Energy Advisory Committee

Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee 8/15/17 7:00 PM City Hall, Montpelier VT Members Present: Kate Stephenson, Jared Duval, Karl Johnson, Dan Costin, Dan Jones, Brent Erlich, Cara Robechek Attendees: Tim Terway, Christopher Damiani AGENDA 1. Introductions 2. Public comment 3. Button Up campaigns 4. Reports from working groups 5. Other Business Note: July minutes and agenda were not officially approved due to lack of quorum. 1. Introductions Chris and Tim: Both have applied to join MEAC and are awaiting Council approval. 2. Public Comment Dan Jones described progress with new commuter train’s arrival and moving through town. Cars heading up to Bombadier plant for refurbishing. For viable transportation there is an estimated $12 million needed for track repairs. 3. Button Up campaign Money available from NEGEF for organizing projects; MEAC would need to apply by September 15th. Button Up is whole month of November, only two months away so planning needs to start ASAP. EAN is working towards using the community energy dashboard as a tool to track impact across the state on Button Up day and year to year. Building infrastructure of dashboard to support that. Sustainable Montpelier Coalition arranged for last 2 Saturdays in Sept and first weekend of October to close State Street to model a pedestrian-centered downtown. An opportunity to bring info to people and get the word out about Button Up month in advance. MEAC could have a NZM table and invite contractors, VSECU and other partners to table also – Oct 7th. Call to action would be getting residents to record their actions on the Dashboard checklist and asking them to pledge to do something more in November. Jared could bring computer to show Dashboard and solicit stories. Planning group: Kate, Cara, Jared, Joey. Other outreach ideas for Button Up month:  On FPF, place links to success stories. Not selling them products, just info.  Talk to Aubuchon about giving discounts again.  Mini tours focused on specific technologies (pellet furnace, weatherization, etc). Instead of lots of tours at once do them spread out over the month of November.  Coordinate with EVT to be one of the 50 towns that receives free LEDs for distribution. Check with Paul Markowitz on this. 4. Working group updates: Residential: Ken Jones has been working on exploring funding for a more comprehensive program to help homeowners go Net Zero. The goals are ambitious, without time or resources it is unrealistic. Transportation: Recent MTIC meeting included proposal for free EV charging station at North Branch Nature Center. Working with consultant on survey of transport use in city. How are they switching from cars or not. Meant to track progress. Opportunity to ask specific questions of interest. Now that there is electronic vehicle inspection process there will be data on vehicle miles traveled that could be input into the EAN Dashboard. Police vehicle idling reduction project is still being investigated. If battery level drops it turns the engine back on and retains functionality of all the police equipment with no idling. Proposal to get money out of revolving loan fund – cost is $500 per car. Trial showed $800 savings/year/car in Burlington. Chief Facos supports the project. Planning and Policy: City plan is up in the air. Complications with how the master plan was re-adopted have been slowing down the process and it hasn’t been resolved yet. Municipal: Last week city council met to approve water resource recovery facility Organics to Energy project development agreement. Approved $20k contract for energy audits of city building as well. MEAC helped coordinate a big event at Log Rd solar array ribbon cutting with the Kendall investment team. Recent Council meeting showed we need to continue to update them periodically; the WRRF request came as something of a surprise to them. We will also need to focus on public education before the bond vote next March to help ensure the project moves forward. Municipal energy audits: the budget process starts in November, but the audits won’t be totally complete by then. We may miss the budget cycle so could use revolving fund to cover low hanging fruit projects in 2018. MEAC should be prepared to go  into budget discussions with an ask for funding for recommended measures coming out of energy audit process. There have been issues with the municipal solar project around allocations of credits to different meters. Some of the meters selected are pump stations that are getting large amount of credits. GMP will not allow the city to transfer from one to another. A team of folks from Novus, Green Light, and Kendall Investment are working to resolve and make it right. We want to make sure we don’t lose any of the credits- they expire after 1 year. Kate got spreadsheet from EVT of all municipal energy use by meter for FY17. Based on those numbers we anticipate 53% of municipal energy use going forward will be covered by the solar arrays. Meeting adjourned at 8:30pm.