Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Okay, that's your job, right?

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: That's me.

[Speaker 0]: I'll just say, Peter, you had approached me, there was a conversation I know in the Senate Agriculture Committee, and the baby had the bill introduction on June. We've actually taken some testimony about prime egg soils in Vermont and trying to better understand what that means.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: And we're gonna hear more tomorrow, I think,

[Speaker 0]: from the agency on that question. But in the meantime, Peter had asked to come in and speak on behalf of on behalf of the solar. I think I think it's specifically solar. I know it's renewable energy. But Peter, anyway, I'll let you tell us who you are.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Sure. My name is Peter Sterling, and I'm the executive director of Renewable Energy Vermont. We're the trade association representing all of the businesses that work to bring robot to a renewable energy future. And this is currently one of my big fears, which is sitting between people and food. I guess thank you for your You deal

[Speaker 0]: with food all the time.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: No, I mean like lunch. Here, the less time you have for lunch. So, this is not that cool for me. But thank you for getting me in and thank you, Patricia, who is incredibly in helping me get in there. All right, so a little background. I signed on at REV. I joined REV as the executive director in 2021. Prior to that, for four years, I was the chief of staff in the Vermont Senate. So, I was like Conor Kennedy downstairs for four years. And prior to that, for about two and a half years, worked with Anthony Polina to, we traveled around the state talking with dairy farmers, trying to get them to come together and purchase and run their own milk processing as a way to get more money as opposed to just waiting for a milk check. So I mentioned those two previous experiences because I've been in a bunch of dairy barns and being in the Senate for four years, Pro Temps office certainly interacted with a lot of farmers. And I just wanna say, before I even launch into all this and all that, the two and half years with dairy farmers of Vermont and trying to get that milk plant up and running. In the four years in the Senate there, I never had dairy farmers come to me and say, the challenges I am facing are exacerbated by having a man go to solo. Dairy farmers have many challenges. I can't speak to other kind of farmers. I've very little experienced But dairy farmers have a lot of challenges, whether it's the coop structure, the variability in milk pricing and how it's set, the cost of grain finding help, loss of land, loss of age is a big one, as we know, right? When most of us talk about working out, it's you go lift weights for dairy farmers. It's someone leaves the farm to get a job to get some health care or a state salary. Never heard a farmer complain about solar being a challenge to them being able to run their dairy. It never came up. So, anyway, that's what I'm gonna talk a little bit about. Jed. So, just as a chart, this is a chart I did, or you can see it great. Vermont has about a million acres of primag soils, and we've used about see, I forgot to write that. I put the number in there. We've used about 1,800 acres of solar, 1,800 acres in Vermont are dedicated to solar currently. And about four seventeen of those eighteen sixteen were developed in the last three years, '23, 24, 20 '5, within the limits of disturbance for solar that serves Vermont's energy needs, 250 kw to five megawatts.

[Speaker 0]: Can you say that again, Peter? Sure. And and it's your It's Tom.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: We should be looking at it. Yeah. Okay. So this is the total amount of land that has been converted to solar in Vermont. Total total land. Total forever since time in Memorial, 1,816 acres. Of that 1,816 acres, 417 acres have been used between 20 converted between twenty three and twenty five for projects that are meeting our renewable energy standard needs, the 55, there's two fifty kW to five megawatts. And that is area, just to be clear, that's the way that they application the Section two forty eight process works. You have to define the acres of primag soils that are within the limits of disturbance, being the giant fenced in area. That does not mean that if you have a 30 acre piece of land that is hosting a solar array, all 30 acres have been disturbed. Really, land that's The soil that's actually been disturbed is almost exclusively for a road to access it, a concrete pad, and that's kind of it. Everything else is just soil and you have to mow it all the time. So that's just to be clear, that four seventeen acres that you see that's been converted over the last three years for this Vermont solo is just within the limits of disturbance. It's not actual soil that's been ripped up and all that kind of stuff. I also just wanna be clear because I don't wanna I see you have a question. This asterisk in the bottom is important to me. From 'twenty three through 2025, there were two larger than five megawatt projects which have been proposed. Those are not for Vermont necessarily. Those are going out of state and those have disturbed it, have about two twelve acres that have been within the area of disturbance. So I just wanted to say this column here is for meeting Vermont's energy needs and this is the renewable energy standard that was debated a couple of years ago and put into place. These are two other projects that are not necessarily for that renewable energy standard, but it's worth noting.

[Speaker 0]: That four seventeen then, that's just for a three year period. Yeah, that's right. And then it doesn't include the asterisk amount of the problem.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Right, it does not because these are the projects that are meeting our renewable energy goals. These are just other things and we can talk about that as kind of a different kind of game right there. But yeah, I could go farther back and look, it takes a lot of time, but I just did the last three years to access that relatively quickly. The number that jumped out at

[Speaker 0]: me was the total of almost 998,000. So the total of the primary ag soils, almost a million. In fact, you've got that at about a million acres. Yeah. A total land in Vermont is 6,000,000 roughly, which for some reason, when we first had the conversation, think with Heather Darby, she showed us some maps last week. I had the impression that a larger part of the state was primary ag soil. So this is helpful, and I want to go back and make sure that we're talking about the same thing.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Well, this came from the census data, the ag census.

[Speaker 0]: Actually, now that I'm saying that, she was talking about not just primary, but

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: secondary Local importance. Yeah, that's a different number. I'm not trying to play games. I just thought this is a number that we always talk about, are our primary Ag soils? We have about a million acres out of our 6,000,000 acre state. We have 1,800 acres in solar now, and I thought just over the last three years, converted about We have about four seventeen acres in the limits of disturbance, I can hop to go back. Think you got it. Representative Berger, yeah.

[Rep. Ruth (unidentified), Member]: Just trying to understand

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: the

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: four

[Rep. Berger (unidentified), Member]: seventeen acres, you're saying that's the roads

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: and the

[Rep. Berger (unidentified), Member]: concrete pads associated with the solar projects?

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: No, no. So let's say you have a five megawatt solar array. The general rule is there's one acre of One megawatt needs about four or five acres of land. So let's say that five megawatt array takes 25 acres, that would be like fenced in and stuff. And that 25 acres would be called the area of disturbance, you fenced it in. And so the CPG process requires you to develop or to look at that within that area of disturbance, that 25 acres for that project and say, how many acres of prime ag soils are within that area of disturbance? You would have to bring a soil expert in and look at that. What I was trying to say was even though this whole array is fenced in at 25 acres, it's not like the bulldozers go in and destroy them, wipe out the whole 25 acres of primax soils. In general, the only thing you're grading or moving real soil for is a road or a concrete pad. You don't really move that much other soil around. And so you're not really wrecking primax. So it's like, I remember like a solar array after twenty five years, the contract, you just pull that stuff out of the ground. Does it actually happen? Well, that would depend on the economics. But if you wanted that land to go to some other use, go back in there, get rid of the racking, get rid of the solar panels, you recycle them, you take the concrete footers out, which you can do, and then the land is a field again. So that's why it's important for us to understand. I just want to give the context that you're not remediating an entire 25 acre site necessarily of primax soil. You're probably looking at more couple acres of primax soils that are actually being moved and stored on-site. It's not the whole array. Clear as mud? Yeah. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: You are, to be clear, kicking it out of production for twenty five years.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: 100%. 100%. It is. Mean, you could grow, like, some people are trying to grow some like herbs between them and like, oh, what was, yeah, like you can grow, you can have sheep grazing in there, but in general, it isn't like, it's generally you're not, like, growing, like, 25 acres of corn anymore. Right? Like, you grow some other stuff. But in general production, you know, put bees in there too.

[Speaker 0]: I was very good, I said, think you were.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Thank you. You're 998,000 acres of primary soil. You must be counting tax corners in that still.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Axe owners? Tax corners.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Tax corners. Yeah. Up in Williston. I mean, I I don't see that there's that many acres of prime ag soil available for agriculture anymore. I think a lot of it's already seen development.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: So just to be clear, we took this number from the Vermont Ag Census. This wasn't a Rev or Peter Sterling creation. I went into the Vermont Ag Census, which I thought it was pretty commonly referred to. I thought it was a fair number. If there's another number, I'm happy to reference it, that the Vermont Ag Census is a number that's pretty widely, I think, referenced.

[Speaker 0]: And the point may be that

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: some percentage of that has been developed already. It's

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: out

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: of production because it's too small, practically ugly to 100%. I just didn't have any other way to get a number, I went to the Vermont Ag Census.

[Speaker 0]: Representative Lipsky.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Thank you. Peter, for clarification, the asterisk line at the bottom, if that's not part of the Vermont renewable energy, is that exported out of

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: state? Yeah, the con well

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: because that's half of the Yeah, yeah. Over half of the

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Oh, yeah. The contract for at least one of those has been signed with an out of state utility. Don't I know where the other one, I don't know if that's been a contract, but not to get into energy Nerdsville, but to especially before lunch, the electrons are actually used by Vermonters. If you're a Vermonter who wakes up in the morning and says, I hope the electricity I'm using comes from renewables, not oil and gas, and you live anywhere near one of those, you're getting those electrons. The utility in Connecticut's actually getting the renewable energy credit for it. But the Vermonters getting the clean electron for both of those because we're the closest one set towards. So it is benefiting Vermonters in a bunch of ways, but I'm not here to debate those larger questions. I'm from Lemoyle County

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: and I there's zero primary ag soils used, but we have a few large installations. But there's one, for instance, on Beach Hill on the stove that's on the edge of a gravel. Yep.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: So that is zero because Well, representative, I'm just being clear. I'm saying is between 2023 and 2025, projects are built between 2025 in the Royal County. Zero. Yeah, before that, definitely. I'm just saying it takes a long time to go through all these records and I just didn't have the time to go back to, like, 2015 or whatever. I I was trying to be really clear. That is 2023 to 2025 only. Projects that have been built that are serving Vermont's res During those three years. Three years. I could go back if you want me to, and I could find out how much is Well, I'm

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: familiar with your soils, and it's totally abuts the municipal gravel. And I Yep. Maybe they weren't considered primary soils.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: I mean, senator Richie Westman has solar on his family farm, which definitely in Mollie County.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: And the the final question about primary ag soils, are any of those in forest use? There are primary ag soils, obviously, You that are

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: can find thousands of people more knowledgeable about what primary ag soils are than me.

[Speaker 0]: I think it's a question we can ask Ari

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Again, again, I just wanna be clear. I always been under the impression that The US that the Ag Census comes up with this number. It's a number that's widely discussed as a credible number. So I threw it in there. I don't mean to mislead the committee in any way or cherry pick. This is the, I guess, I've always heard thrown about in the USDA. If there's another number that totals up primax soils, I'd be happy to reference it. But I think this is kind of the most important one in a way. This is modern times. This is how much solar's climatic soils are really being taken out of production over the last three years. And I think it just gives context to this conversation. We

[Speaker 0]: should probably let you continue.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Well, is actually the meat of what I'm doing. So, I'm glad there were Thank you for all the great questions. Okay. And this is, I think, this is the chart I think you got from the American Farmland Trust when she was in here, she did, I think a great job. It just shows their prediction, modeling. I know she had a lot of caveats on the modeling. American Farmland Trust modeling predicts about 41,000 acres of ag land will be converted to development in Vermont by 2040 versus about 1,200 acres. And that's their modeling. I don't know if it's right or not, but I just thought I'd give that as context for this committee. Seems like it could be that that doesn't seem like a number that's not believable to me. But I did want to throw up that little bullet point right there. Lease rates for solar are typically for farmers are typically in the $1,200 per acre per year. That number is set for twenty or twenty five years, depending on length of the lease. And when you're talking about leasing ten, fifteen acres a year of your farmland. For this solar, that's a pretty good chunk of change coming in to help, I would argue, keep the land open, keep it working the rest of the property. So, that is not an insignificant amount of money a farmer does receive if they choose to lease their land for solar. President O'Brien? Peter, it doesn't necessarily go through Act two fifty, right? It's more PUC. There's a parallel act.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Law says that solar does not go through Act two fifty, it goes through Section two forty eight, which has taken many of the criteria for Act two fifty and just put it into two forty but you don't have to go through both. You just go through Section two forty eight. Was there a mitigation ratio? Yeah. Think I wrote about mitigation in the next one.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Yeah. Here's So solar projects comply with AAFMs Act two fifty procedure reclamation of Vermont Ag Soils. Here are some the points that you have to comply with. There's many others. It's a big long booklet. Any ag soils that are disturbed are securely secured on-site, meaning you have to make a berm. Often you fence it in, make sure that ag soil stays on-site. Ag soils are rarely allowed to be graded during construction, except for road building or stormwater runoff prevention. If you wanted to grade ag soils for another purpose, you would have to do mitigation, amend your permit. It would be a very costly and difficult procedure. So, for the vast majority of solar arrays, the only grading you are doing are these two allowed uses. There's in addition, there's weight restrictions on vehicles that can be driven over ag soils during construction to prevent soil compaction. And during decommissioning, the developer conducts a bulk density test to detect if the soil has been compacted and if it must be remediated. So, there's a bunch of safety checks in place to make sure that during the construction and decommissioning of a solar array, the ag soils are not harmed. And I just threw up this picture of a fellow I met at a conference just a couple of weeks ago just talking about how solar panels are recycled. I thought it was a nice vigil. There's been a lot of talk about what happens to solar panels once they're done, and you can see these folks are making it into glass and they recycle the aluminum and all that stuff. I just thought it was a nice picture to remind folks that there is something we can do once we take these solar rays off of land. If you don't want to go down that road.

[Speaker 0]: I know there's typically twenty or twenty five years of stated life. Are we Now, here we are in the year 2026. Have we been able to see in Vermont any projects that have reached that

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Not in their yet.

[Speaker 0]: But they're talking about doing it somewhere.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Somewhere, yeah. There's a plan. People are planning for it. What I think this also talks about for some sites, this hasn't happened in Vermont as much, but solar panels used to be a lot less efficient back in the early two thousand, like 200 watts. They just didn't produce a ton of power. Now because of technology, they've doubled. They're like 500 watts. So people are going back into some of these old arrays, like on a roof and something taking off the little 200s, putting in a 500 watt, you're doubling your power. And that's a really good thing. I think that's what most people It's repurposing the existing array to get more power out of it. But I know Rev has been in conversation with ANR about establishing recycling program. I think bottom line is these solar panels are 90% silicone, which is glass. And there's some stuff in them, but there's no reason they can't be recycled. Peter, just like to make questions. So if I have a 30 acre cornfield and I turn it into a solar installation, are there mitigation penalties that I have to move some to have the HCB conserve an equal amount of land? No, no, Not like in Act two fifty. But I would say this, and I'm not a lawyer, I've not done this on the PC, but I do believe that the second bullet point, the ag soils, if you were to grade, I do believe you would have to do if you were to grade for a non road building or non protection purpose, like just want to make it more flat, you would then have to do some other mitigation. But in general, since no one's doing that, they don't mitigate in another way. There are people who can- It's not considered to develop and thus lost a minute.

[Speaker 0]: Right, right,

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: right. All right, so I think I have one last slide. Why are we doing all this? Why are we talking about solar? I think this is really important. New England relies on 64 baseload natural gas plants. When we don't have enough renewable energy, we get energy from the grid. We're connected to New England. Primary source of power for our grid mix is natural gas. Okay? There are 64 of those plants in every other state but Vermont. Okay? Every other state we do not host a baseload natural gas plant. I would like you to think about citing in your community a 60 acre natural gas plant. We would never do it. Just to give you, I think, since you're in the attic. I did it for committees who aren't as probably familiar with acres. But 60 acres, just so you know, I'm sure you all have a good idea, goes from national life to the State House here, all the way to downtown where like Threepenny or the library is, back up to the Shaws, and then back to natural life. That's how big 60 acres is. There are 64 of those baseload plants in every other state but Vermont. So, when we talk about why we should have solar in Vermont, when we do not, we are leaning on those natural gas plants and the literally millions of people who live within a mile or two of those plants. And we ask them to generate power for us and just to write it to the last piece I'd like to make. These three pictures are of what our mix coming into Vermont looks like during this recent cold snap, which seems to be going on for kind of ever. You can see this one is 33% gas, 20% oil, 25% oil. This one's 58%. This is dirty stuff that comes in when it's really hot and really cold. In other words, when renewables can't keep up with demand in our region, we turn to fossil, oil and gas. And all of that is burned out of state. We ask every other one of those communities to host those plants so we can have power. And I think when we talk about why we put solar or wind up in Vermont, there is a reason that we should be lessening our load on these plants that are not here. That's, I think, a big reason to consider even talking about this, Paul. So I think oh, no, I'm sorry, one more slide and then I'm done. One of the ways we can lessen the load on open spaces is support the net metering program, which incentivizes on-site construction on rooftops, parking lots, barns in this case. There's a bill on the House, age seven sixteen by rep Chris Morrow that would help make net metering more affordable. The more we net meter, the more we build on-site, the less we are going into open spaces. So, that was my last little plug. Thank you. Representative Nelson. Okay. Just a couple of points.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Careful when you say the community would host a 64 a 60 acre natural gas site when the community where Boston Bank for me host New England waste search systems and the landfill next to much better than 60 acres.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Right. Okay?

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: So and with all the all the buzz that goes on for that, how many acres of solar would you have to have on the ground to replace with that 60 acres of natural gas is doing? I mean, that natural gas

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: is cranking out a lot of energy.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Oh, yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. And on demand. Yep. Like the switch.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Yep.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Whereas if those solar panels are under this much snow

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Yep. Right. You would need many megawatts, but renewable energy brought in and many other people who are working on this, you know, we don't think Vermont There's no scenario honestly, where Vermont's going to generate 100% of its own power. We're too small to say, we don't have the land base. We are always going to need imported power, 100%. Small nuclear would do it. If that exists, which it doesn't. But offshore wind off the coast of New England, that potential, has not potential, it's reality, it's generating power. That also cranks out massive power mass amount of power. I just got to visit those turbines this summer. One rotation of one of those turbines, one rotation of one turbine, powers a house for a day. That is and we are building dozens and dozens of those off of the coast of New England. So, we're talking massive potential to power us. So, again, I don't want to leave this committee with the impression that REV is thinking we should just build solar panels everywhere in Vermont, get 100% of our power. I am just saying when we do build solar in Vermont, we are displacing that natural gas and that oil that comes from those other communities. That's all I'm saying.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: The rooftops, I'm all for if they're efficient and if they produce more electricity than the carbon it takes to create them. We have a we have a 998 foot barn barn roof that was just built, and it's ready to carry the tanks.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Vermont's energy mix so heavily reliant on New England's energy mix is so heavily reliant on natural gas that we are decades away, decades away from that energy mix being clean enough to not offset the carbon offset from making a solar panel.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And then the last point I'll make is this Pleasant View Farm, Pleasant Valley, state piers Yep. That captured their methane and are scrubbing it and turning it into natural gas and they now can heat Yep.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: The whole village of Petersburg, and that's off a two acre site.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Yeah, those methane digesters can crank out a bunch of natural gas, but they're incredibly heavily subsidized by the federal government. They don't pencil out unless you're bringing in something close to 7 figure subsidy. So, market forum is limited because you need federal massive state money to make those happen. But when they do do them, like you say, they crank out, they take that methane and make a lot of natural gas. But it takes a big subsidy, a giant subsidy. Representative Ruth.

[Rep. Ruth (unidentified), Member]: On an airplane going over North Carolina, I see a lot of fields. Yeah, I'm flying over and there's tons of suburban area where I see all these box stores with no panels. Yeah. Why are we not, why is your roof pushing to get a rooftop over there right by the state building, no solar panels. I see most,

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: see Walmart's. That's what

[Rep. Ruth (unidentified), Member]: this Preserve farmland, why aren't we actually

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: actively doing That's what I'm saying. That's what

[Rep. Ruth (unidentified), Member]: this I would assume Walmart would love $1,200

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: a month from

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: the top.

[Rep. Ruth (unidentified), Member]: Not that I don't mind if Richard Nelson got it on his farm, but there are also ways to do it where instead of going on the center of his field, it's off to the side. Right? Where it's still getting sun, but we're still farming.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Or area not suited to a 500 horse heavy tractor.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: So that's what this whole last slide is about, is supporting the only net metering, if you're not familiar, is a financing, a way to finance solar in the built environment. Because it's more expensive to put solar on a roof than is just to drop it in a field, we have this program called net metering, which gives the landowner, the homeowner a little extra money to help offset that cost. The compensation for that net metering program has been going down every single year since 2000, basically decreasing the incentive Vermonters have to put solar over a parking lot or on their roof or things like that. But that's why we're I was just in house energy this morning talking Tesla in support of 8762 to help make it easier for the you know, for homeowners and business owners to put solar where they live and work. So I'm trying, like a whole bunch of us are trying, but we run into opposition from utilities and honestly, Governor Scott, who don't want to see that program be more vibrant.

[Rep. Ruth (unidentified), Member]: So that's also a form subsidy.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: A 100%.

[Rep. Ruth (unidentified), Member]: Similar to the one, it's a different form. Totally. The methane plant coming off a

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: dairy farm. You're essentially saying you need subsidies as well. To do it in the built environment, otherwise the price would, be too much money. No homeowner could really afford. It would be very difficult for your average homeowner to afford putting solar on their roof. The payback period would be like thirty years. Very few homeowners can afford to make an investment that pays back in thirty years. With net metering, you can get a payback period in ten, twelve years, maybe fifteen, which a lot more people can find as a reasonable payback, the investment they make. You know what I'm saying?

[Rep. Ruth (unidentified), Member]: So I guess one of

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: my questions, few, me just support.

[Rep. Ruth (unidentified), Member]: Why is it so much more cost than you go on a roof? Understand, yes, putting panels on a roof,

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: but you don't have It's economies of scale. So like, first of all, there's a bunch of pieces. So let's say you're building it in a field, right? First, the panels generate a lot more power. They can be like 500, 600 watt panels. On a roof, you may have to put a smaller panel which generates less power. Second, you have to get a crew to show up and drive their truck with their stuff to all these houses to put up the eight KW and then they move and they go the next day to another place. You're building a five megawatt, your crew shows up, you do it over a couple months and then they're gone. That's a very efficient way to build a lot of solar. Plus when these sites are selected for solar in the fields, you're angling them on the sun the right way, they're facing this great direction, their capacity factor for the energy nerds is higher because when you're on a roof, it's not always the perfect angle for cash flow of sun. May not be facing the right cardinal direction, things like that, but people want it. So generally generate less solar per panel when it's on a roof versus when you can site it anywhere you want on a field. And that adds up to a lot of

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: kilowatt hours over time. It's on the box.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Seems like Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Rep. Ruth (unidentified), Member]: To a

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: degree. Yeah, 100%. The roof has to be the right kind of roof, meaning there can't be all the HVAC stuff that interrupt it. Can the roof handle that load? We found out when we talked to schools, because every school should have solar on them, why not? But that the load of these solar panels might be too much for what the roof can handle. You know what I'm saying? So there are specs, I agree that we should be incentivizing or pushing solar into the built environment as the first priority for all of us, especially for parking lots. There's no reason a new parking lot should not have solar over it. That is the exact spot we should be putting. Who wants to see more parking lots? But if we are going to see one covered with solar panels, that's a great idea. But again, it would have to be through this Net Mirium program, which currently doesn't really pencil out. And I was in my job running a 4,000 square foot grocery store co op whose owners were very invested in seeing more solar. We spent a lot of time looking into putting solar on

[Speaker 0]: the roof. And the architects eventually came back and said,

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: you can't with a snow load, the roof won't support it. It was disappointing and we just couldn't do it. And that's not atypical. I mean, the parking lot, I'm sure if you were to ask them, they would have said it would have been 2x the roof. You got to build these giant structures to hold it up. That just extends the payback period, which is you have to either justify that to your town or your community or your members or whatever.

[Speaker 0]: I know we're after lunch.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: You try not to make you guys miss lunch. I feel terrible. Well,

[Speaker 0]: I'm sure you can chat in the whole thing. Yeah. Thank you, Peter. If we had more time, I think we all would have had more questions. So, but we'll catch up with you individually.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Anytime, I'm easy to find. And thank you

[Speaker 0]: so