Our Agency

State of Iowa Iowa
Energy Center Board
Meeting Minutes of February 20, 2020
Iowa Economic Development Authority/IFA
1963 Bell Avenue, Suite 200, Helmick Conference Room
Des Moines, Iowa

Call to order 1:00 p.m.

Board Members Present
Timothy Whipple, Board Chairperson Debi Durham Stuart Anderson Robert Berntsen Jenae Jenison Valerie Newhouse Dan Nickey Joel Schmidt Geri Huser* Gul Kremer* Rick Olesen*

Board Members Absent
Jennifer Johnson Nathan Young

Iowa Economic Development Authority Staff Present
Brian Selinger Amber Buckingham Stephanie Weisenbach Shelly Peterson Ryan Young MK Anderson Terry Roberson Kristin Hanks-Bents Lisa Connell Jessica O’Riley Alaina Santizo Maicie Pohlman Betty Hessing Vicky Clinkscales

Others Present
Deb Grooms, Iowa Propane Gas Association Craig Markley, IDOT Dave Lyons, City of Dubuque Chaz Allen, Iowa Utilities Association Brenda Biddle, Iowa Utilities Board Paul Ovrom, Iowa Department of Ag & Land Stewardship

*Participated via teleconference

Welcome & Introductions by Board Chairperson
Timothy Whipple

Roll Call by Betty Hessing, Administrative Assistant
A quorum was established, as all Board Members were present except Jennifer Johnson and Nathan Young.

Consideration of November 6, 2019, Meeting Minutes
Motion by Motion Second Voice Vote Stuart Anderson I move approval of the November 6, 2019, minutes. Dan Nickey All ayes in favor. Motion approved.

Public Comment Period – No comments.

Fiscal Update (Attachment A)
Presentation provided by Terry Roberson. No questions or comments were made.

Alternate Energy Revolving Loan Projects
Stephanie Weisenbach stated the Board has three projects to vote on today. We opened this last application cycle on November 21, 2019. We made changes to application to ensure we added more clarity to the instructions for the applicants. We also held a webinar to convey application instructions. More IEDA & IFA staff are involved in the review process. The applications were due January 6, 2020. We have established quarterly deadlines for the remainder of 2020, that sync up with the amount of time we need for application review. After we received the applications, we had almost $1.3M in requests and these three are on agenda today. We looked at completeness and eligibility; we looked at the applicant detail to assess their ability to pay and any associated risks; we looked at the collateral for eligibility and ensured it was appropriate for the loan that was being considered. We looked at project specific details and risks relating to issues such as energy production, return investment and cash flow. We provided information to the Loan Committee and they met this morning to come-up with recommendations on these loan projects. No questions or comments were made.

KSB Solar, LLC -– 164.63 kW Solar Project (Attachment B)
Roll Call Yes: 10 No: 0 Abstain: 1 (Joel Schmidt) Motion approved.

Nova Properties, LLC — 950 kW Solar Plus Battery Storage Property (Attachment C)
Roll Call Yes: 10 No: 0 Abstain: 1 (Joel Schmidt) Motion approved.

RNR Solar, LLC – 167.17 kW Solar Project (Attachment D)
Roll Call Yes: 10 No: 0 Abstain: 1 (Joel Schmidt) Motion approved.

Grant Program Grant Program Update — Presentation provided (Attachment E)
Amber Buckingham gave an update on the Grant Program. She explained we have seven open grants out of the twenty-three grants we inherited. All but two of those are slated to close this year. All will be closed by December 31, 2021. One will close September 30, 2020, and the last one closes December 31, 2021. Ms. Buckingham asked if there were any questions on the general status of the Grant Program and there were no questions.

Amber Buckingham moved on to the Policies and Procedures Handbook Amendments presentation. Staff recommendation would be to approve those amendments to the Policies and Procedures Handbook.

Grant Program Policies and Procedures Board Report (Attachment F)
Geri Huser asked if anywhere in that process, is there any points or any review towards compliance with regulatory provisions. Amber Buckingham replied there is nothing in particular in the Grant procedures that addresses that. It’s in the contract. Timothy Whipple asked if any applicants are directly subject to regulations. Geri Huser replied that all the solar projects that are over a certain amount would be required to at least notify, if not apply for a TCU. Timothy Whipple asked if any of the criteria for the Grant Application—would people building those projects be applying for these grants? Amber Buckingham replied she didn’t believe so because we don’t allow private asset development in the installation of solar arrays on the grant side. Geri Huser thanked Amber Buckingham for the answer. Timothy Whipple stated that Geri Huser’s question was relevant to the loan projects which we just approved, particularly the Nova Properties, LLC project. Timothy Whipple asked Stephanie Weisenbach to investigate that. Stephanie Weisenbach stated they discussed a similar topic at the Loan Committee meeting today. Stephanie will follow-up with Geri Huser and IUB staff.

Approve Amended Grant Program Policies and Procedures and Procedures Handbook (Attachment G)
Motion by Dan Nickey Motion I move to approve the amended Grant Program Policies and Procedures Handbook. Second Valerie Newhouse Roll Call Yes: 11 No: 0 Motion approved.

Amber Buckingham reviewed the IEC Grant Program Round Two timelines. We’re looking at the August 6, 2020, meeting for award decisions. The next steps here that we have are we will open the IowaGrants portal for preapplications today, now that you have approved those Policies and Procedures. We will also load all the information into IowaGrants on our website, so applicants will have access to both the Policies and Procedures and the Preapplication Guide. Pre-applications do close on March 19th and our Grant Committee is meeting on April 22nd and hopefully for the selected participants, the full application for them will be open on April 23rd . Amber Buckingham asked 4 if there were any questions and there were none.

Propane Supply Challenges & Propane Dashboard
Craig Markley—Modeling, Forecasting & Telemetrics with the Grant Programs Team at the IDOT, gave a presentation. URL for Mr. Markley’s presentation is iowa.propanestats.com. (Attachment I)

Deb Grooms, CEO, Iowa Propane Gas Association, gave a presentation. (Attachment H)

Dubuque Fleet Electrification with Local Renewables & Storage (Attachment J) Dave Lyons, Sustainable Innovation Consultant, with the Greater Dubuque Development Corporation, gave a presentation.

Three things Dubuque hopes to come back to IEC with—(1) What project works in Dubuque and why? (2) How can that project replicate in other communities that are already starting to think about this? and (3) Are there policy or regulatory issues that we need to address as we go through this to reduce the period of time necessary for a City or a private sector entity to get a good return on its investment to electrification?

Joel Schmidt, Vice President of Business Development with Alliant Energy, focused back on Alliant working with Dubuque and stated there is always a number of innovation projects. This one was an increased economic electric globe with electrification transportation. Dubuque seems like a community that is ready to continue the discussion on this and so we’re working with them and moving to the next level on projects.

Debi Durham asked Brian to share the Energy’s Office perspective on this project.

Brian Selinger stated that from the Energy Office’s perspective, we’re approached with this very intriguing concept—you can see it as Dave has articulated it—but we also really value those partnerships and have seen that with Alliant and the City of Dubuque—we’re fortunate to have resources, whether that’s the Energy Center/the Energy Office has some other things, but our money can only go so far, so we would like to try and do these replicable models and so ours is going to be more of the assessment—work out what are the barriers—what are the solutions—so we thought we could play that part in this and others can take it further and then maybe there will be something to be gleaned for other communities. We were glad to play a piece of this supportive puzzle.

Dave Lyons said that was a piece, as a consultant part, that we appreciated. I came charging in thinking I was going to turn-in an application to the Iowa Energy Center for a Grant, but it quickly became clear in a conversation that it would be really good if Dubuque had a strong feasibility study done ahead of time with all the proformas attached and the partners in-place and we can help you with that. Dubuque will be back, but I do appreciate the fact that when we 5 came through the door, the answer wasn’t “no”. The answer was “not yet, but let us help you to get there”.

Debi Durham stated this is a great example of why it makes sense for the Energy Center to be here with the Energy Office because these are not Energy Center funds we used; they were the Energy Office funds. Obviously, we see the line of site between the two and we do see value in the project, but you were not ready to come forth as a grant. We are seeing more of the synergy of having both entities located here with our team.

Other Business - Director’s Updates
Debi Durham reported the Energy Office is very busy. Some of the things we’re hoping for this year is to do a pilot program with an ethanol plant. Obviously, we need to look for new revenue streams right now. It will be at least one pilot project; we would still like to do another different kind of model. This one will bring in the pork producers and try to figure out how you monetize this—it’s not so much monetizing it for the ethanol center, but how do we help the farmer with transporting the manure etc.. We have a lot of moving parts, but we’re working through that.

The other thing we’re working on with the Energy Office, as well as with the SRF funding, which we do here as well—the Sewer & Water and Revolving Loan—is really looking at propping up an R&D facility where we can test new biological processes in real life theater and get IDNR more comfortable with these new technologies. I am of the belief that we are overbuilding so much of our infrastructure in the State and we overbuild it because we have such a strong regulatory mindset. If you misstep on the download, that creates problems, but yet, we really analyzed it to say that there are a lot of other States—Colorado being one—who really value their environment and are doing more and more technology and innovation, which would move down the cost of a lot of these facilities that we’re requiring.

Debi Durham stated that she was vocal regarding that the loan needs to be restructured, but was told by IEDA’s attorney, that we do not have the authority to do that and it would take a legislative change to do that. The plan will be that we will be prepared to go to the legislature next year and talk about how we believe that this loan program should be more retrofitted. We will include stakeholders in conversation about legislation.

Brian Selinger encouraged the Board members to send people our way so we can have conversations regarding innovative projects, and we can have better understanding and perhaps refer projects that are better suited for Energy Office resources or the Energy Center or other State agencies, such as the IDOT. Final thing on Energy Storage in particular, it’s the first action item of our Energy Storage Committee and Action Plan—we issued an RFP and that period has closed and we’ve selected a firm to produce this and are working on a contract. They have done economic development storage assessments for other States and we thought they could hit the ground running. We already have a Form Committee and we are going to continue that. We have a vision that not only will they present their findings to that Committee, but I would like them to come to the Energy Center Board and convey what that looks like.

What is the potential; what are the barriers; what are the opportunities? We’re pushing to try to have that done in the Fall.

Chairperson Whipple stated he looks forward to re-designing the Loan Program, sitting on a Loan Committee and looking at some of these applications. Not that they’re bad projects, but the program that we have is thirty years old and things have changed in the marketplace; the private sector knows how to finance these. It’s time to take a sizeable pot of money that this organization has and put it into something of today.

Next Quarterly Board Meeting May 21, 2020, at 1:00 p.m. at IEDA/IFA, 1963 Bell Ave., Suite 200, Helmick Conference Room, Des Moines, Iowa Adjourn 2:20 p.m.

Respectfully Submitted, Betty Hessing, Administrative Assistant