructure. Those HFC's or refrigerants used in vehicle air conditioning and facility cooling systems as well as the SF6 that's used in our um substations. Uh and then scope two uh you know you can think of scope two and scope three as a group of indirect emissions. And I like to think of indirect emissions as if direct emissions are owned, then I think of indirect emissions as those that we share with other entities. And

2:17:18 scope 2 is just a specific category of shared emissions. You share those with your electricity utility, right? And that's a little weird to think of eb as sharing those emissions with our electricity electric utility because we are the electric utility. But what we're measuring here is the emissions associated with our internal operations, not with every emission that goes with from our electric portfolio to every customer. So our electric portfolio measures an emissions factor per unit of electricity consumed. And we use that emissions factor to understand how e-web's consumption of electricity in our owned facilities impacts our carbon footprint. Scope three is a special type of uh or well if you think about indirect

2:18:04 emissions as those that are shared. Scope two is just what you get from your electric utility and scope three is everything else. Right? So um there are some uh of those everything elsees that happen upstream of your organization and some that happen downstream. We will talk a little bit about some of these scope 3 sources that we are going to be including in our inventory moving forward. But without further ado, I'm excited to share with you the results of our inventory from 2010 through uh 2022. So on this chart, you can see emissions per year. The uh vertical axis shows uh greenhouse gas emissions in metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Uh and then the stacked bar shows the emissions

2:18:49 that uh come from EWS's operations. This is our scope one and two emissions that are covered by that XD-15 policy goal. And so the green at the bottom is the emissions associated with our internal electricity consumption for our owned facilities. The blue right above the green, the lighter blue are the emissions from our fleet vehicles. The dark blue um on the 2010, 2011, and 2012 are emissions from steam that we used to use at headquarters back in the days when we still had the steam plant in operation. And once we transitioned away from that dark blue of the steam, you'll notice that our red section um that kind of rust colored section of our

2:19:34 consumption of natural gas in increased a little bit there because we transitioned from steam for building heat to natural gas at that headquarters site. And then the golden color there, those are the refrigerants and industrial gases from um our SF6 uh releases into the atmosphere. And you'll notice that there's a few dotted lines that go across the chart. The black dotted line shows what we needed to reach for our 2020 goal, part of our SE-15. That was the 25% reduction in 2010 emissions by 2020. And we have achieved that consistently ever since uh uh calendar year 2014. So we have solidly met the 2020 goal.

2:20:21 And in 2022, you will notice that we also made significant progress towards that 2030 goal, which is noted in the dotted red line, which is a a 50% reduction over our 2010 baseline that we need to try and reach by 2030. So, we're well on our way towards meeting that 2030 goal. We've reduced our emissions by 44% in 2022 compared to our 2010 baseline. All right. So, I'm going to go through just a little detail for each of the scope one and two emission sources and then we'll transition into that CAT 2.0 set of results. So, when we think about our fleet, we have so much to celebrate and and uh be um excited about because you can see that consistent downward

2:21:06 trajectory. We have been able to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from our owned fleet vehicles by 64% since 2010. And um I just have to, you know, put out a a big thanks to Gary Lynch, our fleet director, and his team of amazing staff because they have really um driven a lot of this, pun intended, right? Did you get that? Driven. Um where, you know, there have been a lot of reductions through his leadership by investing in new fuels and new technologies. So a lot of this comes from increased use of renewable fuels. Uh, a lot of that is in particular driven by renewable diesel coming on the market. It's a renewable fuel made from plant animal products that's chemically identical to fossil

2:21:53 diesel. So, it's a drop in fuel. You can just drop it into your tanks. No changes are needed. Existing technology can run on the fuel and it reduces greenhouse gas emissions um because it's not coming from the oil we pull out of the ground. It's really exciting. uh and many of the local public entities are using that and actually thanks to Gary's leadership we have um uh facilitated a contract that allow allows many of the government entities to have access to that fuel. Very exciting. We also are you know some something that's new in this round of inventory is that we're also now starting to capture the um uh transition to our electric fleet. Uh we only have a few electric vehicles at this point uh because the technology is not there for some of our heavy duty fuel or vehicle

2:22:38 needs at this time. But as we do transition, we'll continue to capture that. This ch this chart is um I recognize going in the wrong direction. Um we want to see it go go down, but I think I mentioned previously that this is our natural gas consumption in our owned facilities. Um the reason it has gone up so significantly in u 2013 was because we did transition away from steam and to natural gas. Um and we will see a change in our emissions profile as we u move forward with the sale of the headquarters property. Right. And that's reasonable under GHG accounting rules. You have to look at the assets that you own and operate. and we will see significant efficiencies that we gain from um having our staff in a smaller

2:23:25 building footprint. Um so that will save us some emissions. Those emissions will transfer over to the city of Eugene uh and they will take responsibility for any emissions associated with that new facility. Um the industrial gases here um this is uh again from 2010 when we had no releases all the way to 2022. Um we have four different types of um either refrigerants or SF6 that we're using in our um fleet vehicles in the case of HFC 134A and in our buildings in the case of the two um R47C and R410A. Uh and then the SF6 is the golden color and that's the um significant component of this. And you know in the case of these

2:24:10 industrial gases what happens is that they're supposed to be enclosed in a closed circuit right whether that's uh you know enclosed in in um vehicle air conditioning or building air conditioning system or in the breaker. And we know that gas bits wear over time and some of these gases just get released into the atmosphere. And each of these gases has what's called a global warming potential which shows how carbon int or how um heat trapping those gases are relative to the baseline of carbon dioxide. And SF6 is is actually the big one because it's about 22,000 times the heat trapping ability compared to carbon dioxide. So that's why even a small amount of SF6 can have a significant impact. You'll notice that

2:24:55 that spike in 2013 was actually from a particular um leak event that uh informed how we change our processes to make sure that that doesn't happen again. Uh we have and if anybody's curious about it, I I printed it here so I'd have it to refer to but we have an environmental management system um for procedure for SF6 handling and reporting. Um and uh we take that very seriously. So you'll notice that in 2021 there was another spike. Um but it's very different from the one in 2013. Uh because this was um we expect that it was a a slow leak that was happening over time. It wasn't actually all something that happened in that

2:25:40 particular year. But one of the challenges with reporting on these industrial gases is that you often don't know that there's a leak until it reaches a s a certain level in which case it needs to be recharged and then that recharge happens in one particular year and that's the year that it kind of gets charged to your inventory. But this was a a small slow leak that was probably happening over a fiveyear period. Um so when it comes to our electricity um we have seen an 8% electricity consumption reduction compared to 2010. So this chart is for all of our owned facilities. It's in megawatt hours. So when you think about the actual energy that we're consuming it has decreased by

2:26:26 that 8%. We use electricity in our Hayden Bridgewater filtration plant. That's the big use user. Um we use it in our headquarters building for our electricity operations um up river uh here at the rock and for our uh water pumping stations. And um the important thing to remember here is that when we look at our emissions again that's what's really being done is you're taking our unit of business activity in this case how many megawatt hours of electricity we're consuming and we multiply that towards times that emissions factor. And so we have seen a a a decrease over time here, but really you'll notice that our emissions which are on the left side here, these are the emissions by year from our electricity in our owned facilities. You'll notice

2:27:12 that that's going kind of up and down. If you go back to this chart, you'll notice that that green bar at the bottom is going up and down. And the reason for that is not due to changes in our significant wild changes in our electricity consumption, but it's back to that idea of the fact that our emissions factor changes on a year-to-year basis depending on how many market purchases we have and depending on things like the water year uh in our community that can impact what kind of resources go to serve our load. So uh scope three uh I know commissioner McCrae had asked about scope 3 reporting in a previous board meeting. Um we are starting to do additional scope 3 reporting and again really why an

2:27:59 organization um thinks about and does a carbon inventory is to really understand all of the areas that we can influence our carbon footprint even in our scope two and scope three sources where we share those emissions with other entities. Um, for example, you know, when we think about employee commuting, we can't do our work uh for for the certain portion of our staff that needs to be on site unless they can get to work, right? So, while EW the entity doesn't have direct control over how our employees get here, we do rely on them to arrive here and be able or arrive to where the poles and wires are so that they can um be fixing the infrastructure that we rely on to be able to to do our work. Um and so we share the responsibility for things like business

2:28:45 travel uh employee commuting and those are two that um as a result of the pandemic we have significantly changed some of our business practices. We now have a dynamic workforce model in place and um because our employees are are diffuse some many working from home people often will if they need to travel for business take a personal vehicle instead of a fleet vehicle. And so that has changed some of those pieces of reporting and we wanted to be able to capture what are the trends that are happening there so that we can continue to influence those through our policies and um our our practices inside the organization. So when you see the um report come out next month, you'll be able to see how we're doing there. Um Commissioner McCrae had also asked about

2:29:30 um whether we were going to include uh emissions estimates from our purchased goods and services. And I just wanted to to touch on that. Um that is you'll notice if you look at other area um greenhouse gas inventories uh it can be one of the largest sources especially for an entity like e webb or city government that is responsible for significant portions of the built environment because construction emissions tend to be very greenhouse gas intensive whether it's concrete or steel or asphalt those are very greenhouse gas intensive materials. We in the past have estimated um the impacts from our purchased goods and services and we have chosen at this time not to include that in our GHC inventory for now but we do have the requirement as part of SD15 to

2:30:16 include a triple bottom line look at all major capital projects and so for example we will include that kind of analysis in those particular instances and why that's helpful is that it really helps us identify what's possible and when we can make specific um ch or changes to our behaviors that would actually drive a reduction in emissions. So, for example, um when we did the triple bottom line analysis on the Leeberg alternatives, when we looked at the greenhouse gas emissions impacts of those four different alternatives, we did look at the embodied emissions, an estimate of the embodied emissions of those four different alternatives and we included that in the TBL. And when we, you know, look forward to to moving forward with the alternative that was

2:31:01 selected, we can actually start to identify where mitigation opportunities might exist for those kinds of impacts. So that's how we're addressing that component. Um so quickly to change gears here, um moving forward with uh appendix D in the climate guide book. This is where we talk about how EWE is moving forward and reporting out on our progress for the city of Eugene's climate action plan. And the climate action plan really was born from uh the city's uh climate recovery ordinance which was an ordinance that was passed in 20 uh 14 and updated in 2016. And it has very specific goals for the community as a whole as well as city government operations. But the two that uh two

2:31:46 goals that really relate to e webb and the broader community are that um the city, you know, voted to to focus on reducing community fossil fuel use uh by 50% of 2010 levels by 2030 and to reduce community greenhouse gas emissions by an equivalent amount of 7.6% per year, which is what the scientists say we need to do in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. And so they in the and and that's really what led to the um concept of the the climate action plan 2.0. And as part of the approach to updating that um climate action plan, the city took the approach of really reaching out to what they called large lever shareholders. And those are entities that have control over large

2:32:32 portions of either the built environment or have levers that they can pull over community emission sources. So you'll notice that there's a wide variety of those entities here on the screen of which e webb is is one of them. And so uh the city reached out to each of these large lever shareholders and asked us all to submit voluntary commitments as to you know what are you already planning to do related to climate change and how can we capture that and understand the impact of that in our climate action plan. So we e-web had submitted u over 15 voluntary commitments. Uh there were five in the transportation sector, seven in the building energy sector, three in the resiliency sector. They span a wide variety of topics. Many of them were saying, hey, we're going to take action

2:33:18 in this area, but it didn't have a very, you know, they they don't always have a very specific goal that says we will achieve a particular milestone by a particular date. Um and so we are reporting out on all of these metrics so that the community can understand what's happening. A lot of work is happening across all of these areas. Um and the city has a particular dashboard. So this graphic comes from their dashboard. There's four buckets across the top where there's data being reported on transportation metrics across not just EWB's commitments, but all of the large liver shareholders and all of the action items that were included in the cap. And so we wanted to in this appendix in the climate guide book really make sure that we could increase our transparency on

2:34:04 all the work we're doing related to those commitments we included in the cap. wanted to make sure that we were submitting regular updates and we wanted to ensure that the city's staff could selfs serve them the information that they need when they get to updating this dashboard on an ongoing basis. And so the goal is to include um information on all of the um impact areas um that web has committed to. So with that, I'd like to open it up for questions and comments and any feedback that you might have. John start with me over here assistant just a couple of questions about uh statistics and things. So when we go from transitioning

2:34:49 from our meter readers which are probably the largest users of vehicles in our fleet and everyone I've seen is always driving a pickup and we do away with meter readers when when AMI is fully implemented. Will those numbers be captured in our GHG reduction? Great. Because I think that will be a significant reduction. Um the second one is uh in our contracting like tonight we had a contract where we were going to give a contract to somebody from Portland to put a roof on a building and that's a lot of commuting with a lot of heavy trucks. Is that factored in in our GHG? Um so usually transportation associated with our contracts that we contracts yeah so our contracts our third party

2:35:34 contracts would be included in this um kind of upstream activity called purchase goods and services um and so that's usually not something that we capture because that's somebody else's emissions associated with the way they run their business and we can't tell them how to do that unless we write it into the contract as we expect. I mean, we contract with somebody that's totally outside of the area when we have people here that I mean, that's my point is just I was wondering if we get tagged with that, but it doesn't sound We do not. Nope. That's outside the scope of our boundary. And then lastly on the on the third purchase goods and services. You know, Frank's told me that uh there are more coal plants under construction in Asia than currently exist in the entire United States right now. And we're feeding that economy by by buying goods and services from them, mostly goods. Do

2:36:19 we have any policy or are we going to implement any policy to say you know it was made in China uh we don't really like that uh do we get credit for buying local buying in a friendly environment buying one that's not just because it's cheaper? We currently don't have a specific policy on uh purchasing although we do have our environmental policy um which I think is one or two um I can't remember exactly what number it is. There's a few um you know there's an environmental policy and a sustainability policy and then our climate change policy and they do talk about different areas of focus um and you know thinking about the impacts of of the decisions we make is part of that. Um

2:37:05 do you know if we have you know a purchasing policy that that I might not be aware of? I was just asking about local provisions in in our process. We to answer your question we don't get credit for that. I know that there's with a lot of federal policy there's discussion around um made in America kind of requirements and so but we'll have to look at the provisions that we are allowed to do and how much we can specify relative to location of goods and services. It's a good question. Well, personally, I just think it's kind of counterproductive to sit there and feed the engine that's creating the most

2:37:50 problem because it's not just isolated to Eugene and and that and then when we're feeding that economic engine in Asia, uh just because we can get it cheaper. Um where are we going to factor in or are we going to because we buy some pretty big ticket items that are manufactured there, right? Some of it's price and then some of it is is just availability. Some of these are very specialized pieces of equipment, but um we'll look into that. with that as a followup item. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Um got two or three different questions. So the first one has to do with sale of the headquarters building that out of our inventory.

2:38:37 To me, that's a little disingenuous um because we're trying to reduce our our greenhouse gases that we are responsible for. I think the base should be how much did how much greenhouse gases was headquarters responsible for sell. Yeah. Okay. Our our bottom line looks better. the community's bottom line doesn't look better. We haven't done our share to reduce our impact on the climate from the 50% that we're trying to get by 2030 just by offloading a dirty building.

2:39:23 So in my mind, best way to do it would be our baseline at 2010, you take the headquarters building and we have to hit the goal without the headquarters. To me, that that would be the responsible way to go with it rather than just say I'm not going to that's that's the city of Eugene's problem. It's not reducing the amount of carbon that's going into the air. our reduction isn't there just because we don't own it anymore that I don't know if that'll happen or not but but to me it's it's kind of disgu

2:40:18 accounting according to the protocols and there are differences in what you we're trying to calculate when you do a corporate inventory, which is corporate sounds funny when we're government, right? But what this mean is an entity based uh carbon footprint. And this I I left this slide up here because it it kind of is helpful from a you know, if you think about from a policy perspective, right? you're trying to institute a an uh a geographicbased policy that says we want to reduce the emissions associated with the city of Eugene or you know uh the community of Eugene or the state of Oregon or the United States as a whole, right? What greenhouse gas policy tends to focus on is just the scope one

2:41:04 emissions, right? because or scope 2 like e-web scope 2 emissions or scope 3 emissions are someone else's scope one, right? And so that's that idea of them being shared. And so from a regulatory standpoint, they're trying to understand how can we reduce all emissions within a geographic area. And from a regulatory standpoint across the board, almost always you'll see they only say to include scope one emissions because they're trying to get at what you own directly. And so if we, you know, if if we owned the headquarters building and the rock in 2010, but we sold off the headquarters building and the city of Eugene bought it, from a regulatory standpoint, those

2:41:50 are still somebody's scope one emissions from from that geographic area. they'd both still be considered uh to be reported from an entity level carbon accounting. The purpose of doing that is slightly different. We are trying to understand what does it take to provide the drinking water and electric services that we provide as our own entity. And so we're not trying to say here's the set of emissions associated with the entire community of Eugene. We're trying to say here's what it takes to run EW. And if we sell off a particular building, then we don't have control over what happens in that building anymore. We don't have control over the building systems. Is it still using natural gas? Has it been transitioned to a different fuel? Is it uh being managed

2:42:37 in an energyefficient way? And so the greenhouse gas accounting rules for entities like this say you have to look at whether and you can pick whether you take a financial control approach or an operational control approach. But in either of those approaches, if we don't own or control the building, it it doesn't make sense for us to include it. And we're going to get a benefit from selling the headquarters building when we look at our carbon footprint, but when we add a second water treatment plant, we're not going to get a benefit. We're going to see our emissions increase, and we're going to have to figure out how even when we add that uh, you know, second source, we're doing that for a resiliency benefit. It's going to provide a lot of value to our community, but Hayden Bridge is our most

2:43:23 significant source of emissions and our water uh infrastructure is 60% of our electricity consumption. If we add a second source there, that's going to go up and we're going to have to figure out how we still get to carbon neutrality by 2050 with those building changes that we are investing in as an organization to meet the need of our customer base. So, I hope that helps answer the question. It really is based on not just the way e webb chooses to do it but the framework that carbon accounting sets up and I see your point and that's why regulation can can help matter as we think how we can reduce all of the emissions but the this particular activity is looking at what does it take to run and and I understand that and and I I

2:44:09 totally understand but to me it's just I would like to see it 50% % but I understand the way the accounting goes and I can I just that's that's on my um the second thing it goes to scope some things on scope three and you you explain that pretty well to me but I think one thing that I would like to see the utility do is look for opportunities in our purchasing to spec better quality or lower GHC um products and and I'm I'm specifically talking about concrete, right? So

2:44:55 concrete is a huge GHC and there's emerging technologies out there that are that are helping to reduce there's different types of concrete that have a lower GHG. Absolutely. And so if we can spec those in in projects where they're appropriate that can help to offset I mean it may not go into our it may not go into our overall calculation of our reducing emissions but it can help our our community and it can help offset you know the leaky refrigerant right if we buy concrete that is 10% less that's carbon intense That's 10%. So I I would hope that that's something that we look into in

2:45:41 our purchasing things. The last question that I have is and we may not be there yet, but do you see the organization needing the ability to use offsets for us for a way to us to achieve our goals by 2030 and by 2050? Do you see us I mean I know the city of Eugene already is using offsets to make their numbers. Do you see this organization needing to require purchasing offsets to hit our our numbers as well? I don't see offsets as being an important strategy to get to our 2030 goal at 50% reduction. We wanted to go

2:46:26 beyond 50% reduction and try and reach carbon neutrality sooner or for sure by the time we get to 2050 and we need to be carbon neutral on a debt basis. I haven't seen an organization that is able to do that without the use of offsets at this time. Uh you know I'm following closely the way the city of Eugene is um investing in offsets. We're following closely with uh Lane County has a similar provision to get to neutrality and they're using offsets to do so. Um and we are exploring lots of opportunities. One of the things that I mentioned in the resiliency chapter of the guide book is um you know we're looking closely at at partnering with the University of Oregon and understanding ways to u fund research uh

2:47:14 get better information based on you know some of the best available science from the international panel on climate change the IPCC uh about what they're saying are the the best ways to increase sequestration and that's really groundbreaking we're one of the first utilities that is is really looking at that and partnering and the University of Oregon and Yale University are two of the top uh universities in the country that are looking at some of this research. So we are looking at what opportunities do we have to if we do need to utilize offsets to keep those co- benefits associated with the investment of um carbon offsets the the co- benefits of drinking water quality and habitat protection and um you know all of those things that could stay in our own wershed. So, we're looking to

2:48:00 prepare for the time when we might need to utilize offsets and how can we do that in the most uh responsible manner u to maximize those co- benefits for our constituents and our rate payers. We have three commissioners who haven't had a chance to speak. We got about seven minutes left. So, anything okay? Sure. Thank you, President Carlson. I'll be quick. Um I agree with uh Commissioner Barovski about um concrete. If there's places where we can purchase lower carbon concrete, I think uh even in addition to how it would lower our emissions footprint, it would also help drive the market for lower carbon car concrete, which is important. My

2:48:45 understanding is that um it's not great some some of that lower carbon concrete's not great for vertical construction, but is decent for horizontal construction. And so if we can use it um wherever feasible, I think that would be valuable and I'd love to hear about that from project managers um in future projects. Um question about our water energy use given how significant that is. Um do we have do we give the water utility time of use pricing or any other kind of signal to influence the time in which there I'm seeing Frank saying no. I it feels like that would be could be advantageous and relatively straightforward for us to do. I'd love to see us look into that. I'd also love

2:49:31 to see our new water treatment plant anticipating tis use pricing in the design and um I mean the simple version I suspect is like uphill uh storage that can feed the plant during um times of high carbon intensity electricity. Anyway, I don't know what that looks like. I'm not an engineer, but I do hope that as we're thinking about a new water treatment plant, as Kelly just pointed out, the significant energy draw of a treatment plant, I hope we're contemplating how to keep the emissions uh from that low. Uh I think that's all I have. Thank you. And I'll be quick to go ahead and I'll I'll wrap up with a couple. Okay. Um two quick comments. one about

2:50:16 the comment about selling the headquarters building. We also sell cars. I mean, we've switched out our um gas vehicles for electric vehicles. We're not keeping those in there. So, I mean, for me, it's somewhat analogous to that, but I definitely got where you were saw it right when it came out. It's like, but it it's for the community and it's overall we'll look at it as a whole. So, I guess I'm I'm supportive of the approach and I understand the scope one. Um, next up, the air travel piece. I don't know how much air travel we have, but I think it might be good for us to look at um when we do have air travel, if we could do some kind of offsets or or something along those lines because we do know

2:51:02 that air travel has very large emissions just because of where in the atmosphere the emissions are released. Um, I know at other they've looked at um policies around offsetting air travel, but I don't know how much we really have here at Eb. And then, uh, finally, just wanted to dig in a little bit more to the 2019 and the 2021 numbers because they really spiked up. And I was I was surprised that you said that it was because it was a low water year because that was the year that we had the weekl long winter storm. We got a foot of snow and so I thought 2019 was going to be about that that weather year. But so it was because

2:51:49 we had to buy more out on the market and Carmen was not producing. Is that why 2019 was um a higher year? Yeah, there were a few factors. Um, went offline. Carbon or carbon was not producing and we had to go out in the market. So that was and and the market itself you I think when you look at carbon intensity relative to hydro e webb is a pretty small footprint relative to the water year across the upper Columbia basin and places like that. So it was a combination of those things. Okay. So it was all three. And then so when we look at like 2021 jumped back up again too. Um is this I mean now Carmen

2:52:35 is up and running. Is this other factors then is it water year? Is it just heat? Because we're going to be battling against that more than many of the things that we do have control over. And how do we handle that? that I'm thinking more and more about it's it's a combination of the amount of consumption when the consumption occurs like you mentioned you know that if you have an ice storm and a snowstorm and cold weather there's a lot of consumption and therefore um a lot of purchasing takes place and we we are average long but there are times in the winter when we're we're buying on the market um and then just a

2:53:21 combination of hydro across the region and hydro conditions. It's both a supply and a demand influence there. To give this a little bit of scale, when you look at 0.04 for example, I was looking at Pacific or earlier at 1.4 so or 1.6. So these are these are fluctuations and and you're right, it's something that we have to pay attention to when we look at how much we rely on the market. Um um but I I think the points that have come out are very good ones. Time matters whether that's you know because you want to avoid peaks and we're going we're going to have to start using time of use and all these other resources that that uh we're talking about um

2:54:08 relative to demand response and you know he in in I don't know if it was intentional but Commissioner McCra mentioned pump a method of pump storage for example. Well, there's a number of reasons that are driving that. Commissioner, great. Okay, we have a minute left. Can Can I say one more thing before I get I'll cut into her time. She's yielding her time to me. Um I I I think, you know, we don't want to portray the the headquarters building as an intentional shell game to make ourselves look good. I think we want to be transparent about this. I would also say that there's a certain reward the organization should take for shrinking our physical footprint. Um we've consolidated in one location and we've

2:54:54 gone to hybrid work environment so that we can do that. Um as opposed to just occupying a larger space. So there's there's some credit that the organization gets for that. Um, but fully understand that we're not just going to make one move, push push our carbon on someone else and say, "Yeah, look at us." I mean, that's not the intent here. Um, but so we'll we'll try and be transparent even as to the level that it's contributed and we can put that almost like a financial document where you put it in the footnotes and and things like that to keep it visible. Sorry, it's almost You got 18 seconds. Okay. Thank you so much. appreciate all your time. Thank you.

2:55:39 Okay, the next we have the P sensitivity analysis and publicing that we can President Carlson just while they're coming up, I'll just say that there the last few items from staff's perspective. So there's a a bylaws review that can be pretty quick. Um correspondence be very also so good evening commissioners. I'm Megan Kapper, energy resources manager and I'm really happy to be here to introduce our integrated resource planning team. I'm

2:56:25 also happy to note that we have Brian Booth up here, our new chief energy reser uh with us tonight. Um so uh speaking tonight we have Aaron Bush who's going to kick us off and talk a little bit about what sensitivities we've been working on and then Ben Olrich will talk about the results. And I'm also happy to introduce Aaron Olowski who is our communications team member and has been really um instrumental in our engagements at health. Okay. I'm kicking us off. I apologize if I'm not loud enough. I've been talking to computer screens a lot and I've not had to do this in person for a while. So, I will try. Um, as Megan said, I'm Erin Bush. Um, and I'll kind of be kicking us off. So, just a quick recap

2:57:12 of the agenda. U, so we're going to talk kind of the overview of the IRB timeline and processure of the reference case for you all. Um, and then dive into those sensitivity results and a bit of uh an overview of the public engagement that we've done to date. Uh, and then we've also been working on some board briefings materials and so we want to discuss those a little bit and see if you have any feedback for us. Dive into general Q&A. So I know you've all seen this before. I'm sure you're excited to talk through it again. Um, so on the lefth hand side here, December 2022, that's when we released the draft of the IRP. Um, and really was spent most of 2022 kind of getting together all the assumptions and reference case. the last couple months we've been working on kind of socializing that. So, we've been doing

2:57:58 town halls and um getting feedback from the public and then also working on some of the sensitivity analysis that we said we were doing for you. And so now here we are in March. We're going to present on that and moving forwards uh we're going to have the 2023 report June and that's going to include a recommended action plan um as well as some additional analysis of kind of the risk of these different portfolios. Um and then moving on from June uh we really tried to stress that this is a cyclical process the first time we've done it for a while. So the the output of the IRP analytics isn't like hey we're going to go out and buy this resource. It's a whole bunch of information gathering and moving on from

2:58:43 that this cyclical process will improve things and then also get input from you all what happens in the future. Um so just backtracking uh again on the the modeling pieces and why we talked about the reference case being kind of something to compare against. We made so many assumptions about Ub's load, about different resource costs, all of that. Uh, and the constraints that we use all kind of influence what the model chooses as the least cost portfolio. And so we wanted to be really clear about those and then say uh, you know, this is something to compare against uh, and that way we can have meaningful discussions about how changing certain pieces impacts the results. Um and so that reference case, you've seen this

2:59:28 before and in the lower left hand corner um you don't see any uh resources being selected in the next couple years. Uh because according to the the kind of the initial metric that we use for our portfolio needs, we have enough resources, nothing is selected until 2026 when we lose some existing contracts. Um the other thing to keep in mind for all of this is that in our additional initial analysis bill is kind of showed up as a lowcost lowcarbon option that really is foundational to any future portfolio. And so that's assumed to continue in the reference case but also all of the sensitivity analysis. And so uh kind of moving off to the right you basically see a lot of wind and batteries being selected by the model.

3:00:14 The wind is kind of the light green uh and the areas are the darker teal. There's a little bit of demand response and energy efficiency in the purple and black. And then a small modular nuclear facility was selected in the last year of the study. The key thing for those resource acquisitions is that it's really electric vehicle uh electrification load growth that is driving the need for additional resources there. Um so from that reference case was which is really something to compare against uh we suggested uh some initial sensitivities that we wanted to do. Um and so we we've done those. So that is on the right hand side here the 15% planning reserve margin uh higher electrification and higher transmission costs. And those are things that staff have seen as being potentially highly

3:01:00 impactful of our portfolio going forwards. And that's why we've started suggested starting with those. And what we really want to see um through changing just one or two inputs for each of those is how does that impact the types of resources that are selected is there difference in the timing of when those resources are selected and the overall portfolio cost. Um so jumping into some of those initial results uh for transmission. So in our initial research, we've saw that basically there's not much transmission capability to bring resources from the east side of the Cascades for uh some of the best wind and solar facilities over this direction. And so uh we've looked at basically uh knowing that additional uh

3:01:47 transmission would need to be built and that's going to drive up costs. uh that this basically assumes that transmission costs double um by early 2030s which is a substantial increase as well as there would be limited transmission availability for those key Montana sites. The main differences you'll see here is that again the lower left hand side because we don't have a change in our load. There's not resources being selected in kind of the initial use of the study. But then going forwards you'll see that kind of red circled area the the slice of yellow there is solar. So some local solar was selected because in this uh assumption where transmission costs are a lot higher for east side resources partly way um local solar can

3:02:34 become cost competitive. Um it's important to keep in mind that that is not like residential rooftop solar and it's not even community solar which is a rate construct. This is assuming kind of a larger scale solar facility built in the Wamtt Valley somewhere close to Eugene. Um, so it's still benefiting from being larger scale and but not having to pay those transmission costs. Um, the other thing you'll notice is that the wind to that kind of light green color, uh, that was initially selected much earlier in the study, but it's gotten pushed back because it's more expensive in the stud. Uh, the next sensitivity we did was the 15% planning reserve margin. And so the planning reserve margin is basically uh holding additional peaking capacity uh

3:03:21 to kind of maintain a reliable system in case of unforeseen circumstances like higher demand than usual, maybe a generator goes down and a planning reserve margin is typically something held by the balancing authority which is charged like maintaining a reliable grid. So for us, we haven't had to have that higher reserve margin because Bonville does that job for us and we maintain our portfolio standards to kind of account for cost, risk, the amount of traders, manage that risk as we move into real time. Um, and so with this higher need, uh, it's basically saying, hey, we might have some resource needs that show up earlier. Um, and it's important to keep in mind that some of the context for this is the in general

3:04:08 the the western I think Kelly actually showed this. It was that big yellow blob. I don't remember people saw it. That whole region is seeing hey there's coal plants there's a lot of coal plants on the system. and they're scheduled to retire and we see some resource needs coming up and we've been working on uh developing a program uh across the region that's going to kind of incentivize building resources and spreading the costs of those equitably. And so while EW doesn't currently have this obligation, it's something that could become necessary for us to participate in markets or just generally become required for those serving entities like and so if we assume this higher standard, it would show that lower left now we have a resource needal

3:04:54 years. Um it doesn't mean we have to go out and buy something right away. It's just saying, hey, if this standard is different, there's a gap between the current metric. And you'll notice on the upper right this is where uh if you if you see a lot of additional peak need um that light pink color that is a small module nuclear and that is showing the need for kind of low carbon firm capacity as our peak needs increase. And the resource that was initially selected uh in 2022 was kind of a lowcost biomass that's not representing a specific plant, but again it's it's something that's being selected in the model to meet that that gap. And then the last sensitivity that we did was higher electrification. So the

3:05:39 base the reference case used uh primarily vehicle electrification and this assumes on top of that that there would be additional building electrification primarily for heating. Uh and so with that increased demand we don't expect much impact from electrification in the early years. So that's why again lower left hand side you don't see something coming up there because electrification isn't expected to be impactful until earlier in the 2030s. And so you see again uh as that that peak need really starts to increase more of those lowc carbon firm resources like the the lowcost biomass and small modular nuclear start to show up and so I'll pass off to Ben to kind of take some overview of these sensitivities and

3:06:24 how they compare. Awesome. Yeah, thanks Aaron. So um we thought it'd be helpful to kind of put a sideby-side comparison together. So Aaron just kind of went through the details of each sensitivity study. And so this chart kind of takes that reference case on the left and then puts each sensitivity next to it so we can start to draw some themes. So Erin already mentioned this is a these are resources other than Bonavville. Of course, each sensitivity selected Bonavville and continuing but across studies you can see that similar types of resources are being picked. It's just kind of varying the quantities of each. Um, one of the things that jumps out right away is you just see a lot of wind in that light green color and you see a lot of uh green batteries there, the teal at the bottom being selected. So

3:07:10 that's a consistent finding and and Aaron mentioned in that even in that high transmission cost assumption where we assume that doubles, the model is still selecting wind resources even in the later years of the study. Um, and what it was doing was instead of choosing Wyoming wind, it started choosing more Oregon wind. it found that to be more financially or it was cheaper for a lease cost solution. Um so it was kind of changing which types of resources it it changing the resources it was selecting based on that new assumption we made. Um the other uh thing that jumps out is that cost-effective biomass plant um is at the bottom there in that burgundy color. And all three of our sensitivities that was selected and and you also see at the

3:07:55 top there we've got the small modular nuclear which was selected in varying levels and both those resources are low emissions or no carbon emissions and are dispatchable. Um, and so what we're seeing is as our peak needs increase, so under the planning 15% planning reserve margin or under higher electrification where you get a bit peakier of a load, uh, we're seeing these dispatchable resources is being able to help meet those needs. So let's go to the next slide. So what are some takeaways that we can make from these initial set of sensitivity results? Um resource timing is really dependent on when we see uh planning reserve margin being binding for e webb. Right now we're participating in the non the bind uh we're not going to be

3:08:40 binding in the western resource adequacy program until 2028. So we want to monitor that closely and understand that there's financial implications to being a participant in that program. Um, we can also acknowledge that the timing of electrification really has a strong influence about when we need to procure resources and so monitoring electrification and the pace of electrification will be important as we start to think about our future resource needs. Uh, regarding the types of resources that are selected, batteries and wind are still being the majority of new resource selections. Um, conservation and demand response do play a role. they just play a smaller role because there's a limited amount of cost effective potential out in the community. Um, and that's something we

3:09:25 might want to explore further. Um, biomass and small modular nuclear um can help us meet those rising peak needs. They help uh only provide energy when they're needed as opposed to continuing to add more renewable resources which run the risk of making you longer on average. So those dispatchable resources can turn off when they're not needed. um and that can make those helpful for meeting those winter peak needs as well. Um and then local solar can be cost competitive if you assume that transmission costs will double over the next 10 years. Um and then we did some preliminary uh results around portfolio cost to just share those and there's just some major big bigger takeaways is that the planning reserve margin was the most financially impactful of the things that we looked at and that we we did a

3:10:12 sensitivity analysis where we assumed manage charging behavior where we provided some sort of incentive just assuming that we had some sort of incentive or successfully encouraged our customers to move their EV charging to off peak periods. If we were to successfully do that, we would have lower peaks in the future and that represented a potential cost-saving opportunity for the utility because you'd have to procure fewer resources to meet that peak need. Um, so we just thought that was an interesting result that we wanted to share too. So want to do more anal analysis around the financial side of things um and do deeper dives, but those are just some high level takeaways from these initial sensitivities. With that, I can pass it on to Aaron to talk about public engagement. Great. Thanks, Ben. Um, as Megan said, I'm Aaron Orlowski with the

3:10:57 communications team at EW Webb. Um, so in December and January, we kicked off this public engagement phase of the IRP. Um, and so tonight, I'll talk about a few of the notable public engagement activities we've done so far, uh, a new process we have for helping to inform the board of some of these emerging issues, and then some initial themes that we've gotten from public comment. So, one of the first things we did was, uh, to engage the public was to schedule meetings and presentations. Several of you showed up at the uh town hall on February 21st. So, thank you for coming to that. We've had some virtual town halls as well as well as we've appeared at uh some neighborhood associations and Frank gave a great talk to the Eugene City Club as well. Uh one of the other things we've done is build a website eweb.orgp

3:11:44 and that holds a bunch of information on it. Uh we've been posting on social media a lot and then also pursuing uh media stories in our local news media. We've had at least nine stories so far and outlets like the Register Guard, our local TV outlets, and also um we had a great interview on Oregon Public Broadcasting show, Think Out Loud, that I've heard anecdotally, just random people say they heard that. So, that one was heard across the state. Um the process that we launched to try and help um bring you along in our journey on learning about some of these top topics is something we're calling briefings. Um so, you probably saw one already. We wrote one on solar uh and whether solar is a good fit for maybe these energy needs. And the idea here is to provide some more contextual

3:12:29 information um kind of on sort of the the off cycle when we're not actually giving you a report from the IRP. Um and so we're identifying topics of interest that are things that you're asking questions about, things that the community is asking questions about. We have a few on the list. We have a longer wish list than what's up on the screen today. And we also want to hear if there are some topics that uh you're interested in as well. But one of the ones that we're looking at is batteries. You know, basically what are they in a utility context? Why are they appealing to e webb? Then also what happens next after this IRP phase is done that we're working on right now. You know, what is a a resource procurement process actually look like? What could be an action plan and just what happens in general? Then we're also looking at how

3:13:14 to incorporate more uh principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion into the IRP. We're really excited to know that you'll be talking about this in April um at a long work session. So, we'll be hopefully able to uh incorporate some of that feedback into into that briefing paper. So far, we've uh received about 50 uh informal comments from people who've been listening to our meetings and our presentations. And we've also gotten about 15 uh formal comments on our website and some of the teams so far have been uh really on environmental protection. We know that our customers care about the environment. They care about climate change. Uh they're also really interested in generation. Solar is really popular here in town and we've heard from a lot of customers that they're interested in incentives on that

3:14:00 as well as energy efficiency and how they can save money on their bills. Uh and we've also heard about other customer programs. Kelly mentioned this briefly, but we've heard from different large customers that want to know how can they partner with us uh to reduce emissions and and all the programs we'll be offering. As we're looking at the the comments that are coming in, we should also bear in mind that, you know, from our 2022 customer survey, we did find that our customers uh about equally prioritize environmental protection, reliability, and affordability. These are all important principles for us to bear in mind as we're doing the IRP. So with that, are there any questions about the results from the sensitivity analysis and also what are some topics that we should explore creating a

3:14:45 briefing on? Great. Um, thank you for this. I appreciate all of your your colorcoded charts and everything. It makes it easy to um understand the information. Um, well, I know this isn't going to be like the thing that contributes the most to our um, energy needs, but I'm curious about conservation and I know it's just like a tiny slice on all of those, but there is a difference between how much of that slice is on each. I don't know if if it's just negligible the difference between the different scenarios, but to me it seems like why wouldn't we max out conservation on every single one because

3:15:30 that would be free energy, right, is that we would have um and I'm just curious learning a little bit more about how can we max that out as a organization? I know that we have a whole team of people and we have a whole bunch of different products. But I guess I'm curious like what is the potential for that and as um everything becomes as as electrification continues to grow specifically with electric cars seems like it's a really good idea to get people into good habits at the onset of adopting new technology right and so I know that we are looking that we don't need any new um we don't need any new sources until like

3:16:16 2026 or 2027 or whatever. But as more people start buying electric cars, is there a way to kind of get a jump start at least on the conservation part so that we can instill good habits and they don't have to like backtrack and get people to do time of use charging and all that kind of stuff. I Well, Greg's here and I will give a shout out to Greg who helps run our conservation program here at EW Webb. So from a modeling standpoint, yes, the model is selecting all the cost effective um uh conservation that can that it can find and when we change our assumptions kind of the definition of cost effective kind of moving throughout the study period. So that's why you might see the results wiggle a little bit because other resources are becoming less appealing maybe in that higher

3:17:01 transmission cost. Um but then the model says okay what's the next cheapest thing and just kind of always solving for that. So that doesn't necessarily mean it will become our strategy of what we want to go after for conservation. Um there's there's other context to like existing BPA programs that kind of influence our conservation targets today. There's uh the strategy around targeting peaks. So I think that's all something that goes into actual program design which is kind of this other process in addition the IRP. So the IRP is saying okay we're interested in this. we're interested in conservation or cost-effective conservation. And then the program side of that is like, okay, let's get serious about it. How much money does it cost us to convince a customer to change their behavior or upgrade that heat pump or whatnot. So,

3:17:46 uh, that's the cost of conservation when we talk about these programs is the incentive to change customer behavior. I see Frank's in the queue, too. Oh, I was just gonna mention two pieces of context. One is conservation isn't free. Um it it actually if you look back EWE started and was really a leader in energy efficiency and conservation starting in the early 1990s and so you can imagine through we're now entering our fourth decade of energy efficiency and conservation work and as you work through the building stock in an area it becomes more and more expensive. You you start to get the lowhanging fruit early. So maxing out is a trade-off between

3:18:32 what's the return on that investment versus the investment made in a new resource. And so that's what the model is is trading off. Um, and it's why when we put in the model, we put in different levels of conservation, you know, not actually specifying what's in there, but there's cheap, there's more expensive, there's really expensive, and then there knowing that um that it's going to pick different levels. So, we gave it we gave it that option. Um, the other piece of conservation um we have some obligation to the region to do a certain amount of conservation. um that's actually dictated to Bonavville and Bonavville then spreads that obligation to customers like you.

3:19:17 So there's there's return on investment reasons then there's there's other reasons. I was just going to add um that's kind of part of the equation. There's there's the um what is actually out there for our customers. We haven't done a conservation assessment potential assessment for um many years and um something like that would really inform um our assumptions in in our model as well and and at the same time we could also do the demand response um type of assessment as well. So we wouldn't be surprised if you see a some kind of building stock assessment or conservation energy efficiency assessment the action plan in few months. So I'm not I'm not hinting but

3:20:03 I'm just cutting. Thank you. Okay. Well, I'll jump in because you said action and that's what I want to know is next because I I appreciate having the model now. Um, but we don't just have the model to have the model. We have the model so we can inform decisions. So 2026 is right around the corner. When do we start acting based on this information? Because if we really need a new source by 2026 that's less than three years away. Yeah. the action. So the action plan that will be brought back to the board will be recommended actions that um from a from a timing perspective would um likely start in the

3:20:49 the budgeting process that we go through this year. So, um there may be some things that we can do without um significant budget impacts, but if we bring the board something in June, um we'll start having discussions as part of the budget that starts now. So, those actions will start right away. I do want to just just add I just want to add um yeah there there are under under some circumstances that we do you know may need a resource in 2026. Um right now uh there's we have a lot of options to filling to filling that. It could be even a short-term type of a purchase. It depends on really um where

3:21:34 we are anecdotally and where we are where the board is and how comfortable you are at the at the time um that these options are showing up. Um, and then two more quick comments and then roll over the so EPA it sounds like we're keeping that constant. There's no growth. There's no decline. I wonder how so our our estimation is that we're not going to be able to buy any more from them, nor are they going to say you're going to get. So right now we are um in discussions and negotiations with Bonavville and the region is going through um uh what is how much of the system what how much is the system size the Bonavville system and then how do we um all the publics how are they going to allocate it and

3:22:20 then is Bonavville going to actually augment it. There have been many different proposals that have gone around. Um we don't know what Bonavville is planning on do. We've been trying to influence that um uh and work with them and others. Right now it looks like we'll have a better idea maybe um later latter part of this year. Um uh all of the different scenarios have us um not increasing in what we can take and having a little bit of a decrease. Great. Okay. And then finally, um, so batteries and small nuclear seem still seem like somewhat basic technologies, although I know batteries are related to what we're doing in cars. So maybe it's not, but I haven't seen it as much at scale. So I'm very curious if we think

3:23:06 that by the time we need it, that technology will be there or if it's there now and we think it's good to go, we just won't need it for a number of years. I just want to jump on that. And when we talked about these briefings, wanting to do kind of deeper dives on some of those questions. I think you're speaking to a theme that we're hearing in a lot of public feedback is just to understand like there's concerns around the environmental impacts of battery potentially and whether is this really there is there a supply chain. So I think that's one of the things we want to do a little bit more research on bring share those learnings with the board so that we're kind of having this dialogue and the the public forum and kind of I guess bring everyone along as we you know what does this really mean and then could we really go out and do this? I think I think that's one of those steps we want to take.

3:23:51 So the model is saying that it it could exist but we still need to really sus that out. Well, these these technologies do exist. Like we can go procure them, but I think I think we still want to do a little bit deeper dive to better what does that really look like? Commissioner Carlson, I would I would also add that and I think you were in the the the town hall that there's there's a pricing arbitrage component built into batteries that are not in some of the other resources and we need to test that further. Okay. Um so a few takeaways that I got from the presentation. Uh one

3:24:38 has to me like the 15% BRM is probably something that is in our future and I don't think that that's a bad thing. I think that the western region having a backup plan is a good thing for our region. I don't want Texas to happen to us. And I think that's helps us get there. I guess one of the questions that I have is I can see these things squishing together. I can see 15% and high transmission costs and higher electrification. Have you ran that model? No, not all collectively. And and but yeah, we've absolutely talked about you these additive kind of build your own scenarios. kind of how we joked about it was you could add that sense of scale.

3:25:24 It's like high transmission cost isn't you know if we the 15% would be mandated but high transmission cost is something that happens. So that's that's on the list and the diff the difference between a sensitivity it looks at one variable change. We're going to run scenarios where we look at multiple sensitivity changes in in packages that make sense. Right. And then the again this kind of goes to our our learning exercises on batteries, but two points. One is why aren't we listing batteries as dispatchable because a battery is dispatchable. Correct? It's not a that's the whole idea of a battery is you dispatch it

3:26:10 when you need it. Second part of it is what's charging the battery. When I look at these and I see the the purple and and the wind, I mean, is is basically what you're saying is the wind charging the battery. And so the way we model batteries is we assume no transmission cost. So it can either be cited locally or it could be paired with like a wind farm or a solar farm. So right now developers if you were to go out and bid for the crowd sources RFP like give me your wind developers and solar developers many of them are starting to pair batteries with their offering for a contract for solar wind. So that's kind of what what the

3:26:55 market is like. Um but our modeling we didn't get that specific. We just kind of said just assume this battery and I would say the modeling treats the battery kind of is dispatching based on the market prices. Um, and so that's the arbitrage uh that Frank was speaking to of the model kind of assuming that it's dispatchable based on some sort of market signal. It's sort of working the way that you're talking, Commissioner Barovski, because it's looking at peak versus off- peak. Off- peak would naturally have more surplus, a more surplus condition driven by variable resources. So, it's indirectly doing what you saying. Is that what you're going to say? Uh, and there there's a lot of moving pieces to this. The other piece of it as well, they're dispatchable. They're energy limited. And so part of what's driving this is

3:27:41 the resources ability to be heavily hit. So a battery has kind of gotten like a 50-ish% credit for that based on being a 4h hour battery. Longer the battery is, the more it's to hit that peak because it Okay. I think that answers my question. Thank you, Brown. And then Okay, I must have missed something. Did Did the last governor not ban gas and nuclear for generation for electricity in Oregon? So these are Yeah, I would say that these the small molecular nuclear right now we're using as kind of a proxy. It's like, hey,

3:28:27 here's a lowcarbon burn resource. We know the technology is developing, but is there a need for that kind of thing? It's relatively expensive compared to some of the other options. Is there a need for that kind of thing? Additionally, I would say that, you know, these facilities that might be developed are currently being looked at for like Washington, Utah, other locations that you can contract for. So, the actual physical sighting, we could go around the ban on Oregon. Well, but I think it's very important to recognize that there's a reason they had the ban and the ban was around um storage and um I'm thinking with this new technology, you know, we're tracking uh is where are

3:29:14 we with that with the storage question? Um and it, you know, it's it's evolving. I don't think trying to get around anything. I think that we um but it's a it's a very it's a very it's a viable um resource out there. Yeah, I I I know. I just wanted I didn't think it was exempted and so I just think we need a change. We would have to have a change from the political to to to keep that into our portfolio and then and then so say I wasn't wrong on that and then how long do you think it takes to permit a new nuclear facility it didn't we say I think we were joking that it's it's longer than Carmen and probably longer than Finger as well as transmission but that the ones that are in process now are going in into Utah and going into Washington

3:29:59 and they're talking about the early 2030s. or roughly around 2030. So only 7 to 10 years, right? And and you're right on three years once we get them permitted then then it's 7 to 10 years to Okay. I just was thinking about the the logic of making a reliance on that sort resource because it's a dispatchable resource don't have that then what do we have and did you run that without any dis without any small modular nuclear? Could we take it out of the model? Yeah, take the option now. Take the option. I I'm just I'm just curious because I you know it's a political whim and and then it's a it's a it's a regulatory thing that has not been accepted history but we'll have it would be a steep

3:30:44 learning curve I think for people in Oregon to say yeah we want nuclear. I think part of our thought thought process was that these are um the the small module nuclear are a new type of technology doesn't have the risk that everyone else said but um Of course, we can we can take different resources out. I think the key point here is that um our our I think Ben mentioned it earlier, you know, our portfolio needs to have that low no HG emissions um and um dispatchable resource. I think that's really our key takeaway. I'll leave it up to you. I'm just just bringing it up for conversation just in case, you know. Thank you very much. All right, McCrae.

3:31:31 Thank you, President Carlson. Um, just a few questions. Um, I'm curious if the cost of conservation that um, you know, Mindy was asking about conservation and we were talking about the cost and cost effective conservation does do those scenarios or um, include the significant federal incentives available from the inflation reduction act? Those have not been incorporated for anything yet. So that is definitely an update. Do we do you if we're just guessing you think that'll have a significant impact on the cost effective conservation or no? I I don't have a sense. I'm curious. I mean I will say anecdotally a neighbor of mine already installed a heat pump because they got a rebate. So uh I yeah

3:32:17 I don't want to to guess on that though. Okay. Thanks. Um, we talked about a conservation potential assessment that might include demand respon response and from my perspective. Uh, that would be super valuable and especially if it can include the IRA incentives, if it can kind of, you know, include that estimate of how much that changes things. um the the high electrification version and the increasing planning reserve margin. They're both calling for generating technologies that can help us meet that higher peak. And as we just were talking about, um we need a lowcarbon firm power source. But I'm curious, uh isn't there a a handful of

3:33:03 different technologies can that can do that? Biomass is one that we're already using that I I think can can provide that capability. Yes, we got a lot of questions about um geothermal for example if we explicitly modeled that and I think this when we talk about a resource being like a proxy. So the the model just looks at this as a dispatchable resource that does not have carbon emissions and has certain energy generating capabilities. So I think to the extent that if we actually go to look to procure resources, geothermal or other types of resources that that have similar attributes would be desirable. Okay. Yeah. Um it seems to me that um

3:33:48 calling out small modular nuclear, I don't really have an axe to grind with small modular nuclear, but it does feel like we're kind of picking the winner there. And if what we are actually putting in there is a placeholder for a lowcarbon firm power source, which is what I heard earlier, I think we should just call it that because I think there's a bunch of things that can meet that. Biomass, if we're willing to procure more than 20 megawws, I'm not sure why. I'd love it if you'd remind me why we're limiting it to 20 megawws, but also hydrogen. Um we're seeing um the potential for hydrogen generation. Um anyway, I I I would rather us use something that is uh uh maybe not picking a specific technology for the

3:34:33 reasons that Brown mentioned. I just think it's going to um create issues where we don't necessarily need them yet. Like we're not really picking a technology. We're looking at a a specific generating profile that we need. Can you remind of can you remind us what um what the requirement was to have it into the model for the resource uh that it be commercially viable within the next 10 years. And so that's it's um I I think that's great feedback and I I um agree that we can change the way we talk about these resources so it more reflects the attributes of the resource as opposed to maybe picking one. I might sort of disagree

3:35:20 um in the sense of picking a winner. Small modular reactors were specifically selected because we have a path and we know the price. So if you start throwing in other generics, we don't really know the price of those options. So there may be an opportunity for both commissioner. Um, but where we know we we are actually running out of our choices. So where we do have a solid choice, I think we probably need to put it in there. And then where we know that there might be some opportunities for generic choices like you're you're talking about, I think storage and hydrogen and some of these things that are are a little less sure. We can probably

3:36:05 capture that with with the generic choice as well. So I think there's some combination if that makes sense. Yeah. Um and then could you remind me why we're limiting our biomass to 20 megawatts? Yeah, we the size of Senica um is the is the name plate. Um we we placed a limit on that because often biomass or geothermal are great examples of things that are sight specific. And so we wanted to see what besides uh biomass might be selected uh because we don't know the potential quantity of biomass or geothermal that would be available to us if we were to go out and do an RFP.

3:36:57 And how does the current uh price for biomass compare to what we're assuming for a small modular reactors? Do you know? Okay. It's lower and and so it makes sense that it kind of maxed out on that first uh before the small modular nuclear. As you're picking up, these results are very price sensitive and sensitive to our assumptions about the cost and attributes of a resource. I'm sorry. No, go ahead. I was just going to say there's we have to include the carbon attributes in that as well and some of the other considerations. Um if we start looking at things like a social cost of carbon or legislation that could relative to carbon pricing as well. So

3:37:44 have a different carbon biomass will you're saying? Right. Right. Okay. Um, and then the last question is, can you share with me the price assumption for small module reactors? I'm curious what because I know that this leads to this point they're quite a bit more expensive than renewables and storage, but I I understand like there's a we're seeing a business need for that type of power profile, but I'm curious what we're assuming it's going to cost. the I know that we estimate so there's specific numbers in the model but if you look back at the IRP documents that we put out we kind of did a broad levelized cost of the comparison and those are based on the input assumptions so there it's not like a perfect

3:38:31 number but is close to roughly what we assumed okay that we can get that to you if you oh I can I can look it up yeah no no trouble thank you that's all I have appreciate the Oh, we are well past time, so I think we're going to wrap it. Thank you. Uh, next up, so we have a required review of bylaws. They look pretty quick. President Carlson, this will be quick. There's no presentation. Um, according to the existing bylaws, um, you will, um, the bylaws need to be reviewed within the first three months of, um, swearing in of elected, um,

3:39:16 commissioners. There's a couple of articles that have been recommended um, a consideration for amendment. Those are mostly administrative to align with the policies that the board already changed around specifically around um quorums and approvals. Um wording is included in the backgrounder and really um this is if if you sort of endorse uh the changes recommended then we have a certain uh public notification process and things that would go through. we would bring it back uh next month on the consent calendar for action. So that's it. Any comments?

3:40:02 We're good to go. Okay. So we'll we'll serve our notice to the public and bring that back on consent calendar next month. Okay. All right. Correspondence and board agendas. There were a couple of pieces of correspondence um just given the the time I didn't know if commissioners wanted to um punt any conversations about the um state of the watershed report to the next month. Um, so I mean from the headnots we heard earlier or we saw earlier, it sounded like we wanted to have an actual presentation with that presentation and ability to ask questions.

3:40:47 Okay. Um, fair enough. We'll we'll plan on that. And there's a legislative update um as well as um just a document describing EWB's participation with other local community members in the equity community consortium. So that's that's an update. So those those are all updates. I don't know if you have any questions or comments on those. One quick question on the legislative update. Um it said in there that there was a $4 million um item that support that we had gotten from the state for wildlife recovery and we haven't used that and now we're going back to the legislature and asking for a carry forward on that. Why haven't we used it? What is that?

3:41:32 What is it? I mean we've spent a lot of money up river. Does none of that count? this particular award was for some specific purposes and I actually believe and I don't know if Jason is on the line but um some of that had to do with the the state's own processes delaying that. So um who's out there or not? Jason I'm guessing this is something we're going to be talking about at our lobby day of the 15th. So yeah, this was not an issue of of eweb's slowness of the process. This was um access to the funds in a timely manner from the state. All right, that that was

3:42:19 else I'm not seeing you indicate anything. So okay, we're good. All right, that's it on that. So then we're wrap up. Done. One quick um I know every year we've done a river trip and I know we haven't mentioned that this year but I just wouldn't bring that up. I to me it doesn't matter but if others there are certain sections of the river you've never seen or areas that we oversee. So I just thought I'd mention that because we're going to do that. We're going to do it sooner or later. The other thing is is if you want to, you know, you look at the art facilities we've been building, go down I 105 right before I buy it and see that they've entirely doing it whole substation. It's amazing to see the construction project that EWE

3:43:05 is undertaking right now. It's absolutely huge and they've totally taken that whole thing down. It's on I 105 on each side right before I file. I'm smiling because just real quick because when I did the trip with so members of sub were there and they were in they were asking about the river trip that they wanted to be a part of that and they also were curious if we could do something with them around touring some of our different locations so we can get a sense from a resiliency perspective of you know what their services are what what our sites look like. I don't know if maybe that could be part of that conversation. Okay. Um just really quick, I know last

3:43:50 meeting or whenever it was we talked about um engaging up river folks in planning for our up river and I just wanted everyone to know that I've been working with Will Rutherford and reaching out to key members of the communities up there. And um I have a whole list of questions that people want and I've forwarded some of them to you, Frank, but I have more questions from people up there. So just so you know, I'm gathering that information and some of it can be answered ahead of time and some of it we can address at our meeting. I'll divy those out to commissioners appropriately. Just as a side note, I went to the Lane Electric board meeting as their liaison last month and I invited that entire board to come to our up meeting because

3:44:36 they're all their c most of their their customers. So, we'll see. Okay, Matt, do you have anything? Nothing for me. Thank you. All right, Frank, one last thing. So, one last thing, um, we have st talked to staff about the the frequency of the river trips. They are pretty significant amount of work. um and kind of landed on every other year if that if you're okay with that. Sure. If the board's okay with that. I'm fine with that. I'm just curious if we could maybe talk about doing a a tour of maybe the different areas of, you know, sub has different um like water treatment facilities. We have

3:45:22 water treatment. I don't know if there's something like that that we could do and kind of get that conversation going again around resiliency. We can think about that more. It's just an idea that was brought up. And my only take on it would be that the we're trying to establish goodwill with the city of Eugene and sitting in a boat with a city councelor for three and a half or four hours led to a lot of goodwill that I so I mean I understand the the cost and the logistics of it all, but there's a whole lot of good that came out of those those uh those trips. So, I think every other

3:46:08 week would be better than every other year, you know, and and if there's, you know, fishing rods involved, I'm all for that. But anyhow, that's my two sight.