[0:00] In 2025, when I can build a council study session, call this meeting to order and ask that everyone mute or turn off your cell phones or other electronic devices, appreciate that, and I'll ask manager Rob Beahan to do a roll call for attendance.

[0:15] Thank you. Trustee Meyers, Trustee Aphatop here, Trustee Dorman, Trustee Horsick, Trustee Elvinson, President Dearborn.

[0:22] Here, Trustee Handler has provided the required notice that she is unable to attend tonight's

[0:28] meeting due to work obligations. Our rules provide the Trustee Handler may participate

[0:33] remotely unless two-thirds of the board of checks. Is there any objection?

[0:39] Hearing none, Trustee Handler may now participate remotely fully in the study session meeting

[0:45] and the minutes should so reflect. Trustee Handler. Here. Thank you. Thank you, Rob.

[0:52] Now we'll go into a public comment, and this, I'm going to ask if anyone in the audience wants to speak about an item, not on tonight's agenda.

[1:01] So nothing to do with a lifework power, supply, Ted, welcome.

[1:10] Ted, let's go to the middle one here.

[1:12] Oh, a little one there.

[1:13] Thank you.

[1:16] After my, that fingered button pressing issue yesterday, you kind of know I am here.

[1:21] So, yes, I'm back, I've decided that I was a coward last year when I was falsely accused

[1:32] of trespassing by the village and I chose to let the case be dismissed and in return

[1:37] I gave up my valid section 1983 civil rights complaints, the possibility that a attorney

[1:50] had acted onathically, the fact that the police had violated the newly formed body camera

[1:56] act law, and ultimately the fact that I gave up my right to traverse the public beach.

[2:05] So I've decided I can't live with that anymore.

[2:09] So I sent you guys an email.

[2:10] I was going to send it today, but fat fingered.

[2:13] So I have a number of questions because the idea of trespassing is, you know, there's a legal

[2:18] standard and I feel that none of that was met last time.

[2:22] And so next week, I'm going to try to do it towards the end of business like when they're

[2:26] wrapping up construction so that my general right of access to the Lakeshore won't interfere

[2:30] with their specific right of use of the Lakeshore.

[2:34] I'm going to head out there.

[2:35] If there's still a sense, I'll move it.

[2:37] I'll call the police before I go.

[2:39] They can come and meet me.

[2:40] We can walk the Lakeshore together if they'd like.

[2:43] But if someone has a concern that I'm trespassing somewhere, then that person should at that

[2:47] time make the allegation, because they don't have right to alleged I'm trespassing on the public

[2:58] trust land that's only for the state and the state doesn't even have that right. And they

[3:03] have a duty then to show where their property begins and that notice was provided, right?

[3:09] You can't just say my property ends at that crack and you can't cross it. So we'll see what happens

[3:16] next week, but I'll call you guys. I hope the police will come out, escort me. So that's about it, I'll stop talking.

[3:24] Everyone got this except for the village attorney because he wasn't sure that someone,

[3:28] I'm sure that someone forwarded it to you, but I just heard that.

[3:31] Yeah, confirming receipt of the letter, Ted, thank you, and it will be reviewed.

[3:35] So we appreciate that. We have a signed up sheet for public comment.

[3:40] There's a John Anderson. And this is not to do with electric.

[3:45] Oh, no, wrong public comment.

[3:49] Okay, so I will now, anyone else public comment on issues not on the agenda.

[3:55] Okay, so we'll close public comment and move on to the IMEA contract renewal follow-up.

[4:03] The Winnicka Future Energy Supply Considerations.

[4:08] The council has been analyzing the renewal of IMEA Power Sales Contract and capacity purchase

[4:13] agreement for over a year.

[4:15] conducting three study sessions, specifically in May of 2024, December of 2024, February of 2025,

[4:24] and now May of 2025. And participating in the future energy coalition forum, which was fantastic,

[4:31] and that was in October of 2024. Tonight, Village, Water and Electric Director Nick Nari will provide an

[4:38] of date, followed by energy consultant Mark Pruitt from the Power Bureau.

[4:45] And if I could just make a couple, just a couple comments.

[4:49] And first of all, we see all of us have a lot of friends in this audience right now.

[4:53] So thank you everyone for coming. We really do appreciate it.

[4:56] And I think it's fair to say that everyone in this room,

[5:00] everybody cares deeply about the environment.

[5:03] So there's no question about that.

[5:06] I think we could also stipulate and agree that this is a pretty complicated issue and we're

[5:12] going to do the best we can to work through it that I pledge.

[5:16] It's an area that's in transition, it's evolving, it's somewhat in flux, we all understand

[5:20] that we're all looking into the future and the crystal ball can be a little murky as we look

[5:25] into the future.

[5:26] So, with that being said, the way we're going to do this tonight is Nick Nari is going

[5:35] water department and give a presentation followed by Mr. Purwet, who's going to speak.

[5:41] And then we agreed with the Wenecke future energy coalition with one of their representatives

[5:48] who I interacted with directly to offer 15 minutes of public comment during the public

[5:57] comment to make sort of a presentation for 15 minutes, no more than 15 minutes.

[6:03] that's going to follow Mr. Pruitt,

[6:08] then we will, part of that idea was to maybe cover some of the issues that would otherwise come up in public comment.

[6:16] We'd prefer not to have duplicative topics come up. If people still want to have public comment after those presentations,

[6:23] that's fine. We'll see how many people want to speak and we'll determine the length of that public comment period.

[6:29] And then we'll go around the trustees, we'll have the opportunity to ask questions to any of the speakers.

[6:36] And then we'll go from there.

[6:38] So that's kind of the agenda for tonight.

[6:41] So we'll start out and I'd ask that, you know, this is, we can get all in passion in this.

[6:47] If we could keep the clapping or the booing or whatever, down, we'd appreciate that and just make it a good decorum here in Village Hall tonight.

[6:55] So we'll start with Nick Nari.

[7:00] Thank you, Nick.

[7:14] So good evening council.

[7:16] Tonight I have the opportunity to present to you our continued efforts on the IMEA contract extension.

[7:23] Here's an agenda of what we'll cover tonight.

[7:25] I won't spend too much time on this just a timeline.

[7:28] Cost of power, additional content.

[7:30] Next, presentation from Mr. Prood. I'll make some closing remarks before we engage in public comment.

[7:36] Just the timeline. So in February of 2024, that's when the IMEA Board approved the final form of the contract extension.

[7:43] When it was initially advertised to members, a member started designing the contract as soon as March of 2024.

[7:49] These next three meetings, President Deermord or any coverage is opening remarks.

[7:53] Our engagement with stakeholders in the community and our continued efforts was study sessions here in this room.

[7:58] of which was with Mark Pruitt in December of 2024.

[8:02] On March 11th of this year, based on feedback from the public and from the council, we further

[8:08] engage Mr. Pruitt to investigate what we're calling the power marketer option, which would

[8:12] be to engage a power marketing type firm on the villages behalf to procure power.

[8:18] Those findings will be presented by Mark tonight.

[8:20] And overall, when I cast staff and council, I've worked diligently over the past 15 months

[8:25] to perform a thorough options analysis and continue our stakeholder engagement.

[8:31] So just a brief history with IMEA, IMEA is a nonprofit joint action agency formed and run by its members.

[8:40] So IMEA is not listed on the New York Stock Exchange. They do not have any shareholders.

[8:44] That's worth mentioning that they are a nonprofit when we're talking about their overall goals and structure.

[8:51] IMEA was formed in the spring of 1984, when that was one of 23 charted members.

[8:55] It's first CEO, was the former Wenakka Director of Water and Electric, Mr. Gary Zimmerman.

[9:01] Wenakka entered into a full requirements contract in June of 1990, and ever since then,

[9:05] Wenakka has been buying all of its power from IMEA.

[9:09] Wenakka has a direct voice in the power supply through its IMEA board seat,

[9:12] so this is really to kind of clarify what IMEA's corporate government structure is like.

[9:18] IMEA staff, who you've had up here before, twice, serve and take policy from the board.

[9:24] So the village is one of 32 board members, the similar structure to how I am a staff member

[9:29] of the village and I serve you as council members of the village of Weneka.

[9:33] Down there IMEA staff and Springfield serve out the behest of the council of the members,

[9:38] board members who are the 32 communities.

[9:40] So just what we're talking about, who IMEA is and who makes the decisions, the board, the 32

[9:45] communities are the ones who end up making the decisions at the end of the day.

[9:51] Capacity credits, so it's well known that one that is a power generator.

[9:55] We have our plant down in the lake front.

[9:57] We are entitled to capacity credits through IMEA for having that power plant.

[10:02] Our assets are fully dedicated to IMEA, which means they're utilized towards meeting

[10:05] the capacity requirements of the agency.

[10:08] Part of being a PGM, which is our regional transmission operator.

[10:12] Part of being a PGM transmission participant is having adequate capacity to serve your load,

[10:18] which Mark will discuss in more detail during his presentation.

[10:20] So, our plant goes towards IMEA's capacity accreditation.

[10:26] The current plant assets are just over half of our peak load.

[10:30] So, we could feed the village about half the village at our peak.

[10:34] Gender and capacity provides both a physical and a financial hedge in the energy marketplace.

[10:39] So, that power is sold into the energy markets.

[10:42] When we're called upon, the plant runs to net our load off the grid.

[10:46] This results in a power cost savings through the IMEA and for the village.

[10:49] So essentially, and those really hot summer days when the cost of power is really high,

[10:54] we're going to call from the operator booth down in Springfield and they'll say,

[10:57] we need you to run. We take our, what PGM would see on the grid for our load and take it down

[11:03] to a diminimus amount and what that means is that's money saved for us and for the agency as a whole.

[11:09] So we socialize those benefits. And it goes without saying that having generation assets also

[11:14] able to recover faster from local storms to rate shows, tornadoes that would come through the

[11:19] area. Our other neighbors would have difficulty recovering from that, a generational and

[11:23] help us recover quicker.

[11:28] Capacity credits. So since the inception of the contract, which

[11:31] was in 1991, the village has received $47 million in capacity credits. What that amounts

[11:36] to is about a 16% reduction on average per year between 2014 and 2024, credit on our bill,

[11:44] which has lowered our bill 16%.

[11:46] At the most recent IME board meeting,

[11:48] which was in April of this year,

[11:50] the board unanimously approved a more generous

[11:52] capacity payment structure to reflect

[11:54] what we're going to talk about here shortly,

[11:56] which is increases in power costs

[11:57] that are coming in the near term.

[11:59] They've made the capacity payments more generous.

[12:02] So for current assets from an operation through 2035,

[12:05] we stand to make an additional $2.6 million

[12:07] in credits over the next 10 years on top of

[12:10] the existing $1 million per year,

[12:12] we would get for the equipment.

[12:14] capacity of payments through IMEA distribute the benefits and risks of generation across the membership.

[12:19] So what we're really talking about here is we are not on our own, we're one of 32.

[12:25] So when we run and we reduce our load and we produce those cost savings, that is spread throughout the agency.

[12:33] IMEA power marketing in dispatch is a 24-7 operation.

[12:36] So there's a control center in Springfield, there's someone at the desk 24-7 helping us make these decisions

[12:41] doing these power purchases and dispatching.

[12:45] In PGM, there's, there are significant financial risks to non-performance, which, again,

[12:50] more, can talk on during his presentation.

[12:53] If we were a participant, a PGM participant on our own and we're called to generate, and

[12:57] we failed to generate, there would be significant financial risk for the village.

[13:02] Luckily, we try to avoid that by managing our assets appropriately and maintain

[13:08] generation when called upon but if there were a situation where there was a catastrophic failure

[13:12] that risk is again is spread throughout the agency so we're not absorbing that risk on our own.

[13:19] So market indicators so getting into kind of where we're going in the near-term data centers AI

[13:27] is all the talk in the news now. So the Department of Energy forecast that data center energy consumption

[13:32] is going to jump from about 4% of total U.S. load in 2023 to anywhere from 6.7 to 12% by

[13:40] 2028, so a significant rise.

[13:43] This rise in demand coincides with the fall in supply,

[13:46] due to the planned retirements of thermal resources.

[13:49] So coal, natural gas generation is being retired.

[13:54] And in basic macroeconomic principles,

[13:56] a decline in supply and arise in demand equals rising prices.

[13:59] So we're seeing that across the country.

[14:01] Power is a commodity.

[14:03] It's traded on markets.

[14:04] Power really day ahead in year ahead increments.

[14:07] PJM, which is the regional transmission operator

[14:09] for the Chicago land area, stock clearing prices for 25-26, are up 800% year over year.

[14:16] Climate customers, myself included, are going to see that on their bill starting June 1st.

[14:20] They'll see significant increases on their supply cost.

[14:24] Myso, which is in Southern Southern and Central Illinois, those summer prices for planning

[14:28] year 25-26 were up over 2,000%.

[14:33] What this really means is myso and PGM are signaling dramatic increases in capacity pricing, and

[14:38] is a signal to the market. So what they're signaling is that more generation capacities are needed

[14:43] to fill a looming shortfall. So they're looking ahead three, five, even longer than that.

[14:50] And saying, there's a shortfall coming. You need to start planning now. We're providing a price

[14:54] signal to you to build more generation to fill that gap. What does an adequate capacity?

[15:00] That means inability to meet demand, emergency load shedding, which would be blackouts or brownouts, which I'll talk about an example of when that occurred here shortly, back in 2022.

[15:12] So, these are some further market indicators, these are just headlines. Again, most of these is centralized around AI and data centers, but the same argument could be made about electrification of vehicles. Essentially, we are adding demand, electrical demand onto the grid that currently does not exist.

[15:30] So the power to me, AI demands either curly doesn't exist or has not been brought yet to the market.

[15:36] If the US wants to be an AI super power, which I have no doubt that it does, that power needs to come from somewhere.

[15:43] It needs to run all the time.

[15:46] Data centers are server farms at the end of the day. They run constantly.

[15:50] A good fit for that would be nuclear, so you've seen headlines recently about restarting three mile island.

[15:55] to power Microsoft data centers or starting up other nuclear campuses.

[16:01] Again, the demand is there, the supply needs to be there all the time, and you're seeing

[16:06] these market signals.

[16:09] So we're mentioning what we're talking about data centers that there are single data centers

[16:13] with the demands that's twice the size of the entire village of NECA or more.

[16:17] So what we're talking about, the village is competitive competitiveness in the marketplace.

[16:22] We are competing out there with the Meadows, the Amazon's of the world who are

[16:27] have significant higher demand for their projects.

[16:34] So, a case study on reliability and costs.

[16:37] For those of you that may recall, this was Christmas Eve 2022.

[16:41] This was Winner Storm Elliott.

[16:44] This brought almost the entire Eastern grid to near total collapse.

[16:47] So, the Eastern grid, everything east of the Mississippi River all the way to the Atlantic.

[16:51] What happened was they were freezing temps across the region, you had natural gas supply shortages,

[16:56] transportation issues, plants were forced to de-rate or shut down due to extreme cold or gas

[17:01] or tailments.

[17:04] Career operators underestimated the P-electrical demand, so as good as these folks are at PGM or

[17:09] mice so it trying to predict how much power is going to be used, they can make mistakes too.

[17:14] So mistakes were made on how much estimated demand there would be for that day, Christmas Eve 22.

[17:19] to. What happened? So if that southeast

[17:22] move utilities, such as Duke Energy and Tennessee

[17:24] Vailability Authority, TVA conducted

[17:27] rolling blackouts of more than five gigawatts of

[17:29] load. So going through the five gigawatts of load,

[17:33] turning power off, turning it back on. Five

[17:35] gigawatts is about five times the size of IMEA's

[17:39] service area. IMEA's about one gigawatts,

[17:41] so it's five times the size of that.

[17:43] Coned, which is a New York City,

[17:45] which is most of the New York City boroughs,

[17:47] was on the verge of total collapse.

[17:48] they managed to get through it using liquid natural gas reserves.

[17:53] Officials said that if there was a collapse of restoration from the fielder would have taken

[17:58] months to restore, essentially this is all to say that the grid is a gigantic machine,

[18:05] as a lot of moving pieces, and power by its nature has to be there when you need it, when

[18:09] you flip the switch you expect the lights to turn on, that's just how the grid is expected

[18:13] to work.

[18:14] In terms of pricing for this event, so real-time power prices in the P.J. Amazon jumps to $37,

[18:20] $100 a megawatt hour on Christmas Eve 2022, day-at-market, so on Christmas Eve Eve, those

[18:27] analysts thought it was only going to cost $250 a megawatt hour, so more than 10 times the cost

[18:31] on that day. If you were a utility, the had a broad exposure to the open market, those cost

[18:37] would have been passed on to your consumers. So another example, this was Winner Storm Yuri in Texas,

[18:42] We're, again, customers were faced with bills, thousands of dollars in electricity just based

[18:47] on cost passed down to their consumers.

[18:50] What do we not could do?

[18:51] We're not Korean.

[18:53] Our two diesel generators, which is five megawatts, we were called to bond to do this by

[18:57] IMEA.

[18:58] We're in those for two straight days, so Christmas Eve and Christmas to lower our load.

[19:02] So we're doing our parts to help the grid as a whole to lower that profile.

[19:12] So, getting into the cost of power, I mean, I continue to provide affordable, reliable, and sustainable

[19:17] powers to our members.

[19:20] In fiscal year 2425, so far we are 2.8% below the projected budget for power costs.

[19:27] I mean, as power supply costs, the portions of which they control are still less than fiscal year

[19:31] 2013-2014.

[19:34] It's important to mention that stable power costs allow the village to perform long-term planning.

[19:39] So, when I could elect your utility and water utilities have no debt, we do everything on

[19:44] a pay as you go basis.

[19:46] So for us having stable pricing year over year allows us to do long-term planning five

[19:51] or 15 year planning, because we know what our power costs are going to be, and what we do

[19:56] with that is we make sure we have adequate cash flows to put money back into the utility.

[20:00] So we're bearing power lines, we're making improvements to the reliability for when we're

[20:04] residents. We can only do that based on really good solid financial planning.

[20:10] We're not good capacity credits reduce our overall power cost and we have one of the lowest

[20:13] cost portfolios in the agency due to our capacity credits. Instability in the whole

[20:19] set market, as I just discussed, is only projected to have a minimal impact on IMEA members,

[20:24] due to own assets, own generation assets and other hedges. The only have about 10% of their portfolio

[20:30] that was exposed to the open market.

[20:32] So very limited exposure.

[20:36] In terms of the cost of power, when we're talking about

[20:39] what is really a true comparison for Weneka.

[20:42] PGM spot pricing, so locational marginal pricing

[20:45] is a term used for the cost of power in this region.

[20:49] PGM, locational marginal pricing,

[20:51] represents the typical effect of the entire RTO.

[20:55] So you think of all the customers between here

[20:58] and the Atlantic Ocean, you've got a lot of commercial,

[21:00] large industrial customers have a lot higher load factor.

[21:05] We have a higher load factor, you have a lower cost of power

[21:08] because your load is more spread out over those 24 hours of the day.

[21:12] When that goes low, it is a majority of residential.

[21:14] We are a bedroom community, our load,

[21:16] usually peaks between 4 and 7 pm when people are getting home,

[21:21] turning on the air conditioning, their appliances,

[21:23] So our peak generally coincides with the system peak,

[21:26] and our load is very predictable, has a very poor load factor.

[21:29] So we don't benefit from that higher note factor that the majority of PGM would benefit from.

[21:36] Another point to mention is Comet owns no generation assets, and therefore has no financing cost of pay for those assets.

[21:43] So during deregulation, Comet used to own generation. It was spun off to excellent now a constellation.

[21:49] So Comet doesn't have to carry any debt to finance long-term supply costs for power plants, which is important to mention.

[21:59] PGM, location of marginal pricing, doesn't factor in any

[22:01] evaluated services from IMEA that are requirement to be a PGM

[22:05] participating member. Mark is going to discuss this during his

[22:09] portion of presentation. The labor that's involved with being a

[22:12] participating member in PGM is will come at a cost that's either

[22:17] directly through village FTE's or contracted either way you're going

[22:21] to have to pay for that expertise.

[22:23] Comet does add supply-based writers on to bills that are directly reflected.

[22:30] It's in the supply portion of customer bills. Those of us that are kind of met customers, there's a supply portion, a delivery portion, and then all the stuff at the bottom, where they add in all the taxes and fees. So, there are supply-based riders on the bills in 2024, those added about 29%, 2 bills, 29%.

[22:51] And lastly, PGM, spot pricing, doesn't factor in hedging. So hedging is very important to reduce your exposure to volatility in the marketplace.

[22:59] which I was just discussing, 800 percent, 2,000 percent increases in your over year and cost

[23:05] of power.

[23:06] It would not be prudent business practice for us to go completely un-hage into the power

[23:10] markets.

[23:13] Here we have a comparison for cost of power.

[23:16] So, this table.

[23:18] On the left, you have IMEA's total budgeted cost of electricity, which is in dollars per

[23:22] megawatt hour.

[23:23] You have the Weneck rate and the center column.

[23:25] This is when you include our capacity credits, and then on the far right column you have

[23:29] a common average historical pricing.

[23:32] This is the common price to compare, which

[23:35] is a publicly available data through the ICC.

[23:38] This is the true comet cost that you

[23:41] pay for supply on your bills.

[23:42] And I can speak to the accuracy of this data

[23:44] as a comet customer.

[23:48] While I'm used budget to power supply costs

[23:50] are higher than commas over the last 10 years,

[23:52] when I could does benefit from those capacity credits.

[23:55] And again, the cost for comet does not include any supply

[23:59] debt. This particular data doesn't include any supply riders, which would add to this cost.

[24:05] And again, so we're strictly talking about power and transmission.

[24:09] Eight of the last ten years, when I could have lower power supply costs, then the

[24:13] comment price to compare. When you factor in capacity credits that we get for

[24:16] generation, we've saved about five point five six million dollars over

[24:21] time out of just the last 10 years.

[24:26] So additional context for those when we're framing this decision,

[24:31] Naperville's Public Utility Advisory Board,

[24:33] which is an lower board in the City of Naperville,

[24:37] they approved a recommendation from Customize Energy

[24:39] Solutions, CES, who is their consultant

[24:42] of choice to evaluate Naperville's options.

[24:45] It's important to mention Naperville's system demand

[24:47] is approximately 10 times ours.

[24:49] So when we're talking about being in the marketplace,

[24:51] We're about 110th the size of Naperville.

[24:55] This is verbatim from their material.

[24:58] CES recommends that Naperville continued to procure energy

[25:00] and capacity through IMEA while leveraging the MDR clause

[25:03] and its contract to explore renewable energy procurement

[25:06] via PPAs, which is purchase power agreements.

[25:09] By starting with the 10% of its peak load,

[25:12] they can gain valuable experience while maintaining

[25:14] rates stability through IMEA supply stack,

[25:17] which I'll talk to when I get to my sustainability

[25:19] section, but really CES is recommending to do both to accomplish both. As of April, as of April

[25:27] 2025 board meeting, 27 of the 32 members have all signed the power sales contracts and capacity

[25:34] purchase agreements as is with zero changes. And although the April 30 deadline passed a decision

[25:42] on a possible extension of the open contract period through August is expected to be on the June

[25:48] IMEA board meeting, so a decision will be forthcoming on whether or not the open contract

[25:52] period can continue.

[25:54] And just to mention, in terms of the other members, other 27 who have signed, there's

[25:59] one member who is larger than us than terms of load, two members who are very similar sized

[26:03] and the majority are smaller than us.

[26:10] So getting into sustainability measures, so how can the village increase sustainability on the

[26:15] local level?

[26:17] One of the big things we could do is utilize the member directed resources, which is MDR.

[26:22] This is an option in the new contract, contract extension, currently it's capped at 10% of the peak.

[26:31] There is a potential for this to go up, which I will discuss here shortly.

[26:36] How could the village achieve this? Well, estimates are that our closed landfill has a solar capacity of about 2.7 megawatts

[26:45] for utility scale solar, this would be about 6.5% of our peak demand.

[26:51] The village, any item you remember has the option of doing MDR outside of its limits,

[26:55] as long as in the state of Illinois.

[26:58] The issue there is, if you're thinking of an example where we buy farmland somewhere and

[27:04] came county, then you're building a, you're financing a project that you need to do land acquisition,

[27:10] permitting, get in the PGMQ if you recall from our last meeting with IMEA. It was a nine-year

[27:16] Q for the BALO solar project, nine years from start to finish. So behind the meters solar

[27:22] generation allows us to get that a lot faster than trying to work in the PGMQ which will

[27:26] just slow the process down. We can also execute power purchase agreements. That's another

[27:31] way to meet MDRs. We could do up to 10% of our load as power purchase agreements.

[27:39] That's

[27:39] One thing we could do now, if we wanted would be to explore creating a voluntary program for

[27:44] renewable energy credit, these are called RECs, to offset emissions from a power consumption.

[27:49] IMEA has a program to do this.

[27:52] The village can also pursue another contracted resource to do that, but that's something we can

[27:55] do now within the framework of our current contract.

[27:59] We can pursue operations to make opportunities to make village operations fully net zero,

[28:04] the rooftop solar and MDR.

[28:06] So what this would look like would be an MDR utility scale solar deployment as well as covering

[28:11] public safety building, the village yards with solar panels, with the goal of producing

[28:16] as much power as possible, village-owned facilities and operations consumed about 3 million

[28:22] kilowatt hours per year.

[28:25] So we could get very, very close to being fully net zero, through a variety of rooftop

[28:29] solar deployments and MDR.

[28:34] We could create programs to incentivize and streamline customer rooftop solar, so we're currently

[28:39] actively seeking a higher soul smart designation to accomplish that.

[28:44] We can continue to award the maximum allowable IME Energy Efficiency and EV funding.

[28:49] We've taken full advantage of this program as a village since 2009.

[28:53] From 2009 through the end of last year, by fully utilizing the program, we've reduced our

[28:58] of energy purchases about 9.5 million kilowatt hours through efficiency initiatives.

[29:05] And lastly, you may know we're in the midst of an AMI deployment, so advanced metering

[29:10] deployment.

[29:11] That is going to open up some doors for the village to do some pretty new things that

[29:16] we currently cannot do.

[29:17] One of those is called demand response, where you could create a program to incentivize

[29:21] residents to help the lower the villages peak demand during those hot summer days, which

[29:26] obviously would lower our costs.

[29:27] So that's something that AMI is going to open the door for us.

[29:33] More on sustainability measures.

[29:35] So again, DMDR contract revision is in the extension,

[29:39] but it can be, the IMEs committed to roll it forward

[29:41] if we were to sign.

[29:43] So we don't need to wait until 2035 to do MDR.

[29:45] If the contract extension was signed, we could do it day one.

[29:51] 10% is just a start.

[29:53] I know there's been some questions about kind of go more

[29:54] than 10% kind of the approach is kind of a crawl

[29:58] before you walk type approach.

[30:00] We know we can't even do 10% within the village limits. So in order to ask for more than 10%, we would really need to demonstrate to the IMEA Board, third to one of the communities, how are we going to do more than 10%. So we really have to have a plan to accomplish that before we even ask for an increase.

[30:19] Village staff are actively working on pillar four of the comprehensive plan, which includes

[30:23] drafting a climate action plan.

[30:25] The village also recently hired a sustainability coordinator.

[30:29] The village, as an IME board member, has a vested interest in shaping the power portfolio

[30:34] and ensuring progress on the long term sustainability plan for 32 member communities in Illinois.

[30:42] Last thing, IMEA is a non-profit.

[30:43] So there would be a business incentive for pursuing renewable resources that are, as the overall market shifts towards an economical,

[30:51] dispatchable solution.

[30:53] Those are going to lower costs to the membership.

[30:57] So IMEA works on behalf of 32 member communities.

[31:01] So if there is a renewable or, in some sense, a safe, cost-effective nuclear solution,

[31:07] that would be dispatchable and would present lower costs to our entire power portfolio,

[31:11] So, the NIME would have no reason not to pursue it.

[31:14] The goal as a nonprofit is to give us the best, best, the lowest cost product.

[31:20] So, that's the end of my portion of the presentation from now.

[31:24] I'll turn it over to Mark.

[31:25] I'll do a quick introduction here.

[31:27] So, Mark Prue, it has more than 30 years of experience in the Illinois Energy sector.

[31:31] Since 2011, Mark has served as the independent energy consultant, serving clients such as

[31:36] Argonne National Laboratory, the Illinois Senate, and independent power producers.

[31:41] Mark served as the first director of the Illinois Power Agency, where he secured a

[31:45] short city supply and behalf of approximately 4.7 million residential and small commercial

[31:50] customers served by Comet and Amran.

[31:53] Mark is also an adjunct, a associate professor in the Master of Science and Energy and Sustainability

[31:57] Program at North Western University.

[31:59] So with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Prue.

[32:01] Can I just say that we were first introduced to Mark at the future energy coalition forum

[32:09] back in October, so the mark had no previous affiliation with the village.

[32:16] That's where we met Mr. Pruitt, we were impressed and in March of this year we knew

[32:21] we needed some muscle in this endeavor to understand this decision better and so the

[32:29] village retained Mr. Pruitt in this capacity.

[32:37] Thank you very much. I appreciate the introduction and appreciate being invited back. So thank

[32:43] you. As Nick mentioned, my task was a follow-up. My first work with the village dealt with

[32:54] identifying what was the range of options available to the municipal utility moving forward.

[33:01] And then after a little bit of reflection, the direction came back to say, Mark, did you

[33:06] tell us a little bit more about this power marketer option of contracting out this power supply

[33:13] portion of the operation of the utility, and I was very excited to do that because as I

[33:19] shared with staff a little bit earlier, this April celebrates the 20th anniversary of the first

[33:26] electric contract that I ever negotiated. So it's been a while. I enjoy doing it. My family

[33:35] is tired of hearing about it, so I'm glad to have a new audience to share with. And I have the

[33:41] results of some of my analysis and kind of a fit analysis for the municipal operation here.

[33:50] So, before jumping into, well, what would the price be and who could we contract with?

[33:55] I wanted to start a little bit more broad.

[34:00] When we're thinking about the municipal utility, we need to think about where it resides

[34:05] within the whole span of the electric system.

[34:08] So this is a very simple diagram, it starts with power plants over here on the left,

[34:13] substations to step up the voltage to the interstate transmission system,

[34:18] down voltage to substations through local distribution lines and then to the home.

[34:25] And this is the point where the municipal utility resides anywhere from the meter of your home,

[34:31] out to that transformer that connects to the interstate transmission system, right?

[34:36] everything to the left of that, the power plants, the transmission lines, the substations,

[34:41] how they operate, when they operate, at what level do they operate, what happens if

[34:45] they can't operate, that's all the responsibility of PJM, and that's really where I think

[34:52] if I were to start a municipal utility, that's where I would commence my thinking to say,

[34:59] let's worry about who we buy from, of course that's important, but how do we even get

[35:05] to a point where we can take delivery of power as a wholesale power provider, and it's in

[35:11] PGM where that all has to come together.

[35:14] So this is just a quick map of the PGM service territory.

[35:18] Some of you may have seen it or not.

[35:20] PGM stands for at least originally stood for Pennsylvania, Jersey, Maryland.

[35:25] So this was the cooperative buying group and transmission cooperative between the utilities

[35:32] that were in that tri-state area.

[35:34] and it's grown since then, and essentially this looks like a club of utilities, and that's exactly what it is.

[35:41] This is the whole premise of PGM is about reliability, and they get to reliability by sharing resources.

[35:52] The whole idea of sharing resources is not every power plant needs to be operating at full output all the time.

[35:58] Right? That's not always efficient. By coordinating between owners of different power plants and

[36:04] managing the transmission lines that link those power plants to the load centers, that's what PJM does.

[36:12] Okay? So if the whole thing is about reliability and transparency, then you really need to have a lot of coordination.

[36:20] And that's really where a lot of the work comes in being a wholesale market participant.

[36:24] a PGM participant is what you would need to be if you were to separate from IMEA, go on

[36:33] your own, and find someone to sell you power. There's plenty of people to sell you power.

[36:39] Lots of them. I reached out to a dozen, went into in-depth interviews with eight of them. We

[36:44] can always talk to more, and they are very interested in your load. I'll just tell you that.

[36:50] you look like a great opportunity to them, right?

[36:54] And these are familiar names.

[36:56] You see them advertising in the billboards of the side

[36:58] of the highlights, constellation, it's NRG.

[37:02] It's these companies that are, you know,

[37:04] a know, I typically call retail energy suppliers.

[37:07] But I've transacted with them for a number of years

[37:09] and many different iterations.

[37:11] And now sometimes, generations of employees.

[37:16] But what I think is really key to bear in mind as a municipal utility, as a PGA market participant, is that out of all these six categories that I highlight here.

[37:31] Your retail energy supplier, or your power marketer, or, you know, what would we call them, alternative providers.

[37:38] They're only going to consistently provide you services in market operations and load management.

[37:46] That's their area of expertise. That's what they really do best.

[37:51] And that's where across the board, they all say, yes, we will do that.

[37:54] to varying degrees, they would consider some of these other categories, and some of these things

[38:00] they can't do for you. So, as a for instance of something they can't do for you.

[38:06] Being, they can't be the PGM number for you. You're a load serving entity. You need to be a PGM

[38:12] member. You need to fill out the application. You will need also to enter into four separate agreements

[38:18] with PGM that identify how you are going to operate and that you agree to meeting the stipulations

[38:24] of PJM as well as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, right?

[38:29] This is all about reliability, so there's lots of contract language about who does what

[38:33] when and what happens when that doesn't occur.

[38:37] There's also some things that maybe your local municipal staff should be doing or contractors

[38:44] should be doing separate from your supplier, such as figuring out your general planning for

[38:49] load forecast, or your legal activities, or just managing your transactions.

[38:56] These are not file and forget contracts.

[38:59] This is not buying the extended warranty on the washer dryer set.

[39:04] This is something that has to be opened and examined every day, and it's going to take time

[39:09] and money.

[39:10] Can a retail supplier do this or a power market or do this for you?

[39:14] Yes.

[39:15] But they're going to do it at a cost plus their margin, right?

[39:21] So, of course, you can contract out for a lot of things,

[39:25] but my sense is that if it were me,

[39:28] I'd probably let them focus on what they do best,

[39:31] and you represent your interests.

[39:34] Because, you know, in the end,

[39:36] they're there as your contractor.

[39:37] They're not there to outsource your management function.

[39:42] You know, that's something that large manufacturers I deal with have had to come to grips with over time.

[39:50] So, how do these entities operate? There's two categories. These are my labels.

[39:56] There might be other labels in the market, but most of them are resellers.

[40:01] So these are your constellation energies, your energies, your retail energy suppliers.

[40:05] There's a number of them that are operating in the state and in P.J.M.

[40:10] and they're excellent. They do very, very good work. I transact with them on behalf of clients all the time.

[40:16] Their business model is that they buy wholesale power, and then they sell retail power. They make a mark up in the middle.

[40:24] That's it. They take big chunks of power, probably 50 megawatt blocks, and then they break it down into smaller blocks for sale to customers who don't need 50 megawatts at a time.

[40:35] You see some examples of their constellation, direct energy,

[40:38] cow pine, and they make an adder.

[40:41] If you need them to do more services for you,

[40:44] don't crease the adder if you need less, the charge less.

[40:48] So, the idea here is, okay,

[40:50] they can get this all scheduled and delivered for me.

[40:52] Usually, you want to tell them how you need this done.

[40:56] Do you need them to secure all of your electricity needs

[40:59] at a fixed price with no variability?

[41:01] or do you need them to secure 50% of your needs,

[41:05] and you leave the other 50% exposed to the market variability?

[41:09] These are all decisions that you need to make, and they carry them out.

[41:14] Then you have service bureaus.

[41:16] Service bureaus are a little bit different.

[41:18] They operate as advisors.

[41:20] They will find your suppliers for you.

[41:22] They will help review contracts with you.

[41:25] They will help negotiate price in terms with suppliers,

[41:29] but they're not going to sign the contract for you.

[41:32] They will get it all together for you, but ultimately, you need to execute on those contracts.

[41:37] And there's some very large organizations to do this, ACES, for instance, is an entity

[41:43] outside of Indianapolis and Carmel that right down the street from Miso, who you heard Nick

[41:48] mentioned, a wholesale market manager in the Midwest.

[41:51] They manage wholesale transactions for a range of electrical operatives, municipal, large

[41:56] industrials, right? So they're out there. They do a very nice job and they're very competent,

[42:03] but they will only take direction. They are not going to execute on your behalf.

[42:09] So a little bit small. And what I tried to do is draw in my experience. Now have I ever run

[42:16] a wholesale operation? No. I did run a retail operation that delivered natural gas and electricity

[42:23] to do all the state facilities for a number of years and had to bump into a lot of these

[42:28] same functions at that level.

[42:30] And then I also managed the Illinois Power Agency, which managed transactions between the

[42:37] combat, Amarin, and wholesalers, and I observed their operations fairly closely.

[42:42] Could you staff with less than what I've designated here?

[42:47] Yes, you can always go cheaper.

[42:48] But my sense is that these are really the fixed services that any municipal utility is going to need.

[42:58] You would probably need the same staffing if there were two municipal utilities, or maybe even three municipal utilities.

[43:04] These are more or less fixed prices or fixed costs of the operation.

[43:08] So, a lot of these are what IMEA provides for you right now, and to my understanding, most of the other municipal utilities operating within PGM are part of larger organizations that contract out or share these services amongst themselves.

[43:27] So being a solo operator in PGM, pretty rare, unless you're a large investor on utility, but again, you're going to be incurring, I think somewhere in the neighborhood of these costs for these services.

[43:42] Whether you do it in yourself or if you contract it out, that's not really the material issue. The material issue is to meet your PGM obligations, you need to really treat this as a business.

[43:53] and you're going to sign contracts, it will obligate you to perform a number of these functions.

[44:00] So, can you bid this out?

[44:03] Well, based on my background, I'm from to say, yeah, of course you can bid it out.

[44:08] I like bidding out, that's what I do for a living.

[44:11] But let's think about what you would have to do to do that.

[44:13] Once you've set up and you are all ready to go with your operation,

[44:20] You know how you need to perform for PJM, you know who's going to do what, now you've decided who you're going to bid this out to.

[44:29] Here's your challenge.

[44:30] First challenge is going to be.

[44:32] Not your volume.

[44:32] Your volume, I think, is fine.

[44:34] Your larger than, you're about the size of a large manufacturing entity.

[44:39] So you're within the realm of what a lot of suppliers can provide.

[44:43] You're pretty small when it comes to a whole sale entity.

[44:46] But that's okay.

[44:47] That can be managed.

[44:47] What I think your challenge is going to be here is your timeline.

[44:52] That's the fact that you're going to be under an agreement

[44:55] for your supply with IMEA through 2035.

[45:00] So, part of what you're, I think, going to be asking is, can you be my power supplier and start deliveries in 2035?

[45:10] I think most providers are inclined to say yes, but it's going to be really hard for them to give you a price.

[45:17] And that's because we don't know what the price is going to be in 2035.

[45:22] You know, as an analogy, buying large equipment like a fire truck or property.

[45:27] You know, it's hard enough if you're going to try to do it face to face and try to get the

[45:33] transaction done today or this week or this month.

[45:36] If you are trying to negotiate a transaction that actually closes 10 years from now, you're

[45:42] introducing a lot of different risks into that scenario.

[45:45] So I just identified a few of those.

[45:46] So there's market risk.

[45:48] First question is, what will the wholesale price be in the future?

[45:52] I don't know.

[45:52] is next set on a year to year, year over year basis. Capacity rates in PGM rose 800% did we know

[46:04] that? No, did I know it was coming? I knew it was going to be higher. I felt my heart was

[46:08] going to be higher. If I knew it was going to be that high, I probably would have gone short and

[46:13] you know, done pretty well. But I didn't because I don't know. And that's a few months

[46:19] down the road, right? This is years. So this is a real challenge. How do you know what that

[46:24] power is going to be worth. You've got regulatory risk. How do we know that we contract

[46:29] for today is going to be allowed in the market ten years from now? Can there be new capacity

[46:35] requirements that are imposed by FERC or PJM in the intervening ten years? And if those

[46:41] capacity requirements increase for your entity, who bears that added cost? Don't know, you're going

[46:48] have to work that out and to look at that potential complication.

[46:55] And then there's performance risk.

[46:56] I have up here, you know, will the village actually meet its obligation and take delivery?

[47:01] Well, I had another thought here when I was reading the energy user news this afternoon.

[47:06] What if your supplier is not there in 10 years, right?

[47:11] Or what if that supplier is something you don't want to be associated with?

[47:13] The thing that caught my eye was great company NRG, just executed a multi-billion dollar transaction

[47:22] with another company called LS Power to purchase 18 natural gas plants power plants.

[47:30] So if you'd contracted with LS Power, how would they be able to honor the obligation

[47:37] for delivery in 2035 if they had just sold their generating assets?

[47:42] That's assuming those generating assets we're going to support your contract.

[47:46] And then secondly, what if you'd contracted with NRG because they were a clean energy

[47:51] firm or cleaner energy firm and now they've just taken on a bunch of natural gas?

[47:56] Is that a problem for you?

[47:57] Is a recreational risk, I guess.

[47:59] I'm not saying they did anything bad, but it just illustrates that things change in this

[48:03] industry, not just price, I don't know, really basis, not just the trend on a seasonal basis,

[48:08] But the actors and the participants and their drivers are also going to change.

[48:14] So trying to encapsulate all those potentialities in a contract today, I think is going to

[48:20] take an elevated level of expertise and time.

[48:24] And I can you get there?

[48:25] I imagine you could.

[48:27] Are there going to be some things to get missed?

[48:29] Absolutely.

[48:30] I can guarantee it.

[48:32] Can you live with it?

[48:33] Maybe.

[48:34] But you have to start talking with some of these entities and get some of their ideas on what maybe could be done to mitigate that risk.

[48:43] So, to that end, you know, just very quickly on to conclusions.

[48:50] I really think that the first thing to think about if you're going to go away other than IMEA is to take title and ownership of your PGM membership.

[49:00] I think that that's going to be critical.

[49:02] You're a load serving entity that should be part of your process moving forward.

[49:08] You're going to need some time to figure out how that works and how you work in the context

[49:12] of PJM.

[49:13] I'd give yourself some time to do that.

[49:15] Nice thing is you have some runway here, right?

[49:19] So it doesn't have to be done next week.

[49:21] I also think that once you've figured out how this is going to work and who's going to do what,

[49:25] you're going to need some time to find that alternative provider.

[49:29] I have a year here. Could have been done in less time, of course. But I was just trying to give you

[49:34] a flavor of a number of the things you're going to have to work through. I would not be surprised

[49:39] if you start talking to five, and you're going to find that some of the interested parties

[49:46] taper off a little bit in their level of interest, as things become more complicated because they

[49:50] have other things that they could be doing as suppliers. There's very few one-stop shop examples

[49:56] out there. So as I was trying to express with the kind of the all the list of things that PJ

[50:03] members need to do and what internal or external staffing might need to look like in above

[50:09] and beyond a power supplier or a power marketer, just bear in mind that you're going to have to

[50:17] be very active in the membership here. This is another function. You're going to be part of

[50:23] organization at PGM that puts penalties and obligations on you.

[50:27] Hopefully you get some benefits, but you're going to have to perform.

[50:32] And then lastly, you know, what's kind of unique,

[50:36] I'm sorry, not kind of, it's very unique about your processes.

[50:39] When we've looked at wholesale operations or wholesale options for clients,

[50:44] typically they've been looking for economies of scale,

[50:49] you know, large university, they say,

[50:51] we keep getting retail contracts.

[50:53] We think we can do better as a wholesale entity.

[50:56] Fine, we take a look at wholesale operations then.

[50:59] Or they say, we have some generation

[51:00] that we simply just can't monetize as a retail customer.

[51:03] And we want to be a wholesale participant,

[51:05] so we can generate or maximize our revenues from that asset.

[51:08] That's fine too.

[51:10] Neither of those really seem to be the case with you all.

[51:12] So I think maybe one last item here is,

[51:16] Really, in the absence of a direct economic impetus

[51:22] or a securitization of your generating assets,

[51:25] I think you're going to have to get real clarity

[51:27] in terms of what it is you're wanting to accomplish with this

[51:30] because that's going to feed exactly how you're going to position

[51:34] your power marketer and then how you're going to arrange

[51:37] your other PGM obligatory functions in this entire context, right?

[51:43] Sometimes the economics make it real clear

[51:45] how you're going to do things, absent that economic driver in this case, I think you're going

[51:50] to be a little bit different, which is fine. But that's why I think having a bit of time,

[51:55] as I mentioned up at the top, having that extended period of time to figure out what you want

[52:01] to get out of this is going to be very important because you're operating a little bit differently

[52:05] than some of the others in the sector. So, again, it's nothing wrong with that. But getting clarity

[52:11] on your mission when you're taking on this type of task risk obligation is going to be

[52:20] advisable because it has to be worth it.

[52:22] So thank you very much for your time.

[52:26] Thank you Mark.

[52:30] What's that?

[52:32] Okay. Okay, Nick.

[52:43] Thank you, Mark, so I just got some summary comments here.

[52:47] Just a reminder, I was a founding member of IMEA.

[52:50] We've taken a strong roll in shaping IMEA policy over time, and continue to do so going forward.

[52:56] Those of you who had the pleasure of working with Mr. Brian Kees.

[52:59] You recall he was a fierce advocate.

[53:02] So we have a candidate for the villages, benefits, down there in Springfield, energy efficiency,

[53:08] member directed resource, generation policy.

[53:11] These are all things that Brian lobbied for you on your behalf down in Springfield.

[53:15] We can continue to do that exercise going forward.

[53:19] When that goes realized, significant financial benefits on this power portfolio.

[53:23] Since 1991, again, this allows us to provide stable, competitive rates to our customers.

[53:28] we can continue to inject capital into our system and improve reliability

[53:32] while remaining physically responsible.

[53:35] The energy markets entering a period of transition and volatility

[53:39] don't just take it from me, listen to what Mark just described.

[53:43] The question is, is when that has a small utility, better position

[53:46] to enter this volatile marketplace on its own, or as a part of a larger agency

[53:50] of like-minded non-profit municipal systems?

[53:54] Liability is the number one priority of career operators and utilities.

[53:59] Col-based generation is going to run an Illinois until CG mandates,

[54:03] with or without Weneca's participation in IMA.

[54:05] That's just the fact.

[54:08] PGM and MISO's responsibility is to make sure that adequate,

[54:11] dispatchable resources are available in real time

[54:14] to constantly meet demand regardless of the resource type.

[54:17] Again, reliability is the number one priority.

[54:20] Weneca has options, as I mentioned, to increase sustainability

[54:23] locally while benefiting from the stability of the IMEA power supply cost.

[54:28] This is the precisely the recommendation that customers customize energy solutions

[54:32] gave to Naperville.

[54:37] And with that, I am okay.

[54:38] Thank you, Nick.

[54:40] As mentioned earlier, we'll hold on questions from Council to the various presenters.

[54:47] And then we're departing a little bit.

[54:48] We're open public comment now, but we're going to open it with our agreement

[54:52] with the one at the future energy coalition to give them 15 minutes to make a presentation,

[54:58] which I think will be interesting, and Lathamon, Lathamon, Lathamon here there's Lathamon,

[55:03] and I actually have a biography you want me to read this Lathamon.

[55:08] So Lathamon is an energy industry veteran and clean power advocate with over 20 years of international

[55:14] experience in the engineering construction and transformation of energy assets, spanning hydrocarbons,

[55:21] natural resources and electrical industries.

[55:24] Lath has lived in UNECO for 11 years, along with his wife, Lauren, daughter Sophia, and Victoria.

[55:29] He currently leads growth and development from the largest energy transition consulting and

[55:35] audit companies, eco engineers, LRQA, driving decarbonization and environmental advancement globally.

[55:43] Some of the highlights in Lath's energy career have included a strategic advisor to OPEC from

[55:48] 2006 through 2009 in leading the concept development for the World's largest concentrated solar

[55:54] plant in Morocco, a $9 billion clean power plant. So this is a person with some experience

[55:59] thanks for being here.

[56:02] Thank you very much for that very generous introduction and I think that really is why the

[56:09] future energy coalition has asked me to consolidate the remarks and present to you. And even

[56:16] I know I have that kind of experience in energy for these last sort of 25 years that I've worked in it.

[56:24] This process that I've been in working with the community here in Winacker has really opened my eyes

[56:29] to the fact that actually we have amazing expertise in this community.

[56:34] I've had the opportunity to talk to very fine legal minds, people who have done really interesting work

[56:41] commercially in energy and power procurement, and people who are developing really important

[56:49] renewables projects live in Winneca. So in addition to engaging with our community on this

[56:56] topic to develop these remarks, I've also had the opportunities to talk to some of our peers

[57:01] in some of the other communities that are considering the same contract extension that we

[57:07] with IMEA. And I guess it's in spirit of that that I would say that the conclusion that I would

[57:15] like to talk about that I've come to with regard to the extension of this contract is that

[57:21] the contract is a really bad contract and it is a really bad time to actually be extending that

[57:30] contract right now. And by bad time I would just point out to the fact that we are in a contract

[57:36] which extends through to 2035, but this is 2025, and I think one of the important points

[57:45] that were made during the engagement of the power marketers that were done in the report

[57:51] that we've seen is that it really is too early to make commitments about energy provision what

[58:00] that my cost, what the generation mix might be. And I think that's actually a good point.

[58:05] it is too early. So, you know, the idea that we are in somewhat of a high pressure environment

[58:13] where we need to, you know, respond to a time limitation to provide our commitment this early

[58:21] on. It really does work against our own interests, actually, because in some of my remarks here,

[58:27] I'll explain that. I think we do see a very significant opportunity which will work in our favor

[58:33] to develop an energy plan and to identify what our goals are and how we're going to meet those

[58:39] goals through a process to get what we want out of this. But just thinking about all that we've

[58:50] heard in terms of the economics, I will say one of the things in this changing world environment

[58:59] that has been very consistent and is very clear, if we look back over the last 15, 20 years,

[59:06] is that the cost of establishing generation from renewables pretty consistently and quite dramatically

[59:12] decreases over time. And the cost of obtaining power from conventionally generated fossil plants

[59:20] goes up over time. So if we're contemplating here, is signing a long-term contract, which includes

[59:29] an important component of conventional fossil generation, then that I don't believe is a

[59:37] commercially smart move for us to make. Bloomberg New Energy Finance last week released a very

[59:45] important set of new findings. They called it a second tipping point in energy generation.

[59:51] The first tipping point, which happened many years ago actually, is when the cost of

[59:57] decarbonize clean power when you are stuck.

[1:00:00] Zhang symfys, un fel i'n llweddigdadd. Eüglaud ac bwyneth Chaudol, y fzymerol, famio, fropio, grofful.

[1:00:07] Ond y pu dynoeth Maelau, y定 y fforddcadddedd yma 안에addoda yn hwyrddio swampaio rounda un ysa妳ngol hyn o ddim.

[1:00:15] 1, lai e un hynodddadddddda, stickers o或, roberries ffordddann amold gdal.

[1:00:23] 1, byd etw yn vurgingborgwyr hynod roges ffordddddidd 1 waun, amso, hiffy, os epat a hynod r

[1:00:29] gan defer ff'n hollod bids i'l 5'n rwy ar y ryn o'r ydym yn def'n pandell'n ff'n ydym'n pa'n gwne'n

[1:00:37] dewy'n unfeu amigrna i'n roungsu'n yn hynra genesi i'n meddwl dy'r hollon i'n prwy'n

[1:00:41] mod ffordd y'n yr'n dwef'n fy'n iawn yn ydechwc o'n dywre'n osf'n dywre'n

[1:00:46] Mae'n rwy'n i'n ddechwn i'n gwnead yn y y ff'n象 gud,

[1:00:52] chwidd Charlie Frup cynical o ond mwy area ond o ar,

[1:00:55] mae yn y cael o ym Stream Young, ddyddau, mae'n pdad yn yna fashion

[1:00:59] ddat案 y ddearawryd o gwrimeth eich un leif fod yn i màch

[1:01:05] Ydych a th Game Infoffatiofer yn y ditot i degu fill yw fel fy behind�lewlau,

[1:01:10] ywín gael fdoticol mydych y kilof 아 Siwk Antwerock, y 14,

[1:01:12] S yearna weithu rydych ynnutwrdau a mae fi gwthys dal étio

[1:01:22] wederrepionedd ywricleau'n o wheya'r i'r hyndym twydd o'r fwythym yn ydym'n i'r년d.

[1:01:30] A ydyddr ydymduw o'r dweud ychda'r ddw hwn紹fnydd.atellariad

[1:01:34] ffritha'r ddw hwny yn ddw gdyddddionileen shouldio i de Prepastor. I ffwritha

[1:01:40] 'r dda'r ddwyeddod yddddddod y dddoddoddoddoddoddoddoddoddion

[1:01:42] wy'n finalm gdau'n zwydodawn'n chi jdwy'n dina, i'n gwneud sydd ynnegol yn ymda'n pys o'n sydd rwyd?

[1:01:45] Dwa'r iawn'i dweych, aadwodd yn dynreen ddim yn ymd prithos yma'n bod yngddenau'n

[1:01:53] dwd myrwyd yn gyferig yn yma'n gwneud.

[1:01:55] Ayd wydio'r dynneudau'n ddim myrwyd yn ymth yn fredddwyds ddwyfydld aadd neu'n

[1:01:58] ddwyfydl ynau'r gwneud i'r ddaud, ydda'n ydydda'r ddwyfydl yn dddyd yn

[1:02:09] Y spyd yn ymfa'n amrlusu, mae'n yma'n amnyddol ymwysol.

[1:02:15] I look at a gwaith o fi ymnyddol. Mae'n doedol, mae'nобtrad.

[1:02:22] Mae'n amnyddol wna'n dod ymwysol. Mae'n dduch, mae'n ddichau, mae'n iddymod yn ymwysol?

[1:02:27] Mae'n ymwysol chi ymwysol i'n ddich.

[1:02:27] O'n ddichwyr, mae'n ddich.

[1:02:30] Mae'n ddich yn ymwysol iwi, mwyfysol, a'n ddich.

[1:02:36] i� m'ec, o'n coedd ydym yma Bobol, a'w m'r if yma'u yn'n cyflod, a'r ddei'r yma'r i'n i'n cyflod.

[1:02:43] Ydym ydym ydym'r i'r i'r i'n bus gwnaitho, a'r i'r i'n amd o'n eborlwion i'n yn yn postod, a'r i'r i'n eborlwion.

[1:02:55] i n byn gwaith, y jwyd ymer â'r fyw'r i'r 90 o'r i'r dwi gan gda'r i'r i'r i'd glwy'rокойnes,

[1:03:02] dot fel y rwedd Cymru i'r llwchreffyd unwyd yn ydym yn ygu i'r i'r i'n gwichol ydym yn ydym'r i'r riferwyr.

[1:03:10] Dwarf unwyd yn yda'r i'r ammaf.

[1:03:16] Oedd yways eithau.

[1:03:18] Oedd ymchwit o'r gael eithau.

[1:03:21] Mae y i'r sydd yw'r â fyfysdo, yw ydydd si'r hyn o'r fy ffrwyfyr. Mae'r rhawn hynnas yw yw'r ffysdo.

[1:03:28] Mae yw'r hynna fel haw gwnaf ddwyfyr.

[1:03:35] Ydydydd faithych yn ystwfyddwyfyr, o'r rhwd.

[1:03:41] Dyna'r ffyddwyfyddwyfyr, o'r hr rhanfion, o'r hr amlfyddaw, yfyddwyfyr, yw hynnydd yn ffyddwyfyr,

[1:03:42] oad ddwyfyr, yw ddim yna'r sylnydd ydd yn ffyddwyfyr, yna'r ffyddwyfyr

[1:03:46] o'r y ei'r'r llys euol o'r awr wedi ymthotd yn ymthot.

[1:03:50] Mae'r ymthotd yn o'r ridicolai, ydy o'r llys ei'r remarkat.

[1:03:54] A'rwerthodio, mae'n aifod i'n iln, ddymdства, afallio o'r llys â'r ymthotodio,

[1:03:59] o'r te'n ysters всolio, afallio o'r ymthotodio?

[1:04:02] Mae'r llys afallio?

[1:04:05] Mae'r amona, at shouldess ddw'r ymthotodio,

[1:04:09] o'r krown yn ysta yn bwythu yn ymthotodio,

[1:04:10] Aabsolid ddreidol aishy'n nhw i'w doudw yn ymthaiest ar y sy'n ar y wnaed, LORDau ei'n yw, Eiflch yn ymthai fel y'n

[1:04:19] â ddefydol a ffydd, bethyn yn nâwn ar gawbar yn bwysio nydd o'n dal gwysio yn chwy cymd âw'n nidol,

[1:04:24] yn ddefyd yn ffyd yn yddefyd yn gwysio yn ddefyd yn richeswm.

[1:04:28] o fyn'l yn y ddeenau yn yn prwn gan dres derfod membergu a fysfysd edible.

[1:04:36] Seud Jeffs o'n i'n ilw'n中 hynnych fallaitw'n i'l'n phatod yn yenders ydynaed,

[1:04:38] yn ydym'n yddio'r i'n oliweddio'n oll, ydym'r i'n bod bryd o'r sy'n ygybario'n

[1:04:44] ydymidd yng Nghyl sudd yn y pwrd o'r i'n yma'r rhan, gudola'n gyda'r a phyrl.

[1:04:50] Dwy y jynnyd efer ydym bod y gyfr wr i'n eich myrdydd i'r yfr yn ythf fresh.

[1:04:58] I bet y eethau fwyr wedd, wwydyn ei synnogawas.

[1:05:04] Byddio nrefwyd yn de y gadaethau gwfan eithu a rŷf aedd a'r cdr.

[1:05:07] I ddyn ni'n y fwyd yn gwwyd yn jneud ei rwyf fwawn aedu efwrid i rydyn ni'n

[1:05:12] ei ddyn ni'n llywch gwyf.

[1:05:13] I ddyn ni'n yn y pobl am wryd honny – eithau,

[1:05:16] yn y'n ynggenod yma yn rhyfiwn,

[1:05:19] ym'r rhaforfd ac y mynd yn bwyd yn y gwyfod yn i'r ddyn ni'n gael

[1:05:26] mentradotides.

[1:05:28] I think we would be in a really valuable exercise

[1:05:31] that the state will pay us for

[1:05:33] to do proper state-colder consultation

[1:05:36] and to develop an energy plan for ourselves.

[1:05:40] So just a couple of things

[1:05:42] on the existing contract that we have.

[1:05:46] I think that the way we use our plant

[1:05:49] in Wineka, it's too limited.

[1:05:51] You know, that MDR that we have.

[1:05:54] We so seldom use that plant,

[1:05:55] Rhyg ro'n yn ymthigiawn ei'n i'n bribd i mae'n o'n ffys, fy'n fi'n i'n gondol am d gallmd o trwy?

[1:06:01] L enchdiol ond ac synny'n gondol, a ym wanig oigo, mae'n ffys eu bribd i'n delledor.

[1:06:08] A ffys'n ddd a ac i'n ddd o'n bribd wrth yn gondol.

[1:06:12] A ffys'n dddychdydd mwy'n ffys Frau Wraith Ysnesfys,

[1:06:18] yn ydych chi ffys sy'n obroedd'n ymthigiawn oedd yn ffys eu bribd i'n ymthigiawn oedd yn dddol.

[1:06:23] wrwyffy, mae bobhyd sy'n ofur.

[1:06:27] Mae'n morwydd ymnud ar y rwyffy...

[1:06:28] Mae nyn bwyfdi yn'n gsmweud i'n morwydd?

[1:06:30] Mae'n morwydd ywrwrdyw.

[1:06:33] Mae'n earlew, maenthau yw, am ymwynnydd i'n rwyffy,

[1:06:33] ac yn wyb�auiadod Phwy provinces yn factory'n gwnech o'wn,

[1:06:39] apwyин o'n morwydd a chiweddauedddr ymwynnydd.

[1:06:40] Mae'n gsofer, mwynnydd.

[1:06:42] Yw'n ar yl'n enneud i'n yang o'n ar

[1:06:53] mae'n yn y bydio ddwybod, yn yw'n si'n bod yw'n i Wedd, ydfwyneth yn y'n i'n lawedd yn ydych gan defo a'n pysguid yn y'n oed,

[1:07:00] yn yweddwn yn hynryd slaf ynwynnych. Mae'n nd ylwedd o'n ytw weif yn ywydw i'n eich. Mae'n ydych yvd yn ywyd yn ywydw i'n nag i'n aconychіda yn ychwydw i'r yn ywydw am hynnych.

[1:07:17] y mwyn chi yn fusofryn rewi

[1:07:30] To charge them, we plug into coal power, and that's really letting down our citizens in this village.

[1:07:38] So, I have to say a little bit about coal power, and I know that we hear a lot about coal power, and I know that we all have an aspiration to do better for the environment.

[1:07:51] but it must merit mention, because that plant, the prairie state plant, is such an

[1:08:00] egregious emitter of greenhouse gases. It's so inexcusable, it is the biggest power

[1:08:09] generation emitter of greenhouse gases that has been built in the 21st century in

[1:08:15] America. So, you know, when we talk about that plant and the 13 million tons a year

[1:08:21] CO2 that it emits. What we have to understand is that in Illinois, already without us doing

[1:08:28] any work for our energy plan, we've got 53% decarbonized power already from nuclear production,

[1:08:37] we've got 10% decarbonized power from wind, and we've got 3% from solar, so that's 66% today

[1:08:45] of carbon-free power. What do we do with IMA? We run as fast as our legs can carry us from the exit

[1:08:52] from all that clean power and we go and sign up with a coal power provider. And that plant in

[1:08:58] Paris State is high sulfur coal, it's high sulfur bitterness coal. And in 2035 we will have a new

[1:09:15] environmental regulations. So for any of us who believe that when we repay the bonds

[1:09:22] on back to IMA that we're going to get some kind of drop in our power prices with that

[1:09:30] coal plant in the mix, I really need to buy you lunch and tell you that to decarbonise that coal

[1:09:36] plant it's going to cost about $4 billion worth of capex and the plant itself only costs $4.4

[1:09:43] billion. So we're going to have to write an enormous check to catch a carbon from that plant.

[1:09:50] And I've been working with CCSVUs. It actually doesn't work on coal plants. It's a bit

[1:09:54] of a myth. So it's not really a very good option. What we'll then have to be done is the plant

[1:10:00] will have to be closed or a good proportion of the plant will have to be closed. There's coal ash.

[1:10:06] There's people in that local community with asthma. There's litigation.

[1:10:13] There's

[1:10:13] that will become material and we're going to have to pay.

[1:10:18] And we pay a lot in this village for property tax.

[1:10:21] And we don't want to have to have a millstone like that,

[1:10:24] hang it around on next to clean up that coal plump in 2035

[1:10:28] when it has to come offline. There's real risks.

[1:10:31] But I think the most material risk that I want to express to you,

[1:10:37] when it comes to signing this contract extension,

[1:10:40] is about the fact that right now our peer communities in Northern Illinois, Naperville and

[1:10:49] St Charles, they haven't signed. So think about, we're at this fork in the road. We can take

[1:10:58] the $200,000, we can take in the fantastic intellectual capital that we have in this community.

[1:11:06] We can work with those other two peer communities in Northern Illinois.

[1:11:10] And we can talk to a broader range of power markets ourselves directly.

[1:11:15] We can build an energy plan and the state will write us a check for doing that.

[1:11:19] That's a no regrets option.

[1:11:22] Absolutely no regrets whatsoever.

[1:11:24] Or we could get ourselves in an environment where we rush to sign this IMEA contract.

[1:11:32] And what happens if, since Charles and Naperville don't do it because they get a better deal for cleaner power?

[1:11:39] We're going to have serious regrets over that and there's nothing we'll be able to do about it, absolutely nothing.

[1:11:45] And then we could get to 2035 and they could have been significant cost reductions as a result of renewable power cost reductions.

[1:11:54] And we could be in a situation where we've got massive liabilities to have to deal with with that darn cold plant instead of taking advantage of those renewable opportunities.

[1:12:06] That's a big regrets, big risk, way to go.

[1:12:10] So I recommend to you. I know I'm close to the end of my 15 minutes.

[1:12:14] I would recommend to you that we just think about taking a step back from all of this.

[1:12:25] We don't have to sign this extension.

[1:12:27] We can build ourselves a comprehensive energy plan and we can choose green power because

[1:12:34] at the end of the day when it comes to environment, it's actually not what we say, it's what

[1:12:40] we do.

[1:12:40] We have to do right.

[1:12:42] we have to do in consistent with our values.

[1:12:46] Thank you very much.

[1:12:48] Thank you, ladies.

[1:12:53] So,

[1:12:57] thank you, ladies, for both comments.

[1:12:59] Very, very helpful.

[1:13:00] So, that was actually the start of our public comment.

[1:13:03] Can I see it from Michelle of hands?

[1:13:05] Who else would like to speak?

[1:13:07] If you know duplicative comments,

[1:13:09] I mean, what I think we heard it all.

[1:13:11] So, I see one, two, three, four, five or six.

[1:13:17] Why don't we start over on this side, no one in the front row of the second row, come on up, introduce yourself, and we're going to, we're going to, we're going to adhere to this three-minute public comment, limit.

[1:13:31] Hi, I'm John Anderson, actually living will met.

[1:13:36] And I work on energy, I'm also executive manager of Intelligent Generation.

[1:13:41] I think Mark, you probably know my colleagues.

[1:13:43] We optimize solar and energy storage at

[1:13:47] App Electronics, for example, number of industrials.

[1:13:51] We're just about to sign a project with a major utility

[1:13:53] in a city, in a major city.

[1:13:56] So my point is we're optimizing both retail and wholesale power markets.

[1:14:00] The market is evolving rapidly.

[1:14:03] So we are managing a double microgrid at App.

[1:14:06] Not too dissimilar from what you can do at your water plant

[1:14:09] with your generator there, right?

[1:14:11] And both generate frequency regulation revenues,

[1:14:14] where members of PGM, but also a shave your peaks on capacity

[1:14:19] and transmission, and generate real good returns.

[1:14:25] I wanted to add to this gentleman's comment that,

[1:14:28] I mean, I started working in 79 in the North Shore.

[1:14:30] It's a long time.

[1:14:31] I know a lot of leaders up and down in the shore,

[1:14:34] and I don't know many communities that are doing what you're all doing.

[1:14:38] I really don't understand, it's kind of a legacy

[1:14:40] that you've got your own utility.

[1:14:42] I know you call about your peers being naperville

[1:14:44] and what have you, but I mean,

[1:14:46] I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, they're doing just fine

[1:14:53] by my buying market electricity.

[1:14:57] And so as you look at your alternatives,

[1:15:01] I'm encouraged to just stand really leader to talk to our standing leader Lucy, who actually will

[1:15:05] met, buys our energy. She's negotiating with an energy broker right now. I think since he's

[1:15:11] aware that it provides it, but it's a very dynamic market. And these prices going on, I mean,

[1:15:15] 12 years have been working at Intelligent Generation, I'll just conclude by saying, I also found it a

[1:15:20] company called Green Leaf Advisors and an nonprofit Green Leaf Communities, done with, done

[1:15:29] and energy and on climate. Why am I killing myself these days? It's a, it's a, it's a

[1:15:35] state of relief. It's to protect all of us and our grandchildren. I know more than I

[1:15:39] want to know about climate change. I cannot imagine committing a call. It is not competitive.

[1:15:45] We're in the biggest transition that's ever happened in this world, in the biggest market in

[1:15:49] the world. And I got a lot smarter colleagues working with me and for me than me. They should

[1:15:53] be coming here. I've offered your staff to bring in my team and do a power plan to show you what you

[1:15:57] to do. So I encourage you to invite others in to look at a broad-based alternative as you go for it.

[1:16:06] I'm sorry to get a little emotional, but this stop is 24-7 for those of us that are working

[1:16:09] to build a healthy and sustainable world. And I welcome you to look at GreenEath advisors, GreenEath communities, and intelligent generation.

[1:16:15] Any that people I work with will be here to help you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[1:16:20] Who else on the side?

[1:16:25] Thank you.

[1:16:26] My name is Ted Belard.

[1:16:27] I'm from Naperville and I'm one of the co-chairs of Nest.

[1:16:32] Naperville environment and sustainability task force.

[1:16:35] Can y'all hear me okay?

[1:16:37] All right.

[1:16:39] I'd like to speak directly to the point director Nari,

[1:16:42] raised about Naperville's public utility advisory board,

[1:16:47] voting to recommend that Naperville sign

[1:16:49] the current contract extension.

[1:16:54] I was part of that process but let me take a step back just a few minutes to recount a longer

[1:17:06] timeline.

[1:17:07] It was on June 4th of 2024 that the city council for the first time were outspoken in

[1:17:13] opposition to signing the contract extension.

[1:17:16] At that time, we believe the City Council vote was to be 5-4 against signing the contract.

[1:17:24] In early January 2025, Mayor Worley, called me and shared with me, he too was against

[1:17:33] the extension.

[1:17:34] His view was that this was a bad contract, thought that local generation that you have here in

[1:17:46] Since then, the City Council, Naperville, has been and stayed six-three against signing the contract extension.

[1:17:56] I can tell you, regardless of whether the open season is extended by the IMEA Board of Directors, Naperville will not sign this contract extension.

[1:18:11] On February 27th, the PUAB held its first meeting by inviting the IMEA to present to them.

[1:18:20] A week later, they invited customized electricity solutions, CES as their name, I'm pretty

[1:18:27] sure I'm translating that correctly.

[1:18:30] They presented their draft presentation and midway through Chairman Halkius from the public

[1:18:36] utility advisory board, which has jurisdiction over electricity, utility recommendations,

[1:18:43] and water utility recommendations, asked me if Nest would be willing to present at the

[1:18:49] next PUAB meeting. And that's sort of course.

[1:18:58] March 6th, CES presented their draft presentation,

[1:19:04] and Nest was to present on April 8th.

[1:19:08] On April 3rd, we learned that Mark Prut and Chris Townsend were also to be presenting, and that the

[1:19:19] PUAB would be making their recommendation.

[1:19:22] That was a surprise to me in that shortly after Nest was going to present, they were to make

[1:19:31] presentation, it looked to me like they'd already made up their minds.

[1:19:37] The vote at the conclusion was 43 in support of the contract extension.

[1:19:46] The fellow that had water utility experience and to the newly hired board members voted

[1:19:53] Yes, two folks with direct and current energy experience voted no.

[1:20:00] We knew from the beginning that the City Council was not interested.

[1:20:05] We've been told by the mayor, by City Council members, and by director growth that there

[1:20:11] was no intention of bringing this to a vote.

[1:20:13] So we wondered what was this exercise all about?

[1:20:18] OK, thank you very much for your comment.

[1:20:20] Anyone else on the side of the, okay, from the back row?

[1:20:24] Oh, I know that person.

[1:20:26] I was.

[1:20:29] Hi, sorry.

[1:20:30] I actually want to make a comment that I meant to make it the outside of the meeting,

[1:20:33] apologies.

[1:20:34] Honestly, I want to say welcome.

[1:20:36] It's a little better late than never, but welcome President.

[1:20:40] Honestly, welcome to the new council.

[1:20:41] Welcome to the new president.

[1:20:43] And I'm a little bit sorry that this is the big issue that you have to lead off with.

[1:20:46] I don't envy you that.

[1:20:47] Honestly, thank you for your work and thank you for your service.

[1:20:49] Thank you. Honestly. Thank you Liz. We appreciate that about so no one else on my right. How about on the left side here?

[1:20:58] Okay, coming back for another bite at the apple on Ted?

[1:21:03] Okay

[1:21:07] I'll get to the microphone

[1:21:10] So first I have to say something. It's gonna be shocking. You know, I actually found this like I really good the discussion

[1:21:15] You know, I didn't seem one side it seemed like both sides. It was a

[1:21:20] Well, a pleasure to be here for this.

[1:21:24] And I think the one thing that I would say is I

[1:21:27] would think that the council should listen to the thing

[1:21:30] where both sides agree.

[1:21:32] And that is that it is way too early to bind ourselves

[1:21:36] to a contract a decade from now.

[1:21:39] Seems like that was the consistent messes on both sides.

[1:21:42] But the thing that I wanted to mention

[1:21:43] is what I found fascinating.

[1:21:45] Was in the presentation, we talked about trying

[1:21:47] encourage more rooftop residential solar production, I find that fascinating, right? Because

[1:21:54] back in 2007 or so, the now infamous 261 shared an owner, well, not the current, you know,

[1:22:02] fire was at this council, and you can look at the meeting minutes and he said, you know,

[1:22:06] because hey, I have solar panels, why can't I get net metering in Winnatka? Like, comet is being

[1:22:11] forced to do, and, you know, the council was a good, and I'm going to do that, you know, that's

[1:22:15] benefit to you. So then the next solar installation in Winnatka, you know around 2012, came

[1:22:22] up and said the same thing. So it's like if you guys want to encourage people to do this,

[1:22:26] maybe we should offer net metering. And of course, the counts as a well. No, we're not going to

[1:22:30] That's a benefit to you. And then around 2017, Brian Keys, did this great analysis from the data that someone provided him that showed that the person that was producing solar power was actually getting paid less in credits than the village was saving by having a slightly lower peak hour demand over the year.

[1:22:56] And so then the council got together and they said, well, hey, why don't we just do this like kind of weird wholesale retail mix thing over the year?

[1:23:04] And I would say at this point, if you guys really want to encourage people to put up solar, then you should do net metering.

[1:23:13] There's the sole smart stuff. I don't know what that means anything, but financially the people here aren't idiots, and they understand that if they have net metering,

[1:23:21] the payback on their installations is much quicker.

[1:23:26] The benefits occur to them much faster,

[1:23:29] and the added cost to the village is negligible

[1:23:31] when we look at what the benefits to us

[1:23:36] and to the rest of the planet are.

[1:23:39] Thank you.

[1:23:40] Thank you for that comment, Patrick.

[1:23:47] Thank you.

[1:23:48] Thanks for doing this tonight.

[1:23:49] Thanks for taking all the time that you have

[1:23:50] over the last year or two years

[1:23:52] to think through a really complicated issue.

[1:23:54] And I apologize for adding to the time

[1:23:56] that late that a really nice job summarizing a lot of the topics that the Weneco future energy

[1:24:00] coalition have talked about. But one point that I did want to make that I didn't hear

[1:24:03] made tonight was something the President Prince actually brought up a couple of times. And that's

[1:24:09] the idea that we've talked about in Council before that our decision to purchase power through

[1:24:15] I'm Mia does not actually mean that it's our responsibility that we're paying for coal.

[1:24:20] And I just think that that is that's just not true. And it's not true in a deep ethical sense.

[1:24:25] And I think we can wrestle with what that means that we are paying someone to go and burn dinosaurs and destroy the planet.

[1:24:32] But when we do that, I think you can weigh how you measure that against your other priorities.

[1:24:37] One way that you do it is you internalize the cost.

[1:24:39] And you say, okay, what is it worth to us that we are twice, two and a half times as carbon intensive as we'll met?

[1:24:45] And you could put a price on that.

[1:24:47] And so when we talk about the things that we might do and renegotiated contract like by Rex,

[1:24:51] or do other things in sustainability in Wineca to try and get to a net zero despite spending 80% of our electric budget on coal.

[1:25:00] I think we got to take into consideration the real value of that coal to the Wineca resident in an internalized cost of carbon.

[1:25:08] And I think you'll find that it's really expensive.

[1:25:10] So I just hope that you wrestle with that.

[1:25:12] I hope that you don't take that argument at face value that it's not a responsibility because I think it a deep sense that it is.

[1:25:18] Thank you.

[1:25:19] We were kind of okay, anyone else on this side, anyone else over here, we have someone right in the middle, come on up.

[1:25:28] I'm sure we're excited.

[1:25:28] I was on here.

[1:25:30] Bob's Avers 25 year resident, a bit of an expert in this space as well.

[1:25:34] I've started private equity funds consulting firms and trading firm on energy.

[1:25:40] A few observations, I guess, first of all, yeah, you can't prove this contract.

[1:25:45] It's just not the kind of contract anybody should approve in this type of environment.

[1:25:49] There's a lot of things going on with technology, innovation, a lot of all the changes that are going on that were very well described.

[1:25:55] Our real forces, why would anybody execute a contract this far in advance when we can get back in, you know, with two or three years is more than enough time.

[1:26:03] So it's kind of a non-starter and people mentioned it's like buying a car, in listening to this conversation, it's like buying a time share.

[1:26:09] We're being told there's no more beach front available.

[1:26:12] We don't want to be a home builder, you have to learn how to be a realtor if you're going to go outside to this command.

[1:26:16] This is not a real contract, so you can't do it from that perspective.

[1:26:21] The more serious thing I want to bring up is we're not talking about resilience and reliability.

[1:26:26] And we do a lot of work with the grid. We help redesign parts of the grid. These are real challenges.

[1:26:31] And I think the primary goal of village council is for the safety and security of our community.

[1:26:37] And the credit of previous councils of the power plant is a real asset.

[1:26:42] And we have these things people have talked about it.

[1:26:44] It's a real asset for us, a village yards, or a real asset.

[1:26:47] All of our powers on this side of the substation that's

[1:26:49] set on, basically, on, in Northfield.

[1:26:53] We have to protect that part of it.

[1:26:54] And so we can put more, you know, we're giving IMEA part of our

[1:26:58] proceeds from having resources at our plant.

[1:27:01] Let's put more in there.

[1:27:03] Cost is pretty low.

[1:27:04] Our credits better than IMEA credit.

[1:27:06] We can finance these things very cheaply.

[1:27:08] Batteries are there.

[1:27:09] And if these things are all proven,

[1:27:10] Let's look at the Texas grid this Thursday, see what happens, look at the Spanish grid last week.

[1:27:16] So we have the potential to actually make this a green and very secure community.

[1:27:21] So there's no reason to go to emphasizing this again.

[1:27:26] 29 of the 32 members are in a different power market than us.

[1:27:31] They're not going to vote for MISO, which costs are going up faster than PJM.

[1:27:35] They're going to vote in those interests.

[1:27:37] We have our own power plant and we're in PGA, it's an entirely different proposition.

[1:27:42] So in the 90s, the 2000s, the goal was, everyone gets together to build a power plant,

[1:27:48] coal, gas, whatever it does to save money.

[1:27:51] That's a 20-year-old model.

[1:27:52] What people are doing now is distributed energy, distributed portfolios, microgrids, resilient

[1:27:57] grids, because capacity prices are going out.

[1:28:00] We can make money on our own capacity.

[1:28:03] So, those things are real, and unfortunately, I mean I was probably a great organization, probably

[1:28:07] a great group of people, great idea at the time, but the current model, they missed all

[1:28:12] the technology waves.

[1:28:13] They missed clean coal.

[1:28:14] This was marketed to us as a clean coal investment.

[1:28:18] Never became cleaning when a billion dollars over budget, which is why we have the debt there.

[1:28:21] They missed batteries.

[1:28:22] They're talking about 2030 for battery storage, it's saving the Texas and California and

[1:28:26] other grids right now.

[1:28:28] We're going to be 70 years later, that technology.

[1:28:30] We have metering technology. We're using it late. So I would like to say we should go with them, but at the same time the technology has passed them by they haven't delivered and demonstrated they even know how to take advantage of the technologies.

[1:28:42] The world has been distributed generation. We have our own sites. We have our own credit. And the part of the contract that limits us to 10% is almost a death sentence for the reliability of this village.

[1:28:53] You really just can't be. So that's my three minutes. Good luck with the complex decisions here.

[1:28:57] Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else they would like to speak on the side here?

[1:29:15] Hello, my name is Mary Thwhite. Some of you may recognize me as this is my third time speaking about this issue.

[1:29:21] I'm sitting here for my third time to reiterate the fact that my generation cares about the environment.

[1:29:27] And we care about the well-being of Weneka and the future and what it has to become.

[1:29:32] I am telling you that the decision that you are making will send a message and people will not

[1:29:37] Not notice what you guys decide this decision will sign a message to all the children of Oneka if you sign this contract

[1:29:45] You are showing kids that there is hope that they can do things that they can make change

[1:29:50] You are setting the example and you're creating the path for what they can do when what they can become

[1:29:56] If you don't like sign this contract you're just showing that you're

[1:30:00] Not open to taking risks and solving the insoluble. Kids are taught to solve the insoluble. But if

[1:30:06] you're the adults and the examples and the leaders aren't actually solving the insoluble,

[1:30:11] they aren't going to know how to do it. If this contract doesn't get signed, we're not

[1:30:18] got at least needs to show that there's need to, there's some change for the environment. If this

[1:30:22] doesn't get signed, we need to think of other ways, like solar panels on schools and more open and

[1:30:29] talk about the environment because if there's no change, the generation below us below you guys

[1:30:35] won't know how to make a change themselves. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[1:30:42] I think that may have been anyone else would like to come and, okay, okay, in the back here.

[1:30:52] I don't know this person. Hi, my name is Charlotte Harper. I wanted to come up here as

[1:30:57] another young person who feels strongly that we need to be considering this through an environmental

[1:31:03] perspective and through a very long-term perspective. I would be 45 by this time that this

[1:31:10] contract would need to be renewed once again.

[1:31:15] I think that's worth noting because when considering

[1:31:18] an agreement that would function that far into the future we have to consider its impacts that far

[1:31:23] into the future. That means considering how the decisions we make now will infect the environment

[1:31:29] in a changing world of renewable energies and massive impacts of climate change. And it

[1:31:36] means considering the changing and economic world of power. And the fact that we shouldn't

[1:31:42] be brushing a decision 10 years in advance that's going to affect my life until I'm 45,

[1:31:48] this planet until in 45. And also might not be economically advantageous for us in 10 years or in 30 years.

[1:31:58] So this is my plea to you to not rush this decision to consider it and to think about my generation and the planet that we will inherit as you think about these options.

[1:32:07] Thank you, Scarlet. Thank you. Okay, with that, I think we will close public comment and

[1:32:17] bring it back up to our table here for trustees to ask questions of Nick or Mr. Prohitz or

[1:32:25] Mr. Raymond, if you're willing to take any questions, if people have questions, why don't

[1:32:30] we start, Bridget, do you have anything? You're listening. Yeah, no, I was listening. This

[1:32:35] This was very interesting on all parts.

[1:32:38] One of the questions I had when I was reading the materials earlier is am I reading it correctly

[1:32:44] that PGM buys power from IMEA or PGM?

[1:32:51] Yeah, so the power from Prairie State and Tribal County and the wind generation assets,

[1:32:57] everything in the IMEA portfolio is sold into the PGM market through transmission ties.

[1:33:02] So, if the analogy has been made before about the PGM market being a pool, you're swimming pool, full of electrons, some of those electrons are coming from IMEAS, that's so.

[1:33:15] If you, there are members who are buying PGM, market mix that mix of electrons, some of those are IMEA electrons.

[1:33:22] And is it divided out when the energy is resold, like where it comes from or not?

[1:33:28] When people are by, this is very complicated that people have spent their lives learning and we're all just learning, but

[1:33:38] PGM

[1:33:40] It has a bunch of energy that it purchases and sells and our people picking and choosing within PGM where the energy comes from

[1:33:50] Are they saying I do not want I'm part of PJ. I'm I'm a member of PJ. I'm but I don't want any of the energy that you get

[1:33:58] From, say, I am E.A.

[1:34:01] At the resource level, I can defer to Mark, and I, how exactly that's decisions made.

[1:34:07] Answers know, P.J.A.M. is a marketplace.

[1:34:11] So just for clarification, P.J.A.M. uses a series of auctions that I'd use price to identify

[1:34:18] which power plants operate on an hour by hour basis.

[1:34:23] So selection is made on the basis of price.

[1:34:25] So to be able to go into PJM and say, I'll be a PJM member, but I don't want to buy it from that guy.

[1:34:32] That's going to be very difficult because of the co-mingling of the electrons and the dispatch order.

[1:34:40] The way things are usually handled that if you have a preferred resource is that you, as a buyer,

[1:34:46] would purchase from the PJM grid at the hourly rate, just take whatever comes,

[1:34:51] And you would have an offsetting transaction, a power purchase agreement, which Nick mentioned earlier, with a specific project.

[1:35:00] And in essence, you're from a transactional standpoint, you're swapping out what you're purchasing from PJM with your agreement with a wind farm or a solar farm.

[1:35:12] So it's, I know it's a little confusing, but that's the steps that have to happen because again,

[1:35:16] PJM is the marketplace that has responsibility for establishing reliability, so they don't exercise

[1:35:23] a preference for resource outside of that option process. I hope that helped.

[1:35:30] Kind of. Okay, good. Kirk, anything? I'll come back. Scott.

[1:35:37] I've got a few questions both for Nick and for Mark.

[1:35:42] First of all, on the power marketer side.

[1:35:46] So my understanding is communities like Wilmet,

[1:35:50] Kenilworth, around us, they get their power from combat, right?

[1:35:58] Are there any communities that you are familiar with in the area that

[1:36:05] currently use power marketers that are out kind of on their own doing

[1:36:09] their, you know, representing themselves in PGM or our part of some service bureau that represents

[1:36:20] them in PGM.

[1:36:22] Anybody our size, I mean, Naperville is a totally different size, right?

[1:36:26] They're much, much bigger than us.

[1:36:29] Anybody our size?

[1:36:32] On the community level, no, I'm not aware of any municipalities operating in that manner.

[1:36:38] The closest example I could think of, though, might be University of Chicago, which uses a service bureau to operate in the wholesale market.

[1:36:51] Tavia, the municipal utility?

[1:36:54] Believe the municipal utility in Batavia is part of a broader organization, are they part of NIMPA?

[1:37:02] PJ, I'm the communities that this lot was.

[1:37:06] Yeah, that's great. Thank you.

[1:37:08] What is there, there are a number?

[1:37:09] Are there any that are our size?

[1:37:13] of our size that are as individuals know that are buying through power markers.

[1:37:19] No, most utilities, especially the list that was just provided, especially those in New York.

[1:37:27] I'm sorry, in New Jersey.

[1:37:30] So, they all have joined together and they purchased through a pool of purchases, which is fairly common. Again, because a lot of the PGM activity is fixed cost. So they're spreading that fixed cost over a larger pool of purchases. So it's fairly common.

[1:37:46] Okay.

[1:37:49] Mark, let me just stick with you for a second.

[1:37:51] You mentioned something on your last slide in terms of determining what our mission is.

[1:37:58] You use the term, what is the mission of our field?

[1:38:01] Do you elaborate on that in terms of what do you mean by what is our mission when it comes to dealing with PGM?

[1:38:10] Right.

[1:38:12] It's cliche, but form does follow function.

[1:38:17] And what I view any entity that is looking to operate in PGM or ERCOT or any of the other

[1:38:26] similar organizations is they're going to have to go through a series of decisions likely

[1:38:31] cost versus benefit decisions.

[1:38:33] Is this worth doing to bring on in-house regulatory attorney or should we contract it out?

[1:38:39] Should we have one or two analysts?

[1:38:41] What should they be looking at?

[1:38:42] should we monetize our power plant or not?

[1:38:46] These are all decisions that are really

[1:38:48] going to be driven by, what are you trying to accomplish?

[1:38:51] If it's economic goals, then that's really clear, right?

[1:38:55] And you're really well aligned with how the PGM rules

[1:38:57] operate because, as we talked about,

[1:39:00] they use price to establish reliability.

[1:39:03] So it's a very clear line that says,

[1:39:05] if we do something that enhances reliability,

[1:39:07] there's an economic benefit, right?

[1:39:10] If you're going to operate for a purpose other than economics, which is fine, it's just that you might find that a values-based approach might not always align with how the market operates.

[1:39:25] And you're going to have to invest a little bit more to structure your transactions so that they meet your goals.

[1:39:31] Which happens all the time, I deal with a lot of organizations that want to purchase renewables.

[1:39:36] Well, renewables aren't instantly available through PGM, so they operate through virtual power

[1:39:41] purchase agreements or power purchase agreements.

[1:39:44] It's just another level of effort that's necessary to meet a non-economic goal.

[1:39:50] So again, I'm not diminishing non-economic goals at all.

[1:39:55] I'm just saying they're different and entering into this arena just being eyes open and

[1:40:01] understanding how PGM operates and it's drivers. It's reliability. They use price to establish

[1:40:07] participation and they impose penalties when you don't perform. So if you can operate

[1:40:12] with your values and still align with how that market operates, I think you can do well.

[1:40:20] Okay. I hope that was responsive. Yeah.

[1:40:24] Nick, let me ask you a few questions. Just trying to understand our flexibility within IMEA.

[1:40:31] So even, so we buy wholesale power transmitted to us from them at a price, we can then price that anyway we want in our village.

[1:40:43] We could offer, you know, we could charge people electricity at two cents a kilowatt hour between the hours of midnight and 4am.

[1:40:56] So, you know, how much flexibility do we have?

[1:40:59] So the village has full control over a making.

[1:41:04] That's a local control issue.

[1:41:06] Part of our exercise every year with the budget is to do a

[1:41:08] comprehensive analysis and bring it to you the council to make sure

[1:41:12] that we're being fiscally responsible.

[1:41:15] We have adequate reserves.

[1:41:17] We're meeting our revenue requirement to make improvements

[1:41:19] cover our fixed costs and injecting capital back into the system.

[1:41:22] As long as we meet that requirement, how we parse it out is up to us.

[1:41:26] Do we have the capability or will we have the capability

[1:41:29] to do that? Are you talking about time of use rates?

[1:41:33] Time of use rates. That's something that up until this year we could not do because we do not have

[1:41:39] the new smart metering. With meters that are smart and at dumb then you can know when the energy is being used and that allows you to

[1:41:48] time of time of use. So there could be a case to do a time of use rate tariff with the new data.

[1:41:53] And then is there anything that is preventing us today in the IMEA contract from building a solar

[1:42:05] farm on the landfill site?

[1:42:10] If we wanted to say, you know what? Our residents want to go green,

[1:42:14] we are going to allocate $2 million we want to build it this year. I'm not sure that there's anything

[1:42:22] currently that would prevent us from doing up behind the meter solar installation.

[1:42:26] Naper, or I'm sorry, a tree here is doing a one megawatt installation on there when

[1:42:32] I can't bus.

[1:42:33] And we could put in, we could put in battery storage if we wanted to up there also.

[1:42:39] Their battery storage, I'd have to make sure there's no issues in the contract with that,

[1:42:43] but their renewables, I think, is more of a clear cut.

[1:42:45] But what about providing grants to residents to put in solar power?

[1:42:52] So the issue was brought up about heat pumps, EV incentives, I think what you're speaking to gets along those same lines.

[1:43:00] That's all the local control issue.

[1:43:02] So we decide what to do with our revenue.

[1:43:04] So if the village council provides direction to the utility to create a program, a grant program, then we could do that.

[1:43:11] So it's set aside to revenue and expenses to cover that.

[1:43:14] So to go back to a point that life made, could we go to the state today and say,

[1:43:23] we want to create our own green energy power today.

[1:43:28] We're not going to wait for 2035.

[1:43:30] We want to do it now.

[1:43:32] We, as residents, feel a value to green energy.

[1:43:37] We are going to decide we're going to allocate certain dollars.

[1:43:40] And we're going to start reducing our load on IMEA, whether it's, you know, three megawatts or up to 35, you know,

[1:43:52] if we had enough space, we could take it all off.

[1:43:54] There's nothing really in the contract that prevents us from making that decision today.

[1:44:00] Right, you do have to just our budget.

[1:44:02] It's our budget and the tax burden that people are,

[1:44:06] Great burden that I'm willing to bear.

[1:44:09] IMEA does offer energy efficiency programs to us that we pay into so they come to us

[1:44:14] at no cost, but if the village wanted to pursue other incentive programs that would

[1:44:19] come out of our rate base or out of other funding sources, grant funding, we could certainly

[1:44:23] do that.

[1:44:25] Okay.

[1:44:26] Rob?

[1:44:30] Well,

[1:44:32] this is, you know, I appreciate the passion on this side.

[1:44:36] I get it at home.

[1:44:37] two daughters that live in this community with four grandchildren and they're young and I feel very

[1:44:43] responsible for their future as well. It's on the other side as trustees we have to weigh this and say we have, you know,

[1:44:51] 14,000 residents are so in this community that we are also responsible for and

[1:44:59] I'm we're going to go back

[1:45:00] The numbers, I think Nick and the team has done a pretty good job on locking down the numbers

[1:45:05] about what the credits are when I hear you know. One side says, our 25% credit, that's going

[1:45:12] to be due to this village in 10 years, is first of all on the other, but I'm hearing on the

[1:45:19] other side. I'm seeing the real raises when you said PG&H had a PGAM had a 800% increase. I'm

[1:45:28] at the Commed additional writers on the bottom of that bill.

[1:45:33] I just need to know the reality of what this really means.

[1:45:38] You know, we spent a lot of time in this village

[1:45:41] for all the residents.

[1:45:42] When we talk about, you know, the nine, eight or nine years,

[1:45:46] we held any increases of the tax,

[1:45:50] let me in check.

[1:45:52] And they do care about the dollars.

[1:45:55] I am absolutely passionate about it, but I do not agree with the comment.

[1:46:00] It's not what we pay.

[1:46:01] It's what we do.

[1:46:01] It's what we just said on the other side.

[1:46:03] I think that is speaking for himself now, for the 14,000 members of this village.

[1:46:10] I think it's a balance, and whatever we can do to try and move this along is what Scott was

[1:46:15] talking about.

[1:46:16] To green, I am what we're all, I think, 100 percent in favor of doing that.

[1:46:20] We'd like to do it fast.

[1:46:21] I do think there's a risk because I've been talking to a lot of people that we know it's coming

[1:46:28] up with Amazon and Meta and others, we know that kind of power that's going to be sucked

[1:46:35] out of this going to be required for AI, it's going to be massive and there is a risk.

[1:46:43] We have to manage as trustees risk which is in 10 years and we're not to go back to you

[1:46:50] And this discussion, if, you know, and it is a hammer, I don't love that hammer at all.

[1:46:55] When you say to IMEA, if we're not going to do it, but we, if nothing materializes

[1:46:59] in ten years, we'll be back and hopefully you'll give us the same rates as not going to happen.

[1:47:04] And I'll ask your thoughts on that.

[1:47:07] What's the risk?

[1:47:08] Right.

[1:47:08] So you're asking the risk to not sign, to not sign, and then go back when nothing materializes

[1:47:15] that will keep us from brownouts or other problems.

[1:47:17] Right.

[1:47:18] So the precedences, if a contract is not signed during an open contract period and a member

[1:47:26] comes back at a later date, if a resource needs to be allocated to accommodate that member,

[1:47:34] then that member would pay a premium and that premium is given back to the other membership

[1:47:38] as a credit.

[1:47:39] So, the major precedence is Naiproville's entry into IMEA, the resource that was available

[1:47:47] at the time to accommodate that load was per state.

[1:47:51] So, entering Naiproville entering IMEA required entering to per state, which Naiproville

[1:47:56] paid a premium for and the other members, when I concluded, got a credit for on their bill.

[1:48:02] So, the cost of coming late to the game is really dependent on what the market looks like

[1:48:08] at the time. So if we come back and say it's 80% this year and next year it's a thousand

[1:48:14] percent, you know, overblown you a little bit, but we don't know. So whatever the cost is

[1:48:22] of power at the time when you snap the line and we come back, that's the potential premium

[1:48:26] that we would be paying to come back.

[1:48:29] Yeah, I, you know, we asked you to go back and look at the numbers and lock down apples to

[1:48:35] And that's what we're trying to understand.

[1:48:38] They brought some points.

[1:48:39] Of course, I want to double check and see what the reality is.

[1:48:42] They're interpretation of numbers versus ours.

[1:48:45] I need that, you know, facts are important here.

[1:48:48] Obviously, from a directional standpoint, of course,

[1:48:51] we're trying to push this green as fast as we can.

[1:48:55] But kind of knowing what the real facts are in this case,

[1:48:58] are really important, because they're way apart right now.

[1:49:02] Tina?

[1:49:03] Anything?

[1:49:06] Yeah, first of all, I want to thank all those in the audience who have come tonight, all those who have written very extensive and helpful letters to us.

[1:49:16] We've read them all.

[1:49:19] And thank you to Mark and to Nick.

[1:49:22] You know, we have been studying this a while, and I think we are always learning more and gaining more information by the very talented expertise in the audience.

[1:49:35] as well as at the table. So thank you. I guess what I'm struggling, I think at a much macro

[1:49:42] level at this moment because the future is so unknown. We don't know the demands. We've

[1:49:48] got decreasing, decreasing supply, increasing demand. We know that's going to be our future.

[1:49:54] So it's hard to predict what to do. Big picture, though, what I'm trying to understand is

[1:49:59] when people are saying what we should be going out and talking to constellation or other power

[1:50:05] marketers were alternative,

[1:50:09] leaving IMEA, not signing the contract, which I understand, you

[1:50:12] know it presents a lot of risks all around.

[1:50:17] If you enter into an agreement to find your source

[1:50:22] of power from a different entity than IMEA, IMEA, IMEA, is there really any guarantee that

[1:50:30] will be completely green energy sources, or is the only coal-fire plant prairie state? Isn't the

[1:50:40] whole PGM source unless you're buying your own solar field, which, by the way, I think IMIA is

[1:50:47] doing or not buying, but building, right?

[1:50:52] How do we know that if we go at alone, which I think is

[1:50:57] good option. It sounds like we've got a lot of support in the room for that. How do we know

[1:51:01] it's going to be non-fossil fuel? And it could be nuclear, which it sounds like generally

[1:51:08] people are thinking it's greener option, but that has environmental consequences as well.

[1:51:13] So, how do we know that P, you know, an alternative is going to be green? I mean, I think the market

[1:51:19] is going to ultimately make that decision or their regulations are going to shut down coal

[1:51:24] But I'm just kind of curious what your thoughts are and that because that's what I'm struggling with.

[1:51:30] I'll kind of give my two cents now that Mark Trip in.

[1:51:33] So we kind of touched on this before.

[1:51:35] Do you know if the electrons are green?

[1:51:37] You probably have no way of knowing that because you're buying everything off the PGM marketplace.

[1:51:41] But to Mark's point, there are ways more of a book transaction where you can do PPAs and your rights to that energy.

[1:51:49] Those electrons in that pool, you can decide if the sources you want there.

[1:51:53] but the electrons themselves really have no way of

[1:51:55] care and team that.

[1:51:57] But there are mechanisms you can do in order to carve out

[1:52:01] certain parts of your portfolio.

[1:52:04] So maybe another way to ask this question is how much of the

[1:52:11] generation within PJM now is fossil fuel-based?

[1:52:19] Give me a moment.

[1:52:21] Sure, Mark, and find it on their website.

[1:52:24] And so I just want to make it clear because I've heard this before and I just want to make sure.

[1:52:30] I'm actually understanding it clearly. The reason IMEA is in Prairie State was because Naperville joined the party late, right?

[1:52:40] At the time, when Naperville wanted to join IMEA, the renewable market was not what it is today, and the only capacity, which remember we talked about, accredited capacity before, the only capacity available to accommodate that load was to go into Prairie State.

[1:52:57] Okay. So what happens if Naperville, unless did they resign? No. So if Naperville doesn't sign an extension contract with IMEA, doesn't that open up a potential for IMEA to transition away from Prairie State faster because they don't need to fill that capacity?

[1:53:21] Like, what would happen if Naperville doesn't extend?

[1:53:29] Right, so.

[1:53:30] Has there been any discussion at IMEA about what happens if that occurs?

[1:53:35] If Naperville weren't not to resign, that's hypothetical.

[1:53:40] So, free the collective to go transition faster, probably other projects that they've got.

[1:53:48] Right, so I would say if Naperville were not to resign,

[1:53:51] It would reduce the load requirements of the agency by about a third,

[1:53:56] about a third of the agency.

[1:53:59] So what that would mean is after 2035,

[1:54:01] which is when the debt service paid off for our own generation assets,

[1:54:06] IMEA can make a decision at that point,

[1:54:10] whether what to do with that excess capacity,

[1:54:13] the coal plants can technically run until the siege of mandate by state law.

[1:54:18] There's no reason why they would run beyond state law.

[1:54:21] There's no intention to violate state law in terms of their mandated shutdowns, so in that time period between 2035 because they pervile still going to get energy up until September 2035 no matter what.

[1:54:34] So between then and when peri state is mandated to close, that'll be a transitional period, we can decide what to do with that access capacity.

[1:54:43] Okay, and the other thing I wanted to understand a little bit more, and I apologize if it was already discussed.

[1:54:51] But this concept that even when, I mean, eventually Prairie State and all fossil fuel plants will probably be decommissioned at some point either through the cost of extraction and operation or through regulatory control or combination of the boat, right?

[1:55:07] So we know that that's what all the, you know, really smart people have written about.

[1:55:16] Will we have ongoing liability whether we access, exit, peri state in 235 or at some point

[1:55:24] in the future, is that a real concern that we're going to have environmental liability to

[1:55:29] the village?

[1:55:29] Right, so the decommissioning costs that were brought up before during public comment, I mean,

[1:55:38] is already planning for those.

[1:55:40] They have projections on what potential, you know, shuttering of the plant is going to cost

[1:55:45] in 2038 and 2040.

[1:55:48] Excuse me, I don't know, they have 2043, 2044.

[1:55:51] They have an estimate for what those costs are going to be.

[1:55:54] And we're already paying into that as a member now.

[1:55:57] So that's already baked into our rate structure.

[1:55:59] They're already setting aside essentially an escrow account

[1:56:02] for the decommissioning.

[1:56:04] And everyone in the agency is already paying towards that.

[1:56:06] So that it won't be a surprise when the time comes.

[1:56:09] And so I'm sorry that's proportional to our ownership.

[1:56:12] Correct. It's a pro-rata share, right?

[1:56:14] Pro-rata share of the agency and then pro-rata of IMEA's ownership

[1:56:18] in Prairie State, which is 15%.

[1:56:20] Oh, and so if we're setting aside money for decommissioning,

[1:56:24] that also set aside as the lawyer and me for potential externalities or other, you know,

[1:56:31] potential non-related just to shut down and decommissioning those other third party liabilities.

[1:56:39] I would have to inquire with IMEA's corporate counsel on what exactly the funding mechanism

[1:56:45] is there for those externalities.

[1:56:47] Okay.

[1:56:48] Thank you.

[1:56:48] Those are all my questions right now.

[1:56:50] Okay.

[1:56:50] Thank you.

[1:56:51] Sure.

[1:56:52] I'm going to echo some of the other comments just for the community.

[1:56:55] Thank you all for being here.

[1:56:57] It means a lot to us that you are all here with us.

[1:57:00] Your voices do matter, everyone of you, and it's well-received by the trustees to hear

[1:57:10] what the community has to say and what you think.

[1:57:12] So thank you all for being here, and please continue to show up and voice your concerns and

[1:57:19] your positions.

[1:57:19] It means a lot, and it helps us with our decision-making.

[1:57:24] A couple of things I just want to cover, and a lot of this may be a repeat,

[1:57:27] but maybe starting at a really high level and doing a little piggyback,

[1:57:32] some of the things that Tina just commented about.

[1:57:35] When we're looking at IMEA, specifically in comparing their resources to what's happening right now with the demand out there,

[1:57:45] because of data centers, or the increased demand

[1:57:47] for just generally electricity.

[1:57:49] If things continue to go, hey, why are with demand?

[1:57:55] With IMEA's resources are we protected?

[1:57:57] Do we have enough resources to serve all of the members

[1:58:01] in IMEA for the long haul?

[1:58:05] Yes, so IMEA, because we are not deregulated,

[1:58:10] we can own generation assets through,

[1:58:12] so through a combination of the owned fossil fuel

[1:58:15] renewable generation assets and other hedges in the marketplace, we're

[1:58:20] expected to just feel minimal impacts in the near term from those

[1:58:24] increases. Like I mentioned, there's only about 10% of IMEA's power is on

[1:58:29] the open market. The rest of it is covered through own assets in

[1:58:32] generation. So if a member of IMEA wanted to build a data center, are there

[1:58:38] rules in the contract that they have to follow in terms of this, hey, we're going to

[1:58:43] the data center down state Illinois, and it's a member community.

[1:58:47] Yeah, there's rules in place to make sure that it's not

[1:58:51] adversely affected the member and the agency as a whole.

[1:58:54] And just on the flip side, if IMEA or a member wanted to contribute

[1:59:00] by generating more, whatever, come up with a new type of renewable plant,

[1:59:05] that could be in the purview of IMEA.

[1:59:08] We could decide to, or IMEI could decide to build a new, some sort of, you know, energy producing power plant to add to capacity.

[1:59:20] Absolutely, and they're going to have to do that.

[1:59:22] Because we know when the thermal resources are going to be forced to retire.

[1:59:26] So in the next, let's say, five to ten years, we're already going to be planning for that.

[1:59:31] Is that going to look like something that IMEI builds and owns?

[1:59:34] Or is it something like a PPA?

[1:59:37] We're participating like the B. Hallow Solar Project.

[1:59:39] We own a small piece of that.

[1:59:41] It's a much larger project.

[1:59:42] We just have rights to a small piece of it.

[1:59:44] So I mean, he's already going to start planning

[1:59:46] for how to transition away from those thermal resources

[1:59:49] to serve the needs of the members.

[1:59:53] Not necessarily increased capacity to sell

[1:59:55] out into the marketplace.

[1:59:57] They need it.

[1:59:58] As a P.J. and participating member, they're required.

[1:59:59] You

[2:00:00] Have 100, what's the percentage?

[2:00:04] Well, the belt and suspenders? Yes. They like to see 15% excess capacity. So we have to need 100 megawatts. You should

[2:00:11] be able to show evidence of 115. Okay. So taking a step back, talking a little bit about education

[2:00:18] on power plants. We've heard that a lot of coal power plants have shut down or gone out of business.

[2:00:24] I mean, what's the cost-banner?

[2:00:28] Why is that happening?

[2:00:29] It's just because people are wanting to move away from coal.

[2:00:33] It's not economically as feasible.

[2:00:36] It's cost too much.

[2:00:37] What are the reasons why coal is going away

[2:00:40] or why these plants are shutting down?

[2:00:44] I'll give my two cents and I'll let the energy expert weigh in.

[2:00:49] I'd say in the recent past, it was because of competition with natural gas.

[2:00:52] So, when there was a boon in natural gas, again, power is bit in, it's a market transaction.

[2:00:58] So, it's the same reason that nuclear generators have to be subsidized because they

[2:01:04] could not compete against natural gas.

[2:01:07] This cost was driven down so low that they could not compete on an auction basis.

[2:01:13] So, coal plants were shuttered because of their inability to compete.

[2:01:18] That's absolutely correct.

[2:01:19] And we see that fuel-switching happening in different parts of the country in the southeast

[2:01:23] almost monthly when we see the natural gas price go down, they burn more natural gas for fuel,

[2:01:30] natural gas price goes up, they convert over to use their gas, and they're coal plants.

[2:01:35] The other issue is that a lot of the coal plants in the past were built by and operated

[2:01:40] by utilities and had after 30 years plus been fully depreciated.

[2:01:47] So, the way utility earns money is by having appreciable assets, part of their rate base.

[2:01:53] So, if the asset is fully depreciated, it's not as attractive as a new resource.

[2:01:57] So, that's why a lot of utilities have built natural gas plants. They're relatively inexpensive to build,

[2:02:02] and then they can build up their depreciation accounts and get their cost recovery on that as well.

[2:02:07] I'm not knowing what the future holds, I don't know, we're totally just guessing here.

[2:02:11] could there be a scenario where IMEA determines that running per

[2:02:15] state costs more than it's worth to keep it through its

[2:02:19] extended life? Is it 2045? I mean I know we're just

[2:02:24] I'm just speculating here but could there be a scenario where

[2:02:28] the current plan isn't economically feasible?

[2:02:33] Right and I think I touched on this when I mentioned that again IMEA is a non-profit entity

[2:02:37] serving the 32 member communities, so if there is another economical, more economical solution

[2:02:45] that would make us move away from Paris State faster than the membership ourselves included

[2:02:52] as board members would push IMEA in that direction. Correct. And it was touched on when

[2:02:59] you were asking questions, so just to repeat right now, Naperville hasn't signed on or have

[2:03:05] they made a decision to not sign on.

[2:03:09] They have not made a decision, correct?

[2:03:11] And they're one third of the total whatever capacity

[2:03:15] or utilization that I'm yet, correct?

[2:03:18] And from Prairie State, what percentage of that

[2:03:23] is sold out to the open market versus use by its members?

[2:03:27] You know that?

[2:03:29] I'd have to find the exact breakdown.

[2:03:31] So I'm EA's 15% Prairie State, NIMPA, which serves

[2:03:36] Betavia, which was mentioned before in Geneva, they have another portion American power net as a portion, and then I'd have to get to you the exact

[2:03:44] Right now the number was 15% so IMEA owns 15% of

[2:03:49] And what percentage of IMEA is for Wenaka?

[2:03:54] We're just shy of 4% of IMEA. What is 4% times 15%

[2:03:59] 0.6%

[2:04:06] Point zero six, percent, or is it point?

[2:04:14] I think it would just be really curious for us to stay in tune with the bigger issue.

[2:04:22] And it's just a thought process.

[2:04:24] Like as we're talking about, right, significant decision that we have to make about the future.

[2:04:30] And yes, it's ten years from now when this contractor news.

[2:04:34] But my concern is we're betting the farm because we know our destiny with what we have today.

[2:04:44] And we're betting the farm on something that we don't have all the information, right?

[2:04:48] There's lots of other options out there, lots of other communities are doing it.

[2:04:53] But relative to the cost and the cost is not necessarily just a economic cost.

[2:04:58] But the, you know, what is our, you know,

[2:05:01] how dirty is when ECHA's energy, and I'm piecing things together,

[2:05:07] but that in the farm, because of a 0.06 or 0.6% of our energy comes

[2:05:14] from a dirty source,

[2:05:20] okay,

[2:05:23] okay, thank you.

[2:05:27] And I piecing together my head, is it worth it to take the risk in terms

[2:05:33] of, you know, us making the decision to bank for literally the next couple decades economically

[2:05:39] to all of the residents in the town with a lot of unknowns, and that's my concern about

[2:05:48] making a decision to not continue with IMEA. Fair enough? Fair enough?

[2:05:52] So, just a couple other, okay. Maybe, might you think so.

[2:05:56] So, on our plant we run when IMEA asks us to run the plant, right?

[2:06:03] So, as I mentioned, IMEA as a 24-7 dispatch center.

[2:06:09] There, as a participating member in PJM, this is one of their requirements, their

[2:06:13] monitoring, real-time power prices, and they dispatch us when it's most advantageous for the

[2:06:20] agency.

[2:06:22] So, we spread those benefits out, you know, the avoided cost of buying that power by producing

[2:06:29] it instead.

[2:06:30] you spread those benefits out. In this scenario where we were alone, there are significant risks

[2:06:36] to non-performance, which I can defer to mark on the exact numbers,

[2:06:42] but the same we were with,

[2:06:43] we were just on our own as a PG and participant, if they called us to generate our current fleet consists

[2:06:48] of equipment that's very old. If there were a failure and we did not produce, there could be

[2:07:00] cross 32 members, so it's you kind of hits the best of both worlds, I guess you spread

[2:07:06] the risk and you spread the rewards.

[2:07:10] Well, last question, does our current agreement with IMEA allow for us to incentivize residents

[2:07:17] to use solar to do other sustainable measures, I know whether it's geothermal or heat pumps

[2:07:26] There's nothing in the IMEA contract that would prevent us.

[2:07:29] That's a lot.

[2:07:30] Local policy issue. So, like I mentioned, to trustee Myers, if the village wanted to set aside, let's just say, $100,000 in

[2:07:41] 2026 to incentivize solar, we can do that as a local rate maker, where the revenue comes from, we'll have to determine that if it's from the rate base, or are we going to see grant funding, but that's something locally we can do right now.

[2:07:56] Okay. Thank you.

[2:07:59] Trust the handler from remote. Any questions?

[2:08:03] Well, here are my fellow trustees have made some great comments.

[2:08:08] And as is the audience, thank you.

[2:08:09] This has been extremely informative.

[2:08:11] You know, one of the things I was interested in Nick is how, you know,

[2:08:15] it made me think that the IME contract and how it's fit in

[2:08:19] to our energy plan and when that got for the last couple of decades

[2:08:22] isn't necessarily how it has to fit in to our energy plan in the future.

[2:08:27] NICU lists at a whole, you had a nice list there of a lot of sustainable initiatives

[2:08:34] that people can take on their own as individual homeowners or we can take as a community.

[2:08:41] And we can do those along with having a contract like IMEA with IMEA.

[2:08:48] to Rob's point, I am concerned about reliability and a fair cost for our and and predictability for our residents.

[2:08:59] I think I said this in one of our study sessions that in the 40 years I've lived here.

[2:09:03] I've never heard people talk about complain about one on a caucus survey.

[2:09:09] What's wrong with our electricity?

[2:09:10] Because it's reliable, it's fair, it's fairly priced, and the community's happy with it.

[2:09:19] So, not saying that things aren't going to change if people want to look for some alternatives,

[2:09:23] but I feel like we can accomplish both.

[2:09:28] They said what we're hearing and what we're learning from both the residents here tonight,

[2:09:32] and all the work, Nick, and thank you, Mark, and we all have done over the last year

[2:09:39] to learn and understand what the risks are,

[2:09:43] what the costs are, and what this would entail.

[2:09:47] Okay, thank you.

[2:09:48] We're a comment in a question.

[2:09:49] No, that's great.

[2:09:50] Thank you very much.

[2:09:52] Before we wrap up, I think everyone in the room

[2:09:58] has probably heard the commitment

[2:09:59] from the trustees around the table

[2:10:01] that one of our priorities,

[2:10:04] your respective of this contract,

[2:10:06] is to do better locally with our sustainability plan.

[2:10:10] And that's going to be an all-fronts.

[2:10:12] At least, Steiner over here is our sustainability coordinator.

[2:10:16] You know, has been with us, I don't know, at least six months or so, right?

[2:10:20] She's kind of charged with working throughout the village in terms of what we can do.

[2:10:25] Nick has already talked about in the past, and we have a consultant at the moment looking

[2:10:31] that ways that we might be able to power the plant on a sustainable basis, right?

[2:10:36] Now, it's diesel on natural gas, we're looking at that, the solar farm potential out

[2:10:41] in the yards, out at the landfill, and the EFC, we have our representatives tonight from

[2:10:48] the EFC, including Scarlett Harper, where I think left, but we're charging it, we're

[2:10:53] going to charge the EFC with looking at broadly what residents can do, and some of the issues

[2:10:58] that we've talked about, you know, the pricing issues, the solar, you know, maybe we haven't

[2:11:04] sent a program.

[2:11:05] So these, again, you know, I know the big, the big issue here is the contract, but we're

[2:11:11] going to be doing better.

[2:11:13] At a month from now, when we sit down in our June study session, we're going to be talking about

[2:11:17] priorities for the council members.

[2:11:19] And obviously, we have priorities, we have stormwater, we've hovered woods, we have all sorts

[2:11:23] of things, we have the most office.

[2:11:25] But this sustainability issue for this village is going to move forward.

[2:11:30] I can assure you of that.

[2:11:33] And so it's on the minds of everyone here.

[2:11:36] It's on your minds, and as it was echoed many times,

[2:11:40] there's a deep well of intellect in this room right now.

[2:11:42] And we completely understand that.

[2:11:44] We received letters, beautifully written letters, compelling points.

[2:11:49] We read them all, so thank you for that.

[2:11:51] Before we wrap up any thoughts, before we go, where are we going next steps, anything like that?

[2:12:01] What are the next steps?

[2:12:04] Well, I think that I'd like some clarity on the numbers.

[2:12:08] I mean a little bit.

[2:12:10] We can.

[2:12:11] Okay.

[2:12:11] There is a grain can, you know, where people are saying,

[2:12:16] so I'm just trying to make sure our numbers are right.

[2:12:19] And it just helps us inform it.

[2:12:21] I'd also like to get a little clarity on, I like the idea that the fact that if we're going

[2:12:28] to try and push on me, whatever reason, what I'm asking we are, but if we do another contract,

[2:12:34] how do we get their faster with on me, how what true weight we have, and I know part of

[2:12:38] us can be in the market, as the market knows, as you said, if there's a cheaper, or a better

[2:12:43] source, even if it's parity cost, to be able to push IMEA faster,

[2:12:49] not in 20 years,

[2:12:50] but in five years.

[2:12:53] All right.

[2:12:53] Nick, you can come back to us with that, probably.

[2:12:55] Some of that information, Scott?

[2:12:57] Yeah.

[2:12:58] I think what we're all wrestling with is we are being asked to commit a future generation in

[2:13:05] terms of two things.

[2:13:07] One is the stability and price of electricity, and at the same time, we're kind of committing them to a certain kind of an environment, right?

[2:13:19] And I think we're all concerned about both of those in terms of how much risk do we take on, because the more flexibility you have,

[2:13:29] the more you either have to incur costs, the manage that flexibility or else it's just risk, right?

[2:13:37] I think that one way to address this question of committing a future generation in terms of the environment is to really be serious today about investing in green energy in this village.

[2:13:58] Right? I know it's a nice list. We've got a sustainability coordinator. But if this group

[2:14:04] doesn't commit to putting dollars behind it, it's just going to be two residents here,

[2:14:11] it's going to be a little of this and a little of that. So I think that, you know, what we're hearing

[2:14:16] certainly from a set of residents, not 100%. But I think they're pretty representative,

[2:14:23] is that there's a desire to make a significant commitment. And I think that, you know, we've got

[2:14:27] determine what that significant point is. But it's not $100,000, right? And we got to figure

[2:14:33] out what it is and where it comes from.

[2:14:35] Yeah. I mean, there was some analysis. I mean, I think the current, and you can crack

[2:14:38] me on this Nick and Rob, but I think the current estimate for the solar field out at the landfill,

[2:14:44] it's a $5 to $7 million commitment investment to do that.

[2:14:49] Right. There's different ways to structure. Correct. The financing and that if it wasn't

[2:14:53] asset that the villager wanted to own, then it would be about five to seven million dollars.

[2:14:58] So, you know, Scott, you're right. We...

[2:15:00] And to look at that, just like any resident would look at the payback on their rooftop solar.

[2:15:05] I mean, we need to analyze it and, you know, have meetings like this where we could take the pulse of the residents,

[2:15:12] are we willing to pay for that? And so, yes, I think we will be, we will be doing that.

[2:15:18] I guess the question here in my mind, at least, is, Nick, you mentioned in your report that we're currently on an extension

[2:15:29] with IMEA through June, and at the June board meeting, they will decide if Naperville or

[2:15:37] saying Charles, whatever, if they're going to continue to extend. We don't know. If they

[2:15:41] say no, then our entry back into IMEA could be allowed not allowed with a premium, not a premium,

[2:15:49] we don't know. But that is the reality of the timeframe with IMEA at the moment. Am I correct

[2:15:56] on that.

[2:15:57] So the open contract period initially was supposed to end on April 30th.

[2:16:03] There was no action taken to extend that deadline at the last meeting, but there was

[2:16:07] a desire to do so.

[2:16:09] Suggestion was made to extend the open contract period to August, the August board meeting.

[2:16:16] Based on comments made in the room, I have a feeling that it could be ending as early

[2:16:21] as June.

[2:16:22] It just depends on what the board does. Again, this is a board of 32 communities.

[2:16:26] They're the ones that decide what happens. It's not IMEA staff. So if the open

[2:16:32] contract period ends in June or August, and the contract decide after that, then it's not like

[2:16:38] you're coming to them with a blank contract. It's you're starting from scratch. There's potential

[2:16:44] for there's uncertainty on this. There's uncertainty. So ultimately, ultimately, we need

[2:16:52] an ordinance to vote on to either vote to not extend the contract or to vote to extend the contract.

[2:16:59] And in my mind, we may not take up that ordinance in the next meeting or the meeting after that.

[2:17:06] But I think we should charge our bill of attorney to put together the ordinance so that ultimately we have something to vote on.

[2:17:13] When we have the information that we need, I don't know what the thinking is around the table here.

[2:17:17] You know, I'll be talking to people, see if there's any consensus one way or another, but we will need an ordinance to do this.

[2:17:26] And so I don't know if folks here think that we should have Elrod Friedman put that together and have it available.

[2:17:34] Well, what I just heard is if we don't make a decision before they meet in June.

[2:17:40] I mean, right now we're technically in default, right?

[2:17:42] or we were past the deadline, is that correct?

[2:17:45] Right, so no action was taken at the April meeting,

[2:17:48] so that contractors still technically open the membership

[2:17:52] may decide in June to close that door

[2:17:54] or they may decide to let it go to August.

[2:17:57] All right, I can't predict what the membership

[2:17:58] is gonna decide.

[2:18:01] I just want voice, I feel like we have a responsibility

[2:18:05] as a member to give some direction to IMEA,

[2:18:08] So where we're at, I would, and, I mean, we consider on here an informally, or I'd do

[2:18:15] a straw poll or something, but we could, we could, we could seek that direction again.

[2:18:19] I mean, Rob, could we go back to them again?

[2:18:23] We could get their thought?

[2:18:24] I mean, I mean, I think it's going to be discussed on the June board, board meeting as to

[2:18:29] what the time frame is going to be.

[2:18:30] So this was not, you know, but by having our attorney draft the ordinance, we can table

[2:18:37] the ordinance?

[2:18:38] Correct. We can defer.

[2:18:40] We can vote.

[2:18:41] We can vote in favor of it.

[2:18:43] It's just, we're just going to have it.

[2:18:45] Correct.

[2:18:45] That would be my thought.

[2:18:48] Kirk was saying the opposite.

[2:18:50] I was saying we have a responsibility to IMEA to tell them.

[2:18:53] Eventually, one way where what we were going.

[2:18:54] Oh, is that what you were doing?

[2:18:56] I'm sorry.

[2:18:56] If I wasn't.

[2:18:57] I don't like the idea of risk.

[2:19:00] Okay.

[2:19:01] My big concern right now is that we miss this window.

[2:19:05] Okay.

[2:19:06] And asking for forgiveness, could carry a huge price tag with it?

[2:19:13] So is there a consensus thought that we should have a Rod Friedman put this together?

[2:19:19] Have it available?

[2:19:20] We get information.

[2:19:24] Doesn't commit to anything.

[2:19:25] We'll need it eventually, right?

[2:19:27] I don't know when it would be on the agenda, but we need some information back on pricing

[2:19:32] any other questions that might come up, go through Rob, and he'll get that information from

[2:19:39] Nick or from Mr. Prood. Thank you for your help tonight.

[2:19:43] Late. Thank you for your help tonight. Okay. It's past 9 o'clock.

[2:19:51] Let's see here. I think it's

[2:19:54] time unless anyone has any other comments to adjourn. May I have a motion to adjourn?

[2:19:59] Second.

[2:20:01] We'll call vote.

[2:20:03] Good voice vote.

[2:20:04] On favor.

[2:20:05] Aye.

[2:20:06] Okay. Thank you. We're adjourned. Thank you everybody.

[2:20:08] Thank you.

Village Council Study Session

Agenda

Transcript