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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAir Quality Advisory Board - Minutes - 10/29/2002MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 281 N. COLLEGE October 29, 2002 For Reference: Eric Levine, Chair 229-5225 Eric Hamrick, Council Liaison 226-4824 Sarah Fox, Staff Liaison 221-6312 Members Present Nancy York, Katie Walters, Linda Stanley, Eric Levine, Everett Bacon, Mandar Sunthankar Board Members Absent Conrad Van Dyke, Jim Dennison Staff Present Natural Resources Department: Sarah Fox, Terry Klahn, Michelle Pawar, Lucinda Smith Utilities: Mike Smith • York: We as a board already feel marginalized by Council. Now we're going different directions with staff. I know we have to live with what you decide about the liaison change, but I don't think that will help with the marginalized feelings we have. • Pawar: It is not our objective to not provide what you need to be an effective board. The issues you've raised are valid, and merit our attention. You are being heard. It's a gift to have people such as you, volunteering. Sarah has worked closely with Lucinda. • York: I understand that you say you hear us, but your actions are not the vision of the board; our wanting to keep Lucinda as liaison, and continue with the institutional history. I wanted it pointed out that we are feeling marginalized. • Pawar: I didn't read in the minutes that you wanted to keep Lucinda. • York: We did say we wanted the continuity and the institutional history. Sarah identifies with the smoking issues, not vehicle emissions. • Pawar: Sarah, would you please talk about the programs you've been involved in. • Levine: I wouldn't mind her doing that at the next meeting. I'm worried about the clock. Electric Supply Policy, Mike Smith • Sunthankar: When you say transportation, are you talking about motor vehicles? • Smith: All sorts of transportation. • Sunthankar: Electricity generates more CO than vehicles? • Smith: Yes, the majority of our energy comes from coal fire generation. • Sunthankar: Where does Fort Collins gets its electric energy? • Smith: Most of it comes from Rawhide. We share a couple units at the Craig facility. • Sunthankar: How much of that is wind power? • Smith: Less than one percent. Air Quality Advisory Board October 29, 2002 Page 2 of 6 • York: Rate wise, who is below us? • Smith: Gunnison, Loveland, Fort Morgan. • Sunthankar: Why is Loveland different than Fort Collins? • Smith: We've spent a lot more money on other projects. It was a good decision. We should be done with the large underground project in a couple years. • York: What are the others doing, that keeps them low? • Smith: It can depend on how much they're growing. If there's not a lot of growth, and they had cheap power to start with. I haven't really looked in to what they're doing differently. • Stanley: It said that electric rates are only 2% more than in 1983. Is that real dollars? • Smith: Yes. • Levine: What is the split between residential and commercial use? • Smith: Residential is a little bit more than %2. • Levine: And the new energy efficiency for private homes. What kind of energy savings are we looking at there? • Smith: If it's a large home with air conditioning, I've heard as much as 20%. We have a lot of work to do there, especially in the sizing of air conditioners. • Levine: I would think the energy use for residents is going way up. Every new home has HVAC built in. • Smith: We saw a change from a winter peak to a summer peak. Air conditioning is a big issue. • Levine: I believe the weather has changed since I moved here. Global climate change is probably responsible. • Sunthankar: Have you looked at attic fans instead of air conditioning? • Smith: We're looking at incentives. • York: Twenty years ago the rate was structured so that those who used the largest amounts had a lower rate. • Smith: A lot of rates were declining blocks. Then they flattened out, and now we're getting to tiered rates. • Stanley: That goes along with number one. It's more expensive to supply more power at peak than non -peak. There's a cost of service in terms of externalities. When we look at the objectives to maintain rates below Xcel, that doesn't encourage the behavior among our consumers that you want to encourage. That's in conflict with the other objectives. • Levine: That reminds me of the pricing structure at the land fill, and the answer is it's because our customers like it that way. • Stanley: City Council would say that's one way we attract new business, and keep business here. But, in fact, is that really in our best interests? • Smith: Xcel plays games with their rates. Their residential rates are a lot higher than ours, but they're giving favor to the commercial customers. In theory we should always be able to keep our rates below Xcel. We're trying to bring down the per capita use. That will delay the need for additional large generation. It's very expensive. By delaying it we can buy time for technology to come up with other solutions, to make renewable energy more affordable, especially in solar fuel cells. Our hope is to delay the need for growth. • Stanley: What's the deregulation vs regulation environment in Colorado? • Smith: It's quiet, we don't expect to hear anything this year. Air Quality Advisory Board October 29, 2002 Page 3 of 6 • York: Does PRPA produce excess energy? • Smith: Less and less ever year. • Stanley: People need to understand, it's not about the environment by itself. It's the costs incurred because of damage to the environment. It's pay me now, or pay me later. • Smith: We've been skating free for a long time. There's a real void in understanding. We're not sure how to get at it. • Stanley: It's pricing. • Smith: It is pricing, and peak load pricing. • Stanley: Is there any chance we'll get to peak load pricing in the near future? • Smith: Not until the meter technology is here and affordable. We do it on our largest consumers. Some electric homes have demand meters. • Levine: Does that work in changing behavior? Are there objectives based on data to give reasonable confidence? • Smith: You have to make a leap of faith. With today's technology we probably couldn't get there, but we feel we can flatten it at least, and then work on turning it around. Commercial and residential users respond to different things. We're trying to cut down the increase in consumption. We want to send a price signal. The other thing is to provide incentives for high efficiency appliances. • Stanley: Do you have a strategy for when you have to build new capacity? When you decide what type of capacity you're going to build, you have to take into account the environmental costs. • Smith: We haven't gotten to that point yet. We're quite a ways from having to do that. What we're looking at is probably another gas turbine in about 3-4 years, and maybe one more after that. We're trying to avoid the big unit. The longer we can delay the more apt there is to be new technology, or options to look at. PRPA has come along way in being sensitive to environmental issues. • York: For many years now I've been an advocate for a competition between City buildings to reduce energy consumption. • Smith: One of the biggest gains can be in new buildings where we don't have to rely on behavior. We need to build as efficiently as we can. • Levine: They City's percentage of 3% wind power doesn't seem profound to me. • Sunthankar: What is the current growth and demand percentage for the City? • Smith: Consumption is going up faster than the population. • Levine: They're both a problem. • Walters: More people are commuting to Denver. They're getting up before the sun rises, and they're staying up and leaving the lights on longer. • Sunthankar: Everything is on all the time with the computer revolution. • Smith: We need to do a better job of education and promoting energy star appliances. • Levine: I would like to see some milestones established. • Smith: We had talked about trying to put in milestones, and we talked about relying on the annual report to say how much progress we're making. It may be better to add milestones in a couple years. We're not sure how meaningful they would be right now. • Stanley: In terms of looking at the environmental aspects and trying to cut per capita consumption, I worry about if it will ever happen. There are conflicting goals, cheap power Air Quality Advisory Board October 29, 2002 Page 4 of 6 encourages people to use more electricity. It needs to be made clear there are conflicting goals. It's great to have cheap power, but we're not reflecting real costs. That needs to be made more explicit. • Smith: Some folks are predicting that because of the push to not do coal, they'll go back to nuclear. • Bacon: If you do peak pricing it implies you'll make more money. How does that work? • Stanely: It can be revenue neutral, adjust as the peak changes. • York: I like the idea of peak pricing meters for the prairie palaces. • Smith: One thing that all of you can do to help us is the education piece. Help educate the public to the "pay me now, or pay me later" piece. Until most of the public can understand and see the real problem, we're not going to make real progress. We're fortunate to have a fairly well educated public who can understand things. Update on Second Hand Smoke, Sarah Fox Fox said this will be going to Council on November 19. At that meeting they will openly discuss ordinances. They've asked the City Attorney's office to draft two different options. Our understanding there will be a discussion, and then they will come up with a recommendation for next steps. • Levine: We had a discussion on the trade program. There doesn't seem to be much interest in it. It seems that unless something major happens that will be off the table. • Bacon: At some point will they discuss putting it on the ballot? • Fox: Some people have discussed that. • Levine: I got the feeling that most members were not interested in putting it on the ballot, they were interested in making the decision themselves. • Walters: I'm worried they will move it to the April ballot. Review Minutes of September 24, 2002 meeting Nancy York made a motion to adopt the minutes of the September 24, 2002 meeting. The motion was seconded by Linda Stanley and unanimously approved. Review Action Log Stanley will write a memo to Council about opacity. 1. Remove from Action Log 2. Remove from Action Log 3. The worksession will be November 13, 4:30 -8:00 pm in the CIC room 4. Pending — Lucinda will have Mark or Ken get with Sarah 5. Remove from Action Log — memo included in packet Air Quality Advisory Board October 29, 2002 Page 5 of 6 Wood Smoke, Lucinda Smith Smith said the opacity ordinance will go to Council on December 19. There is a memo included in the packet with your requested information regarding the Air Quality Survey data. Staff is not recommending that non -certified units be upgraded at point of sale. Does the Board want to continue to consider this issue, or wait and see if Council takes positive action on the opacity per? • Stanley: Have you looked at a cost/benefit analysis? • Smith: We haven't looked at health costs at all. We looked at the cost of an individual person of taking out the wood stove. • Levine: Didn't the City look at the cost of CO on this issue. • Smith: We haven't tried to give a dollar value to reducing CO. • Walters: My personal opinion is our standing recommendation about opacity will be a stepping stone. • Suntahnkar: Does burning wood save that much money? • York: It's about S80 a cord. • Smith: I have seen an estimate, it seems that wood burning was at the low end. Would you like that information provided to you? • Smith: We have gotten a City employee certified to read opacity. We are upgrading the wood smoke complaint log to get more information. The ZILCH brochure is being redone to promote ZILCH, Zoe Shark is working on that. Trying to raise awareness, combined with tighter opacity limits is a good next step. • Stanley: What about providing information at the point of sale? • Smith: We haven't looked at that, but it would be a good opportunity. We will look at that. • Levine: The City should hire an educational staffer. • Stanley: It bothers me that people use non -certified wood stoves. They last for a hundred years, and they are causing problems for their neighbors. It's a major cost to their neighbors. There are a lot of people with health problems. • Smith: There are some that are certified, and are still causing problems. We're planning and intending to implement a wood smoke response line. We continue to work to resolve these problems. Part of our intent is to define how far we can go to make sure they don't violate the opacity limit. • Fox: One idea we're considering is including a health piece, telling people their neighbors could be having a difficult time breathing. • Levine: I moved to a neighborhood where there's a lot of wood smoke. It has been so bad I could not have comfortably stayed outside my house. My personal opinion is the City is letting some of its citizens down by not pursuing regulatory action. It does necessitate a change of lifestyle that people are subjected to. It's not fair. I'm disappointed the City has dropped including a regulatory approach from consideration again. • York: I pay attention to the information on the back page of the Coloradoan. Often there's nothing there. It conveys the notion that we don't have a problem. • Smith: There could be any number of problems, monitor problems, or the data didn't meet the quality assurance testing. • Sunthankar: People care about what their neighbors say. Are people aware it's a nuisance to some of their neighbors? Air Quality Advisory Board October 29, 2002 Page 6 of 6 • Smith: That's the purpose of the letters. I really like the idea of personalizing them with the health information. • Bacon: Are the calls anonymous? • Smith: If you want them to be. • Smith: I've heard two different directions. One is, it's a start to go with opacity. And, there's a disappointment the City is not taking more regulatory action. How does the board want to proceed, if at all? • Stanley: I'm for the point of sale option. • Levine: A point of sale ordinance won't solve the problem. The City still needs to do the education and opacity piece. • Walters: I think we need to wait and see what Council's temperature is. AQAB Sub -Committee, Eric Levine Levine said he would like to discuss this at the November 13 work session. The board members agreed. Fall AQAB Work Session Wednesday, November 13 from 4:30 pm to 8:00 p.m. at City Hall, in the CIC room. Work Plan • Levine: The main issues are no-brainers. There are some other new issues. We should be able to capture the issues pretty easily. • York: We should look at the carbon monoxide maintenance plan, and clean transit. • Stanley: Let's get ideas and email them to Sarah, and copy everyone else. • Sunthankar: I haven't seen a change in the work plan in the last six years. • Levine: Are there any major categories we're missing; carbon dioxide, Cities for Climate Protection, global warming, public outreach? Agenda Planning Review Council six-month panning calendar Future Agendas: November: Climate Wise update; Electric Policy Update December: - Meeting rescheduled? Smart Trips Youth Programs Clear bike rack Adjourn 2 6 The meeting was adjourned at 7:45 p.m. / .