Good morning. Can you hear me? First lecture is essentially about communicating to all of you at some length, the objective of this and the subsequent series of workshops. First of all, I had circulated an earlier version of a theme paper which I had written. I hope all of you have read that. Anybody who has not had access to it, because we originally sent it only to the heads of the institutions, but subsequently I think my staff would have sent it to all of you. So, do you have any problem in reading, downloading and reading that theme paper? What I wanted to know primarily is, do you agree with most of the observations that have been made there? Because if you look at the problems that we face, I would just like to enunciate some of the problems once again just to reiterate the issues. First of all, the technology that I am using is a mundane technology. It is a wide board technology except that the board is somewhere else and whatever we write can be recorded. Subsequent lectures we shall be using slides as most of you do. So, I start with the problems in what I call educational quality. Has it really suffered? In a percentage sense, it has suffered in the sense that because large number of students are learning engineering, the percentage of students who are well educated is falling. However, in absolute numbers, students who are getting well trained is increasing. Now, this is a dilemma which has not been captured even in my theme paper. So, let me start with this problem of scale which is exactly what bothers everyone. So, just to take our own area of activities, take computer science, electronics and I.T. for example, till about 1980, 81, 82, there were no bachelors programs in I.T. or computer science. These words were not known. M.Tech programs used to run, master's program used to run. Electronics was by and large the closest thing to computers there and there were roughly 5000 seats for students annually across the country for admission to electronics program. Counting all I.I.T.s, N.I.T.s and other institutions, just 5000 seats where the total number of colleges themselves were very few. From that, we have a total of 6 lakh students taking admission to engineering programs every year now and almost half of them and slightly more take admission to bachelors programs in I.T. computer science and electronics and M.C.A. huge numbers. I had a big argument with NASCOM leadership two years ago when they published a report, most of you would be familiar with that, that not more than 20 or 25 percent of our engineering graduates are employable. And I said, yes, I agree with you, but you are talking about 25 percent of what? At that time, we were producing something like 1 lakh students every year out of which 50,000 students were in what you call I.C.T. areas. And I have merely observed that 25 percent of 50,000 students is far more than 5000 students that we ever produced in electronics. So even if we assume that all 5000 students were great, which was not the case by any major, the country is still producing larger number of beta students. Now, while that might answer an issue that whether are we giving quality education, the answer, real answer is yes, we are able to give quality education to some, but we are not able to give quality education to others. And the fundamental problem is that of scale. Unfortunately, most of us in institutions that are represented here, I.I.T.s, N.I.T.s, do not face that kind of problem to the greatest severity, although each one of us have problems of some kind or the other. There are other institutions that are participating here, but they are also well known institutions, although they are outside the I.I.T. and N.I.T.s, and they also face this problem to a lesser extent. What is the problem? First of all, the academic preparation of the students that come to our institutions, by and large, because they come through an extremely rigorous filtering process, you would agree that you would end up getting the best of the available students. Secondly, because these institutions have some reputation and have a reasonable amount of academic flexibility for the teachers, most of the people who want to join teaching as an academic professional career prefer to go to these institutions. But the scale is such that we have greater than 4,000 institutions today. In a I.I.C.T. meeting two months ago, Dr. Mantha told me that we have 4,000 colleges approved as of now, and there are 2,000 pending applications for new colleges. A million people are flying to get into the professional education. The number of teachers that I would not say we have, but we need are more than 1,50,000. Now, that is the scale. Traditionally, if you see, us teachers were required to educate ourselves further, do some research and then only get endorsed as teachers in the institution. So, most of us would at least do a master's degree, and most of us would why to complete a PhD as soon as possible. Now, you would know colleges in your own vicinity. How many colleges have teachers with PhD qualification? How many colleges have teachers with qualification of a master's degree? You will agree that the percentage is very small, and that is the first problem that we have that we do not get teachers with the adequate academic background as we would like them to have. So, the associated most of the problems come out of the scale problem is the educational background of our teachers. The main problem is the educational background with large majority of teachers having only a bachelor's degree or first degree. By the way, this problem is going to become more acute even professionally for these teachers because Mantha told me that in the as per the sixth pay commission, the minimum qualification for a recognized teacher is at least a master's degree. And the nation just does not have adequate facilities even if all the teachers wanted to do their masters. I mean, after all if I join as a teacher, I might be a bee, but I would aspire to do a master's. But on one hand you give me end courses to teach. So, no chutti, no nothing. On the other hand, you say you must acquire your master's degree, but I will not depute you to IIT Kharagpur or NIT Varangal or whatever, whatever. You do any whichever way. Which way does a teacher do a master's degree? Now, that is a major problem that is going to force us over the next five years. Slightly aside from the theme that we are discussing, I have proposed that the mechanism that we are going to use for these workshops be extended to provide subject teaching of courses at the master's level through distance education mode and the project for the final year of the master's program to be done at the respective institution. So, create some kind of a virtual university environment where credits done for courses can be taken across universities and that seems to be the only way where you can scale up that effort. But that is slightly aside. So, this is a problem. This problem is more acute in the areas of computer science, IIT and electronics. So, again, I hope you will bear with me that if you see the colleges around your own institutions, the smaller colleges, while there will be a few people with PhD qualification, a few people with master's qualification, in areas like computer science, electronics and IIT, you will have a larger number of teachers with a basic qualification of B. Is that correct? Is that observation correct? That is where we have the luck. There is an additional problem in the educational background and this problem afflicts all of us. When I became a teacher, nobody educated me on how to teach and I suppose that is true with all of you. So, all of us have learned how to teach by experience and by watching our seniors, by colleagues. So, it is like a peer education system and a self-education system. I find this ridiculous because at the school level, if you want to appoint a teacher, you insist that the teacher be well-trained in teaching. So, you have Bachelor of Education, Master of Education and so on. And yet, I do not know of any institution which necessarily organizes a minimum 7-day orientation program for every new teacher who is appointed. IITs do not do that. I know for sure, NITs do not do that. And I know for sure, most of the other colleges do not do that. I go with a B.E. degree with whatever qualification if I am selected and appointed as a teacher in a college. The day I go and sign a joining letter or something like that, my head of the department says, here is this course, go and teach. Don't you find this ridiculous? What is the solution? The solution is to revamp the process from the bottom and say that no appointment of a teacher will be considered valid unless the teacher is given some initiation in teaching. The fact of life is that engineering people who teach engineering later are generally the smarter people amongst the educational mahal. And they have gone through the grilling of an engineering course wherever. And therefore, their analytical faculties have been reasonably sharpened. And therefore, they can generally do a reasonably good job of teaching. But imagine if at the outset I was taught in the art of teaching, even for seven days, preferably for a month, wouldn't I have been a better teacher right from day one rather than evolving as one in later years? Why I mention this to you is that a large number of teachers that you will find in the engineering colleges are teachers with just zero to three years of experience. And therefore, they desperately need some kind of initiation into teaching. So please keep that in mind when later on you go back and organize as coordinators the workshop for teachers in larger numbers. The third problem is the mindset of students. This is nothing new, but well established that students are primarily motivated by marks and grades. I do not know what it is at your institutions, but in IIT, Bombay, whether it is a quiz paper or a test paper or a mid-sem paper and same paper, the kind of arguments that students come with for half a mark, one mark, half an hour of argument, one hour of argument, saying, no, no, no, you give me less here, more there, etc., etc., tells you where their heart is. I don't know, you have similar experiences at your places also? Fine. Now, at institutions where we share the answer books and discuss the marking, etc., etc., these things happen. In university examinations where there is no natural sharing of the answer book and people generally don't get a chance to get their question paper re-evaluated, the students know that in order to maximize the marks in the exam, they will have to study with a slightly different focus. So, learning on knowledge-getting is not the primary focus of the students, but marks and grades is the primary focus. Can we blame them? After all, we select them in our institutions based on marks obtained in some examination. So, whether it is J.E. for IITs or whether it is IEEE or whatever, examination systems, NITs, whatever, you would not admit somebody who is the lowest ranked person in that all India competitive exam, right?  So, therefore, right from the childhood, the boy or the girl has been taught to maximize the score in exams. What happens after he or she comes to Indian college in our places, even in IITs and NITs, they know that during the placement season, the companies like IBM or HCL or TCS or whatever enforces, they will come and say 90 percent and above, top 5 students, top 10 students. So, I know that if I am a laggard and if I score 40 percent marks or 50 percent marks, it is unlikely that any one of the good companies will even look at me. We all know that once you enter an organization, the marks and other things really do not count. How you work in that new environment and how you prove yourself is what is important. But marks are a door opener and if marks are not there, the doors will not be open. Therefore, the primary target is open doors and therefore score marks. We call this exam-oriented mindset of these students, but I believe we cannot really blame the students for it. We have no other mechanism to filter students that is accepted by the societal structures such as businesses and industry. That is where our students are going to go. So, as long as the structures use this filtering, our students will work towards that. Does it mean that any learning that the student does is incidental? I call it incidental learning that I am working for marks, but for scoring marks, I have to identify which are the important questions. I have to know the answers and there will be some teacher who will put a question which is not exactly as per book or as per notes or as per guidebook. So, I have to do some thinking and since I am forced to do some thinking and some reading, I implicitly learn something. After all, what is learning? Learning is reading, thinking, articulating, discussing, again thinking. That is learning. So, that learning happens perhaps incidental. Teachers on the other hand would like to ensure that the students primary focus is on learning and scoring marks is incidental. There is a dichotomy and it is not likely to be resolved because there is no unique answer to this. We then talk of a few teachers who are able to hold the attention of the students, a few teachers who are able to make the students do work which is beyond whatever the call of duty as you may call it beyond syllabus and whatever. The mindset of students is also forced by another factor which again most of us in our institutions do not see and that is state jacketing syllabus. One is forced to teach as per printed syllabus because that is how exam papers are set. So, there are universities who go to the extent of saying that this syllabus shall have the following eight components. This component shall be taught for four hours. This shall be taught for six hours. This shall be taught for five hours. There shall be a question of two marks from this portion, three marks from this portion, five marks from this portion. I have not seen the more ridiculous example of quantifying the quality. After all, we teach a subject which is part of a larger body of the knowledge so that we enable the student to solve problems in that area. But problem solving does not remain a focus once the syllabus and question paper becomes a focus. Why again it is important for us to understand it? It took me also quite some time to appreciate this fact, but large majority of the 4,000 colleges are required to do this. You and I may like it or may not like it. I will tell you another example. When we started distance education ten years ago in IIT Bombay in our school of IT, we started beaming our own courses, the way we teach them. And we thought people will implicitly like them. The students and faculty from most of the colleges sets are very good, nice knowledge, very useless. Our students are not interested and therefore we are not interested because we can't teach the way you teach. We started releasing edited contents of our audiovisual lectures just like the MIT open course where we started releasing these contents in open source. People appreciated it, lot of collapse, lot of downloads, but then we put in an experiment and measurement how much of these contents actually be used by people. Answer big zero. So we ask why? Are these lectures not good? Of course they are good. So why are you not using them? Sir, they don't address our syllabus. So you see, you cannot force the teachers to adopt the material that you release even in open source unless they perceive that material to be useful to them. And when will they perceive that material to be useful to them? If their students perceive that that material is useful. Does it mean that we reduce the level of our efforts in essentially preparing the digital equivalent of guidebooks? The answer is obviously no. We want the teachers and students of all the colleges to rise up to the level of quality of education that all of us seek even in our institutions. The dilemma is that if we start from the top from where we are, which is what we tried to do, we are never going to reach the bottom. However, we also don't want to land up to a level where we address the issues at the bottom, but never let them rise to the top. Consequently, the challenge before all of us is to engage these large number of teachers across the country, starting with whatever they perceive that they need, giving them that and additionally saying that, look, most of our institutions additionally do this also. So please try this. Please try this. Please try this. Consequently, the extent of coverage that we do for any subject engaging teachers has to start with whatever that teacher perceives to be needed and end up with whatever is done at the best of the institutions including ours and MIT's and Stanford and every place. That is a larger challenge. I just thought I will share that with you. But this all emanates from the mindset of the students, syllabus oriented teaching and what I will call exam oriented learning. A comment on the examination system, I myself did my under graduation from a college in Indore, J.S.I.T.S. and I was part of a university system where we were required to answer any six out of ten questions. Most of the subjects will have section A, section B, whatever, whatever, but generally six out of ten questions. I recall with a great sense of amusement that in my first year, I studied very seriously the entire syllabus, scored very good marks, got a rank in the college in the first year students and so on. But then I discovered that most of the study that I had done was completely useless. In next year, hesitantly, I studied only 60% of the syllabus of two subjects and said, let's see what happens. I scored 89 and 85 marks in both the subjects because you have to answer only six out of ten questions. Then I perfected the technique and by the time I graduated, I knew bare minimum of electrical engineering. Luckily I knew control systems well, which I had studied for 100% and that is how I could get admission to a master's program here. Don't you think that is what would be happening to many of our students who are bound by the university system? So the exam oriented learning means that students are not interested even in covering up the entire syllabus that you are teaching there. They feel it is not necessary. This is the student's problem. There is a larger problem there. The larger problem is mindset of teachers. Here again, the problem comes out of the scale. At a time when we had about 70 to 80 engineering institutions in the country, IITs, NITs, and two or three engineering colleges per state. Numbers were very small. Some of you are very young. You would not have seen those days, but some of my older colleagues would recall. Those days, the engineering program used to be a five year duration program and the teachers that taught us in any engineering college typically had joined a teaching profession as a matter of choice. Whatever, whether they would have done PhD or not PhD or whatever, a large majority of teachers came to that profession by choice. Today, in absolute terms, there is still a larger number of people who are coming to teaching as a matter of choice, but as a percentage, the number is miniscule. And once again, I will say, we don't see that in IITs, NITs, and some of the better colleges, but you go to the majority of 4000 colleges, you will find that a large number of teachers have come to teaching as the second, third, or last option. Does it mean there will be bad teachers? No, not necessarily. But the desire to work towards a long-term career is probably not there. How do we address this issue? We address this issue by emphasizing that look, it doesn't matter how long you stay in this field. After all, by the way, this is not true only about teaching. If you look at any other career building, all of your friends and all who are in the industry, whether in public sector, private sector, typically they would have joined the industry with a long-term career path in mind. So, if you take even the IIT industry today, most of the top leaders, whether it is TCS or HCL or Vipro or whatever, they have been there right from the inception because they targeted a lifelong career or a very long-term career with the institutions in which they joined. Even in the real world, young students who pass out from our colleges do not have a 10-year stint in an organization or a 15-year stint in mind and all. They are thinking in terms of one or two years, three years maybe. They want to switch a job. They switch a job because they will get better paid. Of course, they always say there is a better work there but implicitly there is a better pay also associated with that better work. Whatever. No problem with that but the mindset of teachers who come from the same ethos of the society is also becoming like. How do we then change that mindset? So, I would like you to appreciate that one of the objectives of this engagement because physically those thousand teachers will not be coming to this place. Those thousand teachers will be coming, 30 people at your place, 35 people at your place, etc. And as I will explain, we propose to run 12 such workshops in 12 different subjects. Why we have chosen subject as a center also I will mention. But given the fact that these 30-35 teachers are going to be in your institution with you as the coordinator for about 15 days time I would like to request you to ensure that you actually spend a significant amount of time outside the academic contents of this course also because you will be in a unique position to influence to some extent their thought processes and you will be the role model for them. So, if they see for example that you are enjoying even coordinating this teachers workshop, you are enjoying teaching, you are passionate about it, believe me that will percolate them. And that is one of the objectives which is unstated and unwritten but that is one of the objectives of this entire activity namely to influence the mindset of the teachers. So, I make a very simple statement to any teacher from any college I say that this I developed in 2001-2002 I took a one year sabbatical leave, I was worried about the quality of engineering education. So, in that one year I went around the country giving talks to students and teachers. I deliberately chose smaller places, I could not go to too many places but I visited 67 colleges, interacted with students, interacted with teachers and I found something very amazing at every place without exception I found some students who were as good as the students I find in NITs or IITs. As good, they may not be very polished in their English presentation or something. Usually I would interact with the final year students doing projects and in smaller colleges students do projects in groups, three or four students together do a project. So, when they are making a project presentation group after group and there will be large number of groups because they are 90, 120 students and so on. But you will agree that you would also be doing such evaluation and during the evaluation you can easily spot this completely beyond anybody else. They have applied their mind, their thoughts through the process they have read, they can answer questions. The fact that they are thought independent and mind you they are not even getting the kind of guidance that they can get at better institutions. So, in spite of that they have done so. So, I was very thrilled with this. I also found one or two teachers at every place who were different. I will give you just one example this happened in Orissa, anybody from Orissa state here? Which is the Orissa of NIT? There is nobody from Rourkela. Anyway, I did not go I went to a smaller place. This was a place near in a city called Behrampur. So, this was a by the way this similar experience everywhere I quote this experience because rather unique. So, I was asking teachers after visiting the labs and all. One teacher one teacher sheepishly said that he runs a Sunday lab. This is the electronics teacher. So, I said Sunday lab what do you do in Sunday lab? In one particular semester he runs a Sunday lab where they take up a large problem, they analyze that problem, they design a circuit. They actually do everything from making PCBs and so on. One single problem they take and together everybody will the circuit means it is not a single PCB but sort of a system or application model. And at the end of the semester they make that thing work. He runs the lab from on Sunday from 9 to 12. I was very excited. I said do all students come? No sir, everybody comes. 15-20 people come. At a class of 60 if he is able to attract 15 students you can imagine the greatness of the effort. I said fantastic because these 15 people will make a difference to the world. You are doing a great job. Then he says sir you are the first outsider or insider who is telling me I am doing something significant. My principle of course encourages me but most of my colleagues say you see now the attitude of a large majority of our teachers is also set by the mindset of the students that it is useless to try and do anything outside the syllabus. Now one thing that we want to get across is what is syllabus? Syllabus is a reflection of past knowledge which has been accumulated and which has to be minimally transmitted to the students. The syllabus in fact guarantees that no future problem is looked at. Whereas what we are preparing our students is to handle future problem. So first of all there is very rarely a problem solving element. You look at what the teacher was doing. Actually the teacher was emphasizing throughout the semester that the only objective in life is to solve the problem. Now you may have to swap for one semester to design and analyze do whatever, whatever, whatever till we solve that problem. And believe me there are teachers like that every place even smaller colleges but they will be in minority. One of the unwritten objectives of this entire effort is to try and percolate this ethos amongst the teachers that yes you will be bound by syllabus, yes students will look at examination but does it prevent you from taking an initiative which will attempt to go beyond the syllabus, which will attempt to go beyond the exams no matter how few students are interested, no matter how few faculty colleagues are interested. Try something like that. So I have been suggesting you know try setting up a club of solving hard problems. One of my favorite pen chance which I always tell people is that solving ten simple problems of the kind that appear in most of the university exams will give you lot of satisfaction but no addition to knowledge. But attempting to solve ten difficult problems and not getting a single one right will teach you more. Unfortunately that is not acceptable. I mean events such as one I will describe which happened when I was a young teacher here I think it was 72 or 73 and I used to be the coach of the chess team and I was also a student chess player so one of the students doing a course in late professor Mukherjee's course on fields electrical fields came with that question paper of Midsim or quiz I think and he says Fadak how do you solve this? I looked at that problem I could not solve it but I hotly told him I am now a computer science professor. He says don't talk rubbish your basic degree is electrical engineering. You should still be able to answer this. We could not. So both of us went to meet Professor K.C. Mukherjee. The moment he saw us with that paper he started smiling. He said that question he said yes sir. So he just kept smiling we then asked him sir what is the answer. He said I don't know so that student was of course shocked. He said this is part of an unsolved research problem for last 10 years that problem has not been solved he says but you know I thought this batch was so smart that they will be able to solve the problem so I gave it in the paper Now this is not the end of the story that evening that student went back to hostel 4 and they had a milkshake party in IIT parlance a milkshake party in the evening used to be arranged when something great happens for the hostel so hostel wins a inter-hostel hockey tournament or somebody gets a trophy in some debating competition something big to celebrate you have a milkshake party so naturally when they were having a milkshake party the general secretary of the hostel popped in. I don't know what are you having party for and they said great professor Mukherjee thinks that we can solve unsolved research problem so we are celebrating but you see this is the ethos some of the institutions here represent that ethos at least partially but you go to university system there would have been a get out the vice chancellor you can't accept that so the point is in a straight jacketed examination system you cannot bring reforms very quickly in fact I doubt whether the reforms can ever be brought unless you demolish the present system of affiliation and so on ideally every college should be an autonomous college just as most of our institutions so we follow the tradition that if I teach a course I set the question paper I examine the students and my word is final on that grading but that does not obtain in a majority of 4000 college and hence this suggestion that while you may be required to do that but can you not attempt something like this so don't give a unsolved research problem as a part of the formal quiz where the marks will be counted in the university exam but can't you do that as a weekend discussion club problem and believe me and this I have endorsed from at least those 67 places because every place I ask this question and people say yes it is possible at least 10 to 15 percent of the students in these colleges will be interested in participating in such ending and once that tradition builds then who knows slowly it may percolate down to even formal systems the institute may start recognizing the evaluation done in such mechanisms and the performance in such cases and so on we don't know that is for the future so again the point that I would like to elaborate is that when you go back to your institutions and conduct the larger workshop these 30-35 teachers who will be attending the workshop your job goes far beyond the conventional mutant task of coordinating that workshop you are essentially the peer role model for them and you have to help change their mindset by giving these examples of any similar examples in your own institution you can tell them how either you or your colleagues have attempted something different how your students are encouraged to participate in this or that or whatever whatever and suggest to them that they could use these mechanisms I believe that is extremely important last but not the least is the limitation of administrators I have used a polite word for administrators but these range from not only heads of the departments and principals or directors of the colleges but for a large majority of these 4000 colleges these also include the secretaries, trustees and the chairman of the organizations which have set up these colleges the private public partnership or whatever private colleges et al essentially means that the ultimate administrative control will be in the hands of the people who are not necessarily educated this happens everywhere even for us for example ultimately while we may be government funded it is some bureaucrats and the groups in Delhi which decides what activity we will do and what activity we will not do but by and large they don't enforce that you must do this they generally say you may do this or that or not this but the proposals still come from us it does not happen in most of the engineering colleges so what are their problems what are the limitations of administrators I describe I divide the administrators of the private institutions in two categories one who have started these colleges primarily as a money making instrument so it is a business they have converted engineering education into business the law of the land says that you cannot make business out of education yet it is also a fact that education must run in a business like fashion you cannot run an education like a Dharamshala which is what the government tried to do for first 50 years so if you look at all the institutions in the world they still have to manage the financial responsibilities even the great private institutions for example you take Stanford and Berkeley Berkeley is a state sponsored university in bay area Stanford is a private university but both have fiduciary controls which are very similar both are fiercely independent although one is state controlled like IITs and NITs in terms of academic matters and largely in terms of financial matters most of these colleges are not that is where things start pinching the investment that is to be done in equipment, consumables infrastructure etc. comes in a very stingy fashion these salaries for teachers they are defined for government funded institutions by the government teachers and students by the way in any society are the poorest elements of the society that is something that all of us have come to recognize but every time a pay commission comes it is a step jump and for a couple of years everybody feels very happy till the rest of the world catches with that and goes beyond that and then you again say whatever but still we are all reconciled in private institutions even that does not happen there are situations where people are paid fixed the remuneration there is no scale no promotion whatever there are even instances where the salary on paper is one thing but what is paid actually is different. I thought this happened only in private schools and non-professional colleges but it is sad to note that these things happen even in even in professional college now that is something that you and I cannot do anything about which means that at least for the teachers who come from such colleges and they will be majority teachers in this country they will also have to be prepared to work in spite of the constraints that the administrators might put in their way and to some extent this applies to all of us even in IIT there will be some administrative constraint if I want to do something I will have to find out rules and regulations and procedures in which I have to fit these things take this workshop for example there is no equivalent of this workshop we have continuing education program which says that you will have this workshop for teachers or QIP norms etc etc but that is primarily to enhance the learning in a particular subject of all the participants what are we doing here we are doing nothing of that sort we are saying we are assembled here to see how all of us together can influence other teachers and for what purpose for their teaching better in their colleges so it is two stage removed ok CEP has a rule that whatever course fees you charge to the students so much percentage should go to the institute etc etc etc I had my first problem when I said course fees to be charged 0 rupees 0 rupees I said this is funded by MHR you are not charging anybody and I had a very interesting argument with one of the junior colleagues I said look the teachers who are coming for the co-ordinators workshop are not going to directly benefit themselves in their own career they are coming here to do service to the larger portion of the country that our BS do you think if I say you pay 2000 rupees fees to come to this workshop a single person will come why should he come because you are basically going to be facilitators so they understood that so that means CEP does not get anything this happened when I ran the first workshop of this kind last time for the pilot project for him so you know what I ended up doing because after all this is a MHRE funded project because there is no overhead that even IIT can charge for such funding so how can I pay anything to CEP the via media I have found out is you see these network computers in front of you I bought all of them and gave them to CEP I said this is the contribution of the project to continuing education program for 3 years we will use this whenever we run our program rest of the time you use it so then CEP coordinator noted that adequate component of the training budget has been given as overhead to CEP now there are no rules you have to frame your own process rules and things like that the point is all of us might be able to do that in our educational system we have to actually train these teachers to do something similar at one place I remember the engineering college I went to said who prevents you from keeping the lab open in the evening this is my favorite question are there lights in the educational institution after the sunset if there are no lights in your labs there is something wrong with your institute because students, teachers somebody must be working sometime in the night then he showed me later from the management we said that after the college closes all labs not only should be locked but should be sealed why because one theft of a PC hard disk had occurred one year ago look at the response to an event and look at the objective of the activity that we do now such mindset how do you break you want to create teachers in these institutions who will take initiatives of this kind say alright we will do something we will do something and that is where you need to facilitate but you have to understand the limitations of the administrator the biggest limitation is of course the inability or unwillingness of most of the private institutions to pay their teachers reasonably by that I mean whatever is at least expected to be paid as per the norms of the lab but that is not happening in most places it is in this context that I decided to do something about this and the project proposal which was made to MHRD is based on some kind of background preparation that we have been doing at IIT Bombay first of all the distance education program which is at the kernel of our activities we started in year 2000 when I set up the school of IT setting up a IT business incubator and setting up the distance education program where two new initiatives which are seen at approved at that time in fact one person who helped me a lot in the early days along with the team some of the team that you see here Sami Sasabudde who set up our entire studio and all we will visit our studio facilities later he is not here right now and Professor Emu Deshpande who I believe currently is an advisor to Rajasthani college or something yes so he had just retired as the director of REC, Nagpur then VNIT now and I asked him so what is he planning to do and I told him I am doing this exciting thing so would he be interested so he says I am an electrical engineer so I said doesn't matter you are a problem solver so solve this problem he came and worked with us for almost 3 years and participated in the initial setup of this program so what we did is at that time there was no ISRO as you said we used the HCL covenant bandwidth we set up the equipment and we used this VSAT for two way communication we set up about 10 remote centers like that and I already told you what happened when we tried to give our courses people listen to those courses at remote centers alright but there is no adoption of that activity because the reasons that I mentioned however this is the background experience that we had we had also started recording these lectures and then we came up with an idea of editing these lectures for release in a standard DVD or such format including some interactive e-learning format so lot of work has been done subsequent to this we had a typhax sponsored project on what we call e-outreach where we said we will hold such small workshops 2-day, 3-day, 5-day workshops we will hold nutshell lectures but whatever contents we get we will actually release these in open source so we even defined I don't know what is your familiarity with creative comments creative comments is a open source organization which goes beyond open source software it talks about creative contents in open source so this comments by the way is a traditional English word which even we use in different terminology which says common property of a village so for example water bodies in a village or grazing ground for cattle would not belong to any one person that would be considered a common property of a village so word commons came out of that and now to fight against the intellectual property preservation through patents copyrights and so on a large body of people which thinks that at least a few things should be available to everybody so just like the open source software movement this was followed by the creative commons movement there is a large global body so what we did is a colleague of mine professor Shishir Jha from our school of management he agreed to take the initiative and we set up creative commons India so creative commons India center operates from IIT Bombay he is the coordinator for it and whatever were the creative commons licenses global licenses for open source contents we actually got them rewritten as per India specific law of the land so that the same licenses could be used in India and it is under that creative commons license by attribution that is whatever you want to do with the contents you can do it but you must attribute that the source came from such and such place that is the license we currently use some of my colleagues like to use not by attribution alone but also what they call share alike so share alike this is more like a GNU public license where if you make any modification you have to release that modification also in open source there is a reason why he prefers that he pointed out that some of the slides we had released in open source like that were modified by someone and were being sold by that someone as slides prepared by him so I said there may be one or two instances like that but why clobber up everybody we still have that debate whereas if our license is share alike that means he can modify but he must release all of that in open source you can sell open source contents only for the cost of the medium it cannot be sold for profit so that is the essence of the anyway so this e-outreach program was funded by typhac the technology information forecasting council if you recall Dr. Rajan was the the executive director once and he is the co-author of the book vision 2020 jointly with Dr. Abdul Kala subsequently one of my colleagues Dr. Anand Patwardhan was the executive director and in fact typhac approved this project a similar project on e-learning was also approved by typhac at Amruta university and that is where I first came in contact with the work at Amruta as a member of their review committee so on and we have been working together since so what have we perfected in this particular project as you can see we are being captured audio-video capture is being done if there is any interaction the interaction also gets captured all of this can go as a single composite video but this can this has to be put in multiple forms during the lectures there are pauses there are changes you want to edit them essentially make a film like a regular film where no glitches are there that requires some editing additionally if you want to put it in a format which is not in a digital captured AVI format the AVI format will be too costly in terms of the volume so you have to convert it at some sampling bitrate into either a CD or a DVD format then we are converting it into something else like some of you might have used a tool called producer which comes with Microsoft PowerPoint where you can have a video in one corner a text of the thing in one place and some kind of an index currently we are working on an open-source tool which does exactly the same thing this kind of edited version can be very compact because the video portion is very small and therefore this compact thing can be put as even as many as 10 or 20 lectures in a single DVD so that is the attempt that we have been doing some tools have been developed a much more sophisticated tool for a general use across wide area network of this kind where you can actually force separate screens etc has been developed as a part of the Amruta efforts which Dr. Bijlani will be explaining to us in the evening anyway and we have we have found out how to package it we have even worked out a method of costing DVDs they can send a draft of these many rupees etc etc and we found that whole process was so cumbersome that nobody was interested in you but the free download from our site that has got an enormous response people are able to download freely however if the volumes are high and if the bandwidth internet bandwidth is not adequate free download is not easily possible I jokingly say that even today the cheapest bandwidth in India is a train carrying full of DVDs from Bombay to Delhi that the cost of train moving with so many DVDs so many terabytes of data is still the cheapest bandwidth otherwise any other bandwidth is not tenable bandwidth but we learn some of these things we perfected the art of editing and so on and we conducted the first pilot workshop under a joint ages of e-outreach as well as the MHR by this time MHR was convinced that we could do this and this brings us to the present proposal so as part of the MHR emission project technical name is we conduct workshop for thousand teachers but practically it is not just conducting workshop I call it an engagement model first of all these workshops are conducted under the ages of IST while most of us in our institutions are not affected either way but normally in the professional career if a teacher has to move up or get increments or whatever certain minimal norms have been prescribed by ICT one of the norms is the number of courses of workshop that the teacher has attended and IST workshop gets some brownie points to every teacher so just as we discussed about how why should people pay fees and come to this workshop we similarly say why would the other teachers come paying fees to attend this workshop what is in it for them what is in it for them is essentially a certificate which carries value to some extent in their own career so we have now we are in an MOU with IST whereby all workshops that we conduct this workshop and the previous pilots that we did we have a special permission from IST but all the other workshops that we will conduct will have a stamp of IST so all the workshops that we are doing are actually IST workshops and therefore this has some value to most of the teachers who will participate but the engagement has to go beyond that so is it only a two week workshop this is what we do in this model the kernel of this is a two week workshop incidentally this engagement of thousand plus teachers has to be made in 10 or 12 core subjects which are taught across the country in engineering colleges we started with computer science because that is what is my focus area and I could convince some of my colleagues to participate so in December for example we shall have workshops on database management system which professor Sudarshan has agreed to conduct himself I do not know but I notice that most of the places the database text book is Carl Selbershaar and Sudarshan and the latest edition actually it is mostly Sudarshan's handiwork has revamped the example of an American banking system and replaced it with a university example which our people can relate to so he will be conducting a workshop for two weeks in December on databases and another colleague of mine along with me will be conducting a workshop on object oriented programming which is another course after these we will next summer and next winter and subsequent summer will concentrate on courses such as basic mechanical engineering, basic electrical engineering course which everybody feels must be done as a part of this workshop is communication skills it is a compulsory program everywhere whether you call it English or whatever whatever surprisingly we also have it as a compulsory course not only at undergraduate level but also at a post graduate level and not so very surprisingly uniformly everywhere the response of the students and the faculty of other disciplines is that it is not adequate somehow our students are still not able to articulate their own reports or observations properly either in written form or in oral form so this is a dilemma there and particularly for students who come to first year engineering we have noticed that this is a major problem because many of them have learnt up to 12 standard in their own native language you cannot expect them to be competent in English so that is natural but anyway now in this two week workshop what we do is we cover the syllabus in exactly the same way in which they are expected to teach that syllabus in their places in the pilot workshop we tried to do that but the pilot workshop was at 10 day duration and not 15 day duration and it was only to prove the point but we did it in the same subject so we now know we have learnt what exactly required to be done and in this workshop that we will conduct now we will have about 40 lectures for those teachers and these lectures will effectively try to cover the syllabus of computer programming as defined or as close to as defined in their own respective universe that is the reason why we have been collecting the syllabus, the exam pattern, the exam papers etc etc etc from the teachers that we can formulate a union of the syllabus do we stop there most certainly not we would then like to go ahead and say that look while this is in general the syllabus that we cover in these institutions as well there are few things which are done beyond that these could be in the form of course projects for example that we ask our students to do these could be in the form of harder problems which we give in tutorials or harder problems which we give in our exams so these would be additional examples which will be given to them consequently the model of these 2 week workshop is there will be 4 hour lectures in the morning which will be transmitted from IIT Bombay through our distance education more and for 3 hours in the afternoon they will be conducting either lab sessions or participating in tutorials sessions which you and your other support colleagues will be conducting at your own places of course we would decide jointly what should be the experiment that they should do what should be the lab assignment that they should do and so on and we will formulate all of these well ahead of time so that you have ample opportunity to sort of set up everything according because the kind of lab assignment that we give in IIT or the kind of lab assignment that you would be giving in your institutions may not be adequate we still want to expose them to those kind of lab assignments but we may also want to give some mundane lab assignments which they will have to conduct for their students the idea is that all of this will become part of the open source contents when we release them but the engagement does not stop here we do not give the certificates to these teachers at the end of 2 weeks we form teams of these teachers while they are here while they are at your places 3 to 4 teachers 1 team exactly like we would form students team in a subject or a course to do course projects and what do these teams do they go back and solve an assignment in next 2 weeks and submit that assignment to IIT Bombay as well as to the coordinator only after they submit the assignment the coordinator is supposed to release the signed IST workshop certificate to them in fact we have questions our pilot some teachers say we have attended 2 week program so give us certificate we pointed out that at the time of enrollment we had told them that the certificate will be issued only after they complete this assignment the assignment that I gave to the 630 teachers who came for the pilot program was to formulate questions and answers for quizzes tests and examinations the idea was to create a question bank which in its entirety could be released in open source we collected mukta about 1800 questions right 1800 questions and answers were collected now you can imagine this is a fairly good collection but 1800 questions and answers have been written by these teams of 4 teachers we found out that there were several lacuni the wording of the questions sometimes was not very clear sometimes the questions were too simple and straight forward sometimes the answers were wrong so that means we needed to do a lot of editing of this now you can imagine how any one of us or even few of us how much time we will have to spend in editing those 1800 questions and answers fortunately in IIT we have a system of teaching assistants who are often not as much loaded in the second semester as they are loaded in the first semester I don't know how it is in your respective place so I got 20 TAs assigned this time and January to April they have edited 650 questions out of these 1800 but this is a scalable effort next time I can have 40 TAs assigned to this I can afford to pay a portion of my funding as honouring to them or something the idea is that we should get in the as perfect a form as possible language wise, correctness wise and so on the second problem is because we are releasing something in open source we should not be rummaging on the intellectual property of somebody else now if there is a published question paper that is a published document but as long as I can give a reference that this appeared in let us say Andhra University 2007 final exam something like you have these guide books which always say this right that is perfectly fine because a question paper which has been given and published is open source can we say the same thing about some of the questions which are available on some sites where a teacher has set up a site in Cincinnati and he has given some questions and as a participating teacher I see that question I like it I quote that question I give the answer maybe but I quoted as if it is my question tomorrow if that Cincinnati Boobleaboo charges IIT Bombay of taking away that intellectual property we do not know what will happen so we are trying to build some precautionary measures by getting a certification from the participating teachers that either they have constructed this question themselves or if they have taken it from some other source this is the source this is not the only thing that will happen next time when we conduct the program apart from the questions and answers they will be required to do course projects subject projects just as we might be giving in our programming courses to our student and there could be say something like 200 such projects with the project statement and the implementation available imagine the kind of resource programming resource that would be available because all of this will become open source to both students and teachers so that is the idea I also did something which I would like to share with you because I would like to extend that model where does this open source content go to I mean one is we say we release we put it in our IIT Bombay website but again the same problem how many people they will download etcetera etcetera we are doing a two prong of approach to that problem one we are approaching Moser Boyer who are the DVD CD makers of the country saying if we give open source contents will they help us put it in a form and will they use their distribution channel they can charge whatever their normal distribution fees or charges or whatever but there is no intellectual property cost there is some preliminary discussion it appears agreeable they are the ones who are capable of making it really very low cost in the hands of people


Right here ready to plant and we've got a beautiful machine here that we're hopefully going to figure out how to use now first thing I guess it's the question why are we going to use the machine transplanting we could also do manual planting so why are we doing this Lee? Well we're trying to act in as a contemporary way as possible and I think labor supplies in Asia are declining everywhere as the whole continent develops and systems to use less labor evolving as we speak and one way of using less labor is still the transplant because there's benefits in transplanting but to do it mechanically this this sort of machine was invented in Japan how long ago probably 20 or 30 years ago at least yeah and it's been these kind of things have been in use in Japan Korea and maybe China but what we are seeing in recent years is that it's now moving on to into other countries in India South East Asia and it's mainly because of labor shortage and it's actually a business opportunity not just for the company selling the machines but also for small farmers who then become small entrepreneurs so providing this as a service as a planting service to other farmers and even for seedling growers you know because you need to have seedlings grown in a in a precise manner you can see this here if you can zoom in I don't know if you guys can do this yeah so you need these nice seedling mats here though we can see how uniform the seedlings are and it's of course it requires a special way of growing them so that you can pull them off in these mats and cut them into nice strips which you can then feed into this machine and this is actually a new business yeah even for women we see this in some places in southern India I've seen it so women becoming seedling growers selling the seedlings then to a machine operator or service provider so what we are basically trying to do this year here is a labor saving cost-efficient precise crop establishment technology that is as close as it gets and maybe even better than manual transplanting wait a minute last year we were talking about exactly the same things and off we went up to just over our knees in my broadcasting so what's changed why why why the sudden change of hearts well because I think we will get a more precise crop establishment with this as a safer technology the starters under our conditions here with that kind of heavy and soft soil and we may still try something else next time try direct yeah we're nearly finished and by and large I would say it works but it is actually quite hard work to walk even behind this machine because anytime you hit a deep muddy spot you have to make sure that the wheels don't spin off and we've had a number of patches there we're standing water where basically it's so muddy that the seedlings that because they're so small disappear so but here is a place where it looks quite okay so you can see pretty good spacing and ceilings that hopefully will recover and grow quickly but it has taken us a while and the machine is the engine died a couple of times on the way the planting mechanism got stuck once in a while so it requires some skill I would say of course a trained operator a professional would have done this much faster and probably better than we did but well we got it planted now let's see how it goes


Hello there, welcome to Town Meeting TV's ongoing coverage of Town Meeting Day 2023. My name is Bobby Lucia and I'll be your host for the program today, where we'll be looking at the carbon pollution impact fee ballot question in Burlington. Before we get started I'll mention that this program is one in a series of forums that we're hosting in advance of Town Meeting Day, which is coming up in March 7th. In our forum series, Town Meeting TV invites candidates, municipal officials, and community members to unpack the races and questions that you'll see up and down your ballot this year. Before we get started, just a reminder that if you're tuning in live we welcome your questions anytime at<PHONE_NUMBER>, that's<PHONE_NUMBER>, if you give us a call we'll be sure to put your question on the air promptly. You can also watch Town Meeting TV on Comcast Channel 1087 as well as Burlington Telecom Channels 17 and 217 and on YouTube.com slash Town Meeting TV. So with that we can now dive into this question about the carbon pollution impact fee in Burlington. I'm joined by Jennifer Green and Darren Springer, who are with us from the Burlington Electric Department. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having us. My pleasure. Awesome. So I'll give you both just, actually first we'll look at the language that is on the ballot for voters this year. It is number two on the ballot I believe and we'll just read it off here. It's implementation of a carbon pollution impact fee for new construction and large existing commercial and industrial buildings, 50,000 square feet or larger, shall the city council in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city be authorized starting January 1st, 2024 to implement a carbon pollution impact fee in the permitting process with the fee to be set by resolution starting up to $150 per ton, that's a ton of carbon. And rising annually at the rate of regional inflation but capped at no more than 5% annual increasing for new construction buildings that install fossil fuel thermal energy systems instead of using renewable energy systems or renewable fuels with the exception that the fee would not be implemented until January 1st, 2026 for domestic water heating systems and new construction multifamily residential buildings with more than four units and for existing commercial and industrial buildings 50,000 square feet or larger where the building is installing fossil fuel thermal energy space conditioning or domestic water heating systems instead of using renewable systems or renewable fuels. The fee process could support one or more of the following, could support capital investments in converting the city's vehicle fleet to electric vehicles, could support a new city fund to support clean heating technology installations for low income Burlington households and renters and or in the case of existing building payers greenhouse gas emissions reductions projects at their buildings or facilities in Burlington. So that's what voters will be weighing in on March 7th and I'll invite both of you to just introduce yourselves and share why you're here to talk about this item and I'll start with you, Darren. Great. Well, thanks for having us. I'm Darren Springer, General Manager with Burlington Electric Department. Our department and the Department of Permitting and Inspections have been involved for a number of years now in developing policy recommendations for the city to consider to help reduce fossil fuel use in the building sector, which happens to be the sector that's the biggest focal point of our net zero energy roadmap in Burlington. And so our work on this has really kind of gone back a few years dating to the charter change that was voted on Town Meeting Day 2021 and then continuing with the most recent report that recommended a number of steps including the carbon pollution impact fee, which is the subject of ballot question two for 2023. Yeah, maybe I would just add, Darren, for folks that even taking it a step back, you know, back in 2014, Burlington became the first city in the country to source 100% of our electricity from renewables. That was a very exciting sort of monumental opportunity.  Well, as Darren said, you know, let's transition us away from fossil fuels in the heating sector, in the building sector, and in ground transportation. So up until this point, BED has been offering technical support, incentives, rebates, everything we can sort of from a carrot standpoint to help move us away from fossil fuels. But we also know that we need policy to do that. And that's where sort of the carbon fee that you read about and that Darren explained a little bit more about comes into play. It's really an opportunity to take policy, combine it with the carrots and come up with a way that we can truly begin to reduce fossil fuel usage and our carbon impact in the built environment and then coincidentally the ground transportation sector as well. Great. Thank you both. So let's talk a little bit about the mechanics of this ballot question. If this item passes, what happens next and what will be the impact on residents, businesses and others in the city, and what will happen also if the item does not pass? So we can start either, if either one of you want to jump in, but. Sure. So if the item passes, what happens next is the city council would work to develop an ordinance that could implement this policy recommendation. And for context, we have policy already on buildings in the city that have been developed over the last couple of years. We have standards for rental properties to weatherize to be more efficient. So that's being implemented. We have new construction, primary heating that has to be renewable now. That's a new ordinance as of 2021. So if you're building a new building, you already have to use a primary heating system that's renewable. What this would give us the opportunity to look at as a city is for new construction, can all the thermal uses in a building, heating, water heating, appliances, cooking, can those be renewable as well? Can we set some requirements around that for large existing buildings when they're going to pull a permit to do a new heating system or a new water heating system? A similar requirement could be in place that you have to use renewable fuels or technologies, or as an alternative compliance, you could pay the carbon pollution impact fee and also city buildings are we're looking at moving in the same direction as well. So that would be the next step if this was to move forward. Important to mention that the carbon pollution impact fee proposal, it does not affect existing residential properties, single family homes, rental units, condos, affordable housing. And it does not affect small businesses or really any building that's under 50,000 square feet space conditioned. Anything to add about? Yeah, Darren covered it. I think what's important again is it's larger buildings, 50,000 square feet or more of conditioned space and new construction. So I know folks have asked about my own home. Will I have to comply or I'm a small business? Well, I have to comply. Well, no, that's not the case. Again, we're looking at large buildings, 50,000 feet or more square feet or new construction. Right. And you say large 50,000 square feet. What are like a couple examples of buildings in Brallington? Really, it's really about 80 buildings that we're talking about that would fit that definition. And largely they're going to be, you know, University of Vermont, University of Vermont Medical Center, the city itself, the school district, Champlain College, a lot of, you know, institutions, organizations that have multiple buildings within that footprint, and then some larger commercial and industrial properties as well. And what happens if this ballot item does not pass? What's the next step for BED? Well, really for the city, if it doesn't pass, the city would not have authority to implement the carbon pollution impact fee, would still have authority to move forward with policy, but wouldn't be able to give this option to buildings in order to comply and wouldn't really be able to price carbon. And that's been one of the things that I think a number of scientific groups, environmental groups, over the course of the last couple of decades as looking at climate change and saying, what are some tools that are effective? Pricing carbon pollution is one of the tools that really has drawn a lot of support as being a very rational economic tool for helping to level the playing field for renewable sources and fossil fuels. So that wouldn't be on the table. Anything to add there, Jane? No, only that it's a tool that we can use to help us meet our climate goals, our GHG reduction goals. And again, as Darren said, I mean, this is, it's not a new idea, but it is, it's a dynamic idea really to be actually pricing carbon to capture the social and environmental costs that are otherwise not accounted for. You mentioned this a little bit, Darren, but what is the problem that this impact fee is attempting to fix? Sure, I mean, you know, plain and simple, we know from all the best science that the reason that we are dealing with climate change is human activity, and in particular, the burning of fossil fuels. That's what's driving climate change. In Burlington, we are 100 percent renewable with electricity, but we know we have an opportunity to do more and our city's committed to doing more in terms of reducing fossil fuel use for heating and ground transportation. Those are the two largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, not only in the city, but in the state. So similarly, the state is looking at acting in those areas as well. And this gives us an opportunity in Burlington to continue our leadership, but to do so in a practical way that's going to yield benefits in terms of fossil fuel reduction and also supporting clean energy technologies. And so that's really, I think what this is aimed at, is really a continuation of Burlington's climate leadership.  Maybe I turned to Jen, but one of the things that I think we haven't touched on yet is how the fee proceeds would be used. And that's also kind of a critical piece to maybe. Sure. Yeah. So if people are asking, all right, so we're going to have this, this, this fee from which to draw theoretically, there are a couple of things we can do. Darren mentioned them in the beginning of the show, but the first from an equity standpoint is helping to ensure that some of our low income Burlingtonians and renters in particular can transition their own homes or units to to fossil fuel free entities. So that will be part of that bucket. The second part of that bucket is taking some of the funds and using them to transition our own vehicle fleet. The city's fleet to electric. We're doing that slowly, but this would really add some momentum to that effort. And then thirdly, and I'll let Darren explain a little bit more if it's not completely clear as I attempt to do so. But if you are indeed a payer, you've paid into you've been you've opted to pay the fee. You can do other things that aren't necessarily part of the of the policy, i.e. you can electrify your own fleet. You can switch out your long care equipment to be electric. You can actually take back some of the money that is in that bucket. So if you are a payer, we're incentivizing you to do more so you can recoup some of the funds that you paid into the fee. Right. And who decides how that how those funds are used? So that would be a city council decision with the mayor, of course. But the ballot language specifies the purposes for which the funds would be used. So the purposes that Jen just outlined are the purposes that would be permissible under the ballot language. So now let's turn to there has been some public opposition to this question. And opponents of this plan point to the McNeil wood burning plant as a source of carbon emissions and say that this impact fee may allow continued or expanded burning of biomass at the McNeil plant. And these opponents do not see biomass as renewable or sustainable. So what are your sort of thoughts or response to folks who are opposing this this article on that basis? Just on a pure factual basis, this ballot item does not have anything to do with the continued operation of the McNeil plant. This ballot item is about disincentivizing fossil fuel use for heating and use in thermal applications and buildings. So the McNeil plants and electric plant, we are working very, very hard on a long held city goal to make it a combined heat and power facility where we can capture waste heat and additional steam and use it to provide renewable thermal energy and provide that to help reduce fossil fuel use in the city. But this ballot item doesn't have anything to do with whether McNeil continues to operate. McNeil's operations are driven much more by the energy markets regionally than they are by anything going on with district energy. District energy is important from a Burlington renewable standpoint and a climate standpoint. But McNeil is the largest energy producer in the state of Vermont since Vermont Yankee closed back in 2013. It's one of the few in-state resources that's renewable that can also provide energy when we need it. During the cold weather times when prices are high, it insulates our customers from rate impacts and higher costs. So I think that's a conflation that's not accurate. This ballot item is about disincentivizing fossil fuel use. McNeil's operations have more to do with the electric markets than anything else. Jennifer, anything to add there? Yeah, no. Again, just a reminder to people that we're talking about a carbon pollution impact fee, which would allow us to add, you know, cost out the carbon that's emitted if you opt when you're replacing your system as a large building not to do, you know, to not go fossil fuel free and for new construction. That's really what ballot item number two is about. Right. OK. And if I understand opponents correctly, they're sort of citing that biomass if a, you know, a large building were to choose to keep their building through biomass. It's it's determined to be a renewable energy source by the city, and they also point to the carbon pollution that comes from those that from that biomass burning and the impacts of human health on human health of burning biomass. Can you speak a little bit to those impacts and and whether and whether that still qualifies or why it's still qualified as a renewable resource when it has those impacts? Yeah. So in terms of it, local wood is renewable. We know that because McNeil is almost 40 years old and we are continuing to add net carbon storage in the areas where we harvest. So we know that trees regrow. We know if you manage sustainably, it can be a renewable resource. It has to be managed sustainably. That's one of the things we focus on at McNeil. We have four foresters who work to make sure that the lands where we harvest that there are forest management plans in place that we're protecting wildlife habitats. We operate under state permit for these types of things. And we have data that suggests over the last number of years from 2003 to 2020. US Forest Service data says in the areas where we harvest in New York and Vermont that they've added 20 million tons of net live tree carbon storage, even as we've been able to use the wood residue from those areas for energy production in Burlington. So it is renewable. It can be carbon beneficial with wood. You can't just look at the emissions. You have to look at the life cycle. Are we regrowing trees and re sequestering carbon? That's what we call the biogenic or above ground carbon cycle. Very different than taking fossil fuels that have been stored for millions and millions of years, putting them, burning them, putting the carbon up in the atmosphere with no plan to recapture it versus with wood. It can be part of a cycle. And so that's what I think is missing from the conversation. In addition, McNeil has very significant air emissions technology that we've invested in there. So it operates at levels for things like nitrogen oxides that are well below its state permitted level. So we have a number of air emissions technologies that help to reduce emissions at McNeil. So I think I understand that that folks are coming at this concerned about some of these things. And I think we have good data to indicate McNeil operates sustainably. To your other point, most buildings that are building new in the city are using things like heat pumps or geothermal heating and cooling, not wood. We see wood being used in other areas of the state where there may not be other options. And it's a good renewable fuel choice. But really, you know, having more renewable fuels and technologies gives building owners and developers options to cost effectively meet the policy. But by and large, we're seeing electrification being the primary driver at this point. No, that Darren covered it. Great. So we'll move on to what you're hearing from the public. What kinds of questions are you hearing about this ballot item and how have you been responding to folks? I think the I think there's just been confusion about the role in McNeil and all of this. And again, I just want to reiterate that we're talking about a fee that would allow us to capture the environmental and social consequences of carbon. It's not a new idea, but it is an exciting idea. And I think it's pretty amazing that Burlington is really out front and is very close to making this happen. And as you know, Darren mentioned, it's the World Resources Institute and the EPA and the Rocky Mountain Institute and others resource economists, carbon economists that have been talking about this for a long time. So it's an exciting opportunity. And right now I sort of take off my BED hat. I put on my my Ward hat, my Burlington hat and think about it from that standpoint. I'm excited as a Burlingtonian. Thank you for anything. Yeah, I mean, one of the things we haven't really touched on, but people have definitely been interested in is, you know, are the technologies there that are cost effective to implement this? And we did work with a group called the Building Electrification Institute. Works with cities around the country. And our analysis showed that in a lot of cases, the, you know, renewable technology like heat pumps or geothermal are now cost competitive from an upfront capital standpoint. And in some cases, even on an operating basis compared to fossil fuels. So it's not that making this transition is is going to be in any way economically detrimental. We think we can do this in a way that really does level the playing field for renewable technologies helps accelerate what's already happening in the market, which is buildings are choosing to go with these new technologies because they can operate efficiently. They can provide efficient heating and cooling. We want to accelerate that trend. And one other piece that's of interest is we're not acting alone in Burlington. You know, South Burlington has a renewable heating requirement as well. The state of Vermont's considering an affordable heat act, which would move in a lot of the same direction in terms of incentivizing renewable technologies. So I think those are important points that have come up in some of the conversations at the NPAs and elsewhere as well. Do you see this if past? Do you see this impact fee impacting growth and development in the city? Yeah, it kind of gets right to that point we were just touching on, I think. I think if there's a concern that it would create kind of a situation where Burlington's acting in a way that's different than our neighbors, I understand that concern. Thankfully, we're not acting alone. We have South Burlington acting as well. We have the whole state of Vermont looking at making a pretty strong move towards renewable heating. So I think this really positions Burlington to be ahead of the game in terms of what we know is coming. We're going to need more carbon reduction to meet the needs of our broader, not only city and community, but our broader national goals. Heating and cooling and using thermal appliances that use fossil fuels is not going to be the way of the future. And so by having these types of requirements in place, we position our buildings and our city to be better prepared for climate mitigation than if we wait and didn't act. Yeah, I might just also add that we did a lot of stakeholder engagement in the drafting of this, and again, in support and with the assistance of the Building Electrification Institute. So lots of time spent with some of our larger building stakeholders, UVM, Medical Center, Champlain College, et cetera. So we've dialogued a lot. And I think we're all on the same page about what this could mean, what this can do, and what BED can do to help from, again, an incentive rebate and technological perspective. Right. I don't think you've also touched on this a bit, but I know that when people hear any sort of fee around carbon or carbon pricing, they think making sure that the impact of that fee does not reach low income folks in the city. So can you just talk a little bit about who you anticipate would be paying this fee if they are paying it and how, if at all, it might have an impact on low income folks in Burlington? Yeah, it's a great point. And an advisory question seven from the town meeting day 2021 touched on this issue and said as we implement these policies, essentially, we want to do so with equity in mind. And so there are a couple pieces here. One is we talked a lot with the affordable housing community and they had a concern that the water heating technologies weren't as far along as they should be so that we have in the ballot language a delay in implementation for that portion of the fee that would touch water heating technologies until 2026, which was with that in mind. Also, as noted earlier, the fee proceeds would help low income Burlingtonians, homeowners, renters be able to access clean heating technology. So that's another way to ensure some equity in this transition. And really by focusing heavily on new construction and where we do focus on existing buildings, not residential buildings, we're avoiding making this a challenge for a low income Burlingtonian, you know, renter or somebody living in a single family home or a condo. We're really trying to make this about new construction first where we know we have cost effective options. And then also with the large existing buildings, as we mentioned, those are largely relatively sophisticated institutions and organizations that do capital planning and can look ahead and say, OK, the city saying when I replace, I need to replace with renewable and I can plan for that. That's very different than saying to somebody who is a homeowner or a renter that they're going to immediately have some sort of a bill for this. So really those provisions were really meant to address exactly the issue you just mentioned. Thanks, Darren. Anything else? Yeah, Darren covered it. Great. I do want to touch on it because we have a couple minutes left. And I just want to circle back to one thing that I know I've heard a lot about. We talked about biomass, but renewable energy according to the city also includes natural gas. Is that correct? Renewable gas. Renewable natural gas. So can you talk a little bit about what that means? And so that's just to clarify, that's an example of a method of heating that would not be subject to this fee. Is that correct? That's correct. So in designing this potential policy, we're looking at renewable fuels and then we're looking at fossil fuels. So conventional natural gas systems would be subject here to this fee. If a new building puts in a conventional boiler that uses natural gas, that would be subject to the fee. Vermont Gas, which operates in roughly 95% of Burlington, has a program now that is overseen by the Public Utilities Commission that says customers can sign up to buy renewable gas. It's similar in a way to community solar, where you may not be directly connected to the solar, but you can purchase on your electric bill. Same thing. You're not directly connected to the renewable gas system, but it's putting in renewable gas into the pipeline, so to speak. And then a customer can purchase it. So that's one option that both Burlington and the state, I think, are both looking at as renewable. And really, for some customers, that may be what's necessary. It may be that electrification doesn't work in every scenario. So having other compliance options is really important in terms of being practical and being realistic from an economic and technical perspective. So that's why that option is included. Can you explain why renewable, the difference between renewable gas versus just... Certainly. So unlike natural gas is extracted and is a fossil fuel, renewable methane are going to come from things like, could be landfill gas that's being captured and as opposed to going up as methane into the atmosphere is being used for energy. Could be a farm methane project where we have things like digester projects on farms that can capture energy and use it as renewable. In the future, there may be things around green hydrogen where we have renewably produced hydrogen that can be used as a source of potential thermal energy. So these are newer technologies in some cases. In some cases, they've been around for a little while, but they're being used in a new way. And I think the approach is to try to be inclusive of all renewable and beneficial technologies and really put the focus on disincentivizing the fossil fuel extraction technologies. Thanks, Darren. I think we'll move into, as we reach the end of our time here, just some space for each of you to leave a closing statement and maybe comment on what you, from your point of view, would be a good outcome on this ballot item. I can imagine what your answer is, but we can start with you and then we'll wrap up. Thanks so much. Sure. I mean, maybe I'll say, having worked in Burlington now for 10 plus years as the director of sustainability and more recently with the Burlington Electric Department and being connected with cities around the country that are really looking hard at how they're going to address their climate challenges. There has been a lot of talk about carbon impact fees and how they can actually come to fruition. And the fact that Burlington, under BED's guise, has spent so much time, including work with the Building Electrification Institute, to really be thoughtful in how this might, how to craft it, how it might work, how we would coordinate with the Department of Planning inspections on collecting the fee, distributing the fee, et cetera. I'm just pleased with how much due diligence has gone into this and yeah, really feel pleased with the work that's gone into it thus far. Darren? Yeah, so as somebody who also, I've worked my whole career essentially on these topics, on climate change, on renewable energy, and I appreciate that there are a diversity of opinions in terms of what good environmental policy can be. I think we have to look at things like this on balance, you know, policy proposals and look at whether they are helping us to get off of fossil fuels because at the end of the day, that's the source of pollution that the scientific community has said is driving climate change. And so for us, that lens continues to be critical and important. We, at Burlington Electric, we don't take a position on valid items. We've provided information and tried to inform the discussion and provided recommendations. So we'll leave it to voters to make that choice. But I think in our overall city policy, we really are focused on trying to get off of fossil fuels and provide leadership in that direction and we'll continue to work in that way. Great. Thank you, Darren. Thank you, Jennifer, both for joining us today. And thank you for tuning in to Town Meeting TV's ongoing coverage of Town Meeting Day 2023. You can find this forum and many more on our website, ch17.tv. And of course, don't forget to vote. Honor before March 7th. And you can check it. I think in Burlington, ballots have been sent out. That's correct, yeah. So you should have gotten your ballot in the mail. You can send it in the mail or show up to your polling location on March 7th. Thanks so much for watching and sharing Town Meeting TV. If you're not already, please subscribe to our Town Meeting TV YouTube channel. Thanks so much. So long.


The Nagaloka Buddhist Center is located in the Arts District in Portland, Maine. This provides a unique opportunity to the Sangha in Nagaloka by drawing on the diverse population in the heart of downtown Portland. We're in the Arts District, we're in a busy community, and so what we are attracting is some young men now coming to our community. It's physically in a great location as far as downtown and being in the Arts District and being able to come here and meet local people. This Sangha reflects the nature of Portland. It is a city but it's one of the smaller, it's the biggest city in Maine, but it's a relatively small city. And this Sangha here accommodates a way to practice mindfulness in smaller groups even though there are a lot of people participating in the Sangha and the Sangha is growing all the time. Coming here to Nagaloka and coming back to Portland, I'm originally from Maryland, I found that Portland, the people of Portland are really tight knit group of people and maybe it's a better quality of life up here, I'm not sure. However, it has allowed me to open up within my mind and within my heart especially and to want to connect. I think the people that come to Nagaloka are representative of the population of Portland because everybody is so open-minded and very friendly and welcoming, so very much like Portland as a whole, I think. The Sangha at Nagaloka takes full advantage of its location in the Arts District. The first Friday of every month, the downtown district of Portland has, well it's the part of the after stick and the part of the Maine College of Art, all the galleries are open in Portland on the first Friday, so people can go around, every gallery is open, but actually this building is open, they exhibit art on the second floor, plus we open our bookstore and we open Nagaloka for people that want to come in to just see what it's like here to be in a Buddhist community. Geographically it's great and I think it does it, you know, I come here and I get inspired and I walk through the downtown and go out to dinner or meet friends, it's a nice way to start the evening or the weekend. On April 4th, 2014, the Sangha hosted Nagabody, a long time order member from England during a first Friday art walk when he gave a talk on mindfulness. Nagabody gave his talk on the first Friday too, so Nagabody talked about mindfulness which was really great and we had, I don't know, probably 20, 30 people hear that evening that just, a lot of them just came to listen to Nagabody give his talk and so here we are, this little community in Portland, Maine and we have somebody like Nagabody coming and giving a talk, it's quite wonderful. Our whole life is devoted to kind of holding a tight grip on this idea of a self. Just imagine if you can loosen that, what might get released? You know, the energy, the creativity, the capacity to engage and relate. The people who come to Nagaloka appreciate its connection with the Portland community and find that that connection enhances their practice. I think the Sangha helps to reaffirm mindfulness in just my daily practice when I get to meet up every week with people that share the same values and really just helps to remind me of what I'm trying to do with my practice. The kinds of conversations that we have here at Nagaloka are focused on what we're doing, what we're thinking right now. They're practical, they're everyday and this is a wonderful opportunity for us to connect our practice to our everyday life. It's really about again being interconnected and really finding a way to relate to one another through mindfulness which blows my mind sometimes thinking how again it can happen in this small group. What can it do outside of this, out of the center, in this small city?