But the question that, in my view, H175 asks, or asks that you decide, is should this essentially lopsided process, which uses the sovereign power of the state to take away private property rights, should we say it's okay to use that to expand fossil fuel infrastructure in Vermont? A lot of people have questions about whether the process is fair to begin with, and I guess we're not going to fix that. This committee can't fix that. It's a big, big subject. And they're too sized to the question in general, but we should get away from fossil fuels. But at least in dealing with the crisis we have, the climate change doesn't really make sense to allow that process to be used to expand fossil fuel infrastructure. But that's the essential issue, I think, that H175 raises. Yes? Does the process always move in a linear fashion, as you just described? Where the PUC process proceeds in a domain discussion? Great question. The answer is it rarely proceeds in that linear process. It rarely proceeds in that linear process because as somebody that we know well, Nathan Palmer once put it, after the utility has a CPG and they sit down with you in your kitchen table to quote, negotiate the easement, it's like they're sitting there with a loaded gun on the table next to them because they know they aren't going to lose until you can't refuse. It's a deal you can't refuse. So most cases settle because most people can't afford to hire a lawyer and the thought of eminent domain or condemnation is terrifying to most people. And so when the soft spoken representative comes to their table and says, hey, we want to work this out, we want to help you make a nice deal, most people feel they have no choice. And so we never get to the eminent domain part of the case. People sign over an easement deed long before a condemnation petition is filed with the PUC. Yes? One of the aspects also is that the use of eminent domain doesn't require transparency. The deal that's made with one landowner isn't necessarily visible to another landowner who's also going through it. So you could have a very disparate remuneration for tape. That's absolutely true. And that really, that issue really came up in spades with the Vermont gas pipeline. Some people did, particularly larger landowners, did hire lawyers. And they've got good deals, but the deal included confidentiality so their neighbor to the north and south couldn't ever find out about it. Yes? So if this bill were passed on eminent domain, it was they prohibited from using eminent domain to install fossil fuel infrastructure. How would that, what impact would that have on the CPG process? I believe the answer is that any substantial fossil fuel project would not even be filed with the PUC because the utility, the one seeking to start that process would say what's the point the process is time consuming. I won't say it's expensive for them because all of their expenses get recovered from rate payers. So it's not really expensive for them, but it is time consuming. And it's not, it wouldn't be a good use of their time. So this would just effectively persuade you to leave, not to even try to put in fossil fuel infrastructure? I believe so. That would be the effect. Yes, with the exception of interstate natural gas pipelines. Right, sure. Yes. This would allow, for example, development in rights of way and public state highways. Correct? Yes, it would have no effect on that. Would just be private land owners? Yes, for two reasons. One is it's impossible to engage in an eminent domain against the sovereign. So there can never be eminent domain against the state. And the D-Trans generally negotiates easement agreements with, well, such as that with VGS, they negotiated an easement agreement for crossing interstate 89, for example, and crossing R116 for the ANGP. And the thought behind that was is a ban on using eminent domain or effectively a ban on build-out? That's not as clear, right? Well, when I was talking with Rep. Cortis about drafting this bill, one of the concerns she raised was something Representative Patten raised, which is if you have, say, an existing service territory, which is already served by gas transmission and already served by gas distribution line, and you've got somebody at the end of the street who doesn't have gas, it doesn't make any sense to say you can't add to the distribution line to connect them. That exception is written into this draft. And if you have to cross a town street or a state highway, towns and states always generally give consent anyway. But in theory, a new transmission pipeline could follow a state highway right of way for a considerable distance. It could. But once it left the right of way, it would encounter its lack of ability to use eminent domain. You can tap, you can do connect distribution lines to existing transmission. Right. But to be as clear as possible, the distinction between transmission and distribution is not obvious. The definition that's used nationally and the definition that I believe has actually found the best reading of Vermont statutes is that most of the Addison natural gas pipeline would probably qualify as distribution, not transmission. And they're generally accepted as standards because it's not, because it's the way the definition is used nationally is it's not a through pipeline. It's a pipeline that basically did ends. And it's not very large. The way the PSB, the PUC has treated that pipeline and VGS has treated it. They've treated it as a transmission pipeline. And just so everybody knows, the PUC only has jurisdiction over transmission pipelines. The PUC does not have jurisdiction over distribution pipelines. Those are governed by zoning in Act 250. So the eminent domain, Bill H175 would say whatever you're permitting jurisdiction, whether it's Act 250 or the PUC, if you can't get land owner consent, you're not going to be able to build your pipeline if you need to go through private land. Certainly if you're going to go through state land and the state's willing to give you an easement, you're not. So one of the other goals we're considering is H51, which basically is any further build out of natural gas pipelines, transmission lines. The passage of that statute make this one moot? No. Why? As I put in the written testimony, the state of the law is so uncertain right now about the effect of the dormant commerce clause. That any lawyer who says he or she can predict for you reliably how any of these bills would fare in court you shouldn't listen to. But I can say that H51, which I strongly in favor of, is going to be less, be more difficult to offend than H175. There are cases around the country that are already been decided by the federal courts that a federal judge might say would lead to striking down H51. Other cases would say it shouldn't be struck it down. But the cases, you can't predict. There's just so many law out there and so many cases out there, a lot of them. And the U.S. Supreme Court has not spoken on how this dormant commerce clause applies in this situation. Whereas if you restrict the bill to eminent domain, it's much stronger because the research I did, and I used Lexus Nexus, which goes back to the very first report of cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and every federal court case, there's only been one case in the history of the republic in which somebody has challenged a limitation on the state's exercise of eminent domain, only one case in the history of the country. And in that case, the South Dakota Railroad case, the South Dakota legislature said we're not going to let out-of-state shippers or users use eminent domain to build a pipeline through South Dakota. You can only use eminent domain if you're going to serve people in South Dakota with this new rail line. So obviously if you're in North Dakota and you want to get shipped something to Nebraska and you have to go through South Dakota, you're not going to be able to use eminent domain. And the federal court said, well, that's on its face the statute discriminates against people out of state and struck it down. That's the only time a limitation on eminent domain has ever been stricken. And this proposed bill doesn't do that. And H175 is so different from a general ban on fossil fuel infrastructure that it really would be treated differently. And the principal reason is that the sovereign power of the state, it's protected by the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. And the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution has never been interpreted as superseding the sovereign power of the state to exercise eminent domain. So we're in an area where it's at the height of state power and the nadir of federal power. Unlike just a ban on whether it's fossil fuel infrastructure or nuclear power, whatever it is, which gets federal desert all riled up. Does the concept of eminent domain have any meaning in dealing with talent-owned property or other than state-owned property? It's a fascinating question. And in the Caprax Park case, the Supreme Court decided that eminent domain can be used against the town, which we lost. So this would have been a different outcome in that case if this were passed. Can you experiment a little bit more? Sure. If eminent domain can be used against town-owned property, then the town is in the same situation as a private landowner. If we don't want you to go across our park with this pipeline, then you can't force us to do it, right? Right. But then if this bill passed, then would the town be able to say that? Only going forward, not for past projects. Right. Yes. Yes. Right. And there are, as some people here know, there's a statute ordering the books that says any conveyance of town-owned land with some exceptions requires the opportunity for a vote of the public in that town. 24 BSA 801061. In Bristol, the clients of mine challenged whether the Bristol Select Board violated that statute by entering into agreement with Vermont Gas to what town rights are going to be used for a gas pipeline. The judge denied the motion to dismiss and then the pipeline deal was rescinded by the Select Board, so we'll never go any further than that. But the judge said it was a good argument and it was worth letting it be explored and tried. So the short answer to your question is if the town that owned a park said or school, whatever it could be, said no, we don't want you to run this pipeline through it, that would be the end of it because the utility could not threaten the town with that. I don't know how much time we have here. Infinite. We've certainly got another 35, 40 minutes. Okay. And we will take all of your time with questions if you would. All right, that's fine. So I'm looking to you to be there with a whip and chair. All right. It may be worth spending a little time on the question of interstate natural gas pipelines because it's very different from what we've been talking about. Under the Natural Gas Act, there is complete and total preemption of state law when it comes to regulating, citing anything about interstate natural gas pipelines. But there is one exception and this is true of every federal permit and that is Section 401 of the Clean Water Act. Section 401 of the Federal Clean Water Act, going back to 1969, whatever it was, says no federal permit for anything. It can be issued if waters of the United States may be affected unless the state where those waters are says we sort of, we grant water quality certification for that use. So no matter what federal statute you're talking about, if a permit is required from the federal agency and it affects waters of the United States, which is broadly defined. So the Winootsky River, it's your favorite trout stream, whatever, they're all covered. Then the state has to give water quality certification or the federal permit cannot be issued. And in many of our surrounding states, Section 401 has been used by the state to stop projects that were against the state's interest. The two that I've been harping on for some time are Connecticut and New York, both of which faced huge interstate gas pipeline projects. And both of which said you haven't satisfied us that you've examined the alternatives to this pipeline route through our state and denied the permit and the U.S. Court of Appeals appell that in both cases because 401 is not preempted as part of federal law by itself. And I've suggested in my testimony, and it's, I think, beyond dispute that Vermont has much weaker 401 regulations than New York and Connecticut and many other states, and unfortunately right now there is no general requirement that the applicant demonstrate that this is the least harmful alternative, which is essentially what New York and Connecticut require showing of. And the pipeline company said we're not going to do that. The state said no and the federal courts have held it. And unfortunately, that would be a difficult argument to make in Vermont. So that could be another bill, not any of the three in front of you. So I'm curious what Vermont would have to do in order to invoke Section 401 of a federal clean water act. So right now what happens is A&R will get a 401 certification request and they will review it and say yes or no. Under federal law, the state has one year from the date of request to study it, review it, and then say yes or no. Under federal law, if the state doesn't say yes or no within one year it is deemed to be approved. And the state goes through a review process right now, but the review process unfortunately does not include the examination forcing the applicant to consider the alternatives. That's the problem. So there is a review process, but it's not a robust one. So the difference is just requiring the applicant to demonstrate or to show that alternative routes were analyzed. The concept of no practical alternative actually originates in federal law. It comes from federal highway law. Federal highway law has been in effect since the 60s that if you wanted to build a highway through any park you can't use federal funds to do that unless you show there's no practical alternative. So it's that same concept. So it's a well-known concept. It'd be nice if we could be confident that it applies in Vermont, but we can't be. I have a question for you, which is in your testimony you kind of lay out an example of an interstate pipeline. I think you mentioned a pipeline that would go from Pennsylvania through Vermont to Canada remain as an example of an interstate pipeline. How is the pipeline that comes into Vermont currently, a gas pipeline into Addison County, what defines it as being under one jurisdiction or another? That pipeline comes down from Canada. And in the phase two part of the Addison natural gas pipeline cases, VGS proposed to go from Williston to Fort Ticonderoga. So that proposal was submitted to FERC. And if that had gone forward, that would have divested the PUC of any jurisdiction over the case. It did not go forward. In part because international paper said it's too expensive, we don't want to be part of it. And once they dropped out, it was no longer an interstate case. Because it only comes into one state? Because this pipeline started in Vermont and ended in Vermont. I was wondering about the Canadian connection. Yeah, and that part's a done deal. That's been in effect since the 60s. So the federal preemption would have occurred in that case, even if along the way we're serving a whole bunch of Vermont customers before. Yes. So looking at H51, I think through a drafting error, some of the arcane wording of section 248 caused a little mistake. Section 248 refers to natural gas facilities. And in drafting H51, that language was just incorporated by reference. So H51 in part proposes to amend section 248. And it says no natural gas facilities would be subject to... H51 would apply to natural gas facilities. The problem is that section 248 defines natural gas facilities as being only transportation of fuel. A natural gas facility is defined as only natural gas pipeline. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's the way the statute defines it. A separate part of section 248 governs all electric generating stations. So section 248 works because if you were to build a natural gas generating station in Vermont, it would be covered by 248, even though it's not called a natural gas facility. The problem with H51 is it only applies to natural gas facilities. And so I propose language to run that to say a natural gas facility or electric generation station that uses fossil fuel. And that way I think the intent of the drafters would be served. The second change I think is needed is the definition of infrastructure in the bill itself is limited to facilities that transport fuel. And I don't think that's the intent, so I've suggested that that also be broadened. And you could use the language from H175 which says facilities that transport fuel, fossil fuel, are also that produce electricity, heat, or other energy using fossil fuel. That's on page six of my memo. You just added that to the definition section of H51 you would fix the problem. And I propose also adding to H51 the language from H175 that excludes from the prohibition facilities or structures necessary to more safely or more economically serve customers in an existing service territory. Again, so if you've got somebody in an area that's already basically built out by a gas transmission and distribution system, and they're the last ones at the end of the street, it seems you wouldn't gain much and you lose a lot by not allowing them to hook up. We're talking about H175 and the domain. I have to thank Professor Joe Maria for being really forthright with me over the last week. We've gone back and forth by email and telephone about this bill. And he gave me some law review articles I had not found, including one I've quoted in this memo. It is the latest law review article on this subject. Journals that I think every law school in America has these journals. And if it's the Harvard Law Review and it has an article in it, everybody reads it and it's like the gospel. If it's another law review, maybe it is important, maybe it isn't. This is an article in the Minnesota Law Review, so it's a well-respected law school by professors who really know this stuff. And in this article they say one way to deal with what we're talking about here today is to limit your eminent domain statutes so they do not include fossil fuels within the definition of public benefit or public good. And so I only found out about this article last week from John and yet this is a bill that's been in the Hopper for months and the article points out that some states have already done this. Georgia and South Carolina changed their eminent domain statutes to eliminate use of eminent domain for oral pipelines several years ago. Those were temporary moratoriums, moratoria, that have since expired. But because the legislature was concerned, they said at least for the next three years there will be no eminent domain for oral pipelines in our states, both Georgia and South Carolina. And Colorado has it, unlike those two states, Colorado has a statute on the books. It's not a temporary statute that says you cannot use eminent domain for oral pipelines. So this bill builds on those models and it's not all that extraordinary and it's what these law school professors have suggested as at least a partial solution to the problem. So one thing I would add to this discussion, which a lot of the articles talk about is if we're interested in clean power and climate change, you don't want to cast the net too broadly because a lot of experts say this and some disputed, I know who's right, but at least there's some good science to support the argument that we need eminent domain in the future to get solar power and wind power from parts of the country where they have it in abundance to parts of the country where we need it. So if you have huge wind farms in Iowa, they can't use all the power in Iowa and they need to get it to Chicago, that concept. You don't want to cripple eminent domain so that clean power can't be brought where it's needed. But this bill doesn't have that problem because it's restricted to fossil fuel. H214, this bill I think is largely a great idea, one clause of it. I'm leery of in general what H214 does is it takes a concept that Vermont PUC has had on its books since the Hydro-Quebec case, the decision 1990. In 1990 the PSB ruled that it was proper for the PSB to consider the impacts on Vermonters of massive hydro-development in northern Quebec. The evidence was that the proposed mega dams would flood subarctic huge areas of subarctic land and release really large quantities of methane. And methane was the problem there too. And this would be a substantial contribution to greenhouse gas effects even though it was hydropower because of the large area being flooded. And so that was one impact from developing Quebec that would affect people in Vermont. The other was that migratory waterfowl that go through Vermont, many species are actually based on nesting and staging habitat in northern Quebec. And we wouldn't have those birds in Vermont during the spring and fall if the habitat were destroyed in northern Quebec. So the board said in those two ways what happens in Quebec affects people in Vermont and we can look at that in this proceeding. And in fact what the board did under Chairman Coward is they restricted the size of the purchase so that in the board's view it would not contribute to the mega dams. It would just use power from the existing dams. That concept is now in section 248 because 248 now has built right into it consideration of greenhouse gases which affect everybody. H214 improves on the existing statute by mandating that the PUC actually look at the leakage question, the leakage of methane during extraction and transmission. The board has been doing that but it's great that the statute says it has to be considered and that it's an important fact that the board has to base its decision upon. I'm not a scientist but I read the articles and the scientific consensus now is that natural gas, the life cycle, quote unquote life cycle impacts of natural gas are far worse than oil for home heating and for electric generation because of the powerful potency of methane to destroy the atmosphere. So H214 says the board needs to consider that, yes. Good question, a lot of thinking on it. So let's say an industrial wind project on the Ridgeline was approved or was going through the approval process. The Ridgeline was owned by an individual property owner but to get to the main road where the transmission lines were you had to go through three other people's property. Is there an eminent domain statute that can be used to take that property to get those lines down to the main transmission line? The existing eminent domain statutes would allow that. Okay. I have a barge in here. With regard to what you had just described with the PUC under existing statute and rule being required to look at things like leakage. I don't want to put words in your mouth. I'm trying to play this back. You said in the Addison County pipeline case they did look at things like leakage. I don't know if they were required to but they chose to look past that. How would 214 raise the bar in terms of what they are to take into consideration? I think you could argue it doesn't raise the bar. It makes explicit in statute what's already in its prior decisions and the PUC's prior decisions. And in those prior decisions they chose to look past that issue. They may not look past it but not weigh it to a point where it would preclude them from issuing a CPG. Yes. I think it's fair to say that the PUC decision in the Addison case was that the science doesn't support the conclusion that this is enough of a problem to reject the pipeline. That was the case cited in 2013 based on testimony from 2010 and 2011. And science has changed dramatically since then. So in answer to your question this part of 214 is not a radical change. It's reinforcing what the cases issued by the PUC have said. And it says we're going to hold you to that basically. The part of 214 that I was looking at was the lifespan that the PUC would require the utility to use for pricing out what it was going to cost repairs. Section E. I don't have that in mind. Okay. So public utility commission shall not allow companies to finance the construction of a pipeline through rates beyond the useful lifetime of the infrastructure. So the useful lifetime of the infrastructure is shortened by the fact that we can't use it because it will be stranded then that would make the investment much less economic. So I was just wondering about that part of it. That part of it doesn't strike me as constructive because the testimony was that the useful lifetime of the A&GP was 50 years. Right. That's the engineering lifespan. Yes. But if the lifespan due to the proposition that we can't use it past say 2030 then the lifespan is actually 12 years or whatever. Perhaps the statute could be reworded to say that, as I read it, it's the engineering or expected life's usefulness of the physical object, not the regulatory expectation. The useful lifetime. Yes. It's a matter of defining what that means. So that seemed to me to be a useful approach to the problem because if it can't be, if you're saying that you're going to have to recover all these costs within this period of time, not the 50 years that the pipe might be actually intact in the ground, then that affects the economics. True. But I think the POC decision takes into account the state energy goals and says this still is going to be useful or it's expected physical lifetime. Right. But this 214 would give them a different instruction. And maybe it needs to be worded differently, but that's how I was looking at that cause and proposed.  The A&GP was really an aberration when it comes to this issue of when does the project become economic? It's really an aberration nationally because FERC, which deals with pipelines, gas pipelines all the time, has a general rule that they will not approve of pipelines that will not be paid for from the rates from the new customers with small, tiny exceptions. The New York POC has the same rule. So this pipeline would never have been built if it had to meet FERC standards because there are only 3,000 new customers. It's a $165 million pipeline. That's $50,000 per customer. So this pipeline was built on the backs of the existing customers, which federal law would never have allowed if this had gone through FERC. And if this was the other side of the lake, New York, they would have said, you're kidding. So if we just, you know, so... If we just need FERC laws. Well, the other part of H214 that I was addressing in my memo was looking at water quality impacts, say, contracting in Pennsylvania or Ohio. That's pretty weak under the dormant college clause because none of those impacts affect people in Vermont. And so it really looks like the Vermont legislature is trying to tell regulators in Pennsylvania or Ohio what to do. That would be low-hanging fruit for utility lawyers. We wanted to give them low-hanging fruit. I want to go back and explore Representative Campbell's question a little more in terms of what 214 does. And this is a particular interest to me, though I don't know if it's a fertile place to explore. Again, which is what is the useful life of this asset? Or, you know, an asset that might be considered? And to what extent rate payers could be left holding the bag? And with regard to the Addison Program, you've kind of already laid out the case. But the legislature could go as far. This bill doesn't. But could go as far as being specific for certain types of infrastructure, fossil fuel infrastructure, as to what the useful life will be when the calculation is done as to what is the return have to be from rate payers in order for this utility to, you know, read an acceptable rate of return. And the question I have or the concern that I have from a rate-payer perspective is if that timeframe is squeezed from 50 years to 20 or 15, no project would make sense. There's no way that the utility could reap a return on its investment in that short of time. And, again, from a practical standpoint, I don't think we're going to be using these pipelines in 2015. And so, you know, I'm concerned, and I know ARB is concerned, that rate payers are going to be left holding the bag on this $125 million pipeline, much less another pipeline than we might consider. So, you know, is it worthwhile for the legislature to explore stranded costs and what a reasonable timeline is for payback for utility for these types of investments? How hard is it to prove that case? Your question addresses two different issues. One is in permitting a project that has not been built, how do we address this issue? And second is when we have a project that's already been built, what happens when the project becomes un-economic? Those are really different questions. If we have a project that's already in the ground and alternatives for customers are less expensive, so you can use this example. If the gas pipeline starts losing customers because they've all got cold climate heat pumps and it costs them less to heat their homes for the heat pump than to continue to buy gas. Well, first of all, that's a risk that the utility takes as a private business. They get a return on their investment. That's one of the risks they've entered into in building this pipeline. That's not really a public risk. And you want to discuss this very briefly in the situation of Green Mountain Power and CPS when they overcommitted to the Hydro-Quebec contract and it turned out it was far more expensive than other sources of electricity. Is it in your 90s? Yes. And they went to the PUC and said, we need help. We're going to go bankrupt if you don't help us. We need rates that go up that we can't justify under traditional rate-making principles. And the only reason is to keep us from going bankrupt. That's the situation that gas would be in. And that's really a scientific question of how important it is to keep that utility out of bankruptcy. Well, a gas pipeline is very different from an electric company. Electric service is really essential. And so the board had good reason to say we don't want to start with some people called the death spiral of smaller and smaller rate base. And costs are the same. We're up. And then as rates go up, even more people drop out. Do you want that to happen to an electric utility? The board was concerned about that. Gas is different than electricity because every gas customer already has electricity. And every gas customer can use heat-cold climate heat pumps. So that's much less of a public concern. It's more just a concern if you're worried about VGSs whose sole shareholder and whether we want to worry about their bottom line. If we're looking at this prospectively, which I think this bill addresses, and I think the language of the bill could be tweaked to capture more of what I think your intent is, and that is let's look at state energy policy and when we're going to be required to be renewable and say when you're submitting your application to the POC, don't use the expected physical lifetime of the project. Let's limit that by the state's energy policy. So it may be 20 years, not 50. To what end? So that the project would not be approved of because once you do the calculations using a 20-year life period rather than 50, the rates that would have to be paid to support the project become obviously unacceptable. But if the utility is saying, yeah, we hear you saying it's a 15-year project. It's really a 50-year project. So the rates we're going to charge. I don't understand the difference between that example and the one you gave with existing infrastructure because the new pipeline, maybe that utility chooses to take that risk. But it's not there is to take. Let's back to our initial discussion. The utility is exercising a franchise grant by the state of Vermont. It's not like General Motors or IBM. They don't get to make these decisions by themselves because the legislature said they can't. That's why they passed Section 248. So if the POC says, well, you want to use a 50-year time frame, we want to use 20. They're the decider. It's not the management of the corporation that's the sole decider. Right, the decision that's made is the rate that can be charged. The decision has not made it into 248 as to the rate that can be charged. That's a separate case. But the POC would say, what will the expected impact be on rates going forward? And that's consideration number one. But I think a better analogy is, for years, the POC since 90, something the POC has said has ruled, we're not going to look at what the market says are the costs of this electricity. We're going to add the adder for environmental impacts. And there's a certain number of cents per kilowatt hour that take into account environmental impacts. And the board has developed this as a way to consider the true cost of a project. And so the utility will say, hey, we're going to make money off this. But the POC will say, if you include the true cost of the project, but including the air pollution adder, it's actually a net loser. And if you change to 14 to incorporate the public policy that we'd be done with fossil fuels by a certain date, basically you'd be at putting, you'd be raising the cost to the ratepayers because you'd have to be recovering in a much shorter time frame. And it'd be like the air pollution adder. And the POC would then say, well, as we do the analysis on behalf of the people that say, Vermont, we actually think it doesn't make sense. I've got a question. I understand when you were talking about how everybody's an electrical customer and the gas customers may go to heat pumps. But what about the industries? I mean, I can't see that the industrial usage of electricity is going to be comparable at any point to gas when it comes to the amount that some industries might have to use. Great question. And this question has come up before both in Vermont and elsewhere. Agromark in Middlebury uses gas. Catechise. And they were using truck gas. Vermont gas had to admit in the rape case that AARP brought and went to the Supreme Court that they could not legitimately use the cost of serving, sorry, the rates from serving Agromark in justification for the project because they made less money by selling pipe gas to Agromark than selling truck gas. So it never figured in the economic justification for the gas pipeline. And then the flip side of this, from the customer's point of view, they already had truck gas available. And from society's point of view, if you don't invest $165 million in a project, then if there's a better alternative that becomes available for Agromark, the public hasn't invested in keeping them in the old way. Instead of having a truck show up, I don't know if it's going to be wood chips or it's going to be hydrogen or whatever it's going to be. Maybe it's going to be biogas from someplace in Salisbury. But we haven't locked in $165 million infrastructure to serve that plant. So my short answer is, there are industries that use gas in Vermont. And we can satisfy that need for now without locking in our future for the next 50 years. Can you run hydrogen through an hydro gas pipeline? I don't think so, but that's being considered as a transportable, safe way to provide energy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let's just open the door for five minutes. Yes. Good idea. Thank you. People want to stand up and say, we're going to call. We're going to call our next witness in five minutes. So there's a two-fold up. Thank you. This is very nice. No way. No way for my body. This is Tim Brighlin calling. We have you here on a speakerphone in our committee room. So welcome to the House Energy and Technology Committee. Appreciate you joining us today. We have the committee gathered around the table and probably another 10, 12 people in the room. And just to kind of set the table as to where we are this afternoon. We just heard Jim Dumont speak for a little under an hour and giving us his thoughts on the three fossil fuel infrastructure bills that we have in committee. And understand that you have some time to join us as well.   So you are welcome to take us through your testimony as you see fit. Certainly don't feel the need to read it, but we've got that in front of us to do as well. So it's up to you how you want to take us through the testimony. Excuse me. What I will say is on this end, we record all of our testimony. So if as you start, you can kind of introduce yourself for the record, that would be great. And I will try and direct questions as they come in from this side. Try not to interrupt you, but as people have questions here, I will let you know and you can take it from there. So thank you again for joining us. Really appreciate you taking a couple minutes out of your day. Okay. Okay. Well, my name is John and Chevariel. I'm a resident of Strafford, Vermont, and delighted to have the opportunity to participate in this hearing today. And I appreciate your allowing me to participate by telephone. Tuesday is, we're still in class here at Vermont Law School. Tuesday is a terrible day for me, and I just completed teaching a class, and I have another one coming up. So I just couldn't make it up to Monty here for the hearing. No, this is great. This works fine for us, and again, I appreciate you making time on a busy day. So I, my, to not bring any expertise to the issues you're debating, it's largely in the area of property and property rights, the takings question, the use of eminent domain, it's an issue I've written about, I've been involved in litigation about, and thought of a fair amount about. I have deep interest in the future energy policy of Vermont, and I have a passing familiarity with the key issues, and I'm familiar with the major pieces of legislation that are now pending in front of the House and this committee, but I thought what I would do, because it really is my area of expertise where I think I can perhaps provide some added values to focus on H175, which addresses the use of eminent domain for fossil fuel infrastructure in the state of Vermont. And my testimony is fairly straightforward, and I'm just going to summarize it very quickly. First of all, eminent domain is one of the more controversial topics out there. I say in my testimony that I've never met anybody who welcomed being subjected to eminent domain, despite receiving full and fair just compensation out of the constitution. People don't like to have their property taken regardless of the purpose, and regardless of the validity of the government's objective in taking the property. And I think I understand that. I think I wrote it on the ground. The room understands that. I compare eminent domain to death and taxes on the list of popular issues. On the other hand, the courts have repeatedly upheld the eminent domain power. It goes back to the very early days of the Republic, and I don't think there's really any serious question about its constitutionality or its enormous public value. And basically, it serves the purpose of allowing the government to address the problem of a holdout in order to promote a whole variety of public objectives and valuable development purposes. It's necessary to assemble land, either in a linear fashion such as for a transmission line or to acquire a particular location that serves a public function particularly well. And government often proceeds on a willing seller basis trying to locate property owners able and willing to sell property at a reasonable price. But for a whole variety of reasons, sometimes in an effort to get a higher price, sometimes just for reasons of personal preference, a property owner who is unwilling to sell property. And so in order to deal with that holdout problem, the law has long accorded the sovereign the right to take property by eminent domain. And although it is, as I say, incredibly unpopular, and it's a very strong exercise of governmental power and one that needs to be supervised and watched and that can sometimes be abused, I think it's absolutely essential. And so my take on the use of this eminent domain issue in the context of energy development and fossil fuel development is that for a variety of reasons curtailing this important governmental power even for the worthy objective of curtailing fossil fuel development and progressing the climate problem facing Vermont and the world is not the optimal way to go. You have other bills before you, age 51 and age 214, one of which is essentially a ban on future fossil fuel development in the state, another one which directs the Public Service Board to scrutinize the climate impacts of future fossil fuel development with greater skepticism and care than it has in the past. And I think both of those bills aim in the right direction and are appropriate. I have in my day-to-day layout my testimony is all briefly summarized. I have five basic concerns with the approach taken in age 175. The first is that legislation that curtail the use of eminent domain for fossil fuel problems addresses the climate change problem in an indirect fashion. The concern here is development of future infrastructure that leads to additional greenhouse gas emissions. And whether or not a project is built with the aid of eminent domain or not with the aid of eminent domain really does address a pivotal issue which is whether or not the project is built. And I think everything else be equal. Legislature is better off addressing an issue directly rather than indirectly rather than trying to make a constraint or a hamstring, so to speak, fossil fuel development or to perform it directly by either raising the regulatory bar for approval of fossil fuel development or banning it all together. The second issue is it's not entirely clear to me that this bill would be entirely effective in its objective. The idea is that absent the power of eminent domain it would be difficult to assemble car doors and acquire sites for fossil fuel development. I have no doubt that without the eminent domain power fossil fuel development would be triggered and some instances would go forward. But eminent domain is not always essential for projects to go forward. My understanding is the Northern Pass project in New Hampshire, a large transmission line which is running into a whole variety of regulatory objectives, objections that may never ultimately be built has nonetheless the developers have nonetheless managed to put together a right-of-way through a variety of means but not including the use of the eminent domain power. So the absence of the eminent domain power is a constraint but it's not a complete barrier to fossil fuel development and a bill like H-51 would accomplish the goal much more not only directly but in a more certain way. The other thing is that I think it has been suggested that the other bills which seek to directly control or prohibit fossil fuel development might be subject to federal constitutional challenges and that's certainly possible depending on how they're crafted but I think it's also true that the approach of curtailing the eminent domain power can raise concerns whether it's not under the supremacy clause and under the Dartmouth Commerce Clause depending on how it's all drafted so simply going to the path of curtailing eminent domain doesn't avoid all the possible federal constitutional problems. The fourth point I wanted to make is that although I strongly support the goal of curtailing fossil fuel development and see its enormous value in meeting the state climate goals it's also true that the use of the eminent domain power may be very helpful in achieving those goals limiting the use of the eminent domain for fossil fuel plants would obviously deter future fossil fuel development but looking to the future many policy makers and members of this committee and other leaders in the state have said that the future path for Vermont involves electrification of our power system which means finding more sources of electricity and finding more ways of making electrical power widely available for a whole variety of energy and uses and that may well require expanded or new transmission capacity in the state and providing that transmission capacity would be greatly aided by the availability of eminent domain in some circumstances and I understand what could logically say well we want to keep eminent domain for electrical transmission lines carrying power generated by wind but not for fossil fuel I think signaling out the use of the eminent focusing on the eminent domain power in any context may have a tendency to agenda opposition to the use of eminent domains in other contexts where we'd like to keep it this is an issue in Vermont but it's also a larger issue nationally those who advocate increase reliance on renewables are looking to the Upper Midwest as a fruitful area to generate a great deal of wind power but then the question becomes how to get that to market primarily in the eastern part of the United States which would require very expansive expansion of the transmission capacity and probably reliance on the eminent domain power and it's not clear on a national basis we have the capacity to build large scale interstate transmission lines that would facilitate the kind of national turn to renewable power that we need to do so this is an issue both on a national and on a state level and then my final point is really more of a philosophical one which is that in order to address the climate change it seems to me that the government and the people supporting the government need to be able and willing to impose reasonable regulation on the use of property controlling the exploitation of property assets including but not limited to the vast petroleum reserves that are in the ground we need to keep in the ground and claims of private property rights and entitlements are sometimes raised in opposition to the kind of regulation we need to achieve climate goals and it makes me nervous in this narrow context to be advocating for expanded private property rights even if it's for a worthy goal because I think it may unintentionally in the general sense reinforce the claim that private property rights should stand as an obstacle to progress on climate change so for all those reasons and especially because I think there are other bills that are now pending in front of your committee that would accomplish much of the same objective in a more direct and more effective way I am just a summarized skeptical about H175 and I guess it's urged the committee to devote more time and energy into the other bills than to this one so that in brief I know James who knows a lot about this issue and set an enormous background could easily go on for an hour but I am not going to talk about it whatever length you would like he covered three bills whereas you've only taken that one I do have a question and it relates to I think some law journal articles that you have generously directed Mr. Dumont too and I have not seen them but I think they relate to the use of eminent domain or the prohibition on the use of eminent domain for I think it was for oil pipelines in a couple of southern states Georgia and South Carolina and Colorado may have scratched away at this as well on a more standing basis I think in South Carolina and Georgia it was done on a temporary basis is that something that you can speak to whether it's to those states maybe reaching a policy objective using what you might characterize as kind of a crude instrument but if you could speak to the experience of those states or if you have something to offer there I'm familiar I read the same articles that I received and passed on to James and I know that I believe there were both temporary measures in Georgia and in South Carolina in response to something called the Palmetto Pipewine project which was exceedingly unpopular particularly in Georgia because it involved shipping a large quantity of oil to the state without any providing any benefit to the state of Georgia and as I say I believe those were temporary I don't have any doubts that the state has the authority to craft its statutes for guarding a domain anyway it wants subject to federal constitutional constraints in order for a taking to be lawful it has to be constitutional which means it has to serve a taking has to serve a public use and it has to be accompanied by just compensation for the statutorily authorized and if the legislature decides to remove the statutorily authorization for the eminent domain power then to extend projects depend on state eminent domain power they're no longer authorized of course none of this has anything to do with interstate gas pipelines which are licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the licensees are authorized to take property of the eminent domain power so none of that bears on this but I think it's permissible for the legislature under law to decide where and where for what purposes to authorize the use of the eminent domain power it doesn't I think it's striking I think this may be telling that there seem to be relatively few examples around the country of restrictions on the use of eminent domain for energy projects and more efforts to try to directly control the production of fossil fuel of powered energy and to regulate the the mix of renewables of the state's energy supplies certainly an approach has been used but also has been used widely we have another representative representative Campbell who has a question I'm wondering if you can point to any regulations from other states or bills under consideration in other states that would regulate the construction of fossil fuel facilities directly well there's a you're getting outside my area of expertise one of the I don't know if Jim discussed the I'm reaching for some papers here the Heidegger decision from the 8th circuit which is a 2016 decision from the United States Court of Appeals from the 8th circuit that struck down Minnesota legislation that sought to drive the decarbonization of the electric power system in Minnesota and there are a number of provisions in the law some of them were struck down by the court on the grounds that they sought to regulate to directly the conduct of the energy business in other states on the other hand there's a provision in the law which prohibited the construction within Minnesota of new large energy facilities that would contribute to statewide carbon dioxide emissions as the judges in this case noted that the plaintiffs did not even seek to challenge that provision of Minnesota law which I assume is still in place and has not been successfully challenged by any other party so my that's one example I can pull out for you my admittedly not expert analysis suggests that there's no particular constitutional problem with the state of Vermont attempting to directly regulate or even prohibit in the state generation of power using fossil fuels I think it's on a number of occasions the public service board has either rejecting projects or sanctioning projects has considered whether or not the projects would lead to greenhouse gas emissions and as far as I know the authority of the state entity to consider that issue hasn't been questioned so I don't think pending further research from other people a serious question that the state of Vermont could ban fossil fuel infrastructure or it wanted to but I'm afraid I don't have additional examples on the law I just cited you the other bill that we're looking at H214 would come out a little different way would talk about requiring the PUC to consider the useful lifespan of the facility not necessarily the physical lifespan of the facility and calculating the economics of whether the company should be allowed to build or should receive a certificate of public good yeah I'm not familiar with any other states that have adopted that approach the one, the provision of that proposal that stands out for me is the requirement that the public service board determine whether the leakage of gas and the adverse effects of that leakage are outweighed by the good to the state so basically doing a cost benefit analysis weighing greenhouse gas emissions and deciding whether or not to issue a certificate of public good that's the other dimension of that bill my understanding is the state basically you have before you three options one is banning fossil fuels the other one is H214 directing the public service board to weigh greenhouse gas impacts and then the third approach is to defend the use of eminent domain in connection with such projects okay thank you other questions Representative Briglin had to step out this is Representative Sebelia do you have additional testimony? I'm done, if you're done alright thank you so much for making time to join us today thank you very much thank you Techno Boy Scout here they did with a hammer appropriate technology we call that Percussive Maintenance unplug it hello, greetings for the record my name is Paul Vernes I'm the Executive Director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group or V-PURC and I appreciate the opportunity to be with you today as many of you know V-PURC is the largest consumer and environmental advocacy organization in Vermont we've got about 50,000 members and supporters in communities all across the state and we've been working since our founding in 1972 with a particular focus on energy issues from our earliest days so it really is a pleasure to be with you as you consider several issues related to fossil fuel infrastructure today I want to note before I begin that I am an attorney usually when V-PURC engages in litigation we're smart enough to hire professionals like Jim Dumont behind me here so we have hired Jim to represent us in a number of different cases over the years including one involving the natural gas proposed phase two pipeline for instance Jim is not representing us here today but I appreciate always the opportunity to work with him and share some time with him I want to kind of be labor all of the points about the problems with fossil fuels generally I do want to note a couple of specific points about natural gas particularly natural gas that is derived from fracking, shale gas fracking as Mr. Dumont noted what we're talking about here is methane which though it has been marketed as the clean fossil fuel over the years more recent analysis, more recent studies have proven that methane is a very potent greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide itself and when you take into consideration the life cycle analysis particularly the leakage that comes from the fracking operations and the transmission of that gas ultimately to customer use there are estimates that it actually is far worse as a greenhouse gas as a problem for climate emissions and oil or even coal and so it is the more you learn about gas particularly shale gas which is largely what we're talking about here we don't know the exact percentages but certainly where gas systems is using gas that comes from fracking operations in Canada it should not be considered any longer the clean fossil fuel from a climate perspective but climate emissions aren't the only concern when it comes to natural gas as a matter of fact we've done some research looking back over the information that's available about leaks and explosions and pipelines and we find that over the last five years there have been 20 deaths annually on average in the United States linked to these natural gas pipeline accidents an average of 453 million dollars worth of property damage each year and many injuries as well I will submit for the record the testimony here that I have as well and that will give you more details information I don't think anyone's surprised we hear if you pay attention in the media you see fairly regularly problems with pipelines where not just leakage but accidents property damage even personal injury and occasionally even death just last September September 13th 2018 I'm sure everyone in this room heard about the explosion and problems associated with the pipelines in three communities outside of Boston, Massachusetts those explosions killed one person caused over 80 fires led to 30,000 evacuations Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency customers were left without heat and some without hot water for months after that explosion the faulty pipelines and the concerns have been felt here in Vermont as well and you've heard some of the challenges of building phase one of the Vermont gas systems pipeline that went down into Middlebury the tremendous cost overruns that were seen there we were as I mentioned involved in the proposed phase two pipeline which would have taken it under Ticonderoga under the lake to Ticonderoga that ultimately was pulled back but that too was subject to concerns and projected cost overruns etc so it's not we are not immune to those issues even here in Vermont concerning the legislation before you then we are very supportive of the policies that will take Vermont away from further dependence on fossil fuel and move us toward 100% clean renewable energy you have heard no doubt of a number of states moving in the direction of 100% renewable energy particularly for electricity though over time we need to be going even more broadly than that as we electrify heating and transportation opportunities in the state the electricity sector and the renewable nature of that becomes even more important so we strongly support the idea of moving toward clean renewable energy but these are really two sides of the same coin as we support and either I or my colleagues will be in this chair talking to you about Global Warming Solutions Act and other ideas to move forward in a positive direction with respect to renewables the other side of that coin is to stop our dependence further dependence and further development of fossil fuel infrastructure among the several bills that you've been discussing we favor H-51 which as you know would be which is designed to prohibit new fossil fuel infrastructure in the state we are supportive of the several amendments or opportunities for improvement that Mr. Dumont mentioned that is to say most fundamentally that it would apply to facilities that burn fossil fuels for electricity for instance there's no particular reason why that should not be included in this definition of fossil fuel infrastructure as well in addition to the pipelines I think that were originally envisioned under the bill so we are supportive of those improvements we support H-51 over the ban on fossil fuel infrastructure over the idea of pursuing a ban on the use of eminent domain for fossil fuel development in some ways because it's a professor noted the direct approach that is to say going directly at the idea that further development of new fossil fuel infrastructure is at odds with what Vermont has established as our own policy and goals for the state seems to call for a direct policy that says therefore we are not going to build fossil fuel infrastructure in the state instead of the more indirect path of saying you simply can't use eminent domain for the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure so so that it's not clear to me why unless you see a problem that I don't see I guess with H-51 why you would move to the eminent domain root it is after all possible for a fossil fuel infrastructure of some sort of pipeline let's say to still be built even if you had that restriction in place it might take longer but cost as was pointed out earlier is really not the issue for the utilities in that case and it may be that it is too much of a time burden and they give up on it but it's kind of a roundabout way of getting to the place that I think you would get to more directly as a matter of state policy we do not want to build more fossil fuel infrastructure in Vermont do you mind this thank you Paul so I have a question in there's the broad framework of pipeline as a 50 year investment there's also the lesser of two evils picture of Ticonderoga between burning natural gas or burning tires that go with natural gas probably but specifically when you talk about no new generation just wondering about the McNeil plant and the district heating which calls for I believe natural gas fired standby generation for if the wood burning plant is down being cleaned I'm just wondering how that a band fits in so that would be language that would have to be added to the bill as it stands right now it deals really with pipelines primarily right now and so I guess it could be up to this committee to decide what to do in a case like that where you're talking about a facility that is primarily using wood chips and not fossil fuels and is an existing facility and if you needed that in order to do the heat portion of that project district heat which I should set back we would never support the construction of a McNeil today just to provide electricity it's a terribly inefficient project if it didn't have the heating aspect as well it really doesn't make a lot of sense from our perspective so I have to kind of stop there and say I'm not expert enough to know what the next step is or stages with McNeil and what role gas would play in that but it could be that you could craft it either way as to what makes sense there I would say that I'm primarily concerned about the construction of a new gas fired power generating plant in this state and that's what I'm mostly focused on here when we talk about that kind of facility so that's the short answer so what's your position on distribution lines for instance if the transmission pipeline is already built out to Middlebury and town along the route decided that they wanted to hook up to that and have their community take advantage of it that would be a distribution line and would it be your position if we should ban that too or would that be allowed it seems to me this is an area where you're getting kind of specific so if the pipeline goes right in front of somebody's house and they say hey I want the line to you would have to have some sort of a gate that would put down pressure right and so I think the better policy from a climate perspective is to say no to that kind of distribution line I think there is a reasonableness question that comes in when you say the gas line is already running in front of somebody's house and should they be able to hook up to that gas line or be the last home on the street to do it as Mr. Dumont mentioned earlier that's a tremendous additional use of gas in that case and so I would say you'd be reasonable you say yes we're going to allow that at some point you're trying to decide where is the right balance as a matter of public policy from a climate perspective I think the larger it is more likely I would be to say the better policies to say no we're going to say no to that kind of new infrastructure for fossil fuels and encourage them to pursue other opportunities we're going to move on to 214 before I get there I have one more thing to say because representative you had asked about other states that were looking at this issue and I don't I don't know of other states that have put a ban on fossil fuel infrastructure in this way but as you may know there are other places that have done it so Portland Oregon for instance has put a ban on certain fossil fuel infrastructures there these cases have been litigated I'll get to the information on these cases but there they were the rationale used by the city was to protect the health and safety of the citizens there and they banned new fossil fuel infrastructure in the city through new zoning ordinances and ultimately the court when it was challenged ruled in favor of the city they ruled that based on the fact that there was non-discriminatory local laws to regulate even handedly and to effectuate a legitimate local interest they had only incidental effects on interstate commerce and therefore it was valid so they essentially said that the local benefits put forward by the city of Portland Oregon outweighed the more incidental effects on commerce in that case there is another case out of South Portland from 2014 that banned the loading of bulk crude oil into tankers on the city's waterfront there that ordinance was voted on by residents of the city then passed by the city council who had concerns about air quality water quality, aesthetics, odors, climate change the value on property and all associated with this proposed development there and ultimately again the court concluded that if there were crude oil producers in Maine or in the city of South Portland specifically the city's legislation would be equally applicable to those because there would be no differential treatment of the stakeholders within the state the ordinance was deemed constitutional there's more to those cases than what I've shared with you of course but the idea is you had local actors in these cases saying no to a particular kind of fossil fuel infrastructure there where the opponents and we might expect the same in this case charged that this was a violation of the dormant commerce clause and potentially other areas of law as well and that went through the courts there and they were upheld as constitutional so it is possible to to put these kind of bans on fossil fuel infrastructure in place where they would be upheld and on the, last on the eminent domain I wouldn't, I want to be clear that I'm not opposing that legislation we would support that if the committee and its wisdom decided that it was not inclined to pursue H51 the ban on fossil fuel infrastructure more broadly we would happily participate in any conversations on that would likely be supportive but we do also recognize the need to preserve the use of eminent domain for projects that are not fossil fuel projects because you will need them as, you know, for various other things including renewable energy and so so to some extent I understand the professor's concerns on that score on 214 I have not I haven't spent as much time with that I recognize the value we have in the past been concerned about stranded costs of other projects in the state have weighed in on some of those I understand they wouldn't necessarily change as it's written now wouldn't necessarily change the process by which projects are considered because this has been the practice of the PUC if however the the legislation were amended to move more along lines of what you Mr. Chairman were talking about that is putting some sort of as a matter of state policy some limits on the useful life of infrastructure projects that it seems to me could have a pretty significant impact on what happens when projects are being considered in front of the PUC and it's a and it's not merely you're not making this up I mean that is the plan of the state after all to move away from fossil fuel projects it does concern me when we hear about for instance pipeline projects described sometimes as as a bridge or the natural gas in this case it's a bridge fuel it's not at all a bridge fuel we're talking about putting it into a pipeline underground that could easily last 50, 60, 70, 80 years I mean that's not a bridge to anything and I think it is inappropriate to be talking about it in those kind of terms but if instead we were to say we're not going to as a matter of policy allow this to be considered as an 80 year project or a 50 year project even when the policy of the state is to be getting our energy from renewable resources beyond a certain after a certain point that changes the calculus and I think that's appropriate so I'm I hadn't given a lot of thought before this this meeting today so I may have anticipated your question representative but that's that's kind of where we are I think that's what I was going to ask and that that's our testimony I really appreciate the fact that you're digging into these issues I do think it's important to kind of look at both sides of the coin to consider how do we move forward with a positive vision of clean energy and keeping money in the state keeping jobs in this state in the way that we kind of would like to and at the same time recognizing we're doing that for a good reason and it is to avoid some of the negative effects of building out of these fossil fuels Well you talked earlier about 100% clean energy I didn't hear a date I guess has Beepard done any analysis as to what that would look like regarding you know, ridgelines, what it feels, whatever it is from the number of solar, the number and would it be all in state that you're looking for 100% renewables, a lot of questions there I just wanted to finish analysis. I'd love to come back representative to talk more specifically about things, I don't have that for you here today you are probably seeing a number of states that have moved forward and even are not only considering but the number have now adopted plans to 100% at least clean electricity I think New Mexico was the most recent just a couple of weeks ago and these states are they're not all states that you would consider to be kind of leading edge or more progressive in their policies I mean you know, one of the biggest, I don't think Texas is adopted, but one of the biggest in terms of renewable energy development is the state of Texas right now so you're seeing a lot of movement in that direction I'd be happy to get back to you as we look more into what that would mean for this state but you're certainly looking out over time but our time horizon is growing shorter too as we consider what we can possibly do to hold off the worst effects of climate change and you know the numbers, I'm sure as well as I do but a little over a decade to try to really get a handle on this and to move aggressively we have to move very rapidly toward adoption of clean renewable energy and even I might say more than that to reduce our energy usage overall we need to be cutting our demands for electricity to the greatest degree that we can if we are ever going to hope to get there we're going to use as much as we are or ever more and just get it from renewable resources because that too is not going to be enough we wouldn't have the capacity we wouldn't have the capacity to do it all in state either so I think you'll probably see some sort of mix there but I don't think it's always been our position that if we have the capacity to generate clean renewable energy in this state that we should do so to the degree that we can reasonably and shouldn't just rely on somebody else to produce the power for us because we can generate solar and we can generate wind energy and we can generate hydro energy in this state and if we have the resources why should we have somebody else to incur those costs before us? Bill, but I'm going to follow Mark's lead and respond, not respond, but at the query of testimony one of the things I'm really concerned about is whether or not we are acting with as much urgency on infrastructure and the actual, right now, threats that we are seeing from climate change to Vermonters I'm worried about if we're correctly balanced in our sense of urgency on those two things do you have any thoughts on that in terms of your organization's priorities what you're hearing from Vermonters? Do you understand my question? Well, I can respond to the priorities but tell me if you would mind more what do you mean when you talk about infrastructure? So, roads, power, you know, public safety institutions the things that are impacted by, you know, significant storms which we are seeing more and more and so because if we remove in Vermont or if we eliminate all emissions in Vermont we will not stop that impact that we are feeling happening to Vermonters and so I'm concerned and yet we need to do that so what are the, are we balanced appropriately and I want to understand if we are. Yeah, I'm not the expert on that though I think it's fair to say that most people would say that neither Vermont nor probably any other state is thinking it's not doing enough to act and prepare for the effects that we are likely to feel and to some extent that we are already feeling from climate change and that means our budgets will have to grow significantly just to deal with the effects of what does the changing climate mean for us it will mean, you know, more severe weather events in the state and that means that roads and culverts and so forth will be washed out and I know that there was some good thinking done here in the aftermath of Irene and thinking about, you know, are we doing culverts the right way and had to petition the feds to make sure that there were a certain size and so forth and say I'm not the expert on that side of things, for the most part we as an organization spend more of our time and resources trying to fight for policies that will help to address the problem of climate change as opposed to the effects of climate change here and I understand that and I hear that and I believe that we all have to have a shared sense of urgency around that but when I think about what we are facing right now we had utilities in this year and asked them if they are seeing any increase in storms I've been, it's not just Irene and so it is an open question for me so just about how we balance protecting vermonters right now and in the future and right now are the effects the effects are not in the future they're happening right now No question and the only thing I would add I guess is that it is likely to get even worse so that's the trajectory that we are on we are feeling it now really beyond the scientific doubt I think it's going to get worse All our breath, all our energy our angst in this building and don't address infrastructure as well that concerns me so I'm trying to learn and understand if we are doing better I think the answer, likely the answer is no but you can find a better expert than me to describe those details thank you for the question I wish we could be more helpful I guess even to follow up on that you would said that budgets will have to grow so again when we are looking at $733 million in vermon's destruction of Irene alone I granted a lot of that federal money and so on so how do we mitigate the effects that are happening right now as well as grow the budget for climate change That's why you get the big bucks representative Well that's the big question you're right but I need to go down this road to just say oh we are going to have 100% renewables by of course there is no date there I need to see that, I need to see that I have to have some way to tell my constituents that okay we are going to go down this road this is how we are going to achieve it and this is what is going to cost you or this is what the ridge lines are going to look like or this is, you know it's not that simple you make it sound so simple and it's not that simple you say that we've got the capacity to put in wind towers and solar panels and all that you know I don't know if you know what happened up my way when the low wind project went in but it was devastating to communities and it's the last one that's gone in so you know you are believe it or not going to have some pushback on the other end for some other groups as far as renewable energy and what it does to the environment and water quality and wildlife and you know there is a price to pay as well so that's my concern again the toll mitigating for what we have now as well as budget increases for renewable or whatever it is in the future I understand the point I think from my perspective and when we think about climate change we look at it as an existential threat to our survival and the costs that will come because of our failure to deal effectively not just our failure in Vermont but our failure as humanity you know to deal with the amount of greenhouse gas greenhouse gases that we put into the atmosphere and the climate change that results from that is catastrophic it's hard to compare that with the concerns whether they be aesthetic or clean water or habitat with putting in renewable energy projects here I do think that we collectively are going to have to make some decisions like that are we willing to say we will do more for energy efficiency we will put more money into that you all just went through a debate over that which was in the end a rather modest proposal but an important one to move forward when you talk about weatherizing homes in this state that is not on the scale of what Vermont needs to be doing in our opinion in order to say we've done our part to deal with climate change Vermont's just not just another state we are looked to as leaders when it comes to protecting public health when it comes to protecting climate and the environment and so I do think that we all and certainly you as elected officials have a responsibility to lead in that way so I want to do whatever I can to encourage you that way and try to be as helpful as we can but it's not without tough decisions representative I understand that and appreciate that this isn't a question for people that's responding to points of discussion one is a perspective and one is an observation and one being that I think where we all benefit is where we find the overlap between building that resiliency and doing climate work and a very small example that would be no-till agriculture and cover cropping so wherever we can find those I hate to use the word synergy but I can't think of another one right now those mutual benefits I think there's a lot of opportunity there to find those and the other is you mentioned the costs of wind the impacts on residents and I would argue that we've been outsourcing those costs all along to places where fracking is going on for a while to you know the James Bay NASA hydro projects to wherever whatever the source of generation is there are negative external costs and we have been very fortunate in being able to outsource those on my left and so I guess from my perspective there's a little bit of accepting responsibility in recognizing and accepting the negative external impacts of our energies that's my little surprise yeah, so Paul you referenced a number of cases in your test money and I hope you'll be able to provide what you've got there to the committee so that we can I'd like to keep online copies instead of in my holders here and you know the whole aspect of the cost of doing this it is going to cost money but I think it's a question of paying out or paying later and as we you know as climate change has more and more impacts down the road we're going to find ourselves paying a lot more later if we don't address it now just addressing it here in Vermont it's not necessarily going to alleviate those costs in the future because there's continued generation of greenhouse gases not only throughout the country but throughout the world and we've got to do our part in my opinion and act as leaders so that others can see the example we give and join us any other questions thank you very much 120 seconds and then we're going to we've got two more witnesses today and I expect that collectively they will probably take less than an hour the two witnesses which we're going to plan by phone are from NCSL and the council of state governments both Christie Hartman and Veronica Cohen have done some essentially research on our behalf looking at what some other states have done in this area the memos that they've submitted to us are on our websites we can pull those up if you'd like but generally asking them to speak to some of the research that they've done on what other state legislators or local governments have done and when I stepped out just a few minutes ago just to say no there were some but actually I don't know if they were with a specific organization but some youth climate activists I don't know if they were with 330 Vermont I don't know what organization they were with but they may have done but they had presented to me some things that they had written expressing their focus and their desire for our committee and the legislature generally to work on climate change legislation and they had tied each of those messages to Pussybillows which I have put in a cup of water outside here and then bring them in but I just wanted to let you know why I stepped out for a few minutes so no no well they handed them to me so I'm going to dial in Christie Hartman right now NCSL Christie this is Tim Briglin calling from the Vermont House Committee on Energy and Technology Hi, how are you doing? Doing well so thank you for joining us today you are well actually I'm not sure where you are but in our presence you're coming out of a cell phone or a speakerphone in the middle of our committee table we are a committee of nine members of the technology committee also in our room we have maybe a half dozen to ten other folks who are here listening to our testimony today and again thank you for joining us I think that the call had gone out to you in the last week or so seeking to use NCSL as a resource trying to essentially understand better what other states and even localities municipalities are doing with regard to fossil fuel infrastructure and you had prepared a memo for us which we have on our website so members can pull that up but just wanted to give you a chance and thank you again for being able to present some of that information to us so I will leave that open to you we don't have a pre-prescribed time as to how much time we have with you this afternoon I was thinking you know up to a half an hour if that works for you and I can play traffic cop on this and as members have questions and bring them into the conversation as well so we record all of our hearings for the record so if you want to introduce yourself and then you know take it away to the extent that you want to take us through some of the findings that you have perfect well you know thank you for the invitation I'd like to be able to participate today and you know I certainly wish I could be there in person our offices are located out in Colorado though so it's sometimes difficult to get to the east coast this is kind of short notice so I appreciate everyone kind of sitting around the phone and look forward to the discussion today my name is Christy Hartman I am the Energy Program Director for the National Conference of State Legislatures so we cover any kind of energy topic that is of interest to legislators and staff you know I was pleased to kind of get this request and sort of look into what type of state action is occurring related to fossil fuel infrastructure I think kind of generally working a huge push towards kind of clean energy and reducing emissions and we're seeing it kind of the state that you would expect to see those types of bills and measures considered but also I would say a broader range of states is becoming much more popular to look at policies related to clean energy but that's playing out in many different ways a couple years ago we had requests over time from state legislatures looking for information related to fossil fuel infrastructure and moratoriums or banning kind of specific projects that is certainly growing and we're seeing efforts across more states now this legislative session we've seen in previous years however I also kind of mentioned that we see equal amounts of bills related to promoting fossil fuel development so we certainly see both sides but there has been a number of different approaches that we're seeing state legislatures specifically take looking at sort of the continued use of fossil fuels and those specific limits on fossil fuel infrastructure so this may include a full moratorium on new fossil fuel infrastructure or it may be very specific to the types of infrastructure certain type lines or export facilities that type of thing so what I wanted to do is just kind of take a few minutes I know that you do have the document that I sent over that highlighted some state examples but I'll take a few minutes and kind of run through a few different categories that we're seeing and certainly happy to answer any questions along the way you know just chime in or you know ask your questions at the end and we can kind of go from there and hopefully I can provide some useful information that you can apply in Vermont so with that kind of starting most broadly looking at states that have considered the full ban so I don't know most of the bills and measures that I am going to describe are all pending I will say we haven't seen a lot actually be enacted to date although we're seeing lots of different efforts so starting with the full ban New York has had bills over the last couple legislative sessions that really look to providing moratorium on all new fossil fuel developments the bills have always been really short and succinct they basically included definition of fossil fuels so that's physically kind of the coal petroleum products any type of fuel gasses and then basically the bills have focused on banning any type of permitting for new projects they do kind of sell out the type of projects that are considered similarly in Virginia the state has considered a couple bills so they took a different route the bills more focused on how to promote clean energy in the state and then kind of as part of that we said just a line or two in a bill that would say banning or moratorium on new fossil fuel projects in the case of Virginia the bills kind of defined major fossil fuel projects and so I'm not quite sure and I don't know those bills haven't really gone anywhere yet so it would be interesting to see if they actually had further discussions what is considered major projects but also those bills really focused on training the workforce related to the fossil industry on kind of new projects and a new skill set so those are just a couple examples of the big kind of broad bull bands that we're seeing in state legislation I think what may be kind of more active right now is kind of individual municipalities and counties taking action so in the documents that I provided Portland, Oregon and also King County, Washington both have past ordinances and kind of considered measures that look at banning fossil fuel infrastructure and I think that's what we might see more of state legislatures may have a more difficult time depending on the state passing these kind of statewide measures but certainly we're seeing more considerations from municipalities regarding a foreign moratorium or something that says hey at least in that six months or some type of temporary timeframe set to more explore what that would mean for the state or county there's also I think a trend that we've seen for the last several years related to specific to new pipelines and moratoriums on new pipelines and certainly the northeast has seen a fair share of pipelines proposed and whether or not those have actually been constructed I think there's been more cases where there's been enough pushback from local citizens where those pipelines the state legislature has kind of or the PUC has taken action to prohibit some of the construction of the new pipelines we saw this play out in Georgia and South Carolina in the 2016-2017 legislative sessions where there was a pipeline that was a big pipeline that was considered that would bring primarily diesel between South Carolina and Georgia and Florida and both South Carolina and Georgia passed bills in the 2016 legislative session putting temporary moratoriums on any new construction of pipelines I would have to go back and look but I think that the bills were kind of broadly to any type of pipeline carrying hazardous materials in the 2017 legislative session Georgia in particular really looked more into kind of where they wanted to go and whether or not to approve this pipeline they basically passed the bill that focused more on imminent main and eventually said okay this pipeline can occur but the exact route that was proposed by the company would not work and they put more restrictions on the approval process for the siting of the pipeline and then they really focused on kind of setting limitations and requiring more information from the pipeline companies so they Georgia and South Carolina both decided that the state legislature at least would provide an avenue for approval of the new pipeline project which made it much more stringent than either state had prior to that experience New York state doesn't have a moratorium on new pipelines in place but they have basically their state environmental agency has denied any permit request fighting no reasons as kind of the main source so even though they don't have something in statute they are kind of in effect operating in that way and then Pennsylvania is the last state that I saw this legislative section that has a bill pending that was like the moratorium on permitting new hazardous liquid pipelines and they were kind of specific in the type of pipeline granted you know Pennsylvania being a major natural gas state so what to find ways to get export natural gas from their state to other states. Can I interrupt you just quickly Christy this is Tim Briglin again to what extent are these various states constrained by the pipelines that they're looking to prohibit or somehow influence the expansion of are they constrained by FERC and these actually being interstate pipeline issues as opposed to something that can be contained within the state jurisdiction. Certainly that's a huge issue that has come up a lot and for the state kind of legislative role there isn't a lot of action you can take when it falls under FERC jurisdiction and so I think that comes up in a lot of these instances and they are definitely kind of constrained in what they can do in the cases where it's primarily federal oversight you know I haven't seen a lot of specific state action that kind of counteracted whatever the federal proposal or approval was. Okay so I'm not looking at you to pass judgment on any of these bills but I guess I have to assume that they are these things that you're talking about states and the legislation proposed are feasible you know they're something that can be done they're not constrained by FERC well I would say I mean and I'm not in each of these states but I am kind of monitoring the overall trends. Certainly you know a legislator could introduce a bill on you know kind of any policy that they chose and at some point you know even if it wasn't acted it could go to a court case to kind of be determined who has jurisdiction so I wouldn't say that all of these bills necessarily you know for sure right now have no kind of FERC jurisdictional issues because I feel like that kind of comes up as the bills get closer to being enacted and certainly doesn't prevent some legislators from proposing these topics and you know maybe some of these bills are just to get the discussions going maybe the purpose is not actually to get the bill enacted but for the most part I think these are trying to highlight bills that I think have serious consideration so kind of moving on to another bucket that Kristi can we interrupt you one more time to represent the entire question so Kristi are any of the bills that have been passed and enacted into law been challenged in court to your knowledge not any of the bills that I've raised so far I'm trying to think I mean definitely related to pipeline but I have to feel a little bit more research to get specific examples that I know some of these pipeline issues have gone to the court you know I think it states are kind of grappling with we have abundant natural gas at lower prices right now and it's really appealing to take advantage of that resource and we certainly have a strong natural gas industry oil and natural gas industry that is pushing those efforts and so for states trying to balance kind of where they want state headed in the future and kind of what resource met I know that that has kind of come to a head a little bit but if you're interested in kind of specific examples I'd be happy to do a little bit of research and send you anything I can find okay thank you so one of the other kind of state areas that we're seeing relate to hydraulic fracturing and you know I think from 2011 to about 2015 you know tons of state action related to hydraulic fracturing and making sure that states felt like they had proper regulations in place and then oftentimes we see this through multiple technologies the technology moves faster than the policies and so in some cases states were trying to play catch up and make sure that they had found regulations in place related to the hydraulic fracturing process and you know since 2015 it's been a little bit quieter and you know the number of bills and the types of bills that we're seeing across the country related specifically to hydraulic fracturing what's kind of interesting this legislative session is now we're seeing that boost again of limiting certain aspects of hydraulic fracturing or the drilling process or just outright bans on hydraulic fracturing and I think that plays into the state efforts looking kind of into the future and longer kind of clean energy goals for the state and not seeing as much of a role for oil and gas in that so just of interest nine states so far have proposed bills that would limit aspects of hydraulic fracturing which is certainly an increase over the last several years and then one other kind of items to point out we're seeing lots of other kind of prohibitions related to fossil fuel development California has a measure that would limit fossil fuel production on public land in particular Connecticut has a couple bills that are under consideration that really focus on protecting the consumer and they prohibit any type of surcharge on a customer's bill if it relates to the expansion of pipeline activity and I think those types of measures we might be more of kind of the consumer protection role so there's a bunch of other types of bills that we're seeing that kind of limit certain aspects but not fully prevent the future of fossil fuel infrastructure I think kind of the big thing right now is that we're seeing a lot of different proposals but like I mentioned before we haven't seen a lot of these bills passed yet in previous sessions we may only see a couple states look at fossil fuel infrastructure and whether to put any limitations on that this session we're definitely seeing more states but we're still not seeing those bills passed with state legislatures so I think kind of with that that's just a real brief overview but happy to answer kind of any other questions or certainly if I don't know the answer do some research and get back to you I have a question that's representative Chestnut to Enderman although I have an answer to this which is a couple of years ago when our Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant closed and there was a proposal to put a natural gas burning generating station on that site but that was dependent on a pipeline passing through Massachusetts which was I don't know what if it was defeated by referendum a spur a spur off of an existing pipeline do you know anything about the whether that was moratorium of a bill of permitting process of referendum I do remember reading about it I don't remember exactly what happened I know Massachusetts has had a ton of bills you know at least kind of 10 per session that looks specifically at pipeline preventing of the pipeline certainly the legislature has not shown much support for expanding the pipeline network and so I'm not sure specifically what happens with that if no one else in the room knows I'd be happy to run a quick search so I think that would be pretty easy to find thank you it was kinder Morgan pipeline for just you had mentioned nine states with a fracking ban is Vermont on that list so there's not any states that have a ban in place that was just states that considered legislation this session so I don't think Vermont is one of them I think someone walked us up and ran off because we do have a fracking ban but you have a ban already in place correct so you say the nine there's nine states that have considered a ban this session but then there's another five or so states that already have a ban in place but you know it's kind of it's pretty substantial granted there's a couple states that don't have any oil and gas development so you know more just kind of a signal of the support that they're providing but I think in most cases the oil and gas industry is pretty active in the state so it is sort of a big measure so again that was nine that are considering it to have it currently I think so I can double check if I remember correctly but it is around a handful of states have bans already in place well thank you and Vermont's one of those that doesn't really have any oil and gas production there we go any other questions for Kristy Kristy thank you very much for the research that you've done for us and you know I know a few other questions that come up here and what are the many feedback that you have in response to those as well so thank you for your time today thank you all I appreciate it and if anything else comes up Sarah I have my contact information but please feel free to reach out to me and I'd be happy to kind of look into it and share anything that other states are doing thanks a bunch take care bye bye big colorona Sarah hey Ronan it's Tim Bricklin again hi how are you well thank you for being ready even in advance just to kind of let you know the setting here you're on the speakerphone we've got nine members of our committee the house energy and technology committee and the Vermont legislature we've got another handful of people in the room who are you know interested listeners in on the testimony and our committee in recent days and work weeks have done a little bit of work and a little bit of exploration into kind of what's going on in the fossil fuel infrastructure band world we have three bills that are have been introduced in our committee and we have essentially reached out to you as a research resource for us to better understand what may be going on in other parts of the country in this realm and so appreciate you joining us today to share with us some of the work that you've done we record each of our hearings so if you can introduce yourself for the record and if it's okay with you we'll just let you kind of go through some of the information you found we have your your memorandum on our website so members have that in front of them and take it away okay sure great well thank you so yeah so my name is Rona Cohen and I am the senior policy analyst in the energy environment program here in the eastern office of the council of state governments and thank you so much chair Brigham and members of the committee for inviting me to speak with you today so this is an issue that we have not really officially taken off at the council of state governments so I was actually really related to have the opportunity to do some research so I've researched efforts at the state, local and county level to place moratoria on fossil fuel infrastructure and I found legislative proposals in a couple of states that were not successful in New York state last session in this year in Virginia but it has the effort in county Washington plus a few cities leading on the west coast that have established permanent or temporary moratoria primarily on both forage facilities until I can see you briefly through these efforts and by all means if you have any questions so bands that have been enacted at the local or municipal level as I said they largely affect their facility, new expanded crude oil terminals refinery, storage of natural gas and coal so I'll start with Portland so the city of Portland in 2016 became the first city to establish moratoria on fossil fuel infrastructure through their fossil fuel building amendment Portland's band covers new and significantly expanded fossil fuel terminals and note that there was a legal challenge from petroleum trade groups and a few local business coalitions and from what looks to be workers trade organizations the group argued that the city had overstepped its constitutional bounds by effectively blocking interstate commerce and this was an argument that the state ran these court which is referred to by the acronym ZUBA upheld in July 2017 and so the city then appealed to the orgy court of appeals and won and the decision ultimately was upheld by the state's Supreme Court in July and I can take you through a little bit what the explanation was by the court if that was helpful to you yeah okay so so essentially to prove that the amendments were blocking interstate commerce the group would have to show that they were benefiting in-state entities at the expense of out-of-state ones but apparently neither the city of Portland or the state of Oregon have in-state economic entities that are involved in refining or distribution of fossil fuel so because of that there could be no discrimination between substantially similar out-of-state and in-state economic entities so in other words the economic entities were not benefiting at the expense of out-of-state ones in this case so also the amendments don't prohibit fuel exports through Portland essentially they just restrict the size of certain terminals so those exports can continue but there is no ban on that and also the court found that the amendments demonstrated legitimate local benefits to residents through for example reduced health submissions from limiting the potential exposure to accidents or explosions and from reducing the number inside the terminals in earthquake liquefaction zones apparently a lot of these terminals are located near a very large fault line that runs through the state of Oregon probably something you don't have to deal with in Vermont not that we didn't make every 500 years or so yeah exactly I have a question part of it you had said that it went to the Supreme Court and the decision was just in July was that July of 2008 so what happened was the Oregon Court of Appeals so they moved in favor of the city and I believe that was in July of 2018 I have to double check that but I'm pretty sure it was and then the state supreme court apparently decided not to speed up the case okay so in that lake of time so you said from 2016 to 2018 were they still allowed to expand that infrastructure or no you know that's a good question I'll have to check on that and find out for you I'll get back to you on that thank you yeah sure okay so Baltimore is the other city that enacted a similar moratorium to Portland so last year that amended the city's zoning code and were headed new or expanded crude oil terminals and I've been searching but I have not been able to find any legal challenges to that ordinance now at the county level King's County, Washington which includes the city of Seattle in January this past January has a six month moratorium expanding major new fossil fuel infrastructure making it the first county in the nation to take such action so the ordinance doesn't directly address pipelines of rail infrastructure from what I've been able to read it refers to terminal, to bulk storage and facilities to date to wholesale distribution extraction and refinement of processing of fossil fuels that's taken directly from the ordinance and so during the moratorium officials are directed to study existing fossil fuel infrastructure I believe that they were required within 68 chapters of the ordinance to have a public hearing and the idea is to study the existing infrastructure and determine if they would like to enact a permanent moratorium so imagine that imagine that they will be having the hearing soon if they haven't already I've got a question on that I guess as well so that list of facilities in King County, Washington do they have any of those type of facilities or are they all outside of the county I mean I believe that you have within the county okay so they that would include extraction drilling extraction the list would be pretty broad the list the list is really broad yeah when I think about extraction I kind of doubt I doubt that they do I don't work with Washington state so I'm not entirely sure so I can check on that but I believe they have a primary okay sure okay so in terms of the state efforts there are two that I came across and their bands would have been more comprehensive than the local or county ones that I just mentioned so the first one is legislation that was introduced last in New York state that would have banned all fossil fuels infrastructure including the distribution processing storage or extraction of fossil fuels it also notably would ban nuclear power by 2030 and this is a really broad bill it called for 100% renewable energy by 2030 zero carbon emissions from energy by 2030 it called on the state to create a climate action plan a phase out landfill to zero waste disposal system vehicles would have to be all electric or otherwise zero carbon by 2025 and all buildings would be zero emissions by 2020 there are a number of other measures these are just sort of the highlights that I'm trying to make here now from what I've been able to find well first of all I called the offices of the various sponsors and the assembly and the senate I just told them that the legislation without me it would not be introduced this session so I wasn't able to find that in the office of legislation unfortunately but what I did find is that it was modeled after a federal bill called the federal fossil fuels bill that was introduced by lead sponsor representative Gabbard from Hawaii and that called for 100% clean energy by 2035 100% zero emissions vehicles by 2035 and the immediate moratorium on all fossil fuel infrastructure among other provisions now in Virginia there was a piece of legislation that was considered this year that did not move it through the house that by 2020 would have placed a ban on all new fossil fuel generation exporting import terminals, gathering lines and pipelines or fineries and extraction would have called for 100% clean energy by 2036 and would have called for the creation of a current action plan among other things so what I was able to learn the moratorium was the most controversial element of that bill and there was a move to amend it, remove the moratorium my understanding is that there actually would have been import for the other provisions including 100% clean energy by 2036 but that amendment was not created and it did not move forward now I searched I did various searches to see if there were any other with any other legislation similar legislation introduced in any other state and I really wasn't able to find anything that doesn't mean that nothing was introduced but just that I wasn't able to find any similar bill so in my memo I did include a summary of the research report that was prepared in 2015 by the analysis group which is an economic consulting firm they prepared this analysis for the Massachusetts Attorney General's office to assess the need for additional natural gas pipeline capacity for 2030 to maintain power system visibility and control repair costs and I thought that this report might be helpful to you and in fact I did reach out to one of the report's authors Paul Hibber who has participated in the needs of our in the past who apparently was not available to speak to you today but said it would be available later in the week so you can have questions about the methodology methodology that you use but just briefly in terms of the findings the study concluded that given the region's current electricity market structure power system reliability will be maintained with or without electric repair and that's with a new natural gas pipeline capacity between now and 2030 so I thought those findings might be interesting to you as you consider these three bills that you have before you we're actually speaking with Mr. Hibbert on Thursday this week okay so then I'll let you talk to him about how the methodology that he used and my main question was have his findings changed, have they done an updated analysis based on the current electricity system which is obviously constantly changing and more more incorporated into the system so anyway I'll let you talk to him about those findings I hope that Sarah will be helpful to you in your effort I've got a question for you yes excuse me, Ronald on the Virginia one um somehow I got off that particular document here so lost anyway did um when he talked about going to 100% renewable energy by was it 2036 I think it was 2036 in Virginia in Virginia was that just electric energy or was that overall transportation um eating and everything else I believe the New York one was 100% let me check the Virginia one actually I have it up on my screen here if you think they're with me um no it's electricity just electricity right? yeah but I believe the New York one they just defined it as energy which is kind of uh okay well that's what I was wondering 2036 seemed like a pretty short runway but for as long as possible um short okay thank you any other questions for Ronald? Ronald thank you your memo is very helpful just in terms of you know particularly with the banks frankly that we can pull up some of the other information um so we really appreciate the time you put into this I think there were a couple follow up questions which we also appreciate your feedback on so thank you yeah absolutely and I will keep searching if I can find more related information I will certainly send it to you thank you thanks much okay well thank you alright take care okay you too bye great that's it so we're going to have follow up things that she mentioned that concludes our work for today