Energy Resources Customer Services Nov 19 2025

Unknown: Let's just live with it!

Unknown: All right. Good evening and welcome to the Energy Resources and Customer Services Committee

SPEAKER_05: and Special Board Meeting of November 19, 2025. This meeting is being recorded and can

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SPEAKER_05: two hours after the meeting ends. Would the Deputy General Counsel please conduct a roll

SPEAKER_05: call? Director Sanborn. Director Tamayo. Chair. Chair Rose. All committee members are present

SPEAKER_02: as are all other members of the board. All right. Thank you. So we have first we have

SPEAKER_05: two things tonight. We have a quick power person agreement to discuss and then we'll

SPEAKER_05: switch over to our actual panel. So item number one on tonight's agenda is to discuss authorizing

SPEAKER_05: the CEO to execute an amended and restated power person agreement consisting of two confirmations

SPEAKER_05: with Geyser's power company LLC for up to 150 megawatts of geothermal energy and discuss

SPEAKER_05: approving the California Energy Commission's emission performance standard or EPS compliance

SPEAKER_05: filing and authorize the CEO to sign the compliance filing. So that we have John Olson,

SPEAKER_05: our Director of Energy Trading and Contracts. Good evening, everybody. I'm excited to be

SPEAKER_04: here to talk with you about our Geyser's contract. A little bit of background. Back in 2022, I

SPEAKER_04: was here and we executed a 10 year 100 megawatt contract with Kelpine on our Geyser's that

SPEAKER_04: went valid or started flowing in January 1 of 23 and was set up to run through 2032.

SPEAKER_04: Couple years ago, we approached Kelpine about additional energy in extending this contract

SPEAKER_04: as well as expanding this initial contract. In response to that, we also conducted evaluation

SPEAKER_04: of other proposals and determined that the Geyser's expansion and extension offer provided

SPEAKER_04: superior value to other options that we had on the table versus alternatives. And those

SPEAKER_04: would include building new or other kinds of projects that were existing. So from a

SPEAKER_04: context perspective, SMUDDLE purchased the energy and the capacity and the renewable

SPEAKER_04: or environmental attributes that are PCC1 credits. So it supports our RPS programs.

SPEAKER_04: And from the 2030 perspective, our original plan specifically called out for additional

SPEAKER_04: geothermal as part of our plan. So that's really executing on one of the key tenants

SPEAKER_04: of the 2030 plan. Just to familiarize you a little bit with like where the projects

SPEAKER_04: are, the next picture we'll have is a map. And as you're looking more towards the lower

SPEAKER_04: right, Calistoga is kind of where the project starts. And it kind of spreads out around

SPEAKER_04: that community several miles around. And it's just over the mountaintop from Sonoma Valley.

SPEAKER_04: So if you went over it, you'd be right in the heart of the Sonoma Valley part of it.

SPEAKER_04: Established project, I forget exactly when the geysers went in, but it's from a project

SPEAKER_04: risk perspective, it's an existing project. There's no new additional work that needs

SPEAKER_04: to be done. A little bit more context. So currently with that 100 megawatts of firm capacity,

SPEAKER_04: we get, it's about 876,000 megawatt hours of energy. And there's 8,760 hours in a year.

SPEAKER_04: So at 100 megawatts of firm capacity, basically that's every hour of the year that it's available

SPEAKER_04: for us. So it's what you would call is a high reliability, high availability plant. It's

SPEAKER_04: producing megawatts at 3 a.m. It's producing megawatts at 5 p.m. So from that perspective,

SPEAKER_04: it's again high density and high availability. So what this extend and expand contract is

SPEAKER_04: going to do is in 28 and 29, we're going to add additional 25 megawatts to the 100

SPEAKER_04: megawatts that we're currently buying. So now we're at 125. And that includes again,

SPEAKER_04: the energy, the renewable attributes and everything associated with it. And then in 2030, we're

SPEAKER_04: going to expand it again. So another 25 megawatts. So it'll be a total of 150 megawatts by the

SPEAKER_04: time we start in 2030. The contract has a 15-year term starting in 2028. So for the

SPEAKER_04: first two years, it's 125. For the last 13 years, it's going to be 150 megawatts. And

SPEAKER_04: so it'll run through 2042. So it goes not only is decarbonization efforts immediately

SPEAKER_04: right now, it extends us into that period, what I'd say the mid, your mid-strategy,

SPEAKER_04: kind of like all the way through the 30s and into the 40s. So it's a really nice tenor

SPEAKER_04: to the contract. Anyway, like you mentioned earlier, this is a key component of zero carbon

SPEAKER_04: power for the ZCP. This is kind of how it breaks down from both a megawatts perspective

SPEAKER_04: as well as an average annual cost. So in 2026, it's going to add about $61 million to

SPEAKER_04: our budget. And in the out years 2030 to 2042, it's up to 149. And if you think about it,

SPEAKER_04: the chunks, the chunk up in megawatt hours is why you have those big jumps. And so it's

SPEAKER_04: really, it's additional megawatts that are driving additional dollars. This is going to

SPEAKER_04: offset something else that we aren't going to produce or have to buy from our product.

SPEAKER_04: So these aren't traditionally additional megawatts. These are megawatts that we're

SPEAKER_04: going to, is going to offset something else. As I mentioned, it's located in Northern

Unknown: California. So even though it's in the Kaiso BAA, separate from the bank BAA, it is where

SPEAKER_04: we are currently participating in EIM as well as the future of when, if we go back to the

SPEAKER_04: E-DAM, it's going to be a key tool and is inside the E-DAM footprint. And so it's very correlated

SPEAKER_04: price wise, even though it's in the Kaiso, it's very correlated price wise. So it's a good

SPEAKER_04: financial hedge as well as a physical hedge. And then this amendment, the E-DAM, is going

SPEAKER_04: to be a key tool. And it's going to be a key tool. And it's going to be a key tool. And

Unknown: then this amendment, when we're up and running the past 2030, it's going to, the energy

SPEAKER_04: produce is going to amount to about 7% of our RPS goals for, or excuse me, our RPS portfolio

SPEAKER_04: going forward. So it's not an insignificant portion of energy going forward.

Unknown: In addition to being GPS, or to being RPS compliant, it's also EPS and that compliant. And for

SPEAKER_04: accordance with Senate Bill 1368, which established the EPS, SMUDDLE will need to file with an attestation

SPEAKER_04: that this is our project. And we plan to be doing that with the CEC within 10 days of the

SPEAKER_04: contract execution. So the requested action as stated is to allow, authorize the Chief

Unknown: Executive Officer, General Manager, or designee to amend and extend the Geyser's contract with

SPEAKER_04: Geyser Power Company LLC and approve the California Energy Commission Emissions Performance Standards

SPEAKER_04: Compliance Filing and authorize the CEO and GM, or as a designee, to sign the compliance

SPEAKER_04: filing attestation. At that point, I'm open up for questions.

Unknown: Thank you for the update. I just had a question about the amount of power that we're purchasing

SPEAKER_01: and then we'll continue to purchase and add on to it. Are they like, you know, building out the Geysers?

SPEAKER_01: Are they going to take energy from somebody else to sell to us? I mean, I guess I thought Geysers, you

SPEAKER_01: know, had a small capacity. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question.

SPEAKER_01: I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question.

SPEAKER_01: But Geysers, you know, had a small capacity.

Unknown: So I don't know what the total, I should probably know this and we can find this for if you'd like, but I don't know what the total capacity is.

SPEAKER_04: But they have a number of commercial agreements with people and some people are exiting contracts.

SPEAKER_04: We've had continuous conversations with them prior even to 2022 about here's what our stack is, here's what our appetite is to get more

SPEAKER_04: geothermal and the timings. And so we've kind of have a good relationship with Kalkine on a number of fronts.

SPEAKER_04: And so we said we want to be able to expand our take of the Geysers. So as other commercial agreements fell off the table for them,

SPEAKER_04: that opened up an opportunity for us to go in here. So they aren't expanding it. It was just the commercial opportunity.

Unknown: Thank you.

Unknown: Are there any other questions? Yeah, President Fischman.

SPEAKER_05: John, I assume there's no problem getting the transmission capacity to get another 25 or 50 megawatts over here.

SPEAKER_13: Yeah, no. How we would be doing that is with the transfer capability between the Kaiso and our cells, which is significant.

SPEAKER_04: Okay.

Unknown: I don't see any other.

SPEAKER_05: I'll just say something. Hi, John. Good to see you again. I really like geothermal. I think this is like nature's energy powerhouse that's very reliable.

SPEAKER_10: It's not like sun that comes and goes or wind that blows and then doesn't. And so it's great baseline for us.

SPEAKER_10: I just wish we could buy more. So that's my only issue. So hopefully we can find more and we have more developers because I've heard there's new ways that they can get at geothermal.

SPEAKER_10: They couldn't before where they can go down and sideways where they used to have to go straight down.

SPEAKER_10: So hopefully we'll see more because there's a lot more resources in California that are being used right now. So thank you very much for bringing this.

SPEAKER_10: Absolutely. All right. So we have one public comment from David Wright.

Unknown: Hi. Good evening. David Wright. This seems like a no-brainer assuming the price is right. I'm sure you all feel the same way.

SPEAKER_00: So I'm not opposed to everything. I strongly support this one and 350 Sacramento. I haven't talked to anybody about it but I'm 100 percent sure that they also wholeheartedly support this project. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: Okay. Thank you. Joe, do we have anybody online? There are no hands raised in the virtual room.

Unknown: Perfect. Thank you for that. Yeah. I thought this wouldn't take too long so I figured we wouldn't make John sit here for the next two hours. We made Casey Fallon do the last week.

SPEAKER_05: But yeah, this project, this one is right in line with the zero carbon plan and having this base load, dispatchable, flexible load is really important component and is an important piece of that puzzle.

SPEAKER_05: So is there any ‑‑ I think everybody is in agreement with the Lincoln Center calendar. Okay. Thank you. Yeah.

Unknown: I just looked real quickly on their website and it says that the geysers produce enough power to power 725,000 homes. So they usually use 1,000 homes per megawatt. So about 725 megawatts. Something like that.

SPEAKER_13: Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Let's hop over to the main event tonight. Item number 2 is a panel and presentations on nature based carbon solutions and SMUD's analysis to inform our efforts. We'll have our director of distributed energy solutions, Rachel Wong.

Unknown: Thank you, board. Yes, Rachel Wong, director of distributed energy solutions. I'm going to give a brief intro and hand it over to our external panel. The last several years we've been coming to the board to talk about the great work that SMUD is doing across the company, frankly, relative to ensuring that the work that we do as well as the work that we do with our customers has a positive impact on the land as well as biodiversity.

SPEAKER_08: But at the end of last year's presentation, one of the things the board asked us is what's that opportunity relative to carbon sequestration from all this great work that we're doing? Because we're actually doing work that can help contribute to that. So how do we sort of make it more official and really what is the opportunity in our service territory?

SPEAKER_08: So you may recall actually the last time we did a landscape carbon assessment was back in 2017. And so we've actually just started embarking upon doing an updated analysis. So tonight we've got external speakers to talk about continued wonderful work in the region and in California.

SPEAKER_08: But also we've got our consultants, Ascent and GI, who's actually going to be sharing with you the analysis that we'll be doing. So we won't be getting results back until next summer, but wanted to share with you the approach that they're taking and how that's going to be utilized.

SPEAKER_08: And we'll be able to take that analysis next summer and come back and talk to you about it and then also utilize that to feed into a plan. So with that, I will pass it on to our first external speaker. Thank you.

Unknown: Ciao, pass her. I'm joining you remotely from the Bay Area. I'm down in Marin. So couldn't be there in person tonight, but I really appreciate the opportunity just to share some work that we're doing in the space of climate change and what we call nature-based climate solutions.

SPEAKER_09: And also give you a little bit of an overview of what's happening at the state level. And I'm sure some of the other speakers will as well.

SPEAKER_09: So if you go to the next slide, please.

Unknown: I lead our California chapters strategy on climate and nature-based solutions. And by nature-based climate solutions, I mean land management, restoration, conservation to both mitigate greenhouse gas emissions as well as climate impacts.

SPEAKER_09: And so that's how I'm using those terms in this presentation.

SPEAKER_09: As you may know, the Nature Conservancy is a global organization, nonprofit, and we are dedicated to the conservation of the lands and waters upon which all life depends. We have offices, chapters in all 50 states, and we work in over 80 countries.

SPEAKER_09: Climate change is the biggest threat to our mission. So we are dedicated to addressing climate change and also finding ways through our science to elevate nature as a key piece of addressing climate change.

SPEAKER_09: So if you can go to the next slide, please.

Unknown: And we are a science-based organization. We've done a lot of analyses on the contributions that nature can make to addressing climate change. We've done a global analysis that shows that nature-based climate solutions can contribute up to a third of the greenhouse gas reductions we need globally to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.

SPEAKER_09: And we also have done analyses within the state of California, kind of similar, really understanding across the landscape how management, restoration, and conservation can help California achieve its climate goals.

SPEAKER_09: And so we've issued a couple reports as well, as you see here on the slide. I'm happy to make those available if folks are interested. And if you go to the next slide, I'll just highlight some of the results of our research.

SPEAKER_09: So in our scientific analysis, we were able to do a modeling of 13 different nature-based solutions. There's certainly more, but based on our study, over 500 million metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions could be achieved through different land management and conservation restoration strategies across the state

SPEAKER_09: by mid-century to help the state meet its carbon neutrality goals. And so this, over 28 million acres of land, which is almost a third of the land in California, can be available for these types of nature-based solutions.

SPEAKER_09: You go to the next slide.

SPEAKER_09: And so we worked sharing our science with colleagues, and certainly our work was done with partners, and we shared it with legislators. And the work that we've done helped feed into a larger body of science work that the state has used to set targets for nature-based climate solutions.

SPEAKER_09: And you can go to the Resources Agency website, you can see the targets that have been established, which were spurred by legislation, Assembly Bill 1757. And there's over 81 targets there, and this is just the cumulative effects you see on the right of all the acreage related to either wildfire or different forest management and restoration, agricultural lands, grasslands.

SPEAKER_09: Deserts and beaches, and wetlands and seagrass. So it's wonderful to see this leadership at the state level. And so we are now focused, focusing our efforts on accelerating implementation to help meet these goals. So if you go to the next slide, please.

Unknown: And so this is the heart of the work that I lead, that we are focused now on increasing the pace and scale of implementing nature-based climate solutions. And kind of the core pillars of our work across the state include our science and demonstration projects.

SPEAKER_09: We're certainly pursuing incentives that will help promote these kinds of activities on the ground. And we certainly can't do this work alone. So having strategic partnerships are really key to accelerating this type of work.

SPEAKER_09: So go to the next slide.

Unknown: And I just want to share with you three projects that we are undertaking across the state. I suspect you'll hear more from my colleague Campbell Ingram later on. So I won't go into too much detail about the Delta itself, but we do have a project that we are undertaking on Staten Island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

SPEAKER_09: That's just over 9,000 acres. It's an island that is owned by the Nature Conservancy and was this predominantly managed for corn over time. We were managing that. We originally purchased the island for bird-friendly farming.

SPEAKER_09: So it is a critical area for migratory birds and San Helcrain in particular. And what we found is that because of the peat soils are in the Delta and the ongoing management, that there was an opportunity for us to shift our management practices from corn to rice to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

SPEAKER_09: So we are doing that over 4,000 acres. We are changing management practices while also maintaining habitat for migratory birds. And we are also restoring another 1,000 acres of farmland to wetlands.

SPEAKER_09: And the combination of those activities we anticipate will reduce sequester carbon, reduce emissions by about 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by over the next 40 years.

Unknown: And we are using this project as a laboratory for lessons learned. We are also using a voluntary carbon offset protocol to help account for those greenhouse gas reductions and demonstrate how other farmers across the Delta may be able to use those protocols, shift management practices, and earn carbon income over time for doing that.

SPEAKER_09: And we are also using a voluntary carbon offset protocol to help account for those kinds of practices.

SPEAKER_09: And we are able to maintain coastal habitat along the coast. And so we are partnering here with the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County and securing voluntary agreements with farmers in the area to use innovative conservation easements that can be placed on the lands

Unknown: to help trigger restoration over time as areas become unfarmable and sea level begins to rise and it allows us to, with partners, restore those areas and maintain habitat over time as well. And that also can in turn help protect some of the adjacent farmland from flooding.

Unknown: Can we go to the next slide?

Unknown: And moving further down California, we do also have a more urban project. This is called the Bowtie Project because it is shaped like a bowtie and it is a former rail yard. It is a two acre area that's owned by state parks, and it's also part of a larger 20 acre property that state park owns.

Unknown: And this property sits alongside the LA River, and it is in a park poor neighborhood. Here we are restoring a wetland, it's an engineered wetland for climate and multiple benefits.

SPEAKER_09: We are restoring this to help absorb stormwater runoff and demonstrate how water can be cleaned before going into the LA River. We are also measuring the reduction in heat from restoration of native vegetation in the area.

Unknown: And we also are restoring biodiversity to that area. And we do anticipate that this will be a park that can be used by the local communities over time. So it will provide again park and recreation and an area that cooling area for the neighborhoods that surround this property down in the future.

SPEAKER_09: So let's go to the next slide, please.

Unknown: So all those projects really do inform the work that we're undertaking now to accelerate implementation of nature based solutions. They are informing and helping us develop financial incentives like the carbon markets I mentioned with Staten Island or the use of easements.

SPEAKER_09: As we're doing along the central coast. They are also helping us think through barriers to restoration, including how we might improve permitting processes to enable wetland restoration in particular.

Unknown: And all of this work too is helping us think through standardized metrics that can be used to account for greenhouse gas reductions, as well as other important co-benefits like biodiversity protection, water quality, reducing heat island effect, among others.

SPEAKER_09: And certainly the strategic partnerships are core to all of this work too.

Unknown: And next slide.

Unknown: And so that's just a quick overview of the work that we're doing and continue to do. And I do, if you're interested, I'm happy to provide information on some of the costs associated with these projects. I will say from if you're thinking about things in terms of cost per ton of carbon.

Unknown: That is always one funding piece that goes into that is one funding piece that can go into these projects.

Unknown: Usually the, you know, the costs are exceed what in the voluntary market or a regulatory market what they might pay. So what we tend to do is, is, you know, bundle carbon revenue alongside other types of funding sources to help implement these types of projects on the ground.

Unknown: So thank you very much.

Unknown: Perfect. Thank you for that. We do have several other presenters, but are there any quick questions that you have on anything we just heard?

Unknown: Okay.

SPEAKER_05: Right. Michelle, thank you for that. And then we have a set next.

SPEAKER_07: All right. Good evening, everybody. My name is Honey Walters. I'm a principal with the scent and our climate action and adaptation planning practice.

SPEAKER_07: I do have a postgraduate degree in atmospheric science. So always a great topic to talk about this.

SPEAKER_07: It's nearing about 30 years of experience in doing climate change impact analysis in addition to climate action resilience, adaptation plans and helping public agencies like you all and others with dealing with a super compliance and other strategies.

SPEAKER_07: I also would like to note quickly, we also have Hannah Kornfeld virtually in attendance this evening. She is our practice leader in this area at Ascent.

SPEAKER_07: Many years of experience. The project manager on one of the projects I'm going to talk about. And also our project management manager on our project where we're supporting SMUD in combination with GEI and you're here from Ryan next about all of that great work.

Unknown: Before I get into talking about what's happening in this practice area, I just wanted to remind us all of just a couple key definitions that are threaded through this analysis and others.

SPEAKER_07: First off, carbon stock. So this is the total amount of carbon stored in the natural and working lands at any specific point in time.

SPEAKER_07: Typically this is expressed in units of mass. We typically see this as tons of carbon. So pretty simple there. Carbon sequestration is the rate at which carbon is removed from the atmosphere and stored in the systems that do store carbon.

SPEAKER_07: So this is the carbon storage rate over time. So this is a flux. Typically you'll see this expressed as tons of carbon per a time frame, for example, a year.

SPEAKER_07: Both of these items, carbon stock and carbon sequestration, will be looked at as part of the SMUD's feasibility study that we'll be assisting with or are assisting with.

Unknown: So looking a bit specifically at carbon stock inventories, we have seen a lot more activity and focus in this area. Michelle talked about some of the areas that they are focused in.

SPEAKER_07: We've also seen a lot of attention from the California Area Sources Board as they've been looking at this as one of the many pieces as part of our solutions to meeting our climate change goals here in California.

SPEAKER_07: As said specifically, has prepared carbon stock inventories for regions throughout California, including San Diego, the Antia Napa region, and also the Monterey Bay Area.

SPEAKER_07: The Monterey Bay Area example is one I'm going to talk about a little bit in more detail in a couple more slides. So what is a carbon stock inventory?

SPEAKER_07: Well, that is an estimate of carbon stored through biologic sequestration. And this looks at both above ground and below ground sinks. And this figure here illustrates that.

Unknown: Above ground carbon is found in vegetation, trunks, branches, leaves, grasses, dead plant material. These are materials that are absorbing carbon dioxide through photosynthesis processes.

SPEAKER_07: Below ground carbon, though you don't see it, is extremely important. This is what exists in soils and roots, mainly a soil organic matter.

SPEAKER_07: And it's estimated about 75% of terrestrial carbon is stored in this form below ground. And it can be stored there for millennia. So this is a very important part of the story of carbon storage.

Unknown: As I mentioned, I did want to talk a little bit more about this particular project for the Monterey Bay Area, Natural and Working Land Study.

SPEAKER_07: We conducted this work in support of AMBAG, which is Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments. And what we were out to do is to create a region-specific tool that used spatial data to estimate existing carbon stock held in the natural and working land in this Tri-County area.

SPEAKER_07: So the Tri-County area would include Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Cruz.

Unknown: The objective of building this tool was to assist AMBAG and its partner agencies with implementation and integration into other planning efforts, such as local general plans, local climate action plans.

SPEAKER_07: They really wanted to understand where the really important areas cover, where their current carbon is being stored, and look at areas that have the most opportunity for enhancing that carbon sequestration rate, and ultimately enhancing the amount of carbon stored.

Unknown: And they wanted to see that alongside where they were making other planning decisions, so they could make sure they were protecting the carbon that was currently stored.

Unknown: To assess the carbon stock in this study area, we did conduct a GIS-based analysis. This, of course, was using the best available data at the time. It constantly changes, as you can all imagine, in this arena.

Unknown: Looking at this best available data for land cover, vegetation layers, for instance, ownership types, and also soil.

SPEAKER_07: We got soil information directly from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources, Conservation Service. So just if you're interested in that particular soil data.

SPEAKER_07: The image here on the right does show the GIS layers that were used in this analysis. It also shows the overlay of the progression of how we did this from left to right.

SPEAKER_07: And the purpose of this work was to overlay all the information into one spot so we can make sure we're most accurately looking at that locally specific data.

Unknown: This is some of the results from this. On the left here, we have the vegetation cover type. So this was something that was produced as part of that GIS exercise.

SPEAKER_07: And the image here on the right is the carbon store that's associated with the soil.

Unknown: So on the left side, the vegetation cover, this included barren lands, crop lands, forests, woodlands, a long variety of different covers here.

SPEAKER_07: And again, the map on the right shows the below ground soil carbon stored in the study area.

SPEAKER_07: The gradient on the one on the right shows that areas that are orange and red hold the most carbon. And those that are blue and green hold less.

SPEAKER_07: If you had a little bit more time than probably what we have tonight and you were able to examine both of these, one of the main takeaways here is that these maps show that the grasslands and shrub lands hold more carbon in the soil than forests do.

SPEAKER_07: So again, that below ground, you may see a field of grasses is not that important and trees are more important. But again, that below ground soil related storage is extremely important.

SPEAKER_07: This is also based on the results of this same study. This figure in particular shows the overall carbon inventory in a graphical form.

SPEAKER_07: This is presented by land cover type. So forest, grassland, shrub land, etc. You can see those there.

SPEAKER_07: The green semicircles, so the light green ones that are on the top of each land cover type, those represent the carbon that is held above ground, as we talked about in the previous slide.

SPEAKER_07: And then the blue semicircles represent the carbon held below ground.

SPEAKER_07: Again, what you see here is consistent with what you saw in the previous slide in regards to the soil carbon that is stored there is really great in grasslands and shrub lands.

SPEAKER_07: And it is more significant than the forests that store carbon above ground.

Unknown: Another takeaway here I wanted to mention is you will see terms like million metric tons of carbon. Sometimes we're not always used to seeing this as we sort of think of carbon as a gas in the form of CO2, not necessarily as a solid.

SPEAKER_07: One thing to help with that if you want to in your head convert carbon to tons of carbon to carbon dioxide. It's about a three and a half times increase on that.

SPEAKER_07: So it's about 3.7. So if you ever want to do that conversion in your head. And the reason I'm telling you that is one important takeaway here is that to put these numbers in perspective, the results of the inventory show that the carbon stock holds the equivalent emissions generated

SPEAKER_07: by all the activities in this Tri-County area, so including transportation, emissions from energy use is over a hundred year period.

SPEAKER_07: So the amount of carbon dioxide stored there was larger than their emissions inventory.

SPEAKER_13: I'm sorry, I think you probably said this and I missed it. On this slide, those numbers are per acre. Is that?

SPEAKER_07: It's total. Total? Total per cover type. Yeah, per acre. Derived from per acre information. This is the total amount of carbon sequestered above and below ground total by each land cover type.

Unknown: But it's by acre.

SPEAKER_13: It's by acre. So when we did that GIS analysis I talked about and we combined the storage values to the land cover types, we do that work by acre.

Unknown: Thank you.

Unknown: Is the acreage transferable to other types around the state or was it specific to potentially specifically just to the Monterey County?

SPEAKER_05: Some, yes. If there's similar things. Some, no. It just depends. Depending on the land cover types, the research data, there's usually different cover types in each region.

Unknown: But obviously a lot of these are very common. And what was that? You gave a ratio 3.7? Yeah, if you look at, yeah, if you see a number that's just tons of carbon.

Unknown: If you want to sort of think of that in regards to CO2, multiply that by about three and a half. Yeah, it's actually 3.7, but it's that conversion from carbon to CO2.

Unknown: You'll just sometimes see when you're looking at this information, sometimes you'll see it presented in CO2, sometimes you'll see it presented in carbon.

SPEAKER_07: So just a quick way to sort of translate between those two numbers.

Unknown: So just to make sure I understand. So forest is a question of the most, but it's mostly above ground. Correct. And grasslands are second. Yes. It's mostly by far below ground. Exactly. Yes.

SPEAKER_10: And then the size of the circles put together is the cumulative amount. So you see, you know, forest has a lot. But we don't have data for Sacramento region. What's that? But we don't have exact data for Sacramento. Exactly. Yeah, this is not a race.

Unknown: And so just to clear, I'm going to, so here, we'll say this is top up, 25.5 millimeter tons of carbon. I should multiply that by 3.7 to get to CO2? Yes. Okay, perfect. Yes.

SPEAKER_12: Thank you. I've got one more question. So do you have an additional slide or have you looked at, you know, the intensity of the storage per acre? Because obviously there's going to be different amounts of acres. Acreage for grassland.

SPEAKER_12: I don't have a slide on that, but it is all sort of based on that. Great. Ability of each type of acre to, you know, based on the research.

SPEAKER_12: I just want to say this is a really great way of showing them the differentiation between above ground. Yeah, thank you. It's one of those things that is hard to describe, and it really helps, I think, for people to see this visually.

SPEAKER_07: So yeah, so again, you know, very important for this area to, you know, maintain the carbon stored and look at enhancing mechanism. And, you know, again, the big takeaway here is it's crucial that we continue to look and focus in this area to help meet our climate change goals.

Unknown: All right, last slide. What we did at the very end, just to make all the data more usable, more understandable, is after study was complete, we created a story map. And we wanted to do this to help convey the technical information and to really share the information with the other agencies and other entities that were involved that we reached out to during this process to get information, get data.

SPEAKER_07: So we wanted to give something back to them, all that they could use in their own decision making process. So to do this, we did build this interactive web viewer where the users can view, zoom in, zoom out, they can download the data, they can look at all on their own. You can see some screenshots here.

Unknown: And yeah, that was just, you know, really useful to the jurisdictions, the resource conservation districts, the ranchers and the farmers. So it was nice that they were able to, you know, give this back to help perpetuate everything they also needed to do as a region. And that is it. Oops.

SPEAKER_07: All right. Were there any grants that fund that?

SPEAKER_07: On that one, there was some grant funding, partially. Yeah. It was a larger, we've had a larger project with them, so there's certain aspects that have been grant funded and others not.

Unknown: And so this is the, stupid question, this is the work that's going on for SPUD.

Unknown: What's that? Is this a similar work that we're doing?

SPEAKER_05: There's some overlap. Ryan's going to sort of talk about the particular project we're working with you all. And then I have a couple of slides where I'll talk about the approach.

SPEAKER_07: You know, it deviates from this somewhat, but the fundamentals are similar.

SPEAKER_07: Okay. Thank you. All right.

Unknown: All right. Good evening, everyone. I'm Ryan Jolly with GEI Consultants, where I'm a vice president in our environmental practice.

SPEAKER_14: I'm the project manager for the study that we are leading for SMUD, working with technical staff from GEI and Ascent, including Honey and Hannah, who she mentioned.

Unknown: Also on our team, we have Jennifer Burt, who is a GEI restoration colleges who's been working with SMUD on identifying carbon sequestration practices and research for a number of years.

SPEAKER_14: And so also keep in mind the presentation that Honey provided and Michelle earlier, because what we're going to cover here is kind of the process that we're going to take to develop this study for SMUD, which draws on a lot of that previous work and some of the practices that were talked about.

Unknown: So again, the overall purpose of the study is to create a plan for SMUD to support nature-based carbon storage.

SPEAKER_14: Through the study, we're going to identify opportunities for SMUD to support large-scale land-based carbon sequestration and or preserve existing land-based carbon stocks.

SPEAKER_14: Remember, Honey talked about the difference between sequestration and stocks, so we're going to look at both of those elements here.

SPEAKER_14: And we're going to evaluate potential co-benefits and constraints of opportunities that are identified for SMUD and develop a framework for implementing projects.

SPEAKER_14: So a few things I want to emphasize here is that the study is going to focus on practices for managing soil and vegetation.

SPEAKER_14: And to maximize benefit and value, we are looking at opportunities that SMUD can develop both at a large scale and that can be feasibly implemented.

SPEAKER_14: And of course, through this study, we will determine the overall potential for SMUD to contribute to carbon storage.

SPEAKER_14: So here we have an overview of the steps that we're going to take to develop the study, which the rest of this presentation will discuss a little bit further.

SPEAKER_14: But to introduce them here, we're starting by identifying a study area where SMUD can implement land-based practices.

SPEAKER_14: And then within that study area, we'll identify existing land covers and soils, similar to what Honey showed from Monterey.

SPEAKER_14: And then we're going to estimate the existing land-based carbon storage within that study area and identify land-based carbon practices and assess their potential.

Unknown: And then we'll use this information to identify specific opportunities for SMUD and then conduct an assessment of those opportunities and prepare the project development framework.

Unknown: So we've already developed the study area, so I want to take this next part to show you what we've compiled here.

SPEAKER_14: We started with SMUD's service area in Sacramento County.

SPEAKER_14: Obviously, that includes Rancho Seiko, a bunch of other facilities.

SPEAKER_14: And then we went to look at other areas outside of the service territory that SMUD either owns land or has easements or other land rights in the ability to manage the land.

SPEAKER_14: And so we started with SMUD-owned undeveloped parcels that are over one acre.

SPEAKER_14: Most of those were in the service territory, but we did identify one site in Placer County near the Country Acres Solar Farms.

Unknown: And then next we looked at hydropower project areas and transmission corridors, and we added areas in El Dorado County, the Country Acres Solar Farms in Placer County,

SPEAKER_14: Solano Wind Farm areas down in Solano County, and Electric and Gas Transmission Corridors, which resulted in adding additional areas outside of the service territory in Yolo, Placer, and Solano Counties.

Unknown: And then we also ended up adding areas for Delta lands where peat oxidation and subsidence is occurring, the purple area near the bottom, which ended up adding areas in San Joaquin, Contra Costa, and Solano Counties.

SPEAKER_14: And so in these areas, the peat soils that are formed from wetlands have been drying out and oxidizing and losing carbon.

SPEAKER_14: This occurs due to groundwater pumping and subsidence, where these areas are no longer inundated.

Unknown: So the opportunity here is to re-wet those soils to prevent further carbon loss.

Unknown: So the green area is the consolidated study area of all of these that we are going to look at within the study.

SPEAKER_14: We also put a half-mile buffer around that study area, where we're going to look at co-benefits and constraints on adjacent lands.

Unknown: Honey?

Unknown: So I'm just going to talk quickly on a couple of slides about our approach for the carbon stock inventory, the forecast methods, and the data.

SPEAKER_07: So to assess the carbon stock in the study area that Ryan was just discussing, we are going to do a GIS-based analysis.

SPEAKER_07: This is somewhat similar to the one I talked about for the Monterey Project.

SPEAKER_07: We'll be using the best available data for land cover, vegetative community types, and soil.

Unknown: We're still currently evaluating the best locally specific data sources, but we anticipate we'll be using data from Cal Fire, SACOG, the National Wetlands Inventory,

SPEAKER_07: and I mentioned the soil data from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

SPEAKER_07: Then what we'll do, it gets a little bit complicated, but I'll do my best to describe this simply.

SPEAKER_07: We'll intersect this data with attributes such as land ownership and jurisdiction, and then what we're going to do is we're going to conduct a Python analysis.

SPEAKER_07: Python is a code language that allows us to do a bunch of matching of data without having to physically do it,

SPEAKER_07: so it's a lot more efficient, a lot more accurate, allows us to do this work and not take years to do it.

SPEAKER_07: Essentially, what that Python coding analysis will do is it's going to link the land cover type in the spatial database at every given point

SPEAKER_07: to information based in research or from CARB, for instance, that tells us what the carbon stock opportunity is per acre for that land use coverage type.

SPEAKER_07: It merges that GIS spatial analysis, and then it tells us what do we get from this area, what do we get from this area that's locally specific to the project area in regards to carbon storage.

SPEAKER_07: This will provide us a carbon stock inventory organized by vegetative community type of carbon storage above and below, dead vegetation, soil carbon, land ownership,

SPEAKER_07: and there'll be some other metrics that we'll be working with the team on to develop.

SPEAKER_07: Again, I mentioned this data for the carbon stock values will come from CARB.

SPEAKER_07: They do have their 2025 natural and working lands inventory update, so we'll be looking at that in addition to what's in research.

SPEAKER_07: We also are going to look at the change in carbon stock as we progress forward, so that is the forecast type.

SPEAKER_07: When we do that work, how we're going to do that is we're going to base it on some interpolation from what CARB has done, and we're going to do that for two scenarios.

SPEAKER_07: One is a business as usual scenario, so that's just carbon stock sort of continuing it on, the fluctuations changing how it has done in the past.

SPEAKER_07: This graphic here shows the bottom is time frame and years, the Y column here is statewide carbon stock, and this is million metric tons of carbon.

SPEAKER_07: Now we know if we multiply that by 3.67, we'll get CO2.

SPEAKER_07: Oh, there's the math on the slide. Look at that.

SPEAKER_07: Anyway, we're going to take the SMUD area specific data for the project area and look through it through the lens of this data set so we can see what the land use cover types and how the carbon stock potential could change into the future.

SPEAKER_07: That will give information on where is it really important to make sure we're maintaining and doing things to keep the amount of carbon there that's stored, and where are the opportunity areas for increased sequestration.

Unknown: Just a little bit of context for this number here.

SPEAKER_07: It's about 10% of the total California greenhouse gas emissions inventory, so again, a very important part of maintaining our climate goals here in California.

SPEAKER_07: I've got a question. As far as what you mean by business as usual, are you talking about just static land use, or are you talking about anticipated land use changes, or what exactly does that mean?

SPEAKER_12: Yeah, so there are aspects of the scoping plan and other plans that have actions, recommended actions and measures to help with preserving stored carbon and also enhancing those sequestration rates.

SPEAKER_07: That said, the business as usual scenario is a term that we use in the climate world, meaning none of those actions or measures would occur.

SPEAKER_07: This is just in the context of that. There are things in the scoping plan and others, but if none of those things happened, that's sort of the business as usual.

SPEAKER_07: What we would see is probably increased degradation of these items due to wildfire, due to loss of ag land from development, things like that.

SPEAKER_07: Again, stop, take a measure, look at all the data, and make sure we're keeping all those things in mind as we make future decisions.

SPEAKER_14: I'm going to continue talking about how the land-based practices, which we are going to identify for this study based on the land cover and soils types.

Unknown: If you think those maps that were shown with all the different colors of land covers, we'll use those in the practices that are commonly associated.

SPEAKER_14: We're definitely expecting to find agricultural lands, grasslands, wetlands, forested, troublelands, and other developed lands.

SPEAKER_14: For each practice identified, we'll evaluate the potential to increase carbon sequestration or preserve carbon stocks.

SPEAKER_14: We'll use a variety of methods, including tools like the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Comet Planner.

SPEAKER_14: We'll also prepare high-level cost estimates, for example, the per-acre cost for different practices.

SPEAKER_14: However, we are not preparing site-specific costs for implementation in this study.

SPEAKER_14: Then we'll use this information and identify specific opportunities for SMUD within the study area.

SPEAKER_14: Some examples of practice and opportunities we expect to look at for SMUD.

SPEAKER_14: All of these are proven practices.

SPEAKER_14: Many have been used by SMUD on smaller scales or other agencies.

SPEAKER_14: This includes fuels management actions in forests, which would also help reduce wildfire risk,

Unknown: applying woodchips from vegetation management to degraded soils, which helps improve nutrients,

SPEAKER_14: targeted grazing to promote soil carbon increases and biodiversity,

SPEAKER_14: rewetting peat soils in the delta, like I mentioned before, which could happen through rice farming or wetland restoration.

SPEAKER_14: An example could be SMUD helping to fund these projects.

Unknown: Urban tree planting programs and planting pollinator habitat or hedgerows in urban areas or SMUD's easements.

Unknown: Once we've identified specific SMUD opportunities, we're going to evaluate co-benefits,

SPEAKER_14: including biodiversity contributions to protected lands and climate resiliency,

SPEAKER_14: as well as constraints, which would include land ownership and regulatory considerations and requirements

SPEAKER_14: for implementing the practice.

SPEAKER_14: We will score SMUD opportunities based on a set of criteria agreed upon with SMUD staff,

SPEAKER_14: and then rank the opportunities and identify those to prioritize.

SPEAKER_14: All of this will allow us to determine the overall potential for SMUD to contribute to land-based carbon storage.

Unknown: Lastly, we're going to include a project development framework,

SPEAKER_14: which will provide guidance on how to select project sites using the information in the study,

SPEAKER_14: considerations for implementation of specific types of practices,

SPEAKER_14: needs for site-specific data collection during project planning, since all this is being done at a desktop level,

SPEAKER_14: important considerations for regulations and stakeholders, and the need for long-term monitoring and reporting.

Unknown: And finally, just to briefly touch on the schedule, as I mentioned, we've already developed the study area.

SPEAKER_14: We're currently conducting the mapping within the study area and then the carbon stock inventory and forecast,

SPEAKER_14: and anticipate completing the study in late spring, early summer of next year.

SPEAKER_14: Thanks.

Unknown: Are there any quick questions?

SPEAKER_05: Director Herber?

Unknown: Just want to say that I'm thrilled that we're doing this.

SPEAKER_01: You know, I really love the research aspect of it.

SPEAKER_01: You know, people sound off all the time about what they think about this, that, and the other thing,

SPEAKER_01: and it'll be nice to have some data to look at.

Unknown: Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_05: I'm a little bit curious, as we talk about examples, the biochar is something that I hear a lot.

SPEAKER_05: I don't know a whole lot about it.

SPEAKER_05: Would you have a comment or two about its technical potentials?

Unknown: That's not something I'm as familiar with.

SPEAKER_14: We do have a restoration ecologist, Jennifer, on the phone.

SPEAKER_14: I'm not sure on the line.

Unknown: I don't know if she's familiar with that.

SPEAKER_14: Or do you?

SPEAKER_14: Yeah, I'm here.

SPEAKER_11: I don't know.

SPEAKER_11: I don't have a lot of information on the potential for biochar, except that if it is produced through, you know,

SPEAKER_11: like say you have to get rid of vegetation management biomass or forest thinning biomass,

SPEAKER_11: that adding it to the soil does increase the soil carbon, and it is a stable carbon storage, is my understanding.

SPEAKER_11: But I don't know, like you'd really want to be, have a reason to be producing the biochar in the first place.

SPEAKER_11: And I don't know how, like, intensive that is, energy intensive, etc.

Unknown: But it's something we could look into.

Unknown: I know it's just come up in some of our, some of the work we're doing on hydrogen and carbon sequestration there.

SPEAKER_05: So I was just curious.

SPEAKER_05: Are there any other direct or present fishmen, did you have a clear?

Unknown: Yeah, I'm just fascinated by one aspect of what you were talking about, and that's the process by word.

SPEAKER_13: When peat dries out, it releases more carbon, and that simply by keeping it wet, you can reduce that impact.

SPEAKER_13: Can you just explain a little bit more about how that works and what that rewetting process looks like?

Unknown: I could, but I don't want to steal Campbell's Thunder.

SPEAKER_11: So that's his presentation, which is next.

SPEAKER_11: But I mean, in general, peat soils are like pure organic matter that form under wet anoxic conditions.

SPEAKER_11: And so when you expose them to oxygen, you know, microbial degradation starts to happen, and that's, they basically become CO2 through that process of microbial degradation.

SPEAKER_11: But I think Campbell has a lot to say about how you rewet them and what they're doing.

SPEAKER_11: The Delta Conservancy has been really instrumental in doing a lot of, getting a lot of this work happening on the ground in the Delta.

Unknown: Thank you.

Unknown: Just a quick question for staff.

SPEAKER_10: When that report is finalized, is that something that comes back to the board, or are they going to, are you going to share it back with us?

Unknown: Okay, great. Thanks.

Unknown: I've got a question about the slide that you have on study area one, and what that's supposed to be talking about.

SPEAKER_12: Are we going to, you're going to be looking at all the different types of land uses and opportunities, not because you call out smut-owned underdeveloped parcels, but is it actually going, I'm looking at study area one.

SPEAKER_12: Oh, sorry. Yeah.

Unknown: Yeah, the red polygon.

SPEAKER_14: So, you're going to be looking at land uses throughout the service area, not just the smut-owned parcels, correct?

SPEAKER_12: Right. So within this larger area, which was in green, you can kind of see in the background here, we'll look at the land cover and soils for that entire area.

SPEAKER_14: And then within there, then we can go back and look at these, the smut-owned parcels that are undeveloped.

SPEAKER_14: And obviously, because that's owned land, it might be open to different sorts of management techniques as opposed to land that's leased.

SPEAKER_14: So that's just sort of like a focus area, looking at that. But strikes me that there's a lot more land that we don't control, that we're still going to be looking at opportunities to work with other landowners, correct?

Unknown: Correct.

SPEAKER_12: Okay. Thanks.

Unknown: Anything else? Okay. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Unknown: We have one more to go.

Unknown: Good evening, everyone. I'm Campbell Ingram. It's great to be here with you this evening. I'm the executive officer of the state's Delta Conservancy.

SPEAKER_03: I presented to the board probably about five years ago, I think, on this topic. So it's really wonderful to see the interest and continued momentum in this direction.

SPEAKER_03: So just kind of a refresher, we are the state agency that serves the legal Delta as well as the Sassoon Marsh.

SPEAKER_03: We do ecosystem restoration, economic development, nature-based solutions, and even climate response type of work in the Delta.

SPEAKER_03: And through the course of our existence over the last 15 years, we've made about $160 million available to about 130 projects throughout the Delta.

SPEAKER_03: Really trying to bring up ecological process and nature-based solutions, and at the same time, doing economic development in the system.

Unknown: So it was a nice segue. I'm going to really drill down into the peat relationship in the Delta.

SPEAKER_03: This is where we're spending most of our time, and I'm going to talk about the work we're doing as well as the opportunities in that area.

Unknown: So peat is highly organic soil, and in the Delta, essentially, it formed over 10,000 years as sea levels rose, and the wetlands kept pace with that sea level.

SPEAKER_03: They put down below-ground biomass, which eventually turned to peat, highly organic peat soil.

SPEAKER_03: Interesting to note that globally, only about 3% of the land cover is peat soil, but it contains about 20% of the terrestrial carbon within our system.

Unknown: So as we talked a little bit about, the Delta is an amazing place for agriculture, but you can't grow agriculture, you can't grow crops on saturated soils.

SPEAKER_03: So essentially, if you look at that second... is there a... is this a pointer?

SPEAKER_03: No. Does my cursor work? Yes, it does.

SPEAKER_03: Okay. So if you look at this map here, what you have to do is you actually have to cut in drains, and then you pump water out of the root zone.

SPEAKER_03: And when you do that, you expose that root zone, typically between 36 and 48 inches, to oxygen.

SPEAKER_03: And microbes get in there, and they digest that carbon, and they're byproduct, their waste product, is CO2.

Unknown: So you're directly pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

SPEAKER_03: One of the biggest challenges here is that this subsidence in this last little levee failure diagram down here really represents kind of a major threat within our system.

SPEAKER_03: So that area in red and orange is the most deeply subsided area of the Delta, and it directly correlates with the percent carbon in the soil.

SPEAKER_03: And that area is about 150,000 acres that's up to 25 feet, or even 30 feet deep in this area.

SPEAKER_03: So it's an enormous hole in the ground that was carbon, that is all basically volatilized in the atmosphere, and continues to do so at pretty alarming rates.

SPEAKER_03: But the big threat here is that if we were to lose the western Delta, so all these rivers are perched 20 or 30 feet above this massive area of land,

SPEAKER_03: and if we were to lose the western Delta to become an inland sea through seismic events and or just increase intensity of storms,

SPEAKER_03: the nearest body of water to fill that hole would be the bay, which would bring salt water into this area.

SPEAKER_03: And then down here at the bottom is where we export water out of the Delta to the LA basin, San Joaquin Valley Agriculture in the East Bay.

SPEAKER_03: So you can have a major disruption in California's water supply, which can have a major impact on our economy in general.

SPEAKER_03: A couple more tidbits here about the amount of carbon.

SPEAKER_03: So that 150,000 acres is producing about 1.2 million, I just realized I have one too many zeros there.

SPEAKER_03: Whoops.

SPEAKER_03: 1.2 million metric tons of carbon annually through that oxidation process.

SPEAKER_03: We see as much as between 10 and 30 tons of carbon per acre per year volatilizing as a result of the land being aerated.

SPEAKER_03: So that represents an equivalent of about 325,000 vehicles.

SPEAKER_03: It's also about 6% of California's agricultural emissions.

SPEAKER_03: So there's about 17 million acres of arable land in California produces about 8 million tons of carbon through agricultural processes.

SPEAKER_03: This little 150 acre little post-it stamp in the middle of the state produces at 1.2 million, or about 6%.

SPEAKER_03: So really you have a very unique situation here in California, right here in our backyard,

Unknown: where it's a chimney that's really just pumping carbon into the atmosphere as hard as it possibly can.

SPEAKER_03: And you really see that when you're out there in the Delta.

SPEAKER_03: And you see a 5,000 acre island that's well below sea level,

SPEAKER_03: and you see all that area that was carbon that volatilized and continues to volatilize.

Unknown: As was discussed earlier, it's a really simple solution.

SPEAKER_03: You simply put water back on that landscape, you stop that oxidation.

SPEAKER_03: So we're really promoting two mosaics out there of managed wetland where the land is too wet to farm,

SPEAKER_03: and then rice cultivation where you still have some elevation.

SPEAKER_03: Rice cultivation is really good because you get a strong revenue generation.

SPEAKER_03: You don't get much soil accretion, but you're stopping at least going the wrong direction, you're stopping that carbon emission.

SPEAKER_03: And wetlands, you get soil accretion because you can actually manage those water levels

SPEAKER_03: and recreate those sea level rise processes behind the levees, and albeit slowly restore elevations.

SPEAKER_03: And you get a little bit less revenue, but I'm going to talk about that next.

Unknown: So with a bunch of partners and with the help of SMUD as well, we raised funding,

SPEAKER_03: and we had a protocol developed that was approved by the American Carbon Registry,

SPEAKER_03: and that allows any landowner out there to quantify their baseline emission,

SPEAKER_03: describe their project, quantify their below ground biomass, quantify their methane emissions,

SPEAKER_03: and basically validate, do you have a third party validate the project and then certify their carbon credits,

SPEAKER_03: and then they can take those credits to the carbon market, the voluntary market, and get a revenue stream.

SPEAKER_03: The prices are nearing competitive values, particularly for managed wetland.

SPEAKER_03: When I started this work about 15, 18 years ago, the market was trading at about $7 per credit,

SPEAKER_03: and now we're hearing quotes of $30 to $40 per credit for wetlands in the Delta.

SPEAKER_03: So we're rapidly approaching the point where these credits might actually exceed a lot of the commodity values out there.

SPEAKER_03: We're also looking at trying to get the voluntary market protocol adopted into the AB32 compliance program market,

SPEAKER_03: which would significantly increase the value of the carbon and just again significantly increase the incentive.

Unknown: I'm going to skip that slide.

SPEAKER_03: So we received a one-time $36 million infusion of general funds, state funds, to put towards nature-based solution projects in the Delta.

SPEAKER_03: So I'm going to talk a little bit about the four projects we funded.

SPEAKER_03: They result in about 11,000 acres of land, and that will reduce about 110,000 tons of carbon annually once these are completely constructed.

SPEAKER_03: About 6,000 acres of rice, and about 6,500 acres of rice, 46,000 acres of wetland.

Unknown: I also wanted to mention, Michelle mentioned AB 1757 that established statewide targets for nature-based solutions,

SPEAKER_03: and included in that is a 50,000-acre target for the Delta of rewetting peat soil by 2045.

SPEAKER_03: So that's a third of that 150,000 acres that I mentioned is now a state-recognized target.

SPEAKER_03: Fortunately, it's going to cost about $200,000 to $250,000 million to do that.

SPEAKER_03: So we're looking for funding sources.

Unknown: So one of our showcase projects here is WebTract.

SPEAKER_03: WebTract is currently owned by the Metropolitan Water District.

SPEAKER_03: It's going to be about 1,300 acres of rice and about 2,400 acres of managed wetland, plus upland habitat.

Unknown: I'm really excited about this project because the idea here is let's stop the subsidence, let's stop the carbon emission,

SPEAKER_03: let's increase biodiversity, let's reduce flood risk, but then also let's make sure that this island is economically viable into the future.

SPEAKER_03: Because with the carbon revenue and the rice revenue, it far exceeds the very low-value grazing revenue on this island.

SPEAKER_03: And again, these islands are sinking.

SPEAKER_03: There's a huge flood risk if we lose the islands, and it's the agriculture and the revenue on island that pays for the levee maintenance.

SPEAKER_03: So it's very important that we maintain economic viability for these islands as well.

SPEAKER_03: We work a lot with Nature Conservancy.

SPEAKER_03: We gave a large block grant to Nature Conservancy to reach out to small delta farmers and convince them to convert to rice to stop subsidence.

SPEAKER_03: And we were able to enroll about 10 individual farmers, about 4,000 acres, 3,000 went into practice this year, another 1,000 will go in next year.

SPEAKER_03: And we also combined that with a bird returns program, which really works to try to time the inundation, as well as a drop-down of that water to provide habitat for shorebirds.

SPEAKER_03: So all of these projects really are just sort of win-win-win across the scale.

Unknown: Let's see.

SPEAKER_03: We did a 600-acre acquisition on Bethel Island that will become a managed wetland into the future with the John Muir Land Trust.

SPEAKER_03: And then, as Michelle mentioned, the 1,000 acres that's going into a wetland at the bottom of Staten Island, we're paying for half of that 1,000 acres.

SPEAKER_03: But I also just want to recognize again that Staten Island is an amazing laboratory.

SPEAKER_03: Nature Conservancy, it's 9,000 acres.

SPEAKER_03: It starts at tidal elevation at the north end of the island, goes due south to the 10 miles down, and it's 25 feet below sea level at the bottom of the island.

SPEAKER_03: Nature Conservancy has really looked at the whole bottom two-thirds and made 4,000 acres of rice and 1,000 acres of managed wetland.

SPEAKER_03: And again, it's an approach to see if we can't make that island economically viable, stop subsidence, stop carbon emissions, reduce flood risk, and increase biodiversity.

Unknown: So, my last slide here really is what are the emerging opportunities?

SPEAKER_03: I think this is really well timed, given your report.

SPEAKER_03: I'm really excited about the work that's happening here.

SPEAKER_03: We are looking to purchase Jersey Island, a very strategic island.

SPEAKER_03: There's my cursor right here.

SPEAKER_03: It's a very kind of confluence here.

SPEAKER_03: We're putting together an acquisition package to purchase that island for a water district, and they will then convert it to a small amount of rice,

SPEAKER_03: mostly managed wetland, and there will be funding needed to actually do that restoration to manage wetland in the future.

Unknown: Sherman and Twitchell Island are owned by the Department of Water Resources, and this was really some of the genesis of a lot of this on-the-ground work that's happening.

SPEAKER_03: They've put about 2,000 acres into managed wetland on Sherman Island and Twitchell Island.

SPEAKER_03: They've just come out with a strategy that basically says that as fast as they can, they're going to try to get as much of that land underwater as possible.

SPEAKER_03: So there's a real need for funding to help support that.

SPEAKER_03: With our Proposition 4 funding, we're going to add more money to that small farmer rice conversion program,

SPEAKER_03: but we're looking for other funding sources to be able to augment that funding.

SPEAKER_03: Basically, what we're hearing from the Delta is that farmers are very interested in converting to rice,

SPEAKER_03: but when it's the land leveling cost, it would be between $8 and $1,200 per acre.

SPEAKER_03: It makes it really difficult for them to do that, so this incentive program can help them get over that hurdle, commit to growing rice, and achieving these benefits.

Unknown: We're working with the California Department of Food and Agriculture on their water use efficiency program and their healthy soils program

SPEAKER_03: to both incentivize rice and additional revenue to help incentivize rice,

SPEAKER_03: but also help offset pumping costs in the Delta, which are just really extremely expensive,

SPEAKER_03: representing between 30 and 50% of their operating costs right now because they are below sea level and they've got to pump that water off the island up and over.

SPEAKER_03: PG&E costs are just absolutely killing them right now.

Unknown: Carbon market contribution approach is really exciting in the Delta.

SPEAKER_03: I talked about the protocol where you're actually buying credits.

SPEAKER_03: This approach actually allows someone like SMUD or your rate payers or others to come in and provide some upfront funding to support a project,

SPEAKER_03: utilize the protocol then to verify and validate the avoided emissions, certify the carbon credits,

SPEAKER_03: but then just basically in some agreement with the landowner, take a percentage or all those credits to retire toward your climate neutrality goals.

SPEAKER_03: So we're excited about how that might work, particularly in rice in the Delta.

SPEAKER_03: I also wanted to mention for rice, I didn't have a conversation stimulated, two more ideas,

SPEAKER_03: but we're also really looking at ways that we can utilize the above ground biomass for both rice and for the Thule, which is the wetland plant.

SPEAKER_03: Basically, if you're harvesting the rice, you have above ground biomass, the wetlands, if you harvest them periodically, you have a large amount of biomass.

SPEAKER_03: There are so many uses for that biomass these days.

SPEAKER_03: There are facilities they're trying to set up near the Delta to do all kinds of products, create various proteins, biofuels,

SPEAKER_03: and so if we can also then connect that waste product to a revenue stream, it will just help incentivize more of this work.

Unknown: The last thing I wanted to mention too is that carbon capture storage was mentioned earlier.

SPEAKER_03: The Delta was recognized by Lawrence Livermore Labs a couple of years ago as one of two places in the state

SPEAKER_03: that has confining layers between 6 and 10,000 feet that are ideal for carbon capture storage.

SPEAKER_03: The other area is in Kern County.

SPEAKER_03: Right now, there are two projects that are going through the EPA's Class 6 well permitting process to be able to do carbon capture storage injection.

SPEAKER_03: The one project I'm most familiar with is on Rindstrack in the Southeast Delta.

SPEAKER_03: They are permitting for significantly more source than they currently have.

SPEAKER_03: That's a very large opportunity in the Delta in the near term.

SPEAKER_03: I always like to think if we can combine our work trying to stop subsides and stop carbon emissions on the surface

SPEAKER_03: and we can tap the potential of carbon capture storage in the Delta, those revenue streams could take the Delta from being one of California's most significant problems

SPEAKER_03: affecting our water infrastructure and our very economy to a thriving and growing system.

Unknown: That's pretty much what I had and certainly look forward to working with you all in the future on any number of these aspects.

Unknown: Any questions or comments?

Unknown: Thank you so much, Kimble, for coming back.

SPEAKER_10: I remember you from five years ago.

SPEAKER_10: My only sadness is that we haven't actually done something yet.

SPEAKER_10: I think these projects are amazing and they're local and they help our wildlife.

SPEAKER_10: They help us keep the carbon in the ground and I hope we can work together in the future to do something

SPEAKER_10: because to me that Delta is a real gem and I think people also would be great to get them out there to see it actually after it's been more restored

SPEAKER_10: and they can see those beautiful birds.

SPEAKER_10: I was out in the Delta. I actually took a rafting canoe trip up the McCollumie

SPEAKER_10: and just hearing all the sand-tailed cranes and seeing all the wildlife out there.

SPEAKER_10: It's an incredible place and it's right in our backyard and a lot of people don't know how special it is.

SPEAKER_10: I love what you're doing. Thank you.

SPEAKER_10: We do tours all the time. We're actually setting up some legislative tours here in the winter and spring.

SPEAKER_03: We'd be happy to get a tour out there. It really helps to actually see the subsidence because until you see it, you don't quite appreciate it.

Unknown: I would agree with that. You see an island 30 or 40 feet below the level of the water. It's a shocking first time you drank the eye.

SPEAKER_05: I was a little bit curious about the technical potentials. Have you seen or done any work?

SPEAKER_05: I'm sorry, the kind of...

SPEAKER_05: Like the technical potential for sequestration or...

SPEAKER_05: The total? Do you mean the quantity?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like in the Delta.

SPEAKER_03: I wish I had the numbers. We think about it a little bit differently. The protocol is actually an avoided emissions protocol.

SPEAKER_03: So when you put water back on landscape, you're stopping that oxidation. You get some methane production. You get some below ground sequestration.

SPEAKER_03: But essentially what you're taking to market is that avoided emission.

SPEAKER_03: So you can calculate that by the amount of peat that's left on any given island and the depth of groundwater.

SPEAKER_03: I would be butchering the numbers right now if I tried to put it out there.

SPEAKER_03: But the 50,000 acre target could result in... Basically we just multiply it by a factor of 10 on average for carbon or for CO2 equivalent.

SPEAKER_05: Vice President Smiocz?

Unknown: Thanks. I'm glad to see you back here. I'm glad to see that we're inching towards maybe doing something.

SPEAKER_12: A couple of things. On your slide about solutions, you indicate that there's no soil accretion with the rice cultivation, but there is soil accretion with the wetlands, if you convert to wetlands.

SPEAKER_12: Is it correct to assume that the accretion is actually sequestering carbon?

SPEAKER_12: So there's more value as far as sequestering carbon in using wetlands?

Unknown: Yes. Absolutely. Yes. And the protocol actually allows you to calculate that out very explicitly.

SPEAKER_03: So that blue-brown biomass.

SPEAKER_12: And when you were on this slide, you mentioned that if there were some changes in the carbon market, I guess how this is allowed to participate, that that would help provide some of the revenue that might be lost.

SPEAKER_12: Is it only through carbon market that you would anticipate getting additional revenue? Or are there other opportunities, say like a utility or some other major carbon emitter that wanted to invest in this to accelerate or actually even enable wetlands versus rice?

Unknown: Well, I think we're always looking for ways to stack additional economic incentives on top.

SPEAKER_03: I think one of the ways that's sort of interesting is, again, sort of above-ground biomass can utilize that.

SPEAKER_03: These wetlands actually, the whole delta used to be connected to the river, and they were incredible food sources for the ecosystem, and they've been severed.

SPEAKER_03: So these wetlands will actually produce the base of the food chain that will periodically then be pumped over and provide food resource to what we know currently is just a food desert, particularly for the salmon monids that utilize the system.

SPEAKER_03: So that's another way that we might stack economic value. But these things are hard to monetize and figure out systems that can effectively monetize them.

SPEAKER_03: There's lots of utilities out there, water supply, power, the highways that all get benefit from the levees and get benefit if we stop the subsidence or actually restore elevations.

SPEAKER_03: But it's also very hard to tap into those and get contribution for those. I hope that answers your question.

SPEAKER_03: No, it does. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_12: Thank you for coming back. It's nice to see you. Usually on the third visit you get what you want.

SPEAKER_01: So be looking for you next year.

SPEAKER_01: I'm just being funny. I just love this. I think it is really important work, and I'm glad that SMUD is studying our land, and I think that there could be other entities like the county who owns a lot of land or the city that could be doing some things too.

SPEAKER_01: I'm excited about blazing the trail, so I look forward to seeing what we can do in Sacramento County and then maybe doing something with the Delta.

SPEAKER_01: Thank you.

Unknown: You touched on this in answering Director Tamayo's question, but I'm still trying to get a picture of the mechanics in my head.

SPEAKER_13: To take the land out of farm production, you're pumping water back up over the levee onto that island, or in some cases are you actually breaching the levee or no?

Unknown: In most of everything I talked about tonight, you would not be breaching the levee. Because these areas are below sea level, most of the water that's brought on for irrigation is brought on through siphons at no cost.

SPEAKER_03: But to maintain the aeration in the root zone, and because you have a tremendous amount of seepage around and under the levees, you're constantly pumping water off the islands.

SPEAKER_03: So all the channels are cut to get to the lowest part of the island, you have a pump right there at the levee and very large pumps putting water.

SPEAKER_03: Staten Island is paying over $600,000 a year in pumping cost to be able to manage water levels on that island to be able to grow agro-gaf food.

SPEAKER_13: And so the question is, you also mentioned a little bit it provides bird habitat, so I'm sure that ducks Unlimited and others are thrilled by this.

SPEAKER_13: But I also read recently where juvenile salmon do much better when they have access to wetlands to kind of hang out in for a year or so before they head out into the ocean.

Unknown: I'm guessing because of the levees and the low, that's probably not a factor here.

SPEAKER_13: Right. No, so I mean, we are doing, all of our partners are doing tremendous amount of work trying to recreate tidal wetlands as well.

SPEAKER_03: But those are up in tidal elevation where you can breach levees and you have water coming in and out on the tide, and you're creating that wetland mosaic of tulee plants and cattails.

SPEAKER_03: These are all well below sea level, but the hope is to similar benefits. The hope is though that you're starting to build elevation.

SPEAKER_03: You've got the base of the food chain there because it is a wetland and you can pump that water off to provide a food resource.

Unknown: But maybe in 100 years or it depends on where you are. It might be 20 years if you're not deeply subsided, but 100 years you might actually restore elevations to the point that you could reach the levee.

SPEAKER_03: But that's a very long term prospect.

Unknown: I want to follow up on that. So on the places that are not that far below sea level, they're not quite tidal yet.

SPEAKER_12: Would those be better candidates for trying to restore salmon habitat in the closer term? I realize it's probably still decades.

SPEAKER_12: That area, this area through here, the yellow zone, that's all been looked at as a great opportunity to put this on the landscape and restore elevations and then have more area that would be available for tidal inundation.

SPEAKER_03: The challenge is that wherever you're trying to create wetland habitat right along this line, you've got to put a levee or a serious berm at extreme cost to prevent the water from just continuing down into lower elevations.

SPEAKER_03: But that is definitely a target issue.

Unknown: Can I add to that? Just to say that within the SMUD study area, including the service territory, there are opportunities for floodplain restoration, areas that are at the correct elevations for activating during floods and providing salmon habitat and other benefits.

SPEAKER_11: Because the carbon benefits aren't as high because they aren't comprised of peat soils, but they have a lot of benefits. So they're absolutely an important restoration target in the central valley.

SPEAKER_03: Definitely. We're actually funding a pretty significant floodplain habitat project right here that will increase flood protection as well as create flood habitat as well as salmon and marine habitat.

SPEAKER_11: I also looked at the value, Campbell, for the carbon. I was finding some data that we'd cited before for web track that restoring the wetlands to peats that are being farmed can have a benefit of 9 tons of CO2 equivalent per acre per year.

Unknown: Like equivalent of including the reduction in baseline emissions and the sequestration occurring.

Unknown: Sorry, but I'm not sure I understood your question.

Unknown: Oh, it was a question. Somebody was asking you to provide numbers and you're like, I'll butcher the numbers. And I would have too, but I looked up like some reporting that was done for the web track project.

SPEAKER_11: One of the values that was cited was 9 tons of carbon dioxide per acre per year benefit of restoring wetlands.

SPEAKER_03: Because we have such a wide range, those red areas, you can see up to 30 tons of carbon per acre per year. 10 is a better average that we use. So if you simply take your acres and that's why at times 10 you get just a rough equivalent of CO2 avoided emissions that could happen for these projects.

SPEAKER_11: Okay, that's what you were saying with the ahead. Sorry, I missed that part. Thanks.

Unknown: Yeah, just one small thing. I was wondering if there's, if you've looked at any opportunity or other components of this have looked at other opportunity for using locally generated renewable energy to reduce the PG&E costs.

SPEAKER_03: So we're actually, that's, I mentioned we're working with the sweep program right now. We're trying to get a block grant from sweep proposition for money that we can then distribute to the reclamation districts to help them go to solar.

SPEAKER_03: And there's a couple other practices that they can do that reduce those costs.

SPEAKER_03: I think, you know, we were meeting with them just last week and I think we could we could easily spend $100 million out there. And I think the available amount is 40 million statewide for the program. So we're going to try to figure out an ask and continue to move that forward.

SPEAKER_03: Well, I just want to just end with a comment. I'm really glad that we're looking at this, continuing to look at this and then also looking at the other land uses and really trying to identify what the opportunities are for us and the costs, which makes it more real possibilities.

SPEAKER_12: So I want to, you know, I know that we've been asking for progress in this and I think, you know, having a study that identifies the cost really makes it makes it more real and something that staff can act on and bring something, bring things to us to continue to make progress in this.

SPEAKER_12: So I'm glad we're moving in that direction. And I think that, you know, even some of the information that was provided about the where different buckets of carbon are stored, that's actually just really helpful as far as, you know, where do we put our money and what kinds of land do we do we start investing into.

SPEAKER_12: To help with that. And I'm also really, and I mentioned this before, if let's say we go forward with the the Calpine Project carbon sequestration, we've still got that 5% of carbon emission plus fugitive emissions of methane and all the natural gas and land based.

SPEAKER_12: I'm very attracted to the concept of supporting land based or nature based sequestration to mitigate whatever carbon we're unable to eliminate from our actual emissions. So thank you.

SPEAKER_12: Thank you.

SPEAKER_05: My last question, this is sort of global or are there are there just sort of statewide thinking about the cap and invest program. Are there land use pathways that are approved and generating credits that are that are flowing into that carbon market that anybody's familiar with?

Unknown: There's the forest management.

Unknown: There are, are we asked about land specifically.

SPEAKER_09: If so, there are, there's three protocols that relate to land management and restoration. There is a set of forest protocols in the regulatory market. There is kind of changes in rice management, which is slightly different than what we're talking about in the delta.

SPEAKER_09: But that is another protocol that's been approved. I don't believe that's been used yet. And then there's also an urban forestry protocol that's been approved for the regulatory program. So those are the three related to land.

SPEAKER_09: There are also a few others that are non non land offset protocols that have been adopted.

Unknown: There was an advisory, an offset advisory committee that was assembled by the California Air Board a few years ago to look at and make recommendations around offset protocols and the one I believe that was elevated was a wetland protocol.

SPEAKER_09: So that is something that's been recommended and is on, I believe on the, you know, at least on the radar for the California Air Board as a potential protocol for adoption.

SPEAKER_09: Okay. Any other board comments? We have one public comment on this item. Mr. Wright, do you want to give your comments? And Joe, do we have anybody online who wants to comment at this point?

SPEAKER_05: We do not.

SPEAKER_05: Okay.

SPEAKER_00: I can't be stopped. David Wright, 350 Sacramento. So I do believe that the delta, Pete Islands, are one of your best bang for the buck opportunities if you're looking at natural carbon sequestration.

SPEAKER_00: I'm not totally pulling out of that out of thin air because I co-wrote the salt marsh species recovery plan for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and I have studied carbon cycling in natural systems.

SPEAKER_00: I mean, the reason is that they're underwater and there's not so much oxygen getting there, right? The carbon that's fixed in terrestrial ecosystems from the air goes into plant biomass.

Unknown: Then at the end of the growing season, a lot of that plant biomass falls on the ground and decomposes, which turns it back into CO2 that goes into the atmosphere, right?

SPEAKER_00: But if it falls into water and gets into a low oxygen situation, then it has the opportunity to be fixed, to be sequestered, get layered down, deep, and not decomposed.

Unknown: I would point out that SMUD said upon implementation of its zero carbon plan that it would not use accounting tricks and offsets to reach zero carbon, that it was going to be a true zero carbon plan.

Unknown: That's being said, I do think you will want to keep in mind withdrawing carbon from the atmosphere that you have put in the atmosphere in the past. I think we're going to get to that. And this is, you could start in advance. Thank you.

Unknown: Don't go far, though. Any other comments or a wrap up?

SPEAKER_05: This item? Bye-bye. I do want to thank our speakers. Thank you for coming out tonight. We always appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_05: Thank you.

Unknown: And then just a wrap up, we have David, we have you for one more item for items not on the agenda.

Unknown: Go ahead.

Unknown: David Wright, I'm speaking on my own behalf here. It's my private citizen and voter hat.

Unknown: So ironic, right, that we're having a natural carburetor discussion when the Board of Supervisors just voted to allow the destruction of thousands of oak trees in a natural habitat in eastern Sacramento County.

SPEAKER_00: And the EIR itself said that those trees incorporated 27 megatons of CO2 equivalent. So divide by 3.7, you get 7.9, I think I calculated, 7.3.

SPEAKER_00: So, and I'm pretty sure that that number did not include below ground carbon, which you can anticipate that that below ground carbon is going to decompose, go into the atmosphere.

SPEAKER_00: So even if it was, you know, and it was pointed out today that in grassland and oak woodland situations there's usually more carbon below ground, right?

Unknown: So even if it's not 50-50 or more than 50% below ground, let's just say that you reached 12,000 megatons of carbon out there and it was all going to decompose.

SPEAKER_00: The Staten Island project gave a figure of, I believe it was 12,000 tons of carbon fixed per year. So it would take you about 1,000 years, 2,000 years to sequester the amount of carbon in the Coyote Creek oak woodlands

SPEAKER_00: if you were using this natural sequestration process.

Unknown: At the meeting last night, I'm sure you all know about the result, it was puzzling to many of us, including the board, why SMUD was not at present.

Unknown: I think many people left with the idea that maybe SMUD is not proud of this project. I'm sure that some of you, at least, are ambivalent about the Coyote Creek project now.

SPEAKER_00: And it's very disappointing. It's going to be embarrassing to SMUD and continue to be embarrassing to SMUD.

SPEAKER_00: I think maybe you need to pull back on your green power advertising. It's just not a good look.

Unknown: Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: All right. With that, is there anyone online?

SPEAKER_05: No more comments.

SPEAKER_02: Is there any summary of committee direction?

SPEAKER_05: No direction.

SPEAKER_02: Okay. And then just a reminder, the written comments received on items not on the agenda will be included in the record if received within two hours at the end of the meeting.

SPEAKER_05: All right. Thank you, everybody. We'll be adjourned.

Unknown: Thank you.