Energy Advisory Committee

City of Easthampton – Energy Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes November 22, 2021 Call to order Jamie calls meeting to order at 4:00pm Roll Call Present are Jamie Paquette, Scott Tundermann, Marin Goldstein; also Cassie Tragert 1. Review/Approve Prior Meeting Minutes Jamie moves, Marin seconds, all approve. Scott will send to City. 2. Public Speak No members of the public present. 3. Municipal Aggregation - Process and Next Steps (Jamie P. w/ Good Energy) Folks from Good Energy are standing by. Jamie reached out to Councilors Peake and Zaret about putting this forth to Council. Peake indicates it would probably go through the Rules Committee. Likely nothing will happen until the new committee assignments are made in January, but in December Jamie will work with the Councilors to get something ready. 4. Green Community Grant Proposal (Cassie & Marin) Annual report was submitted and the grant proposal went in; they haven’t offered any review/comments yet. Marin says it’s often February or March before we hear back. To address the questions about how Covid influenced use, Cassie said generally that any big anomalies are probably due to Covid, but there wasn’t a specific or obvious effect from the pandemic. Once the new school building is occupied, that will be a huge change in usage (for the better). Increased air filtration adds a big load at the existing schools. Marin points out that even once we’re not using the old buildings, it takes time to transfer them to other ownership, and in the meantime the City has to keep the utilities on so the pipes don’t burst. There’s another grant cycle in the spring, so we might be able to apply again. But Marin points out that we have to spend the money from the current grant before we can apply for more; because it’s buying a vehicle, it should actually be reasonably quick and easy to spend the current grant. Other ideas for future grants could be streetlight replacements or…? Scott mentions that we could invite ideas via the Facebook page; Marin and Cassie point out that the public don’t have much technical knowledge to make suggestions, and Scott agrees that it doesn’t help to invite feedback and then reject it all. But we could invite suggestions more generally, just to encourage engagement. [More discussion later under the social media heading.] 5. Solar Ordinance Working Group - Updates and Input (Marin & Jamie P.) It started as a project to see how we could promote more use of solar in the City; over time, it’s become a process of identifying places where solar DOESN’T work in the City, blocking out swaths of land. The City has moved to reject large-scale solar on open land; on the other hand, “agri-solar”—overlaying solar on grazing or farming land—can be a really beneficial win-win. There are “best practices” lessons out there. Jamie suggests the working group could more actively pursue that kind of information and other solutions. Marin: it’s a process; if we’re creating something too restrictive against solar, it doesn’t benefit the City. But we are balancing environmental considerations, and while we don’t want to turn away the profit or green energy so it ends up in neighboring towns, we also don’t want to allow harm in a rush to adopt solar. Jamie will summarize EAC conversation and send feedback to Curtis. The next Working Group meeting is Dec. 2. 6. Honeywell RFP - Updates and Discussion Scott points out that before the election, the Mayor said she’d share the updated Honeywell documentation. She hasn’t, so he’ll email her to ask for that update. 7. Social Media Posts (Scott) [From before] Another theme could be about municipal aggregation, just to start getting the word out and sharing information about how it would work. Scott will create posts on both recruiting new members to the EAC and municipal aggregation shortly. 8. New/Other Business No new business is raised. 9. Next meeting We’ll block out a 12/20 meeting at 4:00pm, possibly as an “open house” type thing if we have any interest from prospective new committee members. We’ll also schedule January 24, 2022 at 4:00pm for the meeting after. 10. Adjournment Scott motions to adjourn, Marin seconds, all in favor. Meeting adjourned at 4:36pm. Minutes respectfully submitted by Scott Tundermann, Secretary