Energy Advisory Committee

Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee AGENDA 01/17/17 7:00 PM City Hall, Montpelier VT Members Present: Kate Stephenson, Barbara Conrey, Wavell Cowan, Dan Costin, Dan Jones, Scott Muller, Ken Jones, Jared Duval, Anne Watson, Barry McPhee, Paul Markowitz, Brent Ehrlich, Johanna Miller, Rebecca Harris (AmeriCorps) Members of the Public: Diana Chase,\Amy Gamble 1. Introductions a. Welcome new MEAC member Brent Ehrlich 2. Approve agenda and minutes from prior meeting: Kate moves to approve agenda without objection. Kate moves to approve minutes without objection. 3. Opportunity for public comment: No public comment 4. Updates from Working Groups Planning and Policy (Barbara Conrey)  Trying to align with city plan, regional plan etc.  Timeline is not totally clear; Planning Commission needs to finish zoning revisions before taking up work on the Master Plan.  Suggestion to invite Mike Miller, Planning Director, to our next MEAC meeting to discuss schedule and who is responsible for what sections of the city Master Plan. Residential (Jared Duval)  Next meeting will be Tuesday 1/31 at Cara’s house.  Started to think about Net Zero Home Tour 2.0- Neighborhood level and serving a variety of audiences. Transportation (Dan Costin)  Reviewed the only existing Act 174 Plan from Bennington – contains strategies to get from current to future energy use scenario.  Picked out 4 strategies 1) growth of highly compact city center 2) promoting public and shared transportation options 3) implementing improvements for safe walking and biking and 4) expanding use of electric vehicles.  Need to dovetail into city plan format. Municipal  Solar - Ribbon cutting at Log Road solar array postponed until weather is better and site is accessible.  Wastewater - Supported wastewater treatment team at City Council meeting last week for RFQ for cogeneration at wastewater treatment plant. Proposals  are due February 13th. City would like MEAC members to provide input as they review proposals.  DPW- Efficiency Vermont did walk through of DPW buildings at Dog River Rd last Friday and Geoff attended to represent MEAC.  City Hall boilers- we are exploring alternative options for producing domestic hot water in the summer for the district heat loop (possibly fuel switching). Geoff is the point person for this project.  Municipal buildings data base- we are gathering data we have about municipal buildings. Capital Needs Assessments outline necessary deferred maintenance on municipal buildings (not necessarily on energy matters). We can look to piggyback on these planned maintenance cycles.  Budget: We requested $20,000 for energy audits in the FY18 CIP budget, and $5000 in the regular city operating budget. Next year we will not have a VISTA volunteer to support the committee.  Still trying to access Portfolio Manager which Barbara’s interns created 2 years ago to track municipal building energy use.  Barbara is liaison between municipal working group and net zero design competition.  Police station: Barbara is the point person for MEAC. We are working to get a retro-commissioning study funded by EVT to look at the HVAC system specifically.  Revolving loan fund: We identified a group to work on this with 3 city employees and 3 MEAC members. Seed money will come from reserve fund (separate from budget) and Efficiency Vermont. 5. Sustainable Montpelier design competition update (Dan Jones)  Winner will be announced tomorrow at 11am at Cedar Creek Room.  Will change name to Sustainable Montpelier Development Process  650 votes were received in last round.  How does the design become integrated into the planning process?  Shifted the goal post for the master plan through visual aspirations 6. Digital Display next steps (Kate Stephenson)  Slides are ready to go  Need to find and get permission to put the display in a window downtown  Anne Watson agreed to work on finding a location and procuring the actual monitor 7. GUEP reporting (Kate Stephenson)  Competition ended on Dec 31st, final report due Feb 15th. 8. Other business   DOE Sunshot: Helps solar penetrate into lower and middle-income housing. A team could win as much as 60,000 in technical assistance vouchers.  New net metering rules come out on Friday  Efficiency Vermont is offering free home energy labeling between February and June. Kate will follow up with Emily Levin to find out how we can help to promote this. 9. Adjourn