Alright, sounds good. This is the third meeting of the Cannabis Sustainability Subcommittee. For my Cannabis Control Board, Kyle, is there anyone else in NLE as well? Is there anyone else from the... Yeah, we have four members of the public in the room. So four members of the public, and then as part of the Sustainability Subcommittee Advisory Committee, we have Stephanie Smith, Billy Koster, Jacob Hollitzer, Tim Nalasko, and Megan Howe. Is that how you say your name, Megan? Yeah. Yeah, correct. Thank you. President, so then I will call the meeting to order at 12.05 p.m. Eastern time. I guess first order of business is to approve the meeting minutes from the last two meetings. So now that we have a quorum, you guys both received the meeting minutes. The email from, wasn't the 13th, but from the very first meeting. So I wanted to much to approve. Does anyone have any questions, concerns, discussion items, comments on the meeting minutes for the first meeting? I'll move to approve it, Jacob. All right. Tom has moved to approve. So it's all in favor of approving meeting minutes from our first meeting on September, frame the calendar real quick. All right. Night. Night. Thank you guys. Say hi. Hi. Hi. Yeah, I said hi. I said hi. All right. Night for September 9th. Next we'll motion to approve the meeting for last Monday. And I guess if Kyle is not a voting member then there should be the two of us since we're the only two present. So Billy, do you have any? I think Stephanie can still move or can still second to approve. Well, I will abstain ultimately. But I'm going to second page. It just says act 150. It's supposed to act 250. Easy thing. But I can second the motion, I guess, but I'm going to abstain from voting. Billy, do you have any comments? The only catch I have is there's reference to the active 50 NRB general counsel. I think it says Greg Nobel with an N, but his last name is Bobo B O U B O L. So just typo. Okay. Perfect. So I would motion to approve September 13th meeting minutes with amendments on correcting the typo on the second page from act 150 to act 250 and changing the name to Bobo B O U B O L. I'm going to second that motion. I'll second it. It's with those two amendments. Say hi. Yes. Quickly, quickly before you continue, Kim Watson, the other member of this subcommittee. I think there was some confusion and she's having time constraints. She's a grandparent and traveling doing lab auditing and stuff. And I don't think she's going to be able to be an active participant on this subcommittee. So the board is going to speak with some other advisory committee members and find another member for this subcommittee. That way we don't hit, you know, issues with only having two members in quorum and stuff like that in case Billy or Stephanie has double booked her or else, you know, otherwise for not being able to be here at any of our meetings. So hopefully by Monday we'll have somebody else slotted into that position. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you for that. And then I guess while we're on the topic of meeting minutes, I'm unavailable on Monday and also so I want to talk about we have, you know, Billy and Stephanie on here and wondering how you guys feel about changing the schedule of the meetings rather than doing it Monday and Thursday every week, especially doing Monday, Thursday, and then a Wednesday and then Monday, Thursday, that'll give me more time to kind of compile more primer material and I think have us just have better discussions and just be talking to everyone's time and have more kind of quality meetings. So I wanted to see if you guys were open to changing the meetings the week of September 20th to September 22nd and changing the meeting to October 6th. Okay. That works for me. Okay. Would you look at it at the same time? We also have to make sure that the board and Nellie are available at those times too. Do Jacob, can you send that in writing so that I can make sure that the board is available? Absolutely. Yes. Thank you. I should be. I should be. I have a webinar that I have to participate in. Okay. Noon to one. Noon to one. Perfect. Okay. I will send this and I guess after this an email to everyone, but it's fine. Can I get initial impressions on how people are feeling about changing for like two weeks to a Wednesday? I think because as we're digging into topics, it might be probably the best if we had some more time to do that. So sounds good. So for this meeting kind of over is going to be the last or kind of our overview meetings. And then we're really going to get into the nitty gritty of things starting next week. Well sometime on Wednesday with a review of it's from the Department of Public Service. And so just bringing up the agenda real quick. Make sure I'm not forgetting anything on the conversation we had. Earlier today. Yeah. I mean we don't need to get to another week because Act 250 can get jumping off point to larger conversations. Jacob and I did talk with Ari Rockland Miller. He's the Act 250 coordinator from the Agency of Agriculture. He gave us some good resources. We can put those resources up online and forward them to Billy and Stephanie. You know we talked a lot about a recent Vermont Supreme Court case that looks at the one acre jurisdictional trigger. And if you're under one acre in the jurisdiction that uses the one acre jurisdictional trigger even if you're on a track of land over an acre if you're cultivating on one acre or less you in your commercial product or in a commercial industry you wouldn't necessarily trigger Act 250 I think. That's not going to stand out. The legislature is going to fix that. That was like a technical interpretation of Act 250 and that's not in the way Act 250 it's going to change this legislative session I put money on. So just I wouldn't bank on that provision. That's all I'm saying. Well the Supreme Court ruled out as of Tuesday. So you know I'm very aware of the ruling. All I'm trying to say is that the way that development is defined in Act 250 is slightly different from one acre town and take ten acre towns. And I can't imagine that the legislature won't act next year to correct that technical difference and put jurisdiction back the way it was. So that may not happen but I would imagine that will be the intent of the general assembly come January. All right we'll see. I'm just going to say that the requirements in Act 164 relative to state land state local federal land use or whatever the language says. I'm going to go back to section five and the specific section that says that farming is I believe it applies to this as well that cannabis cultivation is not considered farming. I want to say that's in session law. It's not like they didn't open up Act 250 and say cannabis shall be regulated. So there's potentially some wiggle room to finesse some incentives for some types of cultivation without opening up Act 250 and doing it via session law. You know what those words are how it moves when it moves. You know like that's all an unknown. But I just wanted to kind of throw that on the table. Yeah I think there's potentially flexibility here. I mean depending on what we want it what the Cannabis Control Board wants to do and what is the outside of the legislature. I think we don't need to get into this conversation. I think the outside of the legislature when it comes to 250 is always it ranges from session to session but you know it's a lot. I think the board is just doing outreach to different partners in different agencies with that 250 expertise to give an understanding of certain issues that we might be facing and one of the things that I want to get more of an understanding on whether it's through Ann Ar and Greg and others is whether or not a cannabis cultivation would constitute an improvement under Act 250. The word improvement in that definition can be interpreted as fairly broad and so we're zoning in I think on parts of 250 that are going to help lead to other understandings of how this is going to fit into Act 250 jurisdiction. So without going too much further down the Act 250 rabbit hole I think we made some progress this morning in understanding things. Again I understand Bill has reservations with relying too much on an interpretation through the Vermont Supreme Court because the legislature will have their own priorities come January but you know it still means something as of today. And Kyle just so I understand as of today from that decision it's under an acre it's not triggering. So yeah Tom I can tell you some progress on it because I know we're going to we're going to take up a lot of time in trying to explain things. So in Vermont you know depending on if a municipality has zoning or not they're a 10 acre town they're a one acre town some 10 acre towns abide by the one acre jurisdiction rule but in those jurisdictions no matter what the size of your tract of land is if you're if you're the ruling says I'm going to get confused because it's confusing if you're in a commercial if you're making an improvement on an acre or less of land on that track in a one acre jurisdictional town you would not trigger Act 250. That's what I'm holding on that case says. Yeah traditionally jurisdiction was tied to parcel size in those towns this is now tied jurisdiction to the footprint of the development and if it's less than an acre footprint it doesn't trigger even if it's on the larger parts. So so in practical terms I think it's interesting for if you know if somebody's in one of those towns under that jurisdiction the square foot of an acre is what 44,000 square feet you know depending on your cultivation size it could it could help a lot of cannabis growers up to a point not hit Act 250 jurisdiction. I would just say to close out this argument or close out this discussion is my takeaway was from it was that with the exemptions of regular being from Act 250 there hasn't doesn't seem to be a massive concern from the state as far as environmental impacts they feel it seems as though they were required agricultural practices compliance is adequate to kind of mitigate or quantify or you know deal with the environmental impacts of cultivation and that is written into Act 164 so I think basing things off of that is a good starting point for us and Stephanie we had talked about that at our last meeting there's definitely a lot of outstanding questions I have that I think you would be interested to answer and so we'll go through that I think we'll have like in future meetings. I have some information. I guess one real quick I mean this meeting I feel is a little we've got you know some some time but is there is a requirement in there especially with the nutrient management program I think form 590 that kind of differs to UVM's guidance on different crops my understanding is that they don't have any guidance on cannabis or hemp and so I was wondering what your perspective is on that and how kind of hemp farmers are dealing with that requirements. Yes so the five so actually don't know where the jurisdiction for the required agricultural practices is if it's a small farm I just don't remember it's not my program so I am aware of it but I don't have all the details in my mind right now but I do believe while we don't have standards for hemp what I do believe is there are standards for vegetable cultivation so if a farm of a specific size triggers the need for 590 I think they have guidance for horticultural plants vegetables specifically hemp's not considered horticultural at this point in time though so I think there is a standard and we have had conversations about making something specific for hemp but I don't believe it exists as of yet so. Sounds good I'm working with a few of the growers and nutrient suppliers and stuff that I work with to kind of get an MBK standard that potentially we can use for recommendations as a guidance my understanding if I remember correctly that the certified small farmer is like 50 acres. Yeah. Based enough of what I've seen in that the hemp report I believe you were advising on or helped write within the hemp most farms are like 5 acres and actually even since that report was done I think that was from 2019 majority of our growers are actually now under a half an acre I mean we significantly lost cultivation in 2021 compared to 2019 so it's unlikely that they're going to trigger that standard or at least in the hemp program. Sounds good. Yeah I think it's going to be a policy question we might need to tackle later on is the way 160 acres were ran and like the requirements of farms abiding by that then does it do all farms need to abide by that regardless of size? Yeah so I have had I mean the people we want on that phone call are Ryan Patch and or Laura DiPetro who can really dig in on the RAPs I have had a conversation they are in the water quality division of the agency of agriculture and they are of the position you know based on the fact that cannabis isn't considered farming that they actually would not be the entity the agency would not be the entity that would currently as written that would apply sections 6, 8 and 12 of the RAPs because it's not considered farming therefore we don't have jurisdiction the agency doesn't have jurisdiction so the question then comes who's applying that jurisdiction and is it or is it just a self-certification from a grower or is it or does a change need to happen and if that change is made you know our agency is not interested in looking at thousand square foot grows because these standards wouldn't trigger on a thousand square feet it's unlikely that manure is going to be spread I mean it's possible that there could be overland flow of manure from a thousand square foot grow that gets into a water source but it's probably unlikely so there's that question of scale where the agency would be interested maybe in dipping their toe in and applying those standards if there was a change that something was considered that cannabis cultivation was considered farming so that they could take jurisdiction or if that if the crop is a part of a diversified farm operation that might include animals in which case the scale of that farm on its on its whole size would be of something that the agency would be interested in regulating because it's cannabis isn't the only crop so I think just some like really broadly like just some ideas so piggybacking off of that this is something we're going to have to figure out as well with the applications and what's going to be required if there is I guess an unknown jurisdiction on these things do you think that requiring kind of farm plans based off of RAPs in the application process would be useful so that before anyone's licensed they at least have assessed these things and are at least ideally living up to best practices or in compliance with it regardless of if there's a agency overseeing it I mean that's possible is that there is a part of the application that some basic standards that are explicitly outlined you know that are appropriate as well get incorporated in the application process and then then that individual that applicant is certifying that they that they're going to apply these practices and then it's possible that inspectors could be educated even if it's not water quality to confirm that those growers those inspectors are in compliance with whatever they said they would do so that seems a fair idea perfect and then going back to the agenda so I haven't here like a resource library so I've got a big folder on my computer kind of all of the most updated best practices guides law reports on the different energy water like everything environmental cannabis stuff peer reviewed articles etc so I wanted to create a resource library that we call the access to so I'm working with Nelly to figure out the best way to do that so that is in process to create a folder so everything is there for all of our uses and then as I start to develop more agendas and guides etc I'll be referencing those articles and different areas like page number whatever or pulling out just to kind of help guide us with you know the updated opinions backs everything from the industry so that's what that's coming from most of that before this meeting but it's in process and if that for some reason doesn't work out that will create kind of a reference sheet with all the links I just realized how much longer that was going to take me but so that's in the works and then yeah so in our very first meeting we talked about wanting to do kind of a cannabis cultivation manufacturing process overview so I pulled from some of the presentation I've given in the past to kind of just go through real quick so we're all on the same page all screen share real quick looks like Billy is having some issues with connectivity but not going to go through this whole I can hear you I can hear you fine so believe now I'm presenting so you can see my screen so I'm just going to run through this very kind of quickly talk about sustainable cultivation in cannabis as we see it these days most of this I've done back from probably the last one I did was in 2019-2020 so some little things have changed but you know this I thought was a I can't do that there we go full screen size what's from a new article by Evan Mills I just came out in 2021 kind of going through all of the different drivers of energy using good house gases the big thing I think we could talk about I don't know if it's necessary but it's like the embodied energy and where we're setting those fences or limitations on how we're assessing energy use mainly it's specifically on the cultivation and cultivating aspects but then bringing in all the inputs that you need for kind of cultivation I would say cultivation methodology briefly indoor outdoor greenhouse passive and climate controlled I think what I don't really go too much into depth on the processing but there's definitely energy usages for the extraction machines which I would say is there's the hydraulic heat style to make rosin and resin aspects where you're putting mostly fresh frozen flower so the energy use of actually freezing cannabis and then the machines like hydraulic presses or using hydrocarbon extraction to butane or propane and then ethanol extraction as well and there's also cold water hash which is pretty low tech but then also the baking the vaporation for vacuum ovens and the packaging of that and then waste is like I would say any other industry with the caveat that extraction is going to generate more hazardous waste depending on the extraction method that I'll need to get we'll discuss that during the waste section so pretty much from an energy use the main cultivation factors is the lights, the humidity and the temperature and how all of those interchange and this little diagram I made a little while ago showing how all the different equipment that is being used different types of equipment how they intersect utilize energy and so it's mainly the lighting the HVAC, humidification automation, the fans for air circulation the irrigation systems of pumps, mixing tanks etc CO2 supplementation for indoor and then sealed greenhouse this is more from grower consideration but definitely I would say it costs the reliability of the equipment the consistency ease of use are the main factors cannabis life cycle so this is if you're growing from seed I wouldn't necessarily pay attention to the days on the bottom but it's either seed or clone so you can take cuttings of cannabis plants so most cultivators will have mothers that they have year round take cuttings off of that and turn them into clones which is kind of what you're seeing here using aerators which I'll go into in a little bit and then kind of the final product so here is the propagation so one thing I would say to pay attention to because we're going to need to talk about this and next week's meeting when we talk about lighting standards is I feel especially when you're talking about equipment if you're using it on like a PPE so photosynthetic photon efficiency so the how a light fixture converts lots to usable light are usually based off of what's going on in flowering and then vegetation but I think propagation deserves its own car route because most people are using kind of T5 fluorescent lights that don't qualify and I think it's a financial burden to require gross use LEDs for every phase but this is kind of what you'll see in a lot of gross regardless even outdoor and greenhouse gross this would just be an outdoor greenhouse to start but this is usually how propagation occurs in the cannabis space and I guess one thing to note is also that city of these is really high so you get a lot more less square footage for propagation than you do for vegetative and flowering you go into the vegetative stage so cannabis is a photo curate plant which means it'll stay in the vegetative stage until sunlight or artificial light goes less than 12 hours a day so most I would say you're using 18 hours of light for this phase could also use 24 hours of light though there is on some level a lot of diminishing returns with that and the planting density is a lot higher for the vegetative phase and then you have the flowering stage so as soon as the lighting goes less than 12 hours the plant will trigger to start flowering and then it's usually anywhere from like a 7 to 9 week cycle to get a cannabis and here's some more kind of dense cannabis cultivation in examples so this would be indoor efficiency a lot of gross now we're using rolling benches for indoor cultivation kind of low tech greenhouse and then kind of an outdoor regenerative style and then this is how you can tell that this is ready for harvest is you have the trichomes so the little bulbs that's actually containing the cannabinoids and when they start to mature they go from clear to cloudy to amber and you want kind of a mix um amber is like starting to degrade already but usually a sign of a little bit of amber shows that the rest of the trichomes have been developed then you have the harvesting process so most places hang up plants full on stock also bucket down and dry them in trays just kind of grow preference then you do curing this is what's been going on for I would say thousands of years mainly for preservation but also to increase potency, preserve the turbines and then also to create a pleasant smoke you want to break down the chlorophyll in there which does require kind of strict humidity and temperature controls so there is energy usage with that. There is three different types of cannabis strains but mainly for cultivation purposes there's the indica and the sativa because of how where they evolved they do have different phenotypic characterizations as well as flowering times. This was an estimate from a while ago on what the actual energy needs are mainly because indicas are going to be shorter, broader leaves denser canopy and sativas which are usually longer in stock and area. A newer thing in the cannabis industry and we're seeing a lot of this actually in Vermont is auto flower so there's a strange cannabis ruderalis which came from I believe the Asian steps that is not photo period dependent and will just automatically flower based off of time. This is really useful especially in the Vermont climate because you can get them into fields earlier and they mature and you kind of get an earlier harvest but the plants as you can tell are shorter kind of one main cola so the planting density will be higher but we are seeing that to ensure that with the short growing period in Vermont this is a one way grows are coping with that. You just go to this really briefly but just saying like between the three different phases growers are using different types of lights, metal halides versus high pressure sodiums due into the light spectrum and what the plant needs kind of during that, during the phase of their growth or flowering and then lengthen phase this is really dependent. Flowering doesn't necessarily change as much but this is where growers can kind of put their special sauce on their cultivation style and how big they want the plants. Indoor plants are usually going to be smaller than outdoor plants because they are on a much shorter cycle and kind of in a perpetual harvest. The equipment, so you know from an indoor you've got everything from your lighting to a whole array of HVAC and dehumidification. You do need to pay special specific attention to heating and heating cooling and relative humidity in the rooms as well as circulation. We greenhouse using less equipment because it's getting its lighting from the sun. Outdoor doesn't really use any equipment at all minus pumps for irrigation and weather sensors. Probably too much of this. This is just a rough breakdown. This is going to be different for Vermont because of its growing climate but it is really broken down into lighting and HVAC are the two biggest contributors. Okay, so this is going to need energy benchmark. I would not take this as not necessarily the Bible but it's a good idea on demands from a cultivation perspective and I've started to model this out using a few different studies to kind of estimate what Vermont's energy demand is going to be based off of square footage as well as grams of production as well as water usage. So indoor is using a lot more energy this is looking at it's getting 0.8 grams per kilowatt hour used as opposed to outdoor. And then just the lighting intensity so kilowatt hours per square footage is a lot higher. So from an environmental perspective we want to encourage grows to be outdoor or greenhouse mixed light. So lighting considerations you know the industry is now I feel like fully accepting LEDs and flowering that was always the biggest barrier. That good when they first came out about 5 or 6 years ago but now with more dedicated companies creating kind of specific lights or indoor ag lights the LEDs are I would say up to par these days the biggest issue is just financial costs. They can be 3 to 5 times more expensive than double-ended high pressure sodiums. And so it's definitely something to consider in the Vermont context when we're trying to you know encourage a small farm local industry what can people actually you know afford and making sure that we're not creating environmental regulations that cause a barrier to entry financially since access to capital is definitely a lot different in the cannabis space than it is in other industries. But the main things of growers can take under consideration is kind of the light distribution the lighting intensity and the uniformity of the light. So each back I would just say key consensus that the light and load is really important when looking at your HVAC rather than your sensible load. So most requirements building requirements that look at HVAC is for humans and occupational idea where we care about temperature the plants what we have to pay attention to is deep transportation rate in the community in there. So it does essentially it's a different way of thinking about when you're sizing up HVAC for things. But there are a bunch of new technologies being used in the industry for efficiency. And then I would say these are kind of more of the cutting edge typical gross for indoor how they look like a lot of people are going to using LEDs and stacking gross to capitalize on a lot smaller spaces and using these rolling benches so you can really maximize your planting density and use of lights. Greenhouses so passive greenhouses we see a lot of this one thing from an environmental perspective is the cheaper most used option are these plastic sheeting tarps that do degrade being exposed to UV light and can generate quite a lot of waste. So looking at that from a waste management perspective. Kind of the newer hit on the block which we're seeing a lot of which I believe we will see a lot of in Vermont are these sealed climate controlled greenhouses because they can be used in winter months. And so essentially I would say a lot of these are like cultivating indoors but having a glass ceiling or polycarbonate ceiling and capitalizing on the sun as their main energy source and then supplementing it with lights to make sure that you're getting the daily light hours that you need your daily light integrals what it's called in agriculture and so a lot less energy not a lot less but less energy than indoor still using quite a bit of energy as compared to outdoor cultivation and here's just some examples of different facilities with a greenhouse you're going to need to use a light deprivation and that's to just ensure that when you're in flowering you're maintaining a less than 12 hour lighting cycle and then here's just from a grow that we put in some meters on you can kind of see indoor is just straight you know lights are on the whole time then turn off greenhouse is you know this is with the light sensor so you're only using the lights when the sun's not providing it for you so you are capitalizing on some energy efficiencies there and then outdoor cultivation some models of like regenerative this is what I think ideally we should try to get growers to do or hopefully we will see the small 1,000 square foot cannabis growers incorporating more of these practices which I think we should try to encourage incentivize because you do get a lot of environmental benefits from this style of cultivation using kind of just polyculture cover cropping, green manureing, beneficial insectaries etc. One thing is most cannabis growers are using efficient irrigation systems as well and part of efficiency is how they're actually operating the facility that they have through environmental step points so they profess that for design. We're using temperature, daylight, electrical, air movement so just wanted to kind of run through that here's on this this is a certification I created with City County of Boulder that's just incorporating strategic energy management ISO 5001 standard into cannabis so we don't need to reinvent the wheel we can definitely take from what under industries have used and just incorporate it into the cultivation context and then I left this slide in I was kind of referring to it in our last meeting but when looking at cannabis cultivation facilities you know based off of how Vermont is creating the zoning regulations but usually there's specifics on where cannabis cultivation can be there is going to be a clustering effect so that does have grid impacts or environmental impacts in different geographic regions because you do most likely have to be away from schools, liquor stores, government buildings etc. and there's only so many of those places available so just wanted to run through that real quick. One question I do have and I don't know if we have the answer to it but I was wondering what the state of Vermont with available resource available commercial buildings is right now and are we going to be seeing cannabis cultivation processing facilities kind of moving into unused commercial buildings that are already available or are we going to see kind of purpose built buildings? I don't know the answer to the question about available square footage in commercial buildings I would venture that indoor cultivation may I mean it depends on what a town is doing honestly but it might be in an industrial area I don't know Billy if you have any thoughts on that already rather than in a commercial area when I think of commercial personally I think of our downtowns I don't see cultivation happening in our downtowns but I say that but I don't know for certain and then available square footage in industrial areas I'm sure there's an industry group that has that information but I don't know the answer to the question but it could be new because a lot of people reuse buildings that aren't appropriate for the use that you're going to use them for and it's better to build new you know just to return to Act 250 that might be an appropriate use of Act 250 for indoor cultivation at scale but Jake from the market structure kind of analysis I think they're making an assumption of more of an 80-20 model there's a lot of assumptions in that 80-20 indoor outdoor and I think most of that will be kind of small cultivators so as far as your kind of indoor commercial or industrial space that those will probably be I'm guessing more of the outliers but again based on assumptions I think that's probably what you're looking at Jacob just so time check it's 12.45 I know we've probably got a couple folks that wanted to provide comment in five minutes five minute warning when the public comment time comes if you have a sense of your membership and who is looking at indoor buildings or starting from scratch so on and so forth but five minute warning but we have some members of the public who might be able to provide some anecdotal evidence or examples so yeah I don't have a good sense that either I think it's going to be driven largely by the intensity of and volume of use and how much space is needed I think there's probably a fair amount of available kind of commercial industrial space in Vermont I know that there's at least one large growing operation near me that took residence in a lumberyard that closed so I think that's often the Vermont way that especially entrepreneurial startups kind of go into spaces retrofit them for their purposes and go from there but I just don't have a good sense of like the size and demand on those sorts of resources so it's hard for me to say yeah the reason I bring that up is we see in a lot of places I guess there's a couple of different aspects but one is how laws are written a lot of the times you're applying for a cannabis license you have to be operational within a year to prevent people from kind of hoarding licenses etc but that also kind of had unintended consequences of forcing cultivators to buy older buildings or buy what was available and then start retrofitting so they didn't run the risk of kind of construction overruns etc putting their license at risk but then that because there was no requirements necessarily on building envelope which we'll be talking about next week we should definitely think about it to make sure that buildings are as efficient as possible from an envelope retrofit perspective so that's where I was going with that and then yeah the last thing on here was really the estimated impacts so I started to do some calculations on that the only one I've really got finished at this point is looking at I don't know it's looking like the industry can use somewhere between 3.8 billion to 7 billion gallons of water when it starts off based off of the VS estimates and then as far as energy use I have 52 megawatts megawatt hours give or take but I need to kind of go back through and do that but I'm going to try to have those estimates for us as well as different how different state agents there's different state regulatory bodies have written their regulations and what's available from the conversations we've had in the last two meetings for like energy water in ways so we can kind of get into the nitty gritty on things could you just repeat that water consumption was at 3.8 to 7 billion gallons yeah and that's annually that's annually given and I will share this with everyone I was just kind of rushing to I just wanted to make sure I heard you right so thank you yeah I wanted to make sure it's three three no I'm sorry I'm speaking that's three million gallons to seven million gallons it's yeah I have a question we're talking about regulation and that's what I do I'm a regulator but I'm wondering whether or not some of these environmental standards instead of talking about them in terms of regulation whether or not we can talk about them in terms of incentivizing you know getting people to voluntary do things the right way and again I'm a regulator but that sometimes is a better tactic and providing some benefit to that individual that does something the right way rather than saying everybody's got to do it this way I mean I guess there's advantages to both but I wasn't sure if you're aware states that look at it in terms of incentivizing good practices but just something to think about I think a lot of states incentivize good environmental practices through their application process and they kind of do like a merit based application so the more kind of environmentally friendly already kind of get these little brownie points on that I am from really really like incentivizing is probably the way to go and that's definitely reached out to Energy Vermont to bring a representative in our meetings because I think when it comes to energy efficiency we want to have regulations that don't interact or don't essentially prevent the incentives and the rebates that are already in place and so I think it's finding that balance of looking at kind of the environmental impact so like for indoor cultivation I think we should have some kind of energy regulations at a base minimum and then everything else should be incentivized and so I think that's probably the best way of going about it and I think we'll definitely be a topic of conversation when we get into each specific aspect of that you know I think with the wraps for water I think most of it is kind of I don't think it needs to be regulations on that because if they have to abide by these required agricultural practices they already are essentially practicing best management practices as it comes to that. I just have to reiterate as I consistently have that the wraps apply to agriculture there may be different standards for the same activities and resource impacts for non agricultural activities so the RAPs may be the best practices but there may be a whole different suite of kind of expectations for things that aren't considered agriculture that are more restrictive so I'm not saying that's the case but I just we have to be wary of using the RAPs as the baseline for everything because it may in fact not be right. Yeah I guess that is what I wanted to discuss last meeting my understanding from the way 164 was written was saying that they would need to abide by sections 5-12 even though it was not considered agricultural practice so I guess we need to get some clarification on that but yeah we'll definitely discuss that in each section I do want to now give it the floor to the public that's in the room. Before we do that can I just ask for one more thing thank you Jacob for sending out the schedule future meetings that's super helpful at the beginning of this meeting you talked about an alternate schedule of going like 2-1-2 every other week so if possible by like today or tomorrow the latest revising that schedule because I need to bring certain experts to some of these forthcoming meetings on waste and water so that it can be a productive conversation I need to get those folks booked so the sooner I can know the dates of those meetings the better so I can make sure we have people there so thank you. We'll work on that Billy and just before we move to public comments I know we're running out of time so I'm of the right opinion so it says the week of September 20th which is what Monday you're proposing to move that meeting to Wednesday. Okay so that would be the 22nd and then no other meeting that week okay I just want to get a good make sure Nellie understands exactly what and if you could provide this to Nellie and email that would be great and we can find a channel on Wednesday that does work for you Stephanie and Billy would it just tell me Wednesday's didn't work or was that the following Wednesday? It was this October 6th that I have a conflict we'll figure it out I'll let you know I'll talk to Billy specifically and then I'll let you all know we can talk about it and I think the 20th I think the 20th works for both of us. The 27th? Yes. The 22nd. The 22nd. Oh yeah 22nd whatever it is yeah. Alright and just so Billy and Stephanie you have the correct documents for the 22nd meeting Jacob has on here reviewing the department of public services energy recs do you have a copy of those Billy or do you need us to send you one? I was going to send out that's everyone with additional information prior to the meeting. Yeah it would be great just from a board perspective if you know these recs are already written how do they look to the subcommittee how do they look to everybody and getting to a point where we can start getting stuff out of the subcommittee for more board level understanding of how the subcommittee feels so it feels like there could be made progress there depending on how Jacob you interpret those energy recommendations and how they work for Stephanie and Billy. I'm going to go to the first to get a set some deliverables. Fantastic. Alright I know we've got probably got some public comments. Jeffery Brane. Yeah. If you would mind just saying your name for the record. Hello my name is Bernardo Silva I'm a policy director at the Vermont Various Association I wanted to thank Jacob for his presentation I thought it was very informative I just want to pick up on some concerns I have that kind of go beyond what was covered today the main issue is regarding processing packaging and waste if you know or aware of the Act 164 dictates or you know regulates that oil concentrates can only be dispensed in cartridges those e-cigarette cartridges are not regulated in the United States as of yet they're mostly produced in China or I think they're all produced in China by Chinese producers who don't really factor in Americans health you know it's a mass produced product so there's already an underlying public health standpoint but with regard to that being the only form or method for monsters being able to purchase product you're talking about a huge waste problem you're talking about throwing metal cartridges with lithium batteries into our dumps and leaching into our fields water streams and so you know this is a huge issue with regard to the presentation how this times in you know there's a rare situation here where a lot of times environmental sustainability doesn't go hand in hand with what's sustainable for business but coincidentally here when looking at processing the different levels of processing that Jacob brought up you know you have water based processing which is the simplest and I think creates the least amount of waste right you're not dealing with hazardous chemicals you're just doing ice and water so mainly your energy consumption or is in refrigeration that refrigeration is already used in hydrocarbon extraction and then moving along the line CO2 extraction and then fractional distillation right so in the order that I stated you're talking about not only what type of processes yield the most obviously you get the most out of the least with solveness extraction then with hydrocarbon then you get less with CO2 then you get less with fractional distillation because you're concentrating the product all the way down to a smaller compound within the original raw material considering all this you know solveness extraction is the easiest one to enter for a small business so aside from it being the most environmental sustainable it's the most sustainable from a business standpoint so why am I bringing this all up because as written in title 18 on Vermont Statutes chapter 84 possession and control of regulated drugs sub chapter number one regulated drugs possession 430H chemical extraction via butane or hexane prohibited no person shall manufacture concentrated cannabis by chemical extraction or chemical synthesis using butane or hexane unless authorized as a dispensary pursuance to a registration issued by the department of public safety pursuance to chapter 86 of this title as some of you well know there have been documented risks with hydrocarbon extraction in the past but organizations have come out on a national level to serve as certification processes for not only the equipment but the laboratory in which these products are being made so going back to the scale solveness then hydrocarbon then CO2 then large-scale fractional distillation basically with cartridges the existence of this regulation where oil can only go into cartridges you're basically limiting the hydrocarbon extraction being banned you're limiting the creation of products to CO2 extraction and fractional distillation which are by far the most expensive to get into with this regulation that CO2 is banned the dispensaries are the only one with their unlimited licenses the only ones that can produce these products you can't make and then finally in terms of solveness which is the regarded as the most craft or the most sought after product because it is the one that resembles the original plant the most in terms of smell, taste, etc. it's literally a concentration of what you have not a chemical extraction that essentially with a 60% THC ban is capped as banned right no one goes out and a product a solveness hash product that's below 60% THC is considered non-desirable compared to a product of higher THC that's just how it is so there's all this overlap going on you know we're going to fill our dumps with metal cartridges we're going to have a public health crisis when this is the only way people can consume you're affecting Vermont business owners who produce other methods of vaporizing that are more natural such as Pyrex you know hash oil rigs for the coal bill term you know all these things are overlapping and it's affecting Vermonters as consumers, as producers and environmentally so I just hope that this is taken into account by the subcommittee because you know it is a serious issue I don't want our dumps filled with cartridges you know other regulation in Vermont against e-cigarettes has been guided towards curbing the use of this so why didn't we pass a law that makes it so that this is the only method of consuming I appreciate your time today I need to run for another subcommittee as well so I'll be super brief hello everybody Jeff this is hello from our association and Vermont kind of equity coalition thanks for your time just some numbers that we're looking at that we've seen we pull the cannabis community across the state annually our analysis shows that we've got over 500,000 square feet in total cannabis production on an annual basis and of that half a million figure we've got about approximately a 60-40 split so 60% over 60% grow outdoor and keep in mind that's light depth outdoor not greenhouse not hoop house that's once a year maybe twice a year pulling a harvest so these are families that depend on this livelihood meanwhile about 40% grow indoor or using mixed light techniques I do want to mention a couple of concerns really quickly with regards to outdoor cultivation we are seeking that gets redefined legislatively as farming those who want to grow outdoor right now they are not concerned in agricultural practice yet have to abide by the RAPs we think that is fundamentally unfair equitable further land right now is going up in Vermont commercial land is going up even faster so right there full stop barrier to entry if we're asking people to seek commercial land when we know how much land is used for farm purposes in the state so things to think about I'm leaving a lot behind because I need to jump to another meeting I'm heartened to hear a push to move towards regenerative practices I think that falls in alignment with what we're seeking in terms of redefining outdoor cultivation we would look at and what we're advocating for just a front end some things for you guys non-continuous canopy size you cannot have regenerative farming if you have a fixed block of a thousand square feet on a piece of land it's just not practical light depth should be considered not just indoor but also outdoor as well because that's basically what we're doing one of the central intents of 164 is to transition the illegal marketplace we need to meet Vermonters where they're at now we can expect them to throw away everything and fit into a small fairly defined box I've got a lot more to say I think this is a great discussion thanks everybody thank you so much can I ask you a couple of questions for you with the figures you just asked with the 60-40 split and the figures you're pulling is that illicit and kind of what's your opinion on how many farms that's a really great question the survey figures in front of me so I want to misrepresent them but I would respond by saying this Jacob and thank you for asking that question right now guys in Vermont we have large market actors that are touting a 100,000 square foot production facility keep that in mind when we're thinking about environmental standards and really where we want this market to be we are seeking statewide production caps indoor 10,000 square feet mix like 20,000 outdoor 40,000 so one to four ratio this is common in other more sort of progressive markets so I can follow up Jacob with those numbers but that's how I would respond right now thank you so much really appreciate both of you guys taking the time out thanks okay I think you can move to adjourn Jacob yes move to adjourn this meeting guys all for your time I will be sending out the email to the subcommittee and board members to change the meetings for next week right after this so thank you everyone join the meeting at 1.04 pm you start thank you


Hello, everyone. Welcome back to JSA TV and JSA podcast. We're recovering the latest stories, trends, and innovations with leaders in global connectivity, real estate, and the networks within. I'm here right now with Carol Brown, one of those global thought leaders with Tamponet. She is the Director of Infrastructure Development for Tamponet. Welcome, Carol. Thanks for joining. Good to be here. Yeah, absolutely. We're happy to have you. Let's go ahead and start off with, well, there's so many data center operators in the room today. We've had a bunch of them on JSA TV already and talked with quite a few of them. So if you could just explain how Tamponet is supporting Norwegian and really global data center operators to enable growth. Sure, happy to. So Tamponet is an infrastructure owner in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea. Essentially, it was developed initially for the energy sector. So we've got a long history with supporting energy companies and that general area and their ESG strategy. But within about the last six or seven years, we extended that product set to the carrier community. So to data center operators, but data center customers, hyperscale customers, retail customers, other telcos. So we have been supporting that for about six years or so. But within the last 12 months, we embarked on an investment for a specific data center led network here in Norway. So it's connecting the existing data center locations here within the Nordics. Also some locations that we anticipate becoming important over the next couple of years as we see lots of data center activity here in Norway, excuse me, but also the Nordic region as a whole. So we came up with the concept for Norfest to enhance the network that we already have and have been using successfully, but also to anticipate the transition to more data center activity here in the Nordics. And also the requirements of data center operators and their customers for a different suite of products. So moving away from the 100 gig services that we've been selling to customers who go, we're operating at such a scale, we need to use our own infrastructure, whether it's spectrum or spectrum as a migration to dark fiber, what we're investing in and building this year right now is to allow that customer segment to continue to grow at scale. Excellent, I love that. That's so exciting. You heard it here all about Norfest and folks should go on the website and learn more about that. I think that was the perfect kind of nugget of information to get people excited about it. And also you're discussing the Norfest subsea network on a presentation later today, I believe. So could you give us an update on the cable project and kind of just, you know, where we're at right now? Sure. Well, my technical colleagues and partners will give this. So it'll be a formal detailed and engineer led presentation later, but we've half finished the system. So during the summer months, we laid the cable from Stavanger to Christian Sad, which coincidentally is from the Green Mountain facility in Stavanger or that Stavanger region to the bulk facility in Christian Sad. So we're taking in locations along that route. The cable ship starts loading the second segment, which will go from Christian Sad to also on Friday. Oh, wow. Day after tomorrow. Then that project will continue until December or so. So by the end of the year, we will have a fully lit high fiber count system across the Southern coast of Norway that connects to our existing routes through to the UK and to the Netherlands. And we will be open for business from the start of next year on a totally new and totally diverse backhaul system. And even though the system is in the water, effectively it's a backhaul option for Norwegian systems and Norwegian data centers to connect their facilities in a way that is completely separate from everything that exists at the moment. So we've had a great year. We've had lots of good weather in Norway, which apparently we shouldn't take for granted. And we're on plan for an RFS before the end of the year. Wow, that's incredible. Congrats on all of the success and growth. I mean, in Tampa, that really has a lot going and it couldn't possibly be more relevant for this interview today. I mean, that Friday deadline is happening and then end of the year. So I hope all of the data center operators out there are watching this and getting excited about this. All right, excellent. Well, thank you so much, Carol. It's been a pleasure getting an update on Norfest and chatting with you. Happy to. Yeah, all right, awesome. And thank you to all of our viewers back home. Thanks for hanging out with us at JSA TV. Happy networking.