Sustainability, Energy, & Resiliency Committee

Meeting Minutes October 19, 2017 6:30pm 120 Washington Street. 3rd Floor Attendance: Jenna Ide (staff), Jeff Cohen, John Hayes, Lisa Kay Rosenthal, Jeff Barz-Snell, Rick Nye, Chris Cantone Not in attendance: Gail Kubik Public in attendance: Daria Scofield (intern), Kanchan Kandel (intern) 1. Introductions (New Member): Chris Cantone our new member introduced himself. He has been in the energy, energy efficiency, and renewable energy fields for 25+ years - with experience at Mass Electric, Constellation Energy, and now Sunpower for the past ten years. 2. Review and Approve Meeting Minutes: Minutes from September 21, 2017 were approved after edits from Jenna and John. 3. Compact of Mayors Requirements [now known as the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy]: A. Daria presented her findings of what the Compact of Mayors needs from Salem in order for Salem to be compliant. Mayor Driscoll signed the Compact in 2015. The Compact of Mayors is an international initiative for local governments to combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and becoming more resilient. Salem’s greenhouse gas inventory will need to be updated to include data from the city as a whole. Right now Salem only has data for municipal government operations. Salem will need to report emissions from stationary energy, residential, commercial, industry, transportation, and waste. Daria will research how other cities and towns have gathered their residential and commercial data. John reported on a past research project [ “Global Change in Local Places”] by academic geographers - in which residents of Toledo, OH were surveyed about their home energy use as an insert to one of their utility billing statements. [note added by JH: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13549839808725566?src=recsys ] B. Salem also needs to report a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target year. The committee discussed how a target year can be developed. C. A new Climate Action Plan that encompasses the city as a whole is needed. Jenna discussed perhaps hiring a consultant to help with the Climate Action Plan and greenhouse gas inventory. D. Kanchan presented bar graphs and tabular data showing the energy use data for Salem’s government operations. He is working to update them for this year. 4. SERC Goals: A. Daria proposed ideas to the committee of additions to the SERC website. To combine the many wind energy resources into one tab, to combine the energy efficiency links into one tab, to include a note about the committee’s name change, to include a tab discussing what the committee is working on, and to define the role of the committee in regard to citizen projects. These ideas were approved by the committee and Daria will begin to update the website with them. B. The Wind FAQ and public resiliency event are still being researched. John discussed the possibility of having Daria work on a resiliency FAQ for the website. C. Kanchan is working on updating the data for the Green Communities Act. 5. Open Discussion and Project Updates: A. Jenna updated the committee on the Witchcraft and Bentley School’s solar PV stages. Witchcraft is in phase two, there was an issue with the roof leaking so that needs to fixed before it can continue. Bentley has been approved. B. There was a discussion of potentially hosting an event around Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) - potentially bringing in a representative to a meeting to discuss further. C. Lisa discussed an event to be held at Salem State University on November 14th from 6:30-9:00 pm. Organized and coordinated by Environment Massachusetts (with assistance from Salem State’s chapter of MassPIRG) to push the state to pledge 100% renewable energy. She asked any available committee members to attend. John, who is a professor of geography at Salem State, will appear on a panel at the event. D. Jeff Barz-Snell would like all committee members to look over SERC goals and would like to discuss them further at the next meeting. Meeting Adjourned at 7:58pm Minutes respectfully submitted by Daria Scofield and John Hayes. Know Your Rights Under the Open Meeting Law, M.G.L. c. 39 §23B, and City Ordinance Sections 2-2028 through 2-2033. Please contact Jenna Ide at jide@salem.com or 978-619-5699 for more information. 120 W ASHINGTON STREET, SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS 01970  TEL: 978.745.9595 FAX: 978.740.0404  WWW .SALEM.COM