Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

Hey, Denver. It's time for this biweekly meeting of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of Denver City Council. Join us for the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee starting now.

Alright. There we go. Welcome to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. My name is Chantel Lewis, and I serve the residents of District 8. Today is 04/29/2026. And then we can start with a round of introductions before we get into an action item and a briefing. Councilman White?

Chris White. Deborah is perfect.

Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver is District 2. Darrell Watson, flying District 9.

Great. And we can go online to pro tip.

Hi. Good afternoon. Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Thank you.

All

right. With that, we have up first an action item from CASR. They are going to be presenting on the Energize Denver Code update. So And if you will join us at the table, introduce yourselves, and then you can jump in.

Good afternoon, council members. I'm Liz Babcock, the executive director of Denver's Climate Office. And I'm Sharon Jade, manager of the Energize Denver team. Thank you. So we are bringing to you a request to update our ordinance that, governs the Energize Denver building performance policy.

So our Energize Denver Performance Policy is an energy efficiency requirement. The policy requires each building to meet a certain level of energy efficiency through operations and equipment improvements to each building. We have two different building size categories. We have our smaller buildings, which are 5,000 to 24,999 square feet. That's approximately 8,000 buildings in the city of Denver.

They must upgrade their lighting to LED or install solar to meet 20% of their energy usage. For our larger buildings, that's our 25,000 square feet larger. It's approximately 3,000 buildings in the city of Denver. They must meet certain levels of energy efficiency based on building type by 2032. So what the building performance policy is not, it's not an electrification requirement.

Buildings are not required to electrify to be in compliance. It's not a mandate to replace HVAC systems. Replacing space and water heating systems before the end of system life is not required. And it's not a 30% energy reduction requirement for every building. Overarching goal is a 30 reduction in energy use, but each building's target is unique.

So the policy has actually been around for about ten years now since its ten year anniversary. We've done a lot of engagement over that ten years. It originally started in 2016 with the Energize Denver task force, which created the original ordinance, which was a benchmarking requirement for buildings 25,000 square feet larger. A performance policy was actually recommended at that time but not included. Then we started implementing the benchmarking ordinance for those larger buildings.

And then in 2020, we had the Climate Action Task force, which created recommendations to develop performance requirements. We had another task force for Energize Denver in 2021, which created the ordinance for the performance requirements for the buildings 5,000 square feet and larger. And then in 2022, that's when the team was hired, and we actually went through the process of engaging with our stakeholders to figure out how to implement the building performance requirements. So we set our original energy efficiency targets in 2022 in January, but then we did a six month engagement process with our stakeholders to finalize the program details of actually how to implement it. We did another rules update in 2023, where we actually launched two more parts of the program that we did not launch in 2022.

This was for our specialized option for manufacturing agricultural and industrial buildings and for our smaller buildings under 25,000 square feet. That included a six to eight month process for both of those programs. Then at the same time, we were also engaging with the state air quality control commission as the state was implementing their building performance policy to see if we could make some alignment between Denver's policy and the state's policy. Then in late twenty twenty four, we had heard from our stakeholders, understanding that we had some pain points with the policy that we needed to make some adjustments for, so we engaged in an eight month process to find those pain points and do a rule amendment that we adopted last April about a year ago. So now as kind of a final refinement to this, we're actually bringing some administrative updates to you to codify some of those changes in the ordinance, including some stakeholder engagement that we've done in the last month, and then we will do another rule amendment in just a couple months from now where we will do additional stakeholder engagement to refine some of those final flexibility options.

So this is our current funding and support that we offer our building owners. We have a building management portal that we launched last year, which is a centralized platform for managing compliance, tracking progress, and accessing resources. We have one on one coaching services through our help desk, so we expanded last year our support capacity and personalized consultations for building owners to develop tailored compliance strategies. We have also been offering enhanced service provider trainings over the last year to make sure that our professionals that are supporting our building owners understand this policy and all of the flexibility options. Then we also started a disclosure letter so you could ask for when you are selling the building.

You can ask for a letter that states the compliance status of the building to then give to the new owner. We are launching a new support hub later this year in the summer, which is a new website that's going to clearly communicate the building owner actions and their available support at each step. It'll also be easier for them to find resources. And then we do offer some financial assistance. We have we've launched some rebates in 2025 that are available for energy audits and professional development for facilities staff.

And then we are coordinating partners to include low interest loans, grants and other funding sources and make sure our building owners can find those. So then this is our progress, our overall energy reduction from our large buildings that report their energy usage every year. From 2018, we've actually had reduction, even though we've increased the number of reported buildings by four fifty buildings over that same time. So we've seen some really great success. So Denver's current pollution sources, we believe Energize Denver is already making an impact.

Commercial and multifamily buildings were 49% of the emissions in 2019, and now it's only 45%. So we've seen a 4% drop in emissions. Making our commercial and multifamily buildings as energy efficient as possible does reduce the load on the electrical grid as the state our whole entire state works towards electrification. So in conclusion of the multiyear refinement of the energized Denver building performance policy, some final 2026 administrative and codifying amendments to the ordinance are needed. While administrative in nature, these updates and improvements will strengthen clarity, align ordinance language with our retrofit realities, and ensure the policy continues to put compliance within reach for Denver's buildings.

So what the amendments will achieve. They will codify updates already implemented through rules and technical guidance. This was a request from stakeholders last year. It will clarify language for consistency and ease of implementation. It will ensure the ordinance reflects the flexibility mechanisms now available to all buildings, and it we want to align Denver's policy with updated national building performance standard best practices.

So what the amendments do not do, they do not alter the core policy structure adopted in 2021. They do not expand covered buildings. They do not create new performance requirements. They do not impose electrification mandates or require HVAC replacement before end of system life. They do not require each building to reduce energy use by 30%, and they do not change Denver's commitment to or progress towards meeting our climate goals.

So we have several different categories of ordinance amendments that I'll walk you through. Our timing changes are going to provide additional clarity and flexibility around deadlines and compliance pacing. Our planning changes will increase clarity, flexibility, and long term certainty in compliance pathways. Our budgeting and enforcement clarity will provide predictability, transparency, and stakeholder requested certainty. And then we will follow this process with a update to our rules where we want to finalize practical compliance options requested by stakeholders while preserving elements that are already working well.

So I'll go through each category. So for our timing category, we're proposing to codify the time line extension that was already earned by 98.5% of our buildings. It changes the first target year from 2024 to 2025. We're proposing to codify an extension process for annual benchmarking submissions. We're proposing to codify current baseline year adjustments, which allows the use of 2018 or 2020 as an alternate baseline year if 2019 is not a normal year.

And then for small buildings, we want to extend each compliance deadline by at least one year and split the first group into two groups. And I'm going to explain this one a little bit more in detail on the next slide. So before you start looking at all of the boxes, what I wanted to say is that we would like some additional time to provide better customer service and more flexibility options to these smaller buildings and work with them on educating them about the requirements before we lean in on enforcement. So what the boxes show is that our first group that was due just a couple of months ago, we'd like to split that group into two to give us a little bit more time to educate them and extend those deadlines one year. And then for the other two groups that fell after that, we are going to be extending their time line two years out to follow these initial two groups.

So for our planning changes, I've got two slides to break it out and make it a little bit more understandable. So for our large buildings, we want to create an exclusion process for transportation energy uses when they plug into building utilities. We want to codify exclusion of heated swimming pools. We want to propose codifying the authority to require third party data verification, and this is where the owner hires a contractor to verify their benchmarking data. And we have found that this ensures the building actually gets the correct energy efficiency target.

We wanna remove the manufacturing agricultural industrial benchmarking exemption that exists now. It was an 2021, We were supposed to delete this line because we created performance requirements for these buildings. These buildings started benchmarking in 2023, and it was just a mistake that it was not removed in 2021. Then we also wanna codify authority to have a simplified option for residential condominium buildings through rules, and I'll explain that one in more detail in the rules section. So in the planning changes for our small buildings, we wanna add the ability to create more simplified options for owners to comply.

And then for both large and small buildings, we want to clarify the covered building definition of commercial and multifamily buildings. This would clarify it using building code terminology but does not change what buildings are actually covered. We want to codify clarifying definitions we've developed in rules, including one called financial solvency concerns. This is the level right before you get to qualifying financial distress. We want to require disclosure upon sale for all of the buildings 5,000 square feet and larger.

It's currently at 25,000 square feet and larger in the current ordinance. And then upon sale of building, we want to add the required transfer of historical energy data. This would only be for the larger buildings. So for our budgeting and enforcement changes for both large and small buildings, we want to codify the reduced penalty structure that we created in 2025, and we wanna put that in the ordinance. This was a stakeholder request for long term certainty.

We also wanna clarify what occurs after penalty assessment. We want to add the ability for the owner to request penalty reinvestment into their building with approval from the executive director. And then we want to codify the existing opportunity to submit a compliance plan after penalties are assessed and codify our appeals process. So for our company rule updates, we want to add a simplified process to request a maximum 30% energy reduction. We want to refine the existing manufacturing and agricultural option for some edge cases that we are working with.

We want to simplify our time line extension documentation requirements, and we want to adjust renew the renewable energy credit to allow short term scrip subscriptions past 2,032. And then the two boxes down at the bottom, the where we want to create a specialized prescriptive option for restaurants and create a simplified requirement for certain sizes of residential condominiums. I'm gonna explain those in more detail on the next couple of slides. So creating a simplified restaurant option. We have found that our restaurants have a very wide range of energy use.

This variation is greater than in other building types and stems from differences in operating hours, kitchen to dining ratios, their menus, and equipment loads. Most restaurants are part of a mixed use building in Denver. And because they are usually a small part of a mixed use building's energy use, there is not enough benchmarking data to refine the actual energy efficiency target itself. So the changes we're proposing, we wanna work with our owners and the Colorado Restaurant Association over the next couple of months to develop a specialized option. We're still working with an engineering firm to figure out exactly what this idea is, but the idea we're working with at this moment is to design a prescriptive list of measures that would save them money and reduce energy use, such as LED lighting, smart thermostats, exhaust fan timers, lower hot water temperatures for dishwashing, tighter refriger refrigeration door seals, and walk in refrigerator evaporator motor upgrades.

We just worked with the restaurant association just a day ago to send out a survey to our restaurant owners to understand more about their energy use. So then for our large building residential condominium option, we have one now that adjusts the time line extension for fundraising issues if they already have high special assessments. But what we want to do is break up the smaller buildings in our large building program. So for the buildings between 25,000 and just under 50,000 square feet, we're still gonna require them to benchmark annually, but we would change the requirement so that the HOA chooses either to do a prescriptive route where the an energy audit would inform a list of projects to complete that equal an estimated 15% reduction, or they could choose the performance route where they change their target to a maximum 15% energy reduction from their baseline year or keep their current target, whichever is less stringent. And then for the buildings 50,000 square feet and larger, they would still benchmark annually.

A certain number of these buildings are also regulated by the state policy, so we have to adjust for that. So if hot water and HVAC systems are shared systems, like there's one boiler for the whole entire building. Those buildings are regulated by the state. So we would keep the current energy efficiency target for those buildings, but they're still eligible for all of our custom adjustments and extensions we allow now. If the hot water in HVAC is in each individual unit, then they are not regulated by the state, and then their requirement would be the same as the purple box on the left.

So this would be a simple application process. We're we're not planning on applying it across all condominium buildings. The buildings that already meet their target do not need to do anything, and this would maintain our deemed compliance status with the state policy for buildings 50,000 square feet and larger. So this is our proposed timeline. We have been doing some targeted stakeholder kind of one on one outreach with certain associations.

We proposed our draft to you all, and now we're working through the city council processes, however long that takes. And at the same time, we're working on our rules and technical guidance drafts behind the scenes so that when the city council processes are complete, then we will start some more stakeholder engagement on our draft rules and then do our rulemaking adoption process after that. And at the same time all of this is happening, we are in the middle of our benchmarking season, So all of our large buildings are turning in their benchmarking reports with third party data verification due on June 1. So we hope at that point that everybody is going to have their correct energy efficiency target. And then after our rulemaking adoption, we will be launching our new building owner focused website.

Any questions?

Did we have public comment? Or

Oh, that's exactly right. Thank you. No one signed up. So we this item does have public comment, but no one has signed up. So if there's anyone in the room who would like to speak, I'm more than happy to give you time. And if there's anyone online, just raise your hand and I'm happy to give

you time as well if you'd like to speak on this. Anyone online?

No?

Perfect. With that, thank you for the presentation and you have

the floor. Thank you, committee chair. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the briefing specifically about condominiums. Thanks for reaching out to several condominium associations or homeowners associations that happen to condominiums in the center city.

You know, 80% of my constituents live in multifamily buildings. So they wanna know what their rights and responsibilities are as well. And some of those are new buildings like the Coloradans. Some of them are buildings that are over a 100 years old, like in Cap Hill. And so, you know, they have varying stages of of built in energy efficiency. So you the council path, you're you're aiming to wrap this up and go through the council process in May. Is that right?

Yeah. Mhmm.

Is that included a vote through city council? Yes. So okay.

With the first reading and second reading are estimated to be done in mid May?

So the I think perhaps because we talked so much about condominiums and multifamily buildings, I maybe didn't notice the simplified restaurant path. Okay. And and so it looks like you're just now starting the public engagement process. You met with CRA, the Colorado Restaurant Association, yesterday. Mhmm. Is that what's the ask with the legislative change regarding the simplified restaurant path? Or is there no ask, and you're just letting us know that that's

We're just letting you we're just letting you know. Yeah. In I know. Okay. In in the ordinance, there is a paragraph now that says we have the authority to create alternate compliance options. So instead of four residential condominiums and restaurants, we can do what we propose through a rule change. So it actually doesn't require an ordinance update. So we just wanted to let you know because we know these are two remaining pain points, and we wanted to let you know that we are going to address them in some way, but we we're going to do it through rules.

So the ordinance, as as you would like for us to pass, gives you full authority to to move forward with those two options and and other those just happen to be the two that you've identified Yes. At this point? Yes. Okay. I'm not sure what I think about that.

Just to, you know, like, because I happen to be on television right now, just that you are just now kicking off a process that I think restaurants, you know, should have a process, and and creating a a menu or a suite makes makes some sense. I don't know don't know what to think about not having the ability to take a look at that before you come up with that new process. So anyway, I'll just kind of leave that there. Could you help me with a little more of the context, and maybe because we happen to be in committee, The additional research and detail that you found from your research with multifamily homeowners associations?

Okay. With our homeowners associations and the several people that we talked to in the last couple weeks, actually, the thoughts that we've had around residential condominiums have existed for the whole time of the large building performance requirements. When we did some analysis, we have a few more basically edge cases where our residential condominiums, because their governance is a certain structure, it's actually like a large number of building owners where everybody owns a certain part of the building, their governance structure makes it just a little bit more difficult to address some of these items. We have learned that some of our building owners have a difficult time addressing deferred maintenance. And so deferred maintenance in their buildings is very high, or if the buildings that are maybe more than 30 years old have a lot of special assessments that are already trying to do the different buildings.

So it's higher to raise up. So we've been trying to work through our residential condominium issues for a while now and do believe that for some of those buildings, they really just need reduced requirements and an easier path to actually get to a target. But at the same time, when we examined all of our multi family buildings and compared condos to the apartments, our condos as an overall group are actually closer to their targets than the multi family apartments. But when a residential condominium has an issue, it's just a lot more difficult for them to address it because of the whole homeowner association governance structure. I don't know if you want to add anything else.

I think just I I appreciate the question that you were asking about how that process works. And taking a a step back and looking at how the ordinance functions, what we have done is set those energy use intensity targets by building type and category. So offices obviously use energy very differently than a hospital does, than other types of buildings. What the ordinance already allows Sharon to do and what we have been doing for at least a year plus now is working on customization. So if a building has done an energy audit and they say there are unique factors about our building that don't allow us to perform at the same level as other similar buildings, right?

So there's something unique about our multifamily building that we can't meet that same energy use intensity target as other multifamily buildings. We create a custom target. So they have the option to have a custom target. They have lots of options for target adjustments that are built into the program and then timeline adjustments as well. So to your point about I don't what to think about that flexibility for the restaurants and condos, that actually isn't any different than how the entire program functions.

The reason why we highlighted those particular building types or categories within the program is simply because they have come up as those pain points that we still are working through. So the ability to provide that flexibility for restaurants is no different than provide flexibility for any of the other building types that we are working with currently. So that is something that we are diving deeper on now, as well as the condo piece. So that's really how the program functions overall.

And realizing that I gave you so softball a question, you could take it in any direction, and and perhaps I should have given a little more direction. So to your to your point, the, you know, the biggest challenge with condominiums is that the ownership is not an apartment is owned by one entity. A single family home is owned by one entity. A townhome is owned by one entity. A condominium building is owned by an association of, you know, comprising of people who own units.

It could be residential units. It could be parking units. It could be both. Often, it's both. But there's even this crazier curveball where someone could own a parking space in a condominium building and nothing else and not have it related to a housing unit, and they could have vote too.

And so it's uncommon, but 1950 Logan where I lived before, there was someone who just owned a parking unit because they split the deed or severed the deed. I don't know what it's called, but they sold the unit and didn't sell the parking space for some reason. So at any rate, the the so the challenge is if you have to do 30% improvement in HVAC and air conditioning units are in air conditioners are in each unit, which 30% get that improvement or how, you know, how does does the board mandate that? And so that's I think that's been the sticking point this whole time. The you did some research.

You reached out to CAT Management, East West, Ladona, a couple individual owners of Dona. And and so I saw that you you provided some kinda bullet points. I wonder, did it change your analysis, or do you feel like it with this additional research, way you had just currently crafted the legislation is the right answer.

I believe it's the right answer because it still improves the energy use of the building, which typically will save homeowners money, But it makes the requirements more manageable for them. I don't think the research that we did or the stakeholder engagement would change my opinion on what we proposed, honestly, because I think it makes it more manageable. They do we did get some positive feedback. We got we got both kinds of feedback. We were like got some feedback that we should still regulate the buildings because a lot of especially the property management companies were saying a lot of these buildings really need to improve their energy efficiency.

But and they appreciated the simplified, like, requirements and addressing some of the things of the individual systems versus the central systems, which are handled completely differently by those HOAs. And so I think the refinements, we generally got positive feedback on what we proposed. It it didn't change my mind on this particular proposal. Alright.

Can I director Babcock, the my thoughts about the condominium, you know, giving the condominium authority and rulemaking is is more solid because we've had this conversation ongoing? I don't know if I missed it, and today, I'm only I'm only just catching it today about restaurants. That's why I don't know what I think about it. It's just because it's, at least for me, new information. And maybe it's because I haven't been paying attention, but I paid attention to

a lot of time with you on condos when we did our briefing. And so, yeah, we didn't touch as much on restaurants and others. We've talked a little bit more on restaurants. Yeah, happy to follow-up if there's other questions that arise for you on the restaurant piece, but truly trying to make it much more simple, much more clear and focused on the return on investment for those businesses so that it actually benefits their bottom line and making it much easier because there is just wide variation there. And so we think we can actually come up with a pathway working directly with people who know how their business operates best and with an engineering firm that we are paying for to identify those best opportunities for them. But happy to follow-up if there's anything that comes to mind.

And then one last question with restaurants. Are you considering a different set of considerations for existing restaurants versus new restaurants? Like, if they're building, you know, from scratch.

Yeah. So this policy doesn't affect how a restaurant is built out. So that would not be a different consideration because it has less to do with actually the building design and much more to do with the menu, the operating hours, the actual concept, and so this Equipment. This is gonna allow for that variation across different restaurants. So regardless of whether you're a twenty four seven diner or like fine dining only dinner service, this will work for you because it's gonna be things like you can do LED lighting.

You can make your coolers more energy efficient. Right? Every every restaurant has a cooler. It's those kinds of things. It is not gonna be really related to how how the building is built or anything upfront in the design. So it would hopefully provide options of flexibility across the board. And if you're a newer restaurant, you're likely to have newer equipment. You might be more efficient to start with so you don't have to do as much. But it would hopefully be something that will save money across the board for folks if we're really focusing on

the things that have the best ROI for those businesses. And the idea that we're working with right now is that you wouldn't have to do like everything on the list, the the list of the things that I showed. Like, maybe you'd pick three or four. Like, those are some of the things that we want feedback. The initial survey we sent out to the restaurant owners that they're filling out in the next week and a half is, what is your existing system? How long are you open? Have you done upgrades? Have you considered energy efficiency to reduce your costs? You know, just getting a baseline, and then we'll we'll kind of go from there. If it takes us a little bit longer to actually work through this option properly, then we will.

Just with the timeline I sent is just the proposed timeline. If we need a little bit more time to refine it well, then we would do that.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Councilman?

Thank you, madam chair. On slide 10, what the amendments do not do does not impose electromagnetic mandates or require HVAC replacement before the end of system life. And with reference to the correspondence we got from the building owners, the apartment association, and your reply to us, I'm wondering if, yes, we're not saying you must electrify, but explain to me, talk through with me in your reply. Owners can meet targets via operational improvements, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and not forced immediate replacement. So at some point, if targets are not met, would replacement be required?

No. No? So what happens? They just don't meet the target?

We they could ask for a custom target adjustment. It's a function that we added last year through our rules update. And so they have the opportunity to ask for a custom target.

Okay.

It's more it's basically taking the existing target and customizing it to their building.

Okay.

Let's say, for example, someone has a building type, a type of equipment that doesn't yet have, a much more efficient, you know, alternative option, they they could that could be an example of a reason why they might request a target adjustment. Okay. It's about the discretion

it's not I mean, they don't automatically get it. What would be the what would be the criteria under which it would be granted or refused?

They need to do an energy audit because they need to look and see exactly what's in their building, and then they bring the energy audit to us along with some cost comparisons of, like, what is the option of them out being able to do that. And then we have a list a criteria list of, let's say, doing all of the energy saving measures that have less than a twenty year payback or weatherizing your windows, or we have this list. We say, okay, these are the minimum things that you need to do, and we will adjust your target so that if you do these things, you're going to be able to meet it.

Okay. So that it'll be clear going in?

Yes.

On Slide 14, I think I know what the answer is, but I just because jargon.

Yes.

Create an exclusion process for transportation energy uses when they plug into building utilities. Is that electric vehicle chargers?

It is. We already have an exclusion process for electric vehicle chargers, but what we found actually was that there are a lot of compressed natural gas fleece fleet vehicles and forklifts. We have a distribution center that came to us this fall and said, we did our energy audit. We found out that 60% of our forklift our compressed natural gas forklifts are plugged into our natural gas meter and get it from the building use. And this is this ordinance is about building use, not transportation use.

So we went Okay. Oh, we need to figure out a process. But what we wanna do is gather information about where all of this is happening so that we can figure out how do we decarbonize these long term. So it's just it's an information gathering process to be able to exclude that energy use.

Thank you. That's would not have thought of that.

I would say All I

had in mind was, you know, plugging in your your electric vehicle. Thank you. But that was already in there. Correct? On the same slide.

We addressed electric vehicles. Yes. Previously, we had not addressed this compressed natural gas issue. We didn't know it was an issue until building owner brought it to us.

Great. Thank you. On the same slide, removing remove manufacturing, agriculture, and industrial benchmarking exemption. When I when you talked about that, I had in mind the huge range, the wide range of types of manufacturing buildings and how different they can be from one another. So how given those variations, how how does this work since we're removing an exemption?

Yeah. So very interestingly, from 2016 to 2021, these manufacturing buildings were exempt from benchmarking. But with the 2021 ordinance, one part of the ordinance, we were supposed to strike the benchmarking exemption. And then because later on in there, it says we needed to create a special alternate compliance option just for manufacturing buildings, and that that line didn't get struck to so we actually started benchmarking these buildings in 2023 because we were instructed to do a performance policy. So we have a special alternate compliance option now that was created in 2023 that allows of it covers 270 buildings out of our 3,000 buildings that are covered by the large building policy.

Mhmm. And it allows them a lot of different ways to comply or even set their target. They can do a performance pathway where they can choose from four different metrics, like a production efficiency metric, an energy use metric, a thing through the a special score through the EPA. They can also propose come to us and propose a metric and say, I have this type of business. This is the metric I'd like to use, and we can we can approve that.

So that's the performance options. They could also do a prescriptive option where they go and get an energy audit, and they can choose a certain amount of things off of the energy audit that would save them energy. And they propose to do that as their plan. And so the manufacturing and agricultural option we have now is the most specialized option we have, honestly, to work with these buildings. And it's the first one in the country.

We actually have some other cities and jurisdictions that are looking at the way we set that up as a really good way to work with manufacturing. Because manufacturing is about 9% to 10% of our overall greenhouse gas emissions. So if we it's we need to address them in some way, and we think we've designed a really good flexible option for them.

Okay. Because there is I'm imagining you know, I worked my way through college in a steel mill back east. Right? Compared to a light manufacturing or an assembly building, quite a difference. We had all the doors open and went to steel as we import. Alright? So not that we have a steel mill here in Denver, but we do have a wide range of of manufacturing buildings. So that's nimble enough to be customized to the needs of whatever particular industry that is?

We're we're actually in a good place with about 265 of those buildings. We have five left that we need just a little bit more of a tweak to the policy that we'll do

through

rules. But we we believe we know what we need to do there through the rules update to work with those last remaining five buildings.

Okay. And because I grew up in a city, what kind of agricultural buildings do we have here?

It's our cannabis growers.

That's what

I Come on now.

That's what I

We've got 60 of them in the large building programs.

We've got fewer than we had before. Okay. Do we have any other other than cannabis? Do we have any other active

It's really just cannabis as far as I know.

Okay. Thank you. Although we did have I'm sorry. In my district, we did have a hydroponic farming building on Evans Avenue near Sheridan. And Cannabis? No. It was salad greens for local restaurants.

Oh, that's great. Maybe it's not 25 is it 25,000 square feet or larger? Maybe.

No. They move.

If they're smaller yeah. Okay. They move.

Yeah. And then finally, on slide 18, I had a question. What was it? Oh, I am not familiar enough with restaurant operations. But when you say lower hot water temperatures for dishwashing, is there a health code threshold that the water must meet?

That's what we wanna that's what we wanna check.

So what are you working with DBPHE or

We are.

And and Colorado restaurants association? Because I certainly wouldn't want

to require it.

Not Right. To use cold water to wash the dishes in

No. Totally.

I think it gives you a balance of the temperature and chemicals that you can use to make sure that they're sanitized, but we certainly don't wanna increase chemical use. Right? So we would look at all those things to

make sure.

I can give you an example in a facility that I actually used to be a facility manager in. We we would love to argue with our dining hall manager at this college to, he wanted the temperature at a 180, but health code would allow him to do a 140. And so changing that degrees by 40 down to the the health code limit actually saved us a lot of money on energy. And so we there are some opportunities. But, yes, you can add some different chemicals in it. You can do it at a lower temperature for less energy.

Okay. Different chemicals. That doesn't make me stop. That's all I have. Thank you, madam chair.

Yeah. Thank you. Councilman Watson, you're

up next.

Thank you, madam chair. You're welcome. I was waiting for your steelworker story, and so you just You don't wanna hear. Give us a snippet snippets of it, but I always love your storyline, Sharon and director Babcock. The clarity that you provided even on those specifics when it came to the, agriculture, and, buildings and the thoughtfulness of kind of your process from where we began four years ago to now gives me great confidence.

I've had a lot of discussions with business owners on kind of their concerns of the rigidity of of the the feeling of what was coming down and just the simplicity of just that one part they described, I thought, was great. So I thought I would start off there. I I appreciate the rules and reg piece on restaurant options, and I think I the majority of our discussions were were were on those. So I've fully briefed on it. I appreciate that it's gonna take a lot more time, and I appreciate that you all are doing that instead of in the ordinance.

Two questions. First, on the let me see. Oh, my brain just went dead. Oh, yes. There was the the the I believe a lawsuit of some level.

And obviously, there may be some privileged stuff, so I wanna make sure I I'm I'm being clear. I'm not talking about anything that you can't say publicly. But can you share anything from whatever pending litigation or current that's happening that was brought forward by the initial Energize Denver? Any things that are outstanding that or changes that are made to ensure that we are moving from a place where that litigation is still having footing. Just curious if there's anything you can provide in general on that.

Yeah. I'm happy to answer that question, councilman. Yes. So there were parties that brought forward a lawsuit challenging the building performance policy, essentially saying that the policy de facto requires electrification, and then taking the leap from that and and further claiming that because of that and sort of making a claim around federal preemption. So what their claim is is that the Energy Policy Conservation Act, which was passed in the '70s, our last major energy oil crisis, was trying to prevent a patchwork of different regulations across the country around efficiency standards for appliances.

So if you were a manufacturer of a dishwasher and there were different standards in every single state in this country, that would be a nightmare. So this policy basically said it is the federal government's authority to create those kinds of efficiency standards for appliances. They are using a novel sort of legal idea to apply that to this policy. This policy has nothing to do with efficiency standards of appliances or energy use of appliances. It is setting a standard for different building types for their overall energy efficiency.

So we filed a motion to dismiss. The judge granted our motion to dismiss. The plaintiffs then filed an amended suit. We have filed an additional motion to dismiss along with the state as well because the lawsuit is both for Denver and the state of Colorado. So we both filed a motion to dismiss, and we are now waiting on a ruling by the judge.

The changes that we are making are not related to the lawsuit. We don't think the lawsuit claims have merit. We are making these changes and had actually intended to start a stakeholder process to make these changes even sooner, but the lawsuit actually delayed us in doing so. We are making these changes because we are one of the first cities to do these policies. We have learned a lot since we initially implemented the the original ordinance, and it's good governance to go back and amend your policies when you recognize that there unintended impacts or different issues that we had to address. So what we are bringing forward is really intended to make the policy implementable, and the changes are administrative, not not tied to the lawsuit.

Thank you so much for that. I have one other question, and I could see from my side eye that Excel is in the room. And so the question is for for your team and then, obviously, as partners from Excel have a response. How are we looking at kind of the execution of this ordinance and impacts to the grid, impacts to the ability for energy to be sustained and provided by our energy provider? Just from your point of view, any of these changes, these recommendations, some of these, what I think are extremely innovative steps that we're taking in Denver, How are those impacted positively and negatively in that partnership with our energy provider?

That's a great question, and I'm really glad you raised it because I think some of that is on us in terms of messaging early days. We combined some messaging about this program, which is an energy efficiency program, with messaging about other policies related to electrification, and that has created confusion. So it's not showing up there,

but I don't know if

we can bring the slides back up for a moment, if that's possible, because I wanted to show the slide that Sharon talked to earlier. So this program definitely reduces our carbon emissions in Denver. But one of the biggest benefits of this program is actually grid resilience because what we are doing is lowering the demand on the grid. It is an energy efficiency program. So what is happening is we are still growing in Denver.

We've added 450 buildings to this program, and yet in that same time frame, we have reduced energy use 9% across all of those buildings. So this is not an electrification policy. We do have other things that are electrification related. This is actually helping us create capacity on the grid so that we can continue to grow. And I don't want to speak for our friends at Excel, but I will say that they have a strong plan in place over the next three years to help build out the distribution system to meet our increasing growth and demand as a city.

We know we have to add cooling for housing that doesn't have it today. About 30% of households, primarily lower income households, don't have cooling. We need to add that. We're doing beneficial electrification in our buildings. We're electrifying the transportation sector. EVs are very popular, especially with the way gas prices are, so people are buying them. We need to, you know, do that, and we need to continue to grow, to add housing and other, you know, buildings to our community. So this this program actually helps us where we have capacity constraints today, and Xcel is working on a plan to address those constraints longer term through, you know, increased infrastructure in the distribution system.

Well, thank you both. Those are my questions. I don't know if, Madam Chair, we wanted to provide an excellent opportunity. If they wanted to respond, I'll leave it up to you.

They're up next, so y'all can respond during your presentation.

You're up next? Oh, well, I see. I should have read the agenda. I hope no further questions.

Thank you. Thank you all so much for taking the time to come give us our presentation. Thank you. We are going to move to the briefing that is going to be put on by. So I'll introduce the

We have to do it actually.

Oh, dang. Yeah. Sorry. I was looking at the time. I'm trying to make sure we stay up time. Can we have a motion? Council President Sandoval? Second. Councilman Hines? Do we need a roll call vote? Okay. Great. Thank you. Alright. Wonderful. Thank you all so much for your time. And with that, I will invite up Xcel Energy. They're gonna give a briefing on wildfire mitigation, and we are looking forward to it. So if you all can introduce yourselves and then you can just get into the presentation.

Good afternoon. Grace Lopez Ramirez. I do local government and community affairs for Xcel Energy here in the city and county of Denver.

And I'm Lyle Moore.

I'm a

community resilience manager with Xcel Energy, and I work directly with the Office of Emergency Management and Public Safety.

Well, we wanted to start by thanking you all for inviting us, especially Chairwoman Lewis, inviting us to present on wildfire. This is just a briefing on our wildfire mitigation work that we've been doing. Just go through in interest of time, I mean, it's a really big deck. We actually added a few slides since the last time we sent this deck to you guys. So I'm gonna run through the first couple really quickly so that Lyle can get to the meat of the presentation later in the PowerPoint. And we wanna make some time for questions as well. Exactly. So I'm just gonna run through these first couple really quickly. So I won't go through the agenda. Some of the background here, just a reminder of our electric grid.

And here's where I will answer council member Watson's earlier question about our grid investment. And we are you may recall back in January, Holly and I attended the budget and policy committee where we did a large presentation on the $1,200,000,000 investment we're making over the next five years here in Denver's electric grid. So that includes additional transmission, additional substations, feeders, distribution feeders. And so that's the work that we're really eager to to partner with the city on in ensuring that we have a good path for permitting all of that and and building it and constructing it as quickly as possible. So for this slide, going back to this, what I wanted to highlight here is how much of our infrastructure is above ground, especially those feeders, those taps that are exposed to weather and exposed to, you know, animal life and different kind of vegetation that might be impactful to the grid and its resiliency.

Xcel Energy Colorado, you all might be familiar with these numbers. We have over a million customers both on the natural gas and electric side. And on this slide, I really wanted to highlight the miles of transmission lines and distribution lines, so over 20,000 miles of transmission lines that we maintain and over 80,000 of distribution lines we maintain across our service territory here in the state. As you all have experienced along with us, the drier weather this year. Right?

We had a very, very mild winter. So grateful for the rain this week, but it is much drier conditions this year than we've ever faced, and so we really feel that wildfire safety is shared by everyone, especially given the drought conditions we're going

into the summer with.

One of the things we wanted to highlight was what causes sparking. So a lot of different things could cause a spark. This is a real life event that happened back, I think, in December, where with high winds, a trampoline flew into our line and did impact the line, which, you know, you never know what in high winds can fly into our lines. The next series of slides are other examples of this. Right?

We have car accidents constantly hitting poles, bringing down lines. We have wildlife that impact lines, and that those are those taps on the top of our poles that are really sensitive. Some of the older ones are pretty sensitive to this type of interference. We also have vegetation, which some of you may have experienced when we, you know, we do vegetation management regularly where we cut back trees and branches and shrubbery that impacts our distribution lines through our neighborhoods. We do have a regular cadence for doing that that work, that vegetation management in throughout our neighborhoods here in Denver, but that's a cause of it as well.

Of course, severe weather is what we're really here to talk about today, the high winds and other climactic things that could impact our resiliency. Here's some examples of some public service safety shutoffs, which is what we're here to talk about today. The PSPSs that we conducted where we proactively de energized the system so that we can avoid as much as possible wildfires. We had two events, PSPS events in December, and these are some real life pictures of what happened in Nevada. You know, really, it's been in our counties to the West, Jefferson County, Boulder County, Larimer County up to the North that have experienced the majority of these types of impacts.

You know, back in December, we impacted a 135,000 customers with our proactive de energization, and you can see some of the, you know, some of the the equipment damage that is a result of these high winds. Back in December, we did have to replace 90 poles, a lot of cross arms, transformers, and those kinds of things to to continue to before we were able to reenergize. Back in March, we also had a PSPS that impacted about 12,000 customers. Again, this was mainly in Jeffco, I think in Boulder as well, but the photos here of the damages are are from Evergreen. And in Evergreen, we actually to replace these poles, we have to helicopter in new poles.

A lot of that those lines are in, you know, mountainous areas, so it's it takes longer to to fix fix the infrastructure, to fix the equipment. So what are we gonna do about it? From here, I'm gonna hand it off to my colleague, Lyle. So our wildfire

mitigation programs, we're gonna touch on now. It's we're gonna touch on a little bit on maintenance and resiliency, which we've already kind of heard a little bit about Grace just talking about. Our advanced technologies and how that's gonna help as well, vegetation management, first responder and community outreach, collaborative safety, and finally, that ignition prevention. Because really what this program is about is to stop those wildfires, stop that ignition source that then creates a wildfire. Starting off with that 2025, 2027 mitigation plan overview, Grace has already hit on that, just recently as well.

But with that as well, you can see 82%, over 82% is really going towards that system resiliency, which I'll talk a little bit more here shortly.

And this was a plan that was approved by the PUC, by the Public Utilities Commission.

The advanced technology, this is a picture of a Viper recloser. These are the ones that we can actually control with the PSPS. Again, that power shutoff that just occurred in San Luis Valley this last week. We're able to keep the power on while we watched the wind speeds. And so we kept the speed or those that power on.

It never reached those thresholds that we were looking for. But if they would have, we would have been able to turn off that electricity from our command center, not actually have somebody have to go out and turn off the power manually as well. So this is a part of that, advanced technology that we're looking to harden our system with. Next slide. Pano AI cameras.

We're using AI to actually detect smoke and detect those wildfires quicker, but also providing this information to fire and, public safety out there as well so that then we can get, fire units on this situation before it becomes out of hand as well. Next slide. Again, that advanced technology, we put up a 100 over a 100 weather stations we've installed within our system as well to then help us to better understand how that weather and we'll talk a little more about the weather coming up as well. But we're also using drones, in order to inspect. So when we do a PSPS event, before we will start that restoration process or a part of that restoration process is that we will inspect those lines before we turn the electricity back on.

We basically are not trying or we don't want to start a spark by turning the electricity back on, which is what we just did in order to not start the ignition source as well. Next slide. We've worked with, the State Forest Service as well to develop a wildfire mapping tiers out there so that we can help to target some of our, work and some of our preparedness as well along with that. Next slide. Oh, Denver.

We should mention in here Denver as well. As you can see, Denver is in that tier one, which is the lowest tier because of the the significant human development or the surfaces resistant to fire. Downtown Denver is definitely not the same as Evergreen in that situation where the buildings just don't have that fire, or they do have the fire resistance a little more here in Denver versus like Evergreen as well as the surrounding area as well.

I'll just note that, you know, we are aware that Den is creeping into tier two, and then also Denver obviously has assets in Jefferson County, including, like, cell towers and, you know, the mountain parks and Red Rocks that are all in tier three.

Yep. The next, vegetation management, a huge one. A big problem with this, as you can see in this picture here, where that that sparking or that ignition really comes from. We've even been working with, the public, trying to educate the public that if you are gonna plant some kind of a tree next to some of your lines, do not, you know, plant those cottonwoods near them because those cottonwoods are gonna grow, and they will grow into those lines. So we're looking really for that 10 foot distance on the sides and below our lines when we're looking at vegetation management.

Outreach and collaboration. This is a map of, Terren and myself. We both do the same thing working with emergency management. But that's the key to this is working with those officers of emergency management, not only during response, for training exercises. Just this morning, we were across or down down, sorry, down a couple of floors with the office of emergency management running an exercise on a PSPS event where they had brought in other stakeholders within Denver to work through those processes. What if this were to happen today? I think

that collaboration with OEMs is super important. Both Lyle and I work really closely with Matt and Courtney. And in fact, she was just here this morning, really successful tabletop exercise this morning.

Now we're getting into that ignition prevention. So we have a I wanna make sure and and provide some more information on some of these different terms. You're gonna hear EPSS. This is the enhanced power line safety settings. So during regular times, a power line safety setting is basically where we're telling the lines if you it'll trip three different times before it'll stop, and then we have to go out and inspect, basically.

With using those hardening or those computerized systems that we're able to use, we now can actually make that trip for just one so that we're not allowing that spark again to ignite. So if you ever hear of EPSS settings, that's really what we're doing. We're making the lines just a little more sensitive to things that are tripping them as well. One thing that, a lot of people always ask, well, when do we know when the EPSS settings are going on? If you hear the word red flag warning, more than likely, it doesn't match up one to one, but more than likely, a lot of our lines are in EPSS settings during that time.

Now ignition prevention, when we start moving into that PSPS, this is gonna be the meat of the the the presentation here too. Really, what we're looking at is extreme winds, low relative humidity, and finally, those dry fuels or that low fuel moisture content. This is what moves us into that PSPS. And just to make something clear too, the PSPS is something that is a last resort for us. We really do not want to be shutting off the electricity for people because we know the consequences that go along with that de energization as well.

We've worked through a lot of that with a lot of the office of emergency management across the state and understand those consequences of that as well. So once when we do get into that, we start looking at the different factors. We don't just use those three factors. We start looking into the baseline risk. What are our overhead assets versus underground assets in some of those areas?

What are our assets for those wildfire risk tiers that you just heard about as well? We use all these different these different data points and decision items to then help to shrink some of that PSPS, AOC or area of concern. And please stop me. I've been in emergency management for quite some time. And if I say an acronym that you don't know, please stop me because emergency management, we can do that all day.

Okay? So catastrophic fire behavior assessment. This is where we're using that fire behavior index. We're looking at the fuels, the grasses, the bushes, how dry are they out there as well. And in that building potentially impacted, we use a system called TechnoSilva where we can actually take a look.

And if we have a fire ignition at one point, it'll use the terrain, the wind speeds, the fuels, how many buildings it'll impact, and all of this to provide us with a better planning information or or data in order to make that happen. And then finally, that operational risk. This is where we're looking at, some of that vegetation strike potential. Like, Grace had said, our vegetation management is done on a cadence. So if we're having more issues with trees hitting those lines, we can bring that into into effect.

And this is where you're also gonna find that critical infrastructure. How we are looking at and Denver was one of the first in my area that provided that critical infrastructure that we then placed on some mapping, some GIS mapping. So now we can actually see when we turn off a feeder, we know what critical infrastructure is on that feeder and what that impact will be for the most part. So all of these build into that decision making for the PSPS and what that area of concern looks like for that high wind event.

I'll just add here too that we do have meteorologists on staff within the company that help us determine the, you know, the weather event. So we don't work with third parties. We do have meteorologists on staff.

That's one of those sorry, not sorry that the federal government cut away some of those National Weather Service people, and they've come to us and sent them to work. So this is the process for the process steps. We basically have five steps in the PSPS process. That final one is the post event. Like I said, we were just working with the post the San Luis Valley's PSPS.

And right now, I'm currently writing the after action report for that where we've pulled together the response partners and the Office of Emergency Management, figured out what went well, what didn't go well, what can we improve on. Because as we've noted, we have improved even from the December events that we've worked on as well. Let's go into that first oh, go ahead.

I'll just note that this process is one that we went through vigorously with OEM, with Denver OEM and the various agencies that have participated in our table top exercises and also in other exercises we've had with them in trainings because the coordination with our municipalities that we may be de energizing, we need to have really close coordination. Also, I'll just flag that Denver and I don't know if we've said this since we haven't. Denver has not yet experienced a public safety power shutoff. We have come close. In December, we came close, and that's when I alerted chairwoman Lewis as well as council member Gilmore because the areas that would've that for Denver that were in our initial area of concern were in the Far Northeast and in the Northeast.

But we have not had to include Denver, the city and county of Denver proper in any PSPS up to date? Obviously, some of the assets Denver owns in Jefferson County have been impacted by previous PSPSs.

So when we get into that stage one, we're still looking at that situational awareness. This is over seventy two hours out, basically. And when we do see when our meteorologists do, communicate that they do see a downsloping wind event where we can get, wind speeds past the thresholds of our PSPS. So, like, for December, we had a 129 mile an hour winds in the Boulder area. Basically, weren't felt in other places, but we had those kinds of high winds.

So we're starting to look at that. And this is when, basically, I'm calling, Matt or Courtney, the the OEMs in the area saying, please watch your emails because we're probably setting up a a call coming up to start working through those issues. We start getting messaging prepared, for the public as well as any of the other PIOs and local news, and we are communicating with that National Weather Service to verify what our meteorologists are seeing with theirs as well. Stage two is when we get into these OEM briefings. I set up, or my partner, Terren, sets up meetings to where we have all of the emergency managers in those affected areas on the call to then receive this pertinent information to move forward with.

This also includes additional people. Denver Water is another one of those that we initially contact and move through, health and hospitals as well, like Denver Health, different things like that. We also outreach to the critical customers as well as those medically vulnerable customers. This is something we're very, sensitive to as well, where we need to make sure that they're notified that the electricity could potentially be going out if you've got an oxygenator at home or whatever that looks like, making sure that they're notified too. We're doing that information sharing.

We're actually sending people out to ground truth those fuels as well, making sure that what we understand is really what's happening out there too. Part b of that one is the forty eight hours. We break this down into those stages. And in forty eight hours, we do all the exact same things in there as well. Then we get into stage three.

This is basically twenty four hours out. We're doing those briefings. We're outreaching to those critical customers in the medical again, just letting them know because as we move through these stages, we are then taking that meteorology as well as all that other information about our system, the hardening of our system, what's above ground, underground, all that we talked about before and shrinking that area of concern, to where we know that this will be an issue in those areas. So we're sharing that out. We're putting up outage maps, and we'll talk a little bit further about the PSPP, the partner safety partner portal.

The public safety partner portal, there's too many p's and s's in our acronyms. I So can tell you that right we actually have that public facing outage map where that area of concern goes up there as well so that we can then, guide the public to go and look to see where that area of concern is. But you can also put in your address and find out if you were in that area of concern. There's only one issue with this, and this is a part of that messaging that we're continually pushing out as well. Just because you're in that area of concern or outside of it doesn't mean you won't have an unplanned outage to go along with this because of the winds, all the other things that go along with, as you noticed, those admission pieces as well.

K. And then finally, stage four is that deenergization. This here is a picture of of a really good thing for us that we did deenergize this particular line because that would have been a fire, and you can see how dry those fuels are as well. And you add 60 to 70 mile an hour sustained winds with this, and that becomes an uncontrolled wildfire. But during this, this is where we're doing the back and forth communication where we're getting damage reports from office of emergency management, public safety in order to be able to restore things quicker, and whatever else is needed.

We're still having those briefings. We're still pushing out that information. We also have charging centers that we started. They're called resource centers, where we will go out and actually set up, in locations to help people charge their phones if they're out of phone, if their phone has died from, you know, not preparing themselves as well so that they can get communications as well. And then finally, stage five is that restoration.

So with restoration, we let the weather event go by before we will send people out to restore things. We have a 40 mile an hour wind kinda threshold for sending buckets up, So we have to wait for that to go by. And then just like I said earlier, we will inspect every line that we've de energized as well, the whole line, because we don't wanna start that spark by just starting up the electricity, just what we mitigated, you know, hours before this as well. Something else that happens here too is that, again, that more of that information sharing or trying to help with those restoration timelines as well. And this one's kind of a hard one because as we're out there finding the trees on the lines or the damage that's that's out there, that creates a longer estimation of time out as well.

We're getting better at it because we've been sending people out during the storm to then document where those trees are falling on the lines so that our restoration time can become quicker because we can target people to those areas that need that help as well or those lines that are or damaged our assets. Maps. Here are the maps. Again, I've already talked about that public facing outage map where the people can go in, check it out again. With that one caveat, just because you're outside that AOC doesn't mean the wind won't hit you or some of your stuff as well.

And this is up all times as well. It's up right now, so people can actually see the outages that are occurring where they are and have that estimated restoration time too. And then finally, the public safety partner portal, PSPP. There's some more p's and s's for you. But, this is a GIS mapping that actually layers in all of our feeders, all of our transmission lines, as well as, like I had said earlier, Denver has actually placed all of the critical infrastructure on these as well.

So now we can see who or what is going to be the consequence of shutting off this feeder. But not only us, Denver has signed into this. And so Denver Emergency Management actually has access to this as well so that they can actually see this as it works through this. This is also where we've improved some from December where all of these lines that were in the AOC will start off red. And as they go through the restoration process, they'll go to yellow and then green as well.

So we're trying to provide those office of emergency management or those public safety partners that are on there that information to then better help them to respond to whatever consequences came from this wind event outside of our mitigation step of de energizing the lines.

And I'll just add in Denver, OEM has the PSPP as part of the situational awareness tool that OEM gives us access to certain folks within the within the city.

That's it.

And that's it. Yeah. Additional resources just really based on your questions. So thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you all so much for the presentation. Currently, we don't have anyone in the queue. Has anyone have any questions? Comment on this.

Thank you, committee chair. Thank you for the presentation. I what what's the best advice? You know, I think the the, you know, the the biggest concern is making sure that you're aware of a of of a wildfire. You were saying you're using AI. You're using drones. You know, sometimes people just driving down the road might see I mean, I think the, you know, the twenty four fire, there were you could see it from I 25. And at one point, the signs, the, you know, the c dot signs were saying do not call 911. But my my worry is that, you know, I get someone's gotta have called that in. Right?

I mean, so, you know, what are your what are your thoughts on, you know, if you see a learned a lot about Smokey's Bear when I was little, but but that's about, you know, individual prevention as opposed to alert of a wildfire. Yes. So, Excel, we

do have a wildfire con command center now too that when these panel cameras catch that smoke, it automatically notifies us, which then we notify the fire department, or the fire service in those areas to this as well, as well as other additional partners like CDOT so that we can get that messaging up as quick as we can as well. I was just at the Huron Fire, which is the Thornton Fire, AAR yesterday, their after action review, and that was one of the things that came out of there was that their messaging might have been a little bit slower than normal, but that fire was so quick that there really wasn't a chance to stop the traffic on I 25 going through that smoke. And they were it was a miracle that there wasn't further accidents on I 25, but they were able to get it there finally and work through that. So we also do have outage, an outage number. So if somebody does see a line down or whatnot, they can call that.

We have that, again, that wildfire command center or as, as Grace noted earlier too, working with Matt and Courtney, that if they do and I keep pointing she she's left, but working with them where they can call us and then we can work through our own operation centers to work on whatever it is that's needed, whether it's de electrifying some of those lines so that the firefighters can then help to put out those fires. We've also got people that, are in our tactical unit in the wildland fire group that will actually go out there and stand next to the fire department to then help them communicate back as well. So we've we've tried to work through multiple different aspects of this as well.

I'll just add to that our wildfire command center is located here in the city and county of Denver. We're in Byte And Baker at 3rd And Le Pan. So if you're interested in coming to our LePan distribution center to tour our wildfire command center, you're more than welcome to do that. We can set that up. I'll also add, you know, it's kind of inferred from what Lyle said, but we are monitoring wildfire across the state twenty four seven.

So we do have staff literally monitoring twenty four seven, but also all this technology monitoring. And we are all on an actually a Teams channel, and so we're monitoring any kind of fire. So that Huron fire was detected immediately for by us. Even the Leedsdale fire, that big apartment complex that went up on Leedsdale, we identified that that's at that I guess it was a Friday night. Either way, that was identified through a wildfire commanding too. So

Yeah. And yeah. I went to your website. Looks like there are currently 25 outages affecting a 195 customers. So many of these outages are one customer affected. So it's kinda interesting the the level of detail that's that's on the website. So thank you for that. And just as a a comment, I I think that your marketing team must have a lot of cats. I don't have seen the bumper sticker. Please tell your cat I said, You're doing a lot of ps and s's, so I guess. Anyway, thank you, committee chair.

Thank you. President Sandoval. Thank you. Looking

at that the Excel Energy wildfire risk tiers, it's that map. It's fascinating to see how Denver we're mostly in tier one, but then parts of it is in tier two. And then it's fascinating to see when you even just go up to Boulder. Boulder's in tier three. Mhmm. Parts of Boulder are in tier three. So my team and I have already been looking at that map. So thanks for mentioning it. I had never seen that before. And the work that you all are doing to prevent that, the the fires, is phenomenal.

It's super complicated. I get that. But I watched that movie, something the bus. I can't remember. It's with Matthew McConaughey about the paradise fire. Yes. And it was terrifying. Like, it I hadn't I didn't realize how it all started by a spark of a like, the energy company. So thank you for all of the work you do. And even though it didn't impact us here in in Denver, my husband works in Boulder at a huge pharmaceutical company and the power did get shut off there and they have their own brigade team and he has to coordinate with the Boulder Fire Department and so it was a really big deal when they're fired because it could shut off like all the alarms and he's the prop like the process safety engineer there.

So it is a really big deal. I just sent him this map too so that he could see he could see it. I'm sharing the map around with everybody I know. Because this this this is real. Like, the Rocky Mountain arsenal, it's all tier two. Mhmm. And so that and my part of Green Valley Ranch, part of my fellow so all of the I think having an understanding of how to mitigate that is or having the knowledge about this. My question is, do you all go out and like so let me say it a different way. The Denver Police Department does this. It's called CPTED and it's called safety through environmental

Crime prevention through

prevention through environmental

Design.

Design. So you can go literally and have your fire department or police department go out and look at what what's happening why is crime happening in there. So for example, we get lots of complaints at the skate park off in my council district. Mhmm. We were gonna do an update with Denver Parks and Rec and so I had the police department go out and give a report so that we knew where to put the lighting.

Mhmm. Do you all go out or who do you partner with for those tier the red? Who do you partner? Like, how if someone owns property in there, those tiers, different tiers, who do they contact to do to get rid of the brush and who because I don't think that's a I mean, I've never heard of anyone who does that. Do you have resources for that?

Well, here in the city and county of Denver, we do we typically contract only with right tree services for all of our vegetation management and trimming that we do within the city and county of Denver. That's on your property or on my our property? On city property and private property. So we will go into people's backyards because we have pole distribution poles in certain parts of the city that are in people's backyards. We have pole easements on private property.

So we do go into people's backyards, through our contractor, right, to do regular trimming of trees and bushes. And that, frankly, is always a little bit difficult because people feel really strongly about trees and bushes. We wanna make sure that we're working with the property owner to to cut branches that might not impact won't impact the health of the tree. Right. So that we do do that at a regular cadence here in the city and county of Denver, both on private and public property. But out in the red tier, I'll I'll leave that to you.

Exact same thing. Just as she had we work on a cadence where we actually patrol those lines normally and then actually gear our vegetation management group to go out and try and eliminate that that hazard that is being created by those trees growing into or close to our lines as well. We do work with the fire departments in a lot of places or the fire services in order to work through some of those issues that Grayson just brought up. We're getting into that.

And do you partner with the like, are your customers? So your customers, do you do like, especially Conifer, let's say Conifer, for example, or even not far in Rock Mountain Arsenal. Do you part do you do you, like, teach people, like, hey, we're gonna cut this down, not necessarily you doing it, but you should keep your trees trimmed and all of these different

things.

Oh, yes. And and we're trying to even educate people on planting trees. Yeah. You know? Again, those cottonwoods, if you plant those near your power lines, those will get into I mean, the cottonwoods grow so tall. I know. So even trying to work through some of those different education pieces, even going to the point of planting trees around electrical lines.

I know my colleague who does my my job in in Jefferson County, we just finished a like, he went door to door in Golden. Yeah. And he's we're gonna continue to do that, I think, through this week, really educating our customers on the impacts from their individual properties, right, and and what it looks like property to property out there. We don't do it that level here in the city and county of Denver, but definitely in our in our in our tier tier three. And they they call the Excel number and say, hey. I'm concerned I might have brush that could cause fire and then be proactive. Yes. We will go out and trim.

You will.

We actually will. So they It'll it'll have to be on that. It'll have to be incorporating a schedule because Yeah. A lot of times our schedules are kinda seasonal Yeah. Seasonal built too because we really can't get into the mountains area in the winter Yeah. Whatever winter, you know, if we ever have another winter. Right?

Call, like, the Yes. Yes.

Their bill, and they can call proactively and say, hey. Can you come out here when you're in the area?

Can you give me assessment? Yes. You can. Alright.

Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Great.

Thank you. We don't have any else anyone else in the queue. Really appreciate the presentation. I do have some very district specific ask, so I won't waste my colleagues' time here. With that, we have two items on consent. No one has called anything off. And thank you all so much for your time.

Thank you. Thank you.