Energy Advisory Committee

MEAC Minutes 8-19-2014 Location: Memorial Room, City Hall Members present: Tim Shea, Barbara Conrey, Keil Corey, Scott Muller, Geoff Fitzgerald, Becky Wigg, Anne Watson, Alison Hollingsworth, Andrew Stein, Dan Jones 1. Call to order, approve minutes: Meeting called to order at 7:01. Minutes were approved without discussion. 2. Projects update: Solar RFP: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mZdx5Vdo7tgC2564sBklUqpyx2FrNzJHhemEn8i5b_E/edit Anne: Mike Miller and I have been emailing back and forth quite a bit answering questions from the potential bidders. No bidders yet, but it's due August 29th. Hoping to reconvene the solar subcommitee shortly after that to get a quick turnaround on this. Mike: I'm guessing we're going to get at least 5 organizations to bid, likely more. Andrew: How would one company that isn't asking Q's seeing responses to other Q's? Mike: We're putting all of the questions we receive, along with our responses to them, up on the City's website. Members of the Solar Subcommittee: Anne Watson, Becky Wigg, Dan Jones, Alison Hollingsworth (depending on her capacity), Mike Miller. All are welcome. Document sharing and repository (Google Drive): Google Drive system is up and running; it's purpose is to share and save documents to let everyone know the projects that are going on. Keil will continue to provide assistance after Alex leaves. City consumption data and benchmarking: Scott: Andrew and I have been crunching the data of the City here, and have put together a preliminary snapshot of FY 11, 12, 13. Our purpose tonight is to get your input, suggestions, criticisms, and then we'll begin instilling this a bit more so that the committee can take ownership of it. Purpose is to identify municipal goverment operations and split that apart from residential and private sector emissions. We're looking at thremal, electric, and vehicles. One thing I want to make sure is we're speaking the same language around the net zero community concept. It's easy to get off-target and we're going to always have to get back to that message of what we mean. Energy efficiency is the first and most important step that we're going to have to keep driving home. Geoff: What about FY14, for the Georgetown grant? Scott: We're a few months shy of being able to complete that data. Most of this system is fully cooked, but we don't yet have the data for FY14. So, the method we're using is organizing data collection and conducting inventory, and I want to thank Todd Law and Mike Miller for helping us find this data. We'll set up another meeting to fill the missing gaps soon. Then we're going to analyze and prioritize the results, which is really the discussions we'll have here. How much will this cost, how do you talk about energy vs. emissions, GDP vs. energy usage, what options are scalable by the City and which ones aren't, etc. Then, we share the results and options, and that implies a closer relationship with the City and who on staff is going to take over investments stemming from our recommendations Title: Zero Energy Communities--Hierarchy of Options There are a lot of options that are used for planning zero energy communities and ways to prioritize them. (Presentation continues along the text in Scott and Andrew's powerpoint. See their slides for more information.) Andrew: We're missing a few buildings that weren't included that Todd was talking about. The library is one of them. Anne: I'm just wondering about including schools there because they're quasi-separate from us, as they're funded separately. This is a policy question of whether or not you want to include them. Who's making decisions (School Board vs City Council) is really the issue. Tim: Can you isolate the schools if you need to? Scott: Yes, we have no data from the schools so far. Anne: I have data for the schools if you need it. [When Scott's Powerpoint has been finalized, it will be attached in these minutes. Much of the discussion was based on bullet points within the slides.] Anne: I know Bill Fraser has some numbers on how much we've spent on energy improvements per year, I can send you that info. Scott: Great. So, this GMP data here is a little confusing, but we've been processing some of this stuff, we have DPW data, and their asset list, so we can look at the age of their vehicles. Things like that will become more important as we go on. Everything is very individualized, very accurate, just in a big spreadsheet. We were able to convert the data for their fleet into tons of CO2, gallons of fuel, etc. The electric data is also interesting and we're missing perhaps 20% of the info for this. Anne: There's already a PV system at the WWTP—does this capture that? Scott: In the bills we get from GMP, the power they've produced gets taken off before we see it, which is an issue. We need to tease that out somehow to get credit for the energy we're using and creating. The thermal is interesting, we got data only from 2011 from both Irving and the City, and they were a little different. The numbers need to be crunched and for the most part we only have the raw data, but we're close. Interesting to look at, to dive into, and to start to think about how we might make recommendations based on that. There's about 15% more data that we need, then we want to sit down with DPW and Planning to see how we can put this into a format that City staff will be able to use productively. Then, I guess we can talk about if this needs to be audited, or just have a different set of eyes at least. Some of these numbers are pretty different from what I've seen so far for Montpelier, and that's understandable, they could have just been per capita estimates, etc. Geoff: Is this higher or lower than what you've seen? Scott: Lower, actually. We have a lot of incomplete data and the methods are changing and improving every year, so we're likely to see this change over time as other methods get better. Geoff: The most important thing is to get it into a form where the City can download this in a usable fashion so it's no problem to use it productively going forward. Mike: They haven't started capital planning for next year yet, so if you're looking to make targeted recommendations, you still have time before the fall. Alison: Is it set up so anyone that has the data can go in and enter it? Scott: That's what we need to do. Andrew: Right now it can pretty much only be done by the accountant, Sandy Gallup, because she has all the information. Hopefully we can bring this to you in a more presentable fashion at the next meeting. Scott: We're also trying to minimize burden on City staff in this effort. Barbara: Is it possible to break down the thermal into KBTU per square foot? We had some trouble with that, and it could be really useful. Scott: Yes, aboslutely. A lot of it is just GMP or Irving throwing their data at us in their own terms and it's gobbledegook and we need to decipher that. Andrew: DPW says we don't have a master document that shares every building's square footage, etc. Mike: If that exists, it most likely is with the Assessor. Barbara: If you go to that level of detail, find out not only the square footage of buildings but also residential, multifamily etc. Andrew: A lot of my work right now is with grand lists and the work that the tax department does to put all those grand lists in to the same format, and if we want to we could break down the Montpelier buildings into a lot of different categories. Barbara: If we start to do residential work later on it'd be great to know how many buildings are residential, non-owner occupied, etc. I'm referring to non-municipal buildings, but the grand list should also have that info for municipal buildings for this project. Anne: The grandlist, online at least, only has dollar value. I'm sure the Assessor has the square footage as well, but it's just not online. Alison: There's also the Energy Star Portfolio Manager System where people can add their data and put it into the system, and it's really helpful for a lot of people. If we can just get the City to upload their data every two months or so, it'd be a great way to institutionalize this effort. The Portfolio Manager is not going to go away. Mike: One of the key things is that whatever the results are will have to dovetail with the NZM project. If this thing doesn't point us to where we want to go, we'll be doing a whole lot of work that we may not have needed to do. Andrew: And the short-term goals are really important to this too, for helping us get to.where we want to go. Strategic project planning for NZM: Barbara: In working with strategic planning committee, I know you've all received the charter we sent out and I welcome you to comment on that. In order for us to move forward, we need a document that shares where we're going and get City Council and, of course, the committee's support on this. We're looking, at the moment, for as much brevity on this as possible. If you look in the back there are a few sections that will exist but aren't there yet; in the interests of brevity we decided to leave them out for the moment. The executive summary shows where we're coming from, where we're going, and outlines our goals. We had a bit of discussion about, on page 4, the long-term goals of the strategic plan. From the 2014 gathering-data stage, then kicking it into gear in 2015. We have incremental percentages placed in here but they've been picked somewhat out of the air. My only question was “Yes we want to have goals, but does this mean we need to modify the charter on a regular basis to accommodate this?” Alison: You mean the document that City Council would adopt? Barbara: Yes, and if this says that we have XX% goal by XX year and then we don't meet that, do we have to revise it? Or do we just treat them as loose goals and work towards it? Alison: Yes, just set the goals and provide report-backs on them. Barbara: OK. So we have thermal, transportation, electric and density, as that keeps coming back as a major issue for all of us. There are a lot of ways for us to do that even if we don't have a lot of land. Oh by the way, Scott and Andrew, on your assessment, we did a report on the PV potential for the open land in Montpelier and I can share that with you if intersted. Essentially, this charter is an authorization to move forward, a mandate. One of the important parts is page 6 is talking about what's in scope and out of scope, that's what I wanted to talk with you all about. For in-scope, implementation of measures to achieve our goals is obvious, next step about zoning and municipal bylaws is a bit more complicated, Anne had some concerns about that. Anne: My concern about zoning, from conversations I've had with other municipal people that have worked on energy issues, they think that zoning isn't a particularly effective tool to use to encourage energy efficiency and renewables. I've been looking at NYC's plan and they have a lot about building energy efficiency into building codes, which is a separate issue. Mike: Energy codes are not particularly well-enforced, might be a bit of a hurdle. Anne: I'm not opposed to incorporating NZM stuff into the zoning but I don't know what exactly we could do without halting development, so to speak. Barbara: When I sat on the Planning Commission meetings there was talk about how the zoning needs to adhere to existing codes of the City and State. There's a statewide energy code for residential and commercial buildings but nowhere does our documentation say we'll also abide by state energy codes. I realize this could be a wrench but just wanted to throw it out there. Becky: I think I'd expand that beyond zoining to talk about City policies and programs, things that could potentially require building disclosure info when they're sold or benchmarking our buiildings against each other so people know whether they're getting efficient home when buy a house. This isn't necessarily in zoning, but it's within our purview as a City to encourage this. Geoff: I don't know if we should be imposing mandates... Scott: There's a pretty well-established school of thought about requiring people to meet standards or simply encouraging them to go above and beyond. Density is a really tricky issue and doesn't really happen when there's a lack of trust or community and things of that nature; there are a lot of factors that go into healthy densities. Barbara: I think the issue for the Planning Commission is simply whether or not to allow higher densities and I think that's the kind of thing we want to encourage whenever we can. Mike: Such as removing the parking requirements, etc. Geoff: Going back to our bigger goals, XX% by XX year, these numbers can't come out of the air for when City Council passes on this. I have no comment on this because I have no idea, but we need something better than “We pulled them out of the hat.” Barbara: Perhaps we can set the goals for net zero then work backwards? Or perhaps we can put them in a strategic plan as separate from our charter. My goal right now is to just keep moving forward with this. I encourage you to keep going online and keep making comments on this over the next few weeks. One thing is the out of scope list, I included State of VT buildings because we can't mandate to them. Tim: They'll be in our baseline though. Barbara: Correct. They'll have their own issues and we can work with them but we can't mandate to them to work on our plan. Andrew: There's a state government building energy plan. Barbara: Exactly. We can work with them, but can't mandate anything. Alison: We don't have any power over the buisnesses either, though. As long as we're just checking in with them regularly and keep pressuring them, it'll be the same kind of thing. Barbara: Are you saying we should include them in the scope? Tim: Yes, everything within City limits. Barbara: OK, I'll flip that over to included in the scope. The other thing is about the procurement of funds to implement projects. This is the NZM initiative so I don't know if we can be in charge of the procurement of funds. What came up through the solar RFP is ultimately that contract has to be written by by the City, so any funds coming in or out has to go through the City. Anne: Do we want to say anything about transportation? We defined that we're not counting the cars commuting in, maybe it's not worth saying again? Tim: Yeah I think that's defined earlier on. Scott: What was the logic for that again? MEAC: Too difficult to mandate and to measure. Scott: I think you can mandate about scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions and that can differentiate between cars going in and coming out of the city. You're also putting things in thermal, electric, and transportation, which is great but we'll have to be able to put it all into BTUs in order to compare it. Barbara: The other question I have is organizations effected. We came up with our list of people that would be effected/participating in this. Who are we missing? Scott: The realtors. Anne: By downtown business association, you mean the Montpelier Business Association? Montpelier Alive might be a good group to include in that box too. Also the schools, to recognize that they're their own entity. Vermont College should be on there. Alison: It doesn't seem like there are citizens. You know, for the residential sector. I don't know how granular you want to get, but that's important. Anne: Maybe it's the CAN groups, maybe it's through FPF, other platforms? Mike: Landlords will be a key group to get at some point. They're a unique case to decide on how to get thermal retrofits when they don't have the incentive to make the improvements. Tim: So this is a living document out there on Google Docs. Barbara: The only reason we're rushing through this is because we have deadlines. Our hope is that we can go through this some more and have a new draft for the next meeting so we can look at it as a committee and approve it or not. So we need your comments over the next few weeks. If we're going to get to our 2015 kickoff we'll need this to be in place, and our strategic plan, but also our info from Scott and Andrew about benchmarking. 2. Outreach/Community Engagement updates: Tim: A group of us met yesterday to talk about things we could keep going. We talked about things with EVT and other events to get started with the Net Zero initiative. Alison: Li Ling Young is someone that works in the residential section and has been focusing on NZ retrofits of existing homes. She has put together a group of presentations that are pretty interesting, and are set up as a series to orient people to what we're talking about. It can start pretty basic, and grow from there. She can do 4 or 5 of these events and we just need to get it set up. Tim: We just spoke about getting a spot and time and free food and going from there. Likely going to be regular—at the same time every month perhaps. Alison: Great. She's very flexible. Tim: We need to brainstorm about other ways we can engage the public to talk about other ways to talk about Net Zero. We've got October 9th at the Statehouse, and there's the button up day of action, on November 1st. Alison: Oct 9th is the NZM technical summit for architects and engineers, it's called Net Zero Northeast, we're hoping to get regional attendance but I think it will primarily be VT. One track is for archiects and engineers on how do they do NZ, and the other track is a planning/community discussion. And it's only 1 day, so there's not too much content. Barbara: We discussed the idea of bringing the Archistream trailer on board with this. Tim: This is a trailer that is a mobile teaching unit and could potentially have that at the event, it might be a distraction, and might not fit with their needs, so perhaps we could use this for some other public education event, like the Farmers' Market, Art Walk, etc. It's available in the month of October so how can we leverage that to get some more conversation around this issue. And then just be thinking about other things that we can/should/will be doing in the future that we can do. Geoff: We were talking about doing the Years of Living Dangerously show but there was some pushback on it? Keil: Yes there was some pushback from Becky and Dan, and I've seen most of them by now and the majority of them include a positive message. I find them motivating, and they open your eyes to significant issues pretty well. Tim: And this is a 15 year project. If nobody shows up, and people aren't engaged, no big deal. It's just an easy low-hanging thing that could optentially be a way to engage people. This just one way to do that. So, that's the outreach, where we are and to a lesser degree where we're going. 3. Reorganization of MEAC: Tim: Let's call this more stakeholder involvement. We had a meeting with Dan, Andi, Paul a couple weeks ago and talked about the tensions around representatives from entities that are committee members with voting rights. One way we could do this was, the reason being that a lot of these groups—State of VT Building & General Services, Green Mountain Power, Energy Action Network, VEIC—really having some key stake in involvement with what we're doing, where we're going. One way to work with this is to have them not have voting rights but be advisory members of this committee, to feel they have representation and a stake with us in this project. We don't think we'd need to go to City Council for approval here, just might have to run it by Bill Fraser for cursory approval. So, with that, I welcome people's thoughts on this. It gives them more legitimacy to their role so they feel more like a member than just sitting on the outside. Anne: Do they seem satisfied with that? Tim: Yes absolutely. Geoff: Would they assign a person to hold this role? Tim: Yes. Scott: Questions about that—how many voting members are on the committee? Tim: 13. Scott: And a quorum is? Tim: Seven. Scott: You believe they'll participate even if they aren't voting members? Tim: Yes. Scott: We'd like to really use those advisory roles productively, if someone is just going to become dead weight, another person could productively fill that role. When someones's a voting member, they participate, because they have skin in the game. If somone's advisory, they might start to drift after a few months. There won't be any requisite for minimum amount of participation or anything like that? Tim: No. Scott: Is there a cap on the size of this committee? Tim: No, not yet. Scott: That means they'll have access to what? Google Docs? Commenting on RFPs? Tim: Yes. Next can of worms for this is how this works with the City Council, if we have an opening on the committee, but we don't right now, so it works. Does this seem reasonable? MEAC: Yes. Tim: Seeking to formalize—I'd make a motion to form an advisory committee, including EAN, EVT, BGS, and GMP. Andrew: I'm in favor of this but think we should have language around it. Tim: Would we have to amend the bylaws about this? Andrew: This would be the Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee Advisory Committee. I get concerned that at some point you have committees on committees on committeees and it turns into an Onion article on how cities function. I feel this just doesn't seem formal enough. I welcome their involvement, sure, but this might become too much. Tim: The motion is to keep this informal to some degree, so as to not muddy the waters by going for City Council's approval, or other complications that may emerge. If we do this now, we can do it before other groups jump on board. Andrew: I second that motion. Motion unanimously passes without discussion. 4. Energy Reporting Policy Changes Proposal Anne: I was intrigued by Scott's comment last meeting about NYC's initatives towards sustainability, in particular that they require energy reporting. Turns out they have a bunch of local laws. (See document for more info.) In particular this first one about large buildings. The fact that they're obligated to report is very interesting. Tim: Anything residential? Anne: No, there are large multifamily buildings, but not residential overall. They're using the Energy Star Portfolio Manager. Something I found intersting and want to dig in more is a report on how they're doing with their benchmarks. That's the beauty of using an online tool, you can crunch up the data really easily. They're trying to figure out what the baseline for municipal energy usage is, etc. This leaves me with abunch of questions and some proposals. We could require energy data reporting from every building, from just municipal buildings, just commercial buildings, lots of ways to do this. Andrew: One of the things about this is that it could further weave an energy consience into the fabric of this community. Anne: I immediately have big red falgs around privacy issues on this. Becky: The PSB has established how you'd protect folks' privacy in this case. Anne: One possibility is you could have an opt-out option, opt in only, or you could just require it. How can we make this beneficial to participants? The big question is, is this worth pursuing? I'm interested, and if we're interested, I'd love to have a small group of people develop language for this. Scott: I'd love to help out on this. Fort Collins is starting to require this. The idea is that the national government is pretty incapable of reporting this stuff so the pressure point is how to get the subnationals on board, the mayors and governors and such. There's talk of a presidential initiative about reporting at the state and city levels. A lot of this is going to be announced on Sept 23 at the U.N. Summit, that there will be a national/international online platform for reporting city and statewide energy use. The E.U. is trying to do the same thing, there's a lot going on here. Becky, Andrew and Barbara are interested in helping with this project as well. 5. Georgetown University Energy Prize Update Alison: We applied in a hurry for stage 1, and we were accepted. I think stage 1 was a low bar to make sure people were legitimate and had commitments to the issue. 52 communities participating, 3 in VT—Montpelier, South Burlington, and Waterbury/Duxbury. I'll start with informing everyone that representatives of those 3 communities recently got together. We don't want to be “competing” against each other. The message is that we want to be collaborating as best we can. We talked about formal collaboration, but decided not to do that, as it'd just be too complicated. Wanted to make it more informal, but just commit to helping each other. A lot of the resources we'll need are state wide—its EVT, GMP, etc. I think the 2nd and more important thing for us to talk about is “Do we want to do it?” Stage 2 requires applications and plans, I was going to come with more of a formal next step, but do we really have a process to decide that—does it align with our mission? Do we have the energy? It will be a decent amount of work. And we do already have a lot of work done, especially if we start talking about collaborating with the 3 towns with great leadership, and there will also be resources from EVT to help with this but I don't know what quite yet. Basically, I think what we ned to decide is, we have our NZ goals, we have our strategic plan, and what we want to do to march forward. Is the GUEP a tactical, motivaitonal step that Montpelier can take to move forward our primary goal? Scott: What's the cirteria for winning? Alison: We're not going to win. It's $5M cash. But we're not likely to win. Geoff: We asked about oil and propane, and they said they're not going to measure that. They want to know how you're going to measure your meters. Just meters—gas and electric, for residential, municipal, and school buildings. Scott: So if we're not going to win, why are we doing it? Alison: That's the question. Geoff: If we do the right thing, taking oil and propane offline and replacing it with electric, that will increase our usage. Alison: There's an interesting thing about the way that GMP will do this. Because of the way the bills are formatted, if we install a bunch of solar, it's going to reduce the meter. My pitch is that not every place has electric and gas. We don't have a gas utility, so we'll only be looking at electric. We have a shot with the solar. They haven't thought through all of this yet, and they're looking for feedback, and are looking for innovation and replicability. A lot of the country doesn't have gas, and especially in the north, a big part of the future is the cold climate heat pumps. I think we can do it in the innovation category if we wanted to do it. I think it'd bring recognition to Montpelier and all of Vermont, but I don't think we can win. Geoff: Dan and Barry and I had the same thought—they have students and mentors running this thing. All of us said we wanted to jump in, but just as long as we knew there was an ear there to listen to our situation, so it'd be more along the lines of what we're trying to do rather than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. They said they weren't looking to do those conversions, and I think if they aren't interested, it's not worth our time. Barbara: They didn't answer the question you raised, right Geoff? Geoff: No, not in the webinar. Scott: Seems like they're looking for a measurable thing to award. Geoff: Correct. They absolutely know what they want; maybe we can get them to be a bit more open about it, and send them an inquiry about this situation, Alison: But that's not their framework. I don't think they're going to change their guidelines. Barbara: Could you then pose that as an innovation? Alison: Yes, that's how it'd have to be done, if we were to do it. EAN already has this thing written up. Geoff: Motion to send an inquiry to GUEP, to engage a person, make contact, and be sure that this can be considered under “innovation,” and how much of their weighting system that's worth. Alison: Are people willing to work with this? Becky: What's involved? Alison: Maybe 100 hours between everyone. We have a lot of the information already. We need to put together an energy plan. Alison is going to send around information about what it entails; Geoff is going to follow up with GUEP and report back to MEAC 6. Button Up VT Day of Action & VECAN Conference Keil: Button Up Day is November first, and we'll be participating in some fashion, I'll be happy to lead that. Intending to build awareness of and action on residential weatherization. One category in our umbrella here. In additon to that we're doing a video contest this year, a crowd-sourced two minute video for how do you talk about weatherization, what motivates you for it, so on. I think we should do it, don't think it would take that much. Next, there's the VECAN conference, December 6th, there will be two workshops on Net Zero, one of them is going to be about community planning, and I know Joey is going to want someone form our committee on that. Just something to keep in mind. Geoff: Is there a Button Up workshop or anything related to that? Keil: We could absolutely have a professional come in and give a workshop on weatherization for this. Last year we had a few people out at the farmers' market and in front of the hardware store. Hoping to get them to give a discount on that day to draw people out for it. Tim: Great. If you need marketing just send a request to the group. Barbara: So this should go on our calendar of events. 7. Adjourn Meeting adjourned at 8:48 PM.