Puget Sound Energy (PSE) 6.6.2024 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) Public Engagement Webinar

welcome everyone we'll get started in a few minutes here e welcome everyone to anyone who's viewing on YouTube will get started in about three minutes e e welcome everyone we'll get started in a few minutes here thank you to members of the public who are joining us e welcome everyone thank you for being here we'll start real soon welcome everybody let's give folks a few more moments to trickle in I see more members of the public joining us thank you so much for being here welcome welcome thank you to members of the public and others who are here with us today welcome everyone I'm seeing the uh public attendee list tick up but knowing that uh our time is limited I think we should get started so my name is Sophie glass I'm a facilitator with triangle Associates and we are here for a public webinar that's going to talk about equity and the integrated resource plan this was one of the meetings when I saw the work plan that I was really looking forward to and here we are so you can go to the next slide please so in terms of the webinar tools that are available to you if you are um a member of the public or participant you can use the Q&A feature throughout the the meeting and uh we'll be giving you lots of opportunities to ask questions and we'll address some of those live verbally and some of them we'll write out if we're able to uh the public comment period at the end that's when that raised hand feature will be available to you and then the chat button is a chance to see messages from the host and we are just a heads up going to send out an interactive whiteboard as a link so that will come through the chat and if captions help you those are enabled next slide please so my request is just you know be constructive be courteous um I'm trying to move us through but also make sure to leave room for your questions so finding that balance um if you're a member of a PSA Advisory Group we ask that you just prioritize inut input from the public knowing that as an Advisory Group you have other access to psse the feedback form or that email address irs.com is there for you to provide additional thoughts and feedback as you'd like and um yeah we're going to focus on Equity the IRP today let's try to focus on that and we'll get we'll get to hear your voices during the public comment session so next slide please our safety moment I did not know this June is national Safety month so don't leave sharp objects or utensils misplace or unattended especially if you have a three and a 5-year-old like I do make sure electrical cords are tucked away be careful with flammable liquids chemicals anything producing fumes always install stable and sturdy railings on both sides of stairs we need to do that and then check those smoke detectors regularly and replace batteries next slide please so the speakers today are all from psse your experts are all kind of house within uh the utility here so Troy Hudson the director of energy Equity Brian Tyson the man manager of clean energy planning implementation Alexandra karpa the uh energy resource planning alysis and Tyler Tobin the senior energy resource planning analyst next slide so our agenda uh we'll Brian will kick it off with some kind of welcome and recap where we've been we'll turn to Troy for an energy Equity program overview uh Brian will then pick it back up and talk about equity in that integrated resource plan and how things have evolved you'll hear from Alexandra NEX about the benefits and burdens of generic electric resources Tyler will then talk about electric portfolio benefits analysis improvements and maximum customer benefit sensitivity Brian will wrap us up with the gas portfolio Equity analysis so thinking about the gas side as well as the electric in this meeting and we'll close with public comment so that's going to be our our agenda for today and actually before I turn it over to Brian I did want to just um bring Cara on I know PC has sent out some information today and Cara just wanted to put some words to it so Cara please go ahead thanks Sophie good afternoon everyone um so we will be jumping into the equity conversation shortly um and I just wanted before we did that to let you all know that um PSC did move forward with a filing yesterday at the utilities and Transportation Commission um seeking to transition our current 2025 IRP process towards preparing for the new integrated system plan or ISP approach and um you know PSC is excited to get started on the new ISP and we need sufficient time to develop it and time for Meaningful engagement with customers um with the public and our advisor groups so um we did submit that filing just yesterday and as Sophie noted there have been some email Communications that have gone out um and we'll just have to wait and see um what the next steps look like at the commission on that um either way today's discussion on equity is really important and relevant to our work and we'll be incorporating it either into our 2025 plans or if the commission approves our filing into the 2027 ISP so this is all still um timely and um with that Sophie I think we'll we're almost ready to dive into the rest of the content so thank you yeah thanks Cara I'm just scanning the Q&A box I'm not seeing any questions or reactions to that quite yet but if anyone if anything jumps um into your mind feel free to drop it into that Q&A Q&A feature so thanks Cara let's turn it over to Brian and get us to the next slide please will take it away Brian okay thank you so much Sophie and thank you all for being here it's exciting topic today as we talk about equity in the integrated resource planning process we've have a number of content slides to get to we've got some experts Alex and Tyler we're going to talk more about more in depth about the process as well um but again this meeting is focused on how do we consider Equity throughout our integrated resource planning process both on the electric and gas side and we'll do that at a pretty high level here and then there will be points in time throughout the presentation well we'll look for feedback and do some whiteboarding and things like that uh from this uh from the group that we have here can we go to the next slide please okay this slide I think you all may have seen at the previous public webinar but if not uh this just gives you an overview of how we're thinking about carrying these conversations both from the public and from The Advisory Group perspective we've already had a conversation with our Equity Advisory Group uh back in May really highlighting some of the same material you'll see today uh today we're focused again on gas and electric we'll talk to the arpac our technical Advisory Group about the gas and electric as well in future meetings and we'll go back to the equity Advisory Group as well on the gas slide as well on the gas side um again the point here is to understand and have some of the discussion related to our approach and we'll have opportunities later on uh to break that out and to to hear from from you all here if we can go to the next slide this just gives you an overview of the iip2 spectrum how we blend in what you saw in slide eight into what we're thinking about in terms of that Spectrum here so as you can see we're really encompassing those first three uh levels of inform consultant involve as we move through a lot of these conversations as it relates to to equity here um now before I turn to Troy he's going to give us an overview of equity at the Enterprise the psse level before we really dive into the resource planning process um so if I'll stop here see if there's any questions as well thanks Brian I'm looking in the chat I'm not seeing any open questions so I think thank you Brian you'll come back a little bit later but do you want to go to the next slide please will and bring Troy on hi um Troy Hudson uh director of uh energy Equity here at pan energy uh first I say thank you for the opportunity to update you on our efforts uh since we started this um program over the last 18 months uh next slide uh so we've organized ourselves to focus on three sort of key goals um the first one is meeting our regulatory requirements uh which are fairly extensive um operationalizing Equity across uh all of our key uh operational programs uh and then strengthening Partnerships and enhancing uh engagement um we're also using the guiding principles that we developed with our Equity Advisory Group so we're focused on accountability uh Simplicity in a lot of the our Solutions uh and then making sure that um we focus on transparency in everything that we do next slide uh so you know Equity is a process it's not an outcome so we're not going to end up with a place where we say oh we have Equity uh it's a process uh and this is the framework that uh the commission has uh asked us to follow um and so you know don't try to start memorizing recognition Justice and all of the others um the way one easy way to think about it is recognition is really about the who who are the populations that we need to make sure we're we're focused on um to make sure that we are getting them the support they need uh so that they can become part of this process um and then we have procedural uh how do we engage with those populations we've just identified uh how do we meet them where they are and you'll see some of this a lot of this reflected in the conversations uh as we go on today the third one distributional is what benefits do we provide and what burdens do we reduce very quantitative at this stage of the the the process uh and then finally restorative um what structural changes do we make uh and sustain uh to make sure that um we are addressing the systemic uh inequities that um we have inherited as part of this uh Equity Journey next slide uh so um we're trying to focus on the customer journey and how we're thinking about that uh as an overall program for for Equity so um you know the the the customer relationships piece requires or coordinated and aligned engagements centered on the customer and the community uh this is probably the most challenging part of this but but also the most important um because in you know we have generally tended to think of our programs in in in silos so we're doing a weatherization program or we're um we're doing uh Energy Efficiency and uh this requires us to be more aligned and coordinated uh and think about the customers and the communities that we're trying to reach uh so we've had some some forums um that we've organized but we're trying to start aligning our work so that when when we meet customers we're um being very efficient in how we use their time um to to make sure that uh we are considering them in what we're doing uh we have have some specific programs we're focusing on um for billing uh relief uh and then program to reduce uh energy use uh and help those customers and communities transition to a clean uh Energy Future next slide and then this this the final slide here um you know you'll see in red over there integrated resource plan so a lot of the conversation today is about that and I won't say much more about that but um as you can see here focused on these other use cases as well so resource acquisition uh our delivery system um facility design sighting and construction um the customer programs I mentioned a little bit uh a few minutes ago and then sort of the specific actions uh and the goals and targets required from our clean energy uh implementation plan so looking at minimum designation specific targets um uh these are the approaches that we've taken and the things that we're trying to do so um since you'll be hearing a lot more about this and how it show how it plays out in the IRP I'll stop there and see if there are any questions before I hand it back yeah thank you Troy I see one question from Thomas Kramer about how how does PC identify low-income customers is that a self-identifying process uh so there are um there are requirements um for what's considered low income but for a lot of our programs um we have moved to self attestation so the customer um you know looks at what the requirements are uh determine whether they meet those requirements and then they attest to that uh and then we do uh sort of an audit I think maybe um of a certain percentage just to make sure that um there is some compliance and accountability great thanks for explaining explaining that Troy any other questions from members of the public okay Troy I'm not seeing any we can turn it back to Brian now thank you okay thanks for that Troy so let's go to the next slide and now we're back to resource planning because this is really what we want to dive into and thinking about equity and and resource planning I'm going to to First sort of set the stage for both the electric and the gas side give a little background and then Alex and Tyler are going to give a bit in-depth look at the approach uh that we've deployed and you all have helped us to deploy and and create over the past past iteration so if you please go to the next slide most of you are familiar with the structure PSD and and the Dual uh the dual fuel utility structure that we have here both on the electric and the gas side um we obviously have some surface overlap where we are fully just gas or fully electric and then areas where we have both Gas and Electric as well um when we talk about gas there's going to be sort of two contexts that we use one is the use of gas in terms of electricity that we use to produce electricity that is um and the other is the delivery of natural gas to our customers for heating and cooking purposes and so when we talk about gas and ter electricity that'll be on the electric portfolio side and then when we talk about sort of the natural gas pipes distribution side that's uh for the gas utility side as well and so just keep that in mind as we dive deeper into the electric portfolio analysis and the gas portfolio analysis uh later on okay if we could go to the next slide please so now overview of resource planning for our integrated resource plan that's our really Long View 20 plus years where we think about uh a variety of resources that could be used to meet and uh feel a need that we may have in that time frame now from there from Ceda uh we jump down to a 10year view now this is getting a bit more granular in terms of the the assumptions and the inputs uh but also spelling out some actions that we could take over that 10year cycle from there we get even more granular to a four-year view in the clean energy implementation plan which again more specific actions but thinking about what are we doing in this four-year chunk as opposed to the 10 and as opposed to the 20 as well the discussion today is focus on what we do in that 20-year view that integrated resource plan view thinking about generic resources and and and generic uh assumptions and benefits and burdens uh for generic resources uh over that 20 year that long long period there okay next slide please so how do we actually get to that plan um a lot of it comes from some complex modeling that's that's done also comes through a lot of the engagement the dialogue that we have uh with parties uh throughout this this process but first it really starts with Gathering data on resources and I think this group has had conversations with generic resources and other resources that we may consider in this in this modeling process um so that's one of the first pieces of building that model uh the next piece is in of course having this public participation process that's what we're doing now and that's what we've done in the past and we'll continue to do to bring in that that feedback that discussion into the model itself uh once we have all that all those inputs we'll then run the model and it tells us a needed determines what is the need uh for our electric side what's our need for the gas side of the business as well that's when we get into what's called a portfolio benefit analysis now this is the sort of the second iteration that we've done this we did this before in the previous IRP and electric progress report um but this is where we want to focus some of the attention on this is where Alex will touch on later today but the portfolio benefit analysis that's where we start to understand the benefits that we believe customers may see from a particular portfolio um and this is going back to what Troy talked about in terms of distributional Justice really understanding what are those tangible benefits non-energy or otherwise that customers may see um and how would those benefits be distributed throughout our customers especially uh our most uh vulnerable um or highly impacted customers within our service territory now part of the portfolio benefit analysis uses uh something we call customer benefit indicators and Alex and and myself will touch on what that means later on okay can we go next slide or do we have a question Sophie I think I've got no no questions yet okay I think I've got a couple more here okay so recap I mentioned again we've done portfolio benefit analysis in that previous iteration um we engage you and the eag and other advisory groups on what that portfolio benefit analysis design looks like um we used it to then make a selection in a preferred portfolio for the 23 electric progress report and then we've also had some feedback since then that has helped us now craft the conversation we're going to have today and craft what we do in the future so last time I think we heard a lot of General support for using this analysis there was a strong interest in cost benefit analysis and how that gets how that gets used we're going to talk about that in a few minutes rather Alex will talk about that in a few minutes uh there was also in a feedback we heard and understanding what those benefits and burdens are that's the key piece we're going to talk about today is truly understand we have generic resources so how do we understand the benefits or burdens of a generic resource and then use that to uh understand the impacts in our resource planning process the other concern we had was around waiting the benefit categories and what are the trade-offs there a lot of the conversation we have today I think we'll tie into and duvail into um understanding tradeoffs throughout this planning process and then we also had some interest in adding a climate change resilience indicator and uh we are continuing to consider that as a team and how do we how do we understand how do we add or think about a climate change resilience indicator in the future but uh all in all this really just highlights we heard a lot of information in the past for the past iteration and we want to come back to it here and hopefully the conversation we have today will really highlight and and get to the heart of some of the conversation and the questions that came up especially as it relates to understanding burdens and benefits and some of the tradeoffs as well Brian there's a question in the chat that I just wanted to call out that might be actually requiring Troy to come back on so I I'll read the question aloud and if we need to wait for Troy or someone else um we can go back to you but the question is that Troy Hudson mentioned auditing self-attested low-income customers so how does PSC identify low-income customers who don't need know that they need to self the test true Ro any chance you could come back on camera and answer that one or we can um get an answer and put it in the chat later uh yeah let me let me take a a stab at that um I and and I think I can keep myself out of out of trouble here uh we've tried to streamline uh and simplify the application process so that a lot of the uh the applications can be done uh using our online tools uh and as you go through that process the the tool will prompt you um to do the self at the station thank you Troy okay Brian back to you okay thank you try for that thanks for the question Thomas we can go to the next slide um yep okay I thought this is it so this is just a reminder of the conversations that we've had or that we plan to have we've already had a discussion with the eag and here we are today June six to talk about um Gas and Electric equity in the gas and electric portfolio as well so we can go to the next slide um this is my last one before I turn it to Alex but I want to tie what I just mentioned back to what Troy mentioned about Equity at the Enterprise level again having received guidance and understanding of these four tenants uh wanting to just show how the our approach and the integrated resource planning process how those different tasks really tie to the different tenants we have here so Alex is going to talk about understanding benefits and burdens which requires us to understand as Troy mentioned the who um so understanding The Who but also understanding how each of these generic resources May provide a benefit or may provide a burden uh to specific groups uh of people within near or around these generic resources and then thinking about the distributional Justice where we think about uh the amount of or who receives specific benefits um what magnitude or level of benefits uh customers may receive that portfolio benefit analysis gives us an idea again this is generic so it's still kind of high level but it gives us an idea of of what types of benefits could be received based on a p a portfolio that could be chosen and then another scenario that comes through the Ceda uh process is understanding is there a scenario where we can maximize customer benefits um and thinking about what that portfolio may look like may look like as well so first we're going to talk about benefits and burdens Alice is going to talk about that uh then we're going to talk about portfolio benefit analysis say Alex will give that discussion as well then we'll move to maximizing P maximizing customer benefics excuse me uh and Tyler will dive into that we'll close out on the gas side and that's where I'll come back and and wrap us up there thank you so much Brian I'm actually G to break in that was your last slide yes great so I'm going to break in here as Brian mentioned in the beginning um psse is is kind of looking at a broader swap of the I ap2 spectrum and really wants to kind of hear from you in a more active way as members of the public and one way to do that is through an online whiteboard where you can kind of in real time take some notes make some impressions of course you can continue using uh the Q&A feature but I'm going to walk you through that so first and foremost Pauline can you drop in the chat a board um the mural link so I'm going to share my screen boot that out give me a second so if you click the link that Pauline posted there you're going to get to a screen that looks like this it's going to have a different name but what I wanted to highlight is you're going to click view as a visitor so you don't need to create an account you don't need to sign in click the link that Pauline put there click view as a visitor it'll give you an opportunity to make a funny name like you know Galloping giraffe or something or you can just put your name so I'll give everyone just a moment there to click the link that says mural in the chat and then view as a visitor that should take you to a screen that looks like this and perfect we have a visiting Ram a visiting sheep a visiting snail this is exactly what I want to be seeing so the four major topics that are coming before us the generic resources benefits and burdens updated portfolio benefit analysis maximum customer benefit scenario and the gas Equity portfolio Equity analysis as these speakers are walking through their updates and information think about what do you think about the proposed approaches discussed today are there other considerations that you'd like to see included and these are all sticky notes here and please you're going to watch me just do test test test you just write your thoughts in response to as as this is going if let's say you want to write a small novel or an essay by all means just drag you can make the little um you can make the the sticky note even bigger that's your call um and if all of this online whiteboard stuff is not for you but of course um you can still use the Q&A feature in Zoom as usual so please I encourage you to think about um providing some feedback on the proposed approaches and add any other considerations um I'll watch the the the participant list and if new participants join Paul I'll make sure that we re the Whiteboard and maybe I'll even bore everyone with the same Spiel once more and with that I'm going to stop sharing and ask Will to reshare the screen and turn it over to Alex thank you Alex go ahead yeah hello everyone um so I'm Alex I used her pronouns and I am going to uh discuss today a new approach that we are proposing um for evaluating energy burdens and benefits within the framework of the electric IRP so as Brian mentioned um one of the the things that we heard um from interested parties uh after our 2023 progress report is that it's really important for us to better understand the poten IAL burdens um and benefits resulting from our IRP process and so during our last um our last cycle during the progress report we did consider equity and what we were calling the portfolio benefit analysis and we will talk a little bit of the about the updates of that later on Tyler will address that um but I'm really going to discuss how we are proposing to build upon this prior Equity approach um so if we can go to the next slide our objective today um and where we could really use your feedback on those green sticky notes up in the upper leftand corner of the Whiteboard um is we would love your feedback on this new assessment and approach to addressing Equity so generally we'd love to know what you think and more specifically um are there considerations that we missed or elements that you would like to see us uh consider further so with that uh let's go to the next slide so what we did is we really started with a question of how do we deepen our understanding of energy burdens and benefits um resulting from our portfolio selection in the IRP and what we came up with um with a ton of uh discussion and guidance from our internal Equity team um is to look more in detail at the potential burdens and benefits inherent in generic resources and what we are really hoping to achieve with this assessment is um to really get um a broader assessment of equity in the portfolio and and we think we can do that with this um approach because we can uh really address qualitative consideration whereas in our past approach uh it was really heavily linked to quantitative output from our portfolio models um we also think that we can generally on a very Broad and pulled back uh scope address some uh location and sighting issues um and questions related to equity and finally um you know as we've developed uh a more comprehensive and Company wide Equity approach um I think that this really this this assessment that we're proposing also um addresses our recogn recognition um Justice tenant and so again it's it just sort of broadens our um ability to assess equity in the IRP so can we go to the next slide please um before next slide thank you um before I get too much into how we are looking at Equity uh in generic resources I wanted to give a brief overview of what a generic resource is um these are pivotal components to developing our uh portfolio in the electric RP and um you know generally in this process what we are ultimately trying to figure out is how to meet our customers energy needs need into the future and the demand forecast um is where we start this is what um tells us our future customer needs and the generic resources are what we use to meet this future need so um generic resources Encompass all the different kinds of electric generating and story storage resources so they could be things like um a battery array a wind farm a solar farm um but a key component uh to generic resources is that they are theoretical so they don't exist um and they're not linked in any way to real projects uh either planned or in existence um they really just serve as placeholders uh in that help us H that we put into our model um and that um help us plan for our customers future energy needs um they are however generic resources are modeled uh after sort of the latest and greatest um technology out there and um yeah so I think what this uh little diagram shows here is that uh you know this is super paired down from what we actually model in our IRP but um for illustrative purposes I think like one of the things to note here is that we put in the generic resources into our model and then our model really optimizes for the best um sizing in megawatts of each of those resources that will best meet the customer needs um and so like in this little example we put in a few different resources a wind farm a battery and a thermal plant and we get, 1500 megaw of the wind and um 500 megawatts a b uh sorry my thing is on my other screen over here um of uh gas and a th000 megawatts of the battery and um one thing not shown in this diagram is um that also the the model will provide us sort of the optimal schedule for for bringing these resources online over our planning period so how do we go about assessing um the equity inherent in these theoretical placeholder resources so if we can go to the next slide so what we did is that we turned to literature that is out there already looking into um Equity associated with building different projects and resources so our sources included um academic Publications as well as uh papers and presentations from um different agencies uh such as federal agencies um and what we saw in the literature uh were a set of recurring elements associated with more Equitable outcomes in these real world projects affecting real communities and so what we are proposing doing in our generic resarch Source burdens and benefits assessment is using the set of recurring elements as metrics to guide a really qualitative and research based analysis of the impacts um of each of our generic resources that we're including in the IRP so as we sort of further dove into the metrics they did seem to shake out into three different scales of impact um so we've got a global impact um we have the impact of utility to utility customers and um a new resource can also impact communities and land adjacent or within a project footprint area so it's entirely possible that um these scales have impact will overlap given a certain resource uh but we still found it really useful I think um to evaluate Equity at these at these different scales so what I am going to um do next is present uh yeah the different metrics that were considering at these different levels of impacts um but I am wondering if I should pause for questions or um just dive right into the next slide I love pausing for questions we're doing okay on time so I'm not seeing any questions in the Q&A um a reminder the Whiteboard is kind of for feedback if you really have a question you want answered in the presentation help us out by putting it actually in the Q&A in the Q&A um feature and that way we can track it so I'll pause for just another moment anyone have any questions for Alex so far okay Alex continue all right next slide please so starting with our global scale of impact um we have two metrics that we're proposing to evaluate at the scale um the first is greenhouse gas emissions and the second is end of life effects so the end of life effects are really considerations um about what happens to the resource after its commercial life is over over so can it be repowered uh can it be repurposed or reused or recycled and um what might be involved in each of those um scenarios or does it need to just go into a landfill moving on to the next slide um next we are uh considering the customer scale of impact and these are the impact that end users of the energy produced by the new uh generic resource might um experience so these uh five metrics um may look familiar because they're actually uh metrics for measuring the customer benefit indicators or cbis that were developed in the CB in the CIP so these include um participation in clean energy programs um Home Comfort the frequency and duration of outages um access to Reliable clean energy and um potential cost burdens uh that might um become part of uh utility rates um from adding a a different kind of resource all right so next slide please and so finally we have 10 metrics that we're looking at on the resource footprint scale of of impact and this impact scale of impact really examines um the experiences of the communities and the lands directly adjacent um to or most affected by a new electric resource so the the first consideration um we first metric we have up here is the question of whether a resource will be cited in a disproportionately impacted Community or um a named Community um and really this is uh I I know before I talked about how generic resources don't actually have a site associated with them um which is true but we can um make a best guess about um generally where a particular kind of resource might be located for example we know that a wind resource is highly likely to be cited in a rural community um not likely to be cited in downtown Seattle uh so we we can make that kind of pulled back um assessment of where uh resources might go um Jos this to a distributed battery which actually could be located in an urban center or in a rural area really could be um located anywhere so um that is that is sort of like one way that we can um take this assess and get a little deeper into where the these resources might be cited um the next thing the next metric that we are looking at is um will the energy generated by a new resource serve the local community or will that re that energy be exported um elsewhere and for example using wind again um any new wind resource that psse installs for serving our customers is likely going to be installed in um East of the Cascades and therefore will need to be exported from that Source uh to our service territory um to serve our community uh and um yeah PSC customers so the other things that we look at uh on this scale of impact include um what will there be any changes to land use um this can include changes to a viewshed um will um folks in the community experience any differences in noise um in safety what will happen to the outdoor air quality and to Community Health um will installing a resource create jobs for the community and if so what kind of jobs might those be might they be full-time part-time um un unionized excuse me um and then we're also looking at decommissioning effects and this is a little bit different than the end of use effects that I discussed in the global scale um that was really looking at what might happen to those parts and decommissioning effects here at this scale of impact is really looking at what might happen to the community so will there be a loss of jobs um for decommissioning a resource um will the land on which that resource was located be uh suitable for um use by the community or will there be impacts to the land uh that will need to be mitigated um and then finally what might happen to uh wildlife and plant communities in and around these new resources so from here um if we want to jump to the next slide um to reiterate our plan is to use all of these different metrics as a guide um to do a qualitative Equity assessment for each of our generic resources that we're considering in our IRP and um ultimately how will we use this assessment um this assessment will be included as a narrative um in our resource planning documents so we have a section where we describe our generic technology in detail and um this includes like the costs of different Technologies the operating assumptions Market availability um and now it will also include this um Equity assessment or the assessment of the potential burdens and benefits um furthermore uh this assessment will help inform our portfolio benefit analysis um which Tyler will discuss imminently and um ultimately this assessment will help us to better understand which portfolios contain the most Equity enabling characteristics to assist in our preferred portfolio selection so yeah I think to summarize we think the strategy will really broaden our Equity assessment um moving forward and with that I um will turn it back over to Sophie or answer any questions yeah thank you Alex um so we do have a question in the chat Joel asks has psse worked to ify these benefits and burdens in a way that the IRP portfolio model understands and can optimize around rather than doing a postm modeling portfolio benefit analysis thoughts on that now or a feedback report question what do you think I could take a a stab at it right now um and maybe we can provide a little more detail but I I think that we did actually yes we did go down the road of trying to do some quantification of these potential burdens and benefits and I think one of the things that we ran into was um it's twofold first I think that we keep by sort of keeping a postprocessing um methodology for our Equity assessment we keep it really accessible and a little bit more easy to understand um if we go into quantifying burdens and benefits and then stick it into our portfolio I think that becomes less accessible um because it really gets into the weeds of the model itself which is pretty highly technical um and then I think another um another difficulty in doing that is I I think that um it can be really hard to put a a dollar value on you know um things that are really affecting people right like so I I think that there was enough data gaps in that and um and I think sort of coming we came to this this conclusion that uh that it would it would be more accessible and clear what we were doing to keep it as a sort of a outside of our portfolio model and then let the model do what it does best which is you know um solve for a lease cost solution great thank you so much for that Alex I appreciate you answering on the Fly um for our participants remember questions that you want Alex or others to answer Live use the Q&A feature otherwise I'm having a lot of fun seeing your little guest names buzzing around our our whiteboard and so please keep on just sharing comments that you want psse to consider after the fact there Alex I'm not seeing any more Q&A at this time so you can take a step back and thank you so much for your your presentation and uh we can move to the next slide please will Okay Tyler you're up and remember you can kind of take notes live on that whiteboard as Tyler box now so take it away great thanks Sophie uh so I'm Tyler Tobin I'm a planning analyst on the IRP team and I'm going to talk a little bit about some updates we've made to our portfolio benefit analysis tool uh next slide please well um so this is uh the slide illustrates a high level overview of what our portfolio benefit analysis is and where it comes in in our IRP portfolio development process um so the objective of our tool is to um allow us to see which portfolios that we're developing as part of the IRP process uh contain the most Equity enabling features um and uh we we do this as we mentioned as Alex just mentioned as a postprocess to or portfolio development uh portfolio development model which occurs in Aurora which is really geared toward finding a least cost solution um so that red box is our Aurora modeling where we push in all those generic resources and we get our list of builds and we run that model many times to look at many different sensitivities and we get a number of different portfolios as represented by the the purple circles um and then all of those portfolios are entered into our portfolio benefit analysis tool um where we can look at how those portfolios are composed and based on their composition provide them with some sort of equity score which we can then look at as it relates to the total cost of the portfolio and that gives us a lot of relative information about these portfolios which ones may be more or less Equity enabling um so then we've got a dash line back to our technical Aurora model where we can use what we've learned from conducting this portfolio benefit analysis to generate more Port more portfolios um to hopefully move in the direction of finding what we like to call our preferred portfolio which is the kind of ultimate solution to our IRP process um so uh this process was in place starting in the 23 progress report um and I would encourage you all to you know go take a look at that older document if you've got if you're interested in taking a deeper dive um we published it as a standalone Excel file so you can get in and see all of our math um and yeah uh but we heard a number of comments and got a lot of feedback on how our portfolio benefit analysis was developed as part of the 23 progress report and um yeah we've heard you and we want to make improvements so we promised this is going to be an evolution through our planning processes so the next slide is going to demonstrate what we've heard and some changes we've made to our portfolio benefit analysis tool uh next slide please all right so I think we'll just go through the list um on the left side here is all the feedback that that we've heard um and then on the right side is our response to how we've addressed that feedback uh so the top item here is there's some uncertainty over our conversion from raw data uh into a portfolio Equity score uh so for those of you that have seen our model um we had a number of raw measures that came out of our Aurora portfolio model uh such as greenhouse gas emissions um number of resources added the portfolio and we Ed some kind of complicated statistics to turn those into actual measures that we could relate to one another um and you know I think that created some unease because it was kind of obscuring some results on how that math was done um so drawing from the work that Alex just presented um we're going to take those burdens and benefits and pass them into this model and just we created a generic scoring system um where each benefit and burden will be assigned a zero or a one so it's really transparent if that resource is contributing or not to that specific metric um so it's very clear from the start which resources contribute burdens and benefits and you can track how those burdens and benefits flow through the entire modeling process uh the next uh piece of feedback we heard was the inability to incorporate qualitative burdens and benefits and I think Alex already mentioned that the burdens and benefits analysis that she just presented is great at addressing qualitative metrics um particularly uh by using the binary score that I just mentioned assigning them a zero or a one um you know even if we can't measure precisely how a given resource May influence a given metric we can provide some indication to our process that that provides some benefit or not um and then the rest of our tool is still very quantitative in nature so we take that qualitative measurement and put it through a quantitative process to get an objective answer out the other end uh the third line here is portfolio scores were dependent upon which portfolios were selected in the study um so in the 23 progress report version of the uh portfolio benefit analysis um all of the portfolio scores were relative to one another um because we used some statistical measures that were uh subject to the the data that was put into the model um so if you added one additional portfolio all of the scores would change and that felt less transparent than we wanted it to be um so we've gone forward with a an absolute scoring system so now if you add another portfolio to our uh to the list of portfolios in our tool all those other ones will stay the same and and the new portfolio comes in with its own unique score uh we feel that's more transparent and much easier to follow so if you're looking at different iterations along the way you're not getting different answers based on your initial input data uh fourth down the list here is we wanted to incorporate the portfolio benefit scoring as a cost metric into the portfolio uh into our Aurora portfolio model and I think Alex nailed that last question from from our audience um we retain this as a post-process approach um you know we feel like having a clear distinction between our economic and Equity modeling is important and improves transparency and allows us to um allow both of those tools to do what they do best whether it's looking at the least cost solution or the most Equitable solution and then finally um we heard lots of concerns over waiting specific metrics um to address this uh we started to move forward we incorporated more metrics so all of those metrics that Alex covered in her burdens and benefits analysis are as moved into this revised portfolio benefit analysis tool um so that expands upon the customer benefit indicators that we used as part of the 23 progress report um and we feel like having more metrics reduces any sort of um reduces the importance of any one metric alone and uh I would reiterate that we're going to retain an unweighted methodology so whenever you have metrics you can always throw weights at them um we're going to go forward where all metrics are weighted equally um unless we hear lots of feedback otherwise um we feel this keeps things fair and you know whenever you start tinkering around putting thumbs on scales you know it there's a no end to the possible answers so we're going to go forward with an unweighted methodology unless we hear lots of feedback otherwise and that kind of covers our feedback and and the major changes that we've made um I could pause for a minute but the last slide just uh kind of shows what that looks like going forward the next slide please will all right so this looks very much like the first slide you'll see kind of the core is unchanged um taking into account all those feedback and revisions that we've made you can see that I've added a box up front here to represent our burdens and benefits assessment and all the the research and literature reviews that Alex and her team have done will inform those generic resource Equity measures um and those are scored before we even start putting resources into our portfolio model or doing any sort of portfolio benefit analysis um so we'll have those scores um and as those resource scores um are set and then we run the portfolio model uh we get all of our portfolios and we can apply those burdens and benefits assessment scores to the resources that compose each of those different portfolios run them through our portfolio benefit analysis uh take a look at that cost versus Equity score trade-off plot which I've Illustrated at the bottom of the screen and use the findings from that information to then again uh evaluate and choose a preferred portfolio very nice Tyler take a pause here because I believe you have kind of a different topic you'll move into in a moment is that right yeah yeah let's uh if if there's any questions here I'm happy to answer those and then we'll transition to the related but different topic of the maximum customer benefit scenario okay I'm not seeing any questions in the Q&A for those of you who are playing on the Whiteboard this yellow section is going to be where you'll put some reactions or thoughts in writing um as Tyler continues his presentation so we you can go to the next slide go ahead Tyler thanks all right so changing years slightly we're going to talk about our maximum customer benefit sensitivity uh next slide please will all right so some framework for what what has established the the kind of boundary conditions for the maximum customer benefit sensitivity um the the whack represented in this green box here um is the rule making for the clean energy transformation act it states that we have to uh we as a investor owned utility should uh run at least one Sensi one sensitivity where a maximum customer Ben scenario is uh is observed so uh that says we have to do it and then the RCW um is what lays out exactly what that sensitivity should look like um so I think the the Crux of what this maximum customer benefit sensitivity is um is uh we want to ensure that all customers are benefiting from the transition to clean energy through the equitable distribution of energy and non- energy benefits the reduction of burdens to vulnerable populations and highly impacted communities long-term and short-term public health and environmental benefits and reduction of cost and RIS risks and energy R energy security and resiliency um so that that's a lot of context in a very short paragraph and we're going to use the next slide to break down how we interpreted that all right so to orient you to this slide um this is how we started thinking about what are the burdens and benefits we want to assess as part of the maximum customer benefit scenario um so we pulled out some key words um listed in the category column um you'll see those words highlighted as part of the RCW that we just looked at energy benefits non- energy benefits public health environmental benefits cost and risk reduction and energy security and resiliency So within those categories uh we looked at the list of different metrics that Alex has just presented from her burdens and benefits assessment and thought about which of those metrics fit into those specific categories and we wanted to maximize those specific metrics as part of any sensitivity that we wanted to run um so this this list of metrics is you know pretty long but not uh fully inclusive of everything that that Alex presented um but does cover a a wide range of of the metrics that that she's presented uh and then the final step was to think about which kinds of resources provided value to those specific metrics and uh you know we thought about this in the context of all the resources in our portfolio but you know we've got many many different resource types um and we started to see a clear Trend emerge that conservation demand response and uh distributed energy resources including both solar and storage provide many of these benefits so we've assigned you to those a little icon and then ticked that icon next to each of those metrics where we think that those resource classifications would contribute to each of those metrics as a benefit um and since all of those benefits are covered by this kind of set of conservation demand response and distributed energy resources we thought that maximizing those types of resources would be a great place to start for our maximum customer benefits scenario uh next slide please so taking that idea that conservation demand response and Energy Efficiency are kind of the resources that we want to maximize in order to maximize those benefits those specific metrics that we just presented um we need to get into the nuts and bolts and how we're going to run that through Aurora um so uh the the top bullet here uh just indicates that um you know uh it connects us to our customers we've done a number of customer surveys um and those surveys seem to suggest that local distributed resources are are desirable so that that reaffirms that we're thinking about the same things as our customers um and then that sentiment is also reflected in our portfolio benefit analysis where those three types of resources demand uh distributed energy resources demand respon and conservation tend to score high in our portfolio benefit analysis tool um so uh taking that in mind uh how do we maximize those resources um when we get into do our portfolio optimization we can set some constraints on our model to ensure that these types of resources are selected over other types of resources and what we're going to do is for distributed energy resources we want to maximiz um the amount of those resources that are available in our model so um we are in the process of running a uh dgen model that's enr's the national renew renewable energy Laboratories distributed generation market demand model and that model tells us what's the market potential for distributed energy resources uh in the psse service territory uh get a result from that model and then that result will go in as the ceiling for how many specific megawatts of distributed energy resources we could add to our portfolio uh so under this maximum customer benefit scenario we're going to take the full amount from that this uh Dent model suggests for demand response uh we're going to select all of the demand response programs identified as part of the 2025 IRP coner ation potential and demand response assessment and I think we've already done a public meeting on the the CPA so hopefully that's that's still fresh in your minds and then related for conservation or Energy Efficiency measures we're going to select the highest cost conservation bundle from the 2025 IRP CPA very similar to how we're approaching demand response um so those three categories will will push in the maximum amount that are model can handle for all those and allow the port our Aurora portfolio model to optimize around those decisions and I think that is my last slide yeah nicely done Tyler let me pause again to see if anyone has any questions for the Q&A there we are so Joel writes I didn't see icons on slide 37 so can you back up one slide please will representing anything other than distributed resources Energy Efficiency and distributed solar so did psse consider other resources when trying to Define which offer the most benefits question you can answer now or is that a feedback report one yeah no uh we did consider it um when we're putting this together this slide um I did have many different resources on here and um you know certainly utility scale resources contribute a lot of these same benefits um but I felt like it got too cluttered so it was kind of a presentation decision to narrow our Focus just to the the three types of resources that we are considering um and to illustrate that they they TI a lot of these boxes so it's not to say other resources don't but um these ones are are a good selection very good hey another question here is regarding distributed energy resources you mentioned en rail's dgen model so the national renewable energy lab's dgen model for estimating solar distributed energy resources these are customer owned but what about psse owned distributed sources thoughts on that one Tyler yeah so uh the G gen model we can take a step up from the um I think there's like several levels of potential in dgen model uh the technical potential the market potential and the economic potential the economic potential is what illustrates where uh customers are willing to purchase those specific resources uh we're going to move up a level in that to look at the market potential so how many of those resources could exist in the region which may not represent where customers are willing to make those purchases themselves um and that would be kind of the the boundary condition where psse may be uh developing Community solar at um commercial buildings on rooftops over parking lots uh that sort of thing great thanks Tyler okay we only have 20 more minutes left in this meeting so I do want to move us along so I think Brian is up one more time now yep I'm back all right thanks for for returning to the screen here uh wrap us up with talking about the gas side okay sounds good thank you Sophie and thank you Tyler and Alex for walking through our approach on the electric side I will say before I dive into the gas side much of it is pretty similar to the portfolio excuse me the portfolio benefit analysis that you heard Alex and Tyler talk through for the gas side but I'll try to sort of distinguish and and set up the again high level overview of what we're thinking on the gas side if we can go to the next slide please so again our our gas IRP looks at the lowest cost approach for delivering gas um within within the region again it's a regional overview is is what I want to emphasize here so we're not looking at specifically the distribution right to your home or things like that uh we actually covered uh we actually talked about equity in our delivery system planning uh process back in November so I would encourage you to go back and look at those slides and look at that recording but here we're thinking about equity and the analysis that we do across across the region for for the gas IRP side so I'm going to walk through the Approach at a high level again should be similar to the electric side electric side it is really tough not to say electric slide but um it's similar to the electric side and then at the end we'll also ask similar questions to what Alex and Tyler had earlier uh about our approach and really get your feedback there and again want to appoint you all to the miror that I think you all have been active and busy on providing some comments for so let's go to the next slide okay so first I want to start with now before Alex and Tyler had talked about sort of the generic resources and the different uh resources that that are considered on the electric side here we just have an overview of the the various resources that we're evaluating on the gas side so we think about Energy Efficiency alternative uh Target electrification natural gas and these are the different elements that I'll touch on later as as part of that portfolio benefit analysis so we really want to understand these elements want to understand the benefits or burdens of these elements as we create our portfolio benefit analysis okay next slide please now before I get into the process I do want to make a point and and this goes for the electric as well which is you know this Equity as an input or or as an output as an evaluation is part of the decision-making framework um we still have to consider decarbonization we have to consider costs codes and standards just like an electric side electric side we don't just consider Equity there are other elements to consider as well so that's just I just want to make that point here that this is just one one key piece in making a decision on how we move forward okay next slide so here we get into the the scorecard the assessment and really that portfolio benefit analysis so we start with sort of uh indicator scoring for each of those individual resources and by individual resources I'm thinking of those four buckets we saw earlier so we will score each of them based on how well they align or may not Aline with metrics the customer benefit indicators in this case um across all of all of the ones that are applicable to the gas side then once we do that scoring then we uh do the analysis and try to understand uh from a portfolio standpoint how does the summation the accumulation of the scores for the metrics within that portfolio how does it then um compare to to other portfolios and how are we Distributing benefits or thinking about Equitable outcomes with each portfolio so again similar to the electric side where we are uh trying to give a bit of a score or understanding of um as as Tyler talked about in the maximum customer benefit scenario where uh certain resources May score a little bit higher just because of the benefits We Believe could matriculate from our resource we're doing a similar approach here on the gas side just using those four specific resource types and then I I'll talk a little bit about the metrics themselves that we're using there as well okay and then let's go to the next slide okay and so this one is just a list of those metrics that we're considering in this approach on the gas side so we believe these metrics and all of these are uh Rel reled to the customer benefit indicators from the CIP and so we would essentially ask oursel for each of these resource how well um does each of these resources improve participation in clean energy programming and specifically with highly impacted vulnerable populations or how well does one of these specific resources improve Home Comfort or uh improve access to Reliable and clean energy and so for if you're looking at a resource uh you would ask yourself for Target elri ification uh does it improve participation in clean energy resourcing we would give it a score of one or or zero if it doesn't we would do the same for Target electrification does it increase the quality or quantity of clean energy jobs again doing that scoring and we do we do this exercise with each of the resources with each of these indicators here and then when we run our portfolio analysis we look at it and and ask ourselves um how does this portfolio compare to this based on the scoring within that portfolio uh that's been run behind the scenes there okay so I know we're 15 minutes okay getting close to time but I do want to leave time for questions and feedback here so if we could go to the next slide um this is where we ask the question uh what do you think about this approach and evaluating some of the benefits and burdens of generic resource and specifically it should be for the generic the gas resources here um are there other considerations I think you all heard Alex and Tyler kind of go deeper dive on the electric side and so hoping this makes a bit more sense on the gas side as well of course just with those four buckets of resources um and using a little bit different set of metrics to show here great well thank you so much Brian um if people have comments or questions on this they can put it in the chat or we're about to go to public comment in about three or four minutes so people can just verbally provide some feedback if they'd like to these questions otherwise the M mural board is still open so let me pause and see does anyone have any questions about what Brian shared about the gas side looking to see if there's open questions I'm not seeing any open questions but I do hope that everyone has the Electric Slide song stuck in their head for at least a day following this meeting and I'm not you're not the only one who who has made that slip up it's not a kind of a tongue twister so um okay Brian I'm not seeing anything in the chat so let's go to the kind of next slide Next Step slides and that'll get us to public comment at exactly 3:20 okay so here's what's coming up um the resource planning Advisory Group is going to also talk about Equity at in the IRP at a slightly more detailed level next week on June 12th as you know those meetings are available for the public to view um as an observer and so you can find information on psc's website the feedback form for this webinar closes on June 13th so Pauline can you just drop feedback form uh Link in the chat so everyone has it handy so you have any um you know epiphanies tomorrow or feedback you want to provide please you can use that feedback form uh that wraps up the meetings for this month but next month there will be a resource pending Advisory Group meeting so this is going to talk about gas modeling processes scenarios resource Alternatives there will be a break in August we'll exhale um and right now tentatively there is an arpeg meeting um that's focused on the draft results and the decision process process and a decarbonization update so this public webinar setting is going to take a little break um for for the summer but of course those resource planning Advisory Group meetings are available for the for the public to observe so next slide please well I think that's pretty much it okay it is now the public The public's turn to talk Pauline if you can you activate the hand raising feature and we'll get PSC on the line here and let me share my screen with our timer because I have trouble keeping track of time okay I see uh Mr Jim Adcock has his hand raised let me share my screen and we'll make sure Jim is able to talk so first off Jim can we do a little sound test can we hear you testing one two three very nice we can hear you just fine please your public comments Starts Now Okay equity in utility planning meaning what is fair for everyone involved is a difficult subject with no clear answer balancing the needs and costs between the more impacted communities the average rate payer who pays for all this and the people around the world who are actually most impacted by greenhouse gas emissions from our natural gas for example the people of Africa what helps no one is when utilities simply waste money by implementing foolish measures measures which are not cost effective at the task they are assigned to do I applaud efforts which cost effectively attempt to reduce energy burden on impacted communities while reducing the use of electricity for which more effectively using electricity such as heat pumps and which also help prevent Heatwave deaths due to climate change but we need to be diligent to protect against just for show pretend electric meses which do not actually serve these communities which do not actually reduce electricity and which do not actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to be clear I don't believe pug is there yet implementing methods which actually make a difference which are cost effective in doing so rather than being just for show needlessly wasting great paay money for example I believe the use of hydrogen mixed into gas lines is not C cost effective and is double counting regulatory game playing rather than solving any real problems for anyone whereas getting rid of gas and replacing it with heat pumps and induction cooking would also improve indoor air quality problems further Puget needs to better Implement real word metrics when it comes to measuring these activities I continue to recommend that Puget monitorized metrics as well as possible so that these efforts can be measured by traditional utility lowest reasonable cost measures and so these metrics can be transparently sanity checked unweighted metrics are not necessarily fair for example including a metric which is not actually useful or previously p in basically use the same metrics five times leading to a five times waiting on that particular metric I will leave it there thank you thank you for your comments Jim um I see Thomas Kramer I see your hand let's see if we're able to hear you go ahead Thomas yes can you hear me now I sure can your two minutes start now okay um with regard to generic resources it may be useful to distinguish between uh generic resources even at the initial generic level that are within psse service area that would be controlled by psse versus similar resources that are distant and require transmission into psc's service area there would be differences in cost footprint and reliability among among other burdens and benefits uh you mentioned that wind uh resources would all be from dist sources but it would be different for solar generic utility owned solar within PSC service area would likely cost less but may have greater footprint burdens than generic solar imported from a distant uh solar farm under contract so distinguishing between distance and within psse generic resources at the beginning of the planning process would help in later planning phases such as determining the transmission total transmission requirements needed by psse in Regional planning and um thank you uh once again for uh providing Public Access in the planning process and uh that's all I have great thank you so much appreciate those comments let's go to the participant list here I'm not seeing any uh other hands I'll pause for a second just to check all right then well thank you to our public attendees and for psse for your presentations remember that feedback report will be open for about a week or so and so provide any other thoughts through that mechanism and um if I won't see some of the members of the public here at the upcoming resource planning Advisory Group meetings I hope you all enjoy the start to your summer thank you so much everyone thank you