HomeMy WebLinkAbout9/3/2019 Item 18, Peck
Wilbanks, Megan
From:Stephen Peck <Steve@PeckPlanning.com>
Sent:Tuesday, September
To:Harmon, Heidi; Gomez, Aaron; Christianson, Carlyn; Pease, Andy; Stewart, Erica
Cc:Codron, Michael; Read, Chris; E-mail Council Website
Subject:Peck Planning Comment Comments on CC Item 18; Community Choice Energy
Attachments:Peck Planning Comment Letter.pdf
Attached are my remaining comments on the Reach Code. Thank for all for your time and dedication to this issue.
1
September 3, 2019
City Clerk/City Council Members
San Luis Obispo City Council
900 Palm Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
Re: Item 18; Clean Energy Choice Policy
City Council:
The City Council has undertaken an important step in achieving its climate action plan goals and
objectives by identifying additional energy conservation and GHG-reducing strategies for the
community. The matter before you on Tuesday night has benefitted significantly from public outreach
efforts, and the proposed regulations are much improved from their earlier iterations, as it should be.
I am writing to you to address a few specific issues on the implementation of those new
regulations. In doing so I am only speaking on behalf of Peck Planning, and not on behalf of any
particular property, project or organization, and I am not representing the views of Avila Ranch’s current
owners and developers, or a specific community organization. Those entities are represented by their
own competent representatives and spokespersons who have been making their own contributions to
this discussion. The two issues addressed here are the administration of the fee and the proposed
incentives.
Incentives:
As we learned from Bronwyn Barry, president of the North American Passive House Network, at
the recent SLO Climate Coalition Climate Action Conference, incentives are a powerful and essential
element of any successful and effective climate action strategy. There are more results to be had with
legitimate carrots than with thorny and complicated sticks to implement these strategies over the longs
run. Although the City is required to offer energy supply options in the implementation the energy and
climate action regulations, there is an obvious preference for all-electric buildings, where that is
possible. Incentives play an important role in encouraging builders, designers and developers to choose
this option by making it in their best interest to do so.
As we learned from tackling other air quality issues getting the “gross polluters” off the street
was the key to success. The City’s successful water conservation efforts (we use less water now than we
did 15 years ago), to retrofit existing buildings provided the most meaningful progress in this area.
Projects like Avila Ranch and San Luis Ranch will use approximately one percent (1%) of the community’s
natural gas over the next 20 years. Therefore, incentives need to be provided to the other 99 percent of
the natural gas users to achieve the City’s goals.
A few of the incentives that should be implemented are the following:
1. Expedited Plan Check. Expedited building plan check and improvement plan check. If the City
Council makes it a priority, and directs the staff to do so, it can be done.
2. Code/Reach Code Compliance Analysis. Adoption of the Reach Code and related regulations will
require special analysis. The City can sponsor analysts by cooperating through the County
administered 3C-REN program, of through funding from the community choice power program.
Fees:
I appreciate the fact that the City has once again employed EPS to assist in the development of
the in-lieu fee for this program. We have all come to trust their professionalism, objectivity and
thoroughness. Their study on the GHG in-lieu fees describes it as a “mitigation fee” approach that is
based on the projected number of therms that a proposed building would use on an annual basis as
determined by an energy analysis prepared by a certificated professional. EPS describes that the
implementation of the fee would be require that the annual number of therms generated by a building
be provided as part of a building permit application to determine the natural gas therm usage that will
need to be mitigated elsewhere in the City to maintain (i.e., not increase) above the City’s baseline level
of emissions. The City Council should make sure that the final fee and mitigation obligation that is
adopted is, in fact, based on each building’s proposed natural usage rather than a theoretical building
that is not representative of the City’s future building stock.
Natural gas usage varies widely by the size of dwelling unit (space heating is correlated to
building volume and is the single biggest use of natural gas for a residence), the number and type of gas
appliances used, and various other factors. It appears that the usage factors represented in the EPS
study are for “prototype dwelling units” that are described in the Tables 1 and 2 of the 2019 Cost-
effectiveness Study: Low-Rise Residential New Construction, the document that the City has been using
to benchmark performance. These tables describe the prototypical single-family unit as a 2,100-SF one-
story building or a 2,700-SF two-story building. It also describes these units as having lower efficiency
HVAC gas furnaces, a gas dryer, a tankless gas water heater, and a gas range. By way of comparison,
single-family detached units in Avila Ranch and San Luis Ranch range in size from 1,100 SF to 2,000 SF of
conditioned floor area, with an average of just below 1,500 SF. Thus, the fee estimates provided in Table
1 of the fee study for a “typical” single family unit is for a building with as many gas appliances as
possible and a building with a conditioned floor area that is almost fifty percent greater than the
average for the City’s two recent large specific plans. The average square footage for other projects in
the Margarita and Orcutt Specific Plan areas is closer to 1,800 SF, still 15 percent below the
“prototypical unit”. Therefore, if the City prefers the fewest gas appliances possible, if any at all, then a
therm-based fee as described in the EPS study should be used, and not a fixed fee based on an all-gas
unit for a dwelling much larger than those to be built in the City.
The Council should also strive to make the fees and regulations applicable Citywide to the
greatest degree that is legally feasible. In some cases, additional fees may not be able to be levied
because of vesting map restrictions or other factors. Other than those restrictions, the City should
provide as level of a playing field as possible and not provide surgical exemptions. Providing some
“granularity” to the fees by making them per-therm rather than lump sum/fixed will make them more
palatable.
Finally, the incentives and fees ought to go hand in hand. Many in the building community have
been persuaded to support these regulations based on the assurance that a package of incentives will
be provided. It is suggested that the City fulfill this sincere pledge by taking the fees and the incentives
together.
Thank you for your attention.
Stephen J. Peck, AICP