University Place

Communities' Advanced Energy Goals

[Megan Levy, Local Energy Programs Manager, Office of Energy Innovation, State of Wisconsin]

Thank you to everyone from the Academy for inviting me here today and making this great event possible. It’s been a lot of fun so far. Yesterday, I spoke about resiliency because I’m also the Energy Assurance Coordinator for the Wisconsin Office of Energy Innovation. And for those of you don’t know it’s the state federally designated energy office for this state. So, in 1970s as a response to the oil crisis the Feds thought we should have energy offices who are monitoring petroleum supplies and helping us think about other ways to get off of foreign oil and pathways to energy independence. So, we’ve taken that and we’ve run with it with the help of our good friends from the U. S. Department of Energy and their funding.

So, today I’m gonna be very brief because we’ve got two excellent speakers who are, one, Ned Noel from city of Eau Claire, he’s going to talk to you about their newly-minted goals and I think we’ve heard a little bit about that. And then Manus McDevitt, he’s going to talk to us about Madison’s impressive goals.

I’ll go over our Energy Independent Communities Program that the Energy Office has been sponsoring since 2008. Why these goals matters and a little bit about how we can help.

So, first of all, energy independent communities, it was a program that have started in 2008 under the Doyle Administration. It was a huge push. He had cabinet secretaries having competitions across the state to recruit communities. We had about 147 communities including cities, towns, villages, school districts. And the state at that time encouraged a 25 by 25 goal, replaced 25% of your current energy use with renewables.

Do the energy efficiency but get to the renewables. After 2010, that push from the top was not as prescriptive. So, that’s when I joined the Energy Office and I was lucky to work with my colleague Sherrie Gruder at UW-Extension where we got to do meetings all over the state from 2011. We planned them in 2011, 2012 through 2015. We got out in every corner of the state and we talked to communities and we said: “What do you think about this energy independent community program? What goals do you want to set?”

And – and we heard from communities that they – they love it and they want to set even more aggressive goals and so we set about trying to find ways to help them.

So, why do goals matters? Goals matter because great projects happened when there’s comprehensive planning and thoughtful goal setting. So, since 2013, the Energy Office which is funded with about $800,000 of federal money every year, we’ve put out more than three million dollars in grants to communities for planning and implementation. And we’re gonna keep putting money out there because that’s – thats what we need to get the right groups of people together, to make the solar gardens happen, to make the energy efficiency happen, to make the transportation energy efficiency happen.

So, we also like to leverage our state’s incredible rate payer funded energy efficiency program Focus on Energy. 15 years old, its robust, it’s fabulous. If you don’t know your Focus on Energy representative, you should; it’s your money. 1. 2% of all retail sales are paid into the Focus on Energy pot of money and then they’re meted out through great programs. This is just our 2017 Focus on Energy, renewable energy competitive incentive program results. But you can see there are investments being made in these areas and I applaud you all for going out there and getting this money, bring it back to your communities and using a sustainable way.

Other resources we have. The Energy Office created the Municipal Energy Efficiency and Technical Assistance Program. Because we found from these meetings, we had around the state the big barrier is money. But another barrier is technical assistance, to make sure that the projects are good.

We provide an independent third-party analysis. Typically, it’s getting that energy use baseline right. Getting that weather correction done properly. Understand your utility usage, triple down on the energy efficiency and then you’re – youre ready for renewables. Then you’re ready for that 100% sustainability. So, contact me, contact the energy office, we can help you out with free services.

But there’s something a little more exciting I have to talk about today. In 2009, the Energy Office was awarded 55 million dollars through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

We took about 25 million of that right off the bat and we gave some grants to some large manufacturers to keep them in the state. The rest of it was turned into a revolving, clean energy manufacturing loan fund.

We didn’t have a lot of uptake in that loan fund in the last three or four years. And so, after our move to the Public Service Commission, it was decided by the commissioners just two weeks ago that this loan fund should be turned to grants.

The Department of Energy agreed that it could be grants and that we could open up the eligibility from just manufacturers to include municipal entities.

I think this is exciting.

So, we’ll have five million dollars on the street in the next couple of weeks. The order is coming from the P.S.C., but the commissioners have voted, and it is public record that five million we’ve put out there. Manufacturers of all size will also be eligible to apply under two broad categories: planning and implementation.

For implementation, building energy efficiency projects, renewable energy, the commissioners specifically called out energy storage and resiliency.

Transportation and transportation infrastructure will also be eligible as those are categories that we typically can’t work through the Focus on Energy program because Focus is about electric and gas utilities. So, the RFP is coming out soon. I don’t have all the details but please watch for it.

These slides will be available to you. Since we are at the Public Service Commission, we have all the great electronic resources that the P.S.C. uses like the earth system. You can subscribe to the docket; you can see when there are updates. It’s really fabulous and it’s very modern, so I encourage you to get these links and follow this process. Because when that RFP comes out it will have all the information the grading rubric and it’s a great way to get interesting projects done, microgrids, resilient communities. Let’s think big. We’ll have five years, five million dollars a year if everything goes well.

So, without further ado then I’d like to turn it over to the real stars of this show. We’ll start with Ned Noel.

He’s an associate planner for the City of Eau Claire. Practice urban planning for over 13 years within the Twin Cities and Eau Claire markets. And in his role he also helps the city coordinate efforts on sustainability and healthy community design. Please welcome Ned.

(applause)

[Ned Noel, Associate Planner, City of Eau Claire]

Maybe you can cue me up. But pleasure to be with you all and just thank you for the Academy to decide to come to Eau Claire to host this wonderful event that we can convene and talk about these issues that matter to us locally, statewide and nationally and globally.

And so, Im going to share – I was asked to share about Eau Claire’s experience, kind of our journey and it continues to be a journey. To maybe enlighten some of you, whether you’re elected officials or staffers with your own local communities or just policy people in general.

So, my role with the city, I’m a city planner, so I look at the systems that build a city and make sure that they’re functioning well and growing.

And so, probably – I’ve been with the city now about 11 years and so I’ve seen where – where we’ve come from in terms of these initiatives with energy and climate change goals. And it’s nice when you have been around for a while to be able to see that progress and also inform new – newly-elected officials to it from a staff point of view of that where we’ve been and where we’re going.

So, from that point of view it’s helpful as a staff person to have that continuity to be able to talk about the past and then also help people to understand where we may be going.

So, just from the local point of view, Eau Claire where we’re at, just – just with this helpful resource here, the maps that show that the temperature changes. This is a local issue across the whole state, various places, it’s gonna be a little bit more temperature change. But for us, over the 50 years or so from 1960s about three – three degrees of warming. And then what’s predicted by 2050 which, as you heard from our council president, this 2050 is really our – our goal date, we’re expected to warm another three degrees. So, six degrees of warming does impact the systems that we have, whether they’re natural or built environment.

And so, I think this is, you know, lets – let’s just be real here. This isn’t really a political issue; this is a factual issue when it comes down to what – what is causing that glo – that warming. And so, just a graph here from the EPA talking about looking at the different four scenes of the warming. And you can see the acceleration over the last 50 years or so about why – why our lo – local areas are warming.

This shows that those, primarily the burning of fossil fuels are increasing the heat trapping of our solar radiation to warm our planet, whether it’s our oceans, our land or our atmosphere. And so, this is a matter that’s really important for our elected officials.

And, you know, again, as a city planner I look at these systems that we have built, whether the bridges or roads, our homes. And so, with the – the warming and the freezing in the fall, I mean just basic things that a lot of the local government electives deal with the pothole issues that we have especially around this time of the year. And so, we’ve had a lot of that and that’s when you’ve got the freeze-thaw cycle, that’s always something of a nuisance.

And just – we’ve seen devastating hurricanes that there’s – when there’s more energy, because of heat into the atmosphere that’s gonna power these extreme storms. Whether they’re rain events or hurricanes and that these affect livelihoods and – and washouts with higher rain events. And just from a point of view of having to redo some of our infrastructure, whether it’s the bridges around vulnerable areas with coastal flooding, these are major expenses. Whether it’s planning in – in the beginning for it or dealing with it after a – a horrible natural event like a hurricane.

So, the – these are – these are reasons why the City of Eau Claire is motivated to do something about this issue. And back in June, they asked staff in our sustainability committee to come up with a response after the president decided to withdraw from the Paris agreement. Our local officials felt like, well that is something that they can’t stand for and they directed staff and our sustainability committee to look into this issue about how the City of Eau Claire could actually align with the Paris Agreement. And if you know about the Paris Agreement, it’s really for nations not for local governments. And so, we kind of struggled with trying to understand how a local footprint could actually align with a national-type strategy, and it is possible. And so, basically, we looked at our own carbon footprint and came up with strategies.

And this is an example here of our president had mentioned that really the municipalities carbon footprint is about two and a half percent of the whole total emissions and the university is included in the – in the gray silo there too. And so, we – our elected officials realize that we – we have a role to play as a leader and also as an organizational point of view. But the bigger issue is our community and how are we going to actually advance these things when it comes to the community.

And so, I think one of the things is to translate this to kind of dumb down the – the – the emissions was to help them to understand. This is a helpful calculator on EPA’s website to look at: what does this translate? All of these metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, what does this really look like? And so, for Eau Claire at least, it would be about of a quarter of a – a power plant, a coal power plant. And so, that helped them to realize: “Wow, that’s – thats a chunk of, you know, coal emissions.” It could be looking at from that point of view. Or from renewables, what would that look like to power the whole city on renewables? A very large wind farm in this case. And then also how to – how to actually get at carbon neutral and plant that many acres of forest to be able to carbon sink all of those emissions. And so, this kind of helped to put it in perspective that it is a big – Eau Claire even though we’re a small city, it is – there are a lot of emissions that are still occurring.

And so, one of the things that we felt – and this is I think an important strategy if you’re looking to get into this work – is to gauge the – the citizen response in your community. And so, as the chancellor had mentioned, we partnered with the university. I always hire somebody from the university here as my sustainability intern. And in this case, she was able to do her capstone research project on a community sustainability development survey.

And so, we gauged the community about what they think and feel about this issue. Is it important to them to help inform the local officials? And so, it just wasn’t their own agendas, it was, what – what do the people think? And so, we can see in these graphs that 75% more strongly agreed or agreed about what we should do, not only in the city level but the community level, when it comes to capturing and reducing the carbon dioxide.

Also too, this was – we ran this by our – our utility partner, in this case Xcel Energy, to – to really look at, kind of, you know, where – where this comes down oftentimes is that, you know: are you willing to pay a little bit more to be able to make those changes? And by a large, the community also supported, you know, I mean this is kind of extreme with the $200, I mean that’s – thats phenomenal, whoever that’s, those people were but, you know, roughly around $16 or so that they would be willing to pay more on their – on their monthly bill.

And so, to translate that, if they would choose to have wind source as a – an option for them on their utility bills, you know, it really wouldn’t be a whole lot over the whole course of a year, maybe $200. And so, that helped, I think, the public to realize that, you know, these major changes not necessarily cost big dollars. And so, this was a question that was actually brought to us by Xcel is, why not also engage about willingness to pay, and so I think it was a – a very good insight.

Also, we asked the people, our utility providers are providing very renewable energy already and carbon free energy and they continue to want to do more of that, but what does the community think? Should we be more aggressive? And in this case again about 75% of the folks felt like: “Yeah, we should do some more.” And so, you know, we’re proud to say that we’re offering that really through Xcel Energy’s program with the community solar is that, the community can take part of, if they want more renewable energy today, at the community solar garden across from Xcel’s headquarter – head – headquarters over at this landfill that the city owns. And so those options are – are already available for homeowners, for business owners and many have taken part in that.

So, to boil all this down for our policymakers, our sustainability committee and staff, we looked at, you know, these goals. If our goal is 2050 to reach 100% renewable energy and carbon neutrality by then, how can we look at that in the interim steps? And so, we bowled it down to these decade drops.

So, if you look at the top 4% annually, that’s what we’re thinking about with technology advances in price, declines on some of these technologies would be able to do more. And so, each decade, you know, we get more aggressive but in – in the more near term we’re looking at smaller steps, 1% annually to get to the 5% drop by 2020. And so, what we’re using here is a baseline of 2015. And the reason why we chose 2015 is that that’s the first year that we were able to get energy data for the whole community. And it’s been mentioned that, in our case, Xcel Energy has these community energy reports and so we can – It’s de-identified information from utility bills. But we can understand all of the natural gas and electricity uses within the city. And so, based off of that reliable data, this was the first time we were able to look at the carbon footprint, the energy footprint of our whole community and so that’s why we chose to do 2015.

And so, now we’re moving into this fall, were – we’re trying to plan and gear up and try to do due diligence to a process that would serve our community well related to a Climate and Energy Action Plan. And so, we kind of call this “The retirement plan for fossil fuels. ” How – how do we get there? Incremental investments over time. And so, every – I think our council really understood that, you know, we have to be realistic about this transition that there’s different diverse fuel types that serve affordable energy, reliable energy, there’s clean energy, but it’s not going to happen overnight. And so, we have to look at a planning process that does justice to the – the current realities but moves the needle forward. And so, this process is going to look at that, working with our utilities and also groups that more – more marginal audiences whether it’s low income.

And so, looking at, first of all, energy efficiency is, conservation is number one that you need to focus on before you even look at energy renewables. And so, making sure that we’re doing due diligence for that not only for the – the city but also the community. Just insulation alone can save you big money when it comes to the bills, whether it’s your home or your business.

And then incrementally investing more in the renewables and then electrifying more vehicles and growing these carbon sinks whether it’s our urban tree canopy or tree preservation when it comes to developments.

So, the – the keys to success that I have found, just as a person who’s been around 10 years or so with this whole process, is that the policies that were in place in the past with our comprehensive plan, our sustainability chapter, really set the foundation to be able to advance to these levels. And then also with the Office of Energy Independence, or the Innovation, excuse me, that 25% goal by 2025 really set us on this whole trajectory in the first place to first measure what we use, to have a goal in the first place and then now to be able to actually take that goal further where we have met the electricity portion of the 25%.

So, that was really key and then really all of these partners, we – we can’t do this alone whether it’s just the city. We really need to work with the community. And again, we – we gauge the community’s voice and we know that they – they support. The utilities leadership, both of our utilities, are fantastic in terms of their commitment to renewable energy and energy efficiency and so being with a strong partnership with them. The elected leadership setting those goals as policy. And then executive leadership, we’ve had three city managers since I’ve been around and all three have been very supportive, encouraging staff to do their part, to help inform elected officials to make the decisions. And then finally, the staff that they’re engaged and knowledgeable. Providing that – that objective information so that the – the policymakers can make their decisions.

And so, is this all possible? I think – It’s – its going to be definitely a journey. It’s intimidating in some ways but also in many ways we can do this and I think, you know, the answers are just around the corner when you – when you think about, you know, they – dad, trying to figure out, smart guy in the garage, you know, coming up with a zero emissions vehicle. And here the kids are with a bicycle and they dont – dad doesn’t even realize it. So, the answers are there and I – and I look forward to working with our community together to figure out this plan but also collectively too, whether it’s in our region with our communities or just statewide too. So, I appreciate the opportunity to be here, to be with you and to really focus on these issues that – that matter to our local communities. So, thank you.

(applause)

[Megan Levy]

Thank You, Ned. That was great.

We’re gonna move on.

I should have mentioned, both of these presenters are from Energy Independent Communities. And the – Ned said the Office of Energy Independence, we’ve changed the name a couple times. And by, “we” I mean the Governor.

(laughter)

So, you just have to roll it, we were the, on your notepads we’re the State Energy Office. Prior to that we were the Office of Energy Independence. Now were the Office of Energy Innovation.

So, without further ado, I’ll bring up Manus McDevitt, he’s a founding principle of Sustainable Engineering Group LLC, where he has over 25 years of experience in building design, energy engineering and commissioning. Manus and his firm are currently working with the City of Madison in the development of an action plan to achieve the city’s goal of 100% renewable energy and net zero carbon emissions.

[Manus McDevitt, Founding Principal, Sustainable Engineering Group]

So that – that was very impressive. Thanks, Ned. It was very interesting presentation on the City of Eau Claire. There’s gonna be a lot of parallels for what we’re doing with the City of Madison.

So, a little bit of history. So, last March 2017, the City of Madison unanimously, the council passed a resolution for – for Madison to be a net zero carbon emissions city and also a 100% renewable energy. So, it was a – it was a very short discussion, and everybody was totally behind it and so that was very exciting. And one of the – one of the – the things that came out of it was they also allocated resources to hire a consultant to -to figure out how to achieve that – that goal of net zero carbon emissions.

And – and they – our firm, Sustainable Engineering Group along with our partner Navigant. And Josh is here. I’ll see you at the back. We were hired to – to be that consultant, to develop that action plan. So, we’re about two-thirds of the way through it and I want to give you a little overview of – of – of where we’re at and some of the – some of the – interesting exciting things that were – that we have uncovered. So, I guess the more nuts and bolts approach or overview.

And – and, you know, it just was in 2017 of March where -where they kind of suddenly decide: “Oh, we want to be sustainable and get really into renewable energy. ” There’s a long history in Madison. And – and especially with the Sustainable Madison Committee, a very active committee, and a past chair, Sherrie is here today, and she has a big reason why Madison is where they’re at today. So, definitely have to acknowledge Sherrie’s effort there.

So – so, the first thing that we were challenged to do by the city was assemble stakeholders. There’s a lot of interested people. Madison is a very, I guess, progressive city and there’s a lot of people that have a lot to say about different things.

(laughter)

And so, we – we tried as much as possible to gather all their opinions. We reached out to as many groups that we could think of. Nature Conservancy, Clean Wisconsin. Several other ones I can’t remember right now but the Public Service Commission. The utilities. We – we really have formed a really strong bond with our utilities. Madison Gas and Electric and Alliant Energy. And of course Sustainable Madison Committee remains to be – remains a very strong part of – of our – of our effort.
And – and, of course, members of the public, general members of the public.

So, what we did is we set up a series of three public meetings. And the first one was held back in September of last year. And we – we had a lot more people attend than we thought. There’s a standing-room-only, almost a hundred people attended. It collected a lot of comments. It went on for a lot longer than we thought but that was good. And we also had a guest speaker, Bob Lindmeier. He’s our Chief Meteorologist with Channel 27. He came in and give us a talk and was very passionate about sustainability and that we really need to take action now because he’s seeing it. In his world, he’s seeing the effects of climate change are – are incredibly stark and we got to do something. So, he was – that was a really good help there. And, of course, the media was super interested. We got a feature on the local television, the Wisconsin State Journal, our local paper, and – and the City Channel and The Badger Herald as well.

We also have a – a website and it’s an active website. And, you know, feel free to go and – and look at – at the website. But there’s all the material that we’ve gathered and that we’ve processed to date is on that website. And also, when we have our public meetings, we have a – you can see it up – up at the top right, submit public comment. So, that’s where we allow the – the public to – to submit their thoughts and – and feedback and we get some really interesting ideas from the public, but.

So, the first thing that we – that we do – we did once we started to get into the nuts and bolts. So, we gathered all the public input. So, now we’re looking at: “Well, let’s do a baseline of where we’re at. How much carbon do we use?” And then: What sort of baseline will be use moving forward in order to – to see the effects of any – any – any changes that we make?

Well, we’re very, very lucky that there’s a group called ICLEI. Has anybody heard of ICLEI?

Yup, got a lot of nods.

So, ICLEI is a wonderful organization and I’m gonna mess this up. But it’s the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives or something like that.

(laughter)

But they – they were set up in 1990 and they currently have 84 countries, so its an international organization. And they do a wonderful job of creating that baseline for carbon. So, cause not all carbon is – is – is – is the same, not all carbon is equal. So, they do a really nice job to help local governments, like us, track carbon and – and then measure the progress into the future.

So, we form three – three groups of emissions. Of course, the city buildings, on the left, the vehicle fleets and other, the miscellaneous group.

So, here’s a quick breakdown. And what’s really interesting is, you see that our biggest portion, our biggest amount of carbon is – is – are from buildings. And then the next is the fleet that’s, you know, the – I guess I should back – back up. This is for the city operations. That’s right here. And I missed – I’ll mention another little point. Part of our – our – our scope is to deal with looking at how to be net zero carbon for city operations and for the greater community. And I apologize, I missed that a little bit. So, the – the first phase was to look at the city operations.

So, looking at the city operations, you know, we discovered majority of – of emissions are from the buildings and then the next is from the – the buses and from the – the – the – the fleet that’s – thats operated by City of Madison.

And, what about type of emissions? Well, electricity is by far our biggest producer of carbon. Two-thirds of our – of our electricity is generated from coal-fired power plants. So, that’s really a carbon emissions breakdown and we – we used ICLEI’s database.

So, this – this – this graph basically summarizes the magnitude of where we need to go and the amount of effort that we need to put in to – to get into net zero carbon. And you can see – sure, we can get, we can get some out of building energy efficiency. Yeah, we can get some out of transportation. But we really need to work hard on renewable energy, that’s where it’s going to be the biggest amount of effort. And I’ll talk a little bit about some of the – the ideas that we’re exploring now and that we’re – that were pursuing. But – but you can sort of see renewable energy is going to be the biggest – the biggest factor in reaching that zero carbon.

So so, lets look at – let’s look at renewable energy. So, what are we doing? What ideas are we – are we exploring? Well, they fall into three categories. And there’s a lot more detail to this. This is just an overview. And if there’s any specific questions, I’ll be happy to answer afterwards. But – but, just as an overview, we split the renewable energy side to behind the meter solar. That’s where on – on buildings, the electron of energy that’s produced at the building stays at the building, it doesn’t go through the meter and back to the grid. It just stays at the building. And then off-site solar or wind, that’s where somewhere else, like the community solar garden or – or working with the power purchase agreement – on a power purchase agreement with a third party firm to build a solar farm or a wind farm or something like that and we basically the city pays for that. Or – the – the – or similar to what Ned was saying about the – the City of Eau Claire in the – in the – the – the large community garden project and then renewable energy credits.

So, and I’m gonna skip along here, just got five minutes.

So, and then building energy efficiency strategies. The first one, Sherrie and – and I worked on together is a benchmarking. What an interesting effort. We were so close (laughs) – but we got the part of lobbyists, I guess. They – they were very strong against benchmarking but we’re very close, but you got to measure building performance.

And then retro-commissioning. This is -this is repeating what – what Ned says. But – so, this on the building energy efficiency and then transportation. That’s a lot simpler. Electrification of our fleet. Electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles and alternative transportation strategies.

This is, sort of, a summary of some of the – the – the end products that we’re looking at right now. But we – we’ve been challenged by the city to come up with an aggressive, a moderate and an incremental strategy towards achieving net zero – net zero carbon. And were, sort of, and this is all still a work in progress, but, you know, we’re sort of looking somewhere towards these goals here 100% renewable by 2025 is aggressive and down to incremental 80% renewable by 2030. So, so we’ve got a lot of ideas, they’re all coming together, we’re talking to a lot of people. And our focus is on – at actionable steps. Not pie in the sky ideas but things we can do from – from day one here.

So, this is my final graph, but this is sort of gives you an idea of the order of magnitude of – of what we’re looking at. So, so here’s where we’re at today, 2017. So, this is a carbon – carbon against time. So, here’s how much carbon emissions the – the city is using. Then if we don’t do anything, heres – we do have an increase in carbon usage because the city is expanding. And if we don’t do anything, yes, we will use more carbon.

But here’s the things that we can do to offset that carbon – that carbon usage. And this, sort of, shows the magnitude of each of those – each of those actionable items. From retrofits, retro-commissioning, off-site renewables, behind the meter solar and phase one and phase two, utility renewables. That’s where the utility, we work together and developing like a wind farm or a – a solar farm or something like that in the area. And then you can see what the biggest one is, Renewable Energy Credits, R.E.C.s they call them.

There are some cities in the U. S. already who have declared himself as net zero carbon and what they have done is they – they really haven’t done any of this. They went straight to R.E.C.s and just paid for the R.E..Cs and to say: “We’re – were net zero carbon. ” But that’s not – thats not what the City of Madison has told us to do, they said: “We absolutely want to look at R.E.C.s as one of the last things. We want to explore every other option before we go to R.E.C.s. But we realize that R.E.C.s will – will have to be part of our – part of the solution.

So, I think that’s it.

(laughs)

Okay, thank you.

(applause)

[Megan Levy]

And we have time for just a few questions. I see Kelly’s. . . Flag her down if you have one written and she’ll bring them up.

So, the first question: “Is it possible to build a combination solar wind farm?” And I would say, yes, but Ill – engineer in the room?

[Manus McDevitt]

Technically, yes. It’s definitely possible. But we don’t have too many areas in Wisconsin where wind power is actually feasible. We have a – we have a little slew towards Iowa County, west of Madison towards Iowa. But what makes the most sense is – is solar. And you know what’s really interesting is that Germany produces about 80% of their electricity from – from solar and they are further north than us. So, you know, there’s no real excuse. We are – we should be producing more solar.

[Megan Levy]

Right. And people look askance at that the greatest offshore or greatest wind potentials that we have in Wisconsin which was – is offshore in either Superior or Michigan. A lot of shipping lanes and frankly there’s some petroleum running through those lakes, which we need to watch out for as well. Okay. So, we have another question.

This person says: “Great efforts for me to suppose but, what percent of total carbon emission do cities contribute? And then how do we address other sources, manufacturing our automobile emission?”

So, I think this person is saying: Okay, if you’re just looking at one city, then – then what about rural areas and what about manufacturing? I think we’ve, sort of, talked – spoken about fleets in general, but then there’s the larger transportation sector which we shouldn’t forget. Maria Redman, the director of my office said yesterday, 38% of all energy is expended in the transportation sector, so it’s really something to think about, but. So, in Eau Claire how are you addressing manufacturing, and do you know the percent of the city versus the rest?

[Ned Noel]

We have not looked at Eau Claire County, for example, the rural area. But I think in the rural parts, that’s where like national legislation can take care of, like, fuel economy standards and things like that. So, in the absence of some of that are rollbacks on some of those standards, it’s a little bit harder. I think counties or towns would have to step up and – and deal with that themselves in a more localized level to look at those.

And then for manufacturing, I know with Xcel Energy they – they have really ramped up a new program for medium, small, medium businesses to try to help them to take advantages of Focus on Energy grants where that – that – that niche of those type manufacturer or businesses weren’t really having the capabilities to get those types of rebates. So, they’ve retooled some of their efforts to make sure that they’re helping those type businesses. And that directly benefits a community like Eau Claire.

[Megan Levy]

That’s great. And I think we heard from Dane County yesterday in our resiliency seminar which is all sort of about resiliency and sustainability. That their climate action plan is – is really working to bridge that urban-rural divide, because thats – it’s all part of the same piece of the pie. And I think that we’ll be watching what Dane County is doing and looking at how that affects the rest of state. But Ned said at partnerships, partner, partner. We can’t do it alone. And big hats off to Xcel for being the only utility in the state who really provides these comprehensive reports. It’s so important, we have to know what we’re using. We have to be able to measure it, since we weren’t able to pass that mandatory benchmarking ordinance in Madison but we’re still getting folks to voluntarily benchmark and we’ll – and well continue to push that. Where we can, we’ll just try to explain why it makes so much sense.

All right, we’ll let you get to the break. Thank you so much.

And thanks to our speakers.

(applause)