Committee on Economic Development, Technology & City Light 3922

It's a gorgeous day.

The March 9th, 2022 meeting of the Seattle City Council's Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee will come to order.

We've got four items on our agenda.

It is 9.31.

I'm Sarah Nelson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Council President Wise?

Here.

Council Member Swan?

Present.

Chair Nelson?

Present.

Fythe, present.

All right, if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

So at this time, we'll now go into public comment.

We'll open comment for items on the agenda today.

I thank everyone for their patience and cooperation as we operate the remote public comment system.

I'll moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

The public comment period for this meeting is up to 20 minutes, and with each speaker having up to two minutes to speak.

There are three people listed right now.

Speakers are called upon in the order in which they're registered online to provide public comment.

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Again, I'll call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they are registered on the council's website.

If you have not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of public comment by going to the council's website at seattle.gov slash council.

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of you have been unmuted will be the speaker's cue that it's their turn to speak.

and then in turn, the speaker must press star six to begin speaking.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item you're addressing.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

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Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

The public comment period is now open, and we'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt of you have been unmuted.

Let's see, the first person on our list is Laura Kleiss, listed as not present, so we will go on to, with Wade Hashimoto.

Wade, go ahead.

Good morning, can you hear me?

Yes.

Excellent, thank you, good morning.

Wade Hashimoto, here to address CB 120273. My name is Wade Hashimoto General Manager for W Seattle and I'm also an officer for the Seattle Tourism Improvement Area or STIA Advisory Board here to address of course DB120273.

I'm honored to speak on behalf of the STIA hotel community which unanimously unanimously supports this proposed assessment change.

Pre-pandemic tourism was an $8.1 billion industry here in Seattle King County.

generated by 21.9 million overnight visitors.

COVID-19 of course has impacted all of our lives in so many ways professionally and personally.

But for travel tourism and hospitality it's been really really a huge impact.

In 2020 Seattle King County welcomed 54 percent fewer visitors and also that year resulting in a 52 percent less in economic impact.

56% less in state and local tax revenues, and 40% fewer jobs.

Now, since its inception in 2011, STIA's $2 assessment on each occupied room night has remained flat.

In order to remain relevant in this ultra-competitive travel industry, particularly during a time of critical recovery, the STIA Advisory Board has voted unanimously to pursue an increase of the $2 STIA assessment to $4 per occupied room night.

While STI funds are generated by these paid guest room nights of downtown hotels like W Seattle, the marketing efforts supported by STI celebrate Seattle's diversity and experience across the city and the region.

STI-supported campaigns and events like I Know A Place, Seattle Museum Month, Refract, Visit Seattle TV help illustrate how consumers are inspired to explore Seattle through its neighborhoods, natural landmarks, arts and cultural scene, culinary offerings, and so much more.

Increased funding through STIA and the increased assessment stand to benefit our small business partners of all kinds, including retail, restaurants, arts and culture institutions, et cetera.

Our next speaker is present, Laura Kleiss.

You're free to speak.

Good morning.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak.

My name is Laura Kleist.

I'm the founder and CEO of Intentionalist a Seattle based social enterprise.

Our online platform connects consumers to local businesses and the diverse people behind them.

Through our directory guides and events we make it easier to spend like it matters and support small businesses owned by women people of color veterans families members of the LGBTQ community and differently abled people.

Our small business network includes nearly 2,000 Seattle brick and mortar businesses.

Alongside our public sector private sector and nonprofit partners we believe that everyday decisions about where we eat drink and shop are an opportunity to connect with and contribute to diverse small businesses at the heart of our community.

Intentionalist has partnered closely with Visit Seattle and the STIA to promote small businesses and diverse communities.

Through campaigns like I Know a Place we've been able to highlight diverse owned small businesses that shape our communities.

As we work toward economic recovery STIA can be a powerful vehicle in Seattle's long-term recovery supporting the small business community that has been hit so hard throughout the course of the pandemic.

Success to date does not preclude the need for additional resources that can help our city navigate economic recovery.

The increased assessment will help drive tourism when it's needed most and comes at no cost to the city.

Please approve the STIA legislation so we can drive tourism and much needed economic revitalization in a way that celebrates and supports the Main Street small businesses that make Seattle a truly special destination.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you Wade for for calling in today.

I must note that we have also received emails about this about this rate change in this legislation.

So those are being entered into the the comment record as well.

Seeing no other people signed up for public comment the public comment period is now closed.

We will now proceed to our items of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record.

Item number one, Council Bill 120278, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department authorizing the Mayor and General Manager and Chief Executive Officer of City Light to execute a memorandum of agreement between the City of Seattle, the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, and the National Park Service for the transfer and curation of certain pre-contact archaeological artifacts recovered during the 2013 new Halem George in restoration project and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts, briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

So basically, per Washington state law, the because the artifacts were found on city property, they were under the ownership of Seattle City Light.

And after extensive ethnographic research, the it has been determined that they should go into permanent ownership elsewhere.

And I will not go into detail because we've got a presentation with the presenters.

Please introduce yourselves.

Good morning, council members.

Thank you, Chair Nelson, for the opportunity to talk to you today about the Artifact Transfer Ordinance.

My name is Chris Townsend.

I am the Director of Natural Resources and Hydro Licensing at Seattle City Light.

If we can have the next slide, please.

So in 2013, as Chair Nelson indicated, there were about 260 artifacts found underneath the Gorgon when we were doing a renovation.

And just to orient you to start with, the project is located in the upper Skagit River watershed, and the uppermost reservoir extends into Canada, which is indicated by yellow at the top of the slide.

The artifacts were found in the town of Newhalem.

That's a company town.

that supports the operations of the hydroelectric project.

And just for your orientation, I've included the location or the primary location of the three treaty tribes that are located in the basin.

The first is the Sauk-Suatel tribe that's located on the Sauk River, and their reservation is in both Snohomish County and Skagit County.

We have the Upper Skagit Tribal Office, which is located outside of the town of Cedro Woolley, and we have the Swinomish Tribal Office, which is located on the delta of the Skagit River.

In 2013, when we initially found the artifacts, all three of these tribes were interested because they all have treaty rights and usual and accustomed fishing and hunting areas and gathering areas in the Skagit Valley.

But as Chair Nelson indicated, we've since done extensive ethnographic research and have determined that those artifacts are most closely associated with the upper Skagit tribe.

The upper Skagit tribe is known to have had a permanent winter village where the town of New Halem currently sits, and those artifacts, according to the ethnographic work, are most closely associated with the permanent village rather than migratory and seasonal campsites for hunting and gathering.

So the evidence in the ethnographic record is pretty conclusive about their close association with the upper Skagit tribe.

Next slide, please.

Before you go on, just because this item on the agenda has generated significant interest, I would like the other presenters to please introduce yourselves briefly.

The other presenters that are listed with this item, if that's possible.

Just so folks know who's at the table.

Diana Bob was listed.

Did she was she able to sign on?

Yes, hello.

Hello committee, my name is Diana Bob.

I'm an attorney supporting City Light on this work and would be happy to address any substantive questions that you all have on this process or anything that that relates to the ordinance or Chris's presentation today.

And this is Deborah Smith and just a comment.

So thank you, Chris, you are so efficient and effective that you jumped right in there before I could do any introduction.

So sorry.

No, that's all right.

You are on it.

I appreciate that.

So we also have with us Mike Haynes, who is our officer in charge of generation, environmental generation and engineering.

And I guess I also just wanted to make a quick point to note that for some time as we've been working through, particularly this issue, the city has not had a tribal liaison.

And so Diana, who is a member, she is part of our legal team on the Skagit project.

She's also the only member of our original legal team that we retained when we made our switch in council about a year ago.

And Diana has been super helpful and has kind of been in standing and helping us with tribal issues because she is an enrolled member of the Lummi Nation.

And she's been super helpful.

Excuse me, I apologize.

And so anyway, I just wanted you to have some context for why Diana is here with us today and why her perspectives and her help have been incredibly important to us as we've worked through this process.

So thank you.

And Chris, I think you can go back to your presentation.

Sorry, just jumped right in.

You can tell I'm excited about this.

It's been a long time in the coming.

So if we could have the next slide, please.

So this is just to give you some orientation about where the project is.

The slide on the left is what the Gorgon looked like before renovations or like kind of midway it was lifted up.

It's a historic dining hall that originally served the workers who constructed the hydroelectric project and now It serves our operations staff who many are living up in the town of New Halem, and then a large number of contractors that come up to work on either the hydroelectric facilities or the most recently the relicensing for the Skagit project.

We have scores of researchers up there in the valley right now.

The picture on the right is what it looks like today with a few additional plantings.

It's a really beautiful spot.

I encourage you to go and see it if you haven't already.

Next slide, please.

So this is an example of some of the artifacts that were found.

Most of them are more like the ones on the left side of your screen.

Rock chips and material that's actually been worked and it's easy to tell that it has been.

There's the small piece on the upper left hand corner.

a finer point, and that actually has been replicated and is on a sign in New Halem, an interpretive sign, so that people can kind of see what the materials that are like that are found when we do archaeological digs.

It was done on a 3D printer on the sign up there.

But the most significant artifact that we found is the stone club that you see on the right-hand side of your screen.

And that is the artifact that would be most closely associated with a permanent village rather than a camp or other historical activity.

Next slide, please.

So again, there were 270 artifacts approximately that were related to pre-historic or pre-contact time periods.

They were intermingled with a lot of historic artifacts related to Seattle City Lights activity, and we've separated the collection so that we're just transferring the artifacts that should belong to the Upper Skagit Tribe.

We maintain access currently at an approved curation facility that's run by the National Park Service, and the ordinance anticipates keeping the artifacts there as long as the new owner desires that.

And in conversations with the Upper Skagit Tribe, it really is the best option because it's close to them.

The other option would be something like the Burke Museum, which would be more convenient for their people to visit, and the artifacts would continue to be accessible to the other tribes in the area.

We do pay the cost for curation of those artifacts, and it's a very minimal cost.

We pay for about eight to 10 weeks of labor per year, which translates into about $19,000 to $25,000, and it's for the curation of all of our artifacts, not just these.

So the National Park Service has agreed to continue curating these artifacts under our existing arrangement with them.

So it won't be any additional cost to the city.

So in 2016, when we hired our our archaeologist for the first time, Andrea Weiser, widely respected among the tribes in the Skagit Valley.

That's the first time that the Upper Skagit Tribe requested that the artifacts be transferred to them.

And I've worked at City Light for three years, and one of the first things the Upper Skagit Tribe told me is that they want their artifacts back as one of the priorities for the current relicensing process.

And they have gone out of their way to demonstrate the cultural and spiritual significance of the entire area where the project is, and so along with those requests and the ethnographic work, I think that that's what's led us to where we're at today.

We have coordinated with the other two tribes, speaking directly with the Swinomish and the Soxhawtl tribe.

The Soxhawtl remained the most interested, and the last conversation I had several months ago with the Soxhawtl tribe, they requested that we broker a conversation between them and the Upper Skagit, I reached out to the upper Skagit and they indicated a preference of talking directly to the tribe as it should be done.

And that conversation did happen.

I heard from both parties and I have not heard any requests since that time from the Saksoetal tribe.

So we have done extensive coordination with the other tribes that expressed an interest early on in the artifacts.

But again, just to emphasize, they will continue to be open as long as they're at the National Park Curation Facility for any of the tribes or the public to visit.

Next slide.

Yep, that's it.

So I'm open for questions if you have any.

Eric, do you have anything to add to this item?

No, thank you very much for asking.

I appreciate it.

OK.

I'm not seeing any raised hands.

So I move that the committee recommend no.

Yes, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120278. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Are there any comments?

Going once, going twice.

All right.

Will the clerk call the roll on the committee recommendation that the bill pass?

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Chair Nelson?

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be forwarded to the City Council on March 15th, 2022 for final consideration.

Moving on to our second, thank you very much everyone for that presentation.

I'm glad this is moving forward, so thank you.

Moving on to our second agenda item, will the clerk please read the item two into the record?

Item number two, Council Bill 120273, an ordinance relating to the Seattle Tourism Improvement Area, modifying the assessment rate and amending Ordinance 123714, briefing and discussion.

All right, just I want to emphasize that this is a briefing and discussion on this legislation of a rate change for the Seattle Tourism Improvement Area.

At our next meeting on March 23rd, we will hold a public hearing and a possible vote on this agenda item.

Will the presenters please introduce yourselves?

Neil Ondahoe, Council Central staff.

Good morning, committee chair Nelson.

This is Philip Sit here from the Office of Economic Development.

I serve as the BIA advocate for the office.

Tom?

Good morning.

Tom Norwalk visits Seattle and Allie Daniels visits Seattle.

Trey?

Where is he?

I'm here.

Sorry.

Trey Lamont with Visit Seattle and Jerkshack Seattle.

OK.

Have I missed anyone?

Is that everyone who is signed up?

Yes.

I have a lot of squares open.

OK.

All right.

Take it away.

Great.

Thank you very much, Community Chair Nelson and council members.

As I mentioned, my name is Philip.

I work for OED as a BI advocate.

I will be doing a short presentation about the STI amendments, and I will kick it over to Tom and Allie, where they will give a separate presentation.

Tom and Allie, I'll be running your presentation on your behalf.

And then I think my presentation is going to be about five minutes, and then Tom and Allie will go over their slides, and we will leave plenty of time for questions.

As the BIA program manager, just want to give some background.

Currently, we have 11 BIAs in the city of Seattle.

Currently, they're generating about $26 million in enhanced programs and services in our city.

The benefit of these districts or these industries to create a BIA is kind of predictability and sustainable funding.

And during the pandemic and prior, they've served as vital partners between city departments, city leadership, and our community stakeholders.

Here is a little bit of a geographic overview of some of our BIAs.

We have some active BIA conversations in some other neighborhoods at the moment as well.

In terms of the funding for a business improvement area, it's really up to the particular district when they create the organization on what they would like to focus those assessments and revenues for.

Here are a few examples of some of the activities and programs that a number of our BIAs are focusing on.

In the case of STIA, obviously, it's about promoting the region and local tourism and international tourism.

Here's a little bit of screenshot of some of their activities in the city.

The spectrum of programs and services that they offer kind of runs the gamut here.

In terms of the GS Graphic service area, the STIA does focus primarily on the downtown hotels.

However, their mission and vision is primarily to focus on marketing the entire region as a whole.

Here are the kind of a geographic look of the different hotels that encompasses STIA.

STIA was established by City Council in 2011. Through that ordinance, Visit Seattle serves as the program manager to the Seattle Tourism Improvement Area funds.

They in turn report to a rate payer advisory board comprised of hotel operators and managers in the service area.

Hotel guests are assessed $2 per occupant night via the ordinance, and assessments are spelled out for the intended purposes within the ordinance to promote domestic and international travel and off-season travel as well.

Unlike many of our other BIAs in the city, STIA doesn't have a consumer price index for inflation or program growth.

Most of our BIAs have a growth factor to keep up with costs and to expand new services as their district grows.

In the case of STIA, they did not have a growth factor when the original ordinance was created.

In 2018-2019, the leadership of Visit Seattle and STIA approached the city and OED on a potential rate change given that reality of the fact that there was no growth factor built into the ordinance and competing markets was essentially continuing to grow their revenues in other markets.

State RCEW does allow for assessment rate change once per year, and it's allowed by ordinance after a hearing before the legislative authority.

STIA held an annual meeting in October of 2021, and the ratepayers approved a resolution internally to support this amendment change.

While a amendment process does not require petitions, as with a formation or creation of a new PIA, Business Seattle and SCIA was able to secure 94% of support from the ratepayers with no known opposition.

In terms of forecasting of what would occur after the amendment, if it was to be passed, this is all estimates based on a number of factors, but there is some unknowns.

But if we were to increase the rates based on some conservative occupancy estimates, this is what the growth factor could look like in the forthcoming years.

And that's something to know as we get into this recovery period for the region and for this particular industry.

Tom and Allie on their slides will go a little bit more into the details about the programs and services related to this amendment.

So I'll kick it over to them at this time.

Allie and Daniel, give me a second here and I'll pull up your presentation.

Madam Chair, can I ask a question?

Yes, you may I was just going to say questions about this presentation.

So go ahead.

I was going to do that quickly before we got over to central staff folks.

I know they're going to go into overdrive.

So, Philip, thank you so much.

I always appreciate all of your PowerPoints and the information you provide regarding the BIAs and now.

the Seattle Tourism Improvement Area.

You got a little bit ahead of me on the growth factor when you said that there was no growth factor.

Can you repeat that again?

Because then there's something I want to ask you about the North End.

Yeah, for sure.

So each of our BIAs that are particularly tied to property owners or business owners, I'll pull you district, for example, there's a 3% or less growth factor for each year.

And that's a wave in terms of services, increasing costs and inflation.

It's a way for the BIA organizations to keep up with costs.

Other districts have different formulas to account for new development within their district as well.

In the case of STIA, the rate of $2.00 per opportunity has stayed consistent since 2008 and 2011.

Okay, so you know this and I want to share this again because we're pushing hard up here.

I think we have one BIA north of the ship canal.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

There are 11, right?

There's only one north of the ship canal.

That's correct.

Yeah, so I have a problem with that because we've had tremendous growth in District 5 with Light Rail and Simon Properties and the AHL and OVG and two hotels have come online and we're anticipating two more on the Northgate footprint and the BIA.

So would we be working with your office and Madam Chair's committee to talk about how the STIA would fit into District 5 and growth, even if we don't have a BIA yet.

Yes, that's cool.

Go on.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry, committee chair.

So I should know, while the assessments is being drawn from the Hotel 65 or so from the downtown core, the revenues that are being leveraged by Business Seattle, and Tom and Allie, please feel free to chime in here, is leveraged for the entire city region.

So they, as Business Seattle, to market as a destination for Seattle, there is marketing, and other program support for all of the Seattle Business Districts, including District 5. But I'll turn it over to Tom and Ali if you guys want to add in anything else.

Well, I think people come to Seattle to come to D5, so we should just probably talk about that.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Did Visit Seattle want to comment, or shall we go on?

Yeah, no, I would just echo what Phillip said.

I think we're promoting the entire region.

And we know that visitation takes place throughout the city in every district.

And I agree with Council President Juarez, it's an entire city that we sell in every neighborhood.

So, and we'll try to get into that a little bit in our presentation, but thank you.

And I would like to note that I am happy to be a champion for the formation of another BIA north of the Ship Canal.

Go ahead with your presentation.

Well, thank you very much.

Tom Norwalk, again, president at Visit Seattle.

Allie Daniels, our chief marketing officer.

And we just want you to know how honored and really how proud we are to sell this city, which we do, around the world.

And we think we have one of the greatest regions in the nation, and we're excited to continue this work as things improve.

And, Philip, if you can please advance to the next slide, and thank you for doing that.

I won't belabor the point of where we have been over the last couple of years and I think we've said often that the travel and tourism industry has been disproportionately hit with this pandemic in every area from employment to job losses to just the reduction in revenues coming in flowing through which are created by lodging tax that help fund so many other things in addition to operations of restaurants, etc.

And you'll hear from Trey momentarily just about his thoughts on that.

These numbers go back and we will provide more detail if you'd like them, but this is looking at from 2020, 19 to 20. We're looking at meetings and cancellations, meetings and events cancellations, cruise seasons that were canceled, then modified, and certainly we're getting ready now for what could be a really robust cruise season this summer.

And one of the measurements we use is certainly that hotel occupancy.

Just last week, for example, downtown Seattle and the broader Seattle area ran about a 46% occupancy of hotel rooms.

And if you look compared to a year ago, that was 21%.

But if you look back to where we were pre-pandemic, the numbers for the same week in time were closer to 78%.

So we've got a long way to go.

And next slide, Phillip.

We really do believe that in the increased funding with the TIA mechanism that is in place, it is one of the fastest and surest ways to ensure recovery for this region, and primarily in employment and more visitation.

And we're getting to that point now where every city, every destination around the country is doing the same thing.

And so for us to be competitive, we feel that we really need to take this moment and increase this rate.

We know that tourism is competitive.

We know that leisure travel specifically, which the TIA is really by ordinance empowered to go out and create, it's competitive and in many cases Leisure travel is researched.

People take time to look at where they want to go, especially arts and cultural travelers that come to this area that take time to research where they're going.

And we know that leisure travel can be spontaneous and impulsive.

And in either scenario, we need to be top of mind and do that in a very strong way.

Next slide, Philip.

In looking at competitive cities that we compete against, starting with Nashville on the left down through Vancouver, these are the total marketing and organizational budgets of like organizations to visit Seattle.

They are in millions of dollars.

So with $32 million in Nashville down through $8 million roughly in Vancouver.

The two different bars really represent the different operating budgets of those organizations.

If you look at Seattle, our $10.4 million, and these are the 2021 numbers, $5.7 million of our budget came from a small piece of the convention center lodging tax in the city.

And the 4.7 was the amount generated by our tourism improvement area.

So you can see that even combined, those two sources of funding, where we are currently and where we project to go, are still just not adequate for us to be doing the job we think to get back to close to pre-pandemic levels.

We know that the recovery job is going to be long and not all parts of travel and tourism will come back at the same time.

But leisure tourism, what we've been living on for the last two years in a small way, really is what we have to promote and go forward with.

And again, that is specifically what the TIA is set up to do.

We've asked Trey Lamont, a board member and restaurateur, Seattle native, just to speak briefly.

But I think the point is tourism generates jobs, it generates revenues in many sectors in addition to lodging, overnight lodging.

And 24% of visitor spend is spent in restaurants and food and beverage broadly around the city and the county.

Trey, can you share a couple of thoughts, please?

Definitely, thank you guys for having me speak on behalf of the board of Business Seattle.

And I would love to talk about how not just the tourism, but with the increase to the SCIA amendment and an increase to the rate for the hotels would improve uh...

the restaurant on the restaurant organization like in seattle and how they would uh...

how their marketing has improved i would improve uh...

sales and uh...

uh...

foot traffic of downtown restaurants as well because me being a restaurant tour and have my own brick and mortar for the past almost five years now.

Zero dollars on marketing and branding for the jerk shack.

And organizations like Visit Seattle, they're the ones that have spent their budget, and that's what the budget is for.

And they're the ones that I look to to market restaurants like mine.

as well as the hotel concierge and the hotel industry that surrounds my restaurant.

They're the ones that I, you know, when I come out of the kitchen and meet customers that most of my customers are not even from Seattle before the pandemic.

Now, you know, it's mostly Seattle residents, but when it's tourist season, would always ask, how did you hear about us?

Where did you come from?

And I would be able to have a whole conversation with customers that weren't even around, that didn't come from Seattle.

And I would be so amazed on how they would find out about us.

And it was through organizations such as Seattle.

And if we don't fund these organizations, then my business will cease to exist.

And I think that is very important to please increase the rate and put that through.

So that's pretty much all I have to say.

Thank you, Trey, so much for being here this morning.

Philip, if you don't mind, bump into that next slide.

And I'm gonna talk quick.

I apologize.

I get very excited when we talk about our campaigns and the huge honor we have to celebrate this amazing destination.

From the very beginning, the TIA gave us an opportunity, excuse me, the STIA gave us our first opportunity to promote Seattle as a leisure destination.

We had never been able to do that before.

And we have found great success in using real people's voices.

real locals, real visitors to tell that story.

In 2015, we moved into video content.

You'll see some of our series on this slide right here.

We've created over 17 different video series.

We know that people are consuming more video content than ever before.

They can view it easier than ever before.

And we wanted to make sure that when they were looking at content, they were thinking about Seattle.

And this is not traditional travel Rick Steves with his fanny pack kind of travel content.

These are stories about Seattle.

We use voices of Chef Terrell Jackson of Catfish Corner.

Mary Lambert, Sir Mix-a-Lot, a wallpaper designer from Brooklyn that tells about why this is such a special place.

And we have videos from 30 seconds to 30 minutes, which is just crazy.

One of them has been viewed over 7 million times.

And during the pandemic, when we couldn't spend any money to promote a destination, we engaged our own channels with this content, saying travel might be discouraged right now, but dreaming sure isn't, and allowed them to keep Seattle top of mind.

Next slide, please.

One of our series, family style, talked about immigrant chefs and their restaurants and their family recipes that they brought to Seattle.

They see it as their responsibility.

their family recipes, and they've chosen Seattle to do it.

And I could spend all day talking about this one, but really all together, this series alone has been viewed over 4.4 million times.

Everything from Capitol Hill restaurants to Ballard restaurants to Chinatown International District, and just the personalities behind it and why they get to do what they do here and telling that story.

Next slide, please, Philip.

I'm going so fast.

I love this stuff so much.

I know a place is our latest campaign.

We launched it in the middle of the pandemic.

We created a very nimble platform that we could, at the time, speak to locals, encouraging them to support local businesses, to stay downtown, to explore the neighborhoods.

but we created it in a way in which we could turn that up and speak to visitors as well.

We wanted people to see that Seattle maintains this vibrancy, that you can navigate the city, even in a pandemic, and that we are so welcoming.

So we added some video content to this as well.

We have our friends, Nicholas Bernard, who was just Lumiere on Fifth Ave.

We have Chef Shota, who should have won Top Chef Portland.

We have, Sassy Black and her exploration of West Seattle and all the things that she loves over there.

So again, this is a campaign that we want to continue.

Next slide, please.

Seattle Museum Month.

We just finished our eighth annual.

It happens the month of February.

If you stay in a downtown one of the STIA hotels, you receive a voucher for 50% off over 30 arts and cultural institutions in the region.

Everything from the Burke to the Pinball Museum, to SAM.

And it gives us an opportunity not only to add value to travelers during February when we know it's a traditionally quiet month, but also to celebrate the incredible arts and culture scene that we have here and how our hotels and our community all play together at the same time.

And next, please.

Seattle Good News.

Not only do we have an internal PR team that is constantly pitching and developing relationships with local and national media, but we've created seattlegoodnews.com, and it really is a curation of all of the wonderful things that happen here.

We know people love to focus on the gloom and doom, but we also, we want to celebrate that Seattle is so special on all of these different levels.

So these aren't just travel stories.

They are all the stories that make this place so wonderful, which is why we all choose to live here.

Thank you.

Thanks, Allie.

Thank you, Trey.

And just in the last two slides, Phillip, if you don't mind, we are asking for the council to please increase the assessment.

When we look at what the numbers could mean to us, if the assessment were to go forward mid-year of this year, that would increase our total marketing budget and potential up to about $10 million.

And certainly in future years, it helps us as we start to really experience recovery.

And it does not put us at the top of that competitive list.

It puts us more towards the top, but certainly not there.

And we realize we need to take steps to bring our business back in a very equitable way around the region where it's needed the most.

And the last slide really to summarize is there's a number of things we would do with additional funding.

We'd do more of what we know works.

And we'd spend a lot more time in domestic markets that make sense, where the timing is right.

And if that's Canada to the north, if it's more international growth, we're convinced, as I think all of us are, that this global city will continue to see large international growth in future years of overseas visitors.

And we want to make sure that we are getting our fair share on the West Coast of that, certainly now with a great international arrivals facility.

So in summary, we thank you for consideration.

I know that we have almost unanimous support from our hoteliers in terms of this is the time to do this.

And we're happy to answer any questions or send you more detail as you would like.

So thank you very much.

Thank you very much, everyone, for those thoughts and your presentations.

Are there any questions from my colleagues or does central staff prefer to ask any questions as well?

Go ahead, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Councilmember Nelson.

Thank you, Tom, Allie.

Where did Trey go?

There's Trey.

Thank you all for coming today.

I do have some questions, but I wanted to do a little bit more research first.

I just want to check to see is Tom and Allie, are they coming back to the next committee?

We do not have, we have not.

honestly thought that far ahead about presenters, but if, and we can huddle afterwards.

I am happy to have them back again to answer questions if that is, if you feel most comfortable doing that.

That would be great.

We'll talk offline.

Okay.

Great.

Thanks.

I'm looking forward to sharing my places that I know.

We'll talk later.

Bye.

So that next meeting is going to be on March 23rd.

And again, there will be public hearing and then there will be a possible vote on this legislation.

So that is upcoming.

In closing today, I just want to repeat that our tourism industry has been hammered, especially our hotels and the small businesses and particularly the hospitality industry that relies on those guests.

has really been hurt.

And we are competing with our neighboring cities for guests as the travel season launches and heats up here in Seattle and across the region.

And as people feel more comfortable about traveling, We have to be competitive.

And just for example, our neighboring city of Portland also has an improvement area similar to Seattle Tourism Improvement Area, but their rate is 2% on guest stays.

And so as their room prices go up, their revenue goes up.

So their marketing budget is growing and ours has stayed flat since the inception of this program.

So that is why I support raising this rate from $2 to $4 a night.

And I look forward to continued deliberations.

Thank you very much.

I'll see you later, buddy.

All right, moving on.

Will the clerk please call item three into the record?

An introduction of the Office of Economic Development Interim Director, Markham McIntyre.

Thank you very much and hello.

All right, so Mark McIntyre has been on the job as interim director of the Office of Economic Development for, today will be his 16th day.

And we're very fortunate to get on his dance card to come in today because the anticipation and the excitement about him taking this job has been growing since the announcement was made about a month ago.

And so I just wanted to have the opportunity to welcome and introduce him briefly.

So Markham was born and raised in Seattle on Capitol Hill, and he knows the city inside and out.

We lured him from the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber, where he was executive vice president and led economic development, equity partnerships, and regional outreach.

Prior to working at the chamber, Interim Director McIntyre worked for then-Congressman Jay Inslee, and fun fact, before that, he was a farmer in East King County.

So he and I go back a ways.

I first met him when I was a staffer for Councilmember Richard Conlin, and we've collaborated on small business engagement over the years since then.

And he's now recognized as one of the most creative and knowledgeable and effective economic development leaders in town.

And so I'm, I'm groping for superlatives here, but I just want to say that, um, the city scored big time in, in, in gaining, uh, Mark McIntyre to our city team.

And, uh, I just want to, um, give you the opportunity to say a few words and, uh, and just express how excited I am to begin working with you.

Take it away.

Thanks very much, Councilmember.

I will do my best to live up to those very, very kind words.

I'm really excited to step into this role as the Interim Director of the Office of Economic Development.

As Councilmember Nelson said, I've been working kind of business and government issues for a long time now.

I really pride myself on partnership.

I think that partnership is the way to make progress.

And so kind of Sitting in a position where I can try and forge partnerships between the business community, between government, between our various communities and neighborhoods across the city of Seattle is just really exciting for me.

The council member mentioned it, but I'm also a diehard regionalist.

I really do believe that things happen better regionally as we think about our business community, we think about economic development and workforce issues.

Those really are regional issues.

So one of the things I'm really excited to do is to work with you all in figuring out how we make sure that Seattle is showing up on the regional stage and that OED is having a seat at the table and representing our neighborhoods, our businesses, and our communities in those regional conversations.

So again, just very excited to be here to work with all of you and look forward to having conversations and learning about your ambitions, your economic agenda, especially as we turn the corner from kind of emergency economic relief hopefully towards kind of regional equitable economic recovery going forward.

So thanks very much for having me and look forward to working with you.

Thank you Markham.

Do any of my colleagues have anything to say or ask?

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

Interim Director Markham, it's so great to have you here with us.

Are you interim director or acting director?

I'm Sorry.

I think it's interim director.

That's what they keep telling me.

All right.

Sounds good.

One of the issues that keeps getting kicked around, and I know different administrations have different visions, but would love to accept that you've had an opportunity to begin thinking about it, to know your thoughts around the future of what was or is, I'm not really quite sure what the status is right now, the division of OED known as the Office of Film and Music?

I am learning that.

As Council Member Nelson said, I'm in my second week here, but it's clearly an important issue, both for the kind of film and music industry, but as far as I understand it, the other creative industries and the arts and culture organizations and jobs that are represented by those organization.

So I'm talking with my team.

I'm trying to listen and learn from those who are currently in the office of film music as well as some of those external stakeholders to just kind of learn the ins and outs of why it's been designated an office versus why it's now kind of been folded into a larger, broader conversation about creative industries.

So I'd love to talk to you more about that and kind of understand your perspective.

It used to be an office of the mayor.

And when, and Council Member Nelson will remember this well, and when administrations changed, it moved from being an office of the mayor to an office within the Office of Intergovernmental Relations and has been sort of a little bit of a redheaded stepchild.

And we've lost a lot of amazing talent to the county, who is particularly in the music and film area, taking on some really amazing initiatives that I so wish the city had taken on.

So we'd love to talk to you more about this in the future.

And I know, again, Council Member Nelson has some great ideas in this area as well.

Yeah, looking forward to talking to you about that.

And just like we were hearing from how hard the tourism industry has been hit, the arts and culture industry has been hit really hard as well.

And so very much looking forward to those conversations.

And I want to thank you, Council Member Herbold, for your leadership on this.

I think that you and I can really join together and support the effort to revitalize our film economy.

And I have been having some initial conversations with the executive and also with external partners, labor, at the county, at the state.

And so I'm chomping at the bit, speaking just for myself.

And I look forward to working with you on that.

That sounds wonderful.

Thank you.

All right, anything else?

Okay, stay tuned, Markham.

You'll be back in this room soon, I hope.

All right, thank you very much.

Moving on, will the clerk please read item four into the record?

A briefing on Seattle City Lights electrification assessment, briefing and discussion.

All right, so just a brief introduction.

To achieve an accelerated transformative shift from end-use combustion to electrification, Seattle City Light will need to plan for and supply energy to its customers for both existing and emerging electric technologies at scale.

And so this assessment that we'll be discussing today looks at energy needed for the electrification of buildings and transportation and commercial and industrial applications within Seattle City Lights service territory under several adoption scenarios.

So will the presenters please introduce yourselves and take it away.

Hi, I'm going to start and this is Debra again, Debra Smith, General Manager, CEO.

And we've got a team of all-stars here with us today, many of whom you've already met.

Ameka Anyanwu, who's our officer in charge.

His job is to create the future, and he's working on that, along with his sidekick, David Logsdon, who is the director in charge of innovation and electrification.

And I generally get titles wrong, so don't hold me to any of these.

Stephanie Johnson, who I think we heard from recently.

And Stephanie, as She's got the amazing job.

She's doing the transformation work.

She's been lead on this EPRI study, and she's working really hard to attract federal dollars that will become available through the infrastructure bill.

Mike Haynes, who I think you all know, who is our officer in charge of environment, generation, and engineering services.

Maura Brugger, who you know.

And lastly, someone that you don't know, Jamie Dunkley, who is with us, and she is part of the EPRI staff.

And EPRI is the Electric Power Research Institute, very astute organization.

And we were so honored and pleased to partner with them on this piece of work.

So with that, I will turn things over to the team.

All right.

Thank you, Deborah.

And we appreciate the council.

Thank you, council chair and council members for having us today.

Excited to talk about this piece of work.

And so I will dive right in.

If we can go to the next slide, please.

So as our decarbonization policies are advancing, as the slide illustrates here, there's a tremendous amount of policy alignment for Seattle City Light at the state and city levels that is helping us push decarbonization as quickly as possible.

So this slide, kind of opening slide, focuses on some of the most pertinent and driving aspects of that in terms of the city and state policy objectives.

And at the city level, the Climate Action Plan is really our primary policy guiding document.

So, and that sets, of course, a net zero by 2050 objective.

And then next in line was the Green New Deal, which was passed setting an even more aggressive target to be free of climate pollutants by 2030. And so specifically, this body of work that we're going to talk about today actually ties back to a council statement of legislative intent from 2019, which directed the utility to report on the transition to complete electrification of all transportation and buildings in Seattle in response to the Green New Deal resolution.

That's kind of where this got its start.

And then at the state level, we have the Washington State Energy Strategy, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's plan to decarbonize, CETA, the Clean Energy Transformation Act.

And then, of course, Oregon and California also have clean energy standards that have been passed.

So there's great alignment regionally here as we think about how we plan for this energy future.

The low carbon fuel standard also was passed earlier this year by our state legislature.

And so really for City Light, carbon neutral electricity has been focusing our decarbonization push on electrification of end uses.

So our work around this is within the portion of our strategic plan that is called Create Our Energy Future, which is really to electrify transportation and buildings.

to modernize the grid with the automation and flexibility and capabilities it needs to keep it increasingly reliable and resilient as we grow loads through electrification.

So this work really responds to a key question we get asked all the time when we talk about decarbonization and the future of our energy system, which is, can the grid handle electrification of buildings and transportation?

Which, as you can see from the pie chart, those are really the two big tranches of emissions in our area.

So this study really is a foundational tool that allows us to plan for our electrified future.

We've been working with EPRI now for over a year to complete this full spectrum view of electrification and impacts.

Like I said, this work is responsive to the council statement of legislative intent.

And really, as we did this work, we have engaged and coordinated information sharing with a really broad coalition of stakeholders across utility, across the city, and really beyond.

The way we see electrification will really impact all aspects for the utility and certainly the communities that we serve.

It has the potential to help us realize significant public health and environmental benefits and really help us maintain a steady and affordable rate path.

So this is really the foundation, as I said, for that Create Our Energy Future work.

But before we get into that specifically, I'd love to invite David in to sort of do a quick overview of how we're approaching Building toward that shared energy future at City Light.

So, David.

Thank you.

Yes, we'll be getting into the details of the assessment, but I did want to start us all with some context around the create our energy future body of work.

The status for each of those portfolios and most important to that is really to start with.

How do we approach our work?

And this is all on the next slide.

If we could advance.

How do we approach our work within City Light?

So.

The key to our approach is really starting our work from the foundation of our city like values, starting with our values means staying centered on equity partnering closely with the communities that we serve right from the earliest stages.

And that really means bringing benefits to historically burden communities first that's a big example of how we're really working to shift the paradigm as a utility.

And this really means engagement early and often so that our communities and environmental justice communities and stakeholders in particular, see their values and desired outcomes reflected in our collective work as we push forward over the next decades.

And we're really planning and building for now, right now, for the future.

We're modernizing, reimagining the grid, making foundational investments that allow flexibility, automation, bi-directional flows, new energy resources.

That's key to, as Emeka said, that's key to electrification load growth and supporting the load growth that's on the way.

That's also key to making a grid that's increasingly reliable and resilient as we support electrification and the rate environmental and public health benefits that it brings.

And that certainly requires us to leverage technology and be willing to try out some new technologies and approaches.

But technology is only a piece of the puzzle.

You know, that community outreach is key, but also partnerships – partnerships with national labs, research institutes, community groups.

We really have to go beyond the meter and participate deeply with our customers in planning for their energy future so we know what's coming, so we can plan for an efficient and effective grid to meet all the low growth that's on its way.

And we must continue to learn every day.

So we're working with experts such as the Electric Power Research Institute to explore and test new technologies, test new approaches, undertake long-term scenario planning, such as what we're here to talk about today.

And finally, we need to be bold.

We need to be bold in a way that prepares us for the future, that leverages outside funding opportunities and increasingly builds new public-private partnerships.

And we've taken that approach to all of our Create Our Energy Future portfolios, which you can see an overview on on the next slide of.

So again, for context, City Light now, for more than five years, has been planning for and working towards an electrified future for the greater Seattle area.

Towards that end, we've partnered with other city departments on initiatives like Drive Clean Seattle, the Citywide Transportation Electrification Blueprint, and the Green New Deal.

Our most direct efforts around all of these initiatives and policy initiatives are undertaken in City Light's greater energy future portfolios, which are represented on this slide.

Each of these portfolios sets out long term strategies and efforts for the utility to undertake in close partnerships with our communities.

The transportation electrification sector is obviously key with our transportation electrification strategic investment plan.

A key development around transportation electrification occurred in Washington State in 2019 when state legislature passed a House bill that granted public utilities new authority to offer incentives and make investments to serve customers as they electrify transportation.

And so as that passed, we immediately began developing our transportation electrification strategic investment plan that outlines and shapes our investment priorities based on extensive community outreach and feedback.

That community outreach was the first undertaking we had.

meeting with more than 30 different environmental justice community stakeholders, and really getting community input into the investment priorities that we laid out.

And we took that plan to Seattle City Council in October 2020. Happy to say that that was approved and we're now well into implementation with our transportation electrification investments.

So that plan covers all of our direct investments in public charging.

We'll have 21 public fast chargers active in the Seattle area by the third quarter of this year.

It also covers how we can make Seattle and our service territory a prime area for third-party investment in charging infrastructure.

That level of investment is going to be key as we continue to build out to the level that's needed for all of the transportation electrification growth that's on the way.

And following our stakeholder feedback that we received, there's a big priority on transit and fleet electrification.

So we've been working closely with King County Metro to support conversion for battery electric buses, Washington State ferries to support charging infrastructure for the ferry system as the ferries convert to battery electric and hybrid ferries.

We also have agreements with the Port of Seattle and Northwest Seaport Alliance in the development of the Seattle Waterfront Clean Energy Strategic Plan to support shore power and other waterfront electrification initiatives.

And those are only some of the current initiatives.

We've actually got some major new programs on the way this year.

We're going to be launching in 2022 new fleet electrification programs, new multi-unit dwelling charging programs, which are going to be crucial for our customers as they continue to electrify.

Next up in the Create Our New Future portfolio is grid modernization.

We've also established our grid modernization roadmap.

This is another long-term plan supporting key operational objectives, affordability, reliability, and electrification load growth.

Big focus is on resilience, automation, and security.

The plan lays out 18 initial projects City Light is undertaking, as well as longer-term five and 10-year goals.

One of those projects that I'll highlight quickly is the Miller Community Center microgrid.

That microgrid is going to go live this year.

We're very excited about that.

That project equips the community center itself with solar panels, battery storage that allow it to sustain continued operation and resilience in emergency events.

And it also provides services and value back to the grid itself.

Building electrification is another big focus, and that's next up for City Light.

We're in the process of developing the utilities electrification strategy.

As Emeka showed, the City of Seattle has ambitious goals around greenhouse gas emissions reductions, as do many of our customers.

And City Light's carbon neutral grid has a very important role to play in that transition.

And there's many means by which City Light can continue to support building electrification.

And we're also looking to establish our lighting design lab as a rebranded electrification hub later this year.

And already for more than a year, the lab's been providing extensive building electrification, educational materials, webinars for customers, contractors, and trade allies.

And we're actively getting community and stakeholder feedback to inform our emerging building electrification strategy.

As I said, that's really at the foundation, is getting community feedback as we undertake strategy development.

And finally, and Emeka and Deborah both mentioned this, but utility next is the final, but potentially the most important effort to highlight.

This work really kicked off in the midst of the pandemic uncertainty in April 2020. And we kicked that work off anticipating the future federal recovery investments would be on the way and wanting to be ready to tap into that funding.

So we developed project concepts to allow us to nimbly respond to funding requests.

That works already allowed us to successfully receive more than $3 million in grant funding, and the major opportunities are yet to come, and we're prepared for the more than 1.2 trillion and spending that's been approved under the Federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and that's starting to materialize this year.

So Utility Next is essentially an enabler that allows us to augment and accelerate all of our clean energy future work, maximize its benefits for our customers while also minimizing the amount of direct investments that need to be made in these initiatives by tapping outside funding sources.

So I just wanted to give you that quick overview.

We really wanted to start by highlighting the work to set the context that the equitable energy transition is already well underway And we need an increased focus on ongoing integrated planning efforts and scenario-based planning, such as the work we're here to present on today, so that we can continue to build that future grid that supports electrification load growth.

And I'll now hand it off to Stephanie and Jamie, who will walk through the details of the work that was done over the past year with the Electric Power Research Institute.

David, so before we go into the details of the results that Jamie will cover, I wanted to provide you with an overview of some of the key insights, as well as the scope of the study that's going to help frame the discussion and the understanding of our results.

So at a high level, we found three key points.

The first is that electrification provides a path to meet the city's climate goals.

So as Jamie's going to discuss, the scenarios we evaluated, two of them looked at scenarios that were based on the emissions goals in the Climate Action Plan and the Green New Deal.

And under both of these policy-based scenarios, electrification was found to be able to provide emissions reductions that would support those goals.

The second key insight is that electrification is going to increase city lights load, both in terms of the number of kilowatt hours that are used across the entire year and the instances of our peak load, say in a cold weather event.

But the impact of that is going to vary based on its location on the grid.

And so this is the insight that I say, it seems like it's probably somewhat obvious on its face and probably something I could have guessed before we conducted this assessment.

By doing this work, what we were able to do is better understand the nuances of that and what end uses are going to emerge as the biggest users, how that might play out in service territory and how we can start to plan for that.

And then the third insight, talking about the planning for that, is really that this analysis is the beginning of a larger undertaking to start to do more of this planning for our decarbonized future.

And I'll discuss this in more detail at the end, but this study has highlighted some areas that we need to understand and do additional analysis on.

And it's also being used to inform our other forecasting and planning processes, like the integrated resource plan.

So if we want to go to the next slide, The scope of the study, this was an extensive and collaborative effort that involved multiple divisions at City Light, as well as involvement from individuals at FDOT, the Office of Sustainability and Environment, and the Department of Construction and Inspections.

And so we wanted to take a wide-ranging look, being sure that we were incorporating understanding and learning that has been done in other areas of the city, as well as policies.

In doing that, we really looked at kind of two primary components.

I think the easiest way to think about it is the first half of it is looking at what might be the increases in electric usage as we switch customers from emitting end uses, so gasoline automobiles with, you know, your natural gas furnace.

And that is transitioning to electric.

And so what are the impacts of doing that across buildings and transportation and industries?

And then the other half of it is us looking at our existing distribution grid, so the grid within our service territory that's serving our customers.

And what is the available capacity right now that if we were to electrify this, do we have room to provide that service?

And so by kind of looking at those two pieces next to each other, we can understand what the impacts might be and how do we need to start thinking about the grid going forward.

So there's also some additional analysis in the study that looks at high-level overview of the potential for flexibility of new loads, as well as the potential strategies to help tackle electrification.

But we're not going to get into that today.

And I'm happy to share the report with you, and we can have discussions on that at a different time if there's interest.

But kind of equally important in terms of what's in scope is what's out of scope.

And so the first thing that is here that's out of scope is conservation and energy efficiency.

And this is something that on its face seems odd because conservation energy efficiency are crucial pieces of city life resource strategy.

It's something we've been doing for a very long time and take very seriously.

But it was important for us to not include it in this study because by holding that out and it allows us to conduct that analysis in-house and to understand fully what the implications of electrification might be if we weren't to institute new policies.

But now understanding what the potential implication is without that conservation, we can hand it to our conservation specialists, and they can do an assessment that's going to allow us to properly value and look for the potential in terms of our full load.

Similarly, we didn't assume that the or assess potential for demand response.

That's something that we'll be looking at going forward.

We also don't look at the transmission, so like the bulk energy and transmission needs.

So if you think about this, it's like the generation and transmission that takes to get it to our service territory.

And that's work that's done within our integrated resource plan and that they're starting to think about.

And then we also don't look at the cost or the rate impacts.

There's some work being done at the Department of Commerce that we're hoping to be able, and some tools they're developing, that we're hoping to be able to adapt for our own use going forward.

And so I think with that kind of framing and understanding, I'm going to hand it to Jamie, and she's going to walk us through the results.

Great.

Exactly who is the resident of Ballard I wanted to mention.

Thank you.

I'm, even though every is located in Palo Alto headquarters I'm speaking from my home office in Ballard.

For those of you who don't know, Electric Power Research Institute were actually nonprofit that was mandated out of Congress, after the 1965. Great northern blackout, so helping to support utilities, provide clean, safe, reliable, affordable electricity.

So, before we jump into this, and I know we're probably getting a little short on time here, I'm really excited to talk about this presentation, and I will be jumping back and forth between kind of the where, when, and how much.

So, where power electricity is needed, when, and then how much.

And so I'll kind of keep those in mind as we go through as kind of I explain the different plots and kind of the findings we found in this study.

Next slide, please.

So what do we do here?

It's been mentioned already that we looked into three different scenarios and they're outlined here.

The moderate market advancement one was really kind of more of a business as usual, where we looked at adoption in the area, where we see adoption going and kind of adoption of these new technologies is where it involves adoption of electric vehicles.

And then scenarios number two and number three are based on goals that the City of Seattle and Seattle City Light had.

So they're outlined here and they've already been spoken to, but just to highlight here, for the third scenario there, we're looking at 100% of all passenger vehicles, all medium and heavy duty vehicles being electric.

From the buildings and industrial side in this kind of third scenario, it's full adoption of available technologies by 2030. So really this kind of let's electrify everything.

And then you can see in the scenario two there, there are still some, Quite kind of a large targets that are met there.

So kind of transit and school buses, which are emboldened there.

82% of those are electric long haul and inner city bus is still on the lower end, but that's.

Mainly because the technology isn't quite here yet, but that's going to be an emerging group that that will come quickly as well.

So next slide.

This slide is talking about the how much.

So on the x-axis there, we've got 2020 to 2042. And then on the y-axis, we're looking at total terawatt hours.

So how much energy would it take to meet these goals?

And the red is the scenario, the first scenario, kind of business as usual.

Blue is kind of more advanced adoption.

And then the green is 100% electrification.

You might ask why we did not extend the green all the way down to 2020. In the electric transportation realm, if we were to force everyone to adopt an electric vehicle tomorrow, we still wouldn't quite meet that goal.

So we just start in 2030 with 100% electrification.

But that doesn't mean it isn't important.

It's really kind of this upper goalpost that shows what would it take.

And so kind of planning for that ultimate scenario is what's really important.

Kind of where is our grid at?

What do we need if this is our final end goal?

Next slide.

So if we take that scenario to that line from the previous slide and we color underneath by the different technologies that attribute to the energy needed, we see that the buildings and commercial and industrial sector are accounting for approximately kind of 80% of the total energy needed over time.

There is growth within these over time, but as the new technologies are coming in kind of in the buildings, commercial, industrial, the technologies coming in are very efficient.

And so kind of as those technologies are getting adopted, we aren't seeing kind of a huge ramp.

We're seeing growth over time, but because the technology is so much better, we kind of see this kind of slower growth.

The bigger piece of the pie here is the electric vehicles here, I guess the largest change.

So going from very little, although, you know, Seattle has a pretty high adoption rate now, so it's pretty impressive to see the percentage of new vehicle sales in Seattle.

I think we're up at 10%, so one out of every 10 vehicles in Seattle currently purchased are electric.

And then we see that kind of rapidly growing over time.

Next slide.

And then this is the full electrification scenario.

So again, we're not doing 2020 to 2030, but starting at 2030 on the x-axis, total terawatt hours on the y-axis.

And you see that kind of ratio between the different needs play out over time with transportation taking about 23% of the total energy needed as we move forward.

And this is what we're seeing as well, kind of on a national level.

If we were to electrify everything nationally, it's about 25% would be contributed to electric transportation.

Next slide.

Okay, so now we're talking the when.

So this is a load curve over a whole year.

So in the utility industry it's 8760 for the 8760 hours in a year.

And so you see on the x-axis the entire year and on the y-axis we're now talking in megawatts So, the amount of power needed, and what this is showing is kind of when the power is needed over time.

Seattle is a winter peaking utility.

And as we adopt more and more electric technologies, you would expect that kind of the power needed over time would grow.

You see lots of spikes just because at different times of day, folks would use electricity at different points.

So if you were to count all of the kind of larger spikes there, it's probably 52, 52 weeks in a year.

And so we see kind of with adopted electric technologies that this kind of the scale of this over time is increasing.

So we're looking in the summer there, sorry, in the winter peak of kind of 4.4 gigawatts and in the summer at about two gigawatts there.

The next slide.

And this is the same plot here, so again, showing when.

And for reference here, we have the 2020 winter and 2020 summer values.

And you can see that the power needed at both of those times is increasing when we're looking at the full electrification scenario.

The power needed is about 30, a bit over 30% due to transportation, and then the rest is due to buildings, similar to the energy needs that we projected yearly over time.

Next slide.

Okay, so all of this doesn't make sense unless we put it into context of what the grid can actually handle.

So I'll talk in a couple slides about where the available capacity is and how we need to be thinking about this as we move forward.

Next slide.

So the grid analysis that we did, we did a detailed system-wide analysis looking at, by feeder, how much capacity was available.

We did this in a number of different ways.

We considered voltage and thermal issues, as well as time-specific, so you can imagine that there might be times when there's more available capacity than others.

So there's lots of different ways to, I guess, drag and drop this, but we took a very detailed analysis of what the grid was able to handle.

Next slide.

And before I go into a couple of my heat maps, I wanted to just draw attention to kind of how we calculated these.

So this is another 8760, so the WEN, and we have capacity on the y-axis there.

So if you look at the top plot, this is showing the capacity available on the feeder.

So we're removing the energy that folks are using already.

And what is available to be used for other uses?

And highlighted there is the worst possible day for that feeder.

And so if you carry that down, you see that actually drops down to probably slightly below two megawatts.

And so when we're generating these graphs showing where there is available capacity on Seattle City Light's grid, we're often looking at what is the day that constrains us the most?

Or what's the hour that constrains us the most?

But what I wanna highlight here is that There is that one day, not one hour, but actually, especially with this feeder for the example, there's a lot of available capacity at other times.

And so I'm thinking about moving forward and kind of a new new grid.

You know, thinking about how we can be flexible with our demands as we move forward.

So, could we use energy at different days, different times to kind of avoid this kind of constrained time is where we need to think about.

So.

Again, kind of, as you think of this, we're looking at kind of different scenarios and the times when the grid might be most constrained as we're thinking about limits as we move forward.

The next slide.

Okay, so here's some heat maps showing what we found on the grid.

And so keep that previous slide in mind as we look at this.

So this is the on the left side there, the more red one.

This is the capacity during peak load hour.

So when the feeder, if we're talking about a feeder, is at its loaded the most, it has the least amount of capacity.

So this this graph is showing the available capacity at the worst hour over the entire year.

So Stephanie and I were thinking of a way of explaining this.

If you were to draft a sports team based on the players worst hour of playing in their entire year of playing and put them all together, this is what it would look like.

So this is kind of the worst case scenario at that one hour.

But really, it provides an insight of kind of what we might be dealing with in the worst case scenario.

Similarly, on the right side, we're looking at the capacity during the minimum load hour.

So this is the best case scenario over the year of when there may be a lot of capacity and the grid isn't getting used very much or kind of there isn't a lot of demand on the grid in that location.

So there's a lot of variability.

And in general, there's a lot of available capacity on Seattle City Landscape.

Next slide.

And these are similar ones, but looking at energy.

So rather than kind of looking at power needed at a specific time, this is kind of energy available over all time.

So if you were able to, you know, soak up all of the available energy, stored it in batteries to be able to use when you needed to, or be able to kind of shift your behavior to kind of use it exactly when it's available, this is how much you might be able to to draw from the grid.

So annual energy capacity so this is kind of summing under that line that I showed previous on how many.

megawatt hours are available, and then the minimum daily energy capacity.

So looking at that worst day and summing the amount of energy available on that day to kind of show where you might be constrained.

If you were to model kind of the amount of energy and you wanted the same amount of energy every day, you'd model it on that minimum day, and then you could have that same amount.

I guess the take home here is there is a lot of available capacity.

It depends on space and time.

But kind of thinking cleverly as we move forward with these demands there's a lot of flexibility here.

The one other thing I would add Jamie is on the prior slide.

Yeah.

More if you want to go back one that it mentions that the capacity as we're measuring it there is based on limits that we use for our planning and it's not necessarily the physical capacity of the the elements, and so it's either 50% of the physical capacity or 66% of that physical capacity, and we'll talk about this later, but one of the things we're looking at is whether those planning numbers still make sense going forward, because if we were to do this assessment based on the physical capacity, that map would look a lot different.

Great.

So I guess two slides for us.

Thanks, Stephanie.

Okay, so to put this all in context, here's another 8760, but this shows the current demand on the grid, so the orange, what folks are using, and then the blue, the available capacity.

And so you can see again, as I mentioned, there is a lot of available capacity.

You see the drop in the summer, that's due to constraints, kind of planning limits on the grid that Stephanie mentioned.

And when we think about the scenarios that I marked out in the beginning, scenario two looks at kind of a power demand of 2.1 gigawatts and actually that fits nicely under this curve again you have kind of different area constraints, but the winter is much quite a bit higher and then if we go to scenario three, you see kind of summer again sort of It's hitting that limit there, but the winter would have more demand.

So I guess we're thinking about full energy.

It's available on the grid when we talk about when it's available.

You know, thinking about some flexibility there might be needed.

And I would say to all of the load shapes that I showed.

don't have any smarts built into them.

So again, kind of with all of these scenarios, we're showing kind of the worst day or the worst hour.

You know, for example, with the electric transportation, we assume people come home and plug in when they get home.

I mean, that's a natural habit.

But there are many things that you can do to kind of shift that to midnight to 5 a.m.

charging, whether that's kind of a different rate there, or you can program your smart charger to do something there, or batteries.

There's tons of ways to be able to shift that.

So I guess lots of flexibility here.

There's lots of available capacity.

And yeah, I guess I'll stop there.

Back to you, Stephanie.

Based on these results that Jamie discussed, we're able to draw some conclusions as we're going forward.

So if you want to go to the next slide, Maura.

So under the buildings and industry side of things, we know that buildings and industry are going to account for most of the electrification-related increases in load, and that would be due largely to space heating, space cooling, water heating needs.

And so, as I discussed at the beginning, and as insinuated by Jamie there in the last comments about EV charging, you know, without any energy efficiency or peak mitigation strategies, we can expect a significant increase in our system peaks.

And so, flexibility, being able to shift those peaks to those other hours is going to be important, and conservation is going to be an important tool as we move forward.

And, you know, if we think about it in terms of the grid is being built to meet those peak moments, ensuring that we are able to smooth out those peaks and have an even distribution of them will allow us to most efficiently use our assets.

The next slide.

So under electric transportation, passenger vehicles are going to be the primary user in terms of total energy, and you can see that in the graph that's here on the right.

The blue section of the bar chart is the energy consumption associated with passenger vehicles.

So it's a large component, mostly because of just the sheer number of passenger vehicles.

But we know that transit buses are going to be an early player, and that technology is available now.

And it's something that King County Metro is working on and we're collaborating with them on.

as a part of it.

But understanding where these fleet loads for medium duty and heavy duty vehicles like buses is going to be important for us because those can be big loads that would come on all at once.

And so working with our partners early and collaboratively, we can try and find ways to kind of come up with those peak shaving efforts planned for the grid effectively.

And as Jamie mentioned, a lot – much of the EV charging is flexible load, and so we think that that's an area where we can help mitigate those peaks and put some smarts in that aren't in this analysis right now.

And the next slide is – finally, we're onto the grid impact piece of it.

So City Lights Distribution Grid has significant capacity available for much of the year, but as mentioned, you know, there's areas of the grid and times of day when that capacity is going to be limited.

And so monitoring where these loads are emerging and developing flexible load strategies, you know, a takeaway for us right now is that, you know, flexibility is going to be key.

And so every place that we can start to deploy it immediately is going to be useful for us in the future.

And, you know, to do that sooner rather than later.

So that will be critical.

And then understanding our capacity limitations is going to help us consider new approaches as we plan to serve these electrification loads.

As I mentioned, some of these limitations are related to how we have planned the grid in the past.

And so we're going to take a closer look at that with EPRI to determine whether there are new ways that we can try and analyze this going forward and how we can modernize our approach.

So I'm going to hand to Emeka to cover What's next piece of it.

Yeah, thanks, Stephanie and thank you to you and Jamie for for walking us through that.

So, just to kind of recap our goal today really has been to give.

are the committee, an overview of this work, right?

And give you a sense of what comes next.

You know, this work is part of our, you know, electrification, good monetization work under that create our energy future business strategy.

So it's really all around how we build and maintain this system, the grid as the grid infrastructure as a smart and resilient and flexible, reliable, obviously, system.

that prepares us for increased electrification and including, of course, incorporating things like distributed energy resources, etc.

And so it really requires a lot of strategic long-term thinking, as you've heard from Jamie and Stephanie, and really deep partnerships, really holistic planning processes and tools like we've done here.

You also heard, you know, it's really important to us to stay grounded in the equity impacts of this transition.

And making sure not only that we are avoiding any future inequities in our energy system, but that we're looking for opportunities to reverse historical inequities in the way the system is built and operated.

And so, deep partnerships with our customers, other regional leaders, certainly taking advantage of relationships with technical experts like our friends at EPRI, we work closely with the National Lab folks as well.

And so it's really exciting and crucial work because it represents a bold look toward our new future and really starts to build us a path map our path to getting there.

We're really committed to is really committed to making sure that this, this grid our grid infrastructure is a platform that allows the electrified future.

And this is really the sort of work it takes to get there.

It's a, it's a really important step.

As you can see on the slide, we've really got.

more work to do here in terms of evolving our operational planning and policy frameworks to ensure that they are aligned to, again, begin to build the additional pieces, the smarts, as you heard Jamie and Stephanie describe, that will allow this to happen in both a kind of a graceful or planned, organized way, but certainly in a just way as well, right, really creating that just transition.

And so some of the follow-up phases will be around you know, technical pieces like how we do our load forecasts, the way we analyze our system, really integrating our wire side, the grid side, analyses into more of the resource side generation analyses.

And that's going to be stuff we work on.

And then thinking about the transitions around electric transportation for medium and heavy duty vehicles.

We've really pinpointed transit.

That is an area where communities have been very emphatic to us, makes a real difference, especially for communities that have historically been underserved.

And so we prioritize that.

And then we're going to be working on implementing flexibility demonstrations, demand responses you heard earlier.

But in the meantime, we've been able to use this work to inform some of our strategic decision making.

So we've used pieces of this in our IRP planning, in our response to the Clean Energy Transformation Act legislation, the Clean Energy Implementation Plan.

And so even though those are not sort of formally analyzed here, we are beginning to take advantage of the insights from this work to really help us prepare and help us plan, plan ahead.

And so, you know, as we do that work, we certainly hope that we'll continue to have this conversation with, with the council, as well as our, our community and our, our customer group, our customer groups, and certainly appreciate again, the opportunity to be here today and share this with you all.

It's really exciting work.

And I think with that, we can go to any questions that might be out there.

Thank you very, very much for that presentation.

I want to let folks out there know that also linked to the agenda is EPRI's report.

It's 244 pages long, and there's a lot more information there.

So that's available to you.

Colleagues, do you have any questions?

All right, it's a lot to digest.

So one thing I know that was out of the scope of this study is the transmission side.

So I'm learning this language as I go along.

But when it comes to the generation of electricity and the water in our rivers and salmon and the impacts of climate change, that is something that falls out of this report or this area of study.

But I am thinking about that.

And I'm also thinking about cost to rate payers.

When we talk about potentially new technologies, distributed energy systems, anything that we are going to be needing to implement new infrastructure to be able to maintain capacity, the needed capacity going forward, that is something that that, of course, I am thinking about as well.

So thank you very much.

Look forward to any of the other next steps.

You're always welcome to present ongoing work in this committee.

So thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Councilmember, and we really, really appreciate your willingness again to allow us to share with you background and kind of deep, you know, the deep stuff that will be super important as we do move forward in making critical decisions.

And for instance, our we will be coming through council later this year.

And so having an understanding of how that integrated resource plan sits on this foundation will be super important for you as you consider that.

So thank you very much for your time.

engaging with the Green New Deal board on this work around electrification?

Yes, Council Member Herbold.

We've actually, both Emeka and myself are on the Green New Deal city interdepartmental team.

And so we've been engaging there, but we also actually did a presentation to the Green New Deal Oversight Board at their meeting, I believe it was in February, in the board meeting that occurred.

So we gave an overview of all of this work there.

That's fantastic, thank you so much.

Okay, seeing no other questions.

This concludes the March 9th meeting of the Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee.

Our next meeting is scheduled for March 23rd at 9.30 a.m.

And if there are no further questions, we will adjourn.

Thank you, bye.