Recommendation to receive and file a report on the Clean Pathway Community Partnership between the City of Long Beach and Southern California Edison.  (Citywide)
Will answer the motion in this case. I'm not really I'm 58. I'm 58. Is a report from Public Works recommendation to receive and file report on the Clean Pathway Community Partnership between the City of Long Beach and Southern California Edison Citywide. There's a motion in a second place. There's no public comment. We have two. Dave Sugar and Tiffany Davey has come forward. Dave Sugar. Aren't I commenting after a presentation? What am I commenting? Mr. Mayor, we do have a presentation. We've invited S.E. to be here to give this presentation about greenhouse gas emissions reductions and all the partnerships that they've been working with, couldn't it, at Long Beach? And Eric. Go ahead. Thank you, Tom. Honorable mayor, members of the city council. We'll go through our PowerPoint pretty fast. But we did think it was important to highlight a lot of the work that has been happening and our our how much progress we've made in this clean pathway, our community partnership with Southern California Edison. As we make as we get closer and closer to the Climate Action and adaptation plan and really making the improvements that are needed to meet the goals that that are outlined within the plan. We're working behind the scenes on partnerships like these to really position ourselves and be able to to do more. So I'm going to pass it over to George Cadenas, who's going to go through the PowerPoint. But I did wanted to point out that Edison, Southern California Edison is where they're we're their biggest customer in the area. We've been working with them on major initiatives in the past, highly successful ones. Just a couple of them include the LED streetlight conversions, many solar and battery storage installations, a lot of energy efficiency improvements at facilities, and then most recently, the installation of EV charging stations throughout the city which continues to pick up steam. And we continue to do more and more in that area to get ready for the continued electrification of our transportation system. So with that, I want to turn it over to Dr. Deena, who's going to walk us through the presentation. Honorable mayor and council members. Thank you for having us today. So my name is George Godinez, and I am the contracts and grants officer for the Department of Public Works. I'm joined and also joined here by Vic Noel and Bryan Bustamante from Southern California, Edison. And we're here to provide information on the joint initiative referred to as the Clean Pathway Community Partnership Program. The first will touch on the partnership timeline, discuss the mission, vision and values. Then we'll discuss the initiatives and achievements to date. Benefits and next steps. Finally, our partners are here to give an overview of their commitment to the community. In March of 2019, the City Council studied the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, also known as the CAP, with the primary purpose to provide a framework for the Long Beach community to reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for the impacts of climate change. In August 2020, as part of action related to the city's consideration of forming a community choice aggregation entity, the City Council directed staff to strengthen the city partnership with sea with an eye on raising awareness of both existing programs that provide the community with options to purchase a greater mix of renewables and information related to more efficient energy use. In November 2020, the city and city officially formed a collaboration by developing mutually agreed upon efforts to further sustainability and meet capped targets and goals. The pathway development phase took place in January of this year and resulted in a guiding framework agreed and including an agreed upon mission, vision, values and key objectives. The Partnership's mission is to implement a framework that execute sustainable, affordable and reliable energy improvement opportunities. The vision is to serve as a collaboration model to support a sustainable, reliable and affordable energy future. And we really feel that this will set the example for other cities to follow as they launch similar partnerships with See . The partnership is guided by six values, including accountability and commitment, alignment of mutual priorities to deliver positive outcomes, maintaining an equity lens by promoting resources to community members with historical roadblocks, organizational knowledge sharing, transparency by understanding organizational processes and communication. By promoting open exchanges to build meaningful relationships. The Partnerships Organization includes subject matter experts from several city departments with one city and city staff member designated as team lead for each of the four key objectives. Team leads meet biweekly to discuss, troubleshoot and report on developments. And while the largest group, the larger group meets bi monthly. So the partnerships for key objectives are made up of several initiatives. Here we have the clean energy transition objective, whose goal is to increase public awareness and participation in existing C program and offerings through joint advocacy efforts, public awareness campaigns and community engagement partnerships. Achievements so far include implementation of the first collaborative social media campaign focused on C green rate program. And then we also obtained funding, AB 32 funding in FY 22 to support commercial and residential greenery adoption. The funding will go towards programmatic efforts, including marketing at potential customer rebates, while ensuring alignment with CARB regulations. We also have an internal working group of staff from the city manager's office, public works, development services and Energy Resources working, working on these efforts. Finally, we leverage the city's utility billing to provide the community with sustainability messaging and worked with you to include power options information in the 2022 city utility calendar. The Energy Solutions goal is to provide solutions and technologies that enable the community to manage to better manage their water, natural gas and electric energy usage while saving money. This year's annual events include the execution of an SC corporate giving grant to fund $40,000 for a tree planting program in disadvantaged communities along the 710 corridor and working with Bombay's Conservation Corp. to implement the program. The program kickoff meeting occurred last month and we're targeting for planning to be completed by the end of this fall season. We're also engaging with the Office of Sustainability to address concerns related to ongoing maintenance. The Technology Innovation Objective seeks to improve the development, acceptance and implementation of emerging energy technology strategies in support of the city's renewable energy goals. This objective is focused on valuing resiliency provided by solar and battery energy storage systems to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and improve city facility energy efficiency. So far, we've identified solar city facilities using diesel backup generators and developed a draft analysis framework and process to assess facilities and determine areas of focus for comprehensive solar and battery cost benefit analysis. The Transportation Electrification Expansion objective focuses on investment, emerging technology acceptance and streamlined processes to further electrification, reduce GHG emissions and achieve air quality goals throughout Long Beach and surrounding communities. These initiatives mainly focused on EV adoption. Achievements include initial meetings to discuss possible project projects and the application process and working with the new City Fleet Acquisition Manager to develop fleet strategy. We also submitted over 29 applications to SC for their Towards the Ready program that has a potential to add over 500 plus new EV charging ports at public workplace and fleet locations. So the benefits of this partnership are numerous. By improving our communication, we've been able to increase the speed, effectiveness and action between both organizations, along with improved internal alignment. We are also building an environment based on shared accountability and a strong ongoing commitment for achieving tangible results. Most importantly, we're improving our alignment of environmental priorities. By 2030. His goal is to provide 80% carbon free electricity to meet its 2030 cap GHG reduction target. The city will need over 192,000 metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent GHG reduction. Stationary energy, including all fossil fuels used in electricity generation and makes up 49.2% of the city's total emissions. So the city's ability to reach its 2030 cap GHG reduction target heavily depends on C as the city's electricity provider meeting its own 2030 goal. Ultimately, 98% of the target reduction will come from the 2030 goal and 10% voluntary participation in the green rate program. Similarly, his goal of 100% decarbonization by 2045 will be a significant contributing factor to the city's 2045 carbon neutrality goal. For next steps will continue and expand on our implementation efforts. With recent developments revolving around the infrastructure bill, we anticipate this partnership will play a key role in the implementation of the bill's objectives, especially those focused on EV chargers and renewable energy. We also plan to foster a culture of continuous improvement by consistently assessing partnership results and looking for areas for improvement. So now I'll hand it off to Vic and Brian to discuss his commitment to the community. Thanks, George. Good evening, America. And city council members. My name is Becnel. I'm Southern California, Edison's government relations manager for the city of Long Beach. Part of my major responsibilities. And that role is to be the liaison between the company and elected officials like yourselves in your offices. I work closely with a lot of your staff to help resolve constituent issues and whatnot, but I wanted to also let you know that please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly if you should ever have any questions regarding our policy priorities or or operational issues and concerns. Uh, as George mentioned, as he is committed to the community. Using shareholder funds from our parent company, Edison International. We. Support local nonprofits across our service territory, both big and small, in Long Beach. I'm particularly proud of our community giving. In 2022, we provided over $900,000 in philanthropic support to a variety of Long Beach serving organizations, such as the Aquarium of the Pacific Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach and many others. Digital equity. Enhancing digital equity. Just recently, we provided $150,000 in grants to be divided among a handful of Long Beach organizations to support and enhance digital equity, such as Centara Shore and Long Beach Math Collaborative, among others. And. Just to put in a plug on a current opportunity that we have is our Edison Scholars program. Each year, Edison gives 30 $40,000 scholarships to high school seniors across our service territory who want to study STEM in college. I've reached out to many of your offices to help promote that program. The application period is still open and is open through December 13th. If the public should be interested in applying, they simply need to go to Edison Scholars dot com for that application. Thank you very much. Right. Hi. Good evening. My name is Brian Bustamante. I'm the senior adviser supporting the city of Long Beach. I help support a lot of the business operational needs on the day to day basis. So in terms of strengthening our electric grid and creating a clean energy future, I'd like to touch on improving reliability and really focus on , you know, how we're transitioning into this sustainable future so as to not only track reliability each year, but we produce a publicly available report to every city tribe within our service territory, including the city of Long Beach. Estes reliability and Long Beach specifically continues to not only be good overall, but also have some of the best reliability within our company. It continues to be a focus for us. In terms of investing in our infrastructure, we're continually investing millions of dollars into projects and upgrades in Long Beach to continue to improve this reliability. These projects include grid modernization across the city, extensive system and improvements in the underground network around downtown, a rebuild of our substation in North Long Beach. And we also recently began work on a battery storage project on the East Long Beach substation. As part of it and in relation to time of use in managing our GHG related emissions as part of a statewide initiative to use more renewable power, our customers will be gradually transitioned over to a time of use base rate plan. These plans encourage customers to use energy at the times of day when renewable energy like solar and wind is most abundant and at the lowest cost. Sustainability. Energy efficiency will continue to be an item that supports the citizen. We are currently actually working through supporting our terminals at the Port of Long Beach monetarily through an energy efficiency rebate to implement high mast led lighting. Finally electrification. As we continue down this clean energy path with the city, we also we will also continue to look for opportunities to partner with the city. The couple electrification to drive down these greenhouse gas related emissions. The C e charger 82 and charged transport programs are good examples of this. And George touched on earlier how the city has participated in these programs. It will continue to be a focus for us to support the infrastructure upgrades around the city as necessary and also including with the port, the work at the port as well. I'll turn it over to George to close us out. Thank you. In conclusion, I'd like in conclusion, I'd like to re-emphasize that he has selected Long Beach to develop this partnership as a potential model for other cities in the future, which means I anticipate many emails from other cities in the future asking us about how this program went and being an expert in the field. And also, I'd like to give a thank you to all the departments who have been involved in the partnership as well, which include City Managers, Office, Public Works, Harbor Development Services, Economic Development, Financial Management, Energy Resources and water. It's really been a team effort. So thank you again, Mayor and council members, for having us here today. Thank you so much for that presentation. I just have a few thoughts. So first, I'm happy to support the Clean Pathway Community Partnership. I remember the genesis of the context of the conversation on the CCI. Prior to that, I also remember the City Council having, you know, very stern conversations with Southern California Edison about the downtown outage , the major downtown outage and the need to invest in infrastructure here locally, have more local discussions about what the condition our infrastructure, the resilience of that of that infrastructure looks like. I also know that we're at the precipice of a major transition in our ports, and we have to make sure that our city is a part of that. Just one clean zero emission electric truck could be a megawatt of power and that this will require significant investments into charging and enhancements to the grid. I'm particularly interested in this. I think the federal infrastructure bill will make investments toward that. The ports are looking toward the future. We have to make sure those investments help create living wage jobs as well as the major transitions. I think that's something that's important. I like Mr. Lopez that you mentioned the electric vehicle charging infrastructure for commuters in our city. I think that's a big opportunity, too. But we have to make sure that we're really looking at it with an equity lens. Areas that are a lot of times right adjacent to the freeways already, Bill, and breathe poor air and they oftentimes they're not in a place where there's infrastructure in place for them to even, you know , participate in work in an electric vehicle. We participate the programs we offer are sometimes the only thing they have access to in order to have an incentive to buy something or install it at their home or have electric charging in there in their area, in the electric vehicle charging stations that we do have, or a lot of times there are 110 right there. You know, you can sit down and eat lunch at Uptown Commons and after an hour, you've only added maybe five miles to your car. Right. So we have to think about where the Superchargers are. If you have Superchargers, people will drive and support that business and eat lunch at that place simply to get an hour on a supercharger. So it's an economic development opportunity and that's a supercharger. And so that those are certainly things we should look at. And the last thing I would say is, as we explore this partnership, some of our open space plans are directly related to the availability of Edison Raceway. And in the areas that have the least open space, some of the only opportunities they have are the Edison right away. Historically, Edison Edison's real estate folks have been very aggressive about monetizing those, prioritizing leasing to anything like a nursery or whatever it is, and have been resistant to open space. But that's some of our last opportunities on the West Side and North Long Beach for open space. And so I hope that as we look at this partnership, we think about reprioritizing the values in particularly in areas that lack open space or partnerships that can be mutually beneficial for the development. Open space cities need time. We need to note that that parcels available so we can write the grants and do the designs. It could take five years to develop a apart. If you don't have that type of partnership, it's very difficult to do so. So those are the things I would submit to say we should think about as we move forward. So it's really a truly beneficial partnership that advances equity. Councilman Austin. Councilwoman Allen. Yeah. Thank you. Um. I want to just first say it. Thank you, Eric, for your introduction and George for your presentation. You know, it's important and we're going to need to use every tool in the toolbox to reduce emissions and speed up our transition to clean energy. And as Southern California Edison's largest customer. We have a significant influence and our partnership with them. We need to find the funding to buy 100% green energy. And we need more residents and local businesses to make the commitment to 100% green energy as soon as possible. So I look forward to the a report coming back in December. I do have some questions with regards to our what outreaches on Southern California Edison doing to prompt residents to switch to the green rate. So in the partnership, we've actually been working collaboratively, collaboratively with Etsy to promote the green rate. So what we've done is we've tried to be more more mindful of of using our own social media accounts. What we've done is we recently we actually worked with ASEAN to develop that social media campaign. They pushed it out on their channels, and their channels reach more of a regional level. We then collaborated with them to use our own channels to then post that information to our residents. We also collaborated with them to leverage their next door account to focus green rate program messaging, specifically in the Long Beach area. And then we also have ideas, especially with the funding available now in FY 22 for maybe 32 to work more collaboratively, collaboratively on possibly more multimedia type efforts to promote the program within the city as well. Okay, great. And then my next question is, how much progress has Southern California Edison made on the charge ready 2.0 program implementation? Because I know, like our high rise is low income family buildings older than 20 years old weren't built with wiring for EV charging. So I know it's been slow, but it's going to be key for expanding to zero emission vehicles, especially to our renters and condo owners. So the program just opened up in July. And we're our goal is to get 38,000 charging stations out within the service territory over the next five years. That being said, we, the city of Long Beach has the most applications out of any other city within our service territory by far. And I think it's a symptom of the collaboration and the fact that we're looking at everything possible. We are completely open to exploring additional sites. It's just. At this point. There's about 29 applications in even just since July. So it's moving very quickly. So if you have any recommendations, will gladly take those. Perfect. Thank you. And also, I have another quick question for you. Has Southern California Edison invested in any might microgrid projects locally here in Long Beach? So where there has been some conversations about a looking at a microgrid in the the port area that's still a work in progress in terms of doing a specific microgrid here a lot of those projects at this time are customer driven. However, we are looking at opportunities to maybe couple some of those technologies, which is what I, I touched on a little bit in terms of the battery storage projects at some of our substations. So we're exploring it, but it's kind of a new piece for us. Okay. And then also has with regards to your Southern California Edison's fleet. Is there a timeline or what's the plan for that going 100% emission. Their omission. Are you are your is your fleet currently. So like our fleet of. Okay. So at this time, we do have a plan to do that. However, we're not currently retrofitting our approach from a utility standpoint as it's hard because these are big, heavy duty vehicles. We're not taking the approach to retrofit them. We want something that's sort of built for our industry. So it's definitely something that's on the horizon for us. But we're we're trying to get the market to catch up with what we need. And then one last question. Are there any, like, simple, straightforward opportunities for local property owners to invest in solar, solar cooperatives? I'm sorry and sell it back. Are there any opportunities for business owners or or property owners to invest and sell solar and then sell it back? So we have solar rates. The rates the goal really isn't so they can sell it back. It's really to be net neutral within the our tariffs, but there are opportunities for compensation back, but it's not necessarily a retail rate back. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Sabrina. Thank you. And thank you, folks for the presentation tonight. Great job. I want to speak off topic here for a little bit so much the work the council offices that they micro-level a street later a small power outage. So as long as it is here tonight, I wanted to commend Vic North for just providing a superior level of customer service to our office. I think you've been here less than a year, but it's been quite noticeable and we will feature the Edison Scholarship in this Friday's newsletter and continue to do so through December. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I also want to commend your office on the additional support my team has built, better supported, and we appreciate that. There's nothing harder for a family that either has an infant or a senior citizen than when a family member doesn't have power. And so those updates on your website and the regularity of which they can be updated and the ability to reach out to Vik or whomever from my team is really critical. I will say, though, that this year we had the least number of power outages in a very long time. And I think that that has a lot to do with a lot of the VoLTE upgrades that you've done. However, as the city embarks upon what I know Erik is so excited about, which will be a record breaking infrastructure decade, we really need support in staffing up your ranks to be able to support the planned changes and checks that are necessary to implement the EV charging stations, the VoLTE upgrades, all of those things. And I know you're struggling to get people just like the city is qualified. People are very hard to come by. But there has to be a solution. Otherwise, these major infrastructure projects across our city won't be able to move forward because we as a city have made a commitment that if we're going to have a street, we want to give you that opportunity in advance to fix all the things that are underneath that street before we pay for it. And I know that we've had some challenges with Volt locating and fixing and those timelines. And I know that they're they're not unusual challenges, but we do need to plan. The region will be getting significant federal funding. We're looking at some bond options. And we need you to be prepared to support us on that because the residents can't move forward and we're going to have some strict timelines. So I want to thank you for the work today and know that more needs to be done. And then I appreciate the the movement towards green energy, but I also want to speak on behalf of our senior citizens. Our senior citizens are experiencing 40% increases in grocery costs and gasoline cost 15% increases in some grocery needs and necessities. And energy is a place where they just can't take anymore increases. And so I would love to see an option that allows people opting in to the Green Plan, which I think is a great idea, but pacing ourselves and recognizing that our senior citizens are on a fixed income and their Social Security is not increasing at the same rate as inflation is. And so we need to really think about the ways in which you have supported our low income communities very, very effectively. And communities that are not typically considered low income are going to be experiencing some some pinching of their their pocketbook as all these costs have increased and their income has not. And I know that I've talked to a lot of seniors recently that are trying to figure out how that $800 a month or 1200 dollars a month that they live on can stretch further than it's ever had to stretch before. And I know you're a big part of that, and I appreciate your partnership. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Zendejas. Think you raised me. I just wanted to thank you, Eric, George, Vic, all of you guys, for the presentation and for your continuous partnership and willing to work with us and for your excellent customer service. I know I've email you in panic that late at night and you and your team have really come through and really helped out my residents in times of need. And I just wanted to publicly thank you for for that. And I look forward to the continuing building of our partnership. Fantastic. Thank you. And as we conclude and go to public comment, I just want to echo and say, Vic, you're doing an incredible job. We love your service. And Larry and Kiana have been very thoughtful and responsive, not just here, but across the region as very public comment on this item. Yes, we have to. Dave Shukla and Tiffanie Davey, come forward. I mean, we know who the public comment is. We can just come on at this point. That's good. Come on. I mean. What am I doing here? Um. I couldn't help but laugh a couple of times during this presentation. Southern California Edison is one of the primary reasons why the state of California can't yet meet its climate goals. You have been holding the entire fucking state back. AB 1139 this year. Do you have any idea how much of my time wasted and for what? To take away the net metering, the battery storage and the solar panels that my neighbors have had for ten years. You asked Councilwoman Allen if there's a possibility of an electricity co-op that could get money back if they're producing an overage with their solar panels. Every car in the state has a program like that. The only people who don't want you to have net metering so that you can know how much you're sending back to their grid. Are these folks. I've been seeing it for ten years. I've also been a rate payer of Southern California Edison for the past 24 years. So for the entirety of my adult life, I've been watching this city make the wrong decisions since the O'Neill administration. The city of Long Beach could have created something like L.A. DWP back in the nineties. We didn't. And that's why the port had to bail us out of the recession in the nineties. The building that we're sitting in. This was paid for by the port. As a result of those decisions. We know from the M.W. analysis that if we had implemented a CPA, it would already be making money for the city today. By the end of the decade, we're talking about a couple hundred million dollars per year. A way to optimize across all the oil abandonment costs when they say they want to gradually work people in to the green rate or whatever it's called. What they're trying to do is figure out how to hold on to really bad contracts. Case in point horrible project the city is responsible for. I grew up across the street from the East Point and Studebaker. Project shouldn't have been rebuilt and you shouldn't have slapped 600 megawatts up to 300 megawatts right now. Right. A battery storage across the street from my mother's bedroom. We, the fire department, doesn't even have that much baking soda for an electrical fire. Um, but more importantly, it's because of contracts like that that have grown there. Delta has been basically making chumps out of you, and the innovations in the electricity markets have been one of the most fascinating things where you feel a graduate student study. If I didn't have to come home and help out here. The key discussion needs to come back. This is a fucking slap in the face. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Okay. I'll make my comment rather brief. Timothy Davie, District President Speaking in opposition of this item for a number of reasons, but I only highlight one, which is accountability. But I'm going to walk back to one of the items we discussed earlier this evening about mental health, and we've been very concerned with the pandemic since the beginning of the pandemic. In my partnership in assisting landlords and renters in the city, one way, perhaps, we could have been supported. But many other utilities did actually had a header, something close to our humanity about the impacts. As I was helping residents receiving bills upwards of 20 $500 past due. Disconnection. Disconnection. Disconnection. They're already stressed. But let's focus back. Let's go back to 2015. Those 30,000 customers that were affected, the cpu c0i results were what, 15 million? We supported SB 174 to have 4 million allocated back to the city. Granted, there were many items addressed so that we did not incur those same damages again. Insert 2021. Continued explosions underground. And then let's just go to the last weekend or exactly one week from when we passed today, where the same security and enforcement division issued an MCO in the amount of $550 million for his wrong and lack of. Accountability in the right. Myers in liberty, Thomas and Woolsey fires. Just want to go over that damage. That was 385,000 acres damage and destroy nearly 3000 structures and five fatalities. 550,000,375 million of which they can not step away from. So who pays for the future cost incurred in future disasters? We can almost assuredly be assured will occur. Thank you, members. Please cast your vote.