Energy Advisory Committee

Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee Memorial Room May 19, 2015 Present: Ken Jones, Dan Crisp, Anne Watson, Barry Mcphee, Dan Costin, Cara Robecheck, Johanna Miller, Geoff Fitzgerald, Scott Muller, Dan Jones, Kate Stephenson, Becky Wigg, Barbara Conrey, Bill Brown (non-member), Mike Miller, Andrew Stein Meeting began at 7:07pm Minutes from the April meeting were approved with one amendment. Geoff Fitzgerald suggested that we amend page 2. It had one bullet point addressing both identifying one key project per year and municipal policy. They should have been separate bullets. Update on the City's Zoning Draft - Barbara and Mike This is the first round of review of this draft. The committee had several questions for Mike and Barbara including: What role does zoning play in terms of solar PV and wind siting? We would explore exempting heat pumps What if a neighbor plants a living wall that will eventually shades a PV system? Is it net zero if GMP is selling the RECs? No. How do we define that? How do these amendments adjust required parking spaces? Is there a way we can modify the historic design review, if we can show that it will be in a historic context? What is someone wanted to sell their accessory dwelling unit? Is this enough, or do we need higher standards? There are some provisions in this document that make it easier to permit energy generation devices. There may be some policy decisions to be made. For example, do we give rights to an up-hill neighbor relative to a down-hill neighbor in terms of solar? For parts of the down town there are fewer required parking spaces per unit. These amendments expand the area that doesn't require parking spaces. Barbara will set up a briefing to get a little more feedback. We need to come up with another meeting time to come up with a concrete list of our recommendations. Who's interested in participating further in this process? Kate Stephenson, Scott Muller, Cara Robecheck, Dan Costin, Barbara Conrey, Andrew Stein (as available), Johanna Miller (as available). Municipal Solar RFP Update Stump dump site was eliminated last month due to shading. We have a site on Log Road as our second site, so Novus is moving ahead with that site. The subcommittee recommended moving forward with a second site in Sharon. It should be ready to go this year. The solar service agreement is basically done. We'll have a final draft by tomorrow, and it will be in the packet for the council next Wednesday. Once unit is built it will be sold to another corporation that takes the tax breaks, and in 7 years we could purchase both the sites. But the City will own the RECs either way. The lease for the land on Log Road is $8-10k/year and $5-6k/year for the site in Sharon. We have identified which city buildings will be group net metered: general fund first, water fund 2nd, 3rd goes to sewer, to maximize benefit, since the sewer fund is financially doing well right now. We should reflect on this (perhaps over a beer) regarding lessons learned to help other communities. Data collection - Scott Muller In FY2011, energy demand was 46,096 MMBtus, with 2.6% from offsets and renewables. In FY2014, it was 43,231 MMBtus, with 9.3% from offsets and renewables. GHG emissions went from 6,062 to 4,557 tCO2e in the same period. Lessons learned: 2.6% renewables, is up to 9.3% in 2014. It should increase due to district heat. Efficiency brought usage down. Some renewables came online through the senior center in 2013. The biggest gain came from Bob Fisher at WWTF. He started using excess methane to heat the facility. He'll be flaring the excess methane in the non-hemating season starting this year. His current process has saved 54% in oil costs. Bob Fisher won the Governor's Award for his work! There may be an opportunity to recapture more of that energy, that will be flared through a micro turbine for ~$150,000. Thanks to Sandy Gallup for her efforts in this process. Update on the School District's RFP - by Anne Watson The school received one bid to their RFP and it will be on the school board agenda in two weeks. Climate Action Challenge - Dan Jones, Barbara Conrey Dan asked if it would it be worthwhile to take our strategic plan to the DOE. We have put a lot of time into fitting in their context. Every week Tim is doing something on this. We are fully engaged with this. If someone else wants to step into Tim's role, he'd welcome that. Someone from the Climate Action Challenge is coming through Montpelier, and she'll be meeting with MEAC members. If anyone is interested, see Tim to talk about next steps. Georgetown University Energy Prize - Barbara Barbara distributed a sample data sheet for the WWTF. All of this information is in the dashboard for GUEP. Kristin at VEIC has put in the baseline. This is just electrical. Update on the work of the interns: - Barbara Inventory of 1000 buildings of the city, and we saw a sample data sheet. All of the information is publicly available. She brought example portfolio manager files for municipal and housing authorities. Strategic Planning Session (Part 2) We didn't get to the second part of the strategic planning session regarding stakeholders. That will be addressed next month. Geoff will get in touch with Tom McArdle about purchasing power. Anne will ask Ken to reach out to realtors. Joey will reach out to GMTA. Becky Wigg is gathering this information. Send any notes from these stakeholder meetings to her. Street Lights - Tim The City is looking to update its City-owned street lights from metal halides to LEDs. If you're interested in helping Tom McArdle with that process, see Tim. For next time, Joey wants to talk about the State's energy plan, which will be updated soon. Adjourned 8:40pm.