Sustainability, Energy, & Resiliency Committee

Meeting Minutes - Final June 26, 2019 – 6:30PM City Hall – 98 Washington Street In Attendance: John Hayes, Jeff Cohen, Gail Kubik, Rick Nye, Brittany Dolan (staff) Not in Attendance: Chris Cantone, Jenna Ide (staff), Lisa Peterson (councilor), Phil Koch Public: Stan Franzeen (SAFE), Pat Gozemba (SAFE), Cindy Keegan (SAFE), Richard Wilcock, James Willis 1. Introductions 2. Public comment • No public comment. 3. Review & Approve Meeting Minutes • Jeff Cohen motioned to accept the minutes from the May meeting. Rick Nye seconded. • Vote passed unanimously. 4. Beginning a conversation regarding the development of offshore wind energy • Jeff Cohen – There is a possibility of putting up a MET tower that Marblehead will sponsor with us. • Cindy Keegan – Within the City of Salem, Winter Island would be the only feasible location for wind. Therefore, we should start looking at offshore wind energy. We need continued advancements in deep water technology. We want to work together with SERC to try to get this conversation started. This project is long-term but we have to start somewhere and Salem has to plan for offshore wind energy. • John Hayes – Does anybody know of any multi-community wind collaborative within Massachusetts? • Cindy Keegan – I do not know of anything like that but I would like to see something like that in the future. • Jeff Cohen – Marblehead has shown resistance to this because they pay less for electricity than we do already so they would not want to start paying more. • John Hayes – We could think about short-term, mid-term, and long-term projects and plans to have a comprehensive plan about all of the wind options for Salem.  • Cindy Keegan – Yes it would be good to have opportunities to collaborate with other committees like SERC around the Northshore. • Rick Nye – A good thing about our power plant is that it is ready to utilize wind energy. • John Hayes – Having an update to the MET tower data would be great and it gives Salem an opportunity to have an offshore wind farm. • Jeff Cohen – Salem has too many people and too little space to use only solar power. We have to branch out and use wind energy in order to power all of Salem. Wind operates when solar isn’t so the two would work together. • Cindy Keegan – We could partner with towns and cities that have much more land and those towns could build more solar on top of our wind turbines and then we could combine the power and share it. • Jeff Cohen – There isn’t space for a wind turbine except Winter Island. We would like a wind farm and there just isn’t space unless its offshore. Permitting for wind is much more difficult than solar. • John Hayes – Brittany can start looking into how we can get a MET tower at Winter Island. • Cindy Keegan – We will be having a “visioning session” on October 1st with Sonia Hamill from 6:30-8:30pm at the CLC to talk about what we can do in the face of Climate Change. We want to highlight the positive things that we can do. • Pat Gozemba – The Mayor has given verbal approval for the visioning session and we would like to get co-sponsored by SERC and potentially SSCW. The session will focus on looking at the revenue that could potentially come in with the Jennifer Benson Bill (H.2810). This will allow Salem access to money for the future. • Jeff Cohen motioned for SERC to become a cosponsor for this event. Gail Kubik seconded. • Vote passed unanimously. 5. Solarize Mass Plus Next Steps • Jeff Cohen – We have done Solarize before with Swampscott. We got accepted to the program again this year to work with Swampscott and Nahant to promote solar, solar hot water, and air source heat pumps within the community. We are just awaiting the official confirmation and then the campaign can start hopefully in the early fall. 6. MVP Workshop Review • Brittany Dolan – In 2014, the City made a climate adaptation plan. It did not go through the regular MVP process but was grandfathered and that’s why we are designated as an MVP community. Now we are going back and reviewing the plan and making updates in order to keep our MVP designation. In early June, we had an internal MVP workshop with members from departments across the City. Now there will be a review process of what came out of that meeting and then there will be a second meeting held that will include members of the public. 7. Finalize Resiliency FAQ • This has been moved to the agenda for the August meeting. 8. SERC Website Updates • This has been moved to the agenda for the August meeting. 9. Review Geothermal Energy FAQ • This has been moved to the agenda for the August meeting. 10. New Business/Upcoming Events • Next month on July 24th at 6:00pm, SERC will host the annual Pot Luck Event at the Salem Willows. 11. Adjournment • Jeff Cohen motioned to adjourn. Rick Nye seconded. • Vote passed unanimously. Meeting adjourned at 8:15pm. Minutes respectfully submitted by Brittany Dolan.