All right, welcome everyone.

So we are here at 515 now for the Duluth Energy Commission presentation.

I'm going to welcome Mr.

Gary Olson up to the podium here who will guide us through our presentation, and I believe questions are at the end.

Is that correct, Mr.

Olson?

Yes, please.

All right.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Well, thank you, President Tamonic, wherever you are.

Is she?

She's not sitting in the right spot.

And counselors, I'd like to thank you for this opportunity, opportunity for the Duluth Energy Plan Commission, the EPC to speak to you tonight about the recommendation that we made to the city last year.

I'm Gary Olson.

I'm the chair of the commission.

Our commission was formed in 2019 by city ordinance and was chartered to have seven members.

We have Scott Wishert.

Bouchard.

Here is the commissioner, and I don't see any other commissioners here.

And he will be able to answer questions too if you have questions at the end.

We are especially grateful for the knowledge, advice, and leadership of our city city sustainability officer, Mindy Granley, who, by the way, was one of our original commissioners.

I have a short presentation about the recommendation, the reasons for the recommendation, and the solutions that we are urging the city to pursue.

The city's charge given to the EPC was to advise the administration and city council on ways to achieve the goal of reducing the city's greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.

Next one.

In addition to this original goal, Mayor Emily Larson in 2022 updated that to 100% reduction.

And the state of Minnesota has in recent legislation established the goal of 100% reduction of greenhouse gases by the year 2050.

Just to remind us, the major causes of greenhouse gas emissions is the burning of fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and natural gas or methane.

This burning produces 75% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the world.

And greenhouse gas has trap the sun's heat, causing climate change.

I want to include this slide and this photo of the Duluth Energy Plant to point out that changing from burning coal to burning natural gas or methane, which this plant has done, is a significant improvement in reducing greenhouse gases.

However, we are still using the burning of natural gas throughout our community for the majority of our thermal energy needs.

And this will still produce greenhouse gases.

So let's look at where we are now and how things are trending.

For the corporate city, we have made significant progress on our goal, being at 63% greenhouse gas reduction from in 2023 from a 2008 baseline.

And this we should be grateful for.

The orange line is the electric electricity sector, the blue line is the natural gas sector, the gray line is the transportation sector, and the yellow line at the bottom is the waste sector.

As you can see, the orange line, the electrical sector, has gone from about 50% greenhouse gases community wide in 2013 to about 31% in 2020.

The blue line, the natural gas sector has gone from about 28% greenhouse gas gases community wide to about 41% in 2020.

This is the trend we're most concerned about.

This brings us to the problem, which is that we are that we are getting most of our thermal energy needs met by the burning of fossil fuels.

For the electricity sector, there is more clarity on how to decarbonize the product production of energy.

So the question is how can we meet the thermal needs of heating and cooling our buildings without the burning of fossil fuels.

The solution to this problem is to find ways to get our thermal energy needs met while not producing greenhouse gases.

Traditionally, there are two ways to solve this problem.

Reduce the demand for energy needed for buildings and changing the supply of energy to buildings to cleaner energy sources.

Our commission has seen a third solution, thermal energy networks or geothermal energy networks, which I would say is a combination of both demand and supply solutions.

On the demand side, energy conservation and optimization programs, or ECO, the new name for the old SIP programs, provides many uh provides ways of reducing the energy needs of buildings.

These include improving building envelopes using passive solar design principles and installing more efficient equipment.

Making these improvements can save up to 38% of the energy needs of an existing building.

And this is an important, this is a very important aspect of what Comfort Systems is doing and needs to continue to do, and on a more robust level.

Next slide.

On the supply side, there are potential potentially carbon-free energy sources that can provide thermal energies that we need for heating and cooling.

These include passive and active solar design, electrification of heating and cooling systems, the use of air and ground source heat pumps, and geothermal energy and thermal energy networks.

Here is one local example, the Bagley Outdoor Classroom at UMD that incorporates many of the elements of demand and supply solutions.

I want to emphasize the attributes of thermal energy networks or geothermal energy networks.

They can be thought of as many ground source heat pumps connected together.

They can provide both heating and cooling.

They can provide efficient and consistent heating when temperatures are very low, and they are a local and resilient energy source.

Amazingly, they can produce up to six units of thermal energy for each one unit of input energy.