2020-08-26 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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energy. So this is kind of a profile of—we worked with the utility company, got the GIS locations of the various meters. And the reason for that is there’s multiple departments that _________ the county, although the energy load by the county may be consolidated physically but not in its record-keeping. So we got the GIS locations of the meters, and then we did a heat map, which is on the left. DEM is in purple, and the size of the circle is related to the amount of funding going toward electricity. So on the right side, that kind of gives a comparative of various departments in relation to their electricity consumption. So the Department of Environmental Management is in second place. Actually, they’re in third place if you count the Department of Water. Public Works is number one at $2.5 million. DEM is a little over $2 million. But the Water Department is closer to $15 to $20 million, so it wouldn’t fit on this graph. This pie chart kind of lays it out a little differently, but in analyzing the energy consumption, 99% of the funding goes to wastewater. So if you want to focus on what needs to be done, this is Kealakehe, which was the largest circle in West Hawaiʻi, spends about $670,000 a year. It’s 8.3% of the county’s total annual utility expense, not including Water Supply. It has ________ and solar, irradiation, and it’s within the opportunity zone. And that relates to what an additional tax incentive that—to build on what Steven said about federal tax credits, state tax credits, or state refundable grant type of cost offset for the asset owner, along with accelerated depreciation. So within Kona, physically there’s opportunity zones, which relates to capital gains tax deferral. So that’s an additional incentive for investors to look at assisting the county in installing facilities. So this is another example where you have the transfer station, and combined, the annual energy is $200,000. The kilowatt hours are 680,000. But if we look, the Police Department pays their own bill, and the transfer station pays their own bill. But combined you can see that it may be of interest to a foreign investor to offset that energy cost. Now this is more of a question that Madison and I had, is that one of the locations of the meters is in the middle of the airport. Which I’m not sure it’s true, but we can work with Bill in getting clarification on where this meter is. But it is one that uses a lot of electricity, $545,000 a year. And it’s also within the Hilo opportunity zone. So these are other examples of just consolidating meters physically within the county so we get a better look. Like here, the Hoʻolulu complex has five different meters. So if you look at them separately, it may not have the scale for it to interest an ESCO provider. But if you combine the meters, there is a chance. So I mentioned opportunity zones. These are zones that were determined as close to shovel-ready. Land use zoning is favorable, it allows different investment types to build up capital projects and assets. This is the Hilo area. So within the gray bubbles, these are all meters or load centers. 5