AgdaPkt 2019-10-28 Joint SA PFA - Laserfiche WebLink

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CLK-Pamela Aguilar From: Tom Kabat <tomgkabat@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, October 28, 2019 12:23 AM To: GRP -City Council Subject: Adoption of Reach Codes - Oct 28 agenda item This e-mail is from an external source. Please do not open attachments or click links from an unknown or suspicious origin. o5xrr2i Dear Redwood City City Council, I'm a fellow public servant, an Environmental Quality Commissioner from Menlo Park. By way of personal background, I'm an energy industry professional with training in building energy science and over three decades of experience at a local gas and electric utility as well as consulting for the U.S. Department of Energy. And currently I'm the engineer on a PCE grant funded project looking at retrofitting a RWC home to rid it of gas polluting systems and we can clearly see it would've been much cheaper to have just built it without gas in the first place, or even to have made it all electric in a recent remodel. But that's where Reach Codes can be a great money saving tool. It's clear that climate change is starting to show its ugly head and that we have to deal with it much more rapidly than we had hoped. It's clear now that as public officials we have to heed the worldwide panel of scientists' advice to reduce methane and carbon pollution through new means that are 1) Rapid, 2) Far Reaching and 3) Unprecedented. One more thing is clear. We already have the tools, and equipment to cost-effectively solve the problem in new buildings at a lower cost than running environmentally obsolete gas pipes to them. But old habits die hard. Recently, I was part of the City of Palo Alto Technical Advisory Commission that reviewed the low uptake of their 10% differential 2016 Reach code meant to encourage all electric buildings. The results appear that very few builders (less than 1 in 10) look into building the modern affordable, high performance, clean all -electric way. Designers and builders are simply busy pursuing opportunities the same old way they always have with gas fired equipment. The bulk of builders found acceptable -to -them workarounds that let them install (strand) gas fired equipment in new buildings, and this leaves the owners with a climate liability to be addressed later in an expensive retrofit case as climate preservation becomes an even more obvious local goal. I hope you can see this is an opportunity for councils to make the prudent choice of eliminating the temptation for builders to strand even more new gas assets in our communities. A strong Reach Code now will save our constituents money in initial building costs and save much more money in not having to do inconvenient retrofit projects to later implement the carbon saving equipment that is already available and widely used in other parts of the country and the world. Menlo Park staff looked at the type of differential code (like the one proposed by staff with only a 10% efficiency improvement as a small hurdle to surmount in order to keep building the old gas fired way)... and they realized, not only would it be difficult to administer, it also wasn't going to result in the needed transformation to a safe climate that we need to preserve our way of life. So they developed a simpler code option, to simplify life for all concerned by having the builders start implementing all electric construction in all new construction. As what will be a temporary partial concession