Sustainability, City Light, Arts & Culture Committee 3/21/2025

Good morning, everyone.

The Sustainability City Light Arts and Culture Committee meeting will come to order.

It is 9.33 a.m.

March 21st, 2025. I'm Alexis Mercedes Vrink, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll and note that Council Member Strauss is excused.

Council Member Moore.

Council Member Moore.

Council member Saka.

Here.

Council member Solomon.

Here.

Present.

Chair, there are three members present.

Wonderful.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Welcome everyone to the Sustainability City Light and Arts and Culture Committee.

Thank you for being here.

We have an incredibly packed agenda this morning that includes one appointment and presentations from all three of our departments, so I will keep my comments brief.

Within our time today, we will consider one appointment to the Museum Development Authority, hear from the Seattle Arts Commission, who will provide an overview of their work and goals for 2025. the sustainability and environment regarding the findings from the 2022 greenhouse gas inventory.

And to conclude, City Light will provide two presentations on three proposed ordinances related to the Renewable Plus program and easements for electrical distribution and rights in King County.

Back in December, I specifically requested that the Office of Sustainability and Environment present on the 2022 greenhouse gas inventory because I remain incredibly concerned about our changing climate.

We need to know what the biggest roadblocks are to ensuring that we are meeting our reduction goals by 2030. I have said on this dais before, but it bears repeating, our local emissions have not been reduced to pre-pandemic levels.

Transportation is responsible for 58% of core emissions.

We must consider an urbanist perspective in reducing single occupancy vehicles and increasing safe and accessible mass transit options citywide.

Finally, to provide clarity ahead of City Lights presentation, I did want to flag for my colleagues that we will be briefed on all three, pardon me, proposed ordinances, but we'll only be voting on items five and six this morning.

Item four will be voted on at a later meeting in April.

And with that, we will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda or within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers do we have signed up for today?

Currently, we have one in-person speaker signed up and there are three remote speakers.

Wonderful.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with our in-person speaker first.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets in in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

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

Speaker mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on to the next speaker.

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

Robin Briggs to be followed by Cynthia Irvin.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Robin Briggs.

I live on Capitol Hill.

I'm excited to be here today to hear about the emissions inventory from OSC.

Shout out to all the team at OSC.

But in a way, I feel like I've been here before, and we are replaying the last emissions inventory hearing.

In 2021, we were reviewing results from 2018, and we heard that emissions were pretty much flat and that the city would have to reduce emissions at a rate 17 times greater than we were.

We have had real reductions since then.

Thanks to work at OSC, there are some areas that are going well.

Emissions are down 12% from what they were in 2008, but our goal and the Paris Agreement for 1.5 degree warming calls for a 37% reduction.

More ominously, there are strong indications that these reductions may be products of the pandemic, and emissions since then are headed back up.

So it feels to me like we're back where we started.

I'm not really blaming anyone for this, but the truth is what we are doing now is not working.

What we need to do to reduce emissions is not that complicated.

We need to make space for more neighbors.

We need to prioritize transit, walking, and biking, and electrify remaining trips.

We need to help people electrify their buildings.

I know that's not easy, but all of this will build a stronger local economy.

So here's my ask.

More transparency in the emissions reporting so that we have access to the leading indicators.

More accountability from you, our elected leaders, to put a real plan behind our aspirational goals.

Most of all, we need you to take concrete steps to reduce our emissions and build resiliency.

Please, let's not be back here two years from now and have nothing to show for it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Robin.

The first remote speaker is Cynthia Irvin.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt.

You have been unmuted.

Hello, thank you.

My name is Cynthia Ervin, and I live in the District 4 in the Bryant neighborhood.

I'm here because you will be hearing the report on the greenhouse gas inventory.

I'm here to tell you how deeply important it is to me to leave behind as healthy and livable a world as possible now.

Thank you, Chair Rink, for your comments at the beginning.

We've made some progress in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

I'm grateful, and yet we have far to go.

When it's cold and rainy, it's hard for us to remember this relatively new phenomenon we now call smoke season.

And that's just one small example of what's happening to our city and our only world.

As you hear about the greenhouse gas inventory, I'm asking that you take the lead in educating and bringing the public along about the urgency of this issue.

People rise to the occasion when they understand the need, and not everyone can go to public meetings.

We need more creative outreach.

Please don't wait.

We need your forward thinking and leadership in reducing the burning of fossil fuels equitably and fairly, now more than ever.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The second remote speaker is Rich Voget.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt of you have been unmuted.

Hi, my name is Rich Fogut.

I live in Wallingford.

I want to just kind of take a broad view of the greenhouse gas inventory, mainly how it's been used.

It's a slow process.

And we're late in using it.

What should be happening is You get the data, you make a plan on how you're going to address the emissions, and then with timely data, you can modify the plan.

If you've got data that's two years old, you're way behind the curve.

Now, climate change is driven by physics.

And unfortunately, it seems that the response is driven by political will and concerns about the budget.

And that won't get us where we need to go.

We're in a climate emergency.

We need to use the greenhouse gas inventory.

in a better means.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last remote speaker is David Haynes.

Please press star hit six when you hear the prompt of you have been unmuted.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

Is it sustainable to continue ignoring the toxic industrial trains that pass through the waterfront of Seattle every day, choking off the fresh air, having more of a negative impact than anything else on the community at large?

While people focus on class war between a car driver and a bus rider, blaming the car-centric infrastructure that continues to create modern third-world inner-city residential misinterpretations of 21st century first-world quality neighborhoods, Yet that's all they continue to build.

What about the law that ex-council member Andrew Lewis wrote that exempts small, antiquated, outdated business buildings from being scrutinized about spewing toxic gas out of their buildings that impact people in the neighborhood?

It's hypocritical to only focus on big buildings while Seattle has some of the most prolific slum real estate in all of America that progressively that progressives think are iconic enough to historically preserve that causes unnecessary suffering for the small businesses and the workers and the customers that have to deal with flawed designs and ill-suited purposes and obsolete floor plans while government solicitates off the We need investment in non-toxic alternative energy independent from the grid.

Having a monopoly from Puget Sound Energy that wants to buy back extra energy that somebody might create and only wants to pay like 1.45 cents per kilowatt hour and then immediately resell it for like 14 cents per kilowatt hour.

I mean, why can't somebody provide that to somebody else instead of having it monopolizingly go through the utility company that seems to be one of the most abusive monopolies in the whole of this country?

Anyway, it's not sustainable in an economy that purposely exempts drug pushers and prioritizes repeat offenders for housing and services first, exacerbating the public safety crisis that makes it unenjoyable and unsafe to go out and spend money being overcharged so a small business can pay the abusive bank its artificially inflated property values.

that devalue the working-class values, oppressing Main Street economy, justifying the renters' revolt and the renegotiation on all these leases.

There are no additional registered speakers and we'll now proceed to our items of business.

Wonderful, we have one final public commenter for today.

Apologies.

Iris Antman.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Iris Antman, and I'm here to comment on the greenhouse gas emissions inventory report.

I understand we've had some improvements in our emissions overall, in part due to less travel during the pandemic.

an increased number of apartment dwellers moving to Seattle who have lower carbon footprints than people living in single-family homes, and city programs to help transition homes from heating oil to electric heat pumps.

However, the new data from the 2022 report shows emissions have trended upward.

More people have returned to work, increasing emissions.

Adopting the building emissions performance standards was a good thing, but we're way behind and need many more policies that target emissions reductions.

What other measures can the city take to decrease greenhouse gas emissions?

What about a program to help people transition from natural gas home heating to electric heat pumps, like the city did with oil to heat pumps?

and prioritizing transit, walking and biking, and electrifying remaining trips in our transportation sector.

And we do need more interim data to provide transparency and reporting so we know how we're trending before another two years goes by.

We need you to be accountable and implement a sound climate plan with concrete steps to decrease emissions in line with the goals we've set, 58% by 2030 and 80% by 2050 over 2008 levels.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Iris, and thank you all members of the public who have provided comment today.

There are no additional registered speakers, and we'll now proceed to our items of business.

We will move on to item one of the agenda.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Appointment 03079, appointment of Carol M. Binder as member Museum Development Authority Governing Council for a term to July 11th, 2027. Briefing discussion and possible vote.

And Cindy is already on it, joining us up at the table.

When you get settled in, Cindy, if you want to state your name into the microphone for the record before you begin your presentation.

Yes, very happy to.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Cindy Bolton.

I'm the chief financial officer of the Seattle Art Museum and the staff liaison to the MDA Governing Council.

I'm very happy to be presenting to you this morning Carol Binder's appointment to the MDA Governing Council.

MDA chair Bob Strong is unfortunately not able to be with us this morning.

Carol Binder was planning to be here and unfortunately had a family emergency that's keeping her away.

I'll draw your attention to the appointment packet.

You can see from Carol's resume in your packet, her longtime civic service to the city of Seattle.

as Pike Place Market PDA Executive Director, as Senior Advisor to SAM during our renovation of the Asian Art Museum, and most recently with Friends of Seattle Waterfront.

The MDA Council is honored to have her years of experience and guidance as a newly appointed council member, and we thank this committee and City Council for your consideration.

Wonderful, thank you so much, Cindy.

Colleagues, do we have any questions about the appointment before us today?

All right.

Not seeing any, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointment 3079. Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointment.

Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to confirm the appointment.

Council member Moore.

Aye.

Council member Saka.

Aye.

Council member Solomon.

Aye.

Chair Rink.

Yes.

There are four in favor and zero opposed, zero abstentions.

The motion carries the committee recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the.

Thank you so much.

We'll be moving on tonight.

Thank you so much, Cindy.

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

Seattle Arts Commission overview and goals, briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

And our presenters are going to be joining us at the table.

When you get settled in, be sure to state your name into the microphone for the record before you begin the presentation.

Chair, may I just note for the record that I am present.

We'll make sure the record reflects that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Kayyem, would you like to take us away?

Yes.

Good morning, council members, Chair Rink, Vice Chairman.

My name is Gulgun Kayyem.

I am the director of the Office of Arts and Culture.

I'm pleased to be here with members of the Seattle Art Commission.

The Art Commission works with the Office of Arts and Culture as an advisory body.

and I'm delighted to present today co-chair Kayla DeMonte.

Kayla is the managing director at Citizen University, a Seattle-based nonprofit working to build a culture of powerful, responsible citizenship across the U.S. and along with her presenting is co-chair Holly Jacobson.

Holly is the executive director and CEO of Path With Art, an arts organization supporting individual and community health and well-being through trauma-informed art practice, training, and advocacy.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gugun, and thank you, Chair Rink and Council for inviting us to connect with you.

Our aim today is just to really reintroduce ourselves as the Seattle Arts Commission and share a little bit about what we do, how we do it, why we do it, and answer any questions you may have.

We are your Seattle Arts Commission.

And we're appointed by you, the mayor, and we have one seat of our own.

And we also, provide you with some input on those appointments as well.

We represent a diversity of communities and expertise, including our fellow commissioners here, Yolanda Spencer, a longtime advocate for indigenous and Native American health and arts projects, including most recently from the Chief Seattle Club's Reintegration from Incarceration Program, and Avery Barnes, the dynamic founder and curator of TOSFERA Gallery, highlighting work from the Africa diaspora.

Additional commissioners include representatives from the Vera Project, the National Nordic Museum, Friends of the Waterfront, on the boards performing arts, as well as performing and visual artists, teaching artists, and arts journalists.

We have three vacant seats right now, two of whom will be appointed by you, the council, and one by the mayor.

And as an all-volunteer commission, we really appreciate your attention to filling these seats as soon as your schedules allow for us to fully execute our duties and best represent the breadth of the arts community.

Okay, we work in concert with the office and staff to ensure community representation and guidance in support of important work such as public grant allocations, commissioning of public arts projects, including placemaking activities and activations, education and workforce initiatives.

Conversely, we also connect the broader community to those initiatives to ensure diverse geographic and demographic representation in our arts ecosystem, And as the city's, again, only volunteer commission focus solely on the health of the arts sector, we have our ears to the ground about initiatives and projects out there in the community that could impact the city and sector and can serve as a voice to city leadership like you and decision makers about what's going on out in the community.

Thank you, Holly.

So to talk a little bit about how we do that, we work in several ways to achieve these goals.

First is that one of our primary responsibilities is to review and provide feedback about the annual city budget, both to the mayor's office and to council.

And this is a critical way for us as arts representatives, representatives of the sector, to voice both appreciation as well as ideas and concerns to you all in the budgeting process.

Secondly, outside of the annual budget letter, we also serve as advisors throughout the year to various city leaders, whether that be council members or other leaders throughout our city, on how the arts can be used to enhance our city's well-being and our economy.

And finally, we split much of our hands-on work between three committees, which work directly with arts staff, the amazing arts staff, to provide guidance on grant-making, public art, placemaking, and public space.

And we have two of our committee chairs here with us today, and I'd like to toss to them to speak to the work of those committees.

I'll first introduce here Yolanda Spencer to speak about the Public Art Advisory Committee.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Yolanda Spencer, and I'm happy to serve as chair for the Public Art Advisory Committee.

We review and recommend public art projects and programs and advocate for 1% for the arts projects in public and private partnerships.

Thank you, Yolanda.

And we also have Avery Barnes, who is the chair of our Cultural Investments Committee.

I'm so happy to be here with you today.

The Cultural Investments Committee is completely dedicated to providing feedback on the arts office's racially equitable grant processes and investment strategies and advocates for equitable, accessible, and inclusive cultural investments.

Thank you, Avery.

And our third committee, which is chaired by Ricky Grabowski of the Vera Project, is the Facilities and Equitable Development Committee, which works to advise the work of the Arts Office around issues of cultural space and its impact on economic development in our city.

So as you may or may not be aware, but probably are, over the years, the commission has played a significant role in supporting the arts sector.

Actually, the office was born from the Salem Arts Commission.

And also, part of our job is to strengthen the critical work of the Office of Arts and Culture in a variety of ways.

Some of the ways we've done that has to launch our city's innovative cultural space agency, the new PDA, a first-of-its-kind real estate development company designed to facilitate affordable, culturally-focused community space, and spurring the development of the Creative Advantage Program, a program for student art education in public schools.

We've also worked last year with many of you and really appreciate those of you who supported the maintenance of the Seattle admissions tax to stay with the office in order to strengthen the office's works and the sector.

So thank you all for your support on that because it's really critical that we maintain stable funding for our arts sector grants economic and employment opportunities right now through the office's hard work as we continue to work to revitalize our city.

And we, in an ongoing way, support the arts at King Street Station as a thriving community hub engaged in critical community outreach and input gathering as this new space was designed and developed.

That is something that we have supported the office in.

Great, and so here is an outline of the goals that we as a commission have been working on through last year and into 2025. First, we really want to show and share our appreciation with you, the council for supporting, retaining the admissions tax and support of the arts office that was budget, passed in the budget last fall.

hugely critical in support of the sector and so big, big appreciation for that and we're proud of our work that we did to advocate for that.

Secondly, our second goal here is to note that we are your allies.

We aim to grow our connections with you and with other stewards, other critical city networks like other commissions, community stewards like Seattle Center and parks and our arts cultural districts and we really aim here in this second goal to strengthen the network of those who make and support arts in our city.

Thirdly, we want to ensure that the valuable opportunities that the Arts Office provides are making their way to a wide variety of communities.

And so we want to support more widespread outreach about the extensive grants and programs that the Arts Office offers.

And finally, all of the above underscores why it's so important for us to be at full strength as a commission.

We are in rebuilding mode this year.

Last year we were operating with 50% of our commission capacity and so we're working now to get back up to full capacity with our membership.

And so our final goal really is an internal one.

It's working to revitalize the commission to really be as strong and supportive as a body that can be in support of these goals and of our sector.

So as we close today, we first of all want to just thank you so much for this opportunity to present our work and why this is so important to us as citizens of the city.

And ask you that as you're thinking about supporting a thriving arts and creative sector, we'd love to hear what priorities you have, what questions you have, what ideas you have so that we can embed those into our work.

Thank you.

Fabulous.

Any questions?

Yes.

Thank you all so much for presenting today, for being here this morning, and certainly would love to hear any questions.

Or I also heard a request for any priorities my colleagues want to share as it relates to the arts and culture sector and with the Arts Commission.

So colleagues.

Vice Chair Moore.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for all the work that you do.

Many of your volunteers really appreciate that.

And just wanted to shout out, as a representative for North Seattle, we are sort of starved for this kind of art connection.

So to the extent that we can expand up that way.

I would like to partner with you and also to the extent that you know of events going on up there.

I do have a weekly newsletter that I send out and would love to use that to distribute that information.

We do have Coyote Central Space which is now going to be turned into a maker space.

there's much opportunity up there.

And I view that the connection, the arts provide a vital connection for our community and a way to build community, particularly in these times.

So just wanted to shout out for how important what you do is and how much we'd love to see more of that in my district.

Duly noted, Vice Chair Moore for District 5, we'll take that back to the full commission at our next meeting a couple of weeks from now and work on that.

And that's why we're here is to make those connections.

Excellent, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Council Member Salker, Council Member Salomon.

No, I've got nothing.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Chair Rink, if I can just say one more plug for, and I think Vice Chair Moore really was speaking to this, is that the arts have often been seen as this nice to have, something separate.

And we know, just looking back in history, that civilizations are judged by the character of their arts and the participation of their arts.

And the arts play such a significant role, not just in economic growth, which has been demonstrated, but a lot of the work I do is around community health and public health and safety and well-being, utilizing the arts.

There is a huge movement across the country to do that right now.

And I really appreciate your support and understanding that it's not a nice-to-have for a select few.

It is something that belongs to everybody.

and represents what our city is.

So thank you.

I certainly appreciate that.

I actually have a couple questions, sorry.

If that's all right with you all, if you have a couple more moments.

I think we'd, I'd particularly like to know with these goals, you know, specifically how would you like to be engaging with council moving forward?

Yes, I think, you know, well, I should just toss it to my council member.

No, whatever you're gonna say is the right answer.

Yes, we would love to stay in more regular contact with each of your offices, particularly each of you council members on this committee.

And similarly, as Vice Chair Moore said, really just to be engaged about the needs, the ways that you're understanding and seeing how arts both supports your districts and also how we can play a vital role as liaisons both to constituents of your districts back to the arts office and to spread opportunities that exist that really just need to be more widely understood and promoted to folks.

So we would love to reach out to each of your offices to schedule a follow-up just here more directly and just be in more regular contact throughout the year.

What else would you add?

Oh, no, just that.

Just that I think that that's, again, why we're here, and just to work together and to inform you also of what's going on.

Not just hear what your interests are, but also let you know, as Vice Chair Moore suggested, what's going on in the sector, what the concerns of the sector are.

We have our hands in different communities.

Path of the Art is part of the Seattle Center.

We also have another council member who's part of the Seattle Center.

And there's an arts committee.

We're out there.

And we can bring those concerns to you as well.

I certainly appreciate that.

And if I may add, given the two vacant roles on our commission, working with you is going to be incredibly impactful for us in building the strongest commission in the work that we do.

Thank you.

And there's a lot of work happening right now around FIFA activation right now, trying to prepare for the World Cup coming here.

There's a club game this year.

Have you all been engaged by the local organizing committee by some of this work?

I know there's a lot of downtown activation work, and I'm wondering if there's opportunities to connect you all into some of that activation work.

Yeah, thank you so much, chairing.

I think we're really excited to hear how we can engage.

We've started to talk about that a little bit internally, but as that work ramps up, I think that would be a great way for us to make sure that, as we said, we're able to both share the needs and ideas of the sector and then take that back.

So I think that can be something that we'd be really excited to get more engaged on over the coming year.

I'll just second that.

Thank you, Chair Rink.

I think that just reflects why we want to have increased visibility now.

After several years of not being able to operate at full speed, we're ready to jump in and support and connect.

Amazing.

and I know we've referenced it a little bit, you all are experts in many ways of being really plugged into what's happening with our arts community, and I know we could have probably a whole presentation talking about the state of the arts and culture sector, but if you were to define our community, I'd love to know your personal take, what that looks like.

Well, I think we might all have a different perspective, but I would say from most of my fellow arts administrators, we're all very concerned about funding, and we are really facing an existential crisis in lots of ways.

Also, staying true to our values is critical right now, and as we are at risk of losing federal funding and federal dollars.

There is an existential crisis going on with arts and cultural communities even before those threats have become so apparent.

And this is why we're so appreciative of your support of the admissions tax as a sustainable funding source to the office, so thank you for that.

Anything else Yolanda or Avery that you'd want to add to that question?

Yeah, since my work is geared around the native urban community, and I've worked with United Indians, and they have an arts culture center, and it would be great, you know, after hearing Council Moore talk about the activities, you know, I think outputting our activities within different cultures and just keeping us informed and, you know, kind of bringing together our communities because it feels like we're siloed at times.

And my work also involves recently released incarcerated members.

And so welcoming our families back into society is also a great way to connect with communities.

And I have to say, Path with Arts has been welcoming to create that safe place.

And I think creating safe places to attend these projects give us an opportunity to show that the arts are important in our communities.

Beautifully said, Yolanda.

And thank you, Council Member Ring, for addressing these concerns.

I think, Holly, you stated it beautifully, mentioning staying true to our values.

And that's very important in my work independently and why I was so moved to join as chair for the Cultural Investments Committee.

centered around racial equity and accessibility and inclusion and having an Afro-Diasporic Art Gallery in the center of Pioneer Square, representing artists all over the nation from Seattle as we address these conversations around values and and sustaining racial equity in the community and supporting those in this time.

It's important now more than ever to join, and especially with such a diverse committee as well and commission, excuse me.

It's amazing to be able to come together and bring voices and speak as one.

Thank you for centering that.

I actually was just at the Northwest African American Museum last week and seeing some of our local black artists and their art featured there so poignantly and thinking about just historically the art sector and institutions have kept out many artists of color and moving towards this direction of really centering also the amazing artists of color, black indigenous artists that we have here in Seattle has been so amazing to see.

And so would look to you all to see how we can continue to support those artists, especially in the uncertainty ahead of us.

And my final question, we've been talking a lot about the comp plan across the city and thinking, I know the big focus on comp plan, it usually tends to be on housing, Housing is, of course, a critical component for all of us.

But lately, I've been thinking about ways in which we, through land use policy, can support the standup of more maker spaces and more artist spaces.

And so I'm wondering, is this something you all have been thinking about?

Is this something we could talk about with you all?

Because it'd be great to see ways that we can use land use policy to support more arts activation.

Thank you, Chair Rank.

I am particularly happy to talk about that because Path of Art actually is an example of city land being utilized.

We exist on land owned and managed by the Seattle Center on 2nd and Mercer, and above are 96 units of Plymouth housing, low-income housing, supportive housing.

And so it is a model for what could be, and I would invite you all to come down and see the making, the art making.

Actually today we have open studio and participants can come and make art.

Anyone can come and make art.

We have a jam session going on, two visual art studios.

It is a way actually for people to build not just people to build resilience, but our community to build resilience.

We actually opened up that space on Wednesday for the whole community, not just our participants who come from about 60 social service partners, but for the whole community, because we are feeling the stress of the whole community, and so we're just leaning into that.

I would love to see more spaces.

I would love to help advise on what works and the considerations to build those spaces.

Amazing.

Thank you.

And I heard an invitation in there.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Chair.

And I see a hand from Council Member Solomon.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I did have something that came to mind that I wanted to follow up with.

I'm looking at opportunities for youth engagement in the arts in D2.

And I'd like to have a conversation with you.

Maybe we can schedule something where you can come into the office and we can talk about what that would look like, because I'm thinking about opportunities for youth in the arts, as well as art beautification, murals throughout the district.

I recall one mural that was placed on the Othello Safeway a number of years ago.

It has yet to be tagged because it was done by local folks.

It has stood for years without any kind of vandalism.

Whereas I've seen other things that have been put up by non-local artists that have been slashed.

So that's why I'm thinking if we can get our young people engaged in arts in their community, to beautify the community, that's going to be a win-win for all of us.

So I definitely want to thank you for being here today.

I thank you for the invitation that I heard as well.

And I want to engage with you to see how we can make some things happen for the young people in D2.

So thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Charlemagne.

We absolutely would love to talk to your office more about that.

And I think what you spoke to speaks to our why, too, of why so many of us are giving our time as citizen volunteers to this committee to support youth participation in arts, to support a vibrant culture in our city through public art.

And so really glad to hear you say that this speaks to you as well, and we're excited to follow up with you.

Good.

That's seeing no further questions or comments.

I want to thank all of you again for your service to the city.

And it looks like there'll be a lot of engagement moving forward.

So looking forward to meeting next.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving us to item three, will the clerk please read item three into the record?

2022 greenhouse gas inventory briefing and discussion.

All right.

Our friends from OSC are joining us at the table at the front.

Good morning.

Good morning.

And once you get settled in, if you could take a moment and state your name into the microphone for the record and then begin your presentation.

Good morning.

My name is Michelle Caulfield.

I'm the interim director for the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Good morning, counsel.

My name's Liliana Ayala.

I'm the interim deputy director at the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Good morning.

My name is Ani Krishnan.

I use he, him pronouns, and I'm the climate data and policy manager at the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Thank you very much.

I see we have a slide deck that's on the screen here.

And I want to first just start by saying thank you, Council Member and Chair Rank, for inviting us here today and committee members.

It's great to be here, and it's great to meet a few of you in person for the first time as well.

So today we're here to talk about our greenhouse gas inventory, and I want to just review.

We can move to the next slide.

I'll just review how we want to run through that today.

We want to also just first start by telling you a little bit about OSE.

So I will kick us off with a little bit about our office and the work that we do.

I'll turn it over to Ani next, who's going to talk about the inventory, our climate goals, the data, and the trends.

And then we will round up with Liliana talking a little bit about the work ahead of us.

So I will get us started just talking a little bit about our office and the mission here as stated above.

But I want to say that the Office of Sustainability and Environment implements citywide environmental and climate and sustainability policies across the city of Seattle.

We do this work in great support of Seattle's longstanding Race and Social Justice Initiative.

So we very much prioritize those communities who have experienced historic and current harm in terms of racial, economic, and environmental injustice.

And we know that environmental and sustainability policies and work is not the work of one department, but the work of many departments, the work of many sectors, and the work of our entire community.

So we do this work in deep partnership with many city departments, some of whom are represented here behind us.

I see we have Seattle City Light here in great force, which is awesome.

But we also work with other sectors, including business members and corporations and property owners, institutions, academic organizations, as well as in deep community partnerships.

And as we're implementing Seattle's One Seattle Climate Justice Agenda, we are working on this transition away from fossil fuels in ways that deliver that in equitable ways and support healthy, thriving communities.

So the last slide that I'm going to cover here is just an overview of our core services.

And I already talked about the work that we do in terms of climate and environmental justice.

And that work is really to prioritize greater representation of those underserved communities in the work that we're doing.

And what that looks like is deep investments in community capacity to be partners with us on this work.

That also looks like expanding equitable access to clean energy jobs as we do this transition.

It is working with communities that are impacted by the climate impacts that we are already seeing today to make sure that we have resilient strategies in place to protect people, and also place-based work in environmental justice communities like the Duwamish Valley, the neighbors of South Park, and Georgetown, and others.

And I will say that the Green New Deal Oversight Board is a very strong partner in all this work that we do.

The last thing I'll say, well, not the last thing I'll say, but I want to say strongly that this work, this deep partnership work, and this work on environmental justice really influences and shapes all the work we do across our office.

So our emissions reduction work that you're going to hear a lot about today, I'll just highlight that we do very deep work in our office in the building space.

and sort of have been doing that for many years.

And our leading building emission performance standard policy is the most recent legislation that we've passed to deliver emission reductions in buildings.

We also work in very deep partnership with Seattle City Light here and the Department of Transportation on reducing emissions from transportation and both getting people out of cars, but also the electrification piece of that.

Seattle has had a very longstanding commitment to a sustainable food system.

I think the first food action plan was passed in the early 2010s.

And so that work really translates into providing equitable access to healthy, local, sustainable foods.

through the longstanding Fresh Bucks program, which provides food incentives to help communities access fresh fruits and vegetables at more than 40 retail establishments across the city, a partnership with Seattle Public Schools to look at how we make school meals more healthy and culturally relevant, and a whole set of strategies that are outlined in the Food Action Plan, which was just recently updated.

And we work, again, in deep partnership with many city departments on that plan.

And last but not least, we've been very engaged in Seattle's urban forestry goals as a city.

We work with nine city departments and also in deep partnership with community members to make sure we have a thriving urban forest as we grow our city.

And we oversee the urban forest management plan as well as the canopy cover assessment to track our change over time.

So I will end here on the overview of OSE, and we welcome the opportunity to come back and talk to you in more detail about any of these programs.

And at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Ani, who's going to kick us off with the agenda at hand.

Thank you, Michelle.

Chairing, council members, thank you for making the time for us today.

And I also want to thank our public commenters today because you captured the essence of...

our presentation, so thank you for that.

In this next session, we'll do some context setting around our emissions reduction targets and how we measure our progress towards them.

Next slide, please, Lily.

Seattle's official emissions reduction targets, which cover our transportation buildings and waste sectors, call for a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 over a 2008 baseline.

and for Seattle to be net carbon neutral by 2050. And these targets were officially adopted through a council resolution in 2011. And we followed that up with our own climate action plan in 2013 to kind of serve as a framework for how we get to those targets.

And since then, the primary way we've been measuring our progress towards those emissions reduction targets is through a greenhouse gas emissions inventory.

What is an inventory?

Yeah, there we go.

Very simply, an inventory measures the amount of heat-trapping gases released by human sources within a defined boundary over the course of a year.

And there are many ways in which to measure emissions inventories.

And here at the city, we take kind of a layered approach to do that.

First, we have a handful of departments like SBU, Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle City Light, that conduct department greenhouse gas inventories specifically to measure the emissions impact of their own operations.

Next, we have the geographic inventory.

If we move on to advance the slides a little bit, we'll see that this is the one we're talking about today, and this one primarily tracks emissions occurring within our borders and also corresponds to those three sectors we mentioned for which we have official emissions, emissions reduction targets.

And then finally, we've got the consumption-based inventory, and this one tracks emissions created by the consumption of goods and services in our city, regardless of where those emissions are produced.

And just to give you a sense of scale, Here's roughly how much emissions get reported in each of those layers.

The largest one down below is the consumption-based emissions inventory.

We're talking about 11 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent.

The departmental operations are much smaller, 17,000.

And the geographic inventory, again, the one we're talking about today, is about 3 million metric tons.

And this slide is just for you all to have context for where we sit.

Like, this is one piece of the puzzle in terms of how we measure emissions, and this is an important one for us that we're going to be talking about today.

So one of the benefits of doing geographic inventories is that we have a global protocol that has been established by the Global Protocol for Cities.

And on the next slide, you'll see the reason we use this one is because it's widely used across the world.

It ensures that our methodologies are similar to what other cities use.

And this way, we can do more of an apples-to-apples comparison with how we're doing on emissions.

The protocol helps us define what we should be tracking.

And in this next slide and graphic, you'll see that we've got various sources of emissions here.

We've got scope one emissions on the left, which are the emissions that are occurring within our city boundaries.

Scope two down below, which is things like grid supply to energy.

And then scope three, primarily the emissions that occur outside our city boundary.

And then if we advance the slide one more, you'll see that we've got Oh, sorry, Lily, just...

There's a little bit of a delay.

My bad.

So the ones that we track are in this box right here, and these, again, correspond to the things that we do have those emissions reduction targets for.

So this is what we'll be talking about today.

And the core emissions that actually drive emissions here at the city are broken up into these three categories.

Again, road transportation, we heard, makes up the biggest chunk of emissions here in the city, about 58%.

And the primary driver for that, no pun intended, is people driving cars, vehicle miles traveled.

In the building sector, which makes up about 40% of our emissions, the primary driver there is burning fossil gas for heating and for cooking.

And then finally, the waste sector, which is just about 2%, the primary driver there is...

landfill waste that has organic material that shouldn't have been there.

And you'll see that when we compare ourselves with other cities, this graphic shows us per capita emissions across North American cities, and we do fairly well.

We're under the average here, and you'll see that buildings make up about 40% for us, and transportation is the biggest chunk.

But compared to a lot of other cities, buildings are a bigger portion of their emissions.

The reason for us that it's not as high is because we have Seattle City Light, which has a net carbon-neutral grid, and so our building sector emissions are generally lower compared to other cities.

And then you'll also see that on the next slide over if we go back one more, that these are the cities that are generally...

Bracket, Austin, Boston, Portland, San Francisco, and Vancouver.

And even compared to these cities, we are generally doing pretty well.

So moving on to the next slide, in summary, here are some of the considerations to keep in mind as we look at information from a geographic inventory.

As far as the benefits are concerned, we get citywide emissions estimates from these inventories, which helps us track high-level progress towards our emissions reduction targets.

It allows us to compare us to other cities to see how we're doing in terms of emissions.

And then on the limitation side, again, we heard this as well, there's two years between report releases.

We don't track all of the emission sources, and there's a lag in the data, 18 to 24 months at a time.

And there is also uncertainty in some of these data sources.

For example, our building sector data is measured, utility data that we can report on, and our transportation data, on the other hand, is modeled.

So there is a level of certainty, a difference in certainty between the data sources.

And we also don't have enough data granularity to determine the impacts of efforts at a local scale.

We don't have geographic granularity, spatial granularity, and temporal granularity.

So with that, we can start to look at the key takeaways and trends of our 2022 inventory numbers.

So the top line takeaways are that in 2022, across these three key sectors, emissions ticked up around 4% after a pandemic-induced dip in 2020, although the emissions hadn't returned to those pre-pandemic levels.

2022 emissions are about 12% lower than our 2008 baseline, and this happened with population increasing about 26% during the same period.

And we need to find a further 46 percent of reductions in the next eight years.

And those eight years are from 2022, by the way, not from 2025, to hit our 2030 targets.

On the next slide, you'll see this information on a graph.

This graph is showing a percentage change of core emissions, GDP, and population from our 2008 baseline.

So you'll see that we have been reducing our emissions over the baseline.

in the face of unprecedented population and GDP growth.

And that core emissions line, if we move on to the next slide, you'll see that over a longer trend line.

So we start with this 3.2 million metric tons of emissions in 2008. We're kind of steadily going along.

We see that drop-off in 2020, which is primarily pandemic-induced, and then the tick back up in 2022, up to 2.9 million metric tons.

But we have a long way to go.

We have to hit a target of 58% by 2030 and net carbon neutral by 2050, and this necessitates that we need to be moving about 10 times faster than our average annual reduction rate so far to hit that interim target of 2030. Now, this slide and the next three slides we'll see are a sector-specific overview, so we're looking at the same data except at the sector level, and we'll talk more specifically about what caused that change from 2020 to 2022 in each of these sectors.

So for transportation, we have about a 2 million baseline in 2008, Again, the big drop-off is people stayed home and worked from home and didn't travel in 2020, and the slight tick back up to 1.7 million in 2022. And if we advance it one more, we'll see a pop-up here of the factors that affected that increase.

The primary factor that caused it was an increase in what we call vehicle miles traveled, so more people got into their cars, There was an uptake in economic and tourist activity.

People started returning to work.

That was a primary driver that caused an increase in the emissions.

But this was happening also at the same time as national fuel standards were gradually improving.

So we also saw efficiency improvements there.

We saw an increase in transit ridership that tampered that rise in emissions.

And we also saw an increase in battery electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle registrations here in King County and Washington State that contributed to decreasing emissions even though there was a net increase overall.

So moving on to the next slide, those are the contributing factors there.

Moving on to the next sector here, building energy emissions.

We start off with a 1.3 million metric tons baseline in 2008. We're at about 1.2 million in 2022. Again, slight take back up.

And if we advance the slide one more, we'll see those contributing factors that were at play here.

We had much more extreme weather in 2022 than we did in 2020. Both our summers were hotter and our winters were colder.

So that was definitely a factor.

And as businesses and residents dealt with how to, you know, adjust to the pandemic.

We saw higher ventilation rates and that would increase strain on energy use.

At the same time, we have a very strong energy code that continued to make our buildings more efficient.

We also saw a slowdown in construction and commercial occupancy rates and all of these factors could have reduced the emissions and they might have been much larger had those not been at play.

And finally, our waste sector, we You'll see that on this slide, the K stands for 1,000, so we're at a much lower number here, 101,000 in 2008 and 69,000 in 2022. This line is much better to look at.

It almost looks like we're on track and we're potentially going to hit our goal, and that's because of the work that SBU has been doing.

They have amazing programs around construction waste diversion, waste diversion in general, composting and recycling.

And the tick back up really here that we see is because of an increased rate of people, residents, constituents bringing waste to self-haul stations.

And at the same time, again, because of the lack of construction activity or reduced construction activity, we saw a decrease in emissions from that sector as well.

So...

I think that's all I have as far as our data, and I'll hand it over to Liliana to talk about our progress and next steps.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

So earlier when we began this slide, there was a reference to our Climate Action Plan.

The Climate Action Plan first was developed in 2013. Since then, we've been working cross-departmentally to address greenhouse gas emissions systematically in buildings and transportation and waste, as you just heard.

Many of that is attributed to, as Ani said, our energy code, our building emission performance standards, our municipal building decarbonization, fleet decarbonization, transportation electrification could go on.

the great work our colleagues are doing across the city.

We are though at a point where the socioeconomic factors are different than 2013. And so in the mayor's State of the City address, he did share that he will be issuing an executive order directing OSE to convene and lead departments across the city of Seattle to undergo an update to our climate action plan.

We are currently in the preparation and planning process for that right now, but as we develop more details in terms of the process and get started, we're very happy to come back to Council and share that overview and are glad to work in collaboration with you in that process.

Oh, there we go.

Make sure I have my notes there.

Yep.

Thank you very much.

Happy to take any questions or comments you may have.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Colleagues, what questions do you have for our presenters from OSC?

Recognizing Council Member Solomon.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Looking at the transportation sector, it occurs to me that we currently have an administration that is rolling back any efforts to electrify our transportation.

So my question is, has your office thought about how we're going to respond to federal cuts to, like, charging stations.

You know, if we're really trying to reduce, you know, it seems to me that electrifying our fleet is one way to do that, yet when the feds are saying, yeah, we're not going to pay for this stuff, how, has your office thought about how we're going to respond to that?

Thank you very much for that question, Councilmember Salomon.

We are working closely with Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle City Light on making sure that we double down on our local investments in electrification.

I'll also say we're working in deep partnership with other regional and state partners like the Port of Seattle and the state of Washington to really think about how we leverage regional dollars and state dollars to deliver on our regional electrification goals.

I know that the Port of Seattle has several million dollars that they're investing in some heavy-duty truck incentives to electrify trucks.

We are partnering in conversations, partnering with them on that right now.

And the state of Washington also has money specifically through the Climate Commitment Act, which is going to continue to deliver incredible funding for our state and our community to stand firm in climate action.

So far, since the Climate Commitment Act has passed, there's been, I think, $3 billion that has been raised in revenues through fees on polluters to invest in the clean energy transition in the areas of buildings, in the areas of transportation, in the areas of waste.

And we're also in deep partnership with other regional partners through federal grants that have already been administered, like the Climate Pollution Reduction Fund, and a lot of climate planning work that's happening focused on electrification across our region.

There are big issues with federal policy.

I don't want to overlook that.

Not having the direction we need, actually having policies that are counter to what we want is a challenge.

But I feel good that we're in a region and in a state that's still committed to climate change.

So we will keep working on that.

Great, thank you.

And now I want to bring it down to a local level.

And this is actually something I think we, as a city government, can do something about.

It may involve conversations with FAS and the people who maintain our vehicles.

Because as it stands right now, vehicles are leased to various departments.

And I can give you a specific example of the vehicle that was assigned to me at the South Precinct.

We were told that you must drive this vehicle X number of miles per month, or it will be repurposed to some other use.

Well, the way that they are judging how the vehicle is used and how many miles are on that vehicle is by how often we gas up.

Yet these are hybrid vehicles.

And if we want to use them, use the electrified portion of the vehicle, we're basically punishing that use by saying, oh, we're going to judge how often this vehicle is driven or how far this vehicle is driven by how much gas you put in it.

So that seems to be counterintuitive to what our goals are.

again, maybe you have a conversation with our fleets people to say, you know, can you rethink this because it seems to be wonky.

So just saying.

Thank you very much for bringing that up.

And I will say we will follow up on that and really appreciate you bringing that to our attention.

Tracy Witten, who's in the audience here, has been working across many of the city departments on looking at our fleet commitments and how we convert our fleets.

So this is something I'm definitely going to bring back to that team to look into.

OK, great.

And last one, and I appreciate the indulgence, is looking at leadership in energy and environmental design when it comes to our buildings and designing our buildings like this building to be green so that they emit greenhouse gases.

I probably need to dig into our code to see if that's already there.

But help me out.

Yes, we work with Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections on a whole number of green building incentives that happen for beyond code actions.

And that includes things other than energy but water and landscaping and a number of things that support a healthy green building.

But we do have energy code right now locally that prioritize electrified new buildings.

So the new construction is essentially the carbon emissions are being taken care of in our new construction.

code.

So our office has been focused on those existing buildings that need to be retrofitted over time in a stepwise way as fossil fuel equipment fails.

What is that right moment for us to electrify those buildings so that they're meeting our climate goals?

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you all for this really insightful presentation today, very helpful.

This is a hugely important topic of strategic importance for our city, and I know a lot of our constituents are deeply concerned about it.

It's evident in some of the public comment today.

It's an important opportunity for me too, and strategic priority of mine, just because I represent District One, which includes West Seattle, South Park, Georgetown, Pioneer Square, and Soto.

And in that is the Duwamish Valley, Georgetown and South Park, the most heavily polluted communities in neighborhoods in the city.

And there's a lot of reasons for that, and I'm glad it's a wide sort of shared concern about the urgency and importance of this.

And now it's time to do right and address these underlying concerns because I'll tell you, as we know, South Park and Georgetown residents have historically bared the brunt of the economic opportunity that has been gained from some of these pollution drivers.

And while at the same time, those profits have been shared by a few who don't live in that community.

And then Delridge, by the way, is another, in my district, not particularly you know, safe or non-hazardous relative to other parts of the city either.

So very important for me and my district.

On the slide, I don't know if there's slide numbers, but it was during the data portion, the top line takeaways.

We learned, well, I guess that was the first, we'll use that as a canonical example.

We learned there that on that last bullet, we need to find a further 46% of reductions in the next eight years to hit our 2030 targets.

And I think you teed up and called out some other opportunities pertaining to that in terms of our longer term goals.

Just be curious to better understand how, I know there's a lot of expertise within the departments.

So just be curious to better understand how the department is thinking about some solutions for that?

And at a high level, how are you thinking about approaching that work to ensure we're able to better meet our targets and actually deliver upon our earlier commitments?

Is that, for example, part of the work pertaining to the mayor's executive order calling for an updated climate action plan.

How are you thinking about approaching solutions for that and any recommendations that might rise to the policy recommendation level?

Maybe I can kick us off.

Part of the process to update the Climate Action Plan includes a review of actions and strategies that were encompassed in the original one and doing a bit of an analysis to understand what actions have been underway, what is left to be done, what may have shifted or may potentially be no longer viable given where we're at right now.

So that will be a part of what we will be doing.

And then maybe, Michelle, if you have some specifics in different arenas.

I can cover a couple specifics.

I mean, one thing I want to just state is that what we're seeing in the inventory data from 2022 does not capture really outstanding leadership work that the city has done in the last couple of years with federal grants that have come in, with state grants that have come in, and with the work that we've been doing.

So a couple examples.

We talk about building emission performance standards.

Those benefits have not been realized yet, but will be realized.

We have a very aggressive, we heard about the clean heat program to remove oil from homes.

We have decreased oil-heated homes by 50%.

And a lot of that has also happened in the last two to three years, which may not show up in this inventory.

So I actually, I'm not trying to say like, we've got this, we're on it.

But there are a lot of things that have happened that we're hoping we will see through the next inventory and potentially new metrics that we put on our website and our dashboard.

So we need to continue what we're doing in the building space.

And we need to work very closely with Seattle City Light and how we do that in a way that takes into account the workforce needs around that change, the grid needs, the load needs, the generation needs, the reliability needs, and manages costs for customers.

So we feel very solid in the building space and how we're moving forward with the programs we have ahead of us.

There's about a 35% reduction in emissions just from those policies alone that we will That said, we heard about smaller businesses and residential homes and even the idea of moving to look at fossil gas in homes.

And we're really hoping for state funding as well as some city funding to look at how we do that transition away from not just oil but fossil gas in homes as well.

In terms of transportation, we don't want to speak for Seattle City Light here who are real leaders in looking at emission reductions in transportation, but there's been really outstanding work that's happened between Seattle City Light and Seattle Department of Transportation and OSE to really look at how do we get out of the way from the market changes that are happening with electric vehicles And how do we look at our transportation infrastructure investments?

So the transportation levy, also, which has a lot of focus on climate and resilience and emission reductions through low pollution neighborhoods and through looking at other infrastructure investments.

You may have seen the Seattle Times article recently showing an uptick in people riding transit, and we need to keep moving that higher.

We are seeing a downward trend from the pandemic, and now we're seeing that turnaround.

So we need to keep doing what we have been doing, but we also need to be bolder, and I will say, The work that Liliana and team are doing to work with multiple departments is coming together to look at what are those next generation policies that we need to put in place while we're still building out the capacity and infrastructure to deliver on what we've already passed and what we're already doing.

Thank you.

And you mentioned the transportation levy that voters recently approved.

And this council crafted carefully and put together.

But yeah, there's a lot of non-trivial exciting elements pertaining to climate action and resiliency that we baked into that levy that you mentioned, including EV charging infrastructure, a lot of tree planting initiatives, and our right-of-ways.

I forgot the exact total.

It's something along the lines of like 26, 27% comprise the total available area to plant and grow and maintain trees in our entire city in terms of our city's overall landmass, our city's right-of-ways, 27 or so percent.

So we did a lot for Client More to do, of course, but definitely thank you for calling out the nexus and you as well, the nexus and integration between this work and the execution of our transportation infrastructure.

Final question.

So this is pertaining to the data, and I'm just curious to better understand.

The latest data we have available is from 2022. And I heard you director a moment ago saying something along the lines of, We've done a lot of great things in the past couple of years since 2022. And I hope that it would show up in future data.

No dig at you.

I think by all accounts, you and your department are doing great work, and we need to continue this work.

Clearly, there's opportunities reflected in the data that we have available today.

But at the same time, as a city, hope is not an effective strategy to achieve our goals.

And we have a huge dependency on this data.

Can you help better understand Why there's such a lag in latency in the data?

We are at the, in context, just for clarity, we are at the end of Q1 of 2025 and we're using, we're leveraging data from 2022. So yeah, what's the latency?

Thank you for that question, council member.

The reason for that latency is because putting together an inventory is a pretty involved process because it involves data sources that are disparate from different departments, sometimes from external partners, and putting it all together is an involved process which takes time.

We recognize that, and we recognize those limitations, which is why over the past two or three years, we've been working to figure out what leading indicators of emissions could be And in service of that, we launched, did a little bit of a soft launch, a pilot, if you will, for what we call the One Seattle Climate Portal.

And on this portal, we have information where available quarterly, at the quarterly level.

So in the building sector, that data is much easier for us to procure because we just talk to our friends at City Light, talk to our friends at Puget Sound Energy, and we get that utility data aggregated on a quarterly basis.

And it is by census tract.

So you could look at your specific neighborhoods, the neighborhoods that concern you in District 1, and figure out what that information looks like.

So we have that information on the portal.

It's much harder to get in the transportation sector.

The reason for that is because we rely on a travel demand model that our regional partner, the Puget Sound Regional Council, puts together.

And that's an involved process as well.

So they'd have to do a travel demand survey.

It takes multiple years, so they only update it once every few years.

And we take that model, and then because it's a regional model, we apply factors to essentially say, OK, if this is what's happening in the region, what portion of that is Seattle accountable for?

We and our colleagues at the Seattle Department of Transportation have been working to find different sources of data, different data sets that we can be using.

One of those is called, it's from a company called Replica.

And again, our aim is to get data that is more measured and that is more regular.

And we should hopefully be, we should have something to say about that at some point this year with better data.

I also want to just thank you for your comments, and I agree with your comments and the comments we heard in public comment about how we can provide better data, better storytelling, better narrative about the work that we are doing.

And so that will be something that we will be looking at as part of the update to our climate action plan.

A big part of that will be looking at transparency and reporting on a more regular basis.

So there is more to come, and I do really want to acknowledge that as a priority.

Thank you.

Thank you, council member Saka for those questions.

And so close us out on this.

I want to repeat something I heard in your presentation that really struck me and it was something that Annie said, um, we need to move 10 times faster than we have been to meet our 2030 goal.

And so I was really pleased to see the executive announce an update for the climate action plan.

I sincerely hope that we're talking about an update to this climate action plan that will set an aggressive path forward.

And I know my office really wants to be partnered in making that possible because we wanna be able to really take this as seriously as much as this demands it.

And to that end, it also really begs the question, what are our biggest roadblocks right now that are keeping the city from making more progress?

I can start with some of that.

I mean, we heard budget, right?

We heard budget, too.

But I also want to say funding is important and funding is needed and investment is needed across the entire community for this to happen.

And that investment needs to come in infrastructure to support greater electrification.

That funding, that investment needs to happen in terms of behavior change, in terms of actual people and companies and workers making different choices about how they move around our city, how they heat and cool their homes.

And so I would say behavior change and kind of a whole culture shift is something that requires the whole community to engage in.

And so I think how we double down on, one, we've been trying to make it easy through rebates, through incentives, through programming to help people make that shift.

Where we can, we've required it.

And we can't require all of those things, but we can require some of it.

And then I think the infrastructure that supports what we are talking about is essentially an economic transition of our energy system.

Can't be...

echoed enough how great that is.

That is about workforce transition.

That is about infrastructure that moves energy, stores energy, supplies energy.

And that is also about retrofitting existing infrastructure, whether that be the infrastructure of the utility or the infrastructure that people live and work in, taking time to do that in a cost-wise way.

to not unduly burden people.

So I would say it's sort of a system change, and system change can always in itself becomes a huge barrier.

So I think how we work together, getting over that, how we work together and make sure all the how we think about what those needs are and jointly plan and invest in what those needs are.

So I think definitely budget.

And we need budget from the state.

And we would love to have budget and policy direction from the federal government.

But I also think just the actual infrastructure changes that are happening as we make those investments over time is a challenge.

Anything that Ani or Liliana want to add to that?

I'll just put a fine point on the commitment that we have collectively across the city and regionally to help that transition and behavior change in a way that doesn't disproportionately overburden those who are already experiencing the impacts of climate change.

in a disparate and cumulative way.

So it is a bit of a change management process that we're navigating and trying to do so quite thoughtfully.

Amazing.

Thank you all so much for being here.

I certainly want to be connected to this work as you're updating climate action plans.

We'll probably be asking you all to come back and share updates on the work with the committee.

But thank you for the work you do and for being here today.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, counsel.

All right, moving us along.

We are going to be moving on to item four.

Will the clerk please read item four into the record?

An ordinance relating to the City Light Department authorizing the department to establish eligibility requirements for customers participating in the Renewable Plus Program and charging a rate for the delivery of dedicated renewable energy and its associated renewable energy credits supplied by the department under the Renewable Plus Program and amending section 214989 of the Seattle Municipal Code briefing and discussion.

Wonderful, thank you.

And colleagues for awareness and interest in time today, we are going to be moving items five and six to a later meeting.

Luckily, they're not urgent, so apologies in advance.

Anybody from the City Light team who was here today for that, we promise we'll get to it.

But for now, I'm going to turn it over now to our presenters here today with City Light.

CEO Lindell, please take us away.

Good morning, committee chair, Rink, and council members.

So today we are before the committee to request authority to establish participant eligibility rules and the billing rate for renewable plus program approved by the city council in September of 2021. City Light established this program for a unique set of commercial customers who are seeking delivery of dedicated renewable energy and the associated renewable energy credits.

These are commercial customers who have specific corporate clean energy goals.

fits right in with what we were just talking about, and or facilities pursuing certifications that require them to be served by dedicated renewable resources with the associated renewable energy credits.

We are pleased that working collaboratively with these customers We have developed an innovative program that meets their needs while also ensuring that the customers participating in the program are paying for the full costs of the program as required in the ordinance establishing the program.

I will now turn it over to Craig Smith.

Oh, I guess, yes, Craig Smith.

Sorry, I couldn't see you, Craig.

Suddenly I thought, uh-oh.

Craig Smith, our chief customer officer and the talented City Light professionals leading this program to brief you on the details of the program and the action requested by City Light.

Okay, why don't we go through and we'll just introduce everybody at the table, and we'll start with the young lady to my, I'm Craig Smith, Chief Customer Officer, City Light, and we'll start with the lady to my left who will actually be making the presentation.

Good morning, my name is Lori Mowen.

I'm the manager of Customer Energy Solutions, Solutions Design and Management Team at City Light.

Good morning, I'm Siobhan Doherty, the Power Supply Officer for Seattle City Light.

Kirstie Granger, Chief Financial Officer for Seattle City Light.

All right, so should you stay on the slide for just a moment, please?

Today we're introducing an ordinance that asks for three updates to an existing SMC.

The first update is relative to eligibility for customers participating in the program.

The second update is to some minor language changes to add clarity.

And the third update is to add a rate component so that we can begin execution of this program.

And our first slide, if you can go back one, please.

Thank you.

Our first slide is really just an overview of the Renewable Plus program.

We have a suite of six or seven renewable energy programs for our customers to participate in.

This is one of those programs.

And as Dawn said, it's targeted, I'm sorry, could you go back?

Thank you, back one more.

We're still on the first slide, thank you.

So this particular program was a request of our large customers that they had a need and we had a gap in our portfolio.

And so the solution that we're providing with this program is to contract for a brand new power supply that is a renewable energy resource to integrate that into Seattle City Lights distribution, to meet the subscribing customer's load with that resource, and then to retire the renewable energy attributes of this resource along with the kilowatt hours that the customers consume.

And it's referred to as a bundled energy resource because the power and the renewable attributes are combined.

Next slide, please.

So this program has been under-designed for a long time.

We came to the council in 2011 to seek authority to offer the program.

Sorry, 21. Thank you, Craig.

And of interest, the information that we're presenting here is that the unique thing about this program is that the customer commitment is a long term.

And that's because we're actually contracting for a power resource that is a long-term resource.

And we want to recover the costs of the project along with the rate over the course of time.

So we have energy developers who are building this project for us, and we have contracted with them to purchase the power through our power purchasing agreement.

We have customers who will sign a participation agreement, and they will participate with us a commitment of 15 years.

Next slide, please.

So as I mentioned, we have three changes that are being proposed in the ordinance today.

The first change is relative to customer eligibility.

Over the course of the last several years, we've heard from customers who are very interested in this program that don't meet the large base load requirements in the eligibility.

So we're trying to future proof this and be agile because our customers have specific requests to participate in this program to meet certain certification processes.

And these are qualifications that provide certification that they have met certain goals in relationship to being green and acquiring renewable energy resources.

Two of these examples, one is the International Living Futures Institute certification.

This is a nationally recognized program.

And the second example is our own SDCEI, who has a living building pilot program.

So we have customers that want to participate in both of these programs.

And so we're trying to be flexible with our eligibility.

Next slide, please.

The second change that we're making is relevant to the fact that we've been able to contract for two projects to supply power for this program.

These projects are located in Central Oregon.

The developer has secured transmission for that power to come into Seattle, and we have a guaranteed output of 184,000 megawatt hours.

And to put this into perspective, the average customer in City Lights territory uses just over 1 megawatt per household.

So this represents the power output of what would supply power to about 184,000 households.

These projects should be online and delivering power to us in Q1 of 2026. So having these power supplies resources acquired we were able to move into our rate design and finalize that.

Next slide, please.

So the methodology of the rate design has three main premises.

The first is that we're going to avoid cost shifting of any costs from this program to non-participants.

That's very standard in the way we approach our program design.

The charge or cost for this program will be in addition to the customers on current billed charges.

So if you get a bill for $20,000 currently, you will have one new line item on that bill.

And for all of the kilowatt hours consumed, we will have a specific charge for this program on top of that.

Because we're coming to you for authority after our regular rate package, we're going to request that this initial term be fixed for three years, and then once we come back to our standard two-year rate-making process, we will fold this rate into that process and refresh it every two years thereafter.

So that is the basis of the design.

The inputs that go into that rate methodology are three primary values.

The first is the number of customers that we have subscribed to the program.

And right now, we're sitting with about 70% reservations for the amount of power that we have available.

So that feels really good for us.

The second is that we are recovering all of the program design costs and administration costs throughout the whole 15-year course of the program.

And the third main input is the value of the renewable energy credits, which will be changing from year to year based on market conditions.

So we put all of that in, churn the crank, and the rate that we're proposing today is 1.47 cents, incremental to the customer.

So next slide, please.

That's a summary and a wrap up of the three items that are represented in this ordinance.

Again, changing the minimum threshold for eligibility, updating and setting a premium for the program at 1.47 cents per kilowatt hour, and updating our language for clarity and flexibility.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, questions you have for our CityLive representatives?

Councilmember Sacca.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, CEO Lindell and the entire City Light team.

Appreciate this presentation today.

Very insightful.

I guess, first off, just curious, can you restate your remit in like the portfolio within the department that you overlook?

The customer energy solutions team oversees about 30 plus programs across a number of different focus areas.

Renewable energy is one of those focus areas.

We also operate programs in energy efficiency, transportation electrification, and moving into demand response and flexible loads.

Awesome.

You're speaking my language now based off some prior work that we've done with one of my constituents and one of our top customers in the city.

All right, cool.

But solutions, more specifically, customer energy solutions team.

And I just want to call that out as I think it's a fantastic branding that the City Light team has.

And I'm sure there's probably multiple teams within the department that have solutions.

as part of their naming, their framing, and their mission.

And I would encourage other executive departments to adopt similar solutions, because when customers, when constituents engage with the departments, we shouldn't be in the business of shipping our org chart or confusing them.

We are here at the end of the day.

It doesn't matter what the department or agency is, is to provide solutions for whatever they're seeking.

So I just wanted to confirm that.

That's what I thought you said, and share that as a priority because branding matters.

All right.

Well, on the slide six, When you talk about the methodology to set the rate payment, one of the criteria you're using, seems like a good one, avoids cost shifting to non-participants.

Can you talk about some of the non-monetary impacts of the program, if any, on non-participants?

Well, one thing I might add is with this commitment that these customers have to climate and preventing, you know, doing their best to reduce greenhouse gas and making a climate commitment that provides cleaner air for all of us.

I'd add that there is a net benefit to all City Light customers by City Light bringing this power into our service territory and enabling the development of new renewable energy resources in the region.

Excellent point.

Awesome.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any additional questions right now?

All right, I'll chime in with some pieces.

And I know this was a new program for me to learn about.

And I mean, really exciting to see.

I mean, we're talking about a 100% renewable energy option for large commercial industrial businesses.

Really tides well with looking at the presentation we were just in.

And I think just looking towards this, you know, with these changes to the renewable plus program, how are we measuring our success?

And what are kind of those interim outcomes that we're looking towards?

Great question.

I think our first goal, well, our first goal, right now we're still in the design phase and we'll start to build out the program delivery mechanisms here in the next several months.

This rate is pivotal to moving into that process.

So our goal for 2025 is to really fully subscribe the program.

And ideally, we would get a wait list and perhaps have a second tranche.

And the program team that has worked on this, I just want to give them a recognition here.

This has been a slow and steady burn to get to this point.

And we're just really, really excited.

They've done some amazing work to navigate the challenges and all the various elements that go into delivering this.

It's been an iterative process with customers.

They've really helped to shape the details around the program, program design.

So I'm really optimistic that we're going to get this fully subscribed.

And to be at a 70% commitment rate at this point, including one signed participation group agreement for the large percentage of the output, we're sitting really well.

Awesome.

And certainly really appreciative of the engagement you've been doing with customers, it seems, to be shaping what this programmatic change should look like.

Could you just illustrate a little bit more what that engagement has looked like and also give us maybe a sense of who are the customers we're talking about that all really are currently participating, if you're able to share that, and what some of the impacts of doing these changes could look like?

Yeah, great question.

So as we mentioned in the initial intro, this is aimed at those larger commercial and industrial customers.

I think the initial scan was about 60 to 65 of our customers meet this qualification.

And the initial engagement was one-on-one.

We went out and we talked to specific customers gaining their interest and started off with a letter of intent to participate, so an LOI.

And we have two customers who've come to us recently.

They're sort of on hold, waiting for this process to take place.

But we expect that we'll maybe have as many as five to 10 customers in this first tranche, and perhaps even more thereafter.

And just to be clear, we're talking about 5 to 10 additional customers on top of that 60 to 65 folks?

Or are we talking about of that 60 to 65 folks, 5 to 10 opting in for this additional type?

5 to 10 out of the 65. This is a unique program.

We do have many other options for customers to participate in renewable energy, including on-site generation and remuneration for that through various vehicles.

Also, they can purchase recs directly through our green-up program.

and we will have a new community solar program coming out here in the next year.

So we're trying to meet the customer's need where they're at, and we feel that this may become more and more of interest to customers once we get it underway.

Fantastic.

Thank you for clarifying that point for me.

And it seems like this is another great opportunity for more owned generation, which I think just allows us to have more local resilience, which I think we're learning increasingly is really important for us during these uncertain times.

And so I don't have any other additional questions, but colleagues, do you have any final questions or comments for our colleagues at City Light?

Wonderful.

Well, with that, thank you all so much.

I think this is an amazing step for our green energy future and look forward to hearing updates.

I know this is just for briefing discussion today.

We're bringing this back for a vote in committee and then before a full council.

And so we'll certainly be following up and continuing this work with you.

And thank you for being here today.

Thank you.

And with that, colleagues, we've reached the end of our agenda today, actually.

Is there anything for the good of the order?

All right, fabulous.

In that case, thank you all for being here today for a very packed agenda hearing from three different departments and offices.

With that, I am going to...

conclude our meeting for today.

We've reached the end of today's agenda.

Hearing no further business to come before the committee, we are adjourned.

Thank you.