Alternative Energy and Environment Committee - Regular Meeting

Yes. We do. Okay. Well, I'll just go ahead and call us to order for the Alternative Energy and Environment Committee for March 27. Are there any additions or corrections to the agenda today?

Yes. There is. We received and provided correspondence from the public for agenda item number four.

Got it. And we can add that onto the, or it's correspondence from the public. Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

And additionally, supervisors, I would like to request that we swap the order of the items. So we'll do item number five before we do item number four on the climate action plan.

Got it. Alright. Perfect. And we can have the record show that both supervisor Daniels and ask you are present via the noticed remote locations as well as the meeting being held in the Monterey Room of the Government Center. We'll open it up to public comment. Is there anyone here from the public who'd like to make public comment for items that are within the jurisdiction of this committee but not otherwise listed on the agenda. We'll start with, Janelle. Janelle, thanks for joining us. And I'm not sure how Oh,

okay. There.

Have to unmute, Janelle.

Can you hear me now?

Oh, we can. Yes. Thank you. Perfect.

Great. I just wanted to make a comment in regards to just overall budget because I noticed I I don't know if I could speak on the climate action plan. That's what I wanted to make public comment on, but it it is on the agenda. Mhmm. But my comments are more around, I know the county is in a budget deficit right now, I believe, of $200,000,000.

And just noting the cost of implementing the climate action plan along with the $165,000,000 per year cost of Sigma for the county, I really think the county is gonna need to focus on what is the most pressing priorities for our community and our members. I'm also a little concerned when I see a language that says requiring landscape equipment to be zero emissions if it's 25 miles 25 horsepower or less. I'm unsure how that's gonna be required from, like, Ace Hardware and Lowe's and Home Depot. And if you're gonna make citizens throw away, they're perfectly good landscaping equipment just to be zero emissions. I just it's kinda like a rock in a hard place when you throw something away.

You're adding the landfills, but you can just keep using it and not have to buy something new.

Great. Thank thank you for your comment. We'll go next to Walt, And we'll have to help

or unmute.

Oh, there you are. We've got you. Thank you for joining us.

There it is. Can you guys hear me now?

We can. Thank you.

Nice. I guess you on mute because that that works out great.

I don't even understand. So yeah.

Zoom teams, whatever it is, we just try. Hi, folks. Walter Flock, founder of Sage. We do rural advocacy, for Ag and Energy and the and the related stakeholders. I just wanna echo Janelle's comments. I just think the where the where the county's at from a budget perspective make some of the implementation details on this really challenging. You saw some of the costs in here, they're large already and likely to get larger. I think there's plenty of other places we need to put money first. And so we just urge budget thinking on stuff like this. And I would also just call attention to the supervisors.

There's some massive energy demand going on with things like AI and data centers. And I just think, you know, you need to be careful about how much we wanna bite off on some of these climate objectives because I think a lot of the the energy needs are only going one direction. And so I I think and Sage has been foreign all the above energy policy for a while. I think emissions should be one strategy. Emissions reduction should be one strategy, but I think mitigation and being capital responsible are probably two two equal objectives to me. So I'll just weigh in with that and let you guys have the meeting, Mac.

Great. Thank you for joining us and paying attention to these issues. Well, I don't see any other hands raised for public comment. Is there anyone in the Monterey Room?

No one in the Monterey Room.

Okay. Great. Thank you. We do have one the final call for public comment, and we'll go to Tom Ward. Tom, I think we had to give you permission to unmute, but then you'll have to hit the unmute button somehow.

Okay.

There we go. There we go. We've got you now.

Thank you. I I will just go ahead. I said since those other two individuals actually commented on the climate action plan, I will just make the comment that I, am very impressed with the document that's been produced. Hello?

Yeah. Go ahead. We've got

I have been very impressed with the document that's been produced. It's been a long time in coming, but now we have it. And it truly is a game changer, And, we are so far behind on our goals to meet, greenhouse gas reductions that this document clearly lays out the strategies that can help us move forward and make progress, to, meet our SB 32 goals set by the state. So I wanna congratulate miss Pinderad and Ascent Environmental for producing this document, and we are very impressed. So thank you.

Great. Thank you. And I will just say for so we'll continue with general public comment. We will have opportunities for comment on the items as we receive the presentation. Was there someone that approached the dais for general public comment?

Yes. We're checking. It is gonna be for an item supervisor, so he'll come back.

Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for sticking it out with us. I will say, we are in a bit of a timeline today. We have one hour for this meeting, so we'll wanna, we we wanna do the best that we can to stay on track. Otherwise, we'll have to continue any items that we don't complete to a future meeting. But with that, I will close public comment and move to the appointment of the committee chair and vice chair. I'll check-in with supervisor Daniels to see if she'd like to be our chair this year since we're both new to the committee.

Can I ask if you can hear me?

We can hear you loud and clear.

Fabulous. I have moved to the conference room because we have a member of the public that is here.

Fantastic.

I would be happy to to be chair. That would be fine, and I will take over from here as long as you can hear me well enough and see me.

Perfect. Thanks. So we'll nominate supervisor Daniel as chair, supervisor Askew as vice chair. Any public comment on that motion? Seeing none.

Can approve.

Approve that with consensus. And

Wonderful. I will take over from here then, supervisor, if that's alright.

Fantastic. Thank you.

Okay. Item number two on the agenda is considered the approval of action minutes from the Alternative Energy and the Environment Committee meeting on 07/30/2025. Supervisor ask you, do you have any, comments on the minutes?

I didn't. Thank you.

Okay. And any member of the public that wishes to speak on the draft minutes from July 30?

We do have one hand raised, Kathy.

Thank you, Kathy. You may make your comment.

Kathy put her hand down.

Okay.

She's No other hands. With that then, we can move by consensus the draft minutes from 07/30/2025. Thank you. Okay. We're gonna move now to our regular agenda, and we're gonna consider approval of the Alternative Energy and Environment Committee meeting schedule. Is that something you can put up on the screen for us? Yes. We can.

And through the chair, I'll just say, when I looked at those earlier, the NACO annual conference is will be held the week of July 16, so we'll need to find another date for that meeting. And then the CSAC board of directors meeting is in September. I I I won't be attending that, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Okay. I don't plan on attending the board of directors meeting in September, but let's go ahead and and approve all the dates for other than the July date. And if staff can help us find another date that would work that doesn't conflict with NACO in July? Or I would say, is July the month that the board of supervisors are not meeting for regular Tuesday meetings?

Yeah. That's a good question. I I think we do have some breaks in July.

So what I would suggest is if if if staff can find either a June or an August date. I know it looks like you're trying to go every other month. But if we could if we could there is a date in July where we are back, I think, in in session at the board of supervisors. So maybe moving it out a week later or just looking at the at the board of supervisors calendar so so we can coincide with with that calendar, that would be great.

Yes. We can do that, supervisor. And what we'll do is we'll cancel that July meeting and then schedule a a special meeting for either in June or August.

Okay. Great. So let's move approval if we can of all the other dates. Supervisor Askew?

For sure. I'll second that motion with and there's a request that in the May 15 meeting if we could include an agenda item to receive a presentation from housing and community development long range planning on the Fort Ord habitat resource management plan. I will support that.

Great. Alright. Fantastic. Looks good. Okay. Moved via via consensus. And so now we, you had asked to move to item number five first, receive a presentation or staff asked, from the staff on the county's proposed electric vehicle charging policy. And so we'll move to item number five now. Okay.

Can you see my screen? Looks like it. Yes. Alright. Thank you, supervisors.

So, here is our title for the day. I don't think we have to spend too much time on this, but here are some slides to guide us through our conversation. So we are recommending through this item that, the committee make the recommendation for the board of supervisors to authorize the county administrative officer or our designee to participate in the ChargePoint platform and various terms and conditions therein to consider recommending a consistent rate of charging for electric vehicle charging for a 43¢ per kilowatt hour for level two charging stations and a 75¢ per kilowatt hour price for level three fast chargers. And also recommending that the board of supervisors direct the, county administrative officer or the public works facilities and park staff to restrict the use of existing chargers that are not payment enabled due to hardware considerations to county staff or to disable them until they're replaced and to, ask staff to return back to this committee to review these charging prices after we have a year of data. So walking through each of these items, so the sustainability program has worked with other county staff and the information technology department to review the cloud subscription terms and also the master services agreements with ChargePoints.

And these terms are suitable for the county's needs, so he recommends that you grant authorization or provide a recommendation to grant authorization on these items. For the consistent price for charging, we have worked with our third party energy adviser, Arc Alternatives, to conduct an analysis on EV charging. And our previous direction was for this to be as cost neutral as possible and to compare with other jurisdictions to make sure these prices were reasonable. ARC then helps to develop a calculator with inputs that included the cost of energy via four imaging cloud services, maintenance plans, and an estimated replacement budgets. And that's how we came up with these prices that are in line with what we see from other governments, institutions across state the state of California.

And for more information on this, we have a detailed memo attached to the agenda. For our next item, this has been something that the board and many supervisors have talked about in the past, but we would like to restrict the chargers that are currently unable to process payments either to county vehicles or to take them offline where appropriate. This would provide staff with the flexibility to avoid a gift of public funds situation we are essentially giving away free electricity for community members and staff to charge up their cars. So some of these existing chargers have been free at the county because they have outdated hardware, and they are only able to connect to three g Internet. Until we replace those, those are not able to charge for their services.

We are currently working on a grants with the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission to replace those chargers. And we asked to come back for revised cost for pricing because after about a year of data, we'll have much better information on how often the chargers are going to be used and how many kilowatts are running through them into vehicles. And the price calculator that we've developed is sensitive to those inputs. So after a year of hard data and set of assumptions, we'll have much better information to make an updated analysis. And we at that point, we will have more EV chargers in place, so it would be appropriate for us to come back to this committee on this item.

And that is it for this item. I will pass it back to our chair.

Thank you so much. I appreciate the presentation. Let's move out to public comment first. If that's okay with you, supervisor, ask you and find out if the public has any comment on item number five and on the presentation.

There's no hands raised on Zoom and nobody in the Monterey Room.

Okay. Supervisor ask you any?

Not about food.

Not about this. Okay. So supervisor ask you, I'll I'll go to you first.

Yeah. No. I think it says it sounds good. I think we're cleaning up some of the things that need to be cleaned up. I think bringing it back in a year once we have some better data collected makes sense. And at that point, it might make sense just to put a straight escalator policy on the so it doesn't have to come back on annual basis since I know how much work that is to do. But I think this is a great place to start, so I'm supportive.

Thank you. Well, with that then, we can consider the presentation received and the direction to staff what you heard from supervisor Wendy were asking.

Right. Thank you.

Alright. With that then, we are gonna move to item number four, and this is on the community climate action and adaptation plan. And we're gonna start with a presentation from staff and from Ascendant on the public draft, and then we'll hear public comment and recommend moving forward with direction if that is the the desire of the committee.

Alright. Thank you, supervisor. So we'll go ahead and get started on our main topic of conversation for the day. So our community climate action adaptation plan is now available in draft form, and we are pleased to bring it to this committee for, our first takes before recommending that the public draft move on to the board of supervisors. So we'll go ahead and go to the next slide and have a bit of information on just recapping what is a climate action and adaptation plan.

So this is essentially our road map for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the county. It identifies existing and projected greenhouse gas emissions, sets reduction targets for those emissions, and will establish policies and actions to meet those targets. We are integrating climate action and adaptation and resilience together through this one document. So we've been engaging the community and being able to provide an implementation program so people can understand how are we going to handle this whole climate change thing together. And in doing so, this document aligns with statewide greenhouse gas reduction targets.

It fulfills part of our general plan obligations through policy OS 10 dot 11, and it connects existing and developing sustainability efforts throughout the county. It also works to communicate the challenges and opportunities to both the public and county offices and is meant to empower our community and identify next steps for implementation. And as you can see through our community engagement, many people believe that it is imperative that we act quite quickly on climate action. Just going back a little bit, this has been a very long process with a lot of stakeholder engagements. So this originally started in 2021, and we have since had quite a few community workshops.

So we had three community workshops, 13 sector and focus working group meetings, 11 different public meetings, a meeting series with over 40 different community based organizations. And we've also had a prioritization and climate action simulator tool that were available online as well as barrier survey and our Conveyo project website that is live online. So as you can see from our timeline, we are hoping to bring this forward to the board of supervisors after our public comment period in the spring and adopt in 2026. And we're going to go through an overview of the greenhouse gas emissions included in the plan and how we plan on addressing those and provide a little bit more background to that document. So so starting off with our framework of how we're measuring carbon dioxide, one of our principal greenhouse gas emissions.

So all of our emissions are based on c o two equivalents, And that is because different molecules that are greenhouse gas emissions have different levels of greenhouse gas forming effects. Hence, that is what this is on the screen. So methane and nitrous oxide are much more greenhouse gas intensive. And in our planning process, we went through this a bit earlier, but we worked to establish our baseline of emissions to project how that would shape out in the future to set reduction targets and identify those strategies. And now it is time for us to adopt a plan and move forward into implementation.

So next, we'll see an overview of the greenhouse gas emissions that are included in the plan. So that is everything above that dotted line versus what is excluded. Generally speaking, what is in the excluded section is because those are either regulated by another agency within the states or subject to California's cap and trade policy. So we don't want to be double counting these, industries or emissions. And when you take all of that into consideration, this is what our twenty nineteen greenhouse gas emissions baseline looks like.

So transportation, agriculture, and then buildings combined is a 21% share of our inventory. So those are our top three biggest sectors. And this is another look at that pie chart that breaks down exactly how those emissions are sourced based in each category. So you can see with on road transportation, it's mostly light duty vehicles that make up a lot of those emissions. For agriculture, fertilizer application is a primary source of emissions.

And for our building sector, gas is really the primary driver of those emissions in the built environment. Solid waste is also a considerable source of emissions that we need to address. So projecting out our greenhouse gas emissions from now and into 2045, what this graph shows us is the course of those emissions without additional local action from the county of Monterey. So this takes into account state actions. But if we did not have a climate action plan, this is what we could be expecting from those emissions.

And you can see that before moving on, our twenty thirty, twenty forty, and twenty forty five targets are indicated on this graph, and that is in alignment with the statewide goals.

And with that, I will pass it over to Hannah. Thanks, Cora. Good afternoon, supervisor Askew, supervisor Daniels. My name is Hannah Kornfeld. I work for Ascent Environmental.

We've been supporting the county for the past five or so years, on this effort. So I'll run through a few more slides here for you, as as quickly as we can. So building on what Cora said, starting with building energy, this is 21% of unincorporated county emissions made up of of nonresidential, buildings accounting for about 14% of total countywide emissions and residences, accounting for about 7%. So in the climate action plan, the focus really is on reducing gas use in buildings. And so that's through, both getting gas out of existing homes, so transitioning to cleaner technologies, and then also in in, improving the amount of clean electricity that's available locally.

Fortunately, three CE provides a significant portion of their electricity from carbon free sources. So, really, what we're dealing with is is primarily gas, and there's two strategies in the climate action plan that really focus on this.

Thank you, Hannah.

And I just want to point out to to both our supervisors and the public that in our community workshops, we spent a lot more time focusing on the co benefits of all of these strategies. So things like cleaner air, improves health outcomes, affordability for the community. This is a shorter presentation, and we spend a lot of time on that. So, if you have any questions in that regard, please let me know and be happy to go into it. But for our transportation sector, we are looking at different strategies to reduce, vehicle use as a primary method of reducing these emissions.

That is primarily through, increased sustainable land use planning and also focusing on active transportation to reduce vehicle miles traveled. And for those car trips that we cannot remove from our ecosystem, we are looking at electrifying those vehicles and relying on quite a bit of electric vehicle conversion to make up a majority of those emissions reductions.

Speaking to a few other sources of greenhouse gas emissions, we call these kind of our the different resource conservation strategies. So looking at both solid waste, which accounts for about 6% of unincorporated county emissions, and wastewater treatment, which is about 1%. Solid waste emissions are primarily generated from methane of organic materials in landfills. So really the focus here is on increasing the amount of waste that is diverted from landfills, primarily organic waste. So these charts just show kind of at the baseline year or in the baseline year how much waste was diverted from landfills, and then what the breakdown is in terms of is that waste generated from residents, or from from businesses.

So that provided a bit of a picture, in terms of how we can think about improving composting opportunities, which also lends itself to, some of the nature based solutions that we'll get into later. Water conservation and and wastewater, is really focused on how do we reduce building water use as well as landscaping water use and then increase, recycled water for irrigation, wherever possible. Fortunately, a lot of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with water, are very, very minimal, because it is based on electricity that's coming from clean supplies, from three CE. So it's not a significant greenhouse gas, emitting sector, but we know that it has, major implications for local water supply. So we do have some measures in there about that.

And then moving on to kind of the last, section of this is agriculture representing about 32% of countywide emissions. So I think as Cora mentioned earlier, this is coming from a variety of equipment uses, fertilizer use, open burning, and livestock. We are addressing agriculture related greenhouse gas emissions within the natural and working land sector, which also looks at carbon sequestration. So addressing some of the agricultural emissions are held within, this strategy NWL three for climate smart agriculture. Natural working lands is a really large focus of the climate action plan and is what the project team has spent, the past year or so really digging into more.

We have four primary strategies, tackling how to, know, enhance carbon sequestration, protect the existing carbon stock, and improve the ecosystem services of these various natural and working lands within the unincorporated county. So some around, coastal habitat and watershed restoration, fire adapted landscapes, green space, and infrastructure in addition to climate smart agriculture. We wanna spend a little bit more time on the natural and working lands section of this, of this document, and how we've been thinking about integrating carbon stock and sequestration. This has been an interesting challenge. It's not been been done in a lot of climate action plans in a way that this climate action plan looks at it.

So we're excited by kind of the solutions that we're able to bring forth in this plan. This is still kind of an evolving area and is not, not incorporated in a lot of local climate action plans yet. The state, however, has been really focused on, integrating carbon sequestration into all of their climate related planning efforts. So they've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes, at a statewide level, and so we have spent some time trying to figure out how to apply that, down to the local level. And there's a variety of of state documents and modeling, and other tools that have been published in in the past few years as we've been working on this project that have helped inform, what we've been looking at.

A lot of this is is based on what the, California Air Resources Board of CARB's 2022 scoping plan for achieving carbon neutrality. This is the state's climate action plan, essentially. It looks at how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the state laws. So the main, reduction targets are, 85% below 1990 levels, by 2045 as well as carbon neutrality in that same year. This was the first time that we saw a, statewide target that addressed, the need for carbon to be sequestered, either through or both through, natural working lands as well as mechanical approaches.

We did not look at any mechanical approaches that would be kind of your carbon capture and storage technologies. That is not incorporated into this. In every scenario that CARB modeled, carbon stock is anticipated to be lost over time. That's primarily due to a history of wildfire suppression tactics that have resulted in some of the catastrophic wildfires we've been seeing and and large amounts of carbon being lost in those events. So, really, what the the scoping plan tries to do is figure out, what are the land management activities that, can prioritize restoring and enhancing ecosystem functions that therefore give us more stable carbon stocks.

So there's a variety of management actions that they have modeled that we've been able to then kinda downscale to the county level. And so just to give you a sense of scale for what those, what those actions are, everything here is organized by the the land cover, the prominent land cover type. So within the forest, shrublands, and grasslands land covers, the state is trying to treat about 2,300,000 acres so that we can reduce wildfire risk, as well as not convert land to developed uses. There's also some targets around cropland statewide in terms of how much, climate smart practices the state is, seeking to achieve, very focused on getting more agricultural lands held in conservation easements and then an increase in agriculture that is organically grown. This is all statewide numbers just to clarify that.

So, one of the things that we worked with, a lot of the folks who've been engaged in this process with is how to think about carbon stock and carbon sequestration and how to integrate both into this climate action plan. So carbon stock is really that total amount of carbon that's held. It's looking at a point in time, and it's measured in in terms of its its mass. So carbon stock is, shown in the the chart underneath the definition here in terms of millions of metric tons of carbon. This is how much is being held statewide.

You can see it kind of fluctuates. It's been fluctuating over time, but generally speaking, there is a loss of carbon. The state does have an interesting strong, downward trajectory between, like, 2041 and 2045. That's likely due to their modeling assuming, some carbon losses, and it might have just kind of pushed it towards the end of the model. So I wouldn't take that, as a a predictor of exactly what's gonna happen, but I think it, illustrates kind of what they're expecting the trends to be.

On the the other side of this is carbon sequestration, which is really the rate at which carbon is removed from the atmosphere and stored, in carbons carbon pools, and that's measured in terms of carbon, per year that's sequestered. And so this is showing significant variability. You have zero in the middle of this chart. So some years, the lands are are losing carbon, and some years, they are sequestering carbon. And so that fluctuation makes it a little bit challenging when you're looking at greenhouse gas emissions in comparison because those are relatively stable.

We we understand how much activity happens on an annual basis. We have data sources for tracking that, and we can therefore, estimate how much emissions are happening. Because of this having significant fluctuations, it's been hard to, kind of line up apples to apples. So I'll just walk through briefly what our approach has been in this plan. So for the carbon stock side of this, what we ended up using was, some work that our team was fortunate enough to work on with, AMBAG a few years ago on this, Monterey Bay Natural Working Lands climate mitigation resiliency study where we built a carbon model of the, Monterey Bay, the the Tri County area there.

That was a a spatial analysis that was done that matched carbon levels to the various land covers and soil, within the three counties, and then we projected what that carbon stock might look like under two scenarios, and both of those came from the scoping plan. So one is a kind of business as usual scenario where there's very minimal land management activities that are happening, and then the scoping plan scenario, which I showed those couple of high level objectives that it's trying to get to in terms of, treating for for wildfire and improving healthy soils on, agricultural lands. So we downscaled those actions and applied those. We prorated them to the unincorporated county based on the land cover types that align with what is in, in the county, and the strategies and actions that you see in the in the climate action plan, have been based on a lot of, back and forth with some of our, agricultural interests, in Monterey County, which have who have been incredibly helpful in this process. So the the image that you see here is the result of that carbon stock, inventory where the, little half moons that are on the bottom that are purple show how much carbon is held below ground, and the the green ones that are, the top half is, what's held above ground.

So you can see not all land covers are equal, and we'll show you a little bit more detail into how to think about these different lands. In terms of what this looks like over time, as I mentioned, the state is projecting carbon loss in every scenario. That's why their target is to not lose more than 4%. The same is true if you you scale this down to the unincorporated county. Under both scenarios, carbon is anticipated to be lost, but we can we can save a lot by, taking more action through through the land management actions identified in the scoping plan, which have been, integrated into the county's cap.

We did look at this in in terms of what different land covers projections look like because they are all telling a slightly different story. So forest, oak woodland, shrublands kind of follow the same pattern where the orange line is the the scoping plan scenario, so that's the one where we take significant action. The blue is kind of a do nothing scenario. In both instances, in the long term, carbon is being lost, but that changes when we start to look at some of the agriculture, based land cover types like cropland and grassland that's that's used for for ranging for, excuse me, for rangeland. So when we look at cropland and grassland and the the orange line is what we're really focused on, we see carbon, increasing over time, and that's due to, improving healthy soils over time is capturing more carbon in the soil.

And so those are really the areas that we wanted to highlight and make sure that, you know, this is this is the beneficial work that's being done. Really, we on the forest and and oak woodland side, it's gonna be about kind of protecting what's there and and treating for, to avoid catastrophic wildfires. I'm not gonna get into the details on this slide for sake of time, but, I know you all have have the slide deck here. But these are the, kind of broad land management actions that were in the 2022 scoping plan, so you can kinda see what the level of action at the state level is and then how we've prorated that down to the unincorporated county, and that those numbers have been, reflected in in our quantification that we then, actually looked at for the carbon sequestration side of this effort. So moving from stock to sequestration, we ended up deriving a rate of change between the business as usual scenario and the scoping plan scenario, to understand what would happen in future years and then converted that metric tons of carbon, that mass to, metric tons of c o two e, which is the gas that we're looking at for all of the the greenhouse gas or or climate mitigation side of this project.

And so the way we think about this is, these are the the far right column is really the, avoided emissions loss, by taking more action in terms of protecting healthy soils, as well as, forest and and oak woodlands and other land cover types. And so this was then wrapped into the greenhouse gas reduction analysis, which Cora will kind of show what the final results of this work looks like.

Thanks, Hannah. So when we take into account the local actions provided in the climate action plan in this draft, You can see that in the bottom kind of red emissions line. So that is where we would be if we were able to implement these strategies within the cap, And that would get us to our 2030 and our 2040 goals. We would still be shy of our twenty forty five goals. And for the purposes of this private action plan, that is okay.

This fulfills our requirements, and the climate action planning process is an iterative process. So we will be able to revise this over the years as we have more information on programming, planning, and implementation successes as we go along.

Okay. So for sake of time, we'll kind of go through these fairly quickly. You know, this is a a climate action and adaptation plan. So, there there is a chapter in the CAP addressing kind of climate vulnerabilities, that has been, that was prepared a few years ago. It was intended to supplement the multi jurisdictional hazard mitigation plan.

It's also been used as the basis for the county safety element update, and it really is looking at the the various climate change effects and how that might impact critical infrastructure vulnerable populations in the unincorporated county. And so the strategies that have been put into the the climate action plan are really intended to improve the county's ability to adapt to these various hazards. The results of the climate vulnerability assessment show just a variety of of risks. You know, we're expecting to see increased temperatures, number of extreme heat days, amount of precipitation, and and number of extreme precipitation events. And so, there are a lot of people in the unincorporated county living within, floodplains, living in within, high and very high, fire hazard severity zones.

So all of these have been part of the the conversations as this plan's been built of how to incorporate more resilience into, into the plan. There's five climate, adaptation strategies in the in the CAP. There's a kind of overarching multihazard mitigation strategy, that crosses, between all the different hazards and then one for each of the the primary climate hazards, those being wildfire, extreme heat, flooding and sea level rise, and drought. And we did receive, feedback during one of the CAP workshops over the course of this project about where the community feels the most concerned in terms of these different hazards. And I'll turn it back over to Clara.

Thank you, Hannah. So I did wanna touch on the implementation section included in the climate action plan a bit. So in that section, we discussed how the sustainability program is a lead department, but also this will be done within with great coordination between other county departments, regional state agencies, and also other community organizations to support these actions. And while there has been some comments already on the funding needs of climate action, one of the things that I think is at least worth highlighting is the cost of inaction for climate change. So as we just saw with the extreme heat and increased precipitation events, we are expected to experience many climate change related effects, and those will have wild ranges of economic damage to the county and also our economic society as a whole.

And when you look at the social cost of greenhouse gases from the EPA, we find that there is around a $45,000,000 per year value for implementing these strategies as proposed in this climate action plan. So we have to weigh the benefits as well as the cost here. Then in our implementation section, we also, have a set of actions that we are calling our near term actions for prioritization for 2026 through 2030. And these are the criteria that we are using. And, again, we're really focusing on the co benefits with all of our strategies of increased health, economic benefits, community resiliency, clean air, employments, and those kinds of things that we all care about in our community.

So putting a cost to all of this through a sense analysis found that, we would need over 12 different full time employees and a cost of around $16,000,000 per year to implement those near term actions. This is a helpful analysis in the sense that it provides us with the sense of scale of what we are looking for. This is not a recommendation for the board of supervisors to follow this as a budgetary item, but it is showing that there is increased investment needed in climate action and adaptation. And while I won't go through all of them, just discussing the cost of inaction, again, there are many health and well-being consequences of letting the effects of climate change happen and especially without adapting to those effects. There are quite a few, that are locked in even if we were to mitigate our emissions today.

There's been enough warming already that we are expected to see increased heats and precipitation events within the county as well as impacts to our communities through increased economic pressures and just general instability. And with that, we have quite a few items for monitoring and reporting. So we'll be back every few years. So we'll have a major update every five years back to Alternative Energy and Environment Committee and to the Board of Supervisors. We'll be tracking metrics that are aligned with all the objectives in the climate action plan, and we will come back annually to provide a progress report to the Board of Supervisors and this committee.

And with that, Hannah is going to briefly show us our Inveo platform for public engagement.

Okay. Great. So, you may have seen our website over, the past few years. What we will have available is, the climate action plan so that folks who are interested can comment directly on the document in a live setting. They don't have to submit comments, send them in via email.

They can still do that if they so choose. But, essentially, you'll see the PDF of the document. Folks will be able to click wherever, they would like to make a comment. They can, list their their name and email, which will not be shown publicly, and list their comment, and and then the that will all be captured, and we can be able to to comment back and and answer folks' questions about the document. So once this is fully open for public comment, then we will release this, and folks are still able to access the, the project website if they so choose.

Let me switch back to the presentation here. Thank you, Hannah.

So I'd

like to I'd like to just interject if I can because, this meeting was only scheduled for an hour, and I'm, I'm concerned we have a lot of public comment. And so I think if possible, I'd like to open up for public comment unless you have something critical you need to say.

Yes. So this is actually our very last slide. And I wanted to let people know that our next step after this committee is to head to the board of supervisors for initial feedback. And then that is when, pending board of supervisors approval, that is when we would open that sixty day public comment period for general public comments on the documents itself.

Okay. Thank you. So with that, I would like to see how many hands do we have online?

I see two.

Five. I see four, five.

Four or five. So they're going up.

Good. Six. Yep.

And then I'd like to know how many in the room. I have someone what's your name?

Diana

Henrikin. Diana's here. Okay. So And we have one in Monterey room.

Yes. We have one in the Monterey room, and we could also put up a timer if you'd like.

Okay. Let's do two minutes just to get through them. And then if we could start quickly and start with the Monterey room.

And, Kate, just I have a I have another call. I can't not be on at 03:00, so I will have to step out in eight minutes.

Okay. Let's get to the pop let's go to one minute, and I will not scream at you if you go over one minute. But let's just go to one minute, try to get through all the public comments, and, and then figure out next steps.

Okay. You're good.

Go ahead.

Alright. Hi.

My name is David Perina. I'm a Prudendale resident and, chapter leader of the Citizens Climate Lobby Monterey Bay. I just wanted to say that I strongly support approving the cap and sending it to the BOS, the board of supervisor for consideration. It's high time that we start working to put this plan into action. Staff has worked diligently to solicit and integrate stakeholder and community feedback into the plan.

I think they did a good job of doing so. It's an ambitious plan, and I approve of the county thinking big and taking big swings on climate affordability and public health, all of which will, be benefits if the county achieves its goals. The benefits of implementation far outweigh the estimated costs. I also believe that the that the cap lays out a credible strategy for achieving its goals with thoughtful consideration of the challenges and solutions available as well as, those of the the county stakeholders. So I look forward to seeing what the county can do, and, thank you for your time. And, also, looking forward to see how community organizations might help with implementation. So thank you for thinking of that.

One minute.

Thank you very much. I'm gonna go to the person that's in the room with me, and you have a minute to just share with us your thoughts, and we won't shout at you if you go over a minute. But

Okay. I'm Diane Hannington. I live in unincorporated Monterey County. And I also I'm I'm so grateful that you've done this work. It's it's amazing. What was really interesting to me was the carbon sequestration ideas. We have beautiful grasslands, much biodiversity, and that doesn't take money. It it's it's not tech. I I'm also a member of Citizens Climate Lobby, Communities for Sustainable Monterey, and supporting indigenous communities group. And I would really like to know what tribal people you are consulting with.

I speak with a number of different people. I don't know everybody and all the tribes here, the Ohlone, the s one, the Saline, and and some Chumash here. But I have not heard who you've been consulting with, so that would be important to me. And and you've spoken about indigenous technology planning to deal with fire safety. You speak about this in in your plan. I wanna know more about that.

You did it. Amazing. Alright. Moving to the online, I'll have you expeditiously staff just call on the individuals, please.

Alright.

We can start with Walt.

Walt, you're up.

Hi, folks. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Nice. So I just wanna go big picture for a minute. Work with a lot of ag operators, my day job at Western Growers, some of the most progressive growers are in Salinas Valley in terms of organic and regenerative. I think the targets may be worthy targets, but I think they're unrealistic on a couple levels. We're losing a ton of organic acreage and organic growers because there's not enough demand for the acreage right now in California.

Our ranch in South County in San Arto is a is a victim of that as well. So when you have shorter and shorter leases, the ability of folks to do a three year organic certification goes way down. And regenerative ag practices take several years to get right. So I think the goals are right, but the market has spoken, organic demand and premium are shrinking. Regenerative ag is finding practices hard to get paid for by the consumer. So it has to get paid for by somebody else. And I just think we wanna when we look at the cost of this, if we keep pushing growers costs way up to the sky, the acreage will keep moving even faster to Arizona, Mexico, and Peru. I've got detailed numbers on all that I can tell you about from my day job, but that's the risk if we go too aggressively on this on this front is that we'll just push the acreage out of the state by overregulating it.

Thank you, Walt.

Janelle?

Janelle, you're up.

Can you hear me? Yep. Great. I wanted to say thank you to staff. I know this has taken a lot of time, and it's a 516 page document if you haven't looked at it. But I I am going to push back and be concerned just as a farmer and local citizen here about the cost of implementing this plan. I really appreciate the economic detail on this, and you can see the total cost, which comes out to at least $16,700,000 per year. But what's not included is the cost to businesses and regular citizens. So when we're required to replace our perfectly good stoves or landscaping equipment, there's a cost to that for individual citizens to have to replace that. So I just wanna be cognizant of that.

And, Kate, I've told you my issues with the flooding in the Salinas River, and I'm happy to provide data and scientific detail on that, that I really believe that was a man made issue and can be entirely preventable if the Monterey County Water Resources Agency and the county steps up to implement what is in their bylaws. Thank you.

You.

Who's up next? Robert? Robert, you're up.

Hi. The winner from the Grower Shipper Association is 100% right on. We must shift the focus to adapt adaptation and resilience. Instead, the plan imposes ridiculous and poorly defined targets that are costly, meaningless, or unattainable such as, quote, increase organic ag by 20% and implement climate BART practices and regenerative ag and crop tank conversion of 3,800 acres annually. The fact is that soil tillage inhibits soil sequestration and practices like cover crops and no till are either costly or impractical for berries and row crops.

Grapes are already mostly no till. We use compost. The only real opportunity to increase regenerative agricultural practices is in the rangeland with the cattle industry. Instead, the plan ignores the ecosystem services that all cattle provide, Regenerative grazing practices that mimic behavior of native herd animals increase both forage and carbon sequestration. Instead, the plan labels cows as emitters. And, also, the cost, $16,700,000, 54% of that goes to capital projects and other fluff. And why is this not going to the ag advisory committee if ag is responsible for 32% emission? And why does staff take all the time? Thank you.

Thank you so much, Bob. Kathy's up Who is it? Kathy?

Mhmm. Yes.

Yeah. Hi. I'm Kathy Durvin. I live in Pacific Grove, and I'm a member of the Sierra Club California Statewide Climate and Energy Committee. I wanna thank the staff county staff and our consultants for their long term work to bring this draft to you today for consideration and for getting ready to open up the public comment period as a 500 plus page plan.

It's good to have a sixty day comment period to allow groups like ours to review, discuss, and formulate our comments, which we look forward to doing. These local climate action adaptation plans are only as good as their implementation. And in 2026, the state of the climate is such that we must hold ourselves accountable. The county opted to do a non sequa plan, so we are gonna be looking for mechanisms by which the county will hold itself accountable, engage the public, the business community, and civic and public leaders to help do that. So thank you very much for starting this process after a long, long period of development.

Thank you, Kathy. Deborah?

Deborah, you're up.

Yeah. It just popped up. I was going, where's the button? Where's the button? Hi, everyone. My name is Deborah Mackley Dodson, and I am a cattle rancher in San Ardo. And I have been following the action plan the common action plan for a long time. Hi, Hannah. She's one of the original people. And, Hannah, if you can remember that we agreed to put GWP star because I know by law you have to use GWP 100.

I get that. I'm not even gonna argue that point. But the piece that's in the action plan, the revised one seems reads more like a hit list to some degree on GWP store. And I was hoping we'd go back to the original commitment from staff and the county to make it to show and educate the public on the differences between the two and the successes that Monterey County would have if we use that. And I wanna say, Hannah, also, I am so excited about the grasslands efforts and the mitigation efforts.

So I really look forward to working with whomever I can get on in regards to a committee or group or whatever it may be because us ranchers have been doing this work for generations. And we work at our ranch, we work hand in hand with NRCS, and we are seeing the differences. I mean, extreme differences. Now it hasn't been quantified, but I can tell you when oak trees start growing, grasslands start improving, the elk are coming back, deer has increased, and our cattle are growing and thriving, I think that we're doing something right. And I'm hoping that we can incorporate just like mister Roach.

I did not pay him to give us a speech like for that as cattle ranchers, but he was spot on. We're the solution to helping us or helping you meet Monterey County's goals.

Thank you, Deborah.

Thank you.

Nancy? Any more?

Yes. One more. Nancy? Hello.

This

is Nancy Falstik. I'm the director of Rejenaracion, Pajo Valley Climate Action, work closely with folks, especially in North Monterey County. And just wanna appreciate all the work that's gone into this and appreciate all the speakers. I think it'll be a really robust public comment period. Really important to get lots of people thinking together since we are in quite an emergency.

And I guess that's what I would reiterate. It's like, what can we do at this point in time? The the best time for climate action, I'm sure, was about sixty years ago, but the next best time is today. And we are seeing escalating impacts like the recent extreme heat wave in still in winter. And so I think that we can't let cost be a deterrent to taking really strong action. I do think that will pay off economically, and it will also help protect people's health, other species' health as much as possible going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Nancy. With that, I'm gonna close public comment, and I know we are in a time crunch. I do have a lot of questions I'm not going to ask. Instead, what I would really like staff to please do is to include in a memo when you bring this to the board of supervisors a full analysis of the public comment that we received and your response to that public comment. And I would also ask if possible that you take this to the ag advisory committee since that was requested, and that would be a a good spot for this. So with that, I if I can get some feedback from staff on that so we can let Wendy Root ask you go.

I support your request, supervisor.

Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. I assume so. Yes. Staff I also have

and I'll just say, like, I also have some questions. I think it would be great if we could get, I know for our folks who are trying to join us, it's hard to come to multiple meetings, but I would love another opportunity. I know we'll have opportunity at the board meeting, but I think it's really important that we have the the time allocated for the full discussion.

We can absolutely develop that memo for you. And again, I would encourage people to keep in mind that this is our first pass at public comments. And during the public comment phase, we are happy to continue to engage with members of the public and community based organizations and walk through this plan as you're formulating your official public comments as well.

Yeah. And I think that trip to the Ag Advisory Committee would be helpful to address those specific comments, and it would give the public another opportunity as well as the public comment period. And then I expect what folks have said, there'll be a robust public comment period, and I can bring any further questions that I have to the board of supervisors. So with that, supervisor ask you, do we have support to move this to the next step so we can open the public comment period?

Yeah. So we've got I do have one quick clarifying question. So before going to the board of supervisors, are you saying we should go to the ag advisory committee, or should we go to the ag advisory committee as part of our sixty day public comment period? Just so I know.

It can be either. What what I'm really what's really important is you're gonna have a staff report, and then you're gonna have an expansion of that report with in fuller detail talking about and it it would actually make it better if you could get to the ag advisory committee beforehand. What would be the benefit is you can fully articulate the concerns that have come in in the in in public comment both from the ag advisory committee and from from this meeting. But those that would just be helpful, I think, as as an expanded staff report.

Absolutely. And

you can address the concerns. I mean, if you have if you have responses, this is also a time to respond to the concerns.

All right. That sounds great. We will coordinate that and also try and do our best to balance. I know we have a busy schedule coming up for the Board of Supervisors, but I'll be in touch with your offices to let you know how we best plan to address that.

Thank you so much. Great.

Alright. So motion to move staff recommendation. So we move on to open public comment and with the additional direction that supervisor Daniels offered.

By consensus, that is moved.

Okay. Fantastic. I've got a jump

You can go. I will adjourn the meeting. Thank you.

And thank you to all the members of the public who joined us today. We'll make sure we have more time allocated for the future. Thanks.

So I might be able

to get the answer to

your question. We can see. Yeah.