Climate Collaboration: How Missoula County is Prioritizing Clean Energy

Did you know that the solar panels on the roof of the Missoula County jail are the largest rooftop solar array in Montana? That project represents one piece of the county’s plans to reduce emissions and invest in clean energy in government operations. This week, the commissioners are joined by Svein Newman, climate action program manager for Missoula County, to talk about the recently adopted carbon neutrality plan, data centers and more. 

• Climate Action plans
• Home Resource Hub
• Home Retrofit series - starts May 6!
• Green Power Program

 
Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:10] All right. Welcome back everyone to the agenda with your Missoula County Commissioners. I am Commissioner Dave Strohmaier. I'm joined by my fellow commissioners and friends, Josh Slotnick and Juanita Vero, and we are delighted to have a special guest today. I guess we always have guests and they're always special. But this special guest is Svein Newman. He is our climate action program manager for Missoula County. Welcome, Svein.

Svein Newman: [00:00:35] Woo. I'm happy to be here.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:36] Thanks. Thanks for being here, Svein. So how did you how did you find yourself working for the county, doing climate work? I mean, your name has been associated with renewable energy, etc. for a long time, but how did you find yourself here?

Svein Newman: [00:00:47] Sure. Yeah, it's a it's a good question. I'll zoom way out and try and be abbreviated and then focus in. So I was born in.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:53] We don't do abbreviation. We just go. And that's fair.

Svein Newman: [00:00:57] I was born in southwest Norway in a town about the size of Spokane. But I moved to Montana basically at the beginning of elementary school and mostly grew up on family farmland outside of Billings. And I say that just because I think that that both of those things are a part of my origin story and how I come to the work and how they, in their own distinct ways, helped foster a sense of place and love for the land and for community. But I think I really started moving towards this sort of work in particular when I came to college here at, um in Missoula. And after that I went to work for 15 years for a nonprofit organization called Northern Plains Resource Council.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:32] Great organization.

Svein Newman: [00:01:33] Yeah. Thank you. Community organization, one of the state's largest conservation and family agriculture organizations. And it was working there that I started to develop professional experience on energy issues, climate issues, and, and agricultural issues and other things too. Right. But, but as pertains to this job, the energy and climate piece. So I was excited to, to bring that to the county at the beginning of, of last year. Today is my 15 month anniversary at the county. Congratulations, discounting 15 years, 15 months. And, you know, I loved my old job because I believed then and I believe now, that community building and organizing can be a transformative source of good for our communities. But I also know that local government can be that too. And local government can also be a platform to build community and to help people have their voices heard and get a lot of positive things done. And we're working on a lot of positive, exciting things too. So I'm really excited to to both be in the climate action program and planning, development, sustainability, but with the county more, more broadly, because I learn something new every day.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:02:31] Well, do you want to just dive right into some of those exciting things that you're working on?

Svein Newman: [00:02:35] Sure, yeah. Where is there a place you want to start.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:02:38] At the beginning? No, I don't know.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:41] Let's start with Green Power Program because I think it's potentially the biggest, most transformative thing we've ever done in terms of climate and energy. And I know, Dave, you were working on this before.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:50] We being Missoula.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:52] Missoula County, and Dave was working on this before Juan and I were even baby commissioners.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:02:57] Well. Missoula County, jointly with the city of Missoula, adopted 100% clean electricity resolution pre-pandemic, I think was pretty. It all runs together. After a while it was. It was pre-pandemic. It absolutely was. Now that you affirmed my suspicion. So what this basically is focused on is a recognizing climate change is real, and we need to take concrete actions, even in local government, to do what we can to mitigate climate change. And B, as we look at what we might be able to do as local jurisdictions, the impetus of this resolution was shifting us, and this resolution was focused on the urbanizing area. We decided to be a little less ambitious than I think many of us in our perfect world would like to be in terms of not focusing countywide, but but a chunk that is focused on the city of Missoula proper, the urbanizing area around Missoula. And how can we get to 100% clean electricity and moving away from carbon based fuel sources? So pre-pandemic, we started conversations with Northwestern Energy as the regulated utility that we need to work with here in Missoula County and across the state of Montana. And also recognizing that the broader coalition can be to tackle a problem like this, the better. So it was the city of Missoula, Missoula County, and the city of Bozeman. Initially, the city of Helena was at those early discussions and the community of big Sky.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:04:33] We met in big Sky, Montana. I want to say maybe 20 1819 and started some of the initial brainstorming, and there are a lot of details between that time period and where we are today in 2026. But suffice it to say, I think we're on track to come up with what we're calling a green power program that will not just. And this is an important piece that relates to data centers and what's going on out in Bonner right now, or proposed in Bonner. And we can talk about that later. But we are concerned about bringing new electrons onto the grid, new renewable energy, not just taking credit for what someone is already doing out there in the world and patting ourselves on the back, but creating a new energy resource, renewable energy resource, to the tune of 50 megawatts, I believe is what we're shooting for. Not as much as we ultimately need in this community, but it's a great start. And at the end of the day, we would be partnering Missoula Missoula County, the city of Bozeman with northwestern, to create a 50 megawatt renewable energy facility of some sort. That could be wind, it could be solar, there could be some battery in there somewhere, just just to have the capacity when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining and we're getting close.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:58] And where are we at? Where are we now?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:06:01] Well, Svein you've been in the trenches on this. And, uh, maybe just, uh, paint a broad strokes picture of where we're at.

Svein Newman: [00:06:09] Sure. Well, broadly speaking, we've spent the last period working on sort of the, the technical programmatic design, legal design, addressing insurance issues or financial issues or those sorts of things. Maybe I'll step back a little bit and say that the, the goal of the program for subscribers for consumers is to be really clear, right? So basically, if your local government, if you're a business, if you're a northwestern customer, residential customer, right? If you're a household that you can tell them, um, you know, my home or my business uses X amount of electricity or they can tell you, right, you're not expected to know that number. And I'd like to subscribe that to this new wind farm or solar resource or whatever it is, right? So a fairly straightforward subscription path.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:55] So you get you could opt in if you choose.

Svein Newman: [00:06:57] Yeah, exactly. It's opt in if you choose. Doesn't impact any other customers by, by design.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:03] Is there going to be an effect on all rate payers for having this be part of the grid?

Svein Newman: [00:07:07] There will not know. So it was a founding principle of this that that all of the costs and benefits of the program are kept within the program by subscribers. And so folks want to subscribe their electric use to a nuclear energy resource. They'll have the option to do that and they'll be responsible for that. And it could be when we go out to the RFP stage and build it, that is a great deal, right? There's a chance that lowers people's power bills, but if it raises people's power bills, then again, it's a voluntary opt in program and people decide whether or not they want to participate. And it doesn't impact anybody else. And it should be pretty straightforward for them. That said, the reason why I sort of offered that as a caveat is it's very complicated on the back end. And so a lot of what we have been doing as staff is. That work and those negotiations with northwestern on, on sort of the technical.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:57] And the other governments.

Svein Newman: [00:07:58] And with the other governments, right. It is a true and equal partnership between Missoula County, the city of Missoula and the city of Bozeman. But I I'm pretty confident that we're functionally there with Northwestern Energy on the sort of programmatic design and legal side.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:13] Does that have to be approved at the PSC?

Svein Newman: [00:08:15] It does. Yes.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:08:16] And for listeners, PSC means public service commission.

Speaker 2: [00:08:20] Yeah.

Svein Newman: [00:08:20] The the first step is we'll bring the proposal before you. The city will bring it before city Council, probably in a joint meeting. And we'll figure that out. But the the elected bodies will have to decide, you know, do we still want to offer this program? Kind of here's the terms and conditions. But presuming that you all vote yes, then we would file for review at the Montana Public Service Commission, and I'm pretty confident that we could do that as soon as this fall. So we really are in a fantastic way.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:08:47] And something else, I think, to keep in mind for us who are in the trenches on this. Ourselves, but also for the broader community. Yes, 50 megawatts is not going to get us to where we ultimately need to go. But this is a significant first step, big step.

Juanita Vero: [00:09:03] This would be 10,000 homes, right? Is that right? What's the stat for that?

Svein Newman: [00:09:06] Something like that. So there. I'll use a couple of points of comparison. And I don't have the statistic sheet in front of me. So someone will look it up and be like, that's not quite accurate. And you're right. But broadly speaking, the combined electricity use in the city of Missoula is, I think like 240 some megawatts, right? So it's about a fifth of that. Or another point of context is, I think the latest number I saw for that the total number of of net metered rooftop solar systems in Missoula is like 8.5 megawatts. So this project would be something like six times the size of all of the rooftop solar that currently exists in the city of Missoula.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:43] 20% plus of all the electricity used in Missoula.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:09:47] And ideally, it's going to be a proof of concept that can be replicable and scaled up over time.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:54] Yeah, we can pull this off and it works. We can grow.

Svein Newman: [00:09:57] Totally. So it'd be great to do another project down the road. It'd be great to have other community solar and these other tools. And we're not here to say that this is the one and only clean energy solution, but I think it's a really exciting one. It is at scale, and it's designed to be accessible to local governments, to businesses, to to residential households. And not a lot of tools have that sort of variability.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:22] Up until this point, all the gain that we have made has been on the part of the end user, like we put solar panels on the roof of the jail or we super insulate our buildings. This is utility scale, which has never been done before.

Svein Newman: [00:10:35] Or at least not in Montana.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:36] In Montana. It has not been done before. This is this is new ground, and getting in as big as 50 megawatts is a really big deal. And it's taken seven years.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:46] It has taken a long time.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:48] Yeah. Yeah. Well, congratulations.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:50] Light at or there is electricity at the end.

Speaker 2: [00:10:52] Of the day. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:53] And and Svein saying looks good. We could be at the PSC this fall, which is pretty amazing.

Svein Newman: [00:10:59] Yeah, totally. And and that's not to to undercut. I mean, as you mentioned, the, the solar on the detention center, we can talk about some of those things. Those are great because the county has done a lot of incredible things. And of course, a lot of our partners have and they all add up. But the green power program, because I think, you know, my hope is to be able to to bring that forward to you all for consideration within the next couple of months. So it definitely feels timely.

Speaker 2: [00:11:21] Okay, so.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:11:22] Stay tuned out there.

Speaker 2: [00:11:24] Hold me to it.

Svein Newman: [00:11:25] Hold me to it.

Speaker 2: [00:11:25] I was gonna say.

Juanita Vero: [00:11:26] Keep, keep going. What are some of the other projects we're working on?

Svein Newman: [00:11:29] Uh, sure. For listeners, the the Board of County Commissioners recently adopted a carbon neutrality plan for the county. So the county has a goal of working.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:38] County as an organization.

Svein Newman: [00:11:39] The county as an organization. Correct. That's an important clarification. So the county has a goal of working towards carbon neutrality for the buildings and the fleets, etc. that the county manages or county owns. Right. Of working towards county employee commutes. But really the things that are within the county's sort of control and power and sphere of influence.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:11:59] Well, tell tell us what carbon neutrality means. This does not mean we're sitting on the fence not taking a position.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:05] We're neutral.

Speaker 2: [00:12:06] Carbon neutral. That's great.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:08] That's great.

Speaker 2: [00:12:08] Yeah, there's a lot of.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:09] Jury's not out yet. We're going to wait and see.

Svein Newman: [00:12:12] I mean, the idea is to get neutral or to zero out your your impact on climate change. You know, generally measured in how much CO2 or CO2 equivalents.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:23] How much carbon are we putting out?

Svein Newman: [00:12:25] Yeah. And, and the lion's share of that or biggest part of that is working to, to reduce our own emissions. And the county has been doing great work on that front for a long time. I mean, you mentioned the solar on the detention center. The county has the state's largest rooftop solar array.

Speaker 2: [00:12:40] Right way to.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:41] Go. I was part of that way back when. And not only was it the largest rooftop solar array, it was the first time any institution had done third party investing, so it didn't fall entirely on the backs of taxpayers to come up with the initial really high cost of doing a project of this scale. This was an unusual financing mechanism. It's been done in other states, but we were the first to do it in Montana.

Svein Newman: [00:13:02] Totally. Yeah. No, I think it's a great example. And in terms of scale, it's going to be like it's a 432 kilowatt solar array, but that doesn't mean anything to most people, right? Maybe a better way to put it is, yeah, it's about 50 homes worth of solar just on top of the detention center. And so I think that's something to be proud of.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:18] This is really meaningful in terms of our electrical bill at the detention center, which is a city of 400 people that runs 24/7, 365, and even the doors are operated by electricity. This is a huge energy pig, and it has a big flat roof. So it was an ideal spot to make this work. And in order to make use of this third party investment mechanism I described, the project had to be really big. So this was an ideal fit.

Svein Newman: [00:13:42] It's an 1100 panel solar array, and it's forecasted to save the county something like $400,000 across its lifespan. So it was a big upfront investment. It did take creative work on on your part. Just to be.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:58] Clear, when you say upfront investment, this was not an upfront investment of taxpayer dollars, right? So a third party investor came up with the money, bought the panels, and it's basically selling us power back at the same rate. We are buying power from northwestern back seven years ago when this started. And over time, that power gets cheaper and the investor depreciates these panels over time. And when they're zeroed out, they become ours, which is before the end of their functional life. So we didn't ask taxpayers to shell out a whole bunch of money. And at the time the investor did this, there were tax credits available for investing in renewable energy, which the investor was able to make use of.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:32] And this.

Speaker 2: [00:14:32] Is.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:33] A great recipe.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:34] What's the lifespan?

Speaker 2: [00:14:34] 20, about.

Svein Newman: [00:14:35] 25.

Speaker 2: [00:14:36] Years.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:36] 25 years.

Speaker 2: [00:14:36] Yeah.

Svein Newman: [00:14:37] And solar generally lasts longer than that too. That's just kind of the, you know, they think about depreciation at like one point something percent per year. But but still, I mean, at 25 years, I mean, these things may be producing for 30, 35. We just don't know. Right. And only warranty to a to a certain amount. And you plan around a certain amount. And that's a very important clarification about how it was paid for upfront. But the and the reality is that that, I mean, the county is going to pay it off, but it's going to do it in a way that's actively lowering the county's bills and taxpayer.

Speaker 2: [00:15:07] And meanwhile.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:08] 430 some odd kilowatts of electricity are being generated from the sun. Totally, which helps us meet our climate goals.

Svein Newman: [00:15:16] Improves air quality, created economic development when there were lots of benefits. Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:22] I think we got sidetracked from the neutrality plan or carbon neutrality plan.

Speaker 2: [00:15:25] Oh, sure.

Svein Newman: [00:15:26] Sure, sure. So that was just an example of one of the many things that the county's been doing. But I wanted to offer it because, you know, it's not to say that the county has just been sitting on its hands between adopting that goal and then adopting this plan. The plan is really an attempt to bring together to, to develop, to collate strategies that can be pursued across county departments and their strategies around buildings, renewables, energy efficiency. There's strategies around fleets, there's strategies around commutes. There's strategies around procurement or investing. I mean, there's all kinds of different ways that the county can bite off pieces of this and make a real difference.

Juanita Vero: [00:16:05] Is there an example that you're kind of excited about that to help people kind of visualize?

Speaker 2: [00:16:11] Sure.

Svein Newman: [00:16:11] Yeah. So, so for instance, and, and the question is, how do you find the seed funding, if you will? And we're sort of looking at various opportunities to potentially do that. But like one of the, the strategies that's laid out in the plan is, is exploring, ideally developing an internal revolving loan fund for, for energy efficiency, renewable energy, those sorts of projects. That's something that the university does and has been really successful because then they take, you know, if they finance an internal project. Then they take the savings from that project, pay it back into the fund. And so they're sort of using their own savings to grow this body that's investing in other future savings. And it takes a while to spin up, right? But it can eventually become sort of exponential. And it's important to note that the carbon neutrality plan doesn't bind the county to all of the many strategies on many fronts. But but rather was developed with the county carbon neutrality team, with folks from all sorts of departments and all over the county to, to think about what they might be able to do or would like to explore and tackle, and then sort of undergird that with the math and the science and sort of the technical acumen to say that if we were able to do these things, then that's our path to carbon neutrality, right? And the county will have to make sort of decisions on a case by case basis, for instance, about how how we pursue things and kind of get scrappy, right? But it's nice to know that there is a path and to have some of those potential strategies that have been developed collaboratively by different county departments and really under the lead work and authorship of my colleague Alli Kane.

Svein Newman: [00:17:42] And so I want to be clear that one shout out to Ali to don't want to take credit where it's not due. I mean, certainly I was a part of that plan and a part of that process. But that's really Alli's leadership and sort of a testament to one of my favorite things about working for the county. Right? I mean, we talk about these facilities improvements and the county's got a great facilities department that that's really leading that. And so I feel like a lot of my role is to help follow up or research or bring ideas and keep things moving or set agendas sometimes. But it really is a big sort of village team effort, whether that's county facilities or the Green Power program. Again, this partnership with other communities, partnership with northwestern, you know, we know that in order to go far, we have to go together for sure. And I think, you know, we've got a good team for that.

Juanita Vero: [00:18:27] Was there anything that surprised you in that plan process or surprised you and Alli?

Speaker 2: [00:18:31] Well.

Svein Newman: [00:18:32] I'll let Alli speak for herself. I will say that I was pleasantly surprised. I mean, sometimes you send a draft plan out on a, you know, a listserv, and you just sort of expect crickets and particularly when it's a 60 some page document. So honestly, like what I'm surprised.

Speaker 2: [00:18:47] Is that people read the thing, right?

Svein Newman: [00:18:48] People wrote back and were like, oh, have you thought about this? Or can we change that? Or don't forget to add us to the list to, to think about, you know, when we get to solar or things like that. I think that that was, you know, that's, I don't know if that's kind of a surprise, but it was a, a positive.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:02] Thing.

Speaker 2: [00:19:02] That's great.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:03] So as we, uh, tape this here on the 17th floor of the agenda towers downtown Missoula regular gasoline is over four bucks a gallon and diesel is over five. Yeah. Imagining there are a lot of people who live in Missoula County who are going to be scrambling for ways to cut costs, especially energy costs. We have this home resource hub. Can you describe what sort of tools might be there for people to make use of?

Svein Newman: [00:19:27] Yeah. So, so this is another example of, you know, the great people who work in this instance across the the county. But as I said, sort of the county and our partners. So, so we know that most of us have things we could do to make our homes more healthy, more comfortable, more cost efficient, right, that we know we can take care of the environment while we take care of our pocketbooks and take care of ourselves. But it can be tricky to know where to start, right? I think most of us also are busy. You know, you work, you're taking care of the family, you're trying to eke out a couple hobbies and that's it, right? You kind of fill up your time. And so we're leaving opportunities on the table through no fault of our own as individuals. And I'm that way too right in my own home. So that's why it's exciting that the county launched the Home Upgrade Hub, set the ecology and extension department out at the GW Marks Exploration Center, which which many people know for housing the butterfly house in the area.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:16] Somebody went out there. How did they find the home upgrade hub?

Svein Newman: [00:20:18] Well, I would call first, okay, just to make sure, but Callie Foster, who works with the hub, is in that building, has an office there. So the hub is a no cost resource to help guide county residents planning home retrofit projects, whether that's home energy assessments, to look for opportunities, right? People who are like, I don't know where to start. Help me think about my home, help me look for things I might bite off to people who want help talking through particular projects and if they might make sense in their home. They're like, yeah, I've been hearing a lot about heat pump water heaters and could this be right for me? And let's start there to people who, who know what they want to do and just want help finding an engaged contractor or who want to get a second set of eyes, or some advice on navigating rebates and incentives, you know, that sort of thing to make sure that they're they're saving the money that they can. So it's really sort of anywhere in that process from people who are just getting started to people who already know everything that they want to do, but just want to sort of double check that they're grabbing that utility incentive or that sort of thing. Like is it really is the, the point person out there. And she does a great job, whether that's in one on one consulting, because you could call and set up a time and go and meet with her. But also can be through community workshops. You know, she's got a workshop series coming up in May for, for home energy efficiency retrofits, however you want to. You know, some people want to go to a class and just kind of learn things more and more passively. It's a little bit like intimidating to, to set up a meeting and bring details about your own home. And that's fine if that's how you want to do it. And if you're like, I don't want to go to a workshop series, I just want to drill deep on on my particular project or my home. The county's got you covered that way too.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:21:56] Well, maybe we could provide our listeners with a link or a phone number so they can reach out directly to get some of that great advice. Okay. Elephant or data center in the room?

Speaker 2: [00:22:09] Oh, man. Okay.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:11] I just can't hold back.

Speaker 2: [00:22:12] Oh, geez. Unleashed. So anybody Josh.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:22:16] Is on ChatGPT right.

Speaker 2: [00:22:18] Now. Right now.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:20] Uh, yeah. Hold on. Actually, Claude is going to do this.

Speaker 2: [00:22:23] Oh.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:25] So if you're hearing this, you may have heard that a data center is proposed out in Bonner? Well, way back when. Seven years ago, there was a small Bitcoin operation out there at the old mill site, and this Bitcoin operation wanted to expand. They wanted to expand to a level where they would be using a third of the energy of the entire county, not county organization, county as a geographic unit filled with 120,000 people. We saw this as an emergency, this level of energy being pulled away from our residence by one entity. So we did some interim zoning, and then later we were able to finalize that zoning. And what we said in this zoning was if you want to operate cryptocurrency mine or a data center, this was seven years ago. How prescient we were seven years ago.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:09] Thanks, Diana.

Speaker 2: [00:23:10] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:11] No, no, let's let's take. No, it was totally Diana Minetta and Jenny Dixon and Karen Hughes. We were along for the ride. These fine people said, sure. You're welcome to do a data center in Missoula County, but you need to create your own new renewable energy on site. Or if it's off site, it still has to be new green electrons. You have to do that in order to meet the dictates of zoning. So certainly there is a proposal for a data center out in Bonner. Well, in order to meet the rules of our zoning, that data center is going to need to make their own renewable electricity on site or new renewable electricity somewhere else, equivalent to the amount that they would use. They also right now are proposed to be less than 500ft away from a residential area, which also does not meet zoning. So they're going to have to go see the Missoula County Consolidated Land Use Board and ask for a special exception to that 500 foot isolation zone, as it were. And they may be successful. They may not be. I can't say it isn't us. That's the MCC club, as we call it, gets to make that decision. So if you're hearing this, a data center in Bonner is by no means a slam dunk. If they get a special exception to the 500 foot rule and if they meet the dictates of zoning in terms of creating their own renewable electricity. Well, welcome to Missoula County.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:31] And the Board of County Commissioners does not sit in the judgment seat of thumbs up or thumbs down. No. These other.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:38] You are so.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:39] Right.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:39] MCCLUB makes the call on the 500ft and our planning development services will evaluate whether or not they've met the specific rules of zoning. There you go.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:49] Is there anything you'd like to comment on, Svein?

Speaker 2: [00:24:51] Yeah. What did I miss? What did I miss? That was the setup for you. Got it. There we go. Um.

Svein Newman: [00:24:57] No, I think that's exactly right. I mean, you all created the the zone, so. So I, I wasn't here, right? You can speak to it better than me, but the, the county zoning, uh, around cryptocurrency and data centers really has four distinct parts. And one is that data centers or crypto operations can only be in areas that are zoned industrial, heavy industrial. Yeah. So, so they cannot just be built in residential areas, for instance. But sometimes zoning districts border.

Speaker 2: [00:25:23] Each.

Svein Newman: [00:25:23] Other, right. Which is why we wind up in this situation here. But there's a requirement that it has to be in a in a heavy industrial area, that they have to recycle 100% of their e-waste through a state licensed electronic waste recycling facility. They have to meet this new renewable energy requirement, which I could read the section, but I'll name the other part, which is they have to go through a special exception review. Like you said, if they are within 500ft of a residential property boundary, which is the case in Bonner, and so any data center anywhere in the county would have to meet new renewable energy e-waste only in industrial. But and in the instance in which they're within 500ft of a residential property boundary, then they have to go through that special exception review, which brings in things like noise and lighting and traffic. And it's not everything...But there are criteria that they look at.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:16] We didn't do this because we hate data centers. We did this because we want data centers who are here to behave responsibly, as we want everyone to behave responsibly. This isn't an anti data center zoning. This is a pro responsible behavior zoning.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:26:31] Well, unless we are creating new renewable energy to satisfy energy hogs like this, we are continually finding ourselves set back and reaching our 100% clean electricity goals.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:43] And Svein described well what 50 megawatts would look like. And you described it too in the story of the GPP, reportedly and reportedly. So I might have gotten this wrong. Reportedly, this entity is talking about 3 to 9 megawatts and then expanding possibly to 100 megawatts. This is a tremendous amount of energy.

Svein Newman: [00:27:02] Yeah. We don't know precisely what size they intend to be. They haven't filed a number in the county at this time. But I have, you know, originally the number that we heard when when we talked with them was, you know, they wanted to start around 9 or 10. They did mention at a public meeting out in Bonner that they were thinking about starting at three.

Speaker 2: [00:27:21] Then I saw.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:21] In print A little squiggle line and a hundred. Oh my God.

Svein Newman: [00:27:24] Yeah, I mean, so what they have stated, and I think you see this from the middle manager in the press that they want to start at a certain size and then grow as opportunities, resources, etc. allow. And so I think the point of how big might they eventually become is something that I'm not in a position to speculate on, but it is important to to note that they have their proposed initial size, whether that is 3 or 10, but are also interested in expanding in in the future.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:50] High levels of expansion.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:27:51] And Josh is absolutely right that this is not a prohibition against data centers in Missoula County, but it is a mechanism, regulatory mechanism to make sure that they do it responsibly and align with the values of this place.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:06] And this is happening in lots of other parts of the country. We are not alone. We were early adopters on this seven years ago, but right now, these same sorts of rules and regs are happening all over the place. Everywhere in America is having these types of conversations. How do we bring in responsible data centers into our neighborhoods, communities, etc.

Svein Newman: [00:28:25] Oh, totally. Yeah. There are dozens, if not hundreds of local governments that are passing or have passed zoning ordinances that speak to to some of these considerations directly. And even more indirectly, right? Most communities have rules around noise and things like that that would apply. But then, of course, beyond local governments, you have state legislatures looking at these questions. You have utility regulators. You know what, like the Montana Public Service Commission, but sometimes they're called public utility commissions in other states. But you have those regulators looking at it too. It's definitely a hot topic.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:53] Yep. Absolutely. And we have a process in place.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:56] Way to go Missoula County! Yes.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:28:58] What would you like us to ask you that we've not asked you already?

Svein Newman: [00:29:01] Oh great question, I think that this is a pretty good list. I mean, in coming here today, I wanted to talk about the Green Power Program because I think it's really exciting and I think it has the potential to be transformational. I wanted to talk a little bit about the county's carbon neutrality work. I wanted to plug the home upgrade hub. I think there's two other things that that I want to do. And, and one of those things is, you know, so far we really talked about mitigating climate change, but the county also has goals around climate adaptation and resilience. There's a plan.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:33] Do you mind describing the differences? Just it's jargon for people.

Speaker 2: [00:29:36] Yeah, of course, of course. Of course.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:38] Folks listening may be struggling a bit to catch up.

Svein Newman: [00:29:40] Yeah. No, no, thank you for that. We know that the county has to do everything that it can to mitigate the impacts of climate change, to limit climate change, to reduce fossil fuel use, to increase renewable energy use, things like that. Right? And we know that the county can't do it alone, but we know that it's going to take communities around the country, in the world, everywhere doing. And if we all do our part, we can really blunt the impacts of climate change, right? We can still head off most of it or the worst of it, but we know we're not going to head off all of it, right? Because some of it's already here. And we know that some amount of additional impact is is coming, right? We are going to have warmer, drier summers, right? There's, there's there's no way to avoid that. The question is really to what degree? Because we know we're going to start seeing more extreme heat events in the future that the county's not used to, because we know we're going to start seeing more drought than the county's used to, because we know we're going to start seeing less snowpack or some of these changes, and maybe not every year, right? But over time, then we also have to be doing what we can to develop our own resiliency and plan for that. And the county has it's called Climate Ready Missoula, but it's a plan that exists in the county's growth policy. It was also adopted by the city but was developed by the city, the county and Climate Smart Missoula, with the input from stakeholders from all over the community that looks at all sorts of different impact areas and sectors.

Svein Newman: [00:31:04] So whether that's heat, smoke, water, etc., or agriculture, tourism, right? Like a different way to define sectors to, to look at impacts and look at strategies for the county. The climate ready plan work is, uh, is again led by my colleague Alli Kane. So she'd be the best person to talk about it. But the county is both in the process of working with the city and with Climate Smart Missoula on implementation, like assessing how now that the plan is a handful of years old, you know, let's take a look where, wow, we've been implementing really strongly and celebrate those successes and capture best practices, and then also identify places where, you know, maybe we need a little bit more support or oomph, right, to do some progress reporting to, to potentially inform plan updating all the while, even while we're trying to either as the county or in to sort of catalyze with partners, um, kick off and support implementation efforts as well. Because it's not just plan to plan to plan, right? You're updating the plan, but you're also doing the work while you're doing that. And that's an important part of when we think about climate change as a county, it's both, how can we help head off the worst of it? And then how can we learn to. To live with what, what we can't head off.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:32:19] So. So for instance, I'm... Along those lines... I'm attending a climate ready subgroup meeting this afternoon that deals with smoke. And one thing that we have in the past, and I suspect will continue to talk about in the future, is okay. Wildfires are a ubiquitous thing during the summer here in in western Montana and, uh, and Missoula County, when smoke rolls into the into the valley here, what do you do to adapt and to mitigate its effects on, on human beings? And that could range from where in Missoula is there a place that you could go basically for refuge to get out of the smoke? Or what can you do in your own home to either, uh, purchase or do it yourself, sort of, uh, home air purifier system to, to have some cleaner air within your residence to, to breathe in. So those are just a couple of examples of, of what's going on in the smoke front at least.

Svein Newman: [00:33:16] Yeah. That's great. So that was one of the things I wanted to, to lift up. I think the other thing, and I imagine that some listeners will be like, well, okay, that's a lot. But, but, but what can I do? Or what should I think about? Or what are my takeaways? And the reality is, of course, that, you know, do what makes sense to you. Something is always better than nothing. And the, the way that we solve this problem or, you know, all sustainability problems is, is one bite at a time, right? But I would encourage listeners both to, you know, call tally at the home upgrade hub, again, like consider the home energy efficiency retrofit series that she has planned for for this May. I think the other thing that I would plug that that's related, the city and the county and Climate-smart Missoula have a coalition project called electrify Missoula and electrify is having a Resilient Homes tour on May 16th. For people who want to get some hands on, sort of real life exposure to solar heat pumps, resilient landscaping, to start thinking about wildfire mitigation that they could do on their own property, that sort of thing. So, you know, look out for that Resilient Homes tour on May 16th and think about the Hub's retrofit series, or just call Callye and go meet with her.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:23] Awesome. I got a question for you. So I'm wondering about your own sense of optimism. You've been at this work for quite a while. Real experience. You were doing this work. When our federal government made the single biggest investment in climate of all time in the three point something billion dollars in climate work, really international leaders. And then bam, climate change is a hoax. So living through both those things, how do you how do you keep your head up, feel optimistic and keep getting after it?

Svein Newman: [00:34:54] Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think for me, I take a lot of heart in the knowledge that, you know, to some degree, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. I mean, the Department of Energy released a study towards the end of last year, and they reported that to that point in last year, it was like August, September or something like that. Something like 90% of the new energy that had been brought onto the grid in the United States was when solar batteries. So, so even in this new landscape, we know that the choices that are good for our health, that are good for our air quality, that are good for our water, are also oftentimes the cheaper, cleaner.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:31] Faster, and good for the climate.

Svein Newman: [00:35:33] More economical choice. And I don't think that any amount of public policy headwinds is going to stop that. Now we have to conversely, we have to get behind and push as far as we can, right? We have a long ways to go, and we don't have an awful lot of time to get there. But I think that as much as it doesn't feel like it, we really do still have the wind at our backs. And you know, that's something.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:53] Anyway, that's Great to hear.

Svein Newman: [00:35:54] Thanks.

Juanita Vero: [00:35:55] Well, before we close, can you share with us a good book or additional nugget of wisdom that you've come across?

Svein Newman: [00:36:02] Sure. Yeah, I.

Juanita Vero: [00:36:04] Arts, poetry, music.

Svein Newman: [00:36:06] I love that. I'll offer you say, sort of nugget of wisdom.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:36:11] Chunk of carbon.

Svein Newman: [00:36:15] I'll steal this from an old coworker. But who said that change happens at the speed of trust? And I'm sure she hot it from someone before that. But I think for sure...You know, there's something to be said for that.

Juanita Vero: [00:36:25] That's much better than the one I'm thinking of. Change happens. One funeral at a time. Oh, so yours is much more positive.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:36:33] I like that one.

Josh Slotnick: [00:36:34] Change happens at the pace of accepted loss.

Svein Newman: [00:36:36] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:36:37] And let go of how we used to do things right.

Juanita Vero: [00:36:40] Okay. Say it. Say it again. So we don't. Don't water it down.

Svein Newman: [00:36:43] Oh, yeah. Change happens that the speed of trust. Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:36:46] Well done.

Svein Newman: [00:36:47] In terms of good book. You know, I mostly in my free time read what I would put in the category of brain candy. You know, sort of empty calories. Science fiction, fantasy, sort of escapism. Maybe that's part of how I cope too, but it's not all that. And I did recently start a book that may feel sort of more relevant to the subject at hand. It's called Pretty Good House, and it offers sort of a practical kind of budget minded framework for for building or renovating high performance homes. Sort of treats the house like an integrated system focused on how things like insulation and air sealing and windows work together. And some of it's fairly technical, but it was also written for a lay audience, too, and sort of underscores that oftentimes through smart choices, we can get high performance without high cost, and that a lot of the most impactful things that we can do to limit our climate impact, to limit our environmental impact to, to lower our bills are actually some of the cheapest and most accessible strategies too. So I I'm only about 50 pages in, but I'm really enjoying that so far.

Josh Slotnick: [00:37:47] Oh, I'm going to totally check that out.

Juanita Vero: [00:37:49] A pretty good house.

Svein Newman: [00:37:50] Pretty, pretty good house.

Josh Slotnick: [00:37:51] Yeah, well, it was a pretty good session here.

Juanita Vero: [00:37:54] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:37:55] It's pretty good. Pretty good.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:37:56] Better than pretty good, better than pretty good.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:37:58] Thanks for joining us.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:00] We are so lucky to have you on our team. Thanks a lot for all you do.

Svein Newman: [00:38:04] I feel lucky to be here.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:38:05] So catch you all next time.

Juanita Vero: [00:38:06] Thanks, everyone.

Svein Newman: [00:38:07] Bye, everyone.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:09] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:38:17] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:38:23] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:35] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:38:42] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula dot. Myupdates.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:38:50] Thanks for listening.