Energy Advisory Committee

MEAC Minutes 4-15-2014 Meeting in the Montpelier Senior Activity Center 7PM Tuesday Special Solar RFP Review in MSAC from 5 – 6PM. Members present: Andrew Stein, Tim Shea, Anne Watson, Alison Hollingsworth, Becky Wigg, Keil Corey, Dan Jones, Joey Miller, Dan Costin, Barry McPhee Others present: Hannah Reckhow, Alex Prolman, John Hollar, Barbara Conrey, Ross MacDonald 1. Call to order, approve minutes Meeting called to order at 7:06. Minutes were approved. 2. Discussion and approval of Bylaws Joey & Becky proposed adding language about Net Zero into the mission. Dan C. would like to see a point about the inclusion of subcommittees—language along the lines of “Subcommittees can be formed to research specific projects but decisions are made by the full committee.” Process: Finalize the language, then vote at the next meeting. Put acceptance of bylaws on the next meeting's agenda. 3. Report from Solar RFP committee and possible approval of recommendation Dan C: With regard to the 3 remaining proposals, the vendors were given clarifying questions to make an apples-to-apples comparison. Wasn't quite apples to apples, but close. We weren't able to come to a decision yet, but have another meeting scheduled for next week, where we will hopefully come to a conclusion regarding the vendor. Jessie Baker had a concern that if we asked further clarifying questions that we could put the RFP process at risk, because it may be straying too far from the original RFP. This is a very complicated issue, and we need a little more time to discuss it. Andrew: What are the major issues at hand? Becky, Anne, Allison: Savings differentials, RECs sold vs retained, local vs not, disparity in baseline numbers. Subcommittee needs more time to flesh these issues out. 4. Report on Capitol Commuters and future role for MEAC from Ross MacDonald of AOT Ross is the Go Vermont program coordinator. GoVT offers small grants to municipal energy committees, and offers programs to state employees to stop using their cars. Ross has a few options for possible programs for MEAC to pick up and collaborate. The Capitol Communters program is a Transportation Management Association program that offers a plethora of benefits and incentives to state employees to carpool, vanpool, take the bus, walk and bike. Anything but single occupancy vehicles. They're entering year 2. Possible new project: subsidizing CarShare VT to come to Montpelier. Perhaps MEAC could help promote the Capital Commuters program? 22 towns have had their municipal energy committees promote the program, and after 6 months, GoVT awards the municipality with $500, to be used by the energy committee. Waterbury LEAP is looking into subsidized vans running commuter routes, potentially from Waterbury to South Burlington. GoVT provides a large van to these programs; Waterbury LEAP is just promoting it in their community. Cheaper than the LINK bus! They can put 10 vanpools on the road for the cost of 1 public transit route. Much more efficient. Another opportunity: helping promote the Way to Go program. Not all of the programs are focused on commuting. Heavy focus on it, as it's a high leverage point, but not exclusively about commuting. CarShare VT would love to be in Montpelier, if they can be provided with some support to subsidize the program. Ken: Is there a way to track the reduction in single occupancy vehicles? Ross: Through the surveys we administer. We think ~75-100 of each thousand people commuting to Montpelier each day are no longer in single occupancy vehicles. Ken: What about the seasonal impacts of parking/commuting issues, and are there existing seasonal programs to address that? Ross: Not more than Capital Commuters. The legislature is aware and some use the program. So far, focusing only on carrots, and not sticks. Haven't started charging for parking yet. Dan J: I would like this (transportation) to be an action item of some sort in the future, as part of the Net Zero Montpelier initiative. 5. Preliminary report from Barbara Conrey Vermont Technical College on their student project in support of NZM Barbara: The students have put together a draft report on the Net Zero Montpelier initiative; a set of recommendations. One of the points of this is looking at other energy issues beyond Net Zero: energy independence in land use, food, building and zoning, etc. In putting the plan together, an intention was to articulate measurable, specific steps. We wanted to use carrots wherever possible to make it worthwhile for people. One of the things we found was most necessary was having at least one person at the City level at the center of all these efforts. It could be interns providing assistance, something, but the students felt Montpelier needs at least one person on staff responsible for these issues. For the Priorities section, there was a central focus on greater density in the City, and having more housing—this makes an enormous impact on energy use. One of the things we discussed was the older population in Montpelier, and the possibility of increasing population density through homesharing, turning big Victorian homes into multiple units, etc. Another major focus is raising the energy efficiency standards of our building codes. Transportation is an issue that we feel is best solved by reducing the number of commuters by getting more people to live in town, rather than ramping up public transit for commuter lifestyles. Anne: I just want to note that increasing the building code standards would make more infill housing more difficult. Ken: Infill is much more expensive with regards to development as opposed to greenfield development. We can talk about incentives, but until we can show that the incentives make infill easier than greenfield development, we're not going to see it happen. It's all about the market conditions. Burlington has grown a significant amount in the past ten years. Far more than the average for other New England cities. What made them successful? Barbara: The students are taking these big picture issues and trying to apply them on the local level into specific projects. One group is looking at development in Sabin's Pasture, another is looking at the potential for biomass energy, etc. I invite all of you to come see their presentations on the morning of May 6th at VTC. I will send out more details about that. There is a potential for them to come present to the City, or perhaps the committee. Alison: Perhaps we could have a 4-month event period where a bunch of different entities tackle separate components of what it would take to get to Net Zero, and have some sort of public charette at the end that feeds into a plan on how to get to Net Zero. Could be a really great way to involve the community. Barbara: What the students came up with so far was individual timelines over the next 15 years in hopes of finding useful paths forward for the committee. Becky: With regard to having professional staff dedicated to this issue, an idea was floated recently of having a staffperson who would pay their way in salary through energy cost savings. 6. Discussion of integration of key stakeholders and preparation for stakeholder criticisms (Barry and Anne) Please review Barry's attached memo for preparation Anne: I'm thinking the Committee should comb out the differences between what MEAC can do, what a separate stakeholder group can do, and what this sort of “champion”, professional staff, etc, would do. John: This is huge—you know that. I don't think any place in the country has done this, and it's an enormous project. I think you need a whole organization responsible for Net Zero that can identify the goals, steps forward, and so on. And a major part of those early goals is identifying major stakeholders and bringing them on board. Joey: What about just starting with a position in City government? Ken: The City doesn't have much capacity. I think the City should go out and establish the private sector support within the City. Dan J: There is the potential for the local development corporation, which could provide a number of benefits. John: There has been quite a bit of discussion recently regarding the LDC; I don't think it would have the same kind of narrow focus that the Net Zero initiative would require. The LDC may have a focus that would be too broad. Anne: I had a conversation with Bill Fraser about this idea, in the context of district heat. The thing with the LDC is that it needs a funding mechanism to keep itself going. It could potentially use energy savings as a source of funding, but not district heat, at least for a little while. Ken: What funds an LDC is the returns on an asset—right now the returns on district heat are perhaps too small to fund an LDC, but if district heat were expanded, you could realize higher returns. Anne: It seems like we need someone to spend time putting together a proposal looking at the finances of district heat and how to move forward. John: I think this is going down a rabbit hole, in the context of the larger Net Zero initiative. There has been a fair amount of discussion about a member-owned management structure for district heat, but it's a bit small for our context right here. Anne: Before leaving, I would like to come away with a clear focus of how to move forward. Andrew: I think it's essential to develop short term 3 year plans, for example, that identify specific projects. Alison: Something Andi's been working on is a community dashboard, and EAN's been working on getting pretty deep into different scenarios. The baseline for the dashboard should be done tomorrow. (Discussion of scope, how to prioritize projects, having a schedule or overview of the big picture, etc.) Becky: I have 3 Proposals: 1) We spend a meeting with a whiteboard or a bunch of post-it notes and brainstorm all the potential projects related to this. 2) We brainstorm all the stakeholders that should be at the table and start building those relationships. 3) We have a series of community forums, charettes, etc that bring people together and collectively start to gather ideas and community support for how to do this. Regardless of that though, at some point we need to stop talking and start doing things. Joey: Yes, we need a public launch event. Really need to build public enthusiasm about this, soon. Allison: EVT has a good handful of net zero projects through our commercial, new construction and existing home pilots. Anne: I really like the idea of a series of themed design charettes where we pull together groups of specific stakeholders to buy-into and start brainstorming along the different focal points and how to work together. Joey: There are so many entities around this table and elsewhere that have so much capacity, and interest in this, but we just need to create the venue to allow these people to come together and start collaborating. Maybe at the end of June? At MHS, with Bernie? Followed by more serious charettes staged out afterwards. 700 people came to the Waterbury LEAP Energy Fair two Saturdays ago! We can host something fun, educational, engaging, and introduce people to our short and long term things. Anne: I worry that's not pointed enough. Ken: How did they get 700 people to LEAP? Keil: They've been doing it for 8 years; people know about it, and they make it both fun and useful for people. Anne: I don't see why you just couldn't do the charettes, though. Joey: I was simply suggesting they be followed by a bigger public event, just as a starting point and way of connecting people. Dan: Does anyone want to take this on as an organizing task? Allison: I wish Paul was here—he'll be the EVT Net Zero point person. Ties in perfectly with the Net Zero meeting launch event. Joey: I think we just need to get out there in the public with our Net Zero message. Keil: Relating to that, and our messaging, the climate change rhetoric is missing from this project almost entirely. “Years of Living Dangerously” is a gripping 8-part show explaining the climate crisis. That piece of the messaging—of climate change, and our 15 year time period left to avoid catastrophe—is not something we should leave behind. There's the potential to show these episodes as community events with Net Zero discussions before or afterwards. Could be a good addition to these energy efforts. Anne: I have a proposal: There are some rumblings of a planning group- for those willing to put together a series of events—design charette or otherwise—perhaps put these events together over the summer. Planning group: Anne, Alison, Keil, Barbara, Andrew, Alex, Keil, Paul, Andi? Anne: One concern I have about the process: What we're going to get out of a charette is a bunch of ideas of “here's how we're going to do this!” and then there's the concrete factual analysis of “how many cars must be electric, how many geothermal homes, etc”--but I feel there's a sort of middle ground that we're missing. Those numbers are tricky. Allison: Those numbers are one of the easiest things to calculate though. We can start with the numbers from EAN & EVT and the community dashboard. Ken: One of the things I volunteered to do is to write a series of letters to the papers about once a month. It's a mechanism to introduce NZM piece by piece. In the next week I'll start to send some of that around. Joey: Announcement: On April 22nd, Earth Day, the legislature is going to take up a resolution on Button Up VT Day of Action. On April 28th, we're doing a press event with Vermont olympians on climate change, with 4 skiers talking about climate change. Dan C: Another announcement: Dr. Alan Betts, VT's climatologist is speaking this Thursday at the Library. 8. Adjourn Meeting adjourned at 9:03 pm.