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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAir Quality Advisory Board - Minutes - 12/20/2005MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 200 WEST MOUNTAIN AVE. December 20, 2005 For Reference: Eric Levine, Chair 493-6341 David Roy, Council Liaison 407-7393 Lucinda Smith, Staff Liaison 224-6085 Approved by the Board on January 24 9006 Board Members Present Kip Carrico, Dave Dietrich, Eric Levine, Bruce Macdonald, Gregory McMaster, Linda Stanley, Nancy York Board Members Absent Cherie Trine Staff Present Natural Resources Department: Lucinda Smith, Liz Skelton Operation Services: Tracy Ochsner Utilities: Gary Schroeder Guests Fort Collins Sustainability Group: Phil Friedman, Kevin Cross The meeting was called to order at 5:35 p.m. Minutes With the following changes, the minutes of the October 25, 2005 meeting were unanimously approved: • McMaster (Page 9, Last Bullet, Oh Sentence, West Nile BFO Offer): For Dave Dietrich's comment, change "is" to "are". • McMaster (Page 10, 16'h Bullet, 4`" Sentence, West Nile BFO Offer): For Linda Stanley's comment, change "is" to "are". • McMaster (Page 11, 15` Bullet, 3`d Sentence, West Nile BFO Offer): After the comma, change "is" to "are". • McMaster (Page 11, 4d' Bullet, 2"d Sentence, West Nile BFO Offer): For Linda Stanley's comment, change "that" to "those". • McMaster (Page 11, West Nile BFO Offer): Change "Greg McMaster made to following motion" to "Greg McMaster made the following motion". • McMaster (Page 11, Motion, West Nile BFO Offer): Change "...and then West Nile Task Force is reconvened" to "...and the West Nile Task Force is reconvened". • York (Page 4, 6d' Bullet, 3`d Sentence, West Nile BFO Offer): For Tom Vosburg's comment, change "Castine" to "Kastein". Air Quality Advisory Board 12/20/2005 Page 2 of 13 Public Comment There were no public comments at this meeting. Alternative Fuels / Hydrogen Presentation Tracy Ochsner, Maintenance Superintendent at Operations Services, presented on the alternative fuels portion while Gary Schroeder from Utilities conducted the hydrogen presentation to the board. Mr. Ochsner handed out copies of his PowerPoint slides and began his presentation on alternative fuels. • Levine (re: biodiesel $.20/gallon tax credit): Is that tax credit a long-term tax credit? • Ochsner: It's multiple -year. I think there's a 3-year or 5-year term on that. They are doing some ethanol provisions too. I'll have to check on that. At the last minute, there were some changes to that bill so that it could get passed because they talked about it for several years and they didn't want to get caught up in too many details like they had in the past. I will double check on that and get back to you. • York: Did you say the City committed to 25% biodiesel? • Ochsner: Yes, 25% of our total diesel usage will be biodiesel. That's about 100,000 gallons. Right as of last week we were at 69,000 gallons. We probably won't make that goal, but the good news is that next year we will go 100% biodiesel. All of the diesel that we buy will be a biodiesel 20% blend. We use about 450,000 gallons of diesel a year. • McMaster (School district's phasing -in biodiesel): Is there any reason to suspect that it won't go well? • Ochsner: Nothing indicates there will be any problems. • Carrico: Can B-20 be run on any diesel engine? • Ochsner: Yes. With a footnote to that — the manufacturers will say in their documentation that B-5 or B-10 is all they will support, but we talked to a Cummins representative and a Caterpillar representative and neither indicated that they won't support B-20. It's just in their warranty papers... and as things go along some of the auto manufacturers will come along too. If we don't see any problems, I think in the next year you will see biodiesel everywhere; especially if we can keep up with production. • Levine: Way back when diesels were invented, the original fuel was peanut oil or vegetable oil. It was modified to run on petroleum. • Stanley: This is a little bit off -subject, but how expensive is it to clean vegetable oil? I heard that's what some companies are doing now. • Ochsner: We're not using a recycled vegetable oil. We're using "virgin feedstock". That means soybean oil, sunflower oil, rape seed, mustard seed, things like that. I have read some bad things about using recycled vegetable oil. There is a plant in the Mead - Berthoud area and originally Rocky Mountain biodiesel was using that and I think they switched processes to use more of the virgin feedstock. • York: Do you contract with B1ueSun? • Ochsner: All of our distributors that we contract with, they do run B1ueSun biodiesel. I'm not totally committed to BlueSun but they seem to have a good product out there. I'll be interested to see how it will be when they start actually producing it. 10 Air Quality Advisory Board 12/20/2005 Page 3 of 13 • Dietrich: You said you are saving 'x' number of gallons of petroleum — did you get an analysis, since it is all virgin product, of what goes into production of that product? • Ochsner: That's another topic in itself, as you may know. There are a lot of different opinions on that. One professor put out a study that says it does take more units of energy to produce than you're actually saving. Since that I've read some other studies that say "so does petroleum". Also, when you figure in the National Security portion of that — how much is that costing us? It's a pretty healthy debate on how many energy units does it take to produce compared to what you're gaining. We think the air quality benefits and the reduction in dependency on foreign oil are worth running biodiesel. • Dietrich: I don't disagree with that at all. But when I heard you make the statement that you're saving 'x' number of gallons... • Levine: I have heard that biodiesel has a net energy gain whereas ethanol does not. • Dietrich: I'm sorry; I understand. I don't want to make a big point of this and we can move on. But just real quickly; to say you're saving 89,000 of petroleum, you're not necessarily... • Levine: Absolutely; you have to subtract... • Dietrich: It would be nice to know a better guess for what that figure might be. Is it 10,000 gallons or possibly costing you 5,000 gallons? And you have a lot of other benefits. • Levine: Right. And of course recycled versus a virgin would probably be two different mixes. What I've heard is one of the limiting factors of biodiesel is actually the amount of arable cropland the planet possesses. That there is really not enough to run the planet's transportation system on any grown fuel as an energy source. • Ochsner: Point well taken. I understand what you're saying and maybe I won't throw those numbers out. This is actually the first presentation I've done where I used those numbers and I was just trying to drive home the point that we were reducing total petroleum that we were buying. So maybe it's just not "total petroleum in the whole process". • York: Right. And so you're accurate if you say that because you're not buying that much fuel, right? • Ochsner: Well, yes. But if one wanted to argue, they could say you need to look at the whole process maybe. • Levine (re: Compressed Natural Gas [CNG] Stations): Are these fuel stations fast fuel or slow fuel? • Ochsner: This is a fast fuel station. • Levine: How long does it take to fill? • Ochsner: It's actually almost comparable to filling a diesel. You have two different types of fill nozzles on natural gas buses. You have the regular, which probably takes 1.5 times as long as diesel. Then you have a full flow that is a larger connector to dump fuel in there quickly and you may actually save some time. • Levine: One and a half times is not bad. • Ochsner: It's not too bad. But when we're talking 60-70 gallons, it can take a little while. • Levine (re: Natural Gas Bus): This engine is designed from the ground up to bum CNG? 10 Air Quality Advisory Board 12120/2005 Page 4 of 13 • Ochsner: It is. We've researched this quite a bit. Mostly Cummins and John Deere are in that natural gas engine business. John has been in it a whole lot longer and they seem to really have the technology down. They are progressing and they've introduced another, larger engine designed from the ground up to run on natural gas. Everybody that I've talked to, especially school districts because they were big in to the school bus natural gas engines, have raved about them. We're hoping that all those reviews are good and we'll have little trouble. • York: Is the City having a "coming out" party? • Ochsner: Absolutely. We're trying to figure out the whole media blitz thing at this point. We've not had a grand opening for the natural gas fuel stations. • Levine (re: Picture of fueling station): How many vehicles can this facility refuel? • Ochsner: That question depends on 'how' — whether you're talking back-to-back or... Right now we have a 3-hour time fuel window that could fuel 8 total transit buses. You wouldn't go back -to -back-to-back, but we wanted to make sure that we can fuel all 8 transit buses within a 3-hour period. • York: Will this new bus be able to burn Hythane? • Ochsner: Well, I suppose it might be able to with some modifications, but we're not going to do that right from the get -go. We don't have a lot of capacity on the Hythane and hydrogen. We're probably not going to do that one with the bus. • Stanley: How much cleaner are natural gas buses than diesel buses? • Ochsner: It's fairly significant. I can get you all of the reductions. CO — it's very significant. When you look at a natural gas exhaust stack, it almost looks like it came from the showroom and that bus may have been in service for 3-5 years. If they are tuned correctly, you are showing significant emissions benefits. I'd be happy to get you the percentages that the engine manufacturers compare them to. • Carrico: Did you look at it in comparison to 2007 diesel emissions? • Ochsner: These engines already comply with 2007 EPA standards. You could run a natural gas engine today and comply with those standards. That's going to be significant because when engine manufacturers do have to produce the engines at those standards, it's going to increase the price of those engines — already everything's been done on the natural gas engine side so that cost has already been incurred — plus then the ultra low sulfur diesel is going to cost more and they're going to have to make the modifications for that too. So we see the diesel technology continuously rising in cost, where with the natural gas we don't see that rise as much. • Stanley: What about natural gas prices? • Ochsner: Yes, there is no doubt that natural gas price have gone up. It depends a lot on when you are compressing — if you are compressing under the coincident demand rates or if you're doing it on off-peak times. The last figures we figured when we took our electrical and our gas, we were still a good 25-35 cents less than diesel. That was maybe four months ago. Diesel prices did start to rise and so did natural gas so I really need to go back and figure that out. • Levine: What is the fuel cost as opposed to the total cost of transportation system? • Ochsner: What percentage is fuel cost of total cost? You'll have to ask them that. I could tell you what the fuel costs are, but I don't know their overall costs. They do tell me that the personnel budget exceeds everything else. I can't answer that one. Air Quality Advisory Board 12/20/2005 Page 5 of 13 • Dietrich: What's the capacity of the buses in terms of miles — how many miles can you get off of one fill? • Ochsner: Almost 300. It depends on how good of a fill you get. • Dietrich: How many miles on average does each bus go each day? • Ochsner: The normal — and I'm not talking Foxtrot/Loveland routes — the normal is 250. hi a lot of cases they were under 200. So there is no problem running a full day. You can almost in some cases run 2 days, but we won't do it. • Levine: So the total full-size bus fleet is roughly two dozen vehicles? • Ochsner: Yes. That's pretty close. We have 49 total buses, but that's mini -buses too. • Levine: You said the official City policy is compressed natural gas for bus purchases now? • Ochsner: Yes. • Levine: Is it only full-sized or some of the mini buses? • Ochsner: Good question. The last time we talked our goal was 5 mini buses and 8 full- sized buses. Since that time, Ford has pulled the plug on their compressed natural gas cut -away program. We were buying what we call cut -away vans, which is just a van body, behind the cab it is cut away and we put those mini -bus bodies on it. They don't offer those any more. We were really banking on every purchase we made would have been one of those. At this point, we don't want to decide to do any conversions. Even though there are companies out there who say "we have the exact conversion you would have got on your Ford van anyway"... we are a little bit gun shy with conversions. • Levine (re: Hybrids): Is there any purchase policy for the City regarding the hybrids? • Ochsner: There is not right now. We have a team that Lucinda is helping with; an energy management group that is developing purchasing policies for fuel -efficient vehicles. One of the things that we used to do is we put on our ratings sheet — at one point we had "what is total fuel cost for life of vehicle" as one of the questions and in the 1990s we strayed away from that a little bit because fuel was cheaper. Now there is no question but to look at fuel cost. • Smith (re: Ethanol): Tracy, did you say the City's Fleet is getting more E-85 capable vehicles? • Ochsner: They probably will because as manufacturers keep coming out with them ... for instance General Motors is coming out with quite a few. Some pickups, Tahoes; they are all E-85 compatible. In most cases, my understanding is you don't need to order them as that anymore; they will just show up that way. And even if we did have to, that usually wasn't much of an incremental cost; anywhere from $50-$150 was all we were ever paying for those. It would be nice to do E-85, but until then we'll just play with the ethanol blend a little bit and see what we can do there. And keep in mind both fuel economy and air pollution when you mess with ethanol blends. Gary Schroeder began his presentation on hydrogen. • Dietrich (re: Hydrogen Fueling Demonstration Unit): What's the power? • Schroeder: About 4.5 kilowatts. • Dietrich: Is it 24 Volt DC? • Schroeder: It's 48 Volts DC. It's got a converter on there so it's actually got 120 AC coming out. It has a battery bank too. Air Quality Advisory Board 12/20/2005 Page 6 of 13 • York (re: Hydrogen Utility Group): How did it come to pass that Fort Collins Utilities is part of HUG? • Schroeder: Because we're doing hydrogen things and because we were building the fueling station. Frank Novachec from Excel, Bryan Willson from CSU's Engines Lab and I met at NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab) a couple of years ago to talk about projects the first time Excel was introducing hydrogen. Frank let me know at the last hydrogen National Association meeting, there was a small group that pulled off and said "why aren't Electric Utilities more involved more in this?". So out of that small group they had this meeting that we were invited to. • York: Congratulations. • Schroeder: Thanks. • Dietrich: On the last slide, you're using a hydrogen engine to feed back. What's the difference in the efficiencies in an engine feedback and fuel -cell feedback? • Schroeder: A typical engine is probably on the order of 30% efficient and fuel cell is maybe more on the order of 40-50% efficient. Although I've talked to Bryan Willson at the Engines Lab and there are engine applications that are towards that 50%, but this is going to be more in the... • Dietrich: And the engine was used here rather than fuel cell because you were trying to get a lot of feedback and encourage it, is that...? • Schroeder: Yes, they were wanting to get this project up and running pretty quick. It's hard to get large fuel cells. With our collaboration, what we'll be able to do is to look at our operating efficiency of our fuel cell and overlay it on their data to see how that would work out. • Dietrich: We're talking about fueling vehicles with pure hydrogen? What's the tank capacity? And what's your technology on that? • Schroeder: Right now there are about 25 real fuel -cell vehicles running around. They're all in California and in special programs with auto makers and they are about $1 million each, one-off prototypes. This is an exciting thing about the last HUG meeting is this New York efficiency program — they are doing some hydrogen projects — has everyone heard about plug-in hybrids? Where you're adding a little bit extra battery capacity to the Prins or Civic or something? It's an electric vehicle for short range and eventually the gas engine kicks in. The next step with that is to make it hydrogen. And SERTA has actually taken a Prins and converted it to run on hydrogen but they haven't done the plug-in part. The next step is a plug-in, hydrogen hybrid. So the internal combustion engine runs on hydrogen. It's really a beautiful solution to something where the technology is available now. 9 Dietrich: And the storage capacity in the new hydrogen tank is what? Schroeder: In that case it wouldn't have to be as much as a full-blown internal combustion engine. You would have a tank that is 500 PSI and probably would not have the range the hybrid has now. It just takes a long time to store hydrogen; it's very challenging. You pretty much have to have a pickup or something to have the range of an internal combustion engine. o Levine: I have a few questions and comments. My first question is the bottom line question — what percentage of our fleet, what percentage of our transportation system, and then what kind of a timelines are we looking at for alternative, cleaner -burning fuel vehicles like natural gas and hydrogen? Air Quality Advisory Board 12/20/2005 Page 7 of 13 • Schroeder: I'll answer the hydrogen question first. Hydrogen right now is a learning demonstration. We're doing it to learn from it and learn what the possibilities really are. It seems to be gaining momentum. We've been playing with this for about 5 years now and at it was pretty difficult at first. It was hard to find any manufacturers that did anything, and to do the networking, and it's really picking up a lot of speed. • Levine: You said there are 25 real fuel -cell vehicles in the world? If you asked the average person that reads about these kinds of things, they would have thought there were thousands of them. The industry has a few showcase vehicles and they are reaping tremendous publicity about doing the right thing as they continue to produce thousands of dirty diesel vehicles. I remember meeting years ago when this board was brand new and we were discussing the same thing. You have 20-25 propane vehicles that are being phased out, but you look at those kinds of clean vehicles besides the ethanol and the biodiesel that are replacing them, and you either have a net loss or almost net zero when those propane vehicles are phased out. • Ochsner: One of the reasons why propane isn't increasing in popularity is because a lot of those, unless they were tuned perfectly, were actually not cleaner. I think we're making great strides in emissions benefits by doing ethanol, by doing biodiesel, and the savings are very significant in natural gas. Now, the percentage of the fleet is not going to be a high percentage but the percentage of fuel that we're going to burn in natural gas in the buses is going to be a pretty high percentage. And especially, we have nearly half our bus fleet that needs to be replaced right now. We don't have the money to do it. We're hitting 500,000 miles on many buses and as those are replaced with natural gas buses our diesel usage will go down significantly. I think we run almost 175,000 gallons of diesel out of TransFort right now. • Levine: What can the City do to realize some of these transitions at more than a crawl? What would you need from the City? What would we need to recommend? • Ochsner: Big grants! Show us the money! I think we sit in a good position both policy -wise and council -agenda -wise to support these programs. Any bugs that we can do at the council level to support alternative fuels is going to be good. Policy -wise we are sitting pretty good. • Stanley: How do we compare to other cities of our size in this respect? • Ochsner: In the natural gas arena, a lot of other cities like the City and County of Denver had requirements to do — what was it — EPACT? And then there was State legislation that was pushing them to move towards natural gas vehicles, and that has since been rescinded. They were ahead of us at one point. DIA is way ahead of us because of some airport requirements. Smaller municipalities that are outside regulated areas, I think we are head and shoulders above them. We are not regulated to do this but Fort Collins has always taken the position to be on the leading edge of these alternative fuel programs. • Schroeder: We'll be fast the hydrogen fueling station in state of Colorado, as far as I know. • Levine: Gary, I would be interested in printouts or an email of your PowerPoint presentation. • Schroeder: Sure. • Smith: I can email that to the board. • Carrico: Do you see fuel cells being used anytime in the near future on a utilities -scale? '0 Air Quality Advisory Board 12/20/2005 Page 8 of 13 • Schroeder: My sense is that fuel cells have a ways to go. The cost is very steep. 5 KW of fuel cells is on the order of $20,000. It's actually not bad compared to where fuel cells were a few years ago. But an automobile engine is $35 per KW. That's the target for fuel cells for automotive applications are to get them down to $100 per KW. For utility applications, the one we're getting is designed to be used in the telecomm industry. They're using quite a few of those as backup power. It's a lot cheaper in the long run than a bunch of batteries. I think it's going to be a while for applications like that. ' There is a 200 KW fuel cell that's out there, but it's very expensive to run. This one that we are getting will be fun to play with and help with education and things like that. • Dietrich: When are you getting that? • Schroeder: It's coming next week. We have to do training. Fort Collins Sustainability Group Presentation Kevin Cross and Phil Friedman from the Fort Collins Sustainability Group gave the board their rough draft presentation on climate change and sustainability to receive feedback on the presentation and get ideas on how to tie it together and bring it before Council. • Macdonald (re: Trend 3 — Climate Change): We're atmospheric scientists and study climatology. It's pretty clear that no one can argue about global warming; we have to accept that fact. These follow-on effects — to droughts, and maybe snow icecap melting — maybe that's credible, but increased wildfire severity and storm severity is very hypothetical. You'll find lots of arguments about it, including calling those techniques "scare tactics". It diminishes points you try to make that are really valid. I think you'll find many scientists who would argue with that. • Stanley: But that's because many scientists say "there is not enough information; we don't know that". • Macdonald: Sure. It's mainly a matter of what can you show or imply. Certainly we've seen increased hurricanes; it was clearly a record year but to construe that all these effects are going to result from global warming and cause all these disasters and not imply that there is any beneficial part, which there could be, just undermines the argument you are trying to make. • Cross: Well, I'm not an atmospheric scientist. There are two members of our group who are. They were of the opinion that the increased storm severity was the most marginal, but that drought, icecap melting, and sea level increasing was pretty well linked. These do flow out of models. Can you find scientists who object? Yes. I guess I think that this is a little less controversial than you are implying. • Stanley: I'm not an atmospheric scientist but in Indonesia I've seen a pretty good link between wildfire severity and drought and the drought is due to global warming effects and the way that things are changing in terms of the currents and all of that stuff that I don't understand. To me it's not as hypothetical; I realize that we don't have data. I always look at it is, if we don't do anything, what are the potential costs? • Cross: You had mentioned that there are potential benefits. This is true: increased rainfall, extension of growing season, etc. I don't want to spend the rest of my presentation on this. I think that the human population is at a point where small changes of any kind are likely to threaten humanity's continued survival because there are just so many of us and we have such a big ecological footprint, and that makes sense. I think the fact that the world is warming is pretty indisputable at this point. The Air Quality Advisory Board 12/20/2005 Page 9 of 13 suggestion that a good portion of that is anthropogenic is also not very controversial. The idea that there are going to be consequences to that might be on a little shakier ground. But if temperatures go up, these are not unreasonable consequences. There are a number of others that we left off of the list. • Levine: On the sixth slide you mentioned it, but, cleaner air quality, cleaner environment, healthier population which in turns makes it more attractive for everyone including companies doing business here. Everyone here would agree that that is an important point. • Stanley: Isn't there a statewide group that's working on this renewable energy business cluster? I know there is one in California, and I thought there was one in Colorado that was modeling themselves after the one in California one. • Cross: Well there is the Clean Energy Cluster in Fort Collins. I hear you talking about something other than that. I don't know about anyone else. • Stanley: I just saw something on the web. I was going to write a column on renewable energy and jobs. I was looking for that information and that's where I thought I saw it. I will look for it. • Friedman: Apropos of what you are talkint about, Senator Salazar is having a Colorado Renewable Energy Summit on January 11 . If you go to his web page you can see; it is a hot button. They have all the registration information and it is limited to 500 participants. There is no agenda posted, but I have a copy that I received from his office that I could email you, Lucinda, and you could share it or you could just wait a couple of days for the agenda to show on the website. They have everybody there speaking that has anything to do with renewable energy as it affect consumers and businesses and the environment of Colorado. • Stanley: This is one of the things that got put in the EVSAG report; however it was not easy to get that put in as a possibility when we were talking about business clusters. • Cross: What specifically was not easy to get in? • Stanley: This idea of having some sort of renewable energy business cluster. We spent a lot of time on what the appropriate business clusters are to target in Fort Collins. Most people get stuck on biotech and right now everybody is out there trying to do biotech. There is all sorts of money being spent on attracting that industry. People think we're a great place because of CSU and the CDC. There are people way better than us that are focusing on biotech. • Cross: But that's what a lot of people in EVSAG wanted to see? • Stanley: Yes. There were a bunch of other ones. I don't think the EVSAG committee sees the potential there. They view it as a sideline thing. • Dietrich: What competitive advantage would Fort Collins have in terms of renewable energy? We have no energy industry history. How do you compete against someplace like Denver, let alone Houston? Everything you talk about with renewable energy is big companies. What advantage does Fort Collins have to draw a large company like Shell Research Center or something? • Friedman: There are a lot of small companies. "Creations of Time" highlights twelve innovations for the next couple of years. Two of those are renewable energy innovations. They are both small startups from the Silicon Valley. The computer industry is the kissing cousin to the solar -electric industry — they both use silicon. A lot of those companies working on those projects are very small; they are funded by venture capitalists and they haven't made a dime and we are the type of communities Air Quality Advisory Board 12/20/2005 Page 10 of 13 that those companies look to go to. I agree that we can't attract a BP, or Shell, or Chevron... • Dietrich: Why not? Remember that these jobs that you are talking about that are lost are by companies like HP and Celestica, which were very large companies that came to this town. • Stanley: Being an economist, that's what we don't want to do. That's where the ups and downs are in terms of the employment. If you have smaller companies that tend to be more diverse, you're not going to suffer as much from a bust. • Dietrich: I agree. And perhaps small companies do have a role to play here. But we're talking about energy, OK? And there are big players in energy. You don't think Exxon, Chevron, or Shell will let these little companies beat them to the punch on renewable energy, do you? There might be a small company that starts up something, but... What I'm going to need to be convinced is you'll need to show me these centers of small companies. And why would they come here as opposed to Houston or someplace where they could gain people that have experience in this? It's great if we could do it. But I just don't know... • Stanley: I think that's where the research needs to be done. There are some other places that have smaller companies in the renewable energy sector that have somewhat of a business cluster. There are a number of places that I wrote my article on that use recycling and eco-parks. That's one way to stimulate jobs and economic development. I used to think it was a nice idea that would never happen but it is happening, and it is happening with smaller companies who are banding together and creating these eco- parks. • Dietrich: When you did your analysis, what types of salaries were these companies paying? • Stanley: The recycling industry is higher than average. • Dietrich: Average in Fort Collins? • Stanley: They are higher than the average wage of all industries out there in the US, but they vary a lot. Jobs that used to be low, like processing, are done by machines now. More it is now remanufacturing. I didn't do as complete of a job of research as I wanted to do. But I do think that it shows that there are possibilities. I don't know what they are for Fort Collins. I don't feel like we have a handle on that. • Friedman: We would agree that we're making a proposal here, a vision that there is an additional future for Fort Collins as it relates to jobs and the environment and a clean - industry attraction. It is altogether possible that this is pie in the sky but it is altogether possible that it is not. We do clearly need to be looking at the viability of attracting these types of companies whether they are big or small. We have tremendous educational facilities here, we have a huge brain trust, and a large number of industrial facilities and factories that might or might not be required for various types of renewable energy industries — some of which may have not even been dreamt up to date. Would any of us of thought 20 years ago that a whole industry that has now gone offshore to China, manufacturing compact fluorescent lamps, would exist? That word didn't even exist in our lexicon 20 years ago. Now it is 100% knowledgeable by people and it is 100% manufactured offshore in one country for the entire world. So the possibilities are endless. The timeframe for these changes, especially with $3 per gallon gas, $60 per barrel oil, and the national worldwide security issues of oil, those Air Quality Advisory Board 12/20/2005 Page 11 of 13 can compress the timeframe in which technology as well as jobs in industries change to a much shorter timeframe than you might be familiar with in the past. • Cross: To reiterate what Phil said, FCSG doesn't have the economic strategy completely figured out, or not even close. That's partly where the other stakeholders come in who do have expertise in that area and can help flush out that strategy. • York: I would urge you to invite Maury Alberston to one of your meetings. He told me that somebody at CSU has developed solar cells that are much less expensive than what's currently on the market. The feedback about your speaking is I kept thinking "what about venture capitalists"; that there needs to be people willing to fund such a thing. The last thing that I have is that Hydrogen Now! kicked off what we heard earlier about Fort Collins' adventures into hydrogen and is really putting us on the national map. I would urge a national conference in Fort Collins on renewable energy. • Friedman: ... to follow up Ken Salazar's statewide Conference! Actually, this summer is the National Conference of the American Solar Energy Society. They are having their conference in Denver in July. The State is already attracting things, but conferences don't necessarily mean a locus of activity. But nevertheless, we have NREL here and we have a large amount of activity in the renewable energy field. According to this article in The Economist, it is only going to get more and more and more worldwide basis. It's obvious that we have an opportunity in this state to put various parts of it on the map and we would like to see Fort Collins put on the map for no other reason than I think it's a great idea. • McMaster: It is an intriguing and great vision that you are trying to promote. It's hard to know how it will get there — will you get a BP or lots of little businesses? I would recommend that what you do is you could build upon the idea that Fort Collins is developing a sort of "green community". That goes in to a lot of things — it's this and it's other things. Then you get together with that HUG group — Fort Collins is one of nine utilities in the country; a founding member — I mean, whoa!! Talk about tying in and putting us on the map. You go for the Northern Colorado Economic Development Council and maybe Chamber of Commerce and get together with them and we know they aren't all in agreement with this vision, but the idea is they might see some economic advantages and maybe we could get this group, along with the City, to do a national conference and have it here. Those are the kinds of things that lead to getting a little bit more clearness in your vision, but... it's hard to predict it so early. A lot of it is going to be serendipity. • Cross: You're certainly right. We do have a very progressive public power agency here that's done a lot of things. We have the University that historically was the center of solar energy research. University of Wisconsin has a working relationship with Colorado State and a lot of the modeling was done at UW and a lot of the physical experimentation was done out here. There is a big resource there that is still somewhat in existence. I don't think that it is at all far-fetched to think that Fort Collins could become such a center. As far as big companies or little companies — they all create jobs. • Stanley: This idea of attraction always bothers me because it says we are not good enough to do it ourselves and I don't believe that. I think that there are opportunities within the city or the region itself; that maybe CSU has done the research and it doesn't necessarily end up getting capitalized on here. I know that the University is trying to work on that right now. Their fourth pillar became economic development. Anyway, they are trying to do more there in terms of capitalizing on CSU's research. I Air Quality Advisory Board 12/20/2005 Page 12 of 13 understand that when you talk about doing a business cluster, which is what you guys are really talking about doing, there is usually some attraction of business but personally I think that that can be a risky business depending upon on how you go about doing that. We need to capitalize on what strengths we have here within the community and what is our competitive advantage. Some people say that our competitive advantage may be in air and water quality instrumentation... • Macdonald: ... and environmental work... • Stanley: Yes and that sort of thing — that's really the business cluster that we should be looking at because there are a lot of firms that are doing that here right now and CSU is highly involved in that too. It's not necessarily true that you can only have one business cluster but it often times ends up being that way for a location like ours. So why would this be a better business cluster than that in terms of competitive advantage, resources available, opportunities, and all of those sorts of thing? On EVSAG, we're throwing out things and I don't think anybody has done any research on them yet. Nobody really knows. We just keep throwing out ideas. Somebody needs to do the research. • Cross: It's not clear to me that there needs to only be one cluster at all. I think there are already a number of different broad areas which offers employment in Fort Collins. • Stanley: It depends on how you define it. Most places only have one real, true cluster. According to work that's been done, we don't have any true cluster. Now we're getting into semantics. • York: I recently went to a meeting of the Visitors and Convention Bureau and then I heard this spiel by Mike Powers, who was head of Cultural Resources and he was talking about making Fort Collins a cultural and science place where people come in the summer to take short courses. There are lots of ways to go. • Stanley: One last thing, the City is looking at the recycling strategic plan and their draft plan number three, which would actually meet the goal, they have possibility in it of doing some planning and incentives for an eco-industrial park. So you might want to look at the work they've done there in terms of what they have in mind. • Carrico: Are there any companies that exist now in Fort Collins that we could hold out as an example of what you envision? • Cross: B1ueSun Biodiesel. There are a number of small installers. You have the solar service company; you have Jim Welch's company. These are taking advantage of Federal, now State, incentives to do work and they offer employment to some people and there is no reason there can't be more of those. • Carrico: I think you need to bring those into your plan in concrete terms. • Dietrich: I was thinking that too. You talk environmental companies; can you name 20 with a basis here on renewable energy? • Stanley: Plus we have all the Federal government folks that do a lot of the environmental work. • Dietrich: Also what strengthens the area is the University has a history in natural resources. If you made that presentation, I could say "oh, it's out there, I can see it happening here". Renewable energy, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's out there. Ken Salazar is having his thing in Denver because Denver is loaded with energy companies. He's not having it in Fort Collins. How do you get that base? The University is always thrown up, but what reputation does the University have in terms of renewable energy? Air Quality Advisory Board 12/20/2005 Page 13 of 13 Friedman: During the heyday of the golden era of renewable energy back in the 1980's, CSU did have quite the reputation, but that has faded as did everyplace else as we let the whole industry slip out of our hands and migrate overseas. That doesn't mean we can't regain it. There is some expertise here. Also, right now in the US there is not a cluster at all of renewable energy companies probably anywhere in the country, except perhaps California but I'm not even sure where in California. Cross: This is not a huge industry at this point. We're coming to you today and making our presentation based on the fact that we think there is a lot of opportunity there. We have a vision and it is not realized in Fort Collins, otherwise why would we bother? The University of Wisconsin was the other big place and it's not like they're doing a lot of stuff now either. The US has been at a standstill on this issue for two decades. We do have the University and what it did; we have the University turning out engineers and people who want to stay in the area because of its attractions. It's plausible that... Levine: I'm going to call a time check. I think we all appreciate that this is phase 1 and you're looking for feedback. We realize this is early in the process and this is the outreach phase and I hope that you get to phase 2 and can come back here with some concrete proposals that will be presented to the City and businesses in general. In the meantime, what else are you looking for? Obviously a February meeting representative, but is there anything else you are looking for from us? Cross: If you have any other comments, ideas, or questions based on this presentation you can get in touch with me. Jkevin87@comcast.net is my email address. Our February meeting is the second Monday. Friedman: I will pass out these three articles. I'll give you the URL for fourth article. Wood Smoke This discussion was postponed to the next meeting's agenda. Work Plan for 2006 This discussion was postponed to the next meeting's agenda. Meeting adjourned 8.26 PM