Council Sustainability Committee - Regular Meeting

Not on? Not on?

My apologies.

That was it's

not been on and on,

and I just turned on the meeting video and audio sits now. Okay.

So I'll repeat a a repeat of that. We're on item one, which is our call to order. We are conducting this meeting with a virtual component. If you wish to address the committee virtually, join on Zoom using the link or phone number and webinar ID shown on the screen. For in person attendees, we have speaker cards, which we can hand to you as you enter the room. So we are now on item number two, which is roll call. Ms. Lee, can you, please take roll? Certainly. Chair Hicks.

All members are present.

Okay. Thank you. Item number three is minutes approval. First, we'll look at the CSC meeting minutes from November 2024. Does anyone have comments or questions? Seeing none. Does anybody have do any members of the public have comments on the meeting of minutes? No. And who is monitoring the virtual?

Thank you.

No. Okay. Thank you. Would anyone like to make a motion to approve the meeting minutes? Move approval. Second. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. So it passes unanimously. Now we're on item four, which is oral communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved for people wishing to address the committee on matters not on the agenda. You can speak on any topic for up to three minutes. And we, state law prohibits the committee from acting on nonagendized items. Would any member of the public like to provide comment on an item that's not on the agenda?

So I see nobody either in person or virtually. So we'll now close the oral communications item and move to the discussion and action items. Item five, which is new business. We'll start with 5.1, which is greenhouse gas free fleet and landscaping equipment purchasing policy. And this item will be presented by sustainability division staff. Ms. Lee will commence the presentation.

Thank you, chair Hicks, and good evening, committee members and members of the public. I'm I'm going to introduce this item and then hand over to, miss Lynn, who will be presenting the bulk of the actual proposed policy. And you'll note that, you know, within this item and then kind of across the agenda, we have been shaping items for your committee and for the council's ultimate consideration that are assuming kind of its federal context stays stable. But, you know, there are things that were fed into this analysis and other items that we've been working on that, as of now are standing, rules around vehicles, for example, in this item. And we will continue to update it if there are changes in the regulatory environment.

So I just wanted to make a note of that. That being said, we're really pleased to be bringing this policy to you, within the sustainability action plan for council directed staff to identify strategies for electrifying our fleet. And this policy will be a foundational piece. And with that, I'd like to hand it over to Ms.

Thank you, Ms. Lee.

Gonna start with some background in the context of our city municipal operation municipal operation emissions. Vehicle fleet and equipment represent 33% of municipal operation emissions. And as miss Lee mentioned, SAP for direct staff to develop a clean fleets policy and to address off road equipment emissions as well. A greenhouse gas free or electric first purchasing policy is one tool that can advance decarbonization in that vehicle and equipment sector. What is a greenhouse gas free purchasing policy?

It's a policy that promotes or requires the purchase of low emission equipment and vehicles, and it provides a decision making process to prioritize low emissions equipment and vehicles that may cost more upfront. And it helps to strategically plan with the transition, by supporting infrastructure deployment such as electric vehicle charging, charging accommodations for, landscaping equipment. Who has adopted this policy? We found at least 19 clean fleet policies across the region, state, and country with several examples locally in the Bay Area. And let's take a look at what our fleet, is comprised of.

So we have approximately 250 active vehicles, 60% of which are light duty and 40% of which are medium and heavy duty. And in this case, light duty means passenger vehicles, small trucks, and SUVs, whereas medium and heavy duty vehicles are larger trucks and specialty vehicles and, emergency vehicles such as fire engines. We have a, you know, robust set of landscaping equipment, which includes both handheld landscaping equipment as well as off road landscaping equipment, mowers, and also construction equipment like bulldozers as well. So what is the state context in which we're proposing the greenhouse gas free policy? There are a few state regulations that are really pertinent to these purchases already.

There is the advanced clean cars two initiative from the California Air Resources Board, which governs the sales of passenger cars, trucks, SUVs. And starting in 2035 bans the sale of gas vehicles, but not the usage. It's the sales of vehicles moving forward. The advanced clean fleets regulation, on the other hand, is aimed at transitioning medium and heavy duty vehicle fleets specifically to zero emission. And from 2024 to, 2026 requires at least 50% of annual, purchases, in the fleet to be zero emission, and this moves to 100% requirement in 2027.

As for landscaping equipment, there's the small off road engine regulations from, the California Air Resources Board that governs these purchases. Starting in 2024, the sale of gas powered equipment was banned. So that includes, handheld landscaping equipment and mowers, both push mowers and ride on mowers. So on on top of this context, you know, staff is proposing this greenhouse gas free fleet and vehicle purchasing policy, which in short would require that all on road and off road vehicles and landscaping equipment to be electric if the following criteria are met. If the if the equipment is commercially available, if it meets operational needs, is financially feasible, which includes fuel savings from switching from gas or diesel to electric.

There is EV charging available or can be made available in a reasonable period of time to support that equipment and vehicle on purchase and that there are adequate accommodations. And by adequate accommodations, that means that there is, for example, for a vehicle, a parking space where, there can be conduit and an electric vehicle charging that can reach that space to service that vehicle. So what would, you know, policy implementation entail, and what's the cost of fleet electrification? So the cost of, light duty fleet electrification in the near term from 2025 to 2030 is about 5 and a half million dollars. And this cost estimate includes the purchasing price, fueling costs, and operations, and maintenance costs.

It does not include the electric vehicle infrastructure costs and does not include federal incentives, which we'll talk about later in the presentation, the value of that that that brings to the EV, how that supports electric And then just a further note on that, the total cost analysis does consider that we provided in the report is based on existing regulations. And we just wanted to highlight the light duty vehicle cost as that would be the highest impact area for this policy. And then looking forward, aside from that one side to the, electric vehicle charging cost. So on top of the vehicle cost, we have the, of course, the infrastructure costs that are needed to support the vehicles. 29 EV charging ports would need to be, available at city hall, municipal operations center, and shoreline maintenance center by 2030.

Those are our three primary, large, city vehicle domiciles. So that's kind of the short term, you know, what needs to be deployed in the short term. And then over the course of, like, the fleet being electrified through 2040, we'll need 113, new EV charging ports at approximately, $4,000,000 cost total

to for,

for those installations. And throughout those projects, it's likely that there'll be some electrical infrastructure upgrades with fire throughout the process to support the EV charging if there is an adequate power at the site. And we're exploring some programs, which I'll go into that support that. So staff has, submitted a request for the capital improvement program to, for funding for the electric vehicle charging stations. And everything else on the slide mentions, like, other supporting efforts that we're looking at to reduce city costs.

So the inflation reduction act pay direct pay incentives are valued at $67,500 per light duty vehicle and then $40,000 for large, like, heavy duty vehicles. So that's something that we're actively pursuing and applying for. There's also a program from Pacific Gas and Electric called the EV fleets program that pays for a dedicated electric coal meter to charge charge electric via city fleet electric vehicles, and we estimate the value of that program at around $200,000 for the city based on comparable city with the comparable service population. Staff is also exploring a California Energy Commission grant opportunity, which is administered through a company called BetterFleet, which will which if we decide to participate and move forward, will provide charging optimization support, for the city fleet and subsidized, electric vehicle charging stations. And we continue to evaluate additional grant opportunities for electric vehicle charging.

Yeah. I'm moving into some progress updates of you know, we have made a lot of progress so far and wanted to highlight that so in the context of this policy. The police department, is in the process of purchasing a few electric vehicles, including patrol rated electric vehicles and, some electric vehicles for school resource officers. And we have our, police captain there, Wahid, kind of as a champion of our pilot who we're working with, cross departmentally to to implement that electric vehicle pilot. The community services department has also made a few electric vehicle purchases recently to electrify their parks operations, and we see one of the vehicles there showcased at Earth Day, in the background, and there have been, yeah, a few vehicles purchased to support electric park operations.

CSD also has already converted half of its handheld landscape equipment to electric already. So half of that has already converted, and there are two additional electric ride on mowers that have been, I believe, order have been purchased and stopped or waiting on to implement to support a parks servicing. The city also displayed at our Earth Day was the electric community shuttle. The city is leasing four community shuttles that will go into service later this spring, and that's what is shown on the screen. And the city was awarded a federal grant to purchase four additional to purchase four electric community shuttles, which are expected to arrive in 2127.

And then we are also, of course, pursuing electric vehicle charging, strategically. So the purchase for two, solar and battery electric vehicle chargers are underway to support the police department's electric vehicle pilots as well as the other vehicles at the municipal operations center. So there's two units, one going to the police department and the one going to the municipal operations center. And so to summarize the greenhouse gas free policy would further this progress at the city by establishing a clear, leadership role, integrating decarbonization goals into city operations, and supporting financial and infrastructure planning by clear providing a clear idea of how many vehicles will be electrified over time and a clear policy around that. We anticipate that the policy will have different levels of impact on the different equipment categories.

We think there'll be a low level of impact on medium and heavy duty vehicle purchases because the existing regulation is very strict and very ambitious. As we mentioned, there's half of vehicles need to be zero emission. Purchases need to be zero emission from now until 2026, and then they'll all need to be zero emission after 2027. So that's already pretty ambitious. We expect a medium impact on landscaping equipment, and that this policy would support continued city leadership in the area of landscaping equipment electrification.

And then with light duty fleet, that would be, you know, pretty high impact of, the policy, like, greatly accelerating, the path to electrification. Although I will mention that it is in line with, the state policy to ban the sale of vehicle, of gas vehicles starting in 2035 and allows the city to have a smooth ramp up to implementing that policy, rather than having a very dramatic implementation, once the, there are no longer gas vehicles sold. It's kind of in it's in acceleration, but also in line with the existing state policy. Next steps, we've yeah. Look forward to hearing your feedback and thoughts on the proposed policy and would bring it to city council for adoption if

I just

wanted to underscore, how much collaboration has happened already, across the many departments that are operating equipment and vehicles for city operations. This policy is really meant to cement something that's already working really well, but part of our efforts are to to to really ingrain sustainability across organization. So this is a formalization of something that is already off to a great start. We have colleagues online that are available to answer your questions from the various departments. So if you have any questions specific to CSD or, public works, our colleagues are also available.

And with that, we'd be happy to any questions.

Great. Thank you very much. So we will start with, questions from committee members. Are there any questions?

Well, my question really was gonna be kind of what you started explaining. Basically, how different would this make it? It would formalize it, But but in terms of cost outlays, do you think it would make a big difference in how much money works there? I

think it will prompt us to have discussions. So already, you know, I've met with to talk about if we change the types of vehicles that we're purchasing, how do we reflect that in the budget? How do we capture savings? You know, fuel savings are typically you know, fuel is budgeted in one department, but the Apple outlay to purchase a vehicle might be in another department. So if we if we change our procurement practice, then how do we change our budget and kind of cost recovery to follow suit?

So having a policy like this would then just open the door to say, okay. Well, this is the direction of council. We anticipate purchasing more and more electric vehicles and then having it be rather than it being catch as catch can, which, you know, we've been pretty successful at as you've seen. This can be a more systematic way to do it, and then we can think about, like, all of the infrastructure that would support operations and finance piece of it.

And it seems like there's kind of built in a about whether it was feasible, you know, financially feasible. That seems to be something that gives gives whoever's, implementing it some necessary judgment room Absolutely. If it's, you know, just really very, very expensive. Because, I mean, in some things, I'm sure like, I was talking to the fire chief Yeah. Last year, and and and fire apparently, fire engines aren't there yet, but they're watching it. And so, I can imagine it differs. Consider you know, these specialty vehicles. It differs a lot depending on which one you're talking about.

Absolutely. I mean, mutual aid, for example, if we sent an engine somewhere else to respond to a fire, would we know that there are chargers there as well? You know? So many considerations for certain specialty classes, and and we would definitely not be forcing electric vehicle purchases on all of the departments. This policy was developed in partnership with all of the departments.

They, you know, they would be part of any request for exemptions. It's it really is meant to just turn our our initial assumption about the kind of vehicle that we would purchase from gas vehicle where we would have to justify purchasing an electric field vehicle to saying, we're gonna start with the assumption that we would purchase electric, and then we wouldn't make that purchase if it doesn't make sense actually or financially. Thank you.

That would be the

policy mentions the capital outlay committee. I assume it's someone in finance or some

It's the interdepartmental team. ASD, which is our financial administration office. Some kind of works from public works. And it's kind of the interdepartmental collaboration of, like, does this purchase make sense when it maybe doesn't align with, like, the lowest cost or somebody's requesting

Yeah.

Something additional.

That's why I was just curious. It seems like they're they're kind of they make go no go decisions about

some of those. And

then you mentioned some of this, subsidies and grant opportunities, and it looked like the primary state opportunity was through energy mostly charging infrastructure. Is is the state providing any other opportunities given that their loans opposing the the deadlines or not really right now?

Well, the the inflation reduction act

Yeah.

Was meant to bear with it. And so it's just such a significant incentive that I think having a regulation that would also accelerate it made sense. There aren't additional state incentives right now. We've had various grant offerings, for EV charging both from the federal and state level, not all specifically targeting municipal. Some are just for the public at large to add more EV structure. But I don't think there are additional state incentives that are current.

I was kinda getting at if if the IRA you know? If there are granted funds, which are probably fine, but then who gives a lot of people grants, and I just didn't know if anyone was gonna try and backstop any a tiny portion of that. Right.

But I mean, we we we had a even charging grant application submitted to the So this but, also, there was a federal one as well. Yeah. It's frozen. So, yeah, that's a quick that's a quickly change shifting landscape. So

And then I guess that leads you to the the one other question I had is, I I assume it looked like in reading through the policy, there's enough flexibility to where, you know, we're we're going to do things that are are

feasible at the moment.

So, for example, if we have a temporary economic condition, hopefully, a temporary economic condition like a tariff that makes charging infrastructure or vehicles, you know, 20% more expensive than they would be a year from now, we can just bank that money, you know, and, like, catch up.

I mean, we may well purchase as many vehicles in general.

Yeah.

Right. Like, so, of course But

we could save those funds so that we we have them when the time to strike is right. Yeah. So do that. But, yeah, I just wouldn't wanna be in a position where we're actually overpaying things

unnecessarily for

a year or two.

Right. Sorry. Just wanted to make sure. This policy doesn't appropriate any funds. Yeah. Our current vehicle replacement fund is mostly it's it's calculated based on, like, for like replacements. Most of our vehicles are gas. They're they're not GHG free vehicles. And so we have been budgeting up until now for gas vehicles. If we implement this policy, then there will be kind of another piece that has to happen in conjunction with FASD. Perhaps it'll be a accelerated spend down of the existing fleet replacement fund for the short term and then are we thinking of, like, what does the vehicle replacement cost looks like? Our preference is to have electric vehicles.

So it

doesn't appropriate we would bring further things like that to the full council to make any changes in our budget.

Does the policy look like it accounted for that? Because there are there are options like, you know, deferring the replacement

Right.

Retaining surplus using hybrid vehicles.

I'll say the overriding umbrella for all of my questions is actually, I'm going to channel Margaret Abacogue

that. Chris,

you're the her replacement on the committee who, you know, was saying that she wants more action and less larger action to planning ratio. And so that's kind of the lens I'm seeing all of this through. Not that I don't want planning. You need planning before action. And thank you for this planning.

But so with this, when I read the total cost of ownership for electrification of the fleet by 2042 is 20,000,000 plus compared to 11,000,000 plus for replacing fossil fuel vehicles like for like. So that's just a $9,000,000 difference, and we're talking about 2042 now to 2042. So over seventeen years. So that's just like spending half a half 1,000,000 more per year, which is peanuts in our CIP budget. So I'm just am I calculating that wrong?

No. And it doesn't

take into account reduction. Some

Okay. Savings. It also more favorable. Yes. And then on the other side, it also doesn't have that's just replacement of fleet. It doesn't have the charging infrastructure and save on electricity versus gas. So it doesn't have all the variables. But half 1,000,000 a year is, honestly, compared to a lot of other things we do so cheap that, I guess, my main at the same time, you have the state telling you that you have to buy all of it right. But that is. But it just makes me think if there's any are there any ways you can think of to tweak it to do a little more?

Because to me, this looks like we're really doing this on the cheap, and I lean more into action. You know? And like you said, I don't wanna force firefighters to be in electric fire trucks that won't make it to the fire and back. And, you know, I I'm I don't mean push it like that. But do you have any given that it is so cheap compared to other things we do, do you and and transportation, as we'll see later in the staff report, is important, and it doesn't all come from our own fleet.

But but it's an important, you know, precedent to set to show people that we can do it and they can too. Are there any other are there any other are there any things that come to mind that would allow us to tweak it and push it forward a little more?

Yeah. And I I have a quick answer for you, and then I see that deputy director Boyer has also indicated that she has a response on behalf of public works. But I will just say that we included a lot of information about the work that was underway already to underscore that all of the departments are actually implementing already. You know, there's electric vehicles in our parks and in our fleets, and we're getting chargers. This is a tool to empower them to go even faster, but it's not there hasn't already been really great work undertaken by our departments, led in large part by public works.

Allison, did wanna you add anything?

Allison Boyer, assistant public works director. I have I have fleet in my division. And one thing I I really agree with where you're coming from, and and the more we can do to electrify the fleet is great. I just want to point out that along with the charging infrastructure, there is a maintenance infrastructure side that our current mechanic area would not meet code and regulation for maintaining an electric fleet. So there is a capital cost that will come as we start to, build up our fleet.

And I just I just want you to be aware of that also added cost when you're you know, we're it's not we're not gonna change the we're not changing policy. We're still gonna keep moving, but there's a little bit more planning that we still need to do before I'm ready to jump and say we'll do all of the vehicles that we ever have to buy. There's there is some some other side other planning that needs to happen to make sure that we can if we're not maintaining all those vehicles, that we have the right contracts in place to do that.

Okay. I think my other questions are relative details to understand it better. Well, there was a little talk in the staff report about how the current federal administration may take actions that impact the state's ability to enact CARB's rules. I don't I don't know if you have any more to say on that or other impacts from the federal administration on this.

Yeah. Well, the inflation reduction act, of course, has been identified specifically, and then both of the CARB rules that you referenced have also been identified, but they're they stand currently. I don't know what how that process will unfold. We're certainly watching it.

So you don't have any specific

No. Because the EPA granted the state the ability to regulate the vehicles. So the the question is whether that can be undone. I think it has to wind through the courts. I just don't know how fast quickly will know an answer.

Okay. Then so I'm trying to understand what you were trying to tell us through tables one and two. Are you saying that table two is doing it sooner, or what's what were you trying to tell us through? Was it showing us how to the different financial impacts depending on if we did it slower or faster.

So table one is for the full fleet, faster and slower. Table two is for the light duty fleet only, faster and slower. And I think the the reason we included the slower is even though we have these these regulations

that are

put in that are in place that will Mhmm. Don't make us go faster. If they don't get enforced I see. They're dismantled, then you you would know what that longer term outlook look like. Okay. So that if there aren't regulations pushing us to purchase electric vehicles or if they're ban if they're not banned.

You know,

sale of them is not banned. If not electric vehicles is not banned, then

Okay. So your assumption is we would go with the faster route unless okay. Now you sound better. Do you ever look at not only electrifying vehicles but also buying smaller vehicles? Because I've seen that done in some places, and it make a lot of Is that ever a part of this policy?

I have not done that personally, but we have looked at the size of our fleet overall. I don't if the county. You know, we were looking at the the total municipal fleet and the actual utilization rate.

Oh, okay. That's a good one.

I haven't thought of that. Exactly. With COVID kind of understanding what that pattern actually is is a little bit harder because we don't know what our baseline Uh-huh. The last several years have been anomalies. But soon, I think, you know, we'll have data to point us to utilization information. I don't know.

Yeah. Oh.

Yes. We have Natalie Hansen who is with who conducted the fleet electrification study, so I believe she has a comment. Yeah.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. I just know I could chime in here on the downsizing vehicles. We we did look into that in the fleet study. So the recommendation for each of the replacements that now, you know, fleet has in hand identifies a a few opportunities where, you know, an f two fifty would have been downsized to an f one fifty, and it's the f one fifty Lightning as the energy replacement because it can fulfill the duties of that f two fifty combustion engine. So, yeah, that we did we definitely looked into that in the process of the gate strategic planning.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

I've heard that there's small fire vehicles that wouldn't replace the big ones, but there was talk in the staff report of doing more research on the fire, and I think that might be a productive part of it, but that's a common note. See. And do we have any preliminary reports on the landscaping equipment and how that's working out? Because I there are a lot of people interested and also people saying it does and doesn't work well. So I'd like to know about that.

Mister Youngberg from community services department is online.

Yep. Yep. Good evening. Tim Youngberg, Parks and Open Space Manager. We've been using electric equipment for quite a while now, quite a few years, and we've been going about it as very paced. We haven't gone out and bought just one particular piece of equipment. We've actually been trying different vendors, different models, different brands to try to see what works best before we go all in. So, like the staff report said, we're a little bit over 50% of our handheld equipment being, all electric, And it's just kind of adds something that is a gas two cycle engine. We're not going to replace it. We're not repairing it.

We're going straight to electric. So no new gas, powered equipment is being being purchased this time. So technology is evolving daily. You know, things that we were buying two, three years ago have gotten tenfold better. Same thing with our mowers. Mowers, just a few years ago, you didn't have the ride on mower that was electric. It is now. So, we're just kinda going at it as as slow paced. The the good thing on our end as far as charging, we just need a plug to be able to charge our batteries and our backpacks, that type of stuff, not as in-depth as the cars and the trucks that we're purchasing. So we have, like, little satellite, storage buildings along all the parks where we can charge our batteries.

We can do that type of stuff. And just a little side note and self promotion, as we get ready to open Evelyn Park here in probably the month of May, it'll be the first all electric park. So no gas consumption will be done with the landscaping equipment at that park. The mowers, the blowers, everything will be all electric.

So are different parks done differently? It's just

that you don't have all electric for everywhere.

Right. So it let you know, not to get into the to the minutiae of how all the parks are, but, typically, one staff member has maybe five parks. So that person might have all the electric equipment on hand, but the other staff member might have one or two pieces of gas and one piece of electric. So as things gets phased out or phased in, we'll start to have all electric, and then all the parks will eventually be all electric. But until that happens, you know, there might be somebody that doesn't have it, and I don't wanna, you know, put a sign up that said this park is all electric when somebody rolls up with a gas mower, and that kinda defeats the purpose.

I see. Great. That thank you. Because that was I didn't understand that when I read it in the staff report. Okay. My last question. Mister Youngberg, do you do you or can you ever or anybody with your staff talk to folks from the day worker center who are training the or educating people who do landscaping throughout Mountain View and maybe other cities as well, you know, because you're trying so many different kinds of equipment?

So, a couple of things. One is we we I know that the the group there with sustainability has sponsored day worker events. We've held it at Ringsdorf Park where they've used the new electric equipment, so that is definitely happening. I host various events for other agencies. We've done three or four now at McKelvey where we bring in all sorts of other agencies and try out new electric equipment. So we're trying to be the leaders in it and and try to put forth, you know, when when we're asking these local landscape companies to start using all electric and we're not, that wouldn't look very good. So we're kind of the first ones to be going all electric and, you know, leading by example.

Okay. Great. That's what I wanted to hear. So okay. So those are all my questions. Did anyone think of any additional questions? Okay. So then are there any comments from the audience on this item?

I do have a comment. Hi. I'm Bruce Carney. I'm a longtime resident. Back in 2008, I led the first environmental sustainability task force.

And one of the core attributes of that task force was belief that biodiesel was the answer to many of the challenges facing the planet. Turns out that biodiesel was sort of just something that came and sort of went. And so the reason I bring that up is I would like to ask staff to be aware staff and the committee to be aware of two things in particular. One is the recent announcement that a refinery in Northern California and a refinery in Southern California both announced that they're going to shut down, reducing the supply of gasoline in our state by 21%. Our state is sort of an island for gasoline.

And so if the the supply goes down by 21%, even as electric cars become more and more popular, I would anticipate in the near term a very rapid increase in the price of gas even diesel fuel for vehicles. So wondering if that assumption was in any way in the data that you're looking at. Second thing I'd like to say is that a month or so ago out of China came in and said there was a company whose EV could be recharged about 80% in. You know, if if this technology is real, it is an absolute game changer. It would make me want to say, you know, why are we putting chargers in multiunit, multifamily apartments?

It's just gonna be the gas station model. We'll have 18 or 20 EV stations. Like, we have 18 or 20 gas stations in Mountain View. They'll sell you snacks and beer while you charge and refuel your EV. They must have an enormous connection to the grid. You wouldn't want too many of these around. It's almost substation level if gonna be charging five or six vehicles all at the same time. So all of the assumptions about city owned EV charging infrastructure up to twenty forty, I think, have to have a huge asterisk around them. It's my understanding that this Chinese technology for rapid EV charging is something that the company who developed it will be wanting to license to other EV manufacturers. So we may see it in The US quite soon.

Let's see. Oh, the woman who spoke about retraining the maintenance people. I've owned an EV for seven and a half years. It is just a light duty vehicle, but there's no maintenance. I changed the white person, the tires, and the air filters. That is 100% of the job. And you know what? I can do that myself except for the tires. I had to buy those at America's Tire. So, I'm very pleased by what you put on the table and look forward to its rapid implementation.

Okay. Any other in person speakers?

Good evening. My name is Hala Alchowani. I'm also a longtime resident, in Mountain View. Yeah. That same thought occurred to me. I've had, an EV for eleven years and another one for six years, and there is no maintenance. The electric cars have one or two electric motors. That's it. And batteries. And the batteries, if they, you know, if they need replacement, hopefully, they don't.

But if they do that, maybe a big cost, but that doesn't happen for a long time. So there there really, there is much, much lower maintenance for the EVs, so something to consider. Yeah. And thank you for this great, proposal because it makes it, like you're saying, more systemic so that it it happens hopefully at a faster rate. And I support Allison, in her remarks that that would be because we want these actions to take place faster.

Lowering the greenhouse gas emissions for electric for two electric cars is probably the most impactful in in all of the categories that that we're trying to monitor. Thank you.

Video. Also excited to see that this is gonna be, a new policy that's coming in place. And, sort of a question, I, I'm hoping that if the parks and rec has contractors such as I know they have some contractors, the tennis courts at Cuesta, that they are also moving to electric, devices. So I see people over there with blue flowers. I don't know if it's the park staff or if it's the tennis courts staff, but, possibly, we've got contractors at Shoreline or other places too. So I'm hoping we're pushing them also to go all electric. Thank you.

Triggers another question to me for Tim. Tim, are you finding that the electric equipment is much quieter?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I I think it was in the report or it's, I actually might have just posted it recently. It's, like, 50% quieter. Okay. I mean, it depends on on, you know, a blower. It's just the type of noise, the type of piece of equipment. Usually, like for like, it's definitely, less noise.

Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Are there any virtual speakers? No virtual speakers. So, now I, return this item back to the committee for comments and comments and adoption or acceptance of the report.

A recommendation that staff bring this to on consent. So

comments?

Well, basically, I think this is a great idea, and I really liked your, explanation that what what this would do is it would sort of flip the conversation. So the standard operating procedure would be to order an EV unless there are reasons not to do that. I remember like that. And I guess that having that as a sort of stated goal is always helpful for everybody to have it just clear. So that's one comment.

But another thing I want we didn't really talk too much about the benchmarking. You mentioned that, those other communities in the in the area and state had this. And, so I was kind of wondering a little bit about how this had gone with them. And then, again, another comment I have is that, it seems like from a health point of view, the convergence to leaf blowers and other landscaping handheld landscaping equipment is really important from a health point of view. I mean, it's noisy and smelly enough if you're just nearby.

But if you're the person holding that equipment, it really does impact you. So so I'm interested in what we can do to, if we could do it as an add on to help get more of this, equipment out. And I know Berkeley has a lending library of of basic equipment. There's apparently, like, 50 tools that many people have in their garage, but you only use once or twice a year, and you can take out a library. So that would be something I would be kind of interested in, particularly with respect to the leaf blowers because, it sounds like our parks thank you, mister.

Sounds like our parks has really done a lot of piloting, and and they've they figured out what's good. You know, what are good and and they're they'll probably continue to do that. And that's very helpful for people who, you know, use these really sporadically. They they don't really have access to information, or it's hard to get access to information about what really works well. I mean, there is consumer reports, but and other things, but I don't know. It's just not the same as if you actually talk to people who. So, anyway, the lending library is a comment. I would I would like something that if we're gonna do any add ons, a lending library of, handheld equipment or something. Thank you for the

suggestion. Our our first attempt at the lending library was to supply the day worker center with the lending library kind of on the assumption that they would have a very high utilization rate Right. For all of their That that's a great idea. So we started with that, and then we'd be happy to approach the library and talk with them about phase two of that. But Okay. Thinking that the day worker center was the best starting point. Yeah.

Does it act as a lending library as well as a

I know that the the library does offer other items in the BULORO besides books, and there has been a model in other locations, other jurisdictions.

Does the day worker center act as the lending library? But That's a good answer to it. That's what I didn't ask.

I believe the day worker center uses less of their clients

check

out those Just for sure. Because they are they've been trained in how to use operate the equipment safely. Okay.

More comments?

Comments, I'll move that we recommend the draft policy for council adoption.

Second. Second. Second. My comments are we going to add? I would support the idea of the of of phase two of the lending look, lowering phase two of the lending library. I mean, I I just think the the landscaping equipment is important to a lot of people for the carbon reduction reasons, but also and probably air quality too.

We will engage with the library about that immediately. I think we would, if if the committee is okay with it, keep it separate from the municipal operations Yeah. Orientation of this policy, but, certainly, we'll pursue that immediately. And

the other thing I wanted to support, it was in the staff report, but it says that some oh, I don't I don't know if I can find my exact notes, but it said that for some kinds of fleet, I think not the light duty, but the heavier duty, maybe maybe fire in particular, or maybe it was a variety of them, that the analysis could be more nuanced nuanced than it now is. So I would also I think the staff report implied that you you were gonna maybe do a more nuanced analysis in future, or do we are you going to do that definitely, or should we encourage you to do that?

That's interesting question. I think right now, what we're trying to do is watch and see what happens with the heavy duty medium and heavy duty regulations. If it stands, then there are exemptions for the larger public safety, you know, vehicles. At that point, we could look at seeing other opportunities for accelerating. But if that doesn't stand, then maybe it's a larger question.

So I think maybe giving us a little bit of time to see what happens with those rules if they are actually implemented in the next year or so and then deciding you know, as we implement this, deciding if there's more action needed on heavy duty in particular. So we could certainly come back to CSC, you know, immediately if things change with the regulatory environment or, miss Lynn, would you say a year's time would be about right to delve further if the heavy duty rules are still

since we also report out generally on our municipal organization.

Yeah. We do also plan to come back to talk about municipal emissions broadly speaking.

So

next year or the year after barring any immediate changes.

Yeah. I'd just like to hear about that. I don't think this is a large part of the city's emissions as fire trucks. But but I would like to hear particularly also if there's smaller ones and that whole realm of things I would like to hear. And I think that's all the comments I had. Any additional comments? Okay. So we have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye.

Passes. Thank you. Now we're on 5.2, which is twenty twenty three community greenhouse gas emissions inventory, and this item will be presented by sustainability division staff. Ms. Lee will commence the presentation.

Thank you. This item will be largely presented by our two climate fellows, which I don't believe the full committee has had a chance to lead. So I'm happy to introduce Grace Khan and Remy Rin who have, really been lead on the development of our 2023 greenhouse gas emissions. But to start, miss Khan and miss Randolph, I just wanted to have a very similar remarks to gas the free vehicle equipment policy that, you know, we're we're doing a lot of analysis right now. You'll you'll note that the memo includes reference to

our

decarbonization strategy work, which is underway and will be coming to talk with you about next month. And all of this is happening in the context of of, you know, quickly shifting bigger picture that we're trying to operate with. So all things, from you know, can our partners at Silicon Valley Clean Energy continue to procure renewable energy at affordable rates when there may be tariffs applied to equipment that would be producing energy or, electric vehicles can procure them as easily, you know, all these shifts that that are happening. So we've we've we've developed this inventory. We're excited to share the information, not as much with a specific focus on the year 2023.

There are some trends that maybe are just the tail of COVID that are still kind of showing up in our emissions, especially around transportation. People's work from home, you know, back to return to office patterns hadn't, I think, really stabilized yet. Shift was less, but there's still some changes in that arena. So what we we're trying to shift our use of this inventory to be a tool to help us think about the bigger picture. So, yes, there may be individual shifts.

You know, maybe SPCEs multiplication factor that they give us for how clean their electricity was for a given year. Maybe that's shifted a little bit. But, you know, we look at the long goal. They're still heading in the same direction as us of greenhouse gas free electricity. And and if we're if we're moving to electrify and they're moving to clean our electricity, you know, we feel like that's in very good alignment.

So the the the yearly shifts are one thing, but but the real value in doing these inquiries and doing them annually is that it allows us to look at the trends. You know, what is happening in the big picture? You'll see we've introduced a rolling average set. We still have to kind of roll our inventory through COVID, so it's going to be a little bit choppy in the coming years. But at some point, we'll get to a point where we have enough of a pattern that we can say, okay. In year 2030, how did the last how did 2030 compare to the five years prior to that? That'll because give us a better sense, and that'll help reduce the noise of individual's annual swings that, you know, in the long run are not

or if more maybe they are. So

we're starting to shift the way we use the inventory. You you'll see it, Like, for example, I'm calling the four year average and comparing our individual year to that as opposed to just comparing it to the year Sure. To try to get a clearer perspective on what what we're actually learning from the inventory. It's a lot of data, and sometimes that can be a blessing and a curse. You know? Like, so much information, but we don't wanna read into every single category. What we really wanna do is take a step backwards and see, are we heading in the right direction? Are we going to get there quickly enough? The only other thing I'll include is that we're working on this decarbonization strategy. Currently, our goals are to be carbon neutral by 2045.

But, as you know, CSC directed us to look at accelerating those goals. So it may look good. We're on track for now. But if we accelerate our carbon neutrality goal or decarbonization goal, then, maybe we'll have even more work put out for us. So the big picture takeaway is that it looks good, and there's a lot of unknowns still. And with that, I'd like to hand it over to It's written.

Yes. So to give some background on our methodology and diving into the inventory, it's prepared using a national protocol, The US community protocol. And through that, there are some measures that are directly measures directly measured and then other emissions that are estimates. So we have direct measurements for energy used, water consumed and treated, and organic, waste that goes to landfill. And then we use estimates for certain measures such as on road transportation and usage of off road mobile equipment. So that's just a overview on the methodology. Pass it back

to yeah.

To miss Ken. Thanks.

This slide illustrates the results of the community inventories 2015 through 2023 and a rolling average, of past inventories 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2019 was used to compare the most recent inventory 2023, and it was used to gauge community emissions reductions. 2020 through 2022 were not included in the rolling average as they are considered anomalies due to the pandemic, and some impacts may still be occurring in 2023. And it remains to be seen if 2023 or 2024 is our new normal post pandemic. The rolling average comparison allows us to view GHG emission trends over time, and it really provides a general understanding on how policies, programs, and technologies are reducing emissions. The city is on the path towards the decarbonization goal to be carbon neutral by 2045 as the 2023 emissions are 32% below the rolling average baseline.

This chart also shows the percent of emissions reductions per sector. On road transportation, building energy, and the water sectors have made notable reductions due to state policies and city actions which will be outlined in the following respective slides. This pie chart shows the breakdown of the 2023 emissions by sector. On road transportation and natural gas for building energy contribute to the vast majority of community wide emissions totaling at 80%. And for this presentation, we will walk you through the inventory with a particular focus on these two sectors.

Sorry. So the first section we're gonna focus on is transportation, which makes up 58% of our total greenhouse gas emissions. Here, we can see emissions broken down by type of vehicle. And as we can see, the passenger light duty gasoline continues to dominate in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per year. So in looking at the rolling average baseline, we can see that 2023 emissions have dropped by 44% from our four year rolling average.

Daily per capita vehicle miles traveled or VMT has also decreased from the four year average of 18.4 miles to 14.8 miles in. This can be traced due to a combination of effective emission reduction strategies as well as transportation effects from the pandemic such as increased remote work rates. Another aspect of this that we wanted to highlight was zero emission zero emission vehicle sales in Santa Clara County and Mountain View, such as battery electric vehicles primarily. So in 2023, zero emission vehicles made up 43% of total vehicles sold in Santa Clara County, and I believe this was mismarked in the staff report. So it is 43%.

And in 2024, it was actually also around 43%. But as we can see here, the numbers did rise in Mountain View ZIP code specifically. So yeah. So the city continues to work on a variety of different strategies to keep our emissions down in the transportation sector, such as expanding transit oriented development, harmonizing municipal fleet operations, supporting walkability, boosting biking and public transit ridership, supporting remote work, and reinforcing the community shift to zero emission vehicles. Also wanted to note that staff are is bringing a multifamily EV charging gap analysis to the CSC in June where we will talk about filling in gaps and EV for multifamily communities.

SAP is also supporting a transportation demand management measure that will be supporting increasing multimodal transportation methods.

So this chart shows energy emissions from electricity and natural gas usage in Mountain View. The energy sector makes up 32% of total community emissions in 2023. Low emission electricity from Silicon Valley clean energy continues to drive the majority of Mountain View's energy sector emissions reductions as shown in the large drop in emissions at 2017. Reductions in electricity emissions are also attributed to the city's reach codes, which regulate the design and construction of buildings. And what's most notable about the energy sector over the years is that natural gas emissions have remained constant over time and make up over 70% of the energy sector.

To address this, the city is encouraging electrification of space and water heating of residential and commercial buildings. And in 2024, the city council adopted low cost prewire requirements for new buildings that would allow gas appliances to be easily replaced with an electric alternative in the future. Additionally, we just launched the year of the water heater campaign. On the screen, we have Watson, our heat pump water heater mascot, and this includes providing heat pump water heater rebates to help residents electrify their homes. And we also just received a $100,000 grant from SVCE to help further enhance the year of the water heater campaign.

Additionally, council decided to include the end of flow policy and council priorities for 2025 through 2027, And reach codes are anticipated to be developed in the next year, and we expect those to help reduce emissions in the energy sector. And this concludes our presentation, and I'll hand it back to Lucy.

Thank you. I just wanted to add that we also have staff online if you have questions, especially to the transportation missions. Mr. Pacho is online from the transportation team. And with that, we'd be happy to take any questions.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Do committee members have questions?

I'll just add that Ms. Au and Ms. Boyer are also online from public works to answer questions about the solar waste emissions as well as where I think across all of the building submissions.

Well, I would like to know why the water emissions went down. I think you're. It's great. Yes. What happened?

Was someone online? Miss Al, would you like to

No water quality control. Probably had something.

Yeah. Can't. They changed their operations.

Yes. They changed their operations. That's right. I read that. Is that is that yeah. It's in this in this report.

That's okay. The public may wanna know now that you broke it.

It's Yeah. A big change. It's big. Yeah. It's worth highlighting. And we pay we pay for most of what happens at the, Palo Alto treatment plant, although Palo Alto does the work because most of the waste comes from us. So we okay. Yeah. So it it was

Sorry. I was so Good evening, council members. You're you're asking about the wastewater emissions reduction in energy use.

Well, I

I was more there's a water category, and there's a reduction in the water category. And I, the wastewater is it all attributed to the wastewater, improvements? Okay. That mostly

The wastewater one is attributed to the Palo Alto regional water quality control plant.

Our freshwater is mostly gravity fed, so there's not a lot of energy used.

Yeah. So Delivering energy.

Into the wastewater.

Are we expecting additional, I know the Palo Alto treatment plant is is having a they've been rebuilding for about a decade. Are we expecting additional, reductions in the future, is this kind of it for a while?

I believe they may be working on some, energy reduction or looking at others, clean energy sources, but I don't have all the details at this time. So I'll have to get back to you on the schedule.

Thank you.

No problem. So sorry. Sorry. Gonna ask

the team

for the water. You're talking about the water pump stations, and that would be attributed to our use of Silicon Valley Clean Energy, I believe, because we do. Our water systems are just power from PG and E. And then we do have some solar panels installed, that may be offsetting some of the energy use.

So we have a lot to thank Silicon Valley Clean Energy for all that's really which is which

is good.

It's kind of a long, long letter to

SBC. Yeah.

Well, I

I guess my only other question is, are you satisfied? I mean, this has been an, you know, the methodologies and that kind of thing. This has been sort of an evolving process over time that I I've been watching it, which makes sense. But but how do you feel about this? Do you feel that this is a mature, kind of procedure that you have set up now, or are you expecting, you know, as in the next few years, there'd be big changes? Or I mean, how do you feel about how mature this process is now? If I if

I may mislead. So just look in fact, the entire team before you was not here during all of the years of the rolling average. So it is mature for the city as an organization, but all of us are new and have come from different agencies who have had different to how to measure emissions and what what level of effort makes sense. So we've been refining this over time. You'll notice that we're stretching out, you know, the municipal inventory because that allows us to capture gains that are being made by our colleagues in the various departments.

You know, it takes time to electrify the fleet or to electrify major systems and buildings, and so conducting an inventory annually might not make sense. Likewise, for the community scale, we're moving towards this rolling average. You know, we we may come to, this committee with a recommendation that we move to a biannual process as well for a community wide infant. So, it's it's we're still evolving it. All of us are still relatively new to the city. I think amongst those of us who are here, I'm the longest standing of the team, and I've been here just over three years. So Yeah. The change to do

it annually involved, a really quite a few different methodologies. And, and it made the process go something that took, several years, really, because there's a lot of handwork to being able to do it, and it was just, like, three or four months. It's about, people working a lot on it. It's a big deal. But, anyway, I I so I just I'm interested in in how mature it is, and and I do think it's really valuable to cons to continue to, I mean, as a comment, I guess, to to continue to evaluate these processes and what makes sense for us.

Only have one for the,

for the

off road mobile emissions. Can you just help me it's been a few years. What category or examples of things that was in industrial equipment versus commercial equipment where that where that line is drawn.

Yeah. And I'll just that was one of my questions. So I won't re What is it? Just my question.

Good question. I do not know technology.

An example of industrial would be forklifts versus commercial.

So I trying to meld construction equipment, industrial, and commercial in my head because a couple of them are very stable. Construction obviously went with the economy. It's not an important question. It's just something I was curious.

We're happy to circle back with a more specific answer for you.

Yeah. Actually, my question on that, because it's been stable, but as other things go down, it becomes a more prominent and it doesn't. It becomes more prominent. So I I'm like, at some point, I wanna understand what that is because I actually don't have much of an idea of what it is and whether they you know, are they electrifying the workplace? So my questions were so overall on the is related to this mature so the staff report says the inventory doesn't capture all local emissions related to the community, like emissions from food, air travel, manufactured goods.

They're hard to measure, etcetera. So, you know, staff reports have been saying that since I've been here, and I'm wondering as methodologies, you know, move on. I feel like there's a lot of stuff that that is actually in the carbon footprint of the city that we're not that we're just like, yeah. We can't make that. But as we, you know, as we reduce vehicle and building emissions in the water treatment, some of these are you know, if you put them on the pie chart, they might be larger than what we have. And at some point, are we gonna capture them? Is there any are there cities doing that? Have you heard any talk of it?

I do not. Have you

heard of the

I think remember comment too is, you know, the value of the inventory. I mean, there's good value in measuring the things we can measure and then trying to talk through or present going forward kind of the other actions that would not be so much captured in inventory but are still impactful HD emission reductions.

The way that we try to think about it is sort of and already the this inventory is a bit of a stretch because it's sort of like, what do we as a organization, right, as a city have leverage over. So this bigger life cycle question of emissions that evolve, you know, emerge from the food choices that people make or, you know, packaging and global supply chains. Even if we have that information very specific to the city of Mountain View, our sway over that is is lower than, like, our own built environment within our city limits or the ways that we facilitate better transportation patterns or reduction in transportation emissions. Even that, right, it's hard for us to force individual households to purchase electric vehicles. But we have some level of influence by making charging infrastructure available.

Sure. And we have a grid that can handle that level of demand for electricity. So we've tended to focus on this level of emissions mostly because from that can flow the most the lowest hanging fruit in terms of, like, what programs and policies can we do as a result of this. Doesn't mean that we don't also think about those other levels of emissions. So you you may have attended some of our plant based eating of, community events where we try to engage the community in these these kinds of discussions.

So raising awareness community engagement around bigger questions of, like, what's driving climate change. We still do try to focus on that, But trying to put effort into measuring it when the methodology is still quite hard, we just haven't gotten into that space. We haven't evolved to that yet. As soon as we can decarbonize all of the buildings and once Denise is done with that, then we we're just gonna be talking to

It seems to me there might be some opportunity like air flight, for instance Yes. In the same way that we measure car travel. Right. And it might be informative. It's kind of you you make choices. Do you fly or do you vacation or something? I realize you can work on these even if you don't measure them, but I was just wondering

Yeah.

If they're if I would like to know if you find other people who bring some of those.

We will certainly continue to ask. I was just at Climate Week all of last week, and, you know, there were 25,000 from across the country that are working climate change. Didn't see a lot of discussion on life cycle, but, you know, we we continue to reach out to our peers, and we want to know what other folks are up to.

So

certainly on the lookout. Of course, we also care about that.

Yeah. I'm just interested in the the same pieces.

Talk to Ikley as well. Helps us help the inventory about what's working or what things we would like to stand upon. We've been doing this for over a decade now, and that's why most cities use all provided by to their ClearPath tool. So I think that's promising as well that they're also very open in understanding how to secure their inventory and capture more of the emissions that make sense for local policy.

I went to an inquiry session last Wednesday, and I talked to them. And we're actually going to be scheduling a follow-up meeting with them to learn about they have a ClearPath two point o. You know, we're asking their their that intact. Right? That's why the new you know, so they have

Two point o.

Right. That's

why we need to

They have more information about economic trade offs for urbanization, and I think they're starting to merge into adaptation. So we will we'll ask them about the

Okay.

The scopes of emissions as well.

So on transportation policy, it says it's challenging to capture because it use aggregates and modeling. And I've, you know, I've always been a modeling from from municipalities around us is my understanding. And I've always been a little troubled by that because if we're doing way better than them, we just assume that we're doing just as well. Or if we do way worse, we're doing just as well. So is there an opportunity to measure that? I've I've heard there are other ways of measuring that may be coming online. Is that true and closer to coming

online?

Well and the city has had an interesting approach to modeling transportation emissions. We've we've created a customized transportation van management model then updated it periodically about every ten years. And so our inventories have this cycle of, like, very accurate to, like you know, over time, the model becomes updated and is in need of update. I believe the update is underway, so we're we're very excited about having a new look on our transportation emissions. Mister Pacho is online.

The transportation team, and, hopefully, I didn't botch that too much. Did you have anything to add?

Hi. Good evening. Thanks for the question. So, right, I think our traffic section is kind of in the midst of updating the travel demand model while the transportation sections work on developing the transportation land management ordinance, which you're aware, and we're bringing the framework to council on June 10. So we've set ambitious targets for trip reduction, and this follows from, areas in North Bay Shore where we've set, really high trip reductions for peak hour, and we've now are looking at reducing average daily trips.

We under because of COVID, we're not seeing the the volumes of traffic to the extent that we were pre COVID. So while we're while we're seeing reduced travel volume, we are seeing a higher single occupancy vehicle rate. And so we do believe that the ordinance can be a key strategy for reducing SOV trips and reducing our per capita and per employee VMT rate as well. So it's kind of key strategies from transportation that we're focused on. Because, again, that's the stickier part.

And to Danielle's point, the city only really has Purview. I think from my understanding is, you know, scope one emissions, the one that we have direct control that's within our city boundaries. Scope two and three emissions are a little bit secure because it it follows along supply chain that we don't immediately have control over. But I know that they there are policies at the state level such as s b two five three, which requires companies in gross receipts over 1,000,000,000 having to report their scope two and three emissions. So that, I think, would give jurisdictions visibility over how much emissions that they're actually generating and would help us kinda corroborate our own inventory.

So that's something that transportation and sustainability are kind of in conversation with. I don't know if that answers your question.

Thank you. So another question. I was glad to see under transportation, virtual travel and EVs added. Do you was about to drop ride hailing in Mountain View,

and

I don't know how you're going to fit that in. I mean, I guess maybe it's no different. Like, you have a category which is taxis. That sounds a little outdated. Taxis, motorcycles, or other means.

I guess, ride hailing, EV ride hailing. I so I'm just interested in how that changes this. I see a Waymo in front of Hope's partner idling all the time. Seen that too. I don't really understand the technology and what's going on there, but I would like to know how that's affecting I mean, it's electric, so maybe it's just the amount of charging.

But are they just driving around all the time? It's more traffic thing than a commission's thing. But and I also am afraid that they will impact mass transit use unless policymakers make an effort to make sure they don't. So I would like to find to track that in some way. I guess that's a comment.

Sorry. And the year of the water heater campaign, are you gonna come and report back to us in more detail about that? Okay. So I will questions and comments on that. And then the the food service, is this ordinance, is that enforced?

We don't have miss Cutter on the line. I don't know what phase we are in the enforcement. I know it's still as a grace It's kind of a transition period for establishments. Yeah.

I'd love to hear a report back on that too because I feel like it's not enforced right now. And then, figure seven, solid waste emissions. Why did it spike up in 2017 through 'nineteen? So it's figure seven of his solid waste emissions, and there's a big spike in '17 through '19. Why? Otherwise, it's steadily going down.

It's more more development.

Being generated. Yeah.

Not worried

with the economic booms and the recessions. You'll definitely see waste

so much track with economic solid waste and building and demolition.

I I think there's a couple state regulations too that have been regulating organic waste as well that have been coming online.

Okay. Those are my questions. So now if there are no more questions from committee members, it would be any comments from the public.

Can I jump in quickly to circle back to the off road emissions question? Mhmm. I looked into it a bit more. So the industrial equipment includes things such as aerial lifts, forklifts, material handling equipment, and sweepers or scrubbers. And then the commercial equipment includes compressors, gas compressors, generator sets, pressure washers, pumps, and welders.

So those are some examples of

All those things that are unique more unique than vehicle cars that

are Mhmm.

Likely to electrify more slowly. Okay. Good to know. Thank you. Okay. If there are no more committee member questions, members of the public in person. Okay. Yeah.

Hello. Shawani again. I'm just curious about the natural gas inventory. It seems like according to the one of the graphs that you presented, it's not coming yet. It's staying pretty much constant, which tells me that the efforts for electrifications for residential or commercial use of the buildings for,

you know,

heating the buildings, water, and and etcetera is not is is not changing, which is really surprising to me because I think there there have been a lot of efforts by the sustainability committee of the city to do electrification, you know, efforts and programs like the cool blocks and incentives, you know, from various places. So I just wondered if there's any explanation for that.

Hi. Bruce Carney again. So a couple of things. It's one of the first slides said the reason you do an annual inventory is compare actuals to goals, but this inventory doesn't leave it. There's no mention of the goals. In fact, the city doesn't actually have a 2023 drawing. It has a '20 and a 2025, and we need to interpolate to find the goal. But I think it's it should be there. In previous inventories, we've had a nice graph that makes it clear that we were tracking pretty well, then COVID came along and made it look like e grid. But, of course, we know we're not.

The good news about the rising electricity footprint is that SVCE says that they're going to get things back under control and get the GHG emissions from the electricity that they procure very close to zero again. In 2023, they were actually pretty substantially high. So that's a source of future reductions as more inventories are done. The other thing that I learned from Denise because I asked but isn't in this report is that our service population continues to be well below the pre pandemic levels. And all of that, all the decrease is from workers, not from nighttime residents.

So that's something that may or may not change as the economy moves forward. I believe there was a change too to say that we're gonna take a closer look at emissions from those companies who have the ability to purchase power privately, not from SVC or from PG and E, and we know that they're almost all committed to zero carbon emissions. So that's a change from previous emission protocols as I recall. Alright. So what is what is the takeaway I'd like you to take away from us?

We had the great onetime impact of SDCE. We're looking forward to the long going impact of EVs replacing gasoline powered vehicles. So where are we not seeing progress? As Alice said, we're not seeing progress in natural gas use. And if we were to change the protocol, the one protocol change I would suggest is that we figure the leakage emissions of methane from the wellhead to its use here in Mountain View as part of our footprint and and not even though it doesn't take place mostly in Mountain View, if we if we got off the grid off a gas grid entirely, we could claim that those emissions don't belong to us.

But as long as we have pressurized natural gas pipelines, I think those emissions belong to us. And if they did, and if we're not decreasing them, that would be one more reason why getting rid of gas is the most important thing that the council can recommend.

Thank you. More in person speakers?

Hi, Mary. I'm excited to see the reduction that we've had to date. Unfortunately, there seem to be going in the wrong direction with the active transportation percentage of travel. When you look at that chart about how many people are walking and biking, the numbers are smaller than in 2015. So, you know, encouraging active transportation lies a lot on capital projects that are just really slow to get moving forward.

And so some of those are now starting to come into play, which I'm excited to see. Also, on transportation demand management, both those are long lead time items and and keeping the shuttle running. So I just hope the city sticks with it and continues to to invest in those things and isn't discouraged by these numbers. You're the water heater. I didn't read all the details, but I wonder how applicable it is to apartments, and I hope there are some programs tailored for apartment buildings because that's such a high percentage of our housing stock in Mountain View, preferably before 2027 when the Air Quality Management District rules come into effect banning the purchase of gas water theaters.

So it'd be really good to start pushing the market and the including apartment owners and landlords in in the direction of of eliminating gas before the edict comes down and says you can't buy any new ones in 2027. I also hope it'd be really nice, I realize, we're the metrics that we get from this are you know, we're just now looking at 2023. I know if people are getting rebates for the electric water heaters, you'll have a good count of maybe a a decent count of how many people have electrified. We'll have it, like, a number, but it'd be really nice at the same time to see in near real time what does our gas look like as a result of that effort. And so if there's some way to be able to get some kind of feel for the 2025 gas as at the same time that you're reporting here's how many water here's we did, we could actually not have to wait until 2027 to see our natural gas to see the effect of that.

I think that would be a real boost. Thank you.

I'm John Scarborough. I'm a Mountain View resident, and I like the report overall. It's very nice. I like the rolling average. That makes sense.

And I would encourage you to look into other normalizations, some things that might although the absolute reduction is really what counts for the environment, I think the normalizations can show us where to look at different things like we were mentioning or was mentioning earlier about the natural gas use in our built infrastructure. It would be interesting to see what the changes are for natural gas per square foot or, you know, apartment buildings, new apartment building versus old versus single family housing, real housing, things like that to see where we might be better able to focus. That's like the longer term aspect, speaking of built infrastructure for a walkable, bikeable, and transit oriented. I think not only is that gonna help us reduce our footprint, it's also gonna make us more resilient if, we're not able to travel quite as much because of increased fuel prices or other things. So I think that makes a better community and or better community and makes it easier on our residents to have that.

Yeah. Glad to see decarbonization of buildings is focused on. And I was curious on the transportation, how that would break down if we could get the short trips, like, in town or to Sunnyvale or Colorado, things that could easily be transitable or multiple, versus long trips and people driving through that we may not have much control over. So, keep up the good work. Thank you.

Thank you. Virtual speakers.

Bruce England.

Hi, everybody. Bruce England, Wizman Station Drive. Just in short, wanna echo what Mary Dadeo brought up and what John Scarborough alluded to also around the importance of alternative transportation means particularly active transportation and also transit. We out in the community who've been following this stuff can sometimes get frustrated because we feel there's a lot or maybe too much focus on vehicle transportation and not considering things like road diets and speed limit reductions and things like that that would help to encourage people to get out of their cars and onto their means. When I when I look around, when I'm moving around town, I sure see a lot more cars than I do people biking.

And one thing that tells me is that people feel more comfortable getting in their cars and driving than they do getting on their bikes and biking in Mountain View. I think we could improve that. Thank you.

Thank you. More virtual speakers. Okay. So now we bring this back to the committee for discussion and then to accept the report. Are there discussion points? I assume we're gonna accept the report. So are there any discussion points first?

Well, I'm not sure whether it's I'm not sure whether it's this is the right place for it, but, one of the things I keep thinking is to live with the voting code that I have to change. And so I you know, if the the reach code that we that we, developed and put into place was really impactful. You showed us how much, you know, how many houses were electrified by that. It was really inspiring. I mean, it was, like, 2,000 houses in the time we we did it or it was 1,700.

It was a large number. And, so I think that, keeping up with building vote is something that is really important for these changes as well. But, anyway but all in all, I mean, I think this is great, and it just goes back to y'all what gets measured, gets followed, done. And so it's really important for us to measure these things so that we can understand, you know, how they're changing or they're not changing and and behave accordingly. So this is very, very important work.

And I I really appreciate that it's being done. I'm really proud that it's being done. And I also hope that, you know, this is an opportunity for you professionally to grow. And if you see things, you know, as you as you work on this that that that, you know, these these methodologies do need to be matured, you know, that that that there's an atmosphere where

you know,

we wanna create an atmosphere where you feel very comfortable,

you know,

suggesting that and bringing it to to us because that's, you know, exactly what we need to do.

You may need to add?

I'll just make a few comments. First, I agree with what members of the public said generally that and do I I agree with adding a goal next time so that we can see how to how we're doing with respect to the goal. And then the the comment about gas leakage, is that something that you know how to how to find, or is that Do you have any more information on that?

I don't have specifics. There are sort of generally agreed upon rates of leakage, and we could look at the overall movement of natural gas through the system. Percentage of it is coming to Mountain View, then that that could be the calculation. Calculate somewhat easily what's a leakage attributed to our community if we were measuring that. And if we added that in and then eliminated natural gas usage, then we could take it back out of our emissions and show it as a reduction.

Well, it was an interesting comment, and any more information you have, I I would be interested. But, generally, I disagree with what some member Sherwalter said that this is to inform our policy. So as you work on it, if something jumps out at you, do tell us. And if there are ways to refine it and make it more informative, you know, do that or do us about it too. And and, yeah, I agree. We have

to do it from

the active transportation. Those are my and and, also, I would like included more information on the sort of, as the ride hailing rolls out, if that's affecting anything. And, mostly, I think it may have impact on mass transit, reducing it. So I would like to know about that and have some policy ideas. Those are my comments. And did you make a motion?

Glad to make a motion.

Proposed framework for the climate vulnerability assessment. And this item will be presented by a sustainability division staff. Ms. Lucky will commence the presentation.

Thank

you, chair Higgs.

Next slide. Just some background on conducting the climate vulnerability assessment. Council approved a scope of work in November 2024, ultimately decided to contract with Cascade Cascadia Consulting Group to perform the work. So since November, staff has been working with the Cascadia team to develop a framework,

for

undertaking a climate vulnerability assessment, otherwise known as a CBA for short. And tonight, we're seeking your review and considering approval of the framework to continue to proceed with the overall development of a CBA. So what is a climate vulnerability assessment? It's it evaluates how susceptible a community is to the negative impacts of climate change to really support adaptation planning or decision making around what we expect in the future that we might not know now.

The way this is typically done is through

on climate change. So there are some there are some guiding principles and framework to work from. So we were looking with Cascadia team on what would work for the city of Mountain View, and it does have a a it has a formula in how it gets accomplished. So we look at our exposure. So what's our exposure to extreme heat,

you

know, extreme wind events because of extreme weather events, and then we understand what's our sensitivity to that. So even looking at how maybe different neighborhoods might be impacted. We some neighborhoods might be impacted more by high winds than others or extreme heat than others because maybe there's not enough canopy cover. And then we also subtract our adaptive capacity. So if there are neighborhoods that have a lot of canopy cover, meaning the extreme heat impacts are different in that neighborhood versus another, and that's how we calculate what our vulnerability risk is.

So the CBA's project deliverables really include identifying what the climate risks are. I had mentioned some of them, extreme heat, wildfire. A lot of people are starting to understand and being very concerned about air quality events that result from wildfires and sensitivity to vulnerable community members like seniors or children. Wind, I mentioned, and flooding. And there, again, there are impacts to specific mountain neighborhoods.

And so I would say too that there's been a lot of work at the county level in understanding what climate risk we face. And so this would be a deeper dive from that kind of aggregated data into what that looks like for each neighborhood in Mountain View. And the CBA would also look at potential actions that we could take help increase our resilience or adaptability to climate change. So the climate vulnerability assessment will help it'll with other plans or efforts that we're working on. So one of them is this city's biodiversity and urban forest plan that's currently underway.

And this so the CBA will help in informing the biodiversity plan and and what elements or what things could be incorporated such as extreme heat and how that could be included maybe through increased canopy in certain areas. For sea level rise, we've done a lot of work as a community to address since we're so close to sea the the bay. And so this CBA would also help fill in the gaps. So, I mean, we've looked at sea level rise. We're looking at biodiversity, but it's kind of where else in extreme heat and winds could we also incorporate those findings into the sea level rise planning and implementation in the biodiversity plan.

So the proposed focus areas, there's about there's four areas. So the first one would be buildings and infrastructure. So looking at what how climate risk would impact single and multifamily residential buildings. Transportation, it's looking at roads, any infrastructure related to roads, transportation services, how they could be impacted by these extreme events.

And, of

course, that leads into emergency management. So how would the police department, the fire department be impacted, and how would we respond, or how could we help prevent emergency situations with individuals who might experience, like, heat exhaustion and looking at critical facilities such as schools, hospitals,

care centers.

The other area that we're very interested in learning more about is how does climate change impact economic well-being and resilience. So how does that impact

the productivity?

How does these events overall impact the economic health of the community as well? And then there's also health and well-being. So this has been more studied recently in the last several years about where you know, there's the physical impacts, you know, when you have an extreme heat event or you're unable, you know, to travel somewhere, but also looking at the mental health impacts, the anxiety that it can create when you're facing extreme heat events that you might not have the appropriate tools to manage your lifestyle during these events. So the recommendation is to consider approval of the framework and deliverables and the focus areas for conducting the climate vulnerability assessment and then present a draft to you in the fall. And based on your feedback tonight, our hope is to present to the city council by the end of the year or early next year.

That concludes my presentation.

The only thing I'd like to add is that you'll note that this is sort of sparse on details, and the reason for that is that we wanted to engage the committee very early in the process. So we've only just gotten into contract with Cascadia and started we we started first with the decarbonization strategy, which we'll be talking with here this month about. And we're starting now the work of the community on the climate vulnerability assessment. And we wanted to talk with you all very early on to say, here's the general direction we're headed. When we return with more information, it'll it'll be flushed out. We wanted to just make sure we're in that.

K. Thank you very much. Committee members, are there questions?

I guess we only.

Where did pandemic stand in?

So interesting. Right. Because we don't really know about the correlation between endemics specifically and changes in our temperatures. Like, we've seen migration of disease, like disease incidents in areas, areas with Lyme disease, But we don't have a real sense of the pandemic scale. So it's just That's fascinating, though.

Yeah. So it's

We're not really. No. Okay.

I mean, so far, we've had one every 100 year.

In the

last two hundred,

we've had 100 years.

Okay. Let's hope it's not like a hundred year flood where

they Yes.

Every ten years now.

Yep. I have.

So,

let's see.

So

you have four areas that you're intending to look at, buildings and infrastructure, emergency management. For emergency management, are you intending to work at all with our CERT program? Emergency response.

Yes. Absolutely. We met, initially with both the chief of and the fire chief, and they asked that we talk with our office of emergency. And I was I was forgetting his manager. Who preparedness.

Who manages the service program. Right.

He has, like, 80 titles. He does so many jobs. So, certainly, the it's the request has been that we work with. But there are other impacts to public safety Sure. That are interesting.

I have had

when we had the power shutdowns and some neighborhoods were impacted day after day and multiple times, people said that our CERT program needs to be updated for more than earthquakes. Yes. For so that was a common request. So I so that came immediately to mind because many residents And then another is health and well-being. Would you be working with partners like, the county that does health?

That's more their thing than ours. And, also, like, El Camino does grants and Kaiser does too. So are are you going to be working with those kinds of partners?

Yeah. Absolutely. I've only had discussions so far with the community and with Sutter. One breaks in this region about resiliency and adaptation. So certainly and then also our community based organizations. So we've had discussions with community services agency about how to support older adults that are clients of theirs that are also residents of the state that could be more impacted by

units, for example. So discussions with them.

So certainly, all different, ranges on the spectrum in terms of

Well, El Camino has fairly significant grants, and I think they would probably, in general, be interested. And then do you with buildings and infrastructure, are I imagine you'll interface with, working on our housing and homeless strategy and economic well-being with our economic and quality strategy. Getting okay. So now it's time for comments from members of the public. There are any? There's some comments.

I'm very dadyo. I'm not sure if it fits. I was hoping to see that slide. I'm not sure I don't see where it fits in there, and maybe it's more of a county program, if we could go back to that slide. But on resilience, I guess I was thinking to see more than just business resilience. I was hoping we'd see if the city's gonna be is the city gonna be considering taking steps for, like, cooling centers and how to coordinate with people on cooling sites? Because we do have quite

a few city

buildings that, could could serve as cooling centers if needed. And, also, in other emergencies too, flooding or earthquake. I don't know if that's part of the community emergency response. I'm aware of what's going on in my neighborhood, but I haven't heard anything about a broader thing, especially, again, because we have so many people in apartment buildings. Here again, for heat, especially, heat pumps are so critical in apartment buildings because it's gonna make it so much easier for so many people that don't have air conditioning today to get to have cooling in their house. So I'm

not sure if there are

any grants that are gonna be available that we could make use of to help us address HVAC in heating and cooling in in apartment buildings because of resilience piece of it, but that that might be another another angle. Thank you.

I'm John Skarrow again, and I like the idea and would encourage the focus on people and resilience and, you know, mutual aid kind of things we could do within local areas to,

you know, add to that. Thank you.

Any other in person speakers? Virtual speakers?

Phone number ending in 79 You can unmute.

Hello?

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay. I want to thank the committee for all the hard work you put into this. There's a lot of detail in it. What's going to be important, which has been mentioned a couple of times, is to be able to continue to monitor and manage this. As somebody said, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. And so I think that's going to be important. We need to look at it on a frequent enough basis so that if there is a need to put in corrective actions, we have the time to do so. And again, I want to thank the committee for the work they had put into this.

Thank you. I can hear more virtual speakers. So now we bring it back to the committee for, for discussion and probable adoption of the of the, of the proposed framework.

I think I think overall,

it's I mean, this is the the early version. Right? We'll have the best version in the fall, and I think it's on the. Anything specific to.

Yeah.

I'm I'm pleased with it too. I I guess the only thing I know I did my notes is buildings and infrastructure under transportation, we should add trails too. Things that are really important for making sure people are doing a walk and bike around. But, no, that's great. So

my comments were really reflected through my questions. Don't add any more. That, does anybody want to I'll

move that we

put the new framework

to the rules and analysis of the series for conducting the formal rule.

Do we have

a second? All

those in favor? Aye. Okay. Unanimously. And we are now on item number six, which is committee staff comments, questions, and committee reports. And no action will be taken on these. Do any CSC members or staff have comments or questions?

We have very brief updates for you. It will be Yeah. Okay. But just wanted to share a few.

Good news. I hope.

Yes. Yeah.

I think we'll all chime in.

Great.

First.

Thank you. We had a beautiful Earth and Arbor Day celebration on Saturday, April 19, attended by thousands of community members. It featured the all electric dream home from Silicon Valley Clean Energy, allowing community members to experience electric, devices as well as many community booths and many hands on sustainability focused activities.

Oh, we

had Danielle as our

Watson. Watson. Watson. Yeah. Yeah.

Duties. That's me. That's her. That's a heat pump water heater.

And since last since we

were last here, we have completed outreach and engagement events, including the city's Larchia de Muertos celebration, went to the Farmer's market twice. We did four Kublak information sessions and four leadership training sessions for Kublak leaders, which does cover, energy resilience in times of outage and other related occurrences. And then, also, we're at the Sunshine Gardens EcoMart. We completed recruitments for CoBlock, and our teams have started, including one of our audience members here, which we appreciate. We had the Earth and Operative photo contest, induction cooking, and heat pump water heating focused engagement with the community.

We've had a plant based pantry series hosted by They are very short reels online that are very popular with the Mountain View community. And then two quarterly newsletters in December and May to the sustainability community list. And we have a few upcoming summer events, and that list will no doubt expand as we get closer to summer.

And I've been working on the extreme heat and community preparedness program, which is a $25,000 grant from Santa Clara County to help us support community members during climate events such as extreme heat, import air quality. I've been working with CSA to develop this. We're working on educational flyers, which are being translated into the top languages spoken in the city. And I'm also working on procurement for items for the resilience toolkit, such as masks, electrolyte packets, hand fans, water bottles, etcetera. And then at the beginning of summer, we'll start engaging with residents to hand out those kits. Okay.

Yes. We've been continuing our efforts in decarbonizing city operations. So for buildings, we have signed contracts to secure additional 41,000 in PG and E incentives for additional heat pump water heater projects that are I believe the majority of those should have been completed in the past week. And then we have capital improvement program, projects underway for solar installation at senior center, Wiseman Sports Center, and Mountain View Sports.

Upcoming CSC items and council items. So you can look forward to having a discussion around decarbonization analysis.

We're gonna

have a working session in June.

We're gonna

look at kind of the wedge analysis. How do the federal, state, and policies, like, break down, and what are we potentially responsible for as community? So

Yes. That's

it. I think

It's a dynamic model. We've asked them to seek out, like, entire chunks of legislation.

As miss Ren mentioned, we discussed about multifamily electric vehicle recharging analysis. You should code update as well. And for city council, the items we discussed tonight forward. We look forward to seeing these items again in the

next Okay. Do committee members have any reports? In that case, we will move on to, item number seven, which is adjournment. We'll just go in. Moving is adjourned at 08:03PM.