Seattle City Council Sustainability, City Light, Arts and Culture Committee 1/17/25

Bye.

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

It is 9.36 a.m.

January 17th, 2025. I'm Alexis Mercedes Rink, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Moore.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Chair Rink.

Here.

Chair, there are three members present.

Thank you.

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.

While it is now my first time up on this dais, this is my first time chairing a committee for Seattle City Council.

And I am so honored that the people of Seattle sent me here to do this critical work.

And I'm so excited to work with my colleagues to support this vibrant community that we call home.

And before moving into regular council business, I want to briefly outline what my goals for chairing this committee are.

First, as the youngest person in the city of Seattle history to ever be elected to this body, my generation has been screaming from the rooftops since childhood about the existential crisis of climate change.

And we have seen horrific images coming out of Los Angeles from the Los Angeles fire with entire urban communities wiped out, leaving thousands of Angelinos as climate refugees without homes in the wake.

And as we see the effects of climate change on our own doorstep, heat waves and wildfire smoke caution us about what could be ahead if we do not act locally to create a more sustainable future.

And further, we continue to see people of color and working class communities disproportionately impacted by climate change, and health outcomes from displacement.

So to build true climate resilience, we need to take an equity-first approach.

Seattle and the greater Northwest.

are poised to be leaders in this work, and we need a realistic plan for cutting our emissions that are killing our planet and our communities.

And recently, the Office of Sustainability and Environment released a greenhouse gas inventory report.

Emissions have not been reduced to pre-pandemic levels, and transportation is responsible for 58% of our core emissions.

So to me, this clearly says we need to consider an urbanist perspective in reducing single occupancy vehicles and increasing safe and accessible mass transit options citywide.

And my office is working with the Office of Sustainability and Environment to present this data to committee later this year, which I hope my colleagues will also find fruitful.

Additionally, later this morning, we will hear from Seattle City Light about the Transportation Electrification Strategic Investment Plan, or TSIP, which is a critical resolution to supporting and expanding robust electrification infrastructure and green energy goals.

City Light will also present this morning on the November bomb cyclone storm that struck our region in November 2024, which was requested by my office.

This is just another example of extreme weather caused by changing climates.

I also look forward to supporting the incredible work of our arts, culture, and creative economy workers and institutions, including our city's Office of Arts and Culture.

And in sharing this community, I hope to propose solutions that will make Seattle a place where artists and our broader cultural sector workers can have a stable career where they can thrive and not just scrape by.

And finally, I would like to be clear that the key to all of our work I have just outlined is not possible without people power.

And supporting our workers in every corner of this community will be paramount in the work we do here on council.

And with that, we will now open today's hybrid public comment.

Public comments should relate to items on the agenda and be within purview of this committee.

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

Currently we have seven in-person speakers signed up and there are two remote speakers.

Fabulous.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with in-person speakers 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, two speakers to be called in order in which they are registered.

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

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

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

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

The first speaker on the list is Yasmeen Abraham.

Hello, welcome.

How's that?

Good?

Okay, perfect.

Is that good?

Oh, great, I can hear myself.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak about Cambo Energy Group and our work in supporting Seattle's transportation electrification strategic investment plan.

At Cambo, our mission is to make clean energy and transportation electrification accessible and equitable, specifically for communities that have historically been underserved.

For us, this is about addressing not only environmental challenges, but also health, equity, and economic opportunity.

As a partner with Seattle City Light, our role is to ensure that the voices of those most negatively impacted guide the strategies and solutions we create together.

Through workshops, focus groups, and outreach events, we connect with people directly, listening to their experiences and working to turn their feedback into actionable change.

At a recent workshop, participants spoke about the impact of living near highways on their respiratory health, particularly for their kids.

Hearing stories like these reinforces the urgent need for transportation electrification as a way to improve community health and address systemic inequalities.

At Seattle Central College, we hosted a session on electric vehicles and their potential to reduce emissions.

It was so energizing to see students and faculty not only engage with the environmental benefits, but also really recognize the economic opportunities tied to electrification, like green jobs and workforce development.

In Tequila, we met Spanish-speaking families at a resource fair who highlighted the need for EV charging infrastructure in their neighborhoods.

Their feedback is helping shape how we approach accessibility and equity in building out charging networks.

By prioritizing community input, TSEP is positioned to deliver real tangible benefits, cleaner air, healthier neighborhoods, and meaningful economic opportunities.

Together, we're building a transportation system that works for everyone.

The next speaker is Kathleen Perez Martinez.

Buenos dias.

My name is Kathleen.

My name is Kathleen Perez Martinez.

By the year 2050, 25 years from now, all vehicles in the city of Seattle will be electric.

City Seattle Lights Transportation Investment Plan will be preparing the people of Seattle to move toward a sustainable, just, and resilient electric transportation future.

This will require a commitment to actively listen and engage in conversations with people who are most harmed by transportation fossil fuels and pollution.

Who are these people of the city of Seattle who contribute daily to the strength and beauty of our city?

We are the most vulnerable and underrepresented people of Seattle.

We are low-income, black, indigenous, people of color, and the disabled, who unfairly are the people most impacted by economic, health, and environmental burdens.

As an individual who is part of this community, I worked with a community-based organization, Cultivate South Park, to convene a focus group with 10 young people aged 16 to 21, residents of South Park and Delridge.

In 2015, the focus group participants will be 41 to 46 years old.

I'll be 90. They will have their own families and a community relying on them to make informed and sound decisions.

Here are just a few of concerns that they voiced.

Will electric vehicles be affordable to the low-income community?

Will our leadership-driven decisions be honored?

Will we have access to high quality jobs created by this industry?

There are many more concerns that we do not have time to address here.

I am grateful for the opportunity to assist in gathering this group of young people who have so much to contribute to the city of Seattle.

My name is Kathleen Perez Martinez.

I'm a community liaison with the Department of Neighborhoods of the city of Seattle.

And it is my responsibility to inform and serve and amplify the voice of underrepresented members of our communities to lead in decision making.

We have a legitimate need to influence the decisions and issues that impact us.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Miranda Perez.

We're going together.

He's Ernest.

Hello and good morning.

Our names are Miranda Perez and Ernest Mack.

We are part of the small environmental nonprofit, ECOS, and we are here to provide public comment and support of the Transportation Electrification Strategic Investment Plan, or TSIP, with Seattle City Light.

ECOS was founded in 1994 to address the imbalance of environmental resources and services available to the South Park neighborhood and Lower Duwamish River.

To address these disparities, ECOS bridges differences in language and culture to ensure that immigrant and refugee communities can participate in and directly benefit from the development of environmental solutions and programming.

We speak eight languages in-house, and through relationship-based community engagement, we focus on four impact areas, clean energy, solid waste management, clean water, and environmental stewardship.

For the past six years, in partnership with Seattle City Light and Overburdened Communities, ECOS co-creates education programs and engagement efforts that uplift community needs and priorities as they pertain to the utility's electrification strategy, including TSIP, electric utility services, and the City of Seattle's climate and energy goals.

ECOS played an active role in empowering communities to voice their thoughts, needs, and desires about TSIP and the city's energy goals and ensured those were reflected in the updated plan.

Overburdened communities continue to vocalize their economic wellbeing as the top priority and a more equitable way to distribute social benefits, all being a constant barrier for them to effectively partake in environmental solutions and programming.

A benefit increasing in priority is the health and safety of communities and their loved ones, which includes increasing their knowledge and understanding of electrification as they relate to air, water and soil quality, urban heat islands and weather related injuries and deaths.

The long-term success of City of Seattle's energy goals is dependent on our communities assuming autonomy over how and where this initiative is implemented.

The TSIP directly enables and empowers overburdened communities in co-creating and co-implementing transportation electrification efforts that will effectively create an energy future that is just and sustainable.

Thank you for your time.

Our next speaker is Allie Lee.

Hi, good morning.

Happy New Year, too.

Thank you for your time.

My name's Allie Lee.

I'm a health and equity specialist who's been working on the TSIP program with Seattle City Light.

A lot of the support that I've been doing has been on the Transportation Electrification Strategic Plan, TSIP, as you had mentioned, and community engagement.

I then pulled together nine different communities.

The Seattle City Light sort of overall encompasses further than just Seattle.

A lot of times people think it's just Seattle, but it goes much further.

The nine different areas is Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, Seattle, Unincorporated King County, Burien, Renton, Tuck-Willis, SeaTac, and Normandy Park.

As you know, the airport communities between one and five miles from the airports are then one to five years less as far as for their life expectancy than other areas.

Here locally in Seattle, some of the areas are up to 10 years less life expectancy.

And that's due to our plan for decarbonization.

And hopefully with what our One Seattle has put together is that we can then pull together everybody as far as through electrification to help the decarbonization plan.

The workforce development is one area that came up quite often, and workforce development within areas as opposed to around other areas is important.

Keeping it within zip code, making sure that it's multilingual, making sure that it's accessible to everybody.

That includes training, technical colleges, and high schools, making sure that everybody has the opportunity.

Within TCIP, it gave us the opportunity to reach out to over 200 people in the different areas.

Those people wanted to talk more about mutual aid first, and then talk about transportation electrification, which Seattle City Light gave us the opportunity to hear their voices in order to then advance forward what the plan is.

Hearing their voices first, can we then move forward with the plan?

And we thank Seattle City Light, and we support their TCIP plan.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Philip Jones.

Is this the live one?

Either one?

I'll use the taller one.

I'm a little bit taller.

Madam Chair, congratulations on your first meeting.

I'm a resident of Seattle, a Seattle City light rate payer.

I live Capitol Hill in the 43rd district, so happy to see you coming on board.

I'm the executive director of a national trade association that advocates in 30 states across the country for accelerated transportation electrification.

We see a lot of plans.

This plan is one of the best ones.

We have some really forward-leaning utilities in the Northwest, and Seattle City Light has been leading the way.

The TE plan was adopted five years ago, as you know.

Some TE plans, transportation electrification plans, are every three years.

There are 15 states across the country that require that.

But five years is OK.

It's a very dynamic industry.

But let me point out a few things that are notable about this plan.

First, it focuses on infrastructure.

If you look at EVs, why are the two biggest reasons people or companies don't electrify?

High cost of the vehicle, no infrastructure.

There's not no infrastructure, but the infrastructure is inadequate, or it's unreliable.

So what this plan does, it focuses on infrastructure enablement and community, as we heard from the previous commenters on neighborhoods, communities.

We tend to focus on the infrastructure, because without infrastructure, this revolution, transformation, is not going to happen.

So the goals are ambitious.

700 DC fast charging ports by 2030. We're not there yet.

11,000 public level 2 ports, we're not there yet.

So I encourage you to take a good look at this and give it your positive review.

And I'm available for, I'm based in Seattle.

Travel around the country, I'm available for further help.

I'm a former UTC commissioner in Libya.

Our final in-person speaker is Brittany Barnwell.

All right, then we will move to online speakers.

So our first remote speaker will be Deepa Sivarajan.

Deepa, please press star six when you hear the prompt.

Oh, hello.

This is Deepa.

My apologies.

I thought there was one more in-person speaker before me.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, we can hear you.

Yes.

Sorry.

Thank you.

My name is Deepa Savarajan.

I am the local policy manager at the Nonprofit Climate Solutions.

I'm also here to urge council to adopt the thesis.

I want to first thank Chair Rinkso for your powerful opening this morning.

And I echo the urgent need for climate justice and equitable access to clean energy that TerraRink and many of the other speakers have highlighted.

With the growing demand for electric vehicles and the progress of the statewide clean fuel standard and clean vehicle rules that will require automakers to produce more electric vehicles, the need for charging infrastructure will only increase in the following years.

City Lights PSIP is smart and strategic in preparing for this need.

The plan builds on Seattle City Lights' successful work so far in increasing equitable infrastructure for charging, in particular deploying curbside public chargers to areas where Seattle residents do not have charging access at home.

The PSIP also identifies the continued Jackson access, particularly for people living in underserved communities and those overburdened by climate and air pollution, which are predominantly low-income communities and communities of color.

the district also highlights other needs, such as those of drivers of medium and heavy vehicles, such as school buses, other performance buses, delivery trucks, as well as other vehicles that deliver or do ride share and have unique charging needs.

There's also an emphasis on charging for the employees of small businesses and women and minority-owned businesses.

So this plan really is driven by the community outreach that Seattle City Light did in partnership with so many of the other speakers that came before me.

And I am very happy to urge that the committee approve this plan and we in the community look forward to working with City Light, the committee, and council to continue driving solutions to the climate crisis.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our final online speaker is David Haynes.

David, please hit star sex.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

Is it sustainable to ignore the toxic negative impact that the port spews when the toxic industrial train passes?

I wish the city council would stop ignoring the Warren Buffett trains that have six locomotives spewing toxic soot through the waterfront.

And congestion priced that.

And I was wondering, like, if you electrify everything, would, like, Los Angeles be able to operate when they're trying to shut down that fire?

In other words, if we have a storm cyclone bomb that cuts off the electricity, is City Light still going to be able to mobilize?

Have they improved and advanced the electrical capacity that much, that they have enough battery left.

And it just seems that, like, if you have the level two charging stations, it sounds like you could only charge six cars a day.

That's not very much.

You know, it's kind of like the consumption malfunction in the electrical wires that we have in our crappy rentals that are inflated and dilapidated.

They need the more qualitative transfer lines so that they're not wasting the electricity or they're not getting the full amount of electricity so that we can have that robust access to the electricity.

But, you know, improving the redevelopment of Seattle where you don't have a road driving through the neighborhood every block to give people a reprieve from the road rage and all the affordable housing that you want nonprofits to build on the side of the road.

They're still kicking up street dust.

They're still honking their horn.

They're still flying by at road rage.

We need to reimagine the neighborhoods that are more pedestrian and resident friendly and maybe focus a little bit more on the real problem with the fresh air in the waterfront in Seattle.

It's the toxic industrial port.

We don't even have a home field advantage when it comes to the sports around the port.

We have to rely on the other teams.

All right, and this concludes our public comment period.

Thank you all for turning out for public comment today.

We will now proceed to our items of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Reappointment of Rosita Romero as a member museum development authority governing council for a term of July 31st, 2025. Oh, and appointment 03049. Wonderful, thank you.

Rosita has served on the governing council since 2007. Is she here today by any chance and would like to say a couple of words?

Not will certainly appreciate her service since 2007 to this governing council.

That's fantastic.

I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointment 3049. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointment.

Are there any comments?

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

Council member Moore.

Council member Saka.

Aye.

Council member Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Rink.

Yes.

There are three in favor, zero opposed, zero abstentions.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointment be confirmed will be sent to the January 28th city council meeting.

Will the clerk please read items two through four into the record?

appointment 03050, appointment 03051, appointment 03052. Okay, appointment 03050, appointment of Bruce E. Florey as member of City Light Review Panel for a term to April 10th, 2026. Appointment 03051, appointment of Ryan Monson, a member of City Light Review Panel for a term to April 12th, 2027. Appointment 03052, appointment of Toyin Olao as a member of City Light Review Panel for a term to September 30th, 2025.

Wonderful.

Great.

Thank you.

My name is Lee Berekka.

I'm the interim chief of staff at City Light.

And I appreciate the time today to bring forward three appointments to let me fix this.

If you hold on.

I'm trying to make this a slideshow.

I don't know how to make a design show.

Oh, God, thank you.

Thank heavens for review panel members.

Today I'm bringing forward three appointments for the City Light review panel.

As you see here, City Light review panel is nine member volunteers representing City Light's customers and partners.

Five are appointed by the mayor and four by the city council as set forth by resolution.

The primary...

duties of the panel are to guide and provide input on our strategic plan and financial planning and rate proposals.

We have one vacancy that was originally going to be brought forward today.

But that person has accepted a position with Seattle City Light, which is also good news.

So today, I have three appointments.

One candidate is not available.

So I will read a synopsis of Bruce Florey, who's number one position economist.

So Bruce Florey brings over 40 years of experience as a resource economist.

He holds a BA in economics from the University of Washington and a PhD in economics and agricultural economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

During his 30-year tenure with the city, he led efforts in utility rate studies, financial analyses, and utility forecasting at both Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities.

Since retiring in 2019, Bruce has continued contributing to regional water management through part-time work with the Cascade Water Alliance.

His wealth of knowledge and dedication to public service make him an excellent candidate for this position.

Now I'll introduce Ryan Monson, our nominee for commercial customer representative.

My mic is on.

Can you hear me?

Okay.

I'm Ryan Monson.

I work for SEBI Data Centers.

I've been with them for a little over 10 years now.

I am the general manager, so I'm responsible for developing the campus, supporting leasing activities, maximizing occupancy, and maintaining community relationships.

So I'd like to join the advisory panel.

Thank you.

And next, Toyin Olu.

Good morning.

I work for Nucor and I'd like to join the review panel as the industrial customer representative.

I've worked for Nucor for or two years now, started out at a location in Utah and now working at a location here in Seattle.

I bring over 20 years of industry experience in manufacturing, worked with several utilities around demand response programs.

So excited to join the panel today.

That's all.

Thank you.

Fabulous.

Well, I just want to thank you both for being here today and also your interest in serving in this capacity.

I took a look at your materials.

Certainly impressive.

And the City Light review panel would be so well served by your expertise.

So thank you.

I don't have any questions.

Colleagues, do you all have any questions?

Yeah, sure.

May I?

Great to see you both.

I'm just pulling up your resumes here again.

Ryan, in your resume and in your packet, Notice it says that you started as a journeyman electrician.

Correct.

That's correct.

And now you're running large data centers.

Yep.

Along the way from there, so having seen us, been part of this transition from not having data centers, it used to be all of our memory was on our phone or on our computer, and today, We're using these data centers to power everything, especially with more 5G and more AI coming on board.

What do we need to know here in the city of Seattle?

And looking at that perspective all the way to a journeyman today.

And what's your reflection of the things that we need to be paying attention to

You know, the change is coming.

The AI wave is coming.

So the power densities are getting higher and higher.

So I think preparing for that infrastructure improvement is going to be key for the success for the area.

Is that infrastructure is in transmission lines from our power source or within the community?

Could be all of the above.

Yeah.

Yes.

Do you have anything else that we should be thinking about as we make this large transition into using more electricity throughout our city and across the grid?

I think it'll be a good thing.

I think we're all going to need to get on board with it or it will pass us up.

So I think it's a good thing to embrace AI.

Fantastic.

Well, thank you.

And Toyin, along here, and you mentioned in your conversation that you had worked at a Nucor facility in Utah.

and now you're here in the city of Seattle, the next closest city of our size within the United States is either Salt Lake City or Denver, the Twin Cities, Chicago, Sacramento, San Francisco.

So, I mean, you are in that distance, that in-between space, but it's a very different place here in the city of Seattle.

What's your reflection on the largest differences between operating a facility in Utah and here in the middle of the city in the delta of one of the largest rivers that we used to have?

Yeah.

So, I mean, one of the big differences, and if you look with Seattle compared to other nukle locations, is the kind of density of the population.

Typically, nukle locations are typically about two hours outside of a major city.

Here, we're right in the middle of a neighborhood.

I would say one of the things that makes us kind of uniquely suited to be here in Seattle is kind of the way our operation runs.

So we produce steel, and we, specifically at the Seattle location, we use about 99.6 recycled material.

So, I mean, that helps reduce emissions, you know, polluting the neighborhoods you're being in.

If you look at a lot of other steel manufacturers, the integrated ones, they use a lot of natural gas.

a lot of embedded carbon in that.

We use electricity to melt out, and specifically being here in Pacific Northwest, using hydro-renewable electricity, so that reduces that even further.

I mean, one of the things we've kind of worked on, you know, with the electeds and Olympians around the Climate Commitment Act, I think that is really beneficial to kind of remove the embedded carbon out of, you know, building materials.

And I think as I heard the public comments on, you know, decarbonization, electrification, I think our new cause will see it to kind of help move that along.

I'll admit, I didn't realize that it's so much recycled material being used.

And while our energy sources here on our grid are not 100% renewable, we are darn good at what we do here in the city of Seattle for our city lights.

So I guess I didn't realize the green factor as much as possible.

If you look at steel manufacturing, Nucor as a whole is about 66% lower than the global average.

And when you look at specifically the steel that we're producing in Seattle, it is one of the best in the world when you talk about the greenhouse gases.

And we've actually put out that we expect to be net zero by 2050. And we continue to make progress towards that every year.

That's fantastic, and not the reason that you're on the review panel.

You're on the review panel because you're our largest customer.

Is there anything that we should be thinking about as you are one of the largest users of electricity on our grid?

Anything that you want us to think about?

I mean, I'll kind of mirror what it's, I think a lot of it is around kind of infrastructure, kind of new sources of generation.

I mean, as we get more and more things, to become electric, we're going to need more power, I mean, as the...

So that's really around making sure we have capacity for transmission as well as capacity for generation as well, I think.

Those are kind of the important things.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Two more awesome members, nominees.

Certainly.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss, Councilmember Saka.

Recognize your hand.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

No questions, just a comment.

I just want to thank Bruce, Ryan, and Toyin for your selfless service to this body and this city.

It means a lot.

It's incredibly enriching, rewarding, and impactful.

And I had the pleasure of serving on a number of similar commitments before taking office.

I just want you to know that your service to the city is greatly appreciated and we're glad you're here.

Look forward to supporting you all today.

Also, with respect to Toyin, good to see your expertise with Nucor and good to know the proposed industrial voice for this specific panel.

And Nucor, as Councilmember Strauss aptly noted a moment ago, it is a top customer uh in the city of seattle i think technically it's number two just after the university of washington but in terms of a singular site it is definitely the top customer by that standard but regardless uh new core is important and i and i know your expertise with demand response um new core steel is in my district uh and i know the impact that that has on our economy and the great work uh you know everyone does all all day to to keep our city running efficiently and effectively so glad glad that your expertise and your voice and your perspective is going to be represented on this body thank you madam chair

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

And with that, unless there are any final comments, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 3050 through 3052. Is there a second?

Second.

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

Are there any comments?

We've already commented.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to confirm the appointments?

Council Member Moore.

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Rink.

Yes.

There are three in favor, zero opposed.

The motion carries and the recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the January 28th City Council meeting.

Thank you so much and thank you to City Light for finding such amazing panelists.

Looking forward to coming back to hopefully secure that final vacancy.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Wonderful, moving us right along.

Will the clerk please read item five into the record?

Resolution 32160, a resolution relating to the City Light Department adopting an updated transportation electrification strategic investment plan for the City Light Department that will guide the development of the utilities infrastructure strategy and investment priorities related to the electrification of transportation.

Fabulous.

Welcome, all.

Good morning, Chair Rink and Councilmembers Saka and Strauss.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to present for your consideration and adoption of Seattle City Lights Transportation Electrification Strategic Investment Plan.

I'm Craig Smith, Chief Customer Officer at City Light, and we'll go down the line here and present and let the other team members sort of introduce themselves.

Good morning.

David Logsdon, Director of Electrification and Strategic Technologies at Seattle City Light.

Good morning.

My name is Angela Song.

I'm the Transportation Electrification Portfolio Manager.

Hello, Council Chair Rink, Councilmember Strauss, Saka, and more.

Always a joy to be in space with you.

Jennifer Chow, Director at the Department of Neighborhoods.

Good morning.

I'm Eric McConaughey.

I'm on the Council's central staff.

Okay, so the team here today has been leading the transportation electrification implementation over the last four years.

Council approved our initial plan about four years ago.

And since then, the team has had the opportunity to update the plan using insights from community, our industry partners, market trends and lessons learned from the last four years.

As you've heard from many of our speakers today, the voice of community has been central and foundational to the development of this plan at the outset.

And those insights that we've gained from community as well as from those industry partners has really been key to informing what we're bringing here today.

You will hear more from the team members as we kind of go through the plan.

And then we're also honored to have Director Chow here with us from Department of Neighborhoods.

Thank you for your partnership.

Thank you, community partners, for being here.

Director Chow will highlight some of the work that we've been doing, multi-year collaboration across departments.

So with that, I'll hand it over to David to start the presentation.

Great, thanks.

And I think I got the slides up properly here.

So thank you, Craig.

Thank you, council members.

We'll start off just with a quick look at the agenda for today.

First, I'm going to cover the background on the city's current emissions landscape and the rapid pace of electric vehicle adoption that we continue to experience and support.

I'll then highlight some of the key accomplishments quickly from the team's execution over the past four years.

And then Angela and Director Chow are going to take us home by discussing the process by which we updated this plan, and sharing our updated strategies and the outcomes we're working towards for 2025 and beyond.

And I'll start by talking about the biggest driver for this work.

But I feel like public comment and much of our earlier discussion covered much of this.

So biggest driver is greenhouse gas emissions, of course.

They represent more than this sector.

The transportation sector represents more than approximately two-thirds of our greenhouse gas emissions in Seattle and the region.

So transportation electrification by nature is the best place to get greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

And then as we move this sector onto a carbon neutral grid, which Seattle City Lights grid has been carbon neutral since 2005, we're effectively decarbonizing those emissions.

So our grid's been carbon neutral since 2005. We're committed to keeping it carbon neutral long into the future, and that's supported by our integrated resources plan that Council approved recently.

So moving energy to our low carbon and modernized electric grid is the fastest and best pathway for decarbonization and it's going to help us make strides in meeting the cities and the region's decarbonization goals.

And on the next slide, and this was also discussed earlier, I want to talk a little bit more about how this work is deeply tied to our core value of building equitable community connections.

And so what this slide really shows is that we have that larger problem of greenhouse gas emissions, but fossil fuel-powered transportation not only contributes to climate change, it's also polluting the local environment, harming the health of individuals and communities.

So these images are from the Washington Department of Health health disparities map.

This is an interactive statewide mapping tool.

The boundaries on it are by census tract.

And what this shows is that there are localized concentrations of particulate matter and diesel pollution that form from the combustion of diesel and gasoline.

So these can lead to serious health effects, disparities like asthma, heart disease, cancer, low birth weights.

The blue indicates areas of low impact, while the red indicates areas of higher impact and risk.

And what you can see is that although air and diesel pollution help them throughout the region, there's adverse impacts that are not distributed evenly, but they're concentrated in specific overburdened communities.

And that has real health impacts and have impacts to the quality of life for these communities.

So this mapping's an important tool for City Light that we use to bring the benefits of our investments to these communities directly.

And the takeaway for this slide is really that electrification can not only benefit greenhouse gases, it can help improve the health of our communities, particularly overburdened and vulnerable populations would stand to benefit the most.

And we approach this as I think you got a sense with public comment, not from a distance, but from building deep partnerships and trusted links with community.

Good news on the next slide is that the customers are rapidly adopting and responding to our focus support.

Here you see electric vehicle adoption in our service territory.

It's growing at one of the highest rates in the nation.

The graph shows the growth of new electric vehicle sales in City Light service territory since 2014. The x-axis, of course, shows each year of vehicle sales.

And then the y-axis shows the number of electric vehicles on the road each year, so all the new sales get added to that.

And the 2024 number I'll highlight is not the full data from 2024. We didn't have that.

That's as of August of last year.

And overall, electric vehicle adoption is increasing rapidly.

We've got one in four new vehicles sold in King County is already electric.

That's increasing at a compound annual growth rate of 33%.

So by 2030 alone, we're estimating that we'll have more than 280,000 electric vehicles on the road in our service territory.

So we and the grid, we all need to be ready.

We need to support our customers in adopting these beneficial new technologies, and we've been working hard toward that end.

This slide is just really a quick recap of the first four years of investment under the plan.

In those four years, we stood up several key programs to serve customers based on the priorities we heard in initial outreach.

And those programs have had a big impact in providing technical assistance, resources, incentives, often with higher incentives available in those overburdened communities that I highlighted on the map before, and higher incentives for women and minority-owned businesses and nonprofits.

To date, City Lights completed more than 215 electrification assessments, so helping our customers understand the benefits of electrification for them.

build the business case, build an understanding of what it means.

And then we've supported the deployment of more than 905 chargers across those programs.

In addition to those programs and those customer-owned chargers, we're also making direct investments in city-owned and operated charging infrastructure to help bridge gaps in public charging availability.

Last year, for instance, we partnered with the Seattle Department of Transportation and completed the installation of 60 chargers along the public right-of-way for public use, filling a key gap that the third-party market's not investing in in our service territory.

And we also had some big wins around ongoing work with bus electrification.

So King County Metro, with them, we're supporting the first battery electric buses in the region.

And we also launched with Amtrak, the first all-electric bus in the Amtrak fleet.

And that bus runs from Seattle to Bellingham and back on a daily basis.

Every electric coach replaces a traditional internal combustion engine-powered bus.

Each one saves 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel per year, reduces annual CO2 emissions by 109 metric tons.

So those are just some of the key accomplishments.

And as we move forward from this and start to talk about the plan, I just wanted to highlight that innovation, equity, and partnerships are really at the core of this work.

You guys got a sense of the partnerships that have been built across our service territory.

with all the public comment you heard.

This is really important to us, and it's because our key commitment and our key partnership is with the communities that we serve.

So we really need a lot of partners to make that real.

And I'll hand it over to Angela here.

Angela's going to highlight how we developed the plan and some of our key strategies and outcomes.

And I'll also thank Angela for her service.

She's more than four years into leading this work at this point.

Do you want to have a question here?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So just before we move into where are we going from here, can we speak a little bit?

Help me remember we passed the first plan in, I believe, 2021, 2020. I know we've been talking about what you've done so far, but can you talk about where this came from, what we did in 21?

Sure.

And then something that I'm looking at this slide.

A few years ago, we changed our submetering policy.

Can you explain what we did there and how that helped us here?

Right.

Yeah, so a couple of things there.

So the original plan came about, like you said, Council approved it October 2021. And that was in response to some state legislation that passed.

So there's House Bill 1512, doesn't really matter.

But the state legislature passed a bill benefiting utilities across the state, because in Washington state, there were, prior to that, fuel switching prohibitions, which would not allow utilities to make all these investments we've been making for the past four years.

So state legislature passed that.

We, and all utilities across the state, then needed to go to our governing body with a plan for investment that would allow us to actually use those new authorities and put those authorities into place.

So that's what we came to council with originally.

And it included commitments that I haven't had a chance to highlight here around working with Entities like the port, which came up in public comment.

We've been working with the port deeply on decarbonization efforts, Washington state ferries, building other partnerships around electrification.

And then we've been coming to council periodically with some of the supportive legislation that has helped us to really get to this point.

You mentioned submetering, and that's one of them.

And I think Angela's going to speak to some other ones as well.

Sub-metering allowed, and this is really common practice across the industry, it allowed the installation of chargers from a common electric service, and then you can sub-meter under that to resell electricity at an electric vehicle charging without having to get a whole new service put in.

So it's really a cost-saving mechanism for some of the sectors Angela's going to talk about, particularly multifamily and workplace charging.

And I think Angela's going to highlight a little bit more of that as well.

Thanks.

Sure.

Thank you.

Okay, you can take it away.

Great.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you, David.

I just want to take a moment to just acknowledge the support and presence in the room.

I'm really honored to be at this table and share our next phase of investments around transportation electrification with this committee.

Thanks.

All right, so City Light has been working with industry experts to bring new research to inform our strategy and to prepare for this growing customer demand of electric vehicles.

We worked with the International Council on Clean Transportation to understand the gap between how many chargers exist in our area today and how many...

By predicting how quickly people switch to electric vehicles and how much charging infrastructure our service needs to support them, we can plan where to build now to enable our customers' future choices.

So this chart illustrates the projected growth in the numbers of non-home chargers needed each year.

So on the x-axis, we have the projection by year, and on the y-axis, it shows the number of chargers needed to serve this future demand.

So starting at the top here, in blue and purple, you can see ongoing need for some, but not a tremendous amount of fast chargers.

So DCFC stands for Direct Current Fast Chargers.

So these are located at destinations and along longer travel routes.

And then you will see a growing need for destination and overnight level two chargers.

These are slower, but serve a lot of customers in our service area, particularly those at multifamily buildings who don't have access to an at-home garage or parking space.

So overall, this work shows the need for significant growth from where we are today.

We have just under 2,000 total chargers in our service territory.

And per this analysis, by 2030 alone, we will need 11,800 chargers, seven times more than what we have today.

So the plan we are presenting is an important means by which City Light can work to bridge the gap from where we stand today and where we need to be as a region.

Great.

Community members who carry racial, social, and economic burdens have knowledge and lived experience that can help City Light identify top priorities for electric transportation investments.

To learn from community wisdom, City Light partnered with the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and an external team of community leaders to conduct outreach and engagement with customers throughout our service area.

The community and stakeholder input we receive through this process, as well as ongoing existing community engagement on electric transportation, has directly informed the investment priorities detailed in this strategy.

Next slide.

The most common and consistent message we heard was a need for equitable access to transportation electrification infrastructure and incentives.

Our communities are asking for more regular communication and information about our work.

The ability of electric transportation to reduce noise and air pollution and thereby improving both personal and community health was a major area of enthusiasm and need across ages, cultures, language, and geography of our participants.

Many participants supported and named opportunities for electric transportation to help communities become more connected, resilient, and resourced for success.

For example, our first, very first, level two right-of-way charger launched the first all-electric ADA accessible van share in the state.

The van serves Estelito's library, a justice-focused community bookstore and library located in Seattle's Central District.

All right, so this updated transportation electrification strategic investment plan describes city's lights focus areas and priorities as we continue investing in charging infrastructure, the grid, and communities.

We are committed to investing in Puget Sound's transportation system to shift towards a cleaner, healthier, and more equitable environment.

So infrastructure investments will continue to respond to market forces and customer needs with a strategic focus on building more chargers, increasing equitable access, and improving customer experience.

Electrification enablement prioritizes a resilient grid and strategies to manage new electric loads.

communities and stakeholders expands our existing commitment and collaboration with community partners, inviting them to help shape solutions for community-identified priorities.

And in the following slides, we'll cover our focus in each of these priority areas.

So City Light supports a robust public transit system, including buses, light rail, ferries, and more, with some of these services already fully electric, like the Seattle streetcar.

However, many transit systems still rely on diesel, contributing to pollution and noise in overburdened communities.

Electrification by transit agencies really aims to improve public health, quality of life, and operating costs.

City Light plays a key role by providing electricity, upgrading infrastructure, and working with key partners like King County Metro, where we energized the first electric bus base in 2022. City Light plays a vital role in providing public charging, focusing on the equitable access for overburdened communities.

As of 2024, we own and operate 25 fast chargers and 60 level two chargers.

And these chargers are located at libraries, grocery stores, and in the right of way to support residents without home charging options.

In 2024, these chargers dispensed over 1 million kilowatt hours, which is roughly equivalent to 3 million miles.

So moving forward, we are upgrading chargers for faster speeds and greater reliability to address issues like vandalism.

We're also expanding the network to fill in gaps, focusing on the right of way, municipal, and community center locations.

And by incorporating new technologies and offering financial incentives to support additional charging infrastructure, we aim to meet this growing demand and ensure all residents can access dependable, convenient EV charging options.

So at home and near home charging are crucial for making EV adoption accessible and convenient.

While single-family homes with off-street parking can easily install chargers, many households, particularly multifamily residents, face significant barriers.

To address this, City Light introduced programs offering instant discounts for single-family homes and rebates for multifamily properties to install chargers.

Our priorities include focusing on multifamily housing with tailored incentives to reduce the installation costs and identifying near-home public charging solutions for those without on-site parking.

All right, so commercial vehicle electrification presents a major opportunity to reduce air, noise, and greenhouse gas pollution, especially in neighborhoods near major thoroughfares.

Medium and heavy-duty trucks, which contribute significantly to emissions, can deliver substantial local benefits when replaced with electric models.

However, challenges like high upfront costs and significant power needs for fleet charging requires careful and thoughtful planning.

City Lights fleet electrification launched in 2022, and has assessed over 1,600 vehicles and provided rebates for 91 chargers, and will continue providing technical and financial incentives for projects that benefit any businesses that use vehicles in their operation.

All right, workplace charging is an important solution for employees who lack access to home charging.

Installing chargers at workplace parking areas can be expensive and complex though, especially in these older facilities.

Our priorities include offering technical assistance to guide property managers through the installation process and providing financial incentives to overcome the cost barriers.

Seattle is a major hub for non-road transportation, including cargo ships, ferries, freight rail, which contributes significantly to missions and local air pollution.

While full electrification is challenging for these heavy and long-distance vehicles, emissions can be reduced when stationary by using grid power to shut down engines while maintaining their onboard electrical systems.

So City Light is partnering with Washington State Ferries to transition to a hybrid electric fleet by 2040 and providing technical support for that ferry charging system.

At Pier 66, we completed a shore power system to let cruise ships turn off their diesel-powered engines while at berth and plugging into the local electric grid.

And to put things into perspective, a ship connected to shore power eliminates the emissions equivalent of an average car driving round trip from Seattle to New York 30 times.

So we'll continue to work in the maritime space, rail, and port industries and plan to deliver these large-scale projects.

Just pausing there for a moment, I see a hand from Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for all this work.

Going back to the cruise ships and the ferries, it was just this last year that the last round of the cruise ships were hooked up to shore power.

Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

And what has that transition, what impact has that had on the grid?

And the leading questions that I'm getting to are, we've got the ability to do so for the ferries shortly, not yet, and what impact will that have?

How does that impact your planning?

Yeah, please.

And if I got any of that wrong, just tell me I'm wrong.

No, no, you're right.

The entire area of the waterfront is an area of tremendous load growth.

So I would say the really key thing for us is to get in with all the stakeholders in the waterfront, understand what's coming from an early stage so that we can really work with the engineering teams to get all the investments in place that we're going to need.

So that's really how we've approached it, and that's why we partner well before those large customers are coming to us with service connection requests.

So Ferries, we've got an MOU with them.

We meet with them on a pretty much quarterly, monthly basis at this point.

The Port of Seattle, we're actually one of three key stakeholders A Seattle waterfront clean energy strategic plan, how are they going to electrify and reduce emissions across the port, eliminate them by 2050?

So that's us, the port, and the Northwest Seaport Alliance.

And that gives us the ability to help inform their planning.

It gives us the ability to tell them what grid capacity is now, give them some estimated values for what we could invest for in the future when they're going to need it.

So it's really about working with them from an early stage, partnering well before they've got their plans even fully baked so we can help them bake it and breed those good considerations in.

And then we have the lead time we need to build the grid out to support all of that load before it comes online.

Thank you.

Great.

Next slide.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

Great, so as transportation electrification accelerates, Seattle City Light is committed to building a strong and resilient grid to support the transition while ensuring affordability and reliability.

We're implementing strategies like time of use rates to balance energy demand, reduce costs, and optimize grid resources.

By 2045, transportation electrification is projected to account for 20% of our total electric load.

requiring significant investments in grid infrastructure and predictive modeling tools to accommodate this growth effectively.

So the clean fuel standard CFS plays a pivotal role requiring a 20% reduction in carbon intensity by 2038 and positions electricity as a low carbon transportation fuel.

So City Light will really leverage these clean fuel standard credits to accelerate decarbonization, especially in overburdened communities.

And thank you to this committee and council for passing a clean fuel standard resolution in August of 2024. that allows us to work with our sister departments, so Financial Administrative Services, Seattle Department of Transportation, and the Seattle Public Utilities to implement this state policy and align all of our goals together.

In addition to the Clean Fuel Standard, the Seattle Transportation Levy is another crucial policy initiative.

Approved in the 2024 election, it is providing funding for charging infrastructure in partnership with the Seattle Department of Transportation.

and we'll continue to work together to pursue additional funding and grant opportunities to meet both of our decarbonization goals.

And last, this electric transformation offers significant economic opportunities.

As electrification grows, there's a demand for skilled workers to install and maintain charging infrastructure and support the electrical grid.

City Light is focused on creating workforce and business development opportunities by providing career pathways and skilled trades and supporting women and minority-owned firms.

We have already helped 17 firms obtain industry certifications to install and maintain charging stations growing the local skills needed to enter this clean energy transition.

And with that, I will hand it off to a director child.

Thank you.

Angela, in the four and a half years that you've been here, it really does result in show all the work that you've done.

As you were talking about, I was writing down all the outcomes and all the work, and as Councilmember Strauss is asking deeper questions, I'm being educated even at the table.

So thank you so much for the opportunity, Councilmembers, to speak to the impactful work of Seattle City Light and Department of Neighborhoods and what we are doing in community together to make sure that everyone has equitable access to contribute to transportation outcomes.

Seattle City Light understands the importance of engaging with communities so they have a voice in shaping services that meets their needs.

And they know how critical it is to partner with department partners and community to strengthen engagement with folks who live and play and work in Seattle who have been historically excluded and are impacted most.

As you may know, the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods was created for civic engagement to connect people to each other.

We center communities who have been historically excluded to promote belonging and inclusion and broaden access so everyone has an opportunity to thrive in a growing city.

So our partnership with Seattle City Light on this project started in 2021 and is an example of strong interdepartmental collaboration that results in co-developing solutions in relationship with community.

For this initiative, we partnered with our community liaison program to build deeper relationships with community by providing culturally responsive engagement.

Community liaisons come from community and reflect the communities we serve.

They help to translate meaning so that it speaks to them and what does it mean to have transportation electrification and how does it benefit them and why.

And we provide a lot through the community liaisons how to provide and handhold them for understanding.

Some of our communities do not understand this language and not because of the lack of brilliance, but because this is something that needs to be educated and they have to have knowledge.

14 major community liaison activities were conducted between the end of August and the end of September.

So we dedicated, with Seattle City Light, a whole year of deep engagement.

Even though there were, I would say, 14, and we can name if we talk about quantity, only 14, what I want to highlight is the deep engagement in those 14 areas.

We had a team of 12 community liaisons and completed engagement activities and touched hundreds of community members where they convened and where they gathered.

So we met them where they were at.

Mostly black, indigenous people of color and people who speak different languages.

and half a dozen of organizations we worked with because we partner with our community-based organizations who already hold relationships.

And so we continue to enhance that and build that and strengthen that.

Through one-on-one interviews, surveys, focus groups, EV demonstrations, because it is visual, We did that also at SMT as we talk about community.

The city employees are also community and they also need to know and how to access and how to use electrification and how it benefits them.

And we also did tabling at community events at community-based organizations who had their own programs.

I wanna name some of the languages represented that included Amaharic, Arabic, Khmer, Korean, Laotian, Hmong, Mandarin, Oromo, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

And these are just a number of the folks that came through in different languages that we provided and that our community liaison spoke to.

Other communities represented also included indigenous, seniors, youth, and people with disabilities.

So it was also not just across around age, but diversity in age, representation in gender, and also in race and ethnicity and culture.

So some of those were in resident engagement.

We went to ethnic grocery stores, again, community-based programs, and as I mentioned, an S&T.

I actually want to recognize, so I get the honor to share this work, but I actually want to recognize Stanley, who's actually in the audience, and also Kathleen Perez, who is a community liaison from South Park.

So if you would stand or wave real quick, it would be great to just honor you.

They are the ones who really do the work.

And it was a lot of work to convene and to gather people if people know how to do that.

Organizing and mobility takes a lot of work and takes a lot of trust.

And we are grateful to our community for that.

So in partnership with City Light and the One Seattle approach, we know that it's vital to the success of these efforts.

to help communities co-develop solutions, strengthen partnerships, and build trust in the electrification transition.

People need to see themselves as part of that transition.

They need to know the why and how it benefits them.

And we need to bring them all along, and we need to also provide opportunity for them to know that they are a part of Seattle and a part of this to minimize pollution.

So with that, moving forward, I want to end with the Department of Neighborhoods and Seattle City Light has an interdepartmental agreement with our strategic partnerships program to expand our partnerships and strengthen a holistic approach and community engagement for utilities.

So this is one project that has modeled the success of how we can do this in building relationships with the community and maintaining it and making sure that their voices also shape the services that benefit them.

But we will be expanding that partnership moving forward in 2025 and 2026 as we deepen our relationships and projects.

So with that, I'll hand it over back to Angela to close us out.

Thank you.

All right, so to close out this presentation, our resolution seeks City Council's adoption of City Light's updated transportation electrification strategic investment plan.

City Light will continue to partner and work with city departments, stakeholders, and community to implement this strategy.

We'll also continue to submit annual progress reports to Council as well.

So thank you, Chair Rink and committee members for your time and attention today.

We appreciate the opportunity to present this important matter and are ready to answer any questions.

Thank you so much.

Colleagues, questions?

Council member Saka.

Yeah.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

cycling through the raise hand feature.

But you saw me nodding my head.

So thank you, everyone, for this really terrific presentation.

Got it down a couple of notes, learned a lot.

A couple of questions.

Well, first off, I'll note that with respect to the EV program here in Seattle, I'm proud to remind that as part of the transportation levy that the legislation that we considered over the summer, last summer, and voters ultimately approved, I think if I recall correctly, we expanded by three times the amount of the mayor's proposed investment specifically for the climate electrification program exceeding, I think, $32 million, if my memory serves me correctly.

and you know here's here is another implementation of that work as we sort of talked about here today and with the goal and plan of rolling out EV charging stations I think if I recall correctly we also included some language specifying you know level two versus level three charging But yeah, with the ultimate goal of rapidly deploying and rolling these out to communities across the city, top community centers, top parks, locations, certain right of way, and doing more.

So this is really urgent and important work.

And I appreciate you all for leading the charge on implementing a huge strategic investment that we crafted carefully and voters ultimately approved.

I'd just be curious to better understand the data around, you know, how we're going to roll out more EV charging stations in Seattle.

So on one of the earlier slides, it was very helpful from my perspective.

It noted that EV adoption is growing fast in Seattle, which is great.

It showed the year-over-year trends.

And the takeaway as the slide notes, rapid adoption here in the city of Seattle, which is terrific.

But we also need to aspire to make even further data informed decisions.

And we know across the city, adoption is faster in certain areas compared to others.

And so just be curious to better understand as we think about the optimal locations to make sure we have the most bang for our buck of taxpayer investments in bringing this to life.

And also kind of harmonizing the need to make sure that we're deploying these starting in areas where we know adoption is is is good uh is there a map available that that shows where adoption in seattle occurs most because as we know 84 square miles here in the city of seattle uh and that's a huge land mass so we want to be smart about how we roll out these investments is there a map available to that shows where adoption i know that data is publicly available it's a tsrc it's state like registration uh any number of ways but is there a map available that you could share that includes like you know where where adoption is is uh is highest and concentrated most in the city of seattle short answer is yes and we're happy to share that um and there's there's probably two maps that come to mind that i'm thinking we could share with you council member so i can any other council members that are interested

One, and I went to this slide, and this is from our work with the International Council for Clean Transportation, because this shows, as you were saying, there's rapid adoption, but how many chargers are we actually going to need as we grow?

This doesn't get at the geography question, but it's a good slide to anchor on.

But we do have maps that we will share on where the current adoption is, and then also how this future need for charging infrastructure breaks down by zip code.

I think we have that at the zip code level.

in a map in this larger study that this work was based on.

And like you highlighted, this is a tremendous need.

You know, Angela mentioned when we talked to this slide earlier that we need seven times the charging infrastructure we have currently just by 2030. And then, as you can see, it keeps growing.

So that's going to keep up at a rapid clip And so really our strategy around how do we get the charging infrastructure out there is at least twofold.

One is those programs that we have to incentivize customers, and we're going to be launching a public charging incentive program as well to incentivize third-party market providers of chargers to come into our service territory and adopt in key areas, and that will include some of those overburdened community adders as well.

So we want to incentivize the third-party market to adopt.

We want to support customers in adopting.

And then we're making those direct investments that we're able to make.

And you brought up the levy, and that's where that directly applies, those $32, $33 million that were allocated to electric vehicles in the levy, which we're really fortunate to see.

So we've been partnering with SDOT through this whole plan, Seattle Department of Transportation.

We've been installing chargers with them already.

We've already been working with them on some of the pre-planning around the levy work.

And that levy funding is supportive of everything in this plan.

This plan is going to be the basis for making those investments with SDOT and others.

So that will also help bridge, is building new public chargers through the levy funds as well.

And then some of those other external funding sources that Angela mentioned, the Clean Fuel Standard, is going to start generating revenue on an annual basis that we'll be able to tap to help build out I hope that answers it and we'll follow up with those maps for Council Member Sokka.

Absolutely, yeah.

Very helpful additional response and definitely give some initial clarity.

Would also love to see those additional maps with the level of detail that you can.

Sounds like by zip code, which makes sense.

Personally, I would like to see a breakdown of like an overlay of of council districts and how like it yeah i would like to see that overlay in terms of the with that gif uh mapping in any event um yeah please do follow up and we'll stay tuned my other question pertains to so transportation electrification you know we know that adding more infrastructure to make it easier uh to to drive adoption we know that's one of the underlying challenges to to adoption And that's exactly what this proposed plan is, you know, designed to do in part.

As someone who's a former technology lawyer and geeks out in the tech space more broadly, I'm not sure if the, this is a very rapidly evolving space and, you know, landscape in terms of EV charging and infrastructure.

it takes you know for level two charging that's what two to three hours whatever it is it's it's an hour plus level three charging is you know very fast i think an hour or less and uh level one is like a couple days good luck uh but but regardless even with the fastest charging currently currently available um that's still we're still looking at 45 minutes an hour plus and uh Like I said, this is a rapidly evolving landscape.

And other areas, other parts of the world, namely China and certain parts of Europe, they have these cool battery swapping stations, which you go in, drive your car in.

They take out your old battery and insert a new battery.

And that is the closest thing.

currently available to replicate the experience of moving away from, when we talk about the need to move away from gasoline and combustion engines, that's the closest thing that replicates the experience of going to, driving to a gas station and putting in the nozzle and waiting five minutes or whatever to fully fill up.

the swapping station experience, but we haven't seen wide adoption yet of those in the United States as far as I understand.

How does this proposed plan contemplate, that's one example, but it's not the only, battery swapping stations.

How does the proposed plan contemplate the rapidly evolving nature of technology and electrification and transportation?

Sure, good question.

The nice thing about the plan in that space is the adaptability, and then also the embrace of innovation.

So we do have priorities in the plan around embracing innovative technologies.

And with the adaptability, I mean, we're starting with what we know today and what we know about the future market.

And we're working with some of those industry experts we mentioned, International Council of Clean Transportation, Electric Power Research Institute.

And we work with them each year to reevaluate, like, how is the market adapting?

And on the charging strategies, it's going to take all of the above.

We're going to need fast chargers.

We're going to need level twos.

Some use cases, level one's OK.

And then we're going to need to evaluate all of those new technologies as they come in.

And then on an annual basis, if they're viable and they're providing solutions to our customers, we'll make those investments.

So I think innovation's right at the core of the plan, and we keep the adaptability to embrace those technologies you're mentioning as they come to market.

Yeah, adaptability and flexibility is key, I think, to implementation of all this.

So, no, that's great.

And with respect to those, I mentioned the 3X expansion that we did of that program, the electrification program through the levy.

We did that, and I'm proud that we did that in partnership with with communities, including our brothers and sisters at IBEW.

So good to see some of this is being implemented and appreciate the work you all do.

Final question, it is a very hyper-specific question, and I understand we need to follow offline.

You know that there's the Morgan Junction in my district, Morgan Junction, the charging station has been in the plans, in the works for a while, and there's been some delays, and we've been on various, you know, email threads in conversations about that.

If you have any offhand updates on that and and you know timing when that's going to be finally completed and delivered and if the answer is no I understand I would like to continue to follow up online about that that's that's an one for my constituents across across district one across West Seattle and specifically that community.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka.

Yes, let's stay connected on this project.

This location in particular has faced significant barriers and delays.

Our actual original charger manufacturer went out of business earlier this year, forcing us to kind of rethink the innovation side and which technology and new infrastructure that needs to be assessed at that site.

And so supply chains constraints, we're seeing a lot of market turnover as well in this industry.

And so trying to keep an eye on what's happening in that innovation, the technology side has been key to trying to monitor the specific location.

Right now, we've been working with a lot of the community members and trying to prioritize this location in particular due to the delays that we've been seeing.

And so we're monitoring it very closely and working really hard to get some of those new redesigns out the door so that we can

build that charging station thank you yeah prior to me and my constituents to get that done once and for all i understand the the challenges but uh look forward to continue to partner alongside you all to uh and community to get that done so let's stay engaging in touch thank you no further questions or comments madam chair

Wonderful, thank you.

Thank you for your thoughtful questions, Councilmember Saka.

I'll close with just a couple of comments and one question.

I'm just so impressed by the amount of work and the approach you all have taken to conducting this work.

Really, I look to the passage of the HEAL Act by the state legislature as such a foundational and important piece of legislation that has helped us really take steps to start confronting the inequities that we see around pollution.

And so I want to commend and really voice my appreciation seeing Department of Neighborhoods and City Light engaging in this work together and also seeing again the crowd that's here today.

If you were a part of working on this plan, if you could like wave a hand.

I know we heard from some of our speakers.

Thank you.

Thank you for your commitment to this work and engaging in it.

Thank you for having hope in a better future, one where we are carbon neutral and actually fully addressing our emissions.

And thank you also for your commitment to working alongside our local government to try and put together a plan that truly addresses inequities in our community.

in this matter.

As was mentioned, we'll be getting updates on the implementation of this plan, and I would voice, my focus in that is I'd love to hear more about the workforce components as well.

As was voiced, there's a lot of opportunity here for good paying green jobs in this green energy sector, and so would love to hear updates about opportunities there.

And then of course, continued updates on how we are addressing inequities throughout this plan.

And I guess my question in all of this and looking through the plan, you know, an acknowledgement that we'll need to be leveraging federal and state resources to implement components of this, and I say this on the eve of a change in federal administrations, and I know a lot of uncertainty ahead of us, but wanting to remain committed to this work and thinking about opportunities about how we may further push at the state legislature be able to secure the funding necessary to implement this plan.

So your thoughts on any changes to in the federal agencies and administration and how we can really keep this plan on track because it represents our best hope for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

I think at the federal level for all of us we're gonna have to wait and see but we're poised we've got built-in To pursue all those opportunities that come our way, we are, you know, closely, you know, sort of monitoring all that activity as is our, we've got a representative from Electric Power Research Institute here in the audience.

And they're working with us on that as well.

So whatever comes, we're going to be ready and we're going to be aggressive.

For me, the first thing that comes to mind is, on a personal note, I started here on this work during the first Trump administration.

And I did that because this is the place to do this work.

And there's so much regional alignment around it.

So I do think we're going to have to, no matter what comes, I think we're going to need to lean in within the region.

And the really nice thing has been We've got so many supportive actions.

You know, Council Member Sacco has mentioned the ballot measure which passed with support for electric vehicles.

The Climate Commitment Act provides a lot of funding that we're likely going to need to tap in this space.

And then the Clean Fuel Standard especially is going for us in the region and has a lot of support.

And I think we've got a lot of talented folks in state government that we're going to want to have dialogue with to keep that regional focus even as things change at the federal level.

I was just going to point to the clean fuel standard.

So this is just a nod and thank you to the state of Washington.

A lot of the future funding or some portion of the future funding for this portfolio in particular will actually be led by the state.

And so a little bit centered on that and where we might not have to, I mean, we still have to keep an eye on the federal landscape, but the local and state policies have really enabled us to continue our work.

into the future so that's really exciting and then the other point I think to highlight is that transportation electrification I know is like the leading point and a part of the strategy but transportation can look and be so many different things at the same time so we have a lot of creative and innovative ways to I think get at the outcomes that we want at the same time without necessarily like harnessing solely on the infrastructure piece or um, the enablement piece or community.

So we, we have a lot of flexibility, uh, to play in that space.

The last thing that I would add too, is that there's, there's, uh, our customers want this.

Um, um, you know, we're not, not just community that's here, but also, you know, our, our business customers who are, who are managing fleets and who have their own aggressive sustained sustainability goals.

Um, so that we believe that is going to, you know, just help continue the momentum and they're ready to make investments.

And I just wanted to add real short and briefly around the community-centered landscape in response to that is that we are resilient and we will continue to push forward with centering our communities.

Thank you all.

Thank you all for spending the time with us this morning.

With that, I move that the committee recommend adoption of Resolution 32160. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend adoption of the resolution.

Are there any comments, final comments?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to adopt the resolution?

Council Member Moore.

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Rink.

Yes.

There are three in favor, zero opposed.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the resolution be adopted will be sent to the January 28th city council meeting.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Madam chair.

Yes.

Council member Saka.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am comfortable voting on this proposed plan out of committee for purposes of today.

I do want to follow up with City Light on a few other things that we talked about today, but for our final vote at the full council.

And I look forward to engage with our partners at City Light.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Certainly.

Sounds like a plan.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka.

Wonderful, will the clerk please read item six into the record?

Agenda item six, bomb cyclone storm reports, or excuse me, bomb cyclone storm response and recovery.

So I'd like to invite our presenters who are on their way up already.

When you get settled in, feel free to introduce yourself on the record and thank you for joining us this morning and thank you for folks who came out.

Good morning, Chair Rank.

Mike Haynes, Chief Operating Officer for Seattle City Light.

And good morning, Brittany Barnwell, Emergency Manager for Seattle City Light.

What was the first name?

Brittany Barnwell.

Brittany, yeah.

Awesome.

So this morning, we're gonna give you a quick synopsis of a storm event that took place beginning on November 19th.

And since we're up against time, I think I'll just hand off to Brittany, but just one anecdote that, owing from the major storm we had back in 2006, affectionately known as the Hanukkah Eve storm, if you were around at that time, a similar event with a lot wider impacts, but we learned a lot from that storm.

We stood up a lot of programs that Brittany is now leading a major portion of that.

So I think we've made a lot of progress and we've got a lot of learning to do still and we're gonna highlight some of that.

So go ahead, Brittany.

All right.

Thanks, Mike.

And thanks, everybody, for your attention.

So today we're just going to go through the bomb cyclone overview.

I broke it down into the phases of emergency management.

So we're going to touch on the preparedness phase, response phase, recovery and mitigation.

Okay, so just to give an overview, the bomb cyclone hit our area on November 20th, but SCL was, well, we started to prepare for the event a few days in advance, which gave us the upper hand to getting our staffing and personnel levels to support the response.

Note, we had no challenges during this response, and we were able to preposition our line worker staffs who were in the field, and they also maintained a 17-hour shift with seven hours of rest.

On 11-19, we had 198 personnel in the field, which includes ops, civil, vegetation management, shops, and warehouse.

On 11-20, we had 551 personnel in the field.

On 11-21, we had 553 personnel in the field.

On 11-23, we had 224 personnel in the field.

On 11-24, we had 229 personnel in the field.

And on 11-25, we had 222 personnel in the field, which totaled to 20,176 hours, .75 hours worked total for personnel in the field.

Our peak outages, we hit at 114,000, which is 20% of our customer base.

And we also did the One Seattle coordination efforts with the Office of Emergency Management.

We had Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle Public Utilities, and also the Human Services Department.

Alongside that, we had our SOC, which is our Systems Operations Center.

They were staffed for 24-7 coverage.

And I also want to add, too, we had zero injuries during this response.

So that's always great.

But in preparation to the incident management team, we were all hands on deck by November 19th through 2025, which all our customers were fully restored by then.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that on slide nine.

But also, too, I want to mention our restoration prioritization, which we take critical.

Number one being our critical facilities, which includes hospitals and nursing homes.

Number two is taking an equitable approach, making sure we're looking at the entire service territory and providing evenly distributed services.

Number three would be our largest customer outages.

And number four would be the city of Seattle's infrastructure, making sure that we're able to continue continuity of operations.

So here, I wanted to just give you all just an overview of what the outage map looked like on November 20th by 9.30 a.m.

So the orange dots on the calendar, well, not on the calendar, but on the map stands for 1 to 249 customers without power.

Your light red, which you can see up in your Lake Forest Park area and also two down in your Delridge area, that stands for 250 to 999 customers without power.

Your dark red spots, as you can see, it stands for 1,000 or more customers without power.

And your light green spots are planned outages that we are aware of and that we planned for on the system.

Go ahead, Councilman.

Just pausing right there.

I'm recognizing a hand from Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Brittany, what was your role in all of this?

I'm the emergency manager, so I was the coordinator.

I made sure we had everything we needed, talking to everybody, bringing resources together.

So I was just basically your main point of contact to make sure we had things running up and running.

So you're in charge.

Yes.

Okay.

I now understand why this went as smoothly as possible.

Just hearing your presentation makes me feel more relaxed that you got this handled.

I raised my hand because this map clearly shows that my district did not suffer from power outages during the bomb cyclone.

And I want to bring us back in time to that week because when this occurred, there was a running joke in district six.

Because earlier that week, about a quarter or maybe over a third of District 6 was without power, I think, for 12 to 36 hours.

And so I just bring that up because this looks bad, but it's because we got hit with the bomb cyclone apparently earlier that week.

Anything that either of you want to add to that?

I just wanted to raise it because we're not getting special attention over there.

Yeah.

Thanks.

I appreciate that.

I know that, you know, the underground infrastructure that we're working on out there too is going to help you going forward as well.

So, yep.

Thank you.

I was gonna make that joke as well.

It was like District 6 is looking pretty good.

And we've requested these maps just to get the body familiarized with where this hit.

So thank you City Light for accommodating my request for maps.

Please proceed.

Okay.

Okay, so we also too added in, we wanted to make sure that everyone could see how we were able to restore our customers in a timely fashion.

So as I mentioned, we peaked at 114,000 customers, but as you can see, it dropped.

we had 100,000 customers restored within that first day.

And then also too, as we got towards the end of deactivation, we had the small onesies, twosies that took a little longer than normal that we had to bring in our mutual aid crews in to help us make sure we get our customers fully restored.

So we did highlight the numbers too, so you can see the progression.

Okay, so we also, too, wanted to share the incident command system chart.

This is the breakdown that our sister departments use as well, but this is also, too, the U.S. chart.

So you have your incident commander who leads the incident, and then from there, You have your public information officer who gathers all the information, and then they disseminate the information to the public and to our customers.

You have your safety officer who is in charge of safety, making sure everybody is safe during this event and nothing happens.

Your liaison officer is the role, basically, that I played.

I was the liaison between the city departments and between all of our other...

sister departments as well, along with our franchise cities.

So I was that point of contact.

And then you have your operations section chief, who basically manages all your field operations, making sure everything is running smoothly in the field.

You have your planning section chief, who deals with the planning aspect, making sure we have poles, transformers, and all of those good things to make sure we can restore our customers.

You have your logistics section chief.

They deal with basically your food, your housing, because during incidences like that, we want to make sure the employees can stay close and that they don't have to travel far, especially when we have an all-hands-on-deck response.

And then your finance and admin chief is there to make sure all costs that are incurred We make sure we capture them.

So when we do get that FEMA declaration, we have all of our paperwork and all of our documentation in line to give that supporting documentation to King County so we can get the declaration for the city.

So this is just your breakdown of your ICS chart and how it's managed.

Councilmember Strauss, I would add that the reason this system works is because the training that Brittany does for all of us and make sure that we're up to date on all of our training and incident management.

So the back office support can't go unnoticed and we're all trained because of the work that she does.

All right, so let's jump into the preparedness phase.

So when it comes to the emergency management here at City Light, we did a realignment last year, which maps your positions with the incident management team.

So it's better this way, so when someone does leave the utility, I'm able to grab them at new employee orientation.

get them up to speed, and bring the training to the forefront.

So they're not caught off guard, and we're all on the same page as we enter a response.

For the weather forecasting monitoring, I work closely with the National Weather Service, have a great relationship with them, and also UW.

Uh, we work closely with them, too, to monitor the weather beforehand to make sure we know what's coming so we can prepare and make sure we, uh, communicate with our customers properly, uh, before the weather comes.

Uh, the incident command system training, uh, as Mike just mentioned, we do this yearly.

Uh, we stay on top of this, uh, this way.

We know when something happens, we're trained, we know what to do, and we, uh, and we're able to respond, um, in a great manner.

And our restoration prioritization is so important because we have to make sure that we are looking at it from a holistic basis.

Just like I mentioned, we talk about our critical infrastructure, which is our hospitals and nursing homes.

And then again, we look at our equitable approach.

How are we approaching the service territories?

Is everybody getting the same service?

And then last, the customer communication, which is the biggest piece.

making sure we're communicating with our customers, making sure they know what's going on, and making sure that if their outages are going to be out longer than normal, that we communicate that.

It's so important to make sure that we have their trust and that we are communicating the right thing.

We take pride in this, and our communications department is so great with making sure that they have this information readily available to send out.

So the response phase, which is always great, which is the meat of all emergency management.

We had 11 total daily incident management team calls, which were two a day, one in the morning and one in the evening.

We also had our calls on the weekend for Saturday and Sunday as well, which means we were all hands on deck for seven days straight.

For that, we also, too, realized that we needed to bring in mutual assistance.

So we are part of the Western Energy Institute group, which now I am the secretary of for mutual aid.

So we were able to bring in Avista and Tacoma Power.

They were great.

They were readily responsible.

We were able to coordinate with their mutual aid.

We actually had a conference call with myself, the incident commander, who is also the operations director, and also to the whole entire West Coast for mutual aid support.

We did receive more support, but this is what we needed to get our customers fully restored, and we're definitely grateful for their partnership and also them to coming down to Seattle.

For coordination efforts, as I mentioned before, the Office of Emergency Management played a huge part in connecting all of the city departments.

Huge shout out to them.

And then our sister departments, SDOT, who did a great job, SPU, and also the Human Services Department.

And we want to give a huge shout out to the Garfield Community Center.

They got the shelter up and running.

And for our appreciation, we made sure we delivered great food to them.

They were so appreciative.

And I just want to we just want to say thank you to Garfield Community Center without hesitation.

They got everything up and running and definitely a partnership that will continue to grow and strengthen.

So for the recovery phase, the final restoration always takes a little longer than normal.

We had the small jobs that we had to go look into.

A few were in Lake Forest Park, which you all might be aware of.

But we were able to get our mutual aid crews out there to restore everybody.

Great communication with Lake Forest Park.

So we do have some things that we want to adjust and change going forward.

But I think we find that out after every major event.

So we completed our AAR.

We got those notes in there and we'll definitely be ready for the next event that happens.

For our mutual aid demobilization, that was actually great.

We actually housed our mutual aid crews.

We fed our mutual aid crews.

And towards Sunday, right before we deactivated IMT, we were able to demobilize our mutual aid crews and send them back home safely.

They were thankful for everything that we did.

We took care of them, and they also extended their hands.

If we ever needed anything again, they would be the first ones to come down.

For debris removal, we're still working through that now.

A lot of vegetation came down during the bomb cyclone.

As you can see, I wanted to share some photos of what the debris looked like.

We got our vegetation management crews out there to do a lot of tree trimming and tree cutting during the event, which we're so thankful for them.

And then lastly, we'll talk about the FEMA public assistance.

We're waiting on that federal declaration to come through for the bomb cyclone.

So with that, we've incurred 1.4 million in cost so far that we've calculated and we've been able to send to King County to hopefully get that declaration for the city of Seattle that we've been looking for.

And with that, we're able to get salaries back with any overtime that was permitted in there, any cost for material.

and any cost for anything else that we incurred during the storm, like housing and also food and cost as well.

So for...

The mitigation piece, the after action review went great.

As you can see, I put a picture on here where we all gathered around the table to talk about things that went well.

First thing we did was celebrate the wins, because the wins are always important.

And during a storm, sometimes you never know what way it may go but with the help of everybody and everybody's uh working together we exceeded expectations and we rocked the bomb cyclone we were able to do things uh that we knew we could do and you know everybody is so great very professional and we rocked through it and um that just shows our strength and how you know and how far we've come with emergency management here in 2024. And with that, for emergency management expansion, the department will be expanding the emergency management program.

We'll be getting a training and exercising coordinator and also an all hazard mitigation specialist to help build out the program and to help make sure we're ready for continuity of operations and that we have a robust system in place.

All right, so lastly here, we're gonna talk about the SBA loans.

So I was able to reach out to King County and get some stats from King County for the success rate of your SBA loans.

Right now, all applications are online, so you can go there and apply for all applications for your SBA.

So right now, for homes, the full count that has been submitted is 206, and progress is 68. 51 applications were declined and 50 were withdrawn, with a counteroffer to 37 and 11 of disbursements, which totals to $135,100 have been dispersed so far.

For businesses, you have 39 full applications with 17 in progress, five declined, 13 withdrawn, and four with a counteroffer.

Right now, they've dispersed three of the business loans with $152,400 sent out so far.

All right, thank you.

Wonderful, colleagues, any questions?

May I, Chair?

Thank you for this robust presentation.

Thank you for all your work, especially on the ground during the emergency management.

I guess it's emergency management, right?

Crisis management.

You did a really good job, in my opinion.

And I was wondering if you could share, this is not to point fingers at other jurisdictions necessarily, but as I was watching this unfold, I saw that both Snohomish PUD and PSE had more customers out and we were able to bring our customers online faster.

Now granted, they've got more trees out on the east side of Lake Washington and Sammamish and in Snohomish County than we do.

We're the most urban setting in the state, but can you talk about what sets us apart?

Is it really just the environmental conditions or do we have processes in place that allow us to be so successful?

We definitely have processes in place.

I do think that we're in a nice nest egg right here within the city.

Not a lot of vegetation, but we do have vegetation, not compared to like Snohomish.

So to give a little rundown of against Snohomish, so PSC ramped up their IMT on 11-19 and they worked through their event through 11-27.

They had approximately 600,000 customers impacted without power during that duration.

For Snohomish, they worked or activated their IMT on 11-19, and they deactivated on 11-24, and they had 165,000 customers without power.

So similar to us and PSC, we all bought mutual aid crews and contract crews in.

But I think due to the vegetation piece here, to where we're lucky to not have as much vegetation and to not be so rural as Snohomish and PSC.

And also two I want to add, which is a question I know someone asked, events are starting, well they are, they start locally and they end locally.

So knowing how FEMA is going, we may not have funds in the near future.

So that's why it's important to also understand that Any event that happens here, we have to make sure that we're able to go out first and respond and not wait for FEMA's help.

We have to make sure that we're setting aside the dollars to make sure we can respond to these events and to make sure we can recover because it could take FEMA anywhere from four months to a year to get here knowing what's going on throughout the whole U.S.

You have your hurricanes on the East Coast.

Now you have your wildfires and then you have your tornadoes and things in the Midwest.

And now we're growing with wildfires here.

So it's just best to know that we have to be prepared here and then we can expect for FEMA to come, but we have to hold our own here.

Very well said.

I will note that FEMA is located in Bothell, so they were probably within the middle of the storm as well, and I know that the folks from our Bothell office are down in Southern California responding to the fires today.

Next question is forward-looking.

We have another weather event.

Apologies, Councilmember.

We have lost quorum, and we need to end the meeting.

Well, that's unfortunate.

Good work.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Apologies for that.

I'm sure City Light will be available offline.

And thank you for your hard work.

And we definitely want to find ways to celebrate the hard work you all have done to bring back power.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

This adjourns our meeting.