Children and Youth Committee - Senate

call this meeting to order. Uh, first off, we have to approve some previous minutes. So if I can have a motion to approve the previous minutes. And we have approval, so anybody, uh, object. OK, without objection, staff corrected me. Alright, thank you. We'll approve those minutes, um. Next, we're gonna change up the schedule just a little bit. Uh, we're gonna have these gentlemen, I'll let you introduce yourself where this issue came about in Carroll County, it started with the biggest, the first in, uh, in my district, uh, the first wind project with Scout Energy is came into Carroll County and it's been a pretty controversial issue up there. And, uh, so we talked about last year trying to look into the wind energy part and it just didn't happen. So I decided to bring it up under this committee and so anyway, we'll let you gentlemen introduce yourself and uh, go into your presentation. Got it. Uh, thank you, Senator, for inviting us to come speak today about wind energy in Arkansas. Uh, my name is Simon Mayhan. I'm the executive director of the Southern Renewable Energy Association, where a trade association of large scale renewable developers, wind, solar batteries, transmission, uh, we kind of cover it all, uh, and we work throughout the Southeast, but I, I actually live here in Little Rock. My family and I moved here about 3 years ago, um, and the fishing here is, is much better than where I was. Um, as I was mentioning just a little bit about us, we work throughout the Southeast, uh, we do an awful lot of work at the state public service commissions working on integrated resource planning, uh, at the transmission level with both the midcontinent independent system operator in the Southwest Power pool are are two big grid operators that we have here in Arkansas and then also throughout the rest of the Southeast with uh with Ey Southern Company, Tennessee Valley Authority. I wanted to start out the presentation with uh just a few images of of some nearby wind projects. I grew up in Southwest Missouri, uh, by Joplin, so, uh, this, this wind project, uh, up in Joplin, the Tesla Owners Club of Arkansas actually went on a tour of it, uh, late last year and uh we actually got to go up and see the wind turbines and go talk to the folks that were operating them. Uh, this is a newer wind project that went operational earlier this year in Tunica, Mississippi, uh, this project is selling its power and is currently operational, uh, but it's selling its power to the, the Amazon data center that's going to be uh built in in Mississippi here soon. In Mississippi, the, the Amazon data center, it's, it's going to be the largest investment they've ever had. It's a $10 billion economic development asset and Amazon directed, uh, the state to ensure that they have the capability. of procuring energy from wind farms and solar farms. Uh, and then this past week, I, I, I drove over to win on my way over to Memphis and uh took some pictures of a uh wind project that's going up over there in Cross County, uh, and so this will be the first win project operational here in Arkansas and uh I'll, I'll have Brad, uh, talk more about that here in a minute. But to give you all a sense of kind of where we stand in terms of, uh, our neighboring states, Arkansas, we currently don't have any wind projects that are up in up in operational. The things that are changing and what's making Arkansas more interesting is the wind turbine technology is getting better. The blades are getting longer, the hub heights are getting taller and so as you're able to reach up into higher altitudes, you're able to reach those better wind speeds. And so, you know, 10 years ago, the North Carolina, uh, wind project, uh, which is also an Amazon project wasn't operational, but it was really those those newer turbines that are enabling that, and then we're starting to see when projects that are scoping out uh construction in places like Arkansas, Louisiana, uh, as I mentioned, Mississippi as well, and so it's really starting to develop in some of these states that didn't previously had wind farms, as you can see, uh, Texas is by far the leader in wind energy in the country with over 37,000 megawatts of wind installed in. that state, Oklahoma, Kansas, you know, these are, these are very windy areas that have a lot of wind projects up and running. Uh, you know, one of the, one of the top questions I get about wind energy is what happens when the wind doesn't blow, so in Arkansas, we, we are bifurcated between two different grid operators. There's the midcontinent Independent System operator or MISO, and then the Southwest Power pool or SPP both of those organizations have headquarters here in Little Rock, um, and so we actually had a number of legislators from Louisiana come up to Little Rock a few weeks ago to visit the Southwest Power Pool to see. how they manage the grid. What this image is showing you is that that map is the power prices for the Southwest Power pool when I took the screenshot and you can see there's there's areas where, uh, the wind power is, is blowing very well, and because of that, the power prices are lower, and on this particular day, I think this was, uh, this was the 13th, so it wasn't too long ago. That entire middle region of the country was receiving about 50% of its power from wind energy and so the Southwest Power pool here in Little Rock helps manage that powerful. So if the wind does die down, you back it up with natural gas, you back it up with coal. That's how you maintain a stable grid and so we're able to have that stability because we have our grid operators handling the grid. The other part of the grid here in Arkansas is covered by by MIS or the midcon independent system operator, and again, this is a power map on, on the left hand side showing you what the power prices were during this time, you know, a few days ago, uh, and you can generally see the power prices are actually much cheaper up in the north where they have an awful lot of wind projects and a little bit more expensive down here in the South. And on this particular day, uh, Mao was receiving about 23% of their power from wind energy. Now I did want to talk a bit about uh how how a win project gets built, um, there, there's an awful lot that goes into it before you hear about it in communities or you see about it in a press release, oftentimes the wind developers are spending years ahead of time with grid studies with geophysical studies with birds and bat monitoring and studies before they make a determination of moving forward with the win project. And so this is a very simplified chart of, you know, it may take 2 or 3 years of just studies to. Figure out if a if a spot has enough wind energy, if it's if it's good with with the uh, the, the, the local community, uh, before they even announced that they're going to plan on, uh, construction in a year or two, but then after that, the wind projects are expected to last somewhere between 20 to 30 years. Uh, this, this chart is really difficult to see and so hopefully if you have some time to pick it out later, I, I highlighted in the in red here with those red arrows, um, solar energy prices and wind energy prices, so if you look at the bars just generally, you can see pretty easily that wind energy and solar power utility scale, large scale solar power energy resources are some of the cheapest that you can get here in the United States today, and so as uh electric utilities. as corporations or as businesses are trying to figure out what their energy portfolios are going to be looking like in the next 5, 10 years, they're really weighing the costs of these different generation resources and wind and solar continually come up to be some of the cheapest energy resources that they can get and that's part of the reason why we're starting to see more and more development of both wind and solar here. Uh, wind potential in Arkansas, uh, so this is a map at a 100 m hub height, so about 300 ft. up in the up in the air, the darker blue colors are a better wind speed uh than the lighter areas, uh, but generally the, the areas that a lot of folks are looking at for wind energy, of course, you've got kind of, uh, the mountain areas up in the northwestern part of the state, uh, but then there are an awful lot of wind developments being evaluated in kind of the central eastern part of the state, uh, as well. So basically between Little Rock and Memphis, that's, that's a really solid area for folks to be looking at us. As I was mentioning some of our electric utilities, uh, earlier, uh, we, we get heavily involved as an organization on their integrated resource planning process. The, the IRPs or the, the, the integrated resource planning process that the utilities go through, those are a 20 year horizon that the utilities are trying to figure out how do we serve the power demands of our community over that, that next two decades. And so I pulled up the the Southwestern Electric Power Company. which of course operates in in much of the northwestern part of the state, um, the black bar that you've got on here is how much power they're expecting over the next 20 years, how much power demand they they need to serve over the next 20 years and the different colored bars underneath it are the different types of power that that they will be able to provide. The white Should make everyone in this room a little bit nervous. The white is the gap between the power that we have and the power that we need to serve, which is that black line again. And so in order to figure out how we can keep the lights on, we've got. Thousands and thousands of megawatts that Swepco is going to have to build over the next really 5 years in order to make sure that the lights can stay on for their. And again, you know, this charts kind of difficult to see, but the bottom line is, and I circle circled it down here at the bottom, Swebco sees wind energy and solar power, and then also uh natural gas resources is kind of path forward for them and their customers and so they're looking to potentially add up to 3000 megawatts of wind energy, 600 megawatts of, of, uh, uh, solar energy, uh, Swepco's already been purchasing wind energy for quite some time out of Oklahoma, out of Kansas. using the southwestern Power pool, and so it's not something new to them, they, they've been doing it for quite some time already. Uh, and then for energy, uh, I'm, I'm an energy customer, uh, and so their line is a little different, so you've got a blue line for how much power demand they need, uh, and then the bars underneath it showing how much power they actually have, and so again, we have a gap starting in about 2028, so very, very soon, uh, if we don't do something, we're going to have some power limitations, uh, with the energy, uh, operating company here in, here in Arkansas. Similarly, uh, to sweatco in Egy goes through this evaluation of what types of resources are best for them and their customers, and similarly they found that uh overwhelmingly solar power batteries, wind, and then adding in some natural gas resources is really how they're going to try and uh meet that new demand that they're that they're expecting with all the uh generation that has not only retiring very soon, including the White Bluff and Independence Coal units, but also any sort of new generation that they need. because of new load that's coming on. I mentioned earlier, the Amazon data center over in Mississippi, it's a $10 billion investment for them. They're going to need 1000 megawatts of new power by the year 2027 in order to serve that new load. Louisiana is going through a similar ordeal right now. There's a $5 billion announcement for Northern Louisiana, uh, Egy is trying to to add in about 1500 megawatts of new solar and about 2000 megawatts of new gas in order to serve that new data center, uh, in northern Louisiana, but again, it's a $5 billion investment that's being made there and it's predominantly going to be uh be served by. Uh, you'll notice in my slide deck I have an awful lot of additional slides towards the end. Those are for your reference at a later time, uh, and if, uh, if you have any questions, I'm available. I'm here in Little Rock and uh I'm uh available for questions unless we want to move on over to, to. Are there any questions? Yes, you recognize. and other witnesses, um. I look on the slide with the sweat coat capacity position. Yeah, I guess that's it, yeah. Uh, and I see the gray which is cold down near the bottom. Yes sir, and then in uh. 2028, 29, it, it reduces by roughly 1/3, I presume that is uh because of uh some coal plants somewhere in their system, not necessarily in Arkansas coming offline. Yes sir, that's right. And then we go out to uh 2039 40 and that's uh which seems like eons ahead of us, but I recognize it's not really that, uh. Then it, it cuts in half again and that is, I assume when turkey is taken offline, that one's actually Flint Creek. OK. And I know Turks in there somewhere, but, uh, uh, the fact, the fact is that uh uh as those gray areas get smaller, those white areas get bigger and, uh. As I have been saying and said this weekend on Arkansas week, you don't replace something with nothing. And while you're black line is not real steep. It is climbing, and I think you are maybe even being a bit uh optimistic about how the demand will increase. I think it demand will increase even more. I think you're right. But I'm, I'm just, I guess my question is how do we reconcile this even whether wind or solar are specific parts, and they are parts, but I go back to what, what, what happens when the wind's not. Glowing and the sun's not shining, which you said you would address, so I'll let you do that, yeah, and that's, that's kind of what the the Southwestern Power pool is doing on a daily basis right now, so, uh, when the wind does blow, it's a very good low cost energy resource, it is reliable, we can, uh, forecast days ahead of when the wind is going to go up and go down, and that gives the grid operators enough uh enough warning that they need to ramp up the cold or the natural gas, um, the long term, uh, you know, when provides very good energy resources during the winter time and then also during the night. Solar does well during the summertime and during the day, you add in batteries and you can cover a pretty significant chunk of the the times that we're in, but there will be times where, you know, it's a cloudy day and there's not enough wind and the batteries have been depleted, where you're going to need some sort of backup power and we're starting to see across our region more and more that the utilities are starting to look at combustion turbine, natural gas units, uh, to serve kind of those quick peaks of of we need a. a little bit of power very soon, uh, and then also they're starting to couple them with oil backup, so they'll they'll usually have maybe about 3 days of oil on site, uh, if there is a problem with the natural gas system, uh, in the past couple of natural, uh, in the past couple of winter storms we've seen winter storm Yuri, which took Texas out and then Winter storm Elliot, uh, there were blackouts over in the Tennessee Valley Authority, uh, and then also over in the, uh, the Carolinas in part because the natural gas system. was struggling to provide enough fuel to those natural gas plants. So having some sort of backup system is is the way that the systems are going to grow into the future, but, um, as it is right now, you know, the Southwest Power pool we're relying on less and less coal already and so I think we're going to see more solar grow, more batteries grow, and then more interest around these uh combustion turbine natural gas units. Well, I'm supportive of batteries and I think the technology is going. going to improve exponentially because for once in our world's lifetime, people are actually paying attention to batteries where for about 100 years it was that little black box under your hood that got your car started and then it ran on gasoline, but I'm, I'm really. I'd like to see or hear where these, whether it's oil or some of the other things you mentioned to help take care of the baseline. What is the status of those types of projects is, you know, we can't, uh, as I've said on the TV on Saturday. You don't go to Walmart and buy a generator and throw it in your pickup and that fixes it. This is a, it takes a while to build these things out, notwithstanding the permit process, where are we in our region in that type. of uh Uh Project situation we are much further along with wind and solar and batteries than we are with natural gas plants, which is my worry. That's why I asked that question and so you'll notice in the slides that I that I didn't go through, uh, these are the generator interconnections for our region throughout the Southeast and so in order to plug into the grid, any power plant has to go through what's called a generator interconnection queue or a line and in that process. You're trying to figure out where I can plug in and not cause disruption on the wires that exist. If there is a disruption, you can pay in order to upgrade the system so that way you're able to plug into those those locations, but. These, these red dots that we're seeing up here, these are battery projects all across the Southeast. These are, uh, natural gas plants that we currently or that we had in the generator in our connection queues, uh, earlier this year in May and so This gets updated on a daily basis almost, uh, and so we are starting to see a few more natural gas generators show up here in Arkansas and down in Louisiana, um, but this process can easily take 2 or 3 years to get through a generator interconnection process, uh, and it's, it's incumbent upon our utilities to file those requests with myso with the Southwest Power pool so they can begin studying them, um, but We have a lot more hybrid generators, which are the the solar plus battery projects and then also we have just a significant number of solar generators that are trying to interconnect as well, uh, and so we are, we are much further behind on the natural gas, uh, generator interconnection process than what we are for wind, solar, and batteries. OK, but yeah, that still didn't get a year number Simon on what. Are we, are these nice ideas of an oil powered project or natural gas powered project, are they 6 years out, 9 years out, 20 years out, about where are we? because you know, while all these uh uh new technologies are good and they're gonna increase our generation capacity, they're not gonna take on the base load, uh, burden that coal is doing right now and of course nuclear. Do it right now, yeah, and so in the in the meantime, uh, uh intergies latest integrated resource plan, uh, they have this gap in 2028 and 2029. They don't, they do not know how to serve that with generation that they're going to build, and so their proposal in the meantime is to use short term capacity contracts in the Myso market, so Myso operates kind of air traffic control for uh for the power stations across the region and So they actually have an option where if your neighbor has more capacity than you do if they have spare power plants, you can actually contract for those spare megawatts on a short term basis, usually a one year basis, uh, and so every year that auction comes up and new prices come out so that, uh, all the different utilities can bid on on the remaining megawatts, and so Entergy's plans, at least for at least what they've said in their integrated resource planning processes. In 2028 and 2029, they're really expecting to lean on the myso market to uh to sign short term capacity contracts to serve that, but in what that does is that buys them some time to get other projects built, uh, and so if you look at the SWEPO numbers, you know, it's again kind of a difficult chart to see, but Swepco anticipates adding a new combustion turbine somewhere in the 2029 to 2030 time frame and so. If you, if you're trying to build new generation between now and 2030, you've really got four options. It's gonna be a natural gas plant. It's gonna be solar, wind, or batteries, those are your four technologies that can get built in the kind of the next 4 to 5 years. OK, and I probably Mr. Chairman would want to save any further questions on that line. I know it's Mr. Bethel is back here. I don't know if he's gonna testify, but, uh, uh, Mr. Mayhan has done a great job of talking about what utilities can do and might do, but, uh, I guess I'm gonna have to, uh, after the first of the year look at bringing in joint energy to ask what will you do? and so thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you this is this issue been going on in Carroll County. My brother's on the corn court up there, so it's been going on a while. there and when you look at this area, a big part of it's in my area up there, but, uh, so let me ask you this, uh, you know, we talked about the power needs, you mentioned Amazon to naturally, we just have to think they don't obviously don't keep me in the loop, but maybe Walmart's gonna do something. I mean, you know, these energy demands, crypto mines, we've been through that. I mean, Northwest Arkansas, they're expecting Benton in Washington County, I think, to have like a million people by a certain date in that right Austin, something like that. Yeah, so, I mean, our power needs are increasing in, in that, so that's what. You know, looking at it, it looks like, you know, it looks like we're headed for a cliff in some ways, uh, so, um, but, uh, let me ask you this as far as a general question, one of the questions I sent to you guys was, uh, You know, so the Clean Line project, do you guys remember the Clean Line project that was supposed to go through and then that was headed through, looked like it was going through and then President Trump got in. I don't want to get into the political thing of, of, of what happened in the election or 2 or 4, but what changed in that in the Clean Line project got shut down basically when the Trump, I mean, what do you see in DC now that all this is rolling and all this is going, and then we've had the change. Where do we, where is this going from there? I mean, are we gonna have like that? I mean, that is something real to think about. Yeah, no, absolutely, well, and I'm glad you bring it up, uh, you know, Clean Line was a, uh, kind of an unusual project as you recall they were trying to connect over in Memphis and sell power over to the Tennessee Valley Authority, um, my opinion of, of all of that at the time was TVA was really the crux of the problem, TVA wasn't willing to transact on. Actually building and contracting for wind energy to come out. Had TVA moved, had they signed a contract, they could have signed up, you know, $25 per megawatt hour or 2.5 cents power for the next 30 years, uh, TVA actually had blackouts, uh, a couple of years ago because they didn't have enough power during the winter time. Um, and so I, you know, I think there were some bad decisions being made over at TVA that were uh not necessarily because of the election, but because of just kind of timing wise, that's that's really how it worked out, um, I will say TVA now is planning on building some sort of new transmission line to better connect them with the Southwest Power pool to import about 800 megawatts worth of wind energy, uh, and so I, I, I think again that was just kind of a a a a poor timing thing, not necessarily a federal election. issue, We actually saw quite a lot of growth in solar and and and renewables, uh, during Trump's first presidency, uh, you know, a lower tax base, uh, tax rate on industry as a whole, uh, was really helpful, uh, you know, low interest rates for loans, uh, was really, really helpful. It helped reduce the cost for these projects, um, you know, the, the largest cost for wind and solar and batteries are are the the actual capital construct. costs, just buying the, the equipment and then actually installing it and so the the the the more that you can drive down that interest rate on any on any capital that you're using for those projects, that's gonna be a helpful thing, and I think that's something important to the Trump administration coming in is to ensure that the the the business taxes and that the interest rates are meant to come down, so. I, I'm, I'm not terribly concerned, uh, that things are going to change all that much uh for energy and in particular because again. As we're trying to build more energy sooner rather than later. There's really only 4 technologies that that can do that, it's gonna be the natural gas plants, wind, solar, and batteries, uh, and so I, I think if we want more energy sooner, more domestic energy sooner, it's going to be one of those 4 technologies or, or a mixture of them. And so, and this will be a question for you, I mean, there's this thing we have this, uh, question of foreign ownership and foreign, I mean, generally, typically, these companies out here, where does that network go of like the windmill blade, the turbines, the technology. You know, the companies, whoever scout or whoever, where, where are these linked back to? Are they all US or are they foreign in Canadian or Netherlands or China or where. Uh, a lot of the wind turbines themselves remained a lot of the components are manufactured here in the United States. I can't remember the exact number, it's something like 70 or 80% of the components of the wind turbines are manufactured here in the United States. Um, I know General Electric has a really big manufacturing facility out of Pensacola, Florida, and so if you're ever driving along I-10, you will see the the giant gearboxes driving along and through Louisiana, uh, the, the blades are, are. often made here in the United States. Uh, it's, it's just very expensive to try and ship these massive components overseas and so it's much better for them to to make them and manufacture them here, um, but I will say, you know, Siemens Gamessa, you know, Siemens is is a German company, uh, Vestus is is a Danish company. Uh, these are kind of, you know, it's, it's seamen's General Electric and and Vesta are are really kind of the top 3 turbine manufacturers in the United States, but oftentimes the component. the the towers, the blades, the, the gearboxes, many of those components are made here in the United States. And we had, uh, back, I haven't been around a while, the LM, I think it was LM manufacturing out here and then, of course, it was heavily subsidized and then eventually went out too. So, uh, just some concern. So we'll let the rest of you present and then we'll open it up for questions. Oh sir, great. Thank you. And I'm not, I'm not going to present, uh, Mr. Chairman, I'm just here to, uh, provide moral support and answer questions if, uh, you have some that, that I can, so we just have one more presentation. All right, um, so I'm Brad Lila, I'm a vice president of development for Cordelia Power. um, thank you very much for, for, uh, Allow me to speak here today and, and give you a presentation. We are. We are The probably largest uh wind development company operating in Arkansas right now. I don't think it's even close. We got, uh, multiple projects, uh, throughout the state, uh, we can go into more detail if you have questions exactly where and how large uh happy to answer those questions right now we're constructing 135 megawatt, uh, wind project, uh, in Cross County and just on the west side of uh Wynn. And uh the, the construction is going, uh, going great and uh hopefully we're gonna be. Constructing more projects, uh, we have another project in Cross County that we will hopefully, uh, break ground on that project and uh 2027 and complete probably in 2028. And then we have other projects and uh or I should say really 11 large project injection with an independence, uh, counties that we're focusing on right now. Um, Cordelia Power, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail about this slide, but you, you did just ask a question about uh. About foreign influence and, and you mentioned Canada as well, um, we are, we are funded by the Canadian Pension Fund. The Canadian pension fund is one of the largest funds in the world and basically in the simplest of terms, it is, uh, Canada's version of Social Security, so anybody and everybody. Who received a paycheck in Canada, uh, pays into that, that pension fund and the pension fund, uh, really does like investing in uh in the United States uh in, in the renewable energy market. And uh, you know, I'm uh I'm, I'm happy to work for. Canadian company, I've been in this industry for 18 years and I worked for uh independent power producers through the years, uh, oftentimes just, uh, private equity money. It's uh. I was a I was a cop for 11 years, my, my wife was a first grade teacher, so I, I, I happily. I spend all my time working on these projects, so every day ordinary people who put money into these, into, into this pension fund, uh, will be the ones receiving the benefits of this rather than making a billion. It's uh it's, it's a good organization to work for and uh I'm really pleased that uh they do invest in these projects. Now we have a map up here that identifies our projects that we have around the United States and, and you do see that we've got a few doubts in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. So we're one of the first movers in uh developing wind energy in the southern part of the United States and I'll I'll explain um. Simon's presentation really covered. Some, some of the stuff that I was gonna cover as well, so I'm gonna abbreviate this a little bit so we don't repeat each other, but I will add a little more color to it, so. Uh, so the question really is sometimes why, why are you building in Arkansas right now? Why aren't you building here 5 or 6 years ago or so and uh we'll talk a little bit about because uh load is is is Simon had mentioned there's a need, uh, and generated retirements. We'll talk about that a little bit, uh, turbine technology and increased efficiencies. I'll just bring that up right now. So basically, if we would not be developing these projects if this was 5 years ago or so. Turbine technology is increased substantially to the point. Where we're able to Put in a 4.5 megawatt machine and basically produced 2 to 3 times more than the amount of energy. For the turbines now compared to even 567 years ago when they were 1.5 megawatt or 2 megawatt machines, so we can put up one turbine, uh, compared to what you could, you know, put up 3 turbines, uh, 6 years ago or so. So the technology is so much better. The turbines are going taller, the blades are longer, but you capture more wind, so it's uh it's kind of the the uh secret sauce to to building in the Delta area, so it, uh, it, it definitely does work and uh the turbines that that are going up, um, are, are very efficient. Uh, you asked the question about where these turbines are being made in in in otherwise uh components, etc. The terms that we're putting up in in Cross County right now, those are made by Vestus, um, all of the projects that we've ever built in the United States, we use vests turbines. Vestus turbines come from Colorado, the blades, the towers, the components they all come from Colorado, so it's uh. You can, I mean, quite honestly, I mean this question comes up all the time at county board meetings, etc. um, you know, a lot of times the, the, the question is, does, are, are any of the China turbines, right? Chinese turbans and uh. You know, the, the Chinese just have never found a foothold in this market at all. There was a company called Goldin one time. I don't even know if they still exist anymore, though the Chinese uh based company, and it just doesn't take off, you know, it do with Chinese turban in some of these areas around the United States and almost every area of the United States, so yeah, these are all coming from Colorado. Then the other thing I'll just touch on a little bit is the, the stable price of energy, um, talk about that in a moment. So Simon had mentioned uh the uh IRP uh 2024, um, soy is, as you guys know the large, large supplier of, of energy in in the amount of 5500 megawatts of capacity right now in 2024. Now they have uh goals of reaching 3000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2030 with a carbon reduction target of 50%. Um, by 2030 and be net zero by 2050. Uh, when we see that as a as a company, um, you know, we pay attention to any type of IRP throughout the US and. And we take a look, we took a long look at Arkansas and uh so what the the goals were well, and then we do a comparison and basically look for that gap of the of the very effective slide that Simon had where the the black line and the and the air of white, right? That, that's what, that's what companies like ours really pay attention to. And uh I'll go into a little more detail about that, so. You would uh mention about the the coal plant closures and uh. We are building one of these projects and it's a very sizable project near Independence coal plant. Uh, that's gonna go offline in 2030, December 31 of 2030. I, I understand it may actually go offline even sooner than that. That's 826 megawatts, uh, of generation. That's, it's a substantial amount. So one of the reasons we chose that area, um, is because when coal plants go offline. You have available capacity on the line it brings a company like us. We're developing wind, and there's quite a few solar projects, not ours, uh, also being developed in the area and being constructed in the area right now. So that's, that's with the whole intent of, of, of replacing at 826 megawatts, and it's likely going to be replaced. And then you've got the white bluff uh coal plant, which is also going uh offline in 2028 or 1,638 megawatts. As well as uh Lake Catherine natural gas plant and so we, we as well do our homework and looked at that and. Saw the, the definite need in our. Um, I just put this, uh, this is a, a slide from Entergy's IRP, um, and, and basically the reason I, I put this in there is that. Because I could entery does realize the the ability of wind energy known and proven, uh, form of generation and, uh, you know, consequently identified it with an ERRP and, and, and also identified, you know, existing nuclear solar battery energy storage, etc. as well as some other upcoming uh. Um, forms generation that are not yet. proven but potentially could be. Um But You know, you see in a on a the bottom slide here, uh, or the bottom of the slide where they're gonna end the use of coal at the end of 2030. Um, I found this, uh, this slide in Eys RFP very, very interesting, um. Because they, they identified the cost of energy here and uh I've got a a levelized cost of energy slide coming up here soon, just like the one that Simon had shared and what, what you should know about the levelized cost of energy. Basically what that means is that is the all-in cost. That's when they figure in everything from subs anything and everything, accelerated identifying the true costs of energy, so. Um, oftentimes people will, will look at, you know, when we, when we reference the price of wind, and they'll say, well, yeah, but you get these subsidies. These prices in here take all that into account. So Ey estimates that the onshore wind in Myo south in this area is going to be roughly $58 that, that is pretty accurate, uh, but what I found most interesting about this slide is the the next one down where it's onshore off system wind SPP at $141 a mega which, you know, at first. I saw that number and I thought, boy, how can that be right? and so I research it internally with uh our, our, our origination group and really what you see there is you see the cost of transmission is what that amounts to. So there's a lot of wind generation going on west of us in uh Nebraska and uh in Kansas and Oklahoma, etc. but it's very difficult and very expensive. To send energy east because we really lack so when when you think about when you think about Arkansas's needs, sometimes people automatically say that, well, geez, let's just bring it in for the windy states. Well, if you're gonna bring it in for a Wendy states, you're gonna pay a lot of a lot for it, you know, energy assuming, so it's a, it's a fix, but it's very expensive fix, so that's why we look at Arkansas, eastern Arkansas. This is a market that really, really needs local. All right, so this is a very busy slide and hopefully you can see this here, but I think this is a very important slide because this is all about the cost of energy. We, we as a company are not a company that runs around waving a green, you know, renewable energy flag. We believe in baseload generation. We believe we need natural gas. We, we need that for the system to operate, right? But we also realized that renewable energy is a very cheap form of energy. It's very stable form of energy. And what is really important to know about about wind energy is we're really not impacted with the fluctuation of the cost of gas or the cost of coal or anything like that. When you put a wind project in 95% of your costs are sunk, right? And for the next 30 years, all that blade does is spins around and and generates energy, and it doesn't matter what the price of natural gas is. It doesn't matter if Russia invades Ukraine and somehow impacts our markets because they don't impact the wind, right? So it's, it's super stable and so when you see these levelized costs of energy in here, um, as you see wind on the bottom there, which is the, the blue line. It's a roughly $50 in 2024. Um, you can go up. Throughout this entire uh graph here and and really identify what the costs are, what the historical costs are and what these costs are essentially doing right now, right? So you're at at wind energy that $50 a megawatt hour solar right now is at 61. Um, combined cycle gas, natural gas, $76. The problem with natural gas is when you build a natural gas project. You typically you can't get contracts for that gas more than 5 years out, right? So you never tell you, they, you really can't look into the future in natural gas and really fully understand what that picture is going to be like in 19 in the 1980s, there was a lot of natural gas plants that were built around the United States because the shot through the roof and there's a lot of people gnashing their teeth wondering why they did that, right? With wind you put that project up, you know what that price so. Uh, you'll see nuclear around here if you go up on, on the kind of the bluish purple number, that's $169 a megawatt hour. That's a nuclear is a great form of energy, we love it, it's, it's a great baseload form of energy, but it is expensive. It's real expensive. Coal has gotten very, very expensive too now, look at, you look at coal here it's a. What is that, uh, 10 $118 a megawatt hour. That is You know, way more than double of what wind energy is right now, now and again, you, there, there are areas where the coal plants are operational and it's a great form of base load, but it's just, it's a very, very expensive form of energy. So, you know, on this side, this is again the levelized costs of energy input assumptions. The reason I put this one on here is because Entergy, and this is an energy slide from their IRP. Energy identified that the percent of the, the, the cost for wind energy, um, is going to substantially dropped throughout the years to the point of a negative 41%. Um, you know, factor in all the, um, that's really about the only purpose I put this one in there is that the fact that the local utility company does identify the the cost of wind energy in effect. And, and, by the way, Simon's comments too about, about um You know, the Trump administration coming in, you look at, you know, this, this back slide over here, how the price of wind is increasing, and matter of fact, the price of all forms of energy in the last since 2021 here has been on a rise. That's simply because of capital costs, right? Everything just costs more. Right? It's not just, not just the cost of uh. Uh, you know, financing a project, it's also the cost of materials, right? steel, um. So let's just talk about. Load forecast for a moment, um, Senator Johnson, you, you made the comment that you feel that Eery and and and I'm assuming other utility companies out there and I see this all over is there. Under In our IRPs, they're they're not identifying load is gonna increase as much as as maybe you think it will, and I absolutely when I when energy came out with their IRP of fact, let me see here in this slide here in their load forecasts from energy, you'll see that they, they mentioned the cost of solar, electric vehicles, building electrification, energy efficiency. Um, but nowhere in here do you, do you see anything in regard to AI? We've been hearing in this industry that that artificial intelligence is going to basically require us to double. Uh, the moderation that you have in the United States. Um, and that's finally coming true. You're seeing it more and more, and that's, that's why they're putting in a $5 billion facility in northern Louisiana near Billing Mall. If you want to bring back manufacturing in the United States from China or or from abroad, you're gonna have to double the amount of generation in the United States, you factor in artificial intelligence, you factor in bringing manufacturing back to the United States, you're these load forecasts are are considerably low in my opinion. This, I, I just found this incredibly interesting and a good way to kind of illustrate what artificial intelligence is going to do to our system, so. If somebody types in, gets on Google and types in that they wanna, they wanna do a video AI request, right? So I type in, do a video for, you know, 5 minute video for Brad Lila, um. Whatever discussing renewable energy. The amount of energy it takes for that AI system. To do that. is almost equivalent to run your air conditioner for an hour. Right, it's the almost equivalent or it's, it's, it's considerably, you know, you can see on the, on the, on the, the graph here, you, you, you run a Tesla Model 3 for 1 mile, use 230 watt hours, whereas just one video request is over 3000, so it's uh this this is this is an eye opener for me, right? I mean they've been talking in the industry about how we're gonna need to double our generation and now you actually see it demonstrated here in in what it's going to take. Um, so we're just gonna talk about the our projects and kind of how you develop a win project. Um, and the impacts of a wind project. And, uh, you know, there's a lot of community involvement that goes into it. We, we recognize that it is, it is an impactful, uh, these projects are very impactful to our local communities, um. We, we really like the, the fact that when we build a, a wind project, for instance, we do employ people for the win project more so than than solar projects, uh, with wind energy, you, you do need some maintenance, so our project, for instance, and uh. In Cross County right now, I think we're gonna have about 8 full-time employees and, uh, projects over in. The Newport area where, you know, we're probably gonna be anywhere from like lawyers. Um, so these are individuals that do live and work in the areas, um, we do really like to hire as many. And sometimes it's difficult in in Arkansas since there are no standing operating wind turbines anywhere. It's hard to find wind techs, so what we did is we uh we approach Arkansas State University, uh, in Newport, and uh we're hopefully going to be partnering with them to bring. A program to to that community either potentially a Wintech program. They have a, a very robust, uh, high voltage program there that we would really like to uh be involved with. So we're trying to uh fund these fund the the local ASU campus there so that we can hire local people to work on these projects right, right in Arkansas. Um So tax revenue, uh, I, I know, sir, you, you had some questions about tax revenue and, and we can uh we can discuss that particularly is, did, did you want to ask anything? Yeah, so basically, you know what scout or, for example, is doing up there, they're saying, well, this will generate, you know, mostly tax revenue for the local schools with where school funding from the works, there's, there's not very many schools in Arkansas that are on the wealth index, as we call it, where, you know, maybe Bentonville, Eureka Springs is, is on that, um, you know, uh. Uh, West side, I think up in Hebrew I used to Fayetteville, but most of them received, uh, funding, so they may be at a funding level throwing a wealth index of 54%, and that means that, that to 44% will come from the state to make it up. So it's typically been where if your assessments go up and you generate locally, then, then the water winds up level and rot. So we don't know that basically, is that going to be a net increase for the local school because it's a state just gonna contribute less. So I've, I've got that question to our bureau attorneys. And so, I know you have an attorney. me back here too with Rott Jennings that maybe we can include in on the conversation because I think in Cross County, you signed it in lieu of taxes, right? They're not being assessed by your the local assessor. You've, you've signed a different agreement for how many years? 30 years. So I, you know what I mean, I would, we have chicken houses, me and my brother for 33 years. I mean, we didn't sign an, you know, in 33 year agreement, believe me, it's been up and up. So, you know, I mean, kind of some issues with that. I don't know how that's gonna work out, but, uh, Uh, uh, typically, what have you done in that lieu of taxes and, and maybe we have to. Senator Johnson's going to be the energy chairman, uh, next, uh, year. So that may be something, you know, we need to look at because I mean, if, if If it's not a net increase up there, then I think people on the front end need to know that, that it's not gonna be a net increase to their schools. Uh, also, you know, this 30-year agreement. I mean it just sounds like a pretty good deal, uh, and certainly not one the poultry industry has of growers and stuff. So, um, I'm just kind of interested about this agreement. I don't know what scouts doing up there in Carroll County, and, and it really is uh in, in, and Walter, please. Step in if I get anything wrong here. Um So the agreement that we have in place in in Cross County, you know, we, we approach a county for a, a pilot agreement to pay payment in lieu of taxes and In disgust it in detail with with some of their committee members for a while and uh negotiated it and we got to the point where we did go in front of the Quorum Court and I believe it wasn't unanimous, but it was one short of being unanimous and essentially. What we, what we agreed to do is the county gave us the, the pilot agreement, which is up and we agreed to share 50% of that savings with the county. So we. Every year for the next 30 years, we'll cut a check to the county, roughly in the amount of $400,000 every year. Um, the. While in while at the same time we are paying roughly around $489,000 a year in taxes and to my understanding, and this is conversations have having had with the local officials in Cross County that roughly 80% of that money goes towards the school. So essentially the, the schools there are gonna be receiving roughly around 400,000. Now We haven't done the math on this yet, but I have to believe that between our wind project and uh another solar project in, uh, in the end here, the state probably will not be writing any checks to Cross County schools because of these two projects alone should increase the tax revenues to the $8000 per student. And uh and that's basically where the state steps in is to cover that difference between, between, uh, anything that where you come up the deficient of $8000 per student, um, I feel that we're, we're likely going to get to that point sending any money to Cross County at all, so yeah, I, I do believe it's gonna be in a positive. OK, well, 4, I don't know what the school situation in Cross County, but like I said, I don't know that 400,000 is gonna be. You know, make them where they're not like Fayetteville, not contributing, but we'll, we'll get that sorted out and the turn you back there wants to visit with our attorneys. I'm kind of curious about that. So let me tell you a little, uh, the foundations, how deep do the foundations go? Because I mean, obviously the topography up there where I'm at in the hills and rock, I mean, and down there, how deep do these foundations go down, I mean, Yeah, uh, interesting question, right, so, so where you're at the foundation could be entirely different. Um, where we've, where I've been involved with developing projects and, uh, in rocky areas, ridge top type areas, um, sometimes you use the foundation regular concrete foundation sometimes you'll just drill down and put peers down into the ground. Uh, I can, I can speak to Cross County where, where I believe the foundations are roughly 12 to 13 ft below the surface. OK. Uh, one of the other things that in my discussions with the people and, uh, several states, the blinking lights. You know, the, the, the first windmills were all blinking lights, and then now they're making, I think in Washington State, there was a bill filed to make it where you had to go, or the windmills have to go back and, and they're basically dormant until a plane gets in the area, then they blink. Is that following, I mean, what are these gonna be? Are they gonna be blinking all the time or are they gonna be, so we have uh internal policy at Cordelia regardless of the local ordinances or requirements. We install this uh LDS system where, as you mentioned, we have a radar unit, so the only time that the lights come on is if 2 miles of the wind project. So that's, that's not just in Arkansas, that's everywhere in the United States where we build projects. OK, these over there are they're gonna be the 670 ft tall turbines over there, the same one I think Scouts in. Uh, what about the decimal levels of those in the proximity to several of them, uh, and then what's the decimal levels that, that go out. Well, you know, decimal level is really based on a distance away from a wind turbine, so, um, turbines like this, you're we would, we would wanna operate them. Let me put it this way, in most states in the United States, the standard is 50 decibels. Uh, in order to get 50 decibels with most wind turbines, you need to be back from an occupied dwelling, roughly 500, I mean 1500 ft. Uh, where we're building these projects, uh, and, you know, not in in in cross I can't really comment, um, because I wasn't involved in those early developments of them, but the other projects that we're looking at, there's gonna be very few homes that were probably even close to 2000 ft away, so we will make sure internally we make sure that we operate less than 50 I believe all of our projects around the United States. Is that an industry standard that you know of? I mean, is scout gonna operate 50 decibels or less, I mean, we're a little bit different area up there. So I I'll I can't speak for Scout, but I believe that they likely would. OK, I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I, I just wanted to, to, to say that when These like these projects were put in in in Jackson and Woodruff and Independence County. We're getting together with the counties. We've already met with the, the judges from those counties and there's not zoning in the area right now. So what we want to do is we want to put 3 agreements in place. We want to put a decommissioning agreement in place. We want to put a development agreement in place, and you want to put a road use agreement in place, so in that development agreement, we're gonna agree with these counties that we will not exceed like 50 decibels or we will not exceed. Setback from a home. Um, we're gonna, we're gonna, uh, agree in like a timeline for for a project for, you know, during development, we're gonna agree in a decommissioning agreement, we're gonna agree that we're going to put funds aside either cash or a letter of credit or a bond that any event that our company were ever to go bankrupt, that there's going to be funds set aside. Um, that, that's just, that's just good sound development is good practice, and I think it's, I think you need to do that with communities, even if you don't have ordinances in place, doesn't mean that you should just step in and and just develop a project without some parameters. We, we want to set these parameters for ourself and get that agreement in place with the county so that we know how to operate and we want to make sure that we operate so it's fair to all the residents within the county and they know how we're going to operate and we're gonna have that document in hand, signed. You approved long before we even think about putting a shovel in the ground. Same thing with the road use agreement. It's very important, um. I always tell any any landowner or any county official, uh government official, you need the three agreements in place. You need a erroneous agreement in place because when a wind project comes in, these equipment are heavy, the, the cement trucks are heavy. We will, we will damage roads, but in the end, the roads are going to be in better shape than when we, when we arrived and, and that's gonna be identified in a road use agreement, so you want all those documents in place, you know, long ahead of them. So. In, in that regard, in this decommissioning, you're gonna have a decommissioning bond put up in case there will be a bond of some type or something in these things, OK, um. So setbacks, you know, I've heard this from other states that you want these advice the snow is on these and they start turning again, they may throw them out, I don't know, 2000 ft or something like that is, yeah, that's. I mean, that's, that's not true. That's not true. OK. You know, you know, it's there, there, there's a lot of, there's a lot of information on the, on the internet that as you know is not true. These, these wind turbines, especially in an area like Arkansas, it's probably not as big of a deal compared to in, in some of the more northern climates where I've spent a lot of time operating and developing projects, but the, as I mentioned before, turbines are taller, the blades are longer, and the blades are actually more flexible, so they're much better at shedding ice than potentially turbines that were put up 15 years ago, 10 years ago, so they, they don't, they don't throw big chunks of ice or anything as, as you otherwise see. So typically it's uh When, when you have ice buildup on a turbine, the turbine will stop operating and then it'll slide off and fall right at the base of the turbine. So, you know, you mentioned the wildlife part up in my area, you know, now the bald eagles are back, you know, we're having a lot of that. I mean, obviously you put in there is more birds are killed by cats, but yet there's several million cats, so I don't know that that's really and not as many windmills, but, uh, you know, the other day I saw the Eagles back again. And so, uh, you know, that's an issue. up there in my area. I don't know if the duck issue is going to be an issue down there, uh, the fire danger part, I mentioned that. I know in your area, it's a little bit different. I mean, in our areas, if you look at your one slide up there, if you put them on the mountain in green forest, especially when you have to dry, and we're in our dry season right now. People don't think that up there our dry season in the winter with all the leaves and everything, you know, our road structure to get in there and fight a fire if it is, no matter what it's caused by. I mean, if we just have a road into the windmill, but yet, There is a lot of burnable stuff real quick during our dry season and our real fire departments are just as taxed as they can be right now with lack of volunteers and hard, so explain the fire danger and can air tankers get in and put these things out, so, so first off, you know, it's very, very rare that a wind turbine will start on fire. Uh, there's not a lot of flammable, uh, stuff within a turban typically as you get about. 90 L of uh gear oil in there, you know, naturally, which is enclosed right within in the cell, uh, there are fire suppression units within turbines, um, so, you know, first off is very, very seldom that that even happens, but in the event that a wind turbine does happen, really the protocol is to, you know, and we, we have conversation with the fire department, etc. and do some training on that is to basically containment, right? Just, just show up and uh contain. in the area and make sure fire doesn't spread in the event that, that if something were to happen, um, then you just stay, stay around the turban and uh make sure it doesn't, uh, spread outward, but you know, fire is, is. Natural with anything, right? You build a house, you got a fire risk, um, it's, it's just. It's just the way it is, but there's, there's just not a lot to burn up there, so just let the gear oil burn out and, and that's it. Well, I'm not worried about that, but if there is a fire or lightning hits it or something, you know, it starts right there. It could, it could cause massive amount of damage were in Cross County or, you know, some type of rolling that you can get in there with trucks or do something, so, uh, that's a bigger issue up there right. Let me ask you one last question and we'll go to Center Love and then Senator Caldwell. Uh, so, If you're looking at this map and up here, it looks like the prime even, I didn't really realize this even more than East Arkansas. It goes along this, uh. Area through uh. Uh, Crawford County into Franklin County, Madison County, Carroll County, and they're, uh, you know, that's a big tourism area. And, you know, we, we have some of these states that you have viewways that, uh, is there laws or something in, in the, in these viewways or, or I don't know if it's viewways, but, uh, that don't allow windmills because that might greatly impact our tourism industry up there. Yeah, it's You know, it's, it's interesting you ask that question because I have spent a lot of time in Michigan, for instance, where, um, the thumb of Michigan is, is a very large tourism area and it is also the windiest area. Um, in Michigan, and there are. Thousands of wind turbines, I've personally developed a couple of those projects up in that area, and they actually call it wind tourism because people come from Detroit and other areas out of Ohio to come up and see the turbines, uh, in, in Huron County, Michigan. So I, I don't, I think, you know, some people might look at him and, and, and not like what they look like, but there are a lot of people out there that they think they're pretty cool and actually go out of their way to to see them, so are there, are there areas where they're not permitted because of uh of viewshed. Issue, I'm sure, I'm sure that is likely the case here and there, but I don't know of. Any that any areas in the US that are prohibited, I've never never seen that anywhere. OK. Well, up in my area with the big tourism with all the Buffalo River and, and all of our King's River and all the Mulberry and I thought I, I've not heard the tourism people are very concerned about that. In Vermont, when I was up in Vermont, uh, they put a moratorium on windmills. Is that correct up there? Uh, I've never developed in in it. Well, I, I did hear that they put a moratorium up there in the, uh, Sinner love, you are recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I wanna, I wanna kind of reiterate cause I didn't hear an answer. In regards to the wildlife piece and the, and I know that turbines are put in in the same path of wind and the bird uses it. So talk to me about that, that piece in and of itself. Yeah, so I'll, I'll, I'll first touch on, on the eagle question, so. When wind turbines when they first. When he first, uh, we're being developed in the United States 30 years ago or so in, in California, there was uh the Altamont Pass where they constructed wind turbines right next to each other, just lattice and and basically they built a gauntlet. And those turbans did in fact kill a fair number of bald eagles, uh, I'm, I'm sorry, Golden eagles, uh, for the reason that Golden Eagles when when they hunt, they are flying around looking for the rabbit or the. Squirrel or whatever on the ground and when they're, they're not looking in front of them, so. Those golden eagles were hit in turbans and a lot of them weren't being killed. Um. When projects are not developed, not even close to it, they're they're spread out considerably. I was just mentioning here on County Michigan and in the thumb of Michigan, again, that's surrounded by Lake Huron, there are eagle, um, we would spend a million dollars on each one of these projects. Uh, studying birds and bats and a lot of eagles, we do, the first thing we do with all and all these projects that I mentioned to you, the first thing we do is we hire a company, a third party engineering environmental firm. To go out, no, go out with either helicopters or planes and sometimes even drones and identify every single eagle nest within a project area and even several miles outside of a project area, and then we have to work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to stay away from eagles, right, so bald eagles are not endangered, not in the United States, but there is a federal protection on, on eagles, so we, uh, we take that very seriously. Uh, I've never been involved with a wind project that ever killed a single eagle. Uh, when I think of Huron County, it's probably 1000 wind turbines up there and all the eagles that fly and not aware of any eagles that's ever been killed in that area, so it just doesn't happen very often. Uh, you know, you, you, you had mentioned like waterfall, the when it comes to like ducks and geese or we we hear do hear some concern about that in Arkansas because it is naturally a big uh a big tourism, you know, draws a lot of money to the state. The, the good thing about about ducks and geese is when when they fly, they, they're just going from point A to point B and they're not hunting, so they're all looking straight ahead of them, so it's very rare that we ever kill any ducks or geese waterfall. But really more importantly and actually Simon can probably even touch on this, all of the environmental group the Sierra Clubs, etc. they all strongly support and you can go on their their websites and and look at their, uh, they support wind energy because it's a net positive over nation, so it's it's, you know, occasionally do they kill birds absolutely, but, um, other forms of generation typically will kill more animals, uh, considerably more than stew. OK. All right, um, Mr. Chair, I'll get back in, I'll get back in the queue, um, I'm. Couple of other questions in regards to the the decommissioning. Senator Caldwell, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate, uh, you recognize me. I want to comment on the fact that, uh, uh, most of your project is in my district, uh, Independence County is not, but Woodruff and Cross and Uh, Jackson County is, uh, Senator King, I'm not here to try to talk you into letting these folks come put windmills in, in your district if you don't want them. I understand that. I know the issue up there right now with the, uh, uh, prison that's been announced, uh, in, uh, in Franklin County, uh, in District 10, I have 3 prisons right now and if it were up to me, I'd have 4. I, I would take it in a heartbeat, but again, that's not what I'm here. Uh, I'm here on my own accord. I was not invited to come, uh, but I, I do want to come and talk about, uh. The fact that Cordelia is a, a super, uh, uh, corporate citizen and citizen and, and we're thankful that they're in Cross County have provided many jobs, uh, brought many people in, uh, that shop at our, our restaurants and car dealers and, and grocery stores and then we're very thankful for that, uh, uh, the roads that they build, uh, you did address, uh, Rhodes is much, much better than what the county would ever, uh, build, and so, uh, uh, we're, we're, uh. Super thankful uh for that. But, uh, the fact that, uh, uh, we, we're gonna get a few, uh, permanent, uh, uh, jobs, uh, out of this situation, uh, ASU Newport is in my district. I have all of Jackson County, all of Woodford County, and uh, the fact that they're gonna be a permanent jobs, uh, also there, and the, uh, tax base in revenue that it brings back to the county, to the school. Uh, I was not involved in that. I try to stay in my lane. and uh I did get questions answered for the court, but I did not, uh, go down and try to influence them. Well, that's their, uh, bicycle to pedal and I let them peddle theirs, and, and I stayed in my lane. So, but I, I did want to come in and say that, uh, uh, the only industry, uh, in my district that has any, uh, negative effects and it's very, very minor and that's the aerial applicators that's the crop dusters that we're having to, uh, to make a, a few. Minor adjustments on, and so, uh, I, I, I wish that we had more, uh, you know, if you don't like the aesthetics of it, then, then, you know, you, you deal with that and you vote whichever way you want to, but, uh, the offset here and I, I, I don't have any, uh, uh, uh, financial ties to this company. I, I, I don't have a windmill on my property. I wished I had 8 or 10, you know, I could be mad at you for that, uh, though my property is, is very small, but, uh, uh, uh Most of the landowners around, uh, that wanted them, uh, got them, uh, so to speak, uh, if, if the landowner didn't want it, then, then he didn't have to sign on it. And so, uh, we hear all this, uh, talk in, in the coffee shops about who, who did, who didn't, and, and, but it, uh, again, I know it's on an earlier, uh, uh, slide, it said it takes about a 4-year project from, uh, beginning of, of trying to locate to, to construction, and that's really what it was. I've been on the Energy council here, uh, More than, uh, 4 years and when I first heard that we were gonna get windmills, I said no. Arkansas is not on wind map. We make wind maps just like we make highway maps and river maps and railroad maps, and we weren't on a wind map, but since we go higher and use bigger blades, and guess what, we're on wind maps and the fact that the independence plant and the white bluff plant are shutting down and we've got the transmission lines out there, uh, then y'all have, uh, a transmission lines to send your power down, uh, in, in, in Cross County, uh. We, we have some major solar, uh, farms going in, uh, just outside of my district in Wilson, Arkansas. There's one solar, uh, uh, farm going in over there that's 22,000 acres, 17,000 acres of that is in one spot. So we're taking out 22,000 acres of prime farm ground to put in solars, uh, when we can come back with the windmills and takes out 1.5 or 2 acres per spot. Uh, it really has a very minor, uh, imprint, uh, foot imprint, uh, on, on our. Uh, environment, uh, but again, uh, I'm I'm not trying to talk anyone into, uh, bringing them into their counties if you don't want them, then vote against it, but, uh, as far as, uh, we're concerned in, in Cross County, and what I'm picking up in Woodford Jackson is that we're all looking forward to having those, uh, facilities there and the revenue that comes from it and the job to go along with it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Senator Love, you have another question? Bill, you better take care of Senator Caldwell. No, um, getting back to, to what I was gonna ask in regards to what, what's, what is the life span of a turbine. Uh, 30 years is what we assume. OK, so 30 years you have a 30-year agreement also on the, the land that are and then um. What is you say that you had a bond on. A bond of the the decommissioning agreement, how much is that? How much is that bond? Yes, good, good question. So the way that you usually determine a decommissioning bond amount is we will work with the county to identify a third party engineering firm that they want to use and that we want to use, we pay for that firm to come in and do a decommissioning study, and that's how the bond is set. OK, and, and what goes into the decommissioning a site. Oh, what goes I mean just take taken down, taking down the turbines in and basically you take everything out to a depth of 4 ft below the surface is, is, is standard around the United States. So a lot of times you'll leave cabling in the ground, um, because that's barrier to a depth of 4 to 5 ft in most landowners would prefer that you leave ways because number one is made of copper, which is very expensive, or else aluminum, which is very expensive, so good for them, but, but secondly, they just don't want their ground torn up to to take it out. You don't have drain tile in this area as much, but you have a lot of precision grading and uh to disturb that surface to to take out some cabling just doesn't make sense, but otherwise, everything else is uh OK in And is there any, any residual as far as batteries or any, you know, like what goes into the trans the transmitting of the The wind energy. I mean, besides the cabling, is there any batteries, anything there's, there's no batteries, um, you know, a lot of projects now you will pair a battery with like a wind project or a solar project, right, to, to, to, to grab that, that energy and store it, um, but, but for your typical wind project, no, you typically don't have batteries. You'll, you have the generator itself, you have transformers, and then you have the cabling that connects everything. Uh, until you get to a project substation about it there, you know, they're, they're very technical machines, but really they're, they're pretty simple because they just spin it. OK. And Senator Love to follow up on your bird question, one of the things I learned in, uh, meetings with county judges is uh the turbines turned mostly in Arkansas at night, uh, that's when the wind picks up at that level. And so, uh, birds typically aren't flying around at night. Ducks, geese aren't flying around at night, um, eagles aren't, they're not hunting at night as often, maybe some owls, but, uh, so that, that, uh, decreases, uh, the chance of a bird being destroyed by a windmill as well and it also, uh, to the noise issue, obviously, uh, there's less noise, uh, I mean, that night when, yeah, I had to actually look up what 50 decibels would sound like, and it was like a like a normal conversation or whatever, so that was that wasn't bad. I was, I was really, you know, it's far less than that. So if you go home, uh, you're re, your refrigerator usually operates about 50 decibels. So yeah, that. still is pretty, it's pretty nice, right, and you know, to, to, to comment on on Bill's comment really quickly too about that wind turbine spin at nighttime, where, where that's also very important is when it comes to aerial application so. A wind project in Arkansas, for instance, is going to operate maybe 35% of the time when that blade is gonna be spinning with the majority of that. Happening at nighttime. Um, and also when you have the highest winds, so when you apply, uh, pesticides, etc. you always do it when it's at least windy out, right? So the odds of that, you know, and, and you don't apply it at nighttime when, when usually you, you don't, these projects don't impact the aerial app in there in the windows, windiest times of the year, so. And and and also by the way, as Simon had mentioned earlier too, most of the, the, the soldiers, the, the real good years for producing energy, the good months, most of that is from like October to. to march. So in the in the springtime and in the summertime when you're applying the, the chemicals is probably the worst. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. OK, we talked about the federal subsidy part. I mean, just a general thing, uh, trying to understand this. So each windmill that goes up costs, I don't know, 100,000 or 10,000 or whatever it is. How much of that is, is subsidized by the taxpayers to go, or how much of this industry is subsidized because that's what happened with the LM, uh, situation. I mean, you know, once the subsidies and all that stuff ran out, guess what? It, it all went south after that for a while. And then, of course, change in administration in Congress and. Things go, you know, the needle keeps going back and forth in DC whether we want to, you know, lock which side gets in or not. So, uh, typically how much is federally subsidized in a windmill. If you had to say 30%, 80%, what is it? Well, I guess it depends on your, on your definition of a subsidy, so we don't receive any dollars. We don't receive any, we don't receive any cents, um, I've been in this industry for 18 years and never received a single dollar from federal or state. So we're no direct money coming into the industry. The only really subsidy that exists or production tax credits or income tax credits, right? And, and it really depends on a company that's gonna own and operate them and if they really have a tax appetite if, if they, if I should say, uh. I'm sorry, uh, if they have a real tax need, then, then potentially they can take advantage of that, otherwise, most companies out there will bring in tax equity, uh, which means there's gonna be companies like banks, for instance, Bank of America has a has a huge tax uh tax burden on them, right? So they will invest in renewable energy projects and uh and then we, we basically almost sell into that, that, that their ability to come in, so to, to some extent it's, it's really just a. production tax credit for those that need it and uh as far as what is it worth, you know, potentially about $30 a megawatt hour right now for a production tax credit, one of the 30% for ITC. So it's uh it's, you know, yes, it, it does absolutely help help the industry, no doubt, um, all forms of generation receive tax credits, so it's uh. You know, a lot of times it's uh. You know, life would be easier if you just didn't have these sex is my, this is Bradley was speaking at Cordellio Power here, by the way, but uh it's, uh, you know, it, it's, it's just a part, part of the industry, but it really has helped the industry grow, it is really helped drop the price of wind energy when I first got in this industry when energy was $115 a megawatt hour. And because of the tax credits, it is really. Increase your ability to. Uh, make these turbines so much more efficient in, and in turn really dropped. Do you want to add any more to that at all? No, um, yeah, I was Brad was saying there's kind of two different tax credits that the industry can use, and these are available to as far as I understand, all zero emission uh resources starting next year, that's the production tax credit, uh, which is the complicated one, and it, it depends on how much you produce, so if you produce more clean energy, you get more of a tax credit, uh, and then the other one is a lot more simple. It's the investment tax credit where it's just a 30%, uh, reduction in, in, in your total uh taxes for the, the particular project. Most wind developers will use the production tax credit. We're expecting that nuclear will also use the production tax credit because you will produce more, uh more revenue over time using that, whereas solar has historically used the investment tax credit, which again is about a 30% reduction and you can actually get, uh, the, the, there's a, uh, federal tax credit that you can get for your household, um, if you put solar on your rooftop for a 30%. uh for when or for wind, for solar, for batteries as well. Well, I mean, when I bought my house, I looked into that. So it's, it's not a subsidy, I'm sorry, but it's a credit. But this carbon credit. All that's in the mix with these companies and your investors and everything else, and you know, to your, to your question about the new administration coming in. I wanted to just touch on that for a moment. You know, the When When President Trump was was first elected, um, you know, we didn't know what the industry would look like, but at the end of his 4 years, uh, there's actually more renewable energy megawatts built in 4 years under Trump and there wasn't 8 years under Obama. He really didn't do anything to slow the industry down, a matter of fact, you know, in, in, in those four years too, there was no other subsidies other than what we're speaking of today, the production tax credit, income tax credit. Matter of fact, the final year of that program was in 2019 in the Trump administration actually extended that program in additional year so you could take advantage of those production tax credits, so, um, you know, people would, would have thought that, that. He would have done the opposite with Dent. He would very much supported it and it also really, you know, rolled back some of the, the red tape in regard to uh sighting turbines and permitting turbines on federal ground and stuff like that, uh, rolled back to it's called NEPA, which is a federal standard for, for developing on federal land, etc. So it made things build these projects. Um, the other thing that is you, we all have to keep in mind is that, you know, 85% of all renewable energy projects, so you have a a lot of, uh, a a lot of folks like you that are, are representing their landowners who are really, you know, the landowners get paid very well if you have a turban or you're near a turbine, etc. like that. So there's a lot of incentives in the, in the red areas in the United States to keep these, these programs going. The other, the other thing too is that part of the production tax credits do include like uh uh like a 10% increase if you use domestic content, which we do everything we possibly can to use domestic content, which is why we buy in turbines out of Colorado. Um, so there's, there's a lot of incentive to keep a program like that in place because you know, you don't, they, there's very few wind turbines, blades, towers, etc. that are bought outside of the United States. I don't, I don't know of any projects that have been built. In the last 5, 10 years that I'm aware of where, where turbans came from overseas, so, um, I don't, I really don't see that they're going to, uh, pair much of that back. I mean, we, we don't know, none of us know, but I would be very surprised if, uh, if things didn't I just mentioned the Clean Line project, you know, the Keystone pipeline, the, these typically news hits that you're getting out there about like where it starts and stops, like I said, just looking at in the past history in Arkansas about the LM that went in and, and received subsidies. And then that went out and like I said, you know, Senator Caldwell's area and my area is totally different. I mean, the pore up there, the roads, you run the roads on, on, you know, flat out rock up there, uh, you know, it's not typically a straighter roads going in and out, the fire danger, you know, you go into the tourism aspect of coming in up there. I know Mr. Bethel was with the PSC whenever they tried to put a transmission line through, uh, Eureka Springs over there. So, uh, and he was not invited to be, uh, at the, uh. Grand Marshal at the Saint Patrick's Day parade over there after going through that, but, uh, so anyway, I'm typically at my 1.5 hour limit, total limit. And so what I was going to do is to be fair, is, uh, like I said, I've tried to do this a year ago, to start the discussion, and it just never happened down here. So, anybody knows me is I'm just gonna go ahead and do what I can wear. So we're gonna work on, I've talked to different people in other states about having the other side of the argument to this and, and then once it does that, turn it over to the big guy over here, Chairman Johnson. to uh Let his, uh, energy committee, which I'm a member now, I will be a member of it. So, uh, anyway, uh, do you guys have any, uh, well, the contracts with the individuals out there. Are they thirty-year contracts, 10-year contracts, eight-year contracts, or what are they? really depends on a project, uh, the one that we purchased in, in Cross County, I think, I think that was a fifty-year contract, which is what 50, it's usually 30 years minimum with 2 10-year extensions is pretty standard around the United States. Uh. And and that's just in the event that you were to repower a project, but, you know, turbines don't typically are only gonna be good for about 30. OK. And just remember in Carroll County, I think the, the cross the Ozarks statue in Eureka, I think is only about 65 ft tall, so you're gonna be much taller than, than, than Jesus there in Carroll County when you're putting these up. So, uh, Anyway, uh, but I mean, and I don't know where the project's at up there right now. Like I said, my brother's on the corn court and it's still being resolved and will continue to be a monthly issue at the Quorum Court up there is, I think so. Anyway, uh, do you guys have anything else you wanna add? And we're gonna get the staff back there with the attorney to try and figure out the tax issue. I'm really curious about that and funding our schools and our roads and all that. Um, so, uh. Uh, do you have anything else you wanna add, you know, if you have any additional questions or if or if we can help you out with the tax issue at all, you know, please, uh, feel free to. Reach out to Mr. McSpadden, uh, reach out to us and we'll do all that we can to help out. OK. Do you care if I share your contact information with the chairman over here and he can, because he's gonna be, uh, jumping at the head here in about a month and a half. So, uh, anyway, all right, was anybody else got anything Oh, Senator Caldwell, you recognize. Punch me on. OK, thank you. Uh, I wanted to add one thing about the contract, Senator King, that they have, uh, basically they have a base rate pay, uh, uh, annual pay plus production. So, uh, the more wind that they produce, the more they get paid. I just, when, when you ask about the 30-year contract, so just to throw that in, let you know how that works. Thank you. Yes, sir. And again, I'm disappointed I don't have 8 or 10 of them. Yeah. Well, just know that, you know, windmill solar was not an issue, certainly when I got elected back almost 20 years ago. And so cryptoine, no, I mean, prisons were talked about up there. There's some places up there that want them. It's just, uh, people don't like it popped on them. So if thereen Caldwell. So, uh, we're a hill folk, like uh, you know, we like to operate a little differently up there. Yeah. So, uh, anyway, uh, if nobody has any questions, uh, we will stand adjourned and Mr. uh, Gillam here. We'll get in touch with you and we'll try and, I'm still curious, like I said about this tax issue, we'll share contact information with Chairman Johnson, and we'll just go from there. Alright, thank you. Thank you.