Ready when we are, okay.
Hey everyone, thank you all so much for being here.
My name is Mike O'Brien, I'm a Seattle City Council member.
I'm joined by a handful of folks who I'll introduce in a moment.
Wanted to take a chance to give you an overview of a piece of legislation that we will have a draft version of in our committee tomorrow.
It's a piece of legislation that is one of the first pieces we're doing as follow up to the Green New Deal resolution that we passed out of city council last month.
And just as a reminder, the work on the Green New Deal is a reflection of a national movement that started over a year ago, but taking it to the city level while we're waiting for the climate at the national political level to be ready to work on things like the Green New Deal.
And the attempt here is that we know we have to solve the climate crisis.
We also have to solve the income inequality.
Both of those challenges have damaged the same communities, low income communities, communities of color, immigrant refugee communities.
And we need to solve both those crises simultaneously by lifting up the voices of the folks who have been most impacted by that.
This piece of legislation we're talking about would prohibit new construction, so new buildings, from hooking up to natural gas lines.
And I want to take a minute to talk about why we're doing that.
This is a first step.
It's a rather small step, but it's a first step in a direction towards becoming a 100% climate pollution free city by the year 2030, essentially in the next decade.
I'm going to tell you a little bit about my story, and then I'm going to hand it over to some other folks to tell their story.
My wife and I bought our house in Seattle 25 years ago.
When we bought our house, it's now about a 125-year-old home.
It didn't have natural gas, but one of the first things we did when we moved in is we bought natural gas to the house.
We did that because 25 years ago, I was still an environmentalist then, and I believed that was the right thing to do as an environmentalist.
We were getting rid of our oil furnace, and at the time, electricity seemed like a dirtier alternative because at the time, our electric grid had coal on it.
Well, some things have changed in the last 25 years.
One is that Seattle City Light 15 years ago became a carbon neutral electric utility, which means all the electrons passing through its network are 100% carbon neutral.
The other thing that's shifted is we've learned more about natural gas.
One is that where our natural gas comes from has shifted.
The majority of the natural gas we burn in our city is now fracked gas, which has devastating impacts to the communities where it's produced.
We have also learned more about the impacts of this frack gas on our climate.
You'll hear more about that in a moment, but the methane leaks that are caused as part of that system are 25 times more potent than CO2 as a global warming agent.
Unfortunately, I've also learned the health impacts that have impacted my family by the decision I made to cook with natural gas.
We'll hear from a doctor later today who will talk about what I've exposed my now 21 and 19-year-olds to their entire lives, because I thought that was the clean thing to do, and it turns out it was actually a very hazardous thing that I've put them through, and my whole family through.
And finally, we also know that this is an explosive material, and it's dangerous as it passes through our communities.
And we'll hear from someone who has some lived experience about what a gas explosion feels like.
So the first two folks we're going to hear from is Jill Glen-Goleman, who's the Executive Director of GotGreen.
Then we're going to hear from Jeff Swalwick from 350 Seattle.
Thanks.
Thank you, everyone.
My name's Jill Mangaliman.
I'm the executive director at Got Green.
We're a people of color-led environmental justice organization based out of South Seattle.
We believe that everybody deserves to live healthy, long lives and that the green economy should be accessible to everyone.
And by the green economy, we mean healthy homes, healthy access to healthy food, reliable transit, public transit, as well as living wage green jobs.
So we're really in support of this legislation, healthy homes and healthy buildings, because we see this as connected to the community's everyday lives of wanting to ensure that people are able to have a healthy environment, not just out there in the wilderness, but here in our own backyards, here in our communities.
We know that fracked gas is unhealthy towards our people, not just at the point of extraction, but also within within the buildings that they are powering.
And this is something that we're still educating ourselves about to learn.
We were told that this was a cleaner type of energy, but it's not that so.
And so the more and more we learn, the more we grow.
And for us, climate change is is a threat multiplier to racial justice.
Already our people are struggling with environmental health struggles and 7% of King County children and 9% of adults have asthma.
We live in a society where your zip code can determine, you know, whether or not you have asthma or whether or not, you know, how long your life expectancy is.
And unfortunately, the way that the society in history has been set up and these policies have been set up, Native and Black communities also have taken the brunt of environmental hazards and having their communities placed next to polluting areas.
And so, we're very much in support of this legislation because We see frack gas as another pollutant that's harming our communities.
And the reality is that we want to make sure everyone is healthy and strong, everyone has a future, and that in order for us to take on climate change, to change our society, we really need to make these changes here in our city, on the ground level, in everybody's home, and make sure it's accessible to everyone.
So thank you for hearing that.
I just also want to share like, you know, it is the end of summer.
You know, these hot days are getting harder and harder.
And, you know, we're going to need more energy, you know, to keep our homes cool.
And then when the winter comes, it's going to get hotter.
My mom also especially, you know, has respiratory issues.
She has heart problems.
members of my own family and myself too, that it's been a hard summer with these, you know, the air is getting worse.
And so I really urge everyone to take action and to support this legislation.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My name is Jess Wallach, and I'm an organizer with 350 Seattle, where a grassroots volunteer-led nonprofit working to address the climate crisis by advocating and organizing for systems change.
And what we mean by that is that we recognize that the climate crisis shares roots with our economic justice crisis, and that the climate solutions at the intersections of everyday needs like housing, transportation, food, health, and good jobs are also the most effective climate solutions.
They bring down our carbon pollution, and they make our lives more beautiful, more healthy, and create a better city for all.
And from that perspective, we're really excited about the Healthy Homes, Healthy Buildings policy.
We see it as a necessary first step in implementing Seattle's Green New Deal, because as long as we're still allowing new fossil fuels into our communities, we're not serious about tackling the climate emergency.
And to underscore that, I want to take you on a journey of where the gas comes from in our homes when we turn on our stoves or turn on our heat or turn on our laundry machines.
It actually starts far away from here.
Here in Seattle, roughly two-thirds of a gas that powers our homes is fracked.
It comes from places like the Rockies in B.C., where the fracking industry has devastated local communities.
Fracking poisons the air and the water, which leads to higher rates of cancer, respiratory problems, and birth defects for people living and working nearby.
Fracking industry man camps are linked to higher rates of violence and murder against indigenous women.
And from there, the gas moves through pipelines that leak, so much so that because of the escape methane, frack gas is as bad for the climate or worse than coal.
And these pipelines travel under our feet, often unnoticed until they explode, which happens regularly in a country with aging fossil fuel infrastructure.
And this is especially concerning for cities like Seattle, which are in earthquake zones.
If the big one hits, one thing that we can be certain of is that there will be explosions from gas pipelines under our feet.
And then after all of that, the frack gas comes into our homes, where via gas stoves, furnaces, it emits indoor air pollution at levels so toxic that if it was outside, it'd be illegal under the Clean Air Act.
And when you put that in perspective, air pollution kills an estimated 9 million people a year around the world.
That's more than war, terrorism, and malaria combined.
That's no small matter.
So as we're building for Seattle's future, we need to be asking ourselves, what kind of future do we want?
Do we want to be locked into fracked gas and the pollution, the safety risks, and the injustices that come with it?
Or do we want to pivot?
Do we want to make smart choices about energy that will move our city towards a healthier climate future for all?
More than 50 cities and counties in California are already poised to follow Berkeley and San Luis Obispo in making sure that new homes and buildings aren't powered by fossil fuels.
Seattle has a real opportunity to pave the way by enacting common sense climate policy that keeps our communities and our planet healthy and safe.
Thank you.
So we're going to switch out, and I'm going to let Max and then Erin and then Chris introduce themselves.
Max, you want to be right in the middle since you're first?
Good to go?
Great.
Thank you for inviting us here today.
My name is Max Savashinsky.
I'm the executive director of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.
We're an organization that represents nearly 1,000 physicians and other health care professionals in Washington state, advocating on behalf of public health through our programs that represent what we consider the greatest threats to human health, and those include climate change, nuclear weapons abolition, and economic inequality.
Our organization and the health professionals that we represent endorse and support the Seattle Green New Deal, and virtually all leading medical and healthcare organizations also acknowledge the threat that climate change presents and the extent to which it is a serious human health issue.
Last month, the American Medical Association, the Academy of Family Physicians, the American Lung Association, and dozens of other public health organizations developed a call to action on climate health and equity.
So I came today to speak briefly about some of the points that were mentioned earlier around the health impacts of using natural, or as we call it, fracked gas, particularly in homes.
Fracked gas and the use of natural gas in homes is poisoning families and poisoning children every time that it is used.
I've been a 25-year resident of Seattle.
I bought my home in Beacon Hill six years ago, and one of the first things I did was to run gas from my basement up to my kitchen so that I could cook with gas, because as everybody likes to say, it's a very positive thing to be cooking with gas.
People say, oh, now we're cooking with gas.
And that idea really needs to change.
So every day that I have been cooking with gas in my home, which I didn't realize when I did that, is that I've been poisoning myself and my two young children every time I turn on the stove.
So if you did that this morning to cook pancakes or eggs for your children, you were emitting some serious pollutants into your home, including nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde.
Very few people are aware of this, but every day that we use natural gas in our homes, we are emitting that.
into the air that our families breathe.
A study that was, I think, cited before found that in California, 60% of homes that cook with gas At least one time a week, we're found to have levels of pollutants that would be considered illegal if found outside, according to federal standards.
So the pollution risks are quite extreme and quite real in every home that is using natural gas.
So our organization endorses the Healthy Homes, Healthy Buildings legislation, and we want to see a greener and cleaner Seattle for our families and children.
Thank you.
Hello, my name's Aaron Fairchild.
I'm the CEO of Green Canopy Homes.
Green Canopy Homes is a mission-driven infill builder.
We build homes in Seattle and Portland.
Our mission is we build homes, relationships, and businesses that help regenerate communities and environments.
We're in support of this proposal to remove natural gas from our homes, and we've been in support of it since our inception.
We've never run natural gas pipes to our homes.
We've built hundreds of all-electric homes and sold them here in Seattle and Portland.
The benefits are such that you've described, Max, the homes, the indoor air quality is healthier.
They cost less to operate because the envelopes of our homes are tighter.
We have heat recovery ventilators in our homes which filter out the air and ensure proper ventilation into the homes.
And what we're really here to say is the market is there for this.
Consumers of our homes, our homebuyers love our homes.
And our consumers, our homebuyers, the market can't be defined by one appliance.
The market can't be defined by a gas range top.
We are here to say that and to share that our homeowners love their induction cooktops.
I have been personally a fan of natural gas for years and spent a lot of time over a natural gas oven cooktop here and abroad.
But now we are an induction stovetop range user and it's better.
It's much better.
You have more control.
Your pot of hot water boils quickly.
faster, much faster than gas range.
And our homeowners actually, the benefit that they get from not having forced air, natural gas furnaces, lower energy bills.
When we use ductless heat pump mini splits, That uses less energy, so the homes actually cost less to operate and own.
They're better for you, and the reason why we've stuck with natural gas is because there is a regression to the mean, which is regulation.
And what code requires, most builders build just to that.
As a mission-driven organization, we've had a commitment since our inception in 2009 to build far beyond what regulation requires because we believe it's the right thing to do.
And we're proud of our Seattle Council members for identifying that this is the right thing to do.
And the market is ready for that.
as evidenced by the hundreds of homes that we've sold and the market comparables that those create.
Every one of our homes is compared in the market to validate the next approach.
So we are hopeful that our approach is actually creating, inspiring other builders to build with induction range.
This legislation will make that possible across the playing field so that we can all enjoy the benefits of healthy homes that cost less to operate and own.
So thank you very much.
I'm hopeful that we can get this across the finish line.
It'll be wonderful for our community as a leader in the nation.
Hey, everyone.
My name's Chris Macon.
I'm a native Seattleite, born here in Seattle and raised up on Finney Ridge Greenwood, and privileged enough to be able to still live there.
On the morning of March 9, 2016, I remember I was, I don't remember I was dead asleep, but I remember sitting bolt upright in bed, and I don't, I didn't know why.
Like, it was just like something had happened.
And I just looked around, everything seemed fine.
went back to sleep.
My wife got up about five in the morning to go to her job teaching at Ballard High School, and she came back inside and she's like, you better get down to, oh, so I'm also the founder and former owner of the Chaco Canyon Organic Cafe.
She said, you better get down to the cafe.
We had a brand new third location down in Greenwood, between 84th and 85th on Greenwood.
I walked down there from the house and it was like something out of a movie.
It was like something that was so shocking to see in my neighborhood, in my city.
It was like a bomb had gone off, and a bomb had gone off.
You guys all know the story.
The PSE gas explosion incinerated three businesses, a couple buildings, displaced a couple more businesses, and eventually caused the closure of a number of other businesses in the neighborhood.
When I was finally let into our cafe about 8 o'clock, At night, it was shocking.
We took a great old antique store that had been there with friends, family, and employees.
We had transformed it into a nice little cafe.
And just all the windows were blown in, all the furniture was just reduced to lumber.
I'll never forget, we had a bookcase that was against the wall that was on the side of the street, and it was blown all the way across the cafe.
It was just incredible.
Because I'm a small business owner, we couldn't really afford to be closed between 8 o'clock that night and about 4 in the morning.
We had people from the neighborhood, we had family, we had employees there cleaning up, getting ready, boarding up the windows so we could be open the next day.
Fortunately, PSE, they leapt into action as well.
They issued press statements and saying that they weren't responsible and blaming other people.
And it was kind of amazing to see that the mantle of responsibility was taken on by a community organization, the Finney Neighborhood Association.
They raised a small, well, it's a big organization, but they raised $330,000 from around the neighborhood take care of the people who are displaced from their buildings, take care of businesses, and try to do everything they could to help the neighborhood.
Now, I think the point's been eloquently made that natural gas is a misnomer.
It has massive negative consequences around our planet and in our communities and in our homes.
It's also clear it's not completely safe resource to be piped under all of our homes.
We were lucky.
We were so lucky here.
If this happened any other time of the day, dozens of people would have died.
and other communities in the United States haven't been that fortunate.
So the real point I want to make is why we're here today.
Our local gas company is not a public utility.
It's a massive, multi-billion dollar, for-profit organization.
And I know that some CEOs came out a couple weeks ago and said, you know what?
We're going to be responsible.
We're going to be CEOs who take the public good in front of profits.
But until that really happens on even a small scale, we can't really trust that.
And we all know that multi-billion dollar companies exist for one reason, which is to grow and to maximize shareholder return.
And that's what's beautiful about local government and about this legislation.
If this was happening in D.C., this would go nowhere right now.
Small things happen and start in small local government spaces like this.
And this is a really important step to take.
It's just a couple decades, I can't remember the date, but when Gavin Newsom presided over the first gay marriage in San Francisco, Now, it's just the law of the land.
In Seattle, people call us a nanny state, and we do nanny laws, and we do all these things that are inconvenient, like banning plastic bags and styrofoam.
How terrible!
But then, you see other municipalities and states.
and now countries banning these things, because it's the right thing to do.
It's OK to move on from old technology and old ways of thinking.
And this is a great first step or second step in this process.
So I'm really proud to speak on behalf of this.
I'm really proud of Council Member O'Brien for bringing this to the forefront.
And I think this is good legislation that we all need to consider and learn from.
Thank you all.
Why don't I invite Jess and Jill to grab a seat on the edges here, and we can open up to questions if folks have questions.
Have you talked to PSC at all, or heard from them, or been in conversation with them?
Reached out to PSC a couple weeks ago.
I was in a meeting, kind of a business leader meeting with PSC also a couple weeks ago.
Have had some email exchanges, and I believe I'm meeting with them tomorrow for the first time, kind of face-to-face to talk through it.
And how did that go?
I actually have not heard anything other than scheduling requests to get in front of them.
What we know, this is obviously a major line of business for Puget Sound Energy.
The science is very clear.
They are selling a fossil fuel that is destroying our planet.
And my hope is that they recognize that they need to get out of that line of business.
Companies that are 100% gas, Puget Sound Energy is an electric utility and a gas utility.
Now in Seattle, they're just gas, but if you go over to Bellevue, if Bellevue did something similar, they would simply be shifting their people, their customers from the gas line of business to the electric line of business.
We saw the utility in Berkeley, California come out in support of this because they were also the gas and electric utility.
And so I think there's obviously a threat to the natural gas business, but there's also a huge opportunity to an electric company like Puget Sound Energy.
And I hope they recognize the upside in the future and recognize that it's time for us to transition off natural gas.
Why do it this way with a sort of curate approach rather than maybe some kind of incentive to have new builders use this technology and then maybe even existing buildings swap it out?
And then sort of more generally, do you see this as sort of a bookend to your time on city council?
Yeah, it would be so great to be able to say like, I tied it up with a bow and we were done.
Unfortunately, the reality is almost the opposite of that.
So when I started, I believe in 2011, the city council was one of the first cities in the country in the world to commit to being carbon neutral by 2050. And we thought that was big and bold.
And in the last nine years I've been on council, worked hard for policies to move us in that direction.
And while we've taken some good steps and started to bend the curve in the right direction, as a city we're not even on track to meet those 2050 targets.
And now, unfortunately, despite what we said in 2011, the science tells us we now have to make this change by 2030. And so, I guess, almost by definition, it's a bookend, because that's where I started and that's where I'm ending.
But the work, unfortunately, I wish I could say the work is almost done, but frankly, we're still at the very beginning of the work.
And I'll have to find out a way to plug into that work with a different hat on.
But really, this work is being led by community members, starting with Got Green and 350, who have been leading the charge on the Green New Deal.
And their presence will remain in city hall long beyond my presence.
You asked about the carrot versus stick approach.
It's interesting, you heard from Aaron, and builders are already building 100% electric homes.
In fact, I have a chart here, we may have copies of it.
In I think 2018, the last year we have data for, over two-thirds of the single family homes that are built are 100% electric.
You look at the trend over the last ten years, and we're moving in that direction already.
And so what this legislation reflects, one, it reflects the reality of the science that we have to do it.
But it also reflects an acknowledgement that this actually can be done and is already being done.
And we need to move people, those remaining builders, remaining home buyers, homeowners who are still using natural gas to say, hey, the time is there to switch.
So we have ten years to make a transition, we have to do that transition in a just way.
There are people like myself who will be able to go out and afford to buy the new appliances that are electric.
But there are a lot of folks that will need some help doing that, and they rely today on natural gas to heat their home.
They rely on the frack gas industry for their jobs, and we need to figure out how to make a just transition.
because those individuals who can be most impacted are not the ones to blame for this crisis.
They are victims of the same crisis.
But we need to start today by not making it worse.
We already know how to do that.
The time is right to say, let's do that, and then let's work in the next few years to transition existing buildings off.
From time to time, we do have some serious storms here and long power outages.
And while furnaces wouldn't run with electricity, sometimes gas fireplaces will at least provide some heat source.
Do you have any concerns about that lack of diversity in terms of heat source with the towers?
I think it's a fair question to ask.
One of the things that we've done with the city, I mean, Seattle City Light is a publicly owned electric utility, and they've done some amazing work in the past years to really significantly reduce the time of power outages.
Puget Sound Energy, the electric side of their business, I think has a harder time.
They work in more rural areas too, so they're not apples to apples comparison.
But in a city like Seattle, frankly, I think we can put our resources and have been putting our resources into make those homes reliable.
And homes today, especially new homes that are being built, are so energy efficient.
Oftentimes, I hear builders say, in fact, I met with a multifamily builder the other day who said, we did not put any heating in any of the hallways of our multifamily home because the science showed that our building is so energy efficient that just the people moving through there and the computers operating the building will be enough to keep the hallways warm enough.
And they said the first, when only half the people had moved in, it was a bit of a challenge.
But once the building was fully filled up, it's like the modeling was accurate.
So we can also design buildings that are able to remain comfortable and safe, even in an outage, because there's much more energy efficient.
Have you talked to the restaurant industry about the outage of commercial kitchens?
We have, and so as I mentioned, generally we think the technology is there already to achieve this.
The restaurant industry is an area where we're considering an exemption to allow that to happen.
Met with the restaurant industry to kind of hear how those industries work, and generally what we see is almost all commercial restaurants are using natural gas to cook with.
Now, we believe the technology that we're using in residential homes can also be available at the commercial scale.
And so what we're proposing in the legislation, at least the draft that will be before us tomorrow, is a path where the director can create some exemptions for things like restaurants and commercial buildings.
But we also want to recognize that this isn't a permanent exemption.
We need to find the technology because we need to be a carbon pollution or climate pollution-free city by 2030. And so we're looking for restaurants that want to be the leaders in that kind of green revolution.
We want to work with Seattle City Light, our electric utility, to provide some incentives for folks to try what a commercial-scale electric kitchen looks like.
I suspect that there are places around the world that are already doing that.
But we can pilot that here in our city.
Maybe there's already folks doing it in Seattle.
I haven't found them yet, but maybe with this they'll come forward.
To model that so we can transition certainly new restaurants right into that and work how to transition existing restaurants.
So what we're talking about in this legislation would be a path for the director to allow, if a new commercial building is going in and one of the spaces is intended for restaurants, that they could bring, pull natural gas to that building for that one use.
Again, we need to get off that natural gas by 2030. And so that transition needs to happen.
One of the things, I talked about my story.
I have 25-year-old appliances in my house.
As those wear out, I will naturally replace those with electric appliances.
Someone who's building a new home today with natural gas, in 10 years, they still may have appliances that are still working and may not want to replace them.
So we're really encouraging everyone, even though we're not mandating it, that now is the time to transition.
And the Green New Deal is also about transportation, too.
So, you know, when folks, when their gasoline cars wear out, we need to have electric vehicles that are available at all levels of affordability and charging stations available for people who live at all types of homes so that they can transition to that, too.
This legislation is only about new construction.
So again, we have to address that.
This legislation is not that piece.
We need to continue to work with communities to figure out how we do that in a way that there's a path for those that can afford it to make that transition, for those that maybe are renters and are in a place with gas cooking but are breathing those toxic fumes, how we help the landlords transition and keep those renters in place.
That's going to take a little longer to do.
That'll likely be on the term of, you know, my term on the City Council.
But I am confident that the people of Seattle will continue to elect climate champions to serve on the City Council.
There's not a significant cost difference.
In fact, from the heating and cooling side, a ductless heat pump mini-split doesn't require you to build ducts within the structure, so it's less expensive from that.
Perspective and it provides cooling in the summer so you have a heating and cooling unit within the house that again costs less to operate and from a builders perspective is cost parity to install but if you're just doing a traditional set of electric versus gas Electric is going to be less expensive for the heating and cooling and incrementally for your induction range, likely as well.
Parity.
Parity, yeah.
So that includes even the equipment itself, you would say that's comparable?
Yes, yes, absolutely.
One last question.
Does there need to be any utility work done?
Like say there's a big new apartment building, is the city going to need to go in and add new lines, rip out gas lines?
I mean, what kind of work needs to be done there?
We will you know over the this will shift load to electric But what we've also seen over the course of city lights history is through increased energy efficiency measures, you know Lighting is an area where we've seen significant reduction in energy use but also as our buildings become more and more insulated and more energy efficient and and we're living in smaller units, we're also saving the need for electricity.
So there may be spot places, this is probably a better question for Seattle City Light, where we do have to do certain upgrades, but the electrical network in Seattle is still robust enough that I'm very confident.
I've asked questions historically about shifting to buildings that are all electric, or even shifting our entire transportation to electricity, and said, City Light, can we handle this?
And they say, oh yeah, that's no problem, we can do that.
And so I feel confident we're there, you know, again, there may be a certain location on a certain block that requires a new transformer and we can work through that.
But City Light, you know, we continue to generate a lot of electricity from our hydro resources, both that the city owns and through the Bonneville Power Administration.
Somewhere down the line here as you work through sort of the transition of moving into new appliances, are you looking at banning wood-burning in fireplaces and wood-burning stoves, wood-burning as well?
I don't have an answer for that.
I mean, I'm not looking to do that in the next four months on the City Council.
When you get to wood burning, I mean, we know that burning wood creates a lot of health impacts because of the air pollution.
From a climate perspective, depending on where the wood is sourced, it's a little more complicated.
Some will say that as actually a renewable resource wood is, and it can be depending on how it's harvested, and it can't be in other places where it's not.
When you look at the scheme of how we heat our homes, wood is a very small piece of it, and it's something we'll probably need to figure out and continue to need to work on and probably work with people like the Clean Air Agency on the best way to do that.
Well, I think I would align my answer with Mike's in that when we look at the grand scheme of what's contributing to climate pollution and what's contributing to climate pollution here in Seattle, natural or fracked gas is a significantly larger portion of that.
Building energy is responsible for about 30% of our city's climate pollution.
And the vast majority of that is coming from gas.
So from a community perspective, thinking about climate pollution, thinking about the health consequences of having gas in our homes, that's really where we're focused right now.
The question you're raising I think is an interesting one, and perhaps one that we want to consider, but looking at both what our community needs are in terms of energy affordability, making sure utility bills are not a disproportionate share of your income, being able to breathe clean air in your home, making sure we're not contributing to climate pollution.
Natural or fracked gas is really the focal point for Seattle and the place where we have the greatest opportunity to make major changes with relatively little impact on our everyday lives other than health benefits and less pollution.
Let me say one last thing.
If we were to transition from natural gas to wood, that would not be a good thing.
So we want to transition to electric.
And to meet the resiliency, I think things we would look at are more distributed grid, where folks have solar on their roof, so that we're not reliant on the massive network necessarily, and people can be self-sufficient on micro grids within neighborhoods to share what electricity they have if there's a power outage.
And then again, like I said earlier, work on the resiliency of the network to make sure that we limit the time of power outages.
Thank you all.