Good, Thoughtful Hosts #405: Energy Districts and the Power to Move Forward

Episodes transcribed by AI and proofed for accuracy and spelling by our team.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Energy districts, low carbon infrastructure, closed loop systems, geothermal energy, data centers, heat pumps, ambient temperature loop, district energy, energy efficiency, decarbonization, Montana State University, small modular reactors, heat recovery, energy modeling, renewable energy.

Sarah Steimer 00:08
Hi, folks. This is Sarah Steimer, and welcome to another episode of Good, Thoughtful Hosts. As we continue on this season’s theme of being at the forefront today, we’re exploring energy districts. Much like civil engineering, which we discussed previously, energy districts have been around for a long time, but there’s a lot that’s new, making it a future-forward option for communities, campuses, and more. Modern energy districts are often low-carbon infrastructures that pool the heating, cooling, and power needs of multiple buildings. As time goes on, more buildings can be added to the district system with energy production centralized and distribution efficient and cost effective. And it’s not just for new builds: Older facilities can be added to the mix, helping them meet modern efficiency standards and carbon reduction goals. Today, we’ll discuss some innovations in energy districts, such as closed-loop systems and geothermal energy, and we’ll also explore future opportunities, including how the heat generated by data centers could be a major new energy source. Plus, we’ll look at the example set by Montana State University and Cushing Terrell.

Producer 01:38
Today’s special guests:

Alex Russell 01:41
I’m Alex Russell. I am director of energy services at Cushing Terrell.

Tim Johnson 01:45
I’m Tim Johnson, director of sustainability.

Sarah Steimer 01:50
Great. Well, thank you both so much for joining us today. So we are going to talk about something that I think is really, really interesting. I don’t know a ton about it myself. I actually thought this was kind of newer, until I started digging in. But we’re going to be talking about energy districts, or district energy. Just kind of walk me through, Tim, if you would.

Tim Johnson 02:12
Really it’s as simple as a single system serving multiple buildings. And we’re usually talking about thermal energy here, which usually means heating systems and sometimes cooling systems too. But folks were heating campuses back in the turn of the century, late 1800s, 1900s with with steam systems. So this, yeah, like you say, this isn’t a new thing.

Sarah Steimer 02:37
What are, what are maybe, what’s the new version? So, like you said steam systems for, you know, way back in the day. And you know, what are we looking at today, maybe?

Tim Johnson 02:45
Yeah, so back in the day, we’re talking steam. And over the years, that temperature has kind of dropped, and so a lot of the more modern systems are hot water. And what we’re pushing for these days is an ambient temperature so just, we call it a condenser water loop. So we can tap into it with all sorts of new resources, heating systems, data centers. And then on the, on the building side, we can use high-efficiency heat pumps to heat and cool buildings off of that and that ambient temperature loop. And there’s really no heat losses off of an ambient temperature loop, where as steam, there’s a lot of heat lost, and steam losses. This is a low-pressure, low-temperature system.

Sarah Steimer 03:28
We got a little smarter as time went on. So Alex, can you maybe walk me through a little bit, when we’re talking about the district, perhaps that is using this energy? Who is using it? You know, is this a city? Is this a campus? You know, give me an idea of what a district might be.

Alex Russell 03:43
A little bit all the above. It’s it’s any series of connected buildings or assets that could potentially benefit from the use of that thermal energy. As Tim alluded to, in the late 1800s those original energy districts were primarily cities or portions of cities being served by steam systems. Over time that’s evolved to include any sort of campus-look at that. So hospital campuses, college, university campuses, and obviously communities have continued to utilize those in a myriad of ways. But as we’ve continued to progress, we’re starting to see communities use them on a like a planned subdivision level. So if you can get in early and implement some of this infrastructure, you can see residential houses using these, for example. So the utilization for energy districts is widespread.

Sarah Steimer 04:38
So I want to talk a little bit more too, about the why. And then, you know, we can jump into, why would someone want to consider this? Why would a district want to consider this? But what’s, what’s sort of the benefits of doing something like this? You know, I understand maybe not wanting to rely on a larger grid that could fall apart. I imagine that has to be one of the reasons. But is it also about, well, you’ve already got this extra excess energy. Why not use it? Give me, give me some reasons why you would create an energy district. And Tim, I’ll start with you.

Tim Johnson 05:08
Sure. It creates one central set of mechanical equipment so maintenance folks can go to that one spot and maintain things. It also gives us a little bit of economies of scale. When we’re building things out, it levels the load normally. When we’re sizing for a single building, the load swings up and down. When we add in multiple buildings, the load is diversified a little bit so that the peak a little bit lower. And when we, especially with newer data or newer newer districts, we can, we can share heat. And so when one building is in heating, another might be in cooling, and those loads kind of offset, making a very efficient system. What’d I miss, Alex?

Alex Russell 05:53
I think you hit most of the big ones for me. I always go back to, I’ll say, the evolution of what this is when you think about how heat was produced early stage, whether that was fuel oil or coal, in some instances, at a building level, we were burning a fossil fuel, finite resource to produce this energy. And you might have multiple buildings side by side that we’re all heating and cooling simultaneously, cooling obviously coming a little bit later in the timeline. As we’ve, we’ve evolved, some of our urban centers have sprawled out to suburbs and things like that, our campuses have dissimilar building types in close adjacency. What that gives us is an opportunity to consider those buildings instead of a net consumer, if you will. They can be a producer. They can be an asset. So when one building, maybe is in, is in cooling, is taking rejected heat from that building and potentially passing that along to a building in close adjacency to it that could use it. So when I think about the benefit of that, it’s starting to look at these, these, the built environment, I guess, if you will, as not just a net detractor, but as a benefit, as an asset, and starting to look at that larger scale of things and say, How can we positively move this energy around that benefits the most users?

Tim Johnson 07:12
Yeah, I’m sitting here in in Boise — great example of a district system. Back in — I did a little bit of digging into the the system I’m essentially sitting on top of here — 1892 is when they put in the first geothermal district in Boise, serving Warm Springs District, which is the east end of downtown Boise, with renewable energy, hot water straight out of the ground, serves 350 homes. And even from what I understand, a geothermal pool, and about 100 years later, they went in, and not quite 100 years, put in another one that serves the downtown, serves our capitol building, Boise State University. So I thought that was a pretty interesting precedent. And you know, we’re trying to connect geothermal to a lot of our our district systems these days. But another example of how this has been done for a long time and sustainably done for a long time.

Sarah Steimer 08:09
Yeah, this is, by the way, we’re recording this after the Thanksgiving weekend. I feel like we’re, this is like, also great for, like, shop local, shop small. Keep it local. Keep it small. So I want to get an idea then, you know, we’re already kind of digging into this a little bit, who is this right for? You know, you mentioned some of the different people who would use it. But, you know what, what sort of organization, what sort of group should consider something like this? Or maybe it’s location-based.

Tim Johnson 08:38
Yeah I mean, I think any, we kind of alluded to it already, any any owner of large property, several buildings, communities are ideal. It takes someone with a good maintenance group. Now this is something that has to be well maintained and proactively cared for. We’re not talking a package system that just sits on the roof and you call in a maintenance contractor, necessarily. This is something that you maintain and grow over, over decades. I think that’s the that can be one of the challenges is that it’s maybe not the lowest first cost, because it does take some inference, infrastructure improvements and some substantial upfront cost in tunnels and piping and larger systems. But over the long term, it’ll save the owner money through maintenance, through energy, and having that infrastructure in is a pretty big deal for maintenance staff.

Sarah Steimer 09:49
So the examples where you said that you kind of dug back a little bit, you know, you mentioned that these upfront costs, of course, can be a little bit difficult, but when it comes to building on what already exists, Tim, can you explain that? You know, because if these are systems where many of them started in, what did you say that, you know, 1892 — that wasn’t super recent. How does that get maintained? Or how do you sort of build on that?

Tim Johnson 10:17
Yeah, great question. And in Boise, the newer district, which is downtown, serving commercial buildings, it was installed with all metal pipe of various areas. And so occasionally we’ll get geysers, which is hot water just spurting out of the roads. Because these, this infrastructure does age, and it’ll it’ll fail. And so over the years, Boise has come in, and as they’re improving streets, they’ll go in and they’ll replace piping with newer pipe. And so they essentially run that district throughout downtown. When a new building comes up or remodel an existing building comes in, the city will bring that utility essentially to the front door like any other utility, and then it’s up to the building owner to connect that to their building and then pay utility rates. So they really set it up as a dedicated utility, just like a power company or water company or something like that.

Sarah Steimer 11:17
Gotcha. So, you know, we’re already starting to talk about the now, so how we sort of update these things, how we move in that direction? So let’s talk about looking ahead, because that’s definitely something that we wanted to focus on with this season of the podcast. So yes, even though this whole concept of the energy district or district energy is not new, by that same token, it’s not as though there aren’t updates happening, there aren’t new ways of doing this, and we did already touch on it a bit. So can you, Alex, maybe tell me a little bit about what is new right now, or what could be desirable about them in this moment?

Alex Russell 11:55
Yeah, I think Tim hit on something earlier, when he was acknowledging the it’s being referred to as the fifth generation of these energy districts, or fifth generation of heat pumps, the methodology of moving ambient fluid temperature, say, condenser water loop, that is, that is near an ambient condition from a temperature perspective. So we’re not creating steam at a high temperature, high pressure. We’re not creating hot water at a at an elevated temperature and a high pressure. We’re literally just moving neutral temperature fluid around a district and then utilizing high efficiency heat pumps at each individual building that’s connected to that district to provide the appropriate hot water and chilled water for that building, very specific to their needs. And what this allows us to do is we’re not overheating or over-cooling that condenser water loop, and we’re able to utilize other assets to help provide that energy initially. So this would be geoexchange, or geothermal coupling with that, again, it’s operating at low pressure, so our pumping energy is less to move that water around. That’s probably the biggest development we’ve seen in the last five years. The other thing that’s coming along that that we’re seeing is a huge benefit, as these systems can be fairly complicated from a connection and a control perspective, how do we make sure that we’ve got appropriate temperature at each one of those connected points? The modeling is catching up, so the the energy modeling and the predictive modeling to understand how we get energy in and out of this, this condenser water loop, this energy district, so that it’s appropriate for each of those end uses, has come a long way, and it’s continuing to evolve, and I’m really excited to see where it’s going to go in the next several years, because one of the things we’ve run into is just limitations to understand when we bring on geo assets to trim the field, if we get into a condition where the water is too cold or too hot, how do we appropriately inject or reject temperature gradient across that district to make it appropriate for end use. So that’s probably the biggest advance, is just the heat pump technology itself and then the modeling to stand it up.

Tim Johnson 14:11
Another trend that we’re seeing and paying a lot of attention to is the data center boom. As they’re popping up all over the country, there’s a lot of cooling needed at those data centers, which means a lot of heat produced. And if we can get those connected into a central condenser loop, we can use that heat for heating buildings and improve the efficiency of both the data centers and the other buildings on the, on the district.

Sarah Steimer 14:39
I’m thrilled that you brought up data centers, because I know the big conversation around them, of course, has been more issues than potential benefits that we can bring from them. And I’m in an area where I definitely saw my electric bill go up as a result of some recent builds. So the idea that this could then put, be put back into a district, I think a lot of people would be thrilled to hear. I’m curious: So you mentioned the strides made in modeling when you talked about how, yes, the upfront costs of an energy district could be fairly high, but the payoff down the line is a big deal. That sort of ability to model better is that part of the argument that you are able to offer a potential client when it comes to, okay, well, yeah, we have to make this big investment — how can we tell it’s going to pay off? Is it that ability to kind of go like, well, we know we can kind of show you, is that part of anything that you could provide someone?

Tim Johnson 15:37
Yeah, I think that’s exactly it, is that we can better model the diversity of loads and buildings based on what we’re seeing in our buildings now and some of the trend data we have, and then model the, let’s say, a ground connection, the geo exchange — and really do that quickly. We can look at a whole bunch of different scenarios and tell them what the capacity to meet the load might be, and what the diversity looks like when buildings are simultaneously heating and cooling, where the dominant load conditions are, and look at lots of scenarios really quickly, I think is the is the big piece there. Where, in the past, we would try to try to guess at what the right answer is, and then maybe look at the loads and model that specific instance. But now we can look at a lot of options and make the best choice.

Alex Russell 16:32
And modeling allows us to be more strategic with our designs too. It allows us to right-size things. So when we’re talking about one of the biggest impediments to energy districts that first cost we can use modeling to show appropriate pipe sizing, potentially do life cycle cost analysis and first cost modeling to understand what appropriate materials to use for that piping when we’re sizing things like the geo assets, the geo exchange assets, we can understand how big to make those geo fields if we need trimming equipment, things to reject heat or inject heat that use energy or fossil fuels to provide that input or that export, we can size that appropriately, understand how many hours we may need to utilize that throughout the year. So the modeling is very important from not just understanding the performance of it is, as Tim alluded to, but also understanding the cost and how to appropriately design it to make us better and more efficient at putting that system in play.

Sarah Steimer 17:29
Well, so speaking of efficiency too, can you tell me a little bit about how these energy districts can help with the effort to decarb?

Tim Johnson 17:38
Sure. So the traditional energy districts were using usually fossil fuels for heat, and when we — modern ones are usually natural gas — started with coal way back when. But the natural gas generally has a combustion efficiency of 80 to 90% depending on your system type, older ones are probably running even lower than that. When we run with a heat pump, and especially when we’re sharing loads between buildings or using geothermal, we can get up to 4- or 500% efficiency. And really, efficiency isn’t quite the right word there, but we get, say, five times the amount of energy that we put in because we’re taking that heat from other sources and putting it into our buildings. So energy reduction, this also makes the nearly, or could be, 100% electric system, and so as the grid continues to clean up with renewable energy, it really helps in decarbonization plans, taking fossil fuels off the off the system, and heading towards a really efficient electric system.

Sarah Steimer 18:46
Got it. And also, I don’t know why I called it decarb. I was, you guys probably don’t ever shorten it to that. And I’m like, I will sound like I’m in the biz. I’m sure this is fine.

Tim Johnson 18:57
We decarb all the time.

Sarah Steimer 18:58
So, really? Oh, good. I’m one of you. So I wanted to talk a little bit about an example. So I know a project that you guys have been working on has been with MSU, and they’ve been using some super cutting edge work. Their solutions are just kind of at this forefront that we’re talking about. Can you walk me through a little bit of what you guys have been doing with MSU, how their efforts have looked so far?

Alex Russell 19:24
Yeah, gladly, as a former Montana State mechanical engineering student myself, I’m very proud of the work that MSU is doing and the work that we’re involved in up there started off, I guess, to level set with how we got there, it took a lot of progressive thought from MSU to want to implement this vision, right? This was, this is something that’s been in the works for for a long time, and we’re just now continuing to see the progression of that. So it starts first and foremost with committing to make that progression and then sticking to it. Yeah. And understanding there’s costs and challenges that come with that, but along the way, where we’ve come, and we’ll talk about some modeling that Tim’s done here in a minute to help support this, was understanding that there were infrastructure opportunities already in place, with steam tunnels, and MSU has an energy district already. It’s got a one-pipe steam system that serves the majority of campus. But as they move to remove fossil fuel consumption on campus and go to carbon neutral, they’re looking for ways to electrify that and bring that system into the new age, if you will. So one of the first things that we had the opportunity to implement was a closed-loop geothermal field at Montana State’s Romney Hall, and that’s kind of centrally located on on the, called the South End corridor, Grant Street corridor that runs east-west and connects both the east and the west extremes of campus. We were able to implement that geo system and then understand that that was going to be the first piece, and many pieces that were going to follow in progression after that, the next piece being making a connection from that to the new Wellness Center that was designed and installed a few years after we renovated Romney, and that was truly the beginning of that energy district on campus, but just just saying that over the last couple of years, getting that implemented, that was the resultant of a lot of work over the last five to 10 years trying to get all of this implemented. And we spoke to the modeling earlier, one of the things that really was impactful making those decisions to implement the system and design it out was Tim’s modeling and building these models so we could understand how to right-size these geo systems, how big our piping need be, where we needed pumping, when we needed pumping, and those kind of things. So it’s been exciting to be part of this journey with MSU, and really excited to see where it continues to go.

Tim Johnson 21:58
I was at a conference at MSU a couple months ago, and Duke Elliot of MSU and I both had little presentations we gave about this, and we both came up separately with the theme of, how do you eat an elephant? And of course, the answer is one bite at a time. And I think that is a pretty good description of how MSU is approaching their district. When you look at a campus of MSU’s size, trying to convert all of that to gen-5 district energy system, it’s overwhelming, but you got to start somewhere. So starting with Romney and having the foresight to just oversize that geo field, because we had an opportunity there, and we’ll see what we can connect to it later. Then the wellness building comes online, and it’s about the perfect size for for that geo field. So we were able to connect that. And now we’re we’re watching to make sure that that operates the way we think it should. And then College of Nursing next, we’re able to put in a little bit of extra capacity, actually quite a bit of extra capacity. I think we have four or five times what we need for that building. And don’t really have a clear plan for what’s next, but it enables the south campus to further expand that district energy system, and it might be connecting into the district we already have, or the building across the street, but it opens up those options for future connections, and we’ll continue to plan with MSU on what the next opportunity is.

Sarah Steimer 23:30
Yeah, so I’m not entirely clear: Can you explain how a closed-loop system works, but then also how you add something to a closed loop system that that sounds like a lot of hoops to kind of have to jump through there.

Tim Johnson 23:46
Sure. Closed loop just means we’re we’re transferring heat from the ground into a water loop. And so it’s just a loop of piping that we pump water through it, it goes to the ground. I think we have on Romney, correct me, if I’m wrong Alex, about 84 vertical bores into the ground. We’re going 700 feet deep with a loop of pipe, and we’re using just the temperature of the ground to heat or cool that water back to ambient temperature. And then that loop is pumped throughout the south campus, and it just is recirculating. And as new buildings come online, we can make that loop bigger and just connect into it, as opposed to an open loop where we’d be taking something out of the ground, using that water, and putting it back in, or in the case of the Warm Springs District here in Boise, they were taking that water out and just dumping into the river, whereas now that’s been updated to re-inject into the into the ground.

Sarah Steimer 24:47
Gotcha. So you know, since you guys have been working with MSU for quite a while, since this project started a while ago and is ongoing for the foreseeable future, the, can you give me an idea, maybe, of what some of the big lessons have been, or, you know, what you could pass along to other organizations from what you’ve done with them so far?

Alex Russell 25:10
I can take a first run at this. I think the biggest thing is to start thinking about this early. In fact, sometimes you need to start thinking through some of those solutions before you even have the problem, if you will. One of the biggest impediments to getting energy districts installed is once infrastructure is in place, it’s really hard to add energy districts after the fact. It’s it’s easiest and best first dollar spent if you can get in there early in that planning. So moving, moving through that process early, and thinking through solutions and engaging team members that can help fast fail some ideas that may not work, but also provide a lot of momentum behind ideas that do work. And that’s a combination of feasibility studies. There’s some great tools. The Department of Energy puts out some kind of roadmap playbook opportunities. But then obviously there’s, there’s many members of the engineering community who have expertise that can help push that along. And then it’s, it’s trying to communicate to your stakeholders in the most appropriate way possible the value of that system long term. Because Tim mentioned earlier, it’s, it’s an underappreciated asset. When we compare HVAC systems we’re typically using after life cycles of, say, 20 years, some of these energy districts have been obviously, we’ve we’ve mentioned some that are still in use from the 1800s, so some of these lifespans are multiple decades to centuries, right? So we need to, we need to better communicate to the stakeholders that this isn’t just an investment for for today or for one generational cycle. This is a multigenerational investment.

Tim Johnson 25:57
Yeah, I guess some recommendations, maybe it takes a little bit of creativity and coordination. So taking a look at the projects that are already happening and happening on campus, and seeing if there’s some alignment there, maybe there’s a, like we’ve seen around Boise when we’re tearing up a road, maybe that’s a good opportunity to get in and replace some pipe. And maybe it’s not used immediately, but maybe it’s just put there for future, future connections. And, you know, just whatever it takes to make that first step. Because it can be pretty intimidating to try to go from existing systems to a full district energy system; just starting to eat that elephant.

Sarah Steimer 27:39
So I was hoping you guys would be willing to indulge me here a little bit and geek out if you would about what, if there’s anything kind of upcoming, whether it’s a project that you’re working on, or new solutions that you are getting really excited about getting to use, maybe for the first time, or, you know, using again, now that you’ve been able to get gain a little bit of knowledge on them, just just geek out here for a second for me about, what about energy district you’re you’re getting pumped about moving forward. And Tim, I’m going to start with you, because you made the mistake of nodding.

Tim Johnson 28:24
Oh, better be careful around here. Yeah, I think I mentioned it earlier, but data centers I think are a big deal. If we can start to align data centers with community heating systems, I think that’s a pretty big deal because you mentioned it earlier, Sarah, that data centers have been getting some bad press, and they use a ton of energy. But if we can start to take some good out of that data center boom. I think I’m also interested in in nuclear. I think as as data centers and other, you know, electrification initiatives start to advance, the cost of electricity goes up and the cleanliness of it goes down. We start to use more fossil fuels to generate electricity to meet the higher demand. And I think we’re going to have to find a new solution. I think nuclear, specifically, the small modular reactors, SMRs, are starting to calm, might be a really good fit for these district level energy systems where we’re covering a campus or a small community.

Alex Russell 29:25
Tim stole my answer. It’s like you knew what I was going to say. I’m also fascinated by the advancements in specifically small scale nuclear small modular reactors, as Tim alluded to, because I think they can be the heart of energy districts and implementation for some very creative uses, and specifically providing electricity. In, back to, Sarah, your analogy of shop local, right? You’re providing electricity in close proximity to the use point, which minimizes transmission losses and some of the other inefficiencies there, but then also we’re able to capture that wasted heat and use it meaningfully in close proximity to that generation, which is an incredibly efficient system. I think the other thing, and I’m excited about all sorts of opportunities to implement energy districts, but I think advancements in heat, heat pump technology is going to continue to be pretty fascinating. Specifically, natural refrigerants, CO2, for example, they operate at higher pressures. But again, we’re removing that, the negative impacts of refrigerants — even, even low global-warming-potential refrigerants — as we’re moving to A 12 refrigerants, things like that, they all have some negative connotation with it. But natural refrigerants, although operating in higher pressure, provide us some opportunity to do things that are pretty, pretty creative that we don’t have now, specifically higher discharge temperatures so we can get elevated heating water and some other things. So I think the combination of energy production, electricity energy production and some advancements in heat pump technology will continue to open doors for wider utilization of energy districts.

Sarah Steimer 31:01
I really appreciate that a lot of this conversation also has to do with not wasting what’s already being created, not wasting heat, not wasting energy, not wasting what is already being produced. You know, you guys have talked about the data centers, things like that, so I think that’s an incredibly important part of this conversation, at least from a consumer standpoint, who, even though, like we said, I’m one of you guys now, is still, you know, I’m still just wrapping my head around this. Well, on that note, was there anything else that you guys wanted to mention as it related to energy districts, whether you’re, it’s something you’re excited about in the future, or maybe some myths that you would want to, you know, bat down here, you’ve, you’ve got the floor, I guess.

Tim Johnson 31:44
Actually, Sarah, you hit on something just now that I think is a good, good thing to bring out: The reduce, reuse, recycle is kind of what we grew up with as kids, right? The reduction of use is our, is our first challenge. We want to limit our energy use, so providing efficiency wherever we can. And then once we’ve limited our energy use as much as feasible, we try to reuse it. And that’s a lot of what we’re doing with these gen-5 district energy systems is trying to reuse that heat that’s being rejected back to the system, and then from there we’re we’re regenerating or generating energy from from renewable resources. So I think that’s important to highlight with these systems.

Sarah Steimer 32:28
Alex, any last words?

Alex Russell 32:29
Tim captured that that very well. I think the only myth I would dispel is that when we say energy districts, I think the natural connotation is just this large, all-encompassing thing, right? Energy districts can be as small as two connected assets. It doesn’t have to be grandiose to be meaningful and highly beneficial to the end users. So I think as we continue to look on the horizon of what’s coming up, I think we’ll see opportunities to make energy districts both large and small, and really improve the built environment.

Sarah Steimer 33:04
Alex, I’m glad that you mentioned that about you know, you can have small energy districts as well, because, you know, I’m sure there might be folks out there who think, well, I don’t, I don’t have the, I don’t have the college campus that would be needed, or I don’t have the city that would be required for this. So I’m glad you mentioned that as well. Well, both of you, this has been really illuminating. I’m always happy to learn more about energy districts, because it’s like I said earlier, I didn’t know that this was very much not a new thing, because they’ve been around for a while. So I’m glad to bring myself up to speed and the audience up to speed. But again, thank you both so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Producer 33:50
Music for Good, Thoughtful Hosts was written, produced, and performed by Sam Clapp. Our moderator is Sarah Steimer. Editing by Travis Estvold, And a special thank you to our content development team, Marni Moore and Trisha Miller. For more information about the podcast, visit thoughtfulhosts.com. Thanks for listening.