Sustainability Committee Meeting  8/16 Citizen report

Guest post by Joan from Lakewood

History

So  I have been following the LAC sustainability committee since late June when there was a request of the City Council to allow them to research the mandating  of electrification of homes during remodeling. I did an interview with Lakewood Informer about this subject and shared my knowledge of the federal laws passed in the seventies – Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (Purpa) with the LAC executive board and my love of gas stoves. 

I believe that this caused the Sustainability Committee pause as at a previous meeting they talked about modifying the proposal. 

However there is 180 million federal dollars available and this committee is determined to “get a piece of the pie”. And I believe the City Council’s Emergency meeting on August 7 helped to energize this committee to continue to try to mandate this electrification. Home Rule and leaders with an agenda can over come all laws. 

8/16 meeting

So as my husband and watched this meeting we could not understand how this proposal would be made policy by the city council.  The chair of the committee admitted that there was no way they could collect the necessary energy usage data (due to privacy issues)to use as benchmarks but then stated that  there were approximately 5000 structures in Lakewood of which 4800 were under 5000ft. These 4800 structures (presumable household structures) are responsible for  41% of the  greenhouse gas emissions in Lakewood. I asked my husband wouldn’t it be a better use of the money to go after the 59% from the bigger structures and he said that piece was probably car emissions. I looked up today greenhouses gas emissions from households and there were several articles quoting 20% to 73% so I do not believe this is settled science yet. 

So it was decided that collecting data would be difficult, the discussion turned to what small issues could be addressed. There was an interesting discussion on the permitting process in Lakewood and the number of people that pulled permits. It was brought up that some people do not pull permits because of lack of knowledge (I learned that you should pull a permit for replacing a water heat although there is ambiguity in whether you need to pull a permit when replacing “like with like”) and additional cost to the update. 

Rebates and actually paying for the electrification was discussed. Generating of forms and the means to inform the people about program was another topic. Nate W brought up that DEI should be included in the process. My thought on this was another government program picking “winners and losers” and if the committee really believed in inclusion this would be a more overall program for all of the city. 

So in conclusion it seems that the committee will have some plan because those federal dollars under the Inflation Reduction Act need to be spent. And it is important to have a plan when those dollars are made available.

Thank you Committee for all your hard work and especially looking into how hazardous those Gas Stoves are. I think you will find some recent articles stating they are not so bad. 

PS the last topic was the introduction of the Xcel and Committee Choice Energy Bill that will be introduced in the 2024 legislature. I am looking forward to this bill.