Energy Advisory Committee

MEAC Agenda 3-18-2014 Meeting in the Memorial Room 7 PM Tuesday Solar RFP interviews in Memorial Room 4:30 to 7 Members present: Bill Neuburger, Becky Wigg, Johanna Miller, Andrew Stein, Tim Shea, Barry McPhee, Dan Costin, Dan Jones, Ken Jones Others present: Jessie Baker, Alex Prolman, Hannah Reckhow, Robert Dostis, Tim Perrin, Paul Markowitz, Andrea Colnes Agenda Meeting called to order at 7:05pm 1) Introductions 2) Minutes of the 2/18/14 meeting were approved. 3) Report on Solar RFP presentations (Dan Costin) BlueWave Capital/Triland Partners (BWC/TP), Novus Energy, and Encore Redevelopment presented proposals. The RFP review subcommittee has narrowed it down to BWC/TP and Novus, and will be looking at the proposals in more detail to make a decision based on what was received. The subcommittee requested more information from the bidders and is awaiting their responses. 4. Report on Net Zero Montpelier Press Event (Dan J & Andrea) Press release and fact sheet were circulated through the committee. Andrea: The event was an enormous success; all those involved did great work. Press hits were picked up by VTDigger, VPR, Times Argus, Green Energy Times, the AP (syndicated in Boston, Seattle, San Francisco), and elsewhere. Dan: We got a pretty good launch on this and the perception is that we’re really going somewhere with it. Some of the wind and solar experts have started to come forward with harder questions about it. Recent progress: District heat plant is up, ~500 homes have done some efficiency projects, etc. Real momentum. 5. Report on Onion River Exchange energy audit project (Dan C) Some members of the team met last week with ORE to sign people up for efficiency visits. ~20 people signed up already. Folks have been trained by Efficiency Vermont on the efficiency kits. Energy visits can potentially start in just a few weeks. ORE’s a time bank, so if you get trained to do these efficiency visits you can earn hours doing it through the exchange. Heather Kralik is the contact at the Exchange who’s organizing it. Kate Stephenson (Yestermorrow) is going to be doing some workshops through this project as well. Barry has access to a whole lot of efficiency kit materials (CFLs, etc) that he can donate to the project. 6. Discussion of effectiveness of VHEC (Johanna) Barry: Received feedback from a few contractors who say that the financial incentives that were a part of VHEC were difficult for them to manage. Many people had contractors up in their attics in the summer; it created problems with their ability to spread their work out evenly across the year. Ken J: I’ve heard there’s a significant backload of work for contractors now. Personally has been waiting 8 months on a project for his home. Issue of confusion about what causes that backlog. Johanna: Paul (EVT) and Johanna (VNRC) have put a lot of work into VHEC, and the format is imperfect. Plainfield won the challenge for Central Vermont with 20 projects. (Goal was 3% of houses.) We know the process itself was cumbersome, there were issues with contractors, etc. Our challenge is to figure out how to create “a seamless path” that solves some of the problems like what Ken’s facing. Andrea: This was the first attempt at the program, and these problems are learning opportunities to revise how the program is run. Becky: Regarding VHEC’s impact on MEAC, it felt like VHEC really drained the committee’s energy; some folks were committed, but a handful certainly got tired of the energy committee work. Barry: I felt some of that too. Becky: It took a lot of work, and we put in great effort for a while. Good things came of it, but if we want to do this again we need to put time into thinking about how it will impact our work and how we can make it work for the committee. Joey: There’s a party for the VHEC! (Even though we didn’t win.) It’s at the Capitol Plaza--March 28th. Free dinner! Joey will send an email out with details and ask for RSVPs. 7. Progress on Rules and Procedures (Anne and Dan C) Jessie: Anne circulated sample Rules and Procedures that were based on the City Council’s, Planning Commission’s, others. Anne intended to have a little discussion today about it. Procedurally, from the City’s perspective, these are rules that would be good for the Committee to adopt. Dan: Request that all members of the committee review the sample Rules & Procedures on the shared Google Doc. 8. NZM Discussions Dan J: Net Zero is a big bite; now it’s on us to figure out how to make it happen. I want to go around the table and ask what people’s thoughts are on how to go about this. Perhaps the form is having a couple of subcommittees tackling the issues separately b/c it’s hard to have this discussion in a big group. How to rally financial support, incentives, partnerships, public outreach, etc. What do other folks think? Andrea: NZM is really big, really long term. Will take enormous effort from all players. MEAC is a volunteer group that meets once a month for two hours, does great work in that capacity, but MEAC isn’t going to be able to make NZM happen in out-of-work hours. It’s going to take committees, coalitions doing broad-based work, so it’s a question of where MEAC fits within that matrix of moving pieces. MEAC’s role, to me, is to carry the torch, keep it bright, and to pick up initiatives here and there and keep it in the public eye. We have a number of pilot projects to start with from EVT, GMP, the group net metered project, energy dashboard, etc. Will take a full community effort and lining up the different orgs efforts towards the same goals. So maybe the first thing is “Where does MEAC start,” the outreach piece. Two strategies/levels to think about it: Do you want to do outreach on the whole thing, or outreach on certain pieces and articulating that it’s part of the whole. GMP’s efforts in Rutland say doing workshops on the heat pump pilots before launch appear very valuable. Robert: I’d like to change the focus of conversation from this big goal to a really exciting opportunity. NZM doesn’t have to be this huge, heavy project. We have 17 years here, and we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of the available technologies and projects. No need to get weighed down yet; you have time, and can form and celebrate positive, public partnerships. Now you can “play in the arena” and just promote the heavy lifting being done by SunCommon, GMP, etc. Real heavy lifting on MEAC’s part comes down the road, and for now, focus on all the resources that are currently out there. Tim Perrin: Been working with S.Burlington in their pursuits toward the Georgetown University prize. They’ll be competing against other communities across the country to reduce their energy consumption as much as possible over a 2 year span, and they’re focusing right now on how best to engage the community and get out a coordinated message to all the key orgs and demographics. In the early stages I agree with Robert in terms of presenting things as a tremendous opportunity that folks can take advantage of. Identifying key stakeholder groups that will benefit from this, figuring out how to partner with them. So that you have a number of volunteers across a number of different interest groups so that MEAC can be more of the planning role and the heavy lifting can be done by others. Dan J: Do you (Tim) have resources related to these efforts in S. Burlington? Tim P: Yes, will circulate. Ken J: If you take a true leadership role, this is a true economic development opportunity. Yes it’s a communication piece, but it’s also economics. I like big projects and that’s what I want to focus on--look at the district heat plant--huge project, horribly underutilized and can be developed a lot more. I’d like to see more of those projects. Dan C: I think our role, as the E.A.C., is an advisory role to the City. There are lots of other groups that can go out and do this work. I do see a lot of projects on the horizon that I’d like to be involved with, and the communication piece too, but I feel that the EAN message gets slanted towards shifting to renewables without talking about conservation. It raises a red flag for me as not being represented by EAN. Johanna: I share a lot of the sentiment that’s been shared already. As a volunteer committee we need to be smart about how we use our energy and need to partner with other organizations. I agree with you Dan that we need to be representative of the City and play that “official” role...And not surprising it’s harder to sell efficiency than solar, but maybe when there are solar projects going on we can figure out ways to include efficiency in that project. Having participated in the town meeting event a few years ago where we got together then split up into 11 different subcommittees, I really don’t want to be a part of that. Subcommittees are smart and can do good work but we need to be careful about making this too onerous on us. This is all really exciting work; we need to communicate the urgency and excitement with our friends and neighbors and work with other partners to take on some of the bigger projects Lastly, in terms of the District Heat plant, I agree that’s a place of huge opportunity, and we need to build on it. Bernie was supposed to come up with Secretary Moniz; that will be delayed to May. We need to be maintaining communication with them about partnerships with DOE. Andrea: I’ve been keeping up with the DOE and trying to find out how we can cooperate with them. Barry: I second Dan C’s thought about not leaving behind the efficiency work. It’s where my focus is remaining, and I want to keep chipping away at it. Andrea: Efficiency’s not something we’re looking to leave behind and is a core part of our message. Andrew: NZM is a behemoth goal and I think Robert said what he did because it feels restrictive. I think it’d be helpful to iron out a vision based on incremental goals rather than just NZ at the end. Right now we have a bunch of pilot projects but that’ll only go so far--I think having short/mid/long term goals for the public and private sector will help a whole lot in making this work and being able to get everyone to see that. I think that’s huge. Tim Shea: I caution us from trying to do too much as a volunteer group, and that we should be focused on leveraging partnerships and doing community outreach in terms of educating and motivating our fellow citizens into action. Paul: I’m reminded of Miss Piggy’s 3rd law of thermodynamics: never carry more than you can eat. Somewhere, we need to develop a long-term road map. How are we going to get from here to there? In the interim, do no harm but take actions that we know will help us get there to focus our efforts on the activities we can take on as we develop this longterm roadmap. However, I wouldn’t want to do a whole lot of short term activities without that roadmap. The other thing is governance--who’s guiding us there? Is it MEAC? Maybe not? Should be articulated though. Andrea: I’ve heard 3 things from what folks were saying. One is the outreach & community engagement. Second is doing projects--from big projects like District Heat and more discreet projects like the solar RFP, etc. Third is a planning & coordinating goal. Links to Paul’s idea of a coordinating structure. Those are the 3 big things I heard around the table as what people think MEAC’s role should be. Dan J: I agree with those baskets. The hard part is what are people’s concrete proposals on how we do this? Dan C: Before we get there I think there’s something we’re missing. Not outreach--not telling people what we think they need to know, but just doing a give and take about where they are and what they want. The town planning process is a great way to get input. Andrew: Perhaps working with other committees, too. Dan J: Good point. There’s no impact on any of our discussions on any of the other committees unless it goes through City Council. We do need more of a dialogue about this. Tim Perrin: I agree--engaging folks, not just to capture ideas but also to raise awareness, support, and encourage participation in the future, is so valuable. Andrea: So how do we do this through what’s on the table right now? Maybe, for example, doing workshops on the heat pump project. On the community engagement and planning component, EAN’s going to have the community dashboard, which will be great, but it’s a tool and is only as good as the way MEAC uses it. Dan J: How do we maybe wrap some of these things together? So through all of these projects (heat pumps etc) there’s a discussion of the efficiency piece. Tim P: One idea that’s been thrown out is a symbiotic model--in the first year, install a heat pump, and take the savings you get from that and put it into an energy audit, then take the savings from that and install thermal shell improvements, and so on. Keep reinvesting your savings back into your own home, multiplying them. Paul: You could just as easily flip that on its head--efficiency first, then heat pumps. Joey: Certainly a pattern we’ve seen is that efficiency projects first don’t have a lot of traction, but when people install solar (etc), they become energy nerds and it’s much easier to install efficiency projects. Paul: You’ve got some powerful organizations around the table with a fair amount of resources. With EVT, you’ve got a pilot, and when you’ve got a pilot, you may be willing to take some risks about what you do--so let’s take some risks and be more expansive, bold, be willing to try stuff. Robert: Once we started doing this heat pump project down in Rutland and the word got out, people just started buying their own. Andrea: Let’s think about what MEAC wants to do/can do. What do you, Robert, need from MEAC for this? Robert: I think MEAC needs to host a forum. Joey: Is that specifically a forum for GMP or for the other projects? Andrea: The other projects--we just need to go around to the other groups and see how we can make them fit together into one package. Barry: With respect to our role/oversight/structure, as a large project manager I would suggest that we take some pieces of that (e.g. IDing some of the stakeholders up front, creating a communications plan, etc). I’m just suggesting we take on certain pieces of large project management. The first one would be IDing all stakeholders up front and begin to handhold them. Dan J: How? Barry: Look through all the normal set of disciplines and knowledge areas that are used and choose the ones that we feel would work for us. I will put together an outline of what they are and we could say this might work, that might work, etc. Jessie: Just want to throw out there, you do have some staff support--a little limited right now, but you do have support. There are people in the City do spend a lot of time on district heat, will spend time on net zero carr lot, so you do have support on your issues already. Before you start to hit the community or the council hard with NZM, make sure we’re all rowing in the same direction. Joey: Speaking of which, an update on new planning director? Jessie: We’re not likely to hire a new director before this May. Andrea: Proposal: I’d like to have something to do after this meeting ends. How about a community outreach forum? Including the different components we know of, the transportation center, the heat pump project, NZM, etc where the Council/Mayor/Committee/others can be there to say “Hey, here’s what we’re working towards, these are the pieces we’re starting with.” Andrew: How’s that different from what happened last week? Andrea: That was a press conference. MEAC hasn’t really spoken to the community about this, only to the press. As Dan Costin was saying, the community hasn’t yet been given the opportunity to provide input and we need to provide a venue to achieve that sort of give-and-take. Andrew: I think people on the street are pretty game for this idea, but we need to show how we’re actually going to get there. Andrea: Remember, though, you’re not going to have that plan for a long time. You don’t want to hold yourself up over it, because it’s never going to be able to be tied up into a neat little package, and to some degree you need to just get out there and be building excitement about it. Ken: Sure, doesn’t need to be step-by-step-by-step path to get there, but we can start talking about the broader themes, the big buckets to focus on. That’s a good way to get people to be able to wrap their heads around the issue without providing that in-depth analysis. Andrea: This is a great way to just get the buckets out there. Dan J: Could we have a subcommittee to talk about this before the next meeting and develop? Paul, Ken, Andrea, Tim S., Andrew, Dan J., Johanna, Alex Joey: Need clarity: what and when for this? I organize events a lot and we need a hook to bring people to the table. Bernie does these community things at MHS often; perhaps that’s how? We need to figure out ways to reach beyond the choir. Andrea: If the idea is to get a bunch of Montpelierites to engage in this, it probably doesn’t look like “everybody come to our meeting”... Jessie: This summer we’ll be doing Park in the Street--June 21st. MEAC could perhaps get a parking space. Tim P: some of these components being thrown out are a part of a bigger communication plan. So it might be useful to put together a bigger plan so we’re all on the same page. Joey: Next step? Andrea: Will convene this subcommittee to chat about all this. Meeting adjourned at 8:52