 Okay, we are recording. All right, good afternoon everyone. Let's start our meeting with our vision in charge. Minute, minute taker. Oh, it should be Laura. Don't think she's here. She's just joining. Hey Laura, can you be the minute taker this week? Sure. Thank you. All right, great. So, so vision again is to work with the community in town to raise awareness and achieve results with a sense of urgency. Last week we were talking about planning and prioritizing cross functional efforts and recommending programs, which we did. Thank you all for your feedback. I sent it over to Anna. I was there at the meeting on Monday. And I think that I did not attend the part where they were talking about the town manager goals. I don't know if anybody did. But if you did, and you listen to it, we can talk about it during the ECAC member updates. Again, our sectors were still nothing's changed here. The five sectors that we have. And then in terms of metrics, Stephanie I added a new one based on the conversation that we were having about. We were talking about this week. Around the expense spend report and how that is being used. To meet our sustainability goals. So I have that for as a quarterly action. For now, so we can make changes that needed. We're having our third education series today. Super excited. So thanks Lori for setting this up again. Appreciate it. And then in terms of action items. Stephanie, again, all you hear. I think we can remove the fourth one on this list. Yeah, I don't see why we need that one still. Okay. What about the first two steps? So we're still, that is, you know, the first two are still in process. Don and I met. So we're sort of working it out and I think he's going to give us an update. So. Okay. I'm working with him. So. Okay. Just keep that as in process. Yes. Okay. All right. Let's move on to the next part of the agenda then has to review our minutes. Any questions or comments about last week's months. I move we accept them as they are. Sorry. And we couldn't hear you. I second. Thank you. Okay. Okay. And no particular order via voice vote. Goldner. Yes. The. Yes. Roof. Yes. Allison. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. Thank you, everybody. Yeah. I'm giving you the ability to talk. So feel free to unmute yourself. Thanks. Hi, everybody. Yeah. Okay. So no other comments. All right. So I know Stephanie, you wanted to talk about the time sensitive item. So should we move the agenda to address that first before we talk about progress reports. No, I think you can do the progress reports first. I just want to be able to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just want to very quickly go over those questions and see if anyone has any edits or just. Encourage people to get edits to me. So. Okay. And Lori, how long is the meeting? The education series. I'm assuming it'll be about an hour. I didn't actually ask, but I looked at the slides and it looks to me like it'll be less than an hour presentation. And then he knows, he knows he has an hour slot. So I assume it's going to be an hour. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to go over those questions, which sounds really good to me. Okay. Thank you. Okay. That's the case then, Don. If we can. Talk about. Ace. Sure. I think a Stephanie just told you Stephanie and I. Met. I'm working with Stephanie. I put together a very. Simple one page information sheet. And then I'm going to go over it. And then we'll make available to. Individuals who are interested in. Doing any sort of renovations or retrofitting of. Commercial or multifamily properties. I am technologically challenged. So Stephanie said she would screen share that. So you can see. Sorry. No attention to my screen. You've got way too much to do. I cannot tell you how much it gives me grief about that. So hold on and I'll get the proper screen. Overwhelming. Stephanie. Okay. So this is. This is the very brief. Description of the program. That I put together ran it by Stephanie. I believe. You know, the issues going to be, you were going to send it maybe Stephanie to the finance. Director here. But it just basically lays out the program. It lays out. It just simply. Left out in the type of improvements that are eligible for. Pace financing, the gas line extensions. Since I'm not sure that. Is something that we want to. Encourage. So I. I selected the two other areas other than gas line extensions, reduction improvements which relate to energy efficiency and conservation measures like lighting, lighting control upgrades, HVAC equipment upgrades, building envelope improvements, efficient electrification, combined heat and power, and then the renewable energy improvements. So, solar, panels, wind systems, solar, thermal, ground source heat pumps and air source heat pumps. You know, I'm pretty clear in the beginning that it's only available to owners of existing properties, and that it's designed to encourage and incentivize property owners to make energy efficient renovations, or and or retrofits to their properties. Explain that it's jointly administered by the Department of Energy Resources DOER and mass development, mass development finance agency that ultimately issues the bonds, well the state issues the bonds, but with the approval of DOER, the bonds get issued for the financing that the applications are made to mass development, they've got to be approved by DOER, and interestingly, and it is, even though we call it C-PACE, Massachusetts calls it PACE Massachusetts. And PACE Massachusetts encourages program participants to leverage both mass save and mass CEC incentives in connection with the proposed project. And we give the website, the mass development website that people that are interested, developers or property owners that are interested can pull up the guidelines and the application. I think Stephanie put the little question down there in the bottom which I haven't had a chance to respond to her yet. Do we want to include a local contact here as well. Would it be the finance director, Stephanie, or Stephanie is director of sustainability or both. I think the issues. That interests me as we're talking about the, some of the retrofitting programs, the heat pump programs, whether somehow or other, we can look into, you know, somehow or other combining the availability of this financing. Now I understand our heat pump programs, I believe unless I'm wrong, are really geared toward individual property owners as opposed to group property owners and I may be wrong about that. But I'm wondering if there's a dovetailing in here between the financing program that's available under PACE Massachusetts and whatever programs we as a town want to encourage to do a number of the things that the financing in available under PACE Massachusetts, let's be done. The next issue is in Stephanie I talked about whether or not we could sponsor some sort of educational program for major property owners, I mean earmark toward owners of large residential properties with lots of units on them or and or commercial developers who might be interested in and renovating existing commercial buildings on and what the next step might be to do that, that kind of educational outreach. There's the chamber and I did talk to the executive director of the chamber. And, you know, where do we take it from here. You know, I have my own. I have my own concerns and I think I mentioned these to you all a while back. You know, property owners are, it's going to have to make financial sense for them to do any other retrofitting or renovating and essentially borrow the money to do it. It's going to have to make economic sense and and how we go about convincing them that there is a economic value in regardless of dollars saved that there's an economic value in in a community wide effort to use our carbon footprint. I don't know. But I'd welcome any thoughts on that. Those of you who are persuasive in that area. I'm talking to you, Andrea. Don't see a raised hand. I can, I can say a comment I can comment on one thing which is that I think regarding your last point. We have to find a way to identify homeowner property owners who are going to make upgrades anyway, right because that's who needs to replace a boiler, or you know who needs to do something because it's at the end of its life. They're going to be spending money anyway and if anything it'll cost them less to do it this way right, it'll cost them less both in the short term, because of the incentives and rebates as well as the financing good financing terms. And it'll cost them less in the long run, assuming they're moving from oil or propane heat. I mean, I think that's the thing is to find property owners that whose buildings are ready for an upgrade anyway. And I don't know how we identify them I don't know how we find them. But I think that's what we need to be doing. We need to be finding those folks can't find my raise hand feature. Can I stop sharing this document. Yeah. Just so we can see each other and sorry to jump in I just couldn't see everybody. I was just thinking about that as you were talking Lori that it seems to me that having the flyer and having it available here, where people have to come in for permitting, you know they if they're going to do any of this work. They have to obtain permits so having the information readily available and handed to them. When they're considering this. Unfortunately, I think sometimes when people come in for the permitting they might be that much farther ahead. So I don't know. It's much faster we can get it to them but I feel like at least that feels like a point of contact that would be useful to make sure that when people are here they're either right at the counter when people come in or we have them at the website or people automatically get them sent. Lori, I think you're gonna have a response to that. So I think I think Dwayne has his hand up to but I just thought of something else but like let Dwayne go first. Go ahead if you have if you have a continuation of your thought that's fine. Well both thoughts. It just occurred to me that we could probably get the renters involved in the following way are there particular properties that generate lots of complaints that we know are in trouble for various reasons and can we approach those landowners right. Just a thought. Dwayne and Jesse. Yeah okay yeah I had maybe a similar thought but maybe less targeted than than Lori but I just, I'm just sort of wondering I mean we have it's a relatively small town, especially if you take the universities away and colleges I'm just wondering you know how many of these pace eligible universities are there out there, and does the town have any access to email lists or mailing lists that that would cover a good number of them at least, or maybe the chamber itself. Because I do think you know once they're pulling a permit, they probably have a contractor there, they sort of know what they're doing, and it may be a little bit late for them to switch gears. And just to make sure they all know this. Maybe it will trigger oh maybe this is a good time to do it or maybe it's something that they'll remember, you know, two years from now when they do need to replace something so I guess I am wondering whether there's just a way to get. Do we have a final flyer information is there just a way at not too much cost to get this out to the pace eligible entities we have in town. And then I was also thinking in terms of the financials. I mean, these are commercial property owners they probably have some financial sophistication, you know, more so than than a homeowner. So, you know in terms of them understanding the cash flow and payback period or rate of return. They should have the wherewithal to do that and it's going to be very site specific. You know I do you know once you sort of talk about okay I'm going to upgrade my boiler to a heat pump. I was raising questions about the heat distribution the building and whether you have to redo some of the air exchange handling units or radiation units if it's a ground source heap on so there could be some additional expenses. And, you know, maybe, well maybe maybe another example is in a, if we put together a flyer but then maybe a couple sample proformas I guess or or what this kind of me might mean for a typical replacement of a oil boiler with a heat pump system or those lines, and work out some sort of pro forma financial cash flow analysis that that would trigger their thinking on this. Thanks for Jesse and then under a couple quick suggestions one. Just to remember from the presentation we saw there was a kind of threshold, an unofficial, not to be shared threshold of cost that I've ever calls around $200,000, which was where she thought the project started to make economic sense and that's probably a project that's going to involve design professionals at that point. So getting this information out to that community. I think it's a good one and then one way that people engage the town is they might call and say hey do I need a building permit to do X, Y or Z. If we had a, if we could train the town staff or enable them to say hey, glad you called, can I email you a flyer with our latest incentives. The other place is if you're researching a project I want to do a project in Amherst, I go to the inspection services web page. Is there any reason why there couldn't be a banner on every single sheet page for inspection services regulations fee schedules documents resources at the top of every single page. If you are replacing a boiler click here and just take people to those resources. I think the web, if it's okay I just wanted to respond to that really quickly that you know the web presence is probably an easier route to go for sure. I don't think that would be really challenging it's just catching people. I think to really make it happen. We're going to have to recruit. We're going to have someone in town who's forward thinking be a demonstration, get press, you know, have them talk to the chamber. It's going to be a campaign. This isn't going to happen otherwise this is why pace hasn't taken off, because it really is a mindset change that we have to. That we have to help encourage. And so there's no one way to communicate we yet we're going to have to really think about how many different ways we can communicate it. And of course, the best way is always one to one with, you know, the people we know in the community who own commercial services. That's the best way to actually find someone willing to listen and learn more. That's such a good idea, I really, yeah, find someone who wants to do it make a case study shine a light on it. That is brilliant. I have one last idea. Maybe from one of our. Oh, sorry, Laura, you did you have your hand up. Okay, next. Okay. Maybe for the next education series and before we do a panel, we could have one of the, we already sort of did this didn't we but maybe we can have a. It'd be interesting to hear from somebody who's actually done this right in another town there are plenty of examples in other towns. You can get somebody through the building electrification guys who has done this who'd be willing to speak to specifically to Amherst builders contractors designers or anyone in the area who is, you know, thinking of making use of this program. Yeah, and we did that with Greenfield right Stephanie somebody and we had that we had the Greenfield one so yeah, did we get who showed up to that though we have builders and contractors in the audience. I don't recall. No, it will. Yeah. No, nothing. We didn't even have a flyer at the time. Lori. How do we get those guys. Yeah. Yeah. It's not always easy to get to come. Sorry. Oh, yeah. So yeah, um, I think we've got some good ideas we've got some ideas that we can do immediately and we should just go ahead and do those. I feel like these conversations always end with us saying we need to do a big campaign. And that's always really too much for us to take on and we never do it and then we never do any of the things. So I think there's like a few things that we talked about that seem very simple, speaking to communications department about whether we can get this. First of all, getting the flyer finalized, getting on the website, linking to it from all the pages we need to link to having it available in town hall next to the permitting office, sending it out to the chamber to email folks. So let's start with those things that seem like all things we could accomplish in a month or something, and then go from there and see where we can go because once we have all that information up. Then if we plan a campaign or some other event, like we have some place to send people. Yeah, and I agree and you know I was also going to say, Stephanie if I may go. I think there's all good comments. I kind of echo what Andra said, but in a not more elaborate fashion. I think there should be boots on the ground. Don you know people in the community. Let's ask them what they're looking for. And why would they convert will be the reason why they would convert into a greener initiative. I think that having that conversation will help us understand whether there's a need to have an education series, whether there's a need to put up links that we would need to do work on so I think I would say, let's have conversations with people. You know, I think Dwayne brought up. It's a small community. We should have emails and data about these property owners. Let's start having conversations with them and then figure out what actions we need to launch whether it's updating the website, or something else through education series, we wouldn't know until we have that discussion. So, Stephanie and then gone. So, Don and I spoke about what a next step could be and in working with the chamber and the bid, they have breakfasts and they have regular events where they gather the business community. It's really easy to reach out to them and say we would like to have this as a topic at one of your meetings. I've that's one of the things that I actually did reach out to the finance director about was to a look at the flyer and then be to ask him if he would be interested and available to maybe do one of these with Don, who has experience and to be able to talk to folks and we can, you know, we could certainly work out what that might look like even more as if that idea moves forward, but it's certainly an opportunity where you already have an audience pretty much. Don you're going to say something. Stephanie took care of what I was going to say. Yes, he care of the whole thing. So with the, then with the flyer. Have language like. Do you want to be a part of the art, you know the first paste project in Amherst like. Yes, you reach out to Don or Stephanie or how is there a way to do what what Laura's saying of like let's get the things done that we can get done now which I make sense, but also sort of cast a line out for for this bigger project and is that is that putting the cart before the horse to have this flyer this banner this sort of outreach piece. Make that ask. Those are just general it's just general information just literally get the information out that the program exists and the more people hear of it or see it. And then you have an event and you say oh we're going to have this event where we're going to actually talk more about this and how you could get involved in this. People will hopefully have seen or heard about it. And that this will be just like another, another reference to it I think like with anything else you just have to keep. You just have to getting the information out there. So I don't think you want to start honing in and asking people are you going to be the first project. You want to give people the information and let them know that you know this is how you can do it that it's possible other communities have done it. We can certainly use greenfield as reference I don't think Carol could come but she could certainly you know their project is out there. We could certainly reach out to the pace program and even see if we can get someone from the pace program to come. So Stephanie you're saying, let's have a conversation through whatever event that bid has at whatever frequency to understand pain points interest levels before we go and do anything to basically just well not before we do anything. I think you have to get the flyer out you've got to get the flyer. So that program that program would really just be again to give more information, but it gives people an opportunity to ask specific questions to be in the room together. And I think that kind of conversation and question and answer helps because sometimes someone will think of a question that somebody else wouldn't have, and the response actually might actually trigger them to think that something would happen. So, and having, you know, having an example of a community that's done something that might be willing to come might help to, because it'll be like here is an actual example of something that was successful. Maybe Carol doesn't come but maybe the folks who actually own that building or did that actual renovation might be willing to come. And Stephanie how often do these meetings happen. I think they used to happen monthly and Don I'm you're probably more connected to it than I am. Yeah, I'll check. I'll check with the executive director of who I who I spoke to just a couple of weeks ago, and find out, you know when how often they are, and when the next kind of breakfast kind of meeting is, I would also, you know, it is about getting the information out there because, as I look at it as a lawyer, the real. I think the best shot you have to get a project going is to find a property owner, whether it's a commercial property owner or an owner of a large residential rental property project or property. Find somebody who's in the process of selling or buying that particular property, where whoever's buying it is going to be looking toward renovating it or, or doing something anyway. And, and if you get that information to them at that point when you know there's going to be a sale. I think that's an easier point than to, you know, take somebody who has a property and try to convince them hey you want to, you want to retrofit this property, and you ought to go out and spend the money to do it. And, you know, it's really got to be what some of you have already said like you Laurie that they're ready to replace, they're ready to replace all the boilers in, you know, one of one of these properties or in a one of these residential multifamily residential properties or a commercial property. And this is a financing program that's available. And that encourages the renewable energy and the non, you know, carbon footprint stuff. So, so getting it to Realtors. Yeah, yeah, I mean if you if there's a, you know, if there's a big commercial deal being made to sell a piece of commercial property or, you know, it wasn't all that long ago that rolling Ridge or whatever it is that's over there by, you know, by echo Hill, you know, sold and all the renovation that went into that at the time that the new buyer bought it. If you're able to get in front of that when another one of these things sells you might actually be able to convince them that this is a great time to take advantage of a program like this, because you're going to be doing these renovations anyway. To me, those are real tipping points because the new buyer is going to do work is going to do significant work on the building that they're buying, especially if it's an older building. Laura. Yeah, so I'm going to take as the note taker here to maybe wrap up this combo and make sure I've jot it down the immediate action item. So what I've heard is immediate action items is that Don will reach out to the chamber to find out when the chamber meetings are happening. Next, Stephanie is going to get feedback from Sean and who and I think committee members should provide feedback on the flyer. Do we have a date by which we want to do that and who is going to be responsible for finding it for finalizing the flyer. I will work on that scene that we were the ones working on it. Yeah. I don't mind sending it. I mean, we just screen share that we can send it out to you and if there's any suggestions. I want to keep it short. I don't want something that's many pages long because you'll put people to sleep. If it is, I just did send it to everybody just before the meeting, by the way. Good. Okay. Okay, so an action would be to give Don and Stephanie feedback before our next meeting. And then finalize that. Okay. And then Stephanie, once we do that Stephanie will share with folks in town and then I think we can reconvene on others we want to reach out to and who will do it. I think that's one of the many ideas that have been thrown around so far have been designed firms commercial realtors and HVAC companies, but we can talk more about that next time, as well as additional campaigns. Yeah, we might have to do things in parallel as we're having conversations with the bid. There are some owners that we can connect with Don, not naming names but you know there's interest within our committee. So just reach out to whoever you think can help you. This is a big initiative so. Thank you, Jesse. There are some, there are some lawyers that do. I mean, there are one or two law firms in fact, very few law firms that actually do all of the permanent for these big deals going into town hall, and yeah, you can reach out to them too. Because they have a client that comes in that wants to buy a piece of property. So we have to rehab it and needs to finance the rehabbing. It's, there's a lot of possibilities, but I'm mindful of Laura saying we've talked about this enough so. Yeah, Jesse finding comments and then we need to move on to the next topic. So as you review the language just consider thinking in all of our heads like this should be a replicable process there's more incentives more programs. There should be a, I think thematically this is this should be a kind of fill in the blank type of brochure where any type of. So the next time something comes up that we want to promote this is just insert the right words and times and places, and it's the same thing over and over again because this hopefully won't be the last. Something to think about as as you're reviewing the, the flyer. Thanks, Jesse. All right, we'll move on to our next topic on solar so when you know you're going to go through the calculations at this meeting. Now. Sorry, what was that again. Are you going to also go through the calculations. Now, I'm prepared to show you the spreadsheet that I have put together for discussion and comment. It's not final. I don't necessarily think it's ready for public consumption but if we need to share it because we share it here that's fine. And I don't think we, you know, I certainly encourage people to do I want to think about it and provide comments over the next until the next meeting and then I can try to wrap things up. But yeah, I can show you if we can take the next 18 minutes to discuss updates, because we'll leave the last six minutes for Stephanie to go over the time sensitive material. And then switch to the education series. So, so I just wanted to remind you that on is here and may not be able to stay the whole time. Okay. Any updates, we want to jump into, or if you can wait hold off until 528 or so. I do have to jump. I'm sorry I teach a class at 530 but really, really quickly, we did not do the goals on Monday so we have added a new meeting on the 12 this next Monday so another three in a row which is great but it's a little bit sarcastic. So we'll be discussing it then I have sent a red lined draft of the goals to back to the folks who are working on them in GOL that incorporated the ones you sent. There were a lot in there. And so what I did do is I took the liberty of taking the ones that were policy related out of the town manager goals and they would go into the policy goal, because those are those would be dealt with by the council. And then there are a couple that were financial implications that I'm going to send to the finance committee to include or to see if they might include them in their financial guidelines document which again is is very broad it does not get into specificity but we'll, we'll keep pushing for that so just so you know that discussion did not happen on Monday you did not miss it. It will be happening Monday the 12th. Okay, and can you send me the draft that you're sending out to everybody, please. Absolutely yep in it again like it's not a it's not a sure thing so yeah always you know keep that in mind but we'll we'll definitely keep trying and yes I will forward that to you and if I haven't done it tomorrow by tomorrow please please feel free to remind me. Thank you. Thank you. When you have about 16 minutes if that's okay. Yep, I can just run through quickly what I have and then we can talk about how to just high level comments and then how to get more specific comments but okay if I share the screen. Good. Okay, so let's just and sort of understand the purpose of this, which is not really to look at in in isolation but it goes hand in hand with the solar assessment work that is going on for the town to look at the extent of the town and what potential technical potential and then some preferential potentials of solar sighting would be on land and on the built environment in in within the jurisdictions of Amherst. And what we wanted to be able to then do with that technical assessment is put into some context with regard to if if the town of Amherst was to host a certain amount of solar capacity within the town, what what that what might that look like both on the built environment and the unbuilt environment. And to do that we needed to have some basis to suggest some capacities that would be reasonable to expect to want or propose for Amherst to host within its jurisdictions and so that's the purpose of this evaluation and the way we were looking at is to look at it's for coming up with a range of solar hosting or solar capacity that would would seemingly be appropriate for Amherst and and look at those different methodologies and look at the range of capacity levels that they would suggest and then to use that to then potentially come up as as ecac but others could come up with their own numbers to suggest that we look at in terms of potentially maybe a low and high capacity amount that we would want to potentially host an Amherst and then what that would look like in the solar assessment mapping that is concurrently taking place. So that's what we set off to do. And so on the screen is spreadsheet to sort of put this into into into some numbers, and there are three methods I think we discussed a few meetings ago. So I'll just walk through these quickly and sort of how we I put this together. I do appreciate some input from Steve on this as well and acknowledge that there's some color coding here in terms of what are sort of user inputs or things we decide what's just sort of calculated cells. We have fixed inputs that don't we don't really have flexibility on and then the greens greens are really the outcomes that we were are looking for under these methodologies and in each case, and each method I've tried to come up with a high, a low and a high valued scenario that would sort of scan a reasonable assumptions. So the method one is really looking to base a capacity amount of solar in Amherst. That's targeted in some way to the electricity that we consume in Amherst. And so we do have reasonably good electricity consumption across the whole town from the 2017 I think it was. The last greenhouse gas inventory, excluding the universities and the colleges all this excludes the universities and colleges, and that's about 95,000 megawatt hours. Now, and this is also, I should point out looking to be sort of in line with the state, looking at sort of hosting, what would make sense for hosting by by by 2050 not tomorrow but out out by 2050 time frame. Our current load is is pretty fixed but pretty well known at 95,000 megawatt hours residential commercial and so forth. As per the 2050 roadmap, our electricity statewide is used as supposed to double potentially a bit more than double, assuming Amherst does the same. I look at either a little bit less than doubling 80% or a little bit more than doubling 120% has two options. It doesn't mean that we need to produce all, all of our renewable energy assuming we're going to get to 100% renewable energy by 2050 it doesn't mean that we have to produce it all from solar in Amherst, but assuming I went with two assumptions here, noting that this at the state level it's expected that the solar contribution amongst all the renewables is about 2535% the rest coming from offshore wind and hydro. I figured to some extent. So 25% was sort of a low scenario. I went with 50% thinking that, you know, we're for those that think we're pretty far away from offshore wind. We're pretty far away from hydro if we wanted to take that on take more of our local resources and base our own consumption on local resources, the other the high scenario I chose, but open for discussion for ecac and then others can use their own assumptions but I went with 50%. That basically leads to a range of capacity solar capacity of 33 to 92 megawatts a pretty large range, but these are all pretty large ranges. The second methodology was to base it off of the projections that the statewide projections that the state is has recently come out with with their 2050 roadmap. The state projects by 2050, a build out of about between 25,000 and 35,000 megawatts 25 to 35 gigawatts of solar as the contribution by 2050, I use that as the low and high value. Again, that's in the base case scenario if, if hydro doesn't come in, for example, or offshore wind comes in less, the expectations that solar would have to be actually substantially higher. But as the as the base case and the reference case it's 25 to 35 megawatts. I looked at there's two potential two ways to look at that in terms of our fair share if you want to look at it that way. Amherst is about 0.289% of the landmass within the Commonwealth were also about 0.559% of the population. I did want to dig in a little bit more in terms of what that data that I used meant with regard to population, because I don't know if that's year round popular year round population or, or how that treats students as a little bit of an outlier when it comes to population demographics I think so I wanted to dig a little bit more into that but that's the data that I had available. And so then, you know, one can look at that and say okay our land where you know these are the sort of fair share based on land and population. You know I said as a, as a, as a, as a, as a assumption for, for low amount if we wanted to take a quarter of a percent of the state capacity as a high percent 0.6% of the state capacity kind of spanning the, the range of share the landmass and the population. That led to solar capacities between 63 and 210 megawatts. And then the final method that we talked about was building off of the 2050 roadmap, and particularly the, the technical report on land issues I forget the exact title of that was a some assumptions or projections that fertile ground mounted solar this is not the totality of solar, but for land ground mounted solar. The energy pathways scenarios covered a range of anywhere from 31,000 acres to 158,000 acres with a mean of 60,000 acres. Under the reference scenario was projected to be needed for ground mounted solar in Massachusetts. Again using. So I built a scenario off of that. And I kind of scan, expand that those, those ranges for a low value of 3035,000 the high value of 100,000 acres. And again then looking at mass Amherst portion of that landmass. And then also thinking about you know there's different thoughts and projection about how tightly you can pack solar on an acre of land. If we look at do you solar or parking lot they tend to be a little bit less megawatts per acre. So there's some range there in terms that the density of solar per acre. And then, you know, keeping in mind this is just the ground mounted amount that Massachusetts needs, not the full amount. I made some further assess assumptions and to sort of build that up of the totality of solar, thinking that anywhere from 40 to 60% of the solar. These are these I will admit are kind of made up numbers I don't really have citations for that the rest of the stuff. I'm we are have fairly well referenced. Though I one thing I want to complete in this spreadsheet is just to have those citations clearly available for folks. But in any case this scenario sort of gave a range of 24 to 180 megawatts. I'll pause in a moment but we then talked about looking at this graphically. So here's our three scenarios with the ranges of solar capacity that sort of emanate from those different methods. And the idea would then be to say, you know, not with precision, but then to, you know, base okay we want a low, medium and high value perhaps to look at to see how it translates to the mapping and the resource potential, solar potential in Amherst. And so we could use this type of graph to then pick out okay what's what's a reasonable low value medium value and high value that sort of spans the, the totality of the of the capacities suggested by the three different methodologies. The last spreadsheet just some additional data and assumptions that were made. But let me, I'm interested in folks thoughts on this, and how you would like to dig into this further and help help you know I want this to be a something that we can all somewhat reach consensus on both in the methodology of the assumptions, and then how we select both low, medium, high scenarios to look at in concert with the mapping. So, yes, this is great when fantastic. I mean thanks Steve also for the support. I'll let Jesse go first. Wayne, do you think it would be appropriate. If someone said asked, hey, how much solar should Amherst have, based on this presentation, and if I wanted to keep it very high level and simple could I say yet somewhere between 50 and 200 megawatts installed. Is that could that be like a very, very concise. That's where we're headed kind of statement without getting into the weeds that would that were that that crazy. I'd say we want to discuss that because what is what is ecax roll here and and and what what do we want to put forward from the committee. We've clearly heard some public comments with regard to this notion of fair share may not be the appropriate way to look at it. There may be arguments that Amherst is a special place. And that we should look at this more regionally. And maybe there are other areas that are better suited for solar than Amherst. I don't, I think, folks can push back on that I think every place probably considers themselves fairly special. And obviously we want to and and Western Massachusetts is pretty, you know, there's, there's, there's farms and forests and the built environment there's. I'm not sure there's a whole lot else. And so, I think we want to be careful with regard to how to couch that and express that. Whether we want to sort of put out something as a, as a proposal what we what ecac thinks we should host or this is merely a tool for people to use and come up with their own conclusions. But I think I think you know one thing we want to be able to do is is look at this in concert with the mapping. And what I'm really, you know, focused on in the mapping is you know obviously there's there's good reasons and and and justifications for putting things as much as possible in the built environment. Arguably at higher cost but still probably folks feel that that's justified. I think we might want to think about what we want to put forward once we see some of the mapping and see the extent to which we have capacity availability availability on the built environment. Laura just final comment by Laura will have, we might have to come back to this again Dwayne. Yeah. So Laura go ahead. Yeah thanks Dwayne and Steve this is really helpful. Just a clarifying question on. So the first two are looking at solar generally so roof built environment and land where the last bucket is just the land based on based on the Massachusetts data, right. Yeah, but then I did try to extrapolate that to the entirety of solar land and not land with this, this, this factor here. Okay, in order to put them all compare apples to apples across all three methods. Okay, and so all of these are for land and for any solar capacity and then the mapping as you said will help us determine how much of it we could meet on built environment versus greenfield land versus greenfield land or something like that. Exactly. And to the extent that you know Amherst can say oh we have enough capacity and where with all to put it put, you know, a good chunk of this on our built environment. I think then we can argue that we don't need to put it as much on the land, because we've we've done due diligence to get it as much on the built environment perhaps more so than the state was projecting on average across the state under this under their scenarios. Hey, let's come back to this topic if we have time today after the education series. Yeah, no, yep, absolutely. Thank you. Stephanie if you want to go. Sure. So I just wanted to very quickly. Just look at the community survey questions and I can just go through this really quick and you don't actually even have to give me any responses to this right now. I just want to go over it quickly and then you can send me any additional comments. So, this document was put together by the consultant GCA after having talked to ECC solar bylaw working group and then also the department heads. So, I'm going to just skip down to this is just a general introduction of why they want to do the survey and what the survey is hoping to achieve. Just some of the questions and I'll just go over some questions about general solar attitudes. There were some questions about commercial solar development so trying to sort of get to help you feel about solar development, potentially near properties and within the community where they'd like to see it. Where they think it would be located best. And they're asking people to sort of rank where they'd like to see these developments occur. And then. Everyone get a chance to look at it. Yeah, okay. No. Go ahead. We all have it Stephanie. We all have it. Yep. You have it. So I'm just quickly going through sort of, you know, in general, for also the public's sake, you know that these are sort of what we're working on right now. This is, you know, questions that are pertaining specifically to the municipal development of solar and how the public would like to sort of weigh in on that. I will say myself, I just want to flag this question number two. I think shouldn't even be a question because I think it's absolutely diversity, equity and inclusion is, you know, absolutely attend, you know, so I don't even think that question should be in there. So I just want to say for your sake, that that's going to be my response to the consultant and I'm going to ask them to take this question out. Because I think it's a given that we are going to, I think somehow they need to state that somewhere that it's going to be a priority. So, let's see. And then how people can get involved in solar development. If they're interested. And then for residential small scale development just why people have or haven't been able to install solar. You know, what are the reasons that they see as barriers to their potentially putting solar on their property. So Stephanie, my comment, I had the same comment and IDE, but on this one specifically, this should be a multiple choice question. The first one, instead of just having them pick one, one answer. Okay. Well, can you. Yeah, so if people could just, I can make a note, but rather than having people give me your feedback now if people could just shoot me a really quick email, just with a few points. If there are, if there are comments that you have or edits that you'd like to see, just get that to me and then I'm going to compile. I'm going to compile the responses from both the ECAC and the solar bylaw working group and put those together. And Stephanie you needed by when. Well, ideally, so the, the solar bylaw working group has a meeting on the 16th. So if I could get your responses before then so that I could actually share your responses to this, so that they'll be seeing, you know, this list plus your potential edits. That would be great. Okay, sorry. A state final comments. Yeah, a question is Stephanie, is there going to be any sort of an introduction that that introduces survey respondents to the climate action plan of Amherst and the state that puts this in context. Oh yeah, there'll be, yeah, there'll be that this right now we're not focusing on process right now, literally just the questions that were for the survey there's going to be, we're going to have a very in depth involved process and there's also questions in there that actually bring it back to the carp. It does tie into the carp and if you just look at the survey you'll I think your question is answered if you look at the survey. No, it's not because I've looked at the survey really carefully and the lot of the questions just they don't have a context and my feeling was like solar is kind of like taxes you know would rather not have it. But there's a reason for having it then we can accept it. And the reason for having solar is not expressed in the questions on this document. But if it's going to be presented elsewhere or added to the survey before it goes out that's, that's great. I believe it will be but again can you just give me these comments, like if you could all send me your comments because then I can direct the consultant to, you know, I know that we've discussed that piece I Steve that's why I sort of responded that I think if you want to specifically see it on this actual survey as part of that introduction, and you maybe even have some specific language that you want to suggest. Go for it. Just let me know. I mean, you don't have to spend a whole lot of time I just, you know, it would be helpful. I will do that. Thank you. Okay. Thanks Stephanie. I'll turn it over to Lori. Thank you. Okay, so Edison. I think the next thing on the agenda is Edison Dica from CET who's going to tell us about weatherization and insulation doesn't look like we have a big turnout tonight Edison but I know we're all learning and our advocates for all of this stuff so we're all quite interested in hearing what you have to say. So. Yeah, it's. Thanks for having me. Can I share my screen. Please yeah. Thank you for joining. You're welcome. Stephanie are there any members of the public that are out there. Or is it zero. No, we don't have any attendees. A little puzzling and I'm thinking that maybe it's just the time of year people are getting busy with holiday stuff maybe. Although you would think it's the time of year. It's getting cold. It's the holiday season. I think you should go back to your first point. I had one person who said they were going to attend so I guess keep an eye on. Yeah, people will probably start showing up. Can you see my screen yet or no. Not yet. Not yet. Okay. How about now. Yeah. Yes, now we can see it looks great. Great. So thanks for having me my name is Edison Dica, and I work for the Center for Eco Technology. I attended UMass Amherst for my education and have been in the energy auditing sector for over 10 years now. So I do hold Amherst in my heart daily since I was there for a couple of years attending school. So see a little bit about CET and who we are. CET works with partners throughout the country to address climate change by transforming the way we live and work for a better community economy and environment. More than about 40 years now, our innovative nonprofit organization has offered practical solutions to save money, increase the health and comfort of our homes, and help businesses perform better. We like to say that we make green make sense. So today I'll be talking about the home access system, and also how a home energy assessment that basically the home energy assessment process, and also some DIY weatherization, and also how the massive program could kind of tie it all in and help us with and also rent us with weatherizing their home. So CET's home energy assessments are rooted in building science. So basically we treat the home as a system. It's important to consider all of the variables that go into your home. Your home's energy use. We use energy with heating, hot water, cooling, cooling, lighting, refrigerating, refrigerators, laundry cooking. We also lose energy, which is infiltration, early cage, as well as through inefficient lighting and appliances. Finally, they're connecting exterior layers. So these yellow lines are kind of like the building thermal boundaries. So the exterior layers that separates the outdoors and the indoors areas where we want to look at in terms of weatherization and making sure that those are really tight and sealed up to stop any infiltration or exfiltration into the home. So the way buildings work is there's this thing called a stack effect. So because cold air is heavier and denser, it infiltrates into the home from the basement or the lower level of the home, and then it gets warmed up by the heating system. And as warm air, as well as air is warmed up, it becomes lighter. So it starts to rise up. And then it basically rises up and up and up and gets lost up in the attic or the top floor of the building. I was explaining this concept to a homeowner the other day and she was like, oh, the chimney effect. So it's basically kind of like the same idea where usually when you are sitting in front of a fireplace with the chimney, they throw a chair that kind of like wraps around that way when the fireplace is pulling in the air, you don't feel that cold air on your back. It's the same idea, buildings built the way they are, but the way they are built is basically any air that comes into the home has to, or any air that leaves the home has to be replaced and it's normally in the winter being replaced by colder air. So the idea for weatherization is stopping that cycle of the stack effect and keeping your home warmer longer and stopping heat loss and infiltration. So, these arrows are basically indicating areas where in few trees and extra trees out of the home so the blue arrow is the cold air coming in. And the yellow arrow is the warm air, the warm air rising up and then getting rising up all the way up to the top floor, and then eventually makes its way out of the building. And then the cycle repeats itself. So, I was going to make this a little engaging and ask some questions, where do you folks think escapes out of a building some examples of areas in the home that am I escape. I know in my house it's around the windows, they don't seal properly and the doors. Around the light switches that are on the outer walls. Maybe between the house and its foundation around the rim joist. Yep. In the, in the attic in the eaves with a roof, such as the walls. Right. Great. And, and when you leave the bathroom fan on. Right. Ventilation. So, yeah, I'm mixed I put some points as up here so flaws walls ceilings doors and windows. Docs bombing fireplaces outlets fans events. So, you all nailed it. Good job. So, also a little bit of about ice dance. As air leaks out of the home so that warm air rises up and then when it leaks out of the home, it hits the roof and melts the ice or the snow on the roof, and then it freezes at the base of the roof. Without weather rising. There's also structural damages that could okay. In the home, as you can see in this picture with the ice down basically damaging this grip on. So, weatherization is important, and I'm going to give go into some ideas to weatherize your home and seal it so you don't get ice dance. And energy auditing process. What we do is we test heating systems. And also heating and hot water systems, we also install in step what we call instant savings measures which is basically shower heads every day programmable thermostats. And power strips. And then we send out or come up with a report. It's a very comprehensive report that outlines everything that we are recommending you do to improve your home. So, some of the things that we do recommend and what homeowners could be eligible for. And this is depending on income for single family homeowners. And to be there's various incentives that massive offers. So that's low cost insulation. Usually it's 75% off up to $2,000. But for Berkshire guys there's no cap is 75% off total. And if you are moderate income. That incentive becomes an 100%. So you won't have any out of pocket costs for the installation. As ceiling is also a no cost under the massive program. There's also appliance rebates like washer rebates. Domestic water rebates there's no rebates on refrigerators but if you have an old refrigerator that you would like to get rid of. The program will pay you, I think $50 to take it off your hand and recycle it. And that's a 0% interest rate heat loan that you could use to finance windows installation heating system upgrades. Windows also now have a rebate of $75, but you have to be upgrading from a single pane window to a triple pane energy style window to qualify for that rebate. And for rentals and landlords. They are also eligible for no cost insulation. So for rentals, if your unit, if you are if for landlords if they are insulating the entire building installation is covered 100% so there's no out of pocket costs. And then for rentals, if they are insulating just one unit is also 100% covered under the program. And they also do get a ceiling at no cost. And there's also additional funding for addressing certain barriers like knob and tube. During the assessment, they find that there's a knob and tube wiring in your home, which is an old type of wiring that could potentially cause fire. The program does give a grant of $5,000 to remediate that before installation is done. And as I go along, if you have any questions you could raise your hand. I don't think I can see folks that have hands raised. So they could speak up. I'll take care of it. Yeah. Yeah, I have a quick question on this slide. Can renters actually call mass save themselves and get insulation put in without the landlords permission or they need to go landlord. They need to call so the landlord has to be involved. They could get a free energy rentals to get a free energy assessment, but if installation is recommended and needs to proceed. The landlord will have to be involved so it is better to have the landlord involved earlier on in the process than later. Yeah, the rentals could call is just that if installation work has to be done, the landlord has to be involved. Okay, thanks. But the incentives do still apply. So for the landlord, it's all at no cost to them and same thing for the renters, I don't see why they wouldn't want to take advantage of the program that way. Thanks. Yeah. So this year is the number to call them. Basically, basically to schedule your energy assessment. 186 is 5277 283. And anyone that answers that phone will be able to help you and schedule an assessment. And also see if you go on the CT website, you could schedule an assessment for your you could schedule an assessment through CT's website. And for municipal programs like I know South hardly is a municipal municipality. They also have a program where you could contact them. Again, you could go on the CT website or email CT or CT online dot org or call us to schedule an assessment for municipalities. And also for low income communities. There's a weatherization assistance program. So you can reach out to your local community action. So the community action paneer valley is a local one valley opportunity council and also Berkshire community action. Springfield partners for community action are available to help low income residents to participate in the program. And for folks in the in that community, they are able to basically get all their weatherization at no cost to them also. They are also sometimes even able to get new heating systems at no cost. So anyone in that community can take advantage of the program as well. Question, do you create any promotional campaigns or awareness? I'm sorry, promotional campaigns or awareness. For them. No, we do not massive actually does most of the marketing. So most customers come to us to us through massive and webinars, webinars like this also help us get customers but massive is a program that is well known in Massachusetts. So, even folks that are in municipal communities start out sometimes with massive and then find out that massive can serve them and they find out about the municipal program through contacting the massive hotline. Thank you. So I'm going to go over some DIY weatherization things that folks could do themselves to weatherize your home. Safety first, it's always good to make sure that you have proper eyewear gloves on. If you are going to do any weatherization work yourself. And it's also good to have adequate ventilation especially if you are applying spray foam insulation. And we recommend some tools that we do recommend to do this DIY projects is using a measuring tape, utility knife, caulking gun, a drill or screwdriver. So, something that folks could do themselves is installing weather stripping. I mean, yeah, door sweeps and weather stripping stripping. You could buy the door sweep cut measure the door at the bottom and cut it to fit and then drill the weather stripping at the bottom of the door. So adding a door sweep to the interior for a door will cut heat loss and drafts around the floor. And it's good to not have it too tight to the bottom of the doors that way, the door will be able to swing open and close freely. Another thing that could be done is foam gaskets, which could be installed in behind outlets. These help reduce drafts to so. And also stop air infiltration into the home and V seal weather stripping. Installed around the frame of the door that way when you close the door is kind of has a good seal around the door to stop any infiltration and drafts through the door. The way to install it. To measure and cut at an angle with a knife or scissor, then fold the straight into a Z. Remove the paper backing and attach the strip onto the door or window. After installing the V seal. You want to test the door to make sure it isn't too tight. Some cracking and of the strip may be heard, but that's normal. It's just, it might happen a couple of times to have the seal broken into and caulking caulking company and effectively creates a permanent seal around gaps in windows. Window frames and other areas where it is able to infiltrate. So to apply caulking, you want to cut the tip of the tube of the cock at an angle and place it in a caulking gun pull the trigger to release a bead of cock and lay the cock down at an angle to fill the gap. You could kind of like meeting up the cock with your finger. After you apply it. Another good option. If folks don't want to use this type of caulking is the rope cock or multi and it's a similar product that seals gaps really well. The spray form, as you can see it's been applied around a PVC pipe. And like caulking spray form is effective at sealing gaps in the envelope of the home where infusion occurs. Unlike caulking, it's harder to control and the spray form is harder to control. So it's best to use the spray form in basements or around pipes, instead of in a around in windows in your living space and insulation. So, once you've sealed your home, the next step is to make sure that you have adequate insulation. So while sealing eliminates infiltration and leakage, insulation slows heat loss through the building materials in your home. So addicts, walls, floors, heating pipes and ducts should be considered, should all be considered for added insulation. And that massive recommends now R49 in an attic, which is about 15 inches in the attic. And around basements, rim joists, you could just install six inch fiberglass bats around the basement range joist. Walls are a little bit tricky because they are considered an enclosed cavity. So usually walls are done by professionals, but the way they insulate walls is to pull up pull off the siding from the exterior drill holes and blow the insulation or dense bags insulation into the wall cavity. So basically a two by four wall or two by six, and the goal is basically to fill the entire wall cavity with insulation. And another thing that could be done is pipe insulation so hydronic pipes, which are the copper pipes that baseball heating systems have or the domestic water pipes could be wrapped with insulation. And also steam pipes could also be insulated. So, basically, all you have to do is get the pipe wrap insulation and then wrap it around the pipe as is shown here. You could actually see the whites. Staff is actually seen pipes that are wrapped with fiberglass. That's pipe wrap insulation and faucet aerators are stuff that we install as part of the energy assessment, but if folks are not getting the energy assessment they could buy a low flow aerator themselves and install it in their faucets underneath their faucets to save on their gas or oil, water heating and LED light bulbs are also stuff that we give out during the energy assessment. But again, for school go out and buy LED light bulbs themselves on these days and install and any questions. That was my last. Yeah, any questions for the must say weatherization program and weatherization in general. Steve. Yeah, thanks Edison. Now in the past I've used the more tight around doors, like in the wintertime and we just seal them up for the season. Lately I though I got a seal and peel removable caulk that is supposedly you squeeze it on like regular caulk but you can remove it. Have you any experience with that, and do you know if I'm going to have any problems removing it in the spring time. I don't personally have any experience with it. One thing that I have had happens with some types of caulking is that they end up hardening and drying up and kind of cracking. But I'm not sure about that specific kind that you mentioned. Thank you. You're welcome. I'll also open it up to the public for any questions. We have one. So Elizabeth, do you have any questions that you'd like to ask Edison, if you electronically raise your hand then I can unmute you. Or any other questions from ECAC. I can ask a question that's been on my mind. So, recently I looked into getting storms from my old crank out windows. Glass storms have gone up in price enormously. And there's a slightly cheaper option which is a film in a frame it's a film storm with foam around the outside and it strikes me that there's probably no disadvantage to that and so any disadvantage to using a storm made of thin vinyl film as opposed to a glass storm. You know, I mean a glass storm is a bit more rigid. And I know folks use plastic on their windows to stop drafts. So that the film will be serving the same purpose. So a glass storm is much more rigid and will will serve a better purpose in terms of you values I think yeah a glass storm will be better but the film wouldn't hurt. It's gonna stop drafts. Yeah. Edison what would you recommend for low income communities here. If we create an awareness campaign, what should be their approach contact massive first. How are they getting discounts, explain that process please. Yeah, so for low income. Yeah, for low income community, they massive doesn't serve the low income community but they go through the community action program. And that was in the slide I shared. So, the way they could participate is by calling any one of these community action programs. You know where they live each each action program says a specific area or geographical area. So they'll call them and then ask for an energy assessment. And everything and that this program is a no cost to them so the energy audit, the installation work as you mean. They were able to get even heating systems repaired at no cost to them, and also even replaced a first some some folks that have had these bombs installed for them at no cost. So this program is basically geared towards the low income community and they just will have to call any one of these. I think Greenfield has all of these community action. Yeah, I think Greenfield is part of the pioneer valley community action so all of these communities and programs are available for the low income community and they could participate just by calling and getting an energy audit as a first step. Okay, so that's, thank you for that so for low income community first step would be to call these people for everybody else will go through massive coming in energy assessment and make recommendations for you to install. Right. And if folks don't know whether they are on low income or not. They could look on their utility bill. The national grade and ever source will show. If they are rich is based on the rate code so if they are rich code is income eligible. Then they qualify for low income and in that case they could call their local community action program. Thank you, Steve. Yeah, they could still also call massive and massive will look at their utility bill or check if they are and redirect them. Great. Um, yeah, could you say a little bit more about what a renter might expect when they call for a massive audit. What sort of things can they get done if they don't have permission from the landlord. So they could get the energy assessment done. So, they will get the no cost energy assessment, along with all the instance savings measures that come with it. Faucet area, shower heads, power strips, programmable thermostats or Wi-Fi thermostats. Although the Wi-Fi thermostats might be tricky if the landlord is really picky about what the tenants install or someone touching the heating system. Yeah, they could get the assessment done and sometimes we found that if the landlord is not involved, one thing that we do as part of the energy assessment is test the heating system and usually heating systems are located in a basement and some tenants don't have or renters don't have access to the basement. So we do the assessment without testing the heating system. But if weatherization needs to be done, then we'll have to go back and do a compassion safety test to ensure that all the heating systems are working well and in good condition before weatherization could be done. Okay, let me also ask the question if I'm a landlord, say it's a small two-family rental house, what would I expect from a mass-save inspection and would it involve going through the tenants' apartments? Yes, so as a landlord you have to notify your renters that you are getting an energy assessment done because we do need to enter the units, take measurements and gather information that is needed. So you will have to let your tenants know the time and that we will be arriving so to give us access into their units to perform the energy assessment. I also know some folks want to get heat pumps and the criteria to get heat pumps is basically you have to have your home weatherized first before you get a heat pump rebates. So the heat pump rebates $10,000 up to $10,000 depending on if you do a whole home heat pump or a partial home. So for the whole home rebate, if you want to get the full $10,000 rebate, you'll have to have weatherization done first before installing the heat pump. So for the partial home weatherization is not required. And Edison, based on your experience, what town has been successful in creating awareness, ensuring that homes are weatherized? And what did they do? It's tough to say because the mass-save program is broad and there's so many different companies. So I only have visibility into some of the geographical areas that I work. But I know Framingham has, I've heard of some towns that have had partnership with Massave. And so Massave marketed those sounds and said, if you do get a home energy assessment through the Massave program, maybe they get extra, some extra incentives, certain things. So it's, those sounds that have been successful in getting a bigger participation, partnered with Massave and then Massave marketed using their resources to get folks to participate. Interesting. Thank you. And Stephanie, that's something that we don't currently partner closely with Massave? That's a hard question to answer because I feel like in the past we've done lots and lots of outreach around the Massave program. It's been less so I think recently, but I think when we start doing this heat pump program, and we'll actually hopefully be working closely with CET, so that will be very much, we'll be very much promoting the Massave program as part of that effort. Yeah, okay. It waxes and wanes, you know. We've certainly promoted it for a long time depending on various projects that we've done. Yeah, and I know some towns that did the part. So individual towns are able to do their own outreach, but the partnership is basically them promoting a certain energy efficient measure and having Massave marketed that for them. So if the town has enough money to pull towards maybe giving additional incentives to homeowners, Massave will partner with that town and market that additional incentive. Laura, I know you had your hand raised. You have a question. My question was similar to Steve's, so I think it was answered. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else? And thank you again. Laurie, I don't know if you have anything to say here. Thank you. Just wanted to thank you very much, Edison for showing up today. I think we've all learned quite a bit so thank you. You're very welcome. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I appreciate your time. Thank you. Trying to see how to stop. Feel free to stay on if you want, or if you want to drop that's fine too. Thank you. We have 22 minutes, Dwayne, do we want to go back to the conversation we were having on solar? Yeah, yep, happy to do so and get some more feedback and direction from the group. If it's helpful to bring this, bring the spreadsheet up again, I'm happy to do that. Steve, you already have a question. Yeah, I guess I have a raise a question for perhaps discussion. The results here Dwayne are in megawatts. And I think many people aren't going to be able to sort of grasp what that means and people might want to know, probably want to know like, okay, well how much is that in acres. So do you foresee having a being of the convert that result from megawatts into acres or dollars? Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about that, Steve, because you brought that up before. And I guess I was reluctant to do that, because we don't want to, I don't particularly want to suggest that this has to go on the ground and take up acreage. And that I do understand that people know what an acre is more so than a megawatt. But I was a little bit concerned about, you know, suggesting that ECAC is making the suggestion, I guess that ECAC was assuming that this all had to be on the ground or ground mounted. So, you know, maybe it comes when we see the solar resource assessment tool and the mapping to see, okay, now we have X number of megawatts that seem, you know, not just technically but reasonably capable on the built environment. And then we can say, okay, well if we really work hard to build that out, any remainder has to be on the ground and that much capacity would take up this much additional acreage. So that was sort of my thought was not to suggest and concern people or not that we were suggesting this all should be on the ground. That's good night. I agree with that. Just point out that method three is using the Commonwealth projected ground mount solar and so that that 35 to 100,000 or the 60,000 in particular, that is explicitly ground mount, assuming that there's minimal coverage of rooftops and parking lots in there so that that one is bit more acres and you've converted it from acres back to megawatts and clever people will see the conversion there so they can always convert megawatts back to acres if they choose to. Yeah, if you want to pull up that spreadsheet. Laura Laura and then Lori. Oh, just telling her is, I wonder if just a different measurement less implies ground versus not ground, because I, for example like square footage I don't think really suggests like, I imagine square footage would be a very big number so maybe it would be like, more alarming. But I don't think it I don't think it has that like square footage or square yardage I think like people know what their like roof square footage is do you know what I mean. Yeah I could also we could also say okay you know this number of megawatts would imply. Number of would be equivalent to x number of residential roof projects, which would be a pretty enormous number of roof of residential roofs, or you know x number of acres of land. Yeah, your, or, you know, square feet. I guess that becomes and you know, when we talk about square feet then we have to think about okay how many megawatts or watts per square foot is the right distribution or spacing out of these arrays. So it's all. Yeah, so we can think about those. And I think there's also a government website that converts wattage to phones that are required to charge or acres it just makes it for people to understand I'll see if I can find it and there's like images of you know how many cars per year that. I never liked that. I never liked those conversions because you know what's a typical house is that you know it's a US typical house or Massachusetts and it's different in Boston and here. Every car is different I don't know what you know people but, and you know, a car that doesn't drive anywhere or drives very little doesn't believe. I guess it's all averaged out but it's I never liked those conversions, but good I got you. But Laura and Jesse. Yeah, I was going to say something similar to Stella that maybe like square footage would be a more neutral terminology than acreage but I do like the idea of kind of like taking this and houses may be hard but maybe we say like an average big box store like if we were going to use a roof of an average big or an average big box store is x square footage, roofage. So, but I think doing I agree with your approach that we should kind of keep this at maybe it makes sense to keep this at a more technical level until we get the mapping, and then we can really start to think through how it all fits together before figuring out how to communicate our, I agree with Steve I think when when ecac goes to communicate whatever ecac wants to communicate on this. I think we need to be aware that not everybody's going to understand what megawatts are I understand what megawatts are but I still it's a struggle for me to like scale it. Still, so I think we should definitely think about that but I like the idea of focusing in on combining these two elements because I do think understanding where we do have potential for non land based systems is going to be an important part of the conversation. Yeah. And the other thing that I was going to add somewhere in the whole story is recognizing the 20 or so. Don't quote me on that megawatts that is already installed in mass in Amherst. Just to put that in context to that we're not starting from scratch. And that you know what people see now is about. I don't say 20 but I think it might be about 20 megawatts I think that includes Hickory Ridge which is in the pipeline. And so to give some context along those lines. So I was going to add some information about about what's already installed or to be installed in Amherst. I think that's the sense of the distribution I mean it you know turns out we have, you know, a decent start of the megawatts. And there's, but again, as with the state. There's many, many residential projects but the 90% of the capacities in the larger projects. Jesse and then Steve. I just like to add a vote to the column of, I think there has, I actually feel uncomfortable just using megawatts. Oh yeah, okay. I really think it's important to help people to understand, and whatever, and maybe a diversity of representations but that some way to show that the, I wonder why are we doing this if not to say to sort of give us a sense of an order of magnitude these are order of magnitude numbers. And, and, and there has to be some sort of translation into to anyone in this town who could get some version that they could relate to I just think it's really certainly, you know, with with again some assumptions. And with some very bold letter types that were that this is just for reference purposes that you know, in a quiver you know whatever the number numbers would be or maybe just say you know 50 megawatts would be equal to. All on rooftop of all on residential rooftop there would be, you know, these many roofs homes and Amherst it would have to have to have solar, or if it was all on on ground on the ground and very clear to that we're not suggesting be different ones. Yeah, if you include a couple of metrics where we're not saying yeah gotta be on the ground we're not. Yeah, I mean if you're in Hadley there are acres of roofs and parking to be even be square miles. Yeah, yeah parking lots, you could use specific parking lots even. Yeah, okay can identify with. Laurie. Steve and then Laurie. Okay, sorry. Jump. I guess to offer my opinion here in that I similar to Jesse's I think it's our job to inform the town based on our expert opinions, what we're facing. Yeah, this is not what we're facing next year or 10 years from now this is what we're facing in 2050 so almost 30 years from now. But I think we need to tell the town what we see based on our expertise and the Massachusetts roadmap and all the detailed energy studies that they have done. This is what we're going to plan for and I think it's going to be a shocking number. I think people need to be shocked, and step back and say okay well if we're going to have our commitment to being carbon neutral, then that's, it's a commitment that comes with consequences and the consequences are going to be seeing more solar. People need to begin to prepare for that. So I think, you know when we get down to it all, I'll argue again that I think we need to make this quite explicit and say, this is how many acres it'll take and some of it can go on rooftops but Amherst does not have a lot of big rooftops and nor do we have a lot of big parking lots and a good chunk of what we come up with here is going to have to go on the land. That's the consequence of our commitment to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. And I think we need to be clear that's our expert opinion and acknowledge that other people might have different opinions but it's not our job to represent the public of Amherst. Our job is to provide our expert opinion as a wreck as as recommendation or as information to the town council and to the town manager, that's our role here. That'll be my opinion. I'll let go of that again in the future. Laurie, if I can jump in the same topic and quickly share my screen. This is something that I had. Can you see my website here? This is the EPA website and you can plug in kilowatt hours and then it converts to vehicles gasoline burned. And then it also talks about landfill and LEDs and trees. So, pick your poison, I guess, when I can send this over to everybody, you can figure out what how you want to approach this and not just another suggestion. Yeah, it is a little bit different. We're talking about megawatts not megawatt hours. Yeah, yeah, I know. Correct. Yeah. It's a bit different, but yeah, I got that. Yeah. Laurie and under. Okay, a couple of things one is, I think it's really important to emphasize that we're pretty far along already. And that maybe even 20 you might consider subtracting the existing or project or already in progress. I think it's important from the projections to make it clear that we've already made some progress, some significant progress that would lessen the shock a bit. I also, yeah, I don't think it really needs to be shocking if it's presented that way. And, you know, if you remember that this is over over a few we have a few years to do this. The other thing though that I wanted to bring up, we talked about this a little bit, just as we were chatting before the before the webinar before the today's meeting began. So the prices for putting solar panels on rooftops. I'm looking at two quotes for 15 kilowatts 15 kilowatt system for $67,000 or a 23 kilowatt system for 77,000, which is so far out of affordable for almost everybody I know. You know, homeowner and Amherst even with the 30% rebates that are coming. You have to wonder how that would ever work. So, just want to make sure that somehow in this discussion, the idea of the really high expense of rooftop solar comes through big box stores are different we don't have any big box stores in Amherst though but we do have municipal buildings and schools and things that might make good platforms for solar. And KW a system would be, it would require a very large roof that would be a very big house, not a very big house. Well, I mean my system is a little over seven and it provides more than enough I need for my family of four in my house. I'm surprised to 15 most they cap most of the net meter incentives and everything at 10 KW. I think that's been expanded now. It must have been expanded because that's what I have sitting in my energy sage inbox. It's a pretty big system though. I think KW would be about the largest you see on the residents. Even a five KW system would be a meaningful system for both houses. If you don't have trees all around like my house. Yeah, it isn't a good candidate but there are also a lot of houses in Amherst that trees all around. So I mean this is Lori I mean I think that you're getting to the point right like there's not putting solar on everyone's roof is not a feasible solution to this. So we have to I strongly support Steve's sentiment here like as ecac we need to be strong in our convictions around what we need to do to meet our climate goals. And what that means we can't, it is we are talking about 2050 which has benefits right we're giving ourselves time. And that also doesn't mean we can say, I mean what I've heard folks in town say is like, well the technology will improve and we'll just have it all on the roof so let's not worry about ground mount right now. And that cannot be the message that ecac is sending right so I think that's going to this is going to be an important discussion for us to have. And yeah we need to bring in all those variables right of course like we want as many people in town to benefit from the economic. For those who can to benefit from from the economics of solar and renewables that doesn't mean everybody cancer then how can we support people that can't because they don't own their roof or they don't they have trees or whatever the situation might be. And it may mean more community based solar which may need to be on land. So, like, these are the things that we are going to need to be coming out strong on. Um, as ecac entities point like we should anticipate what the community members and those who have been against this type of solar might think but we shouldn't be trying to. As ecac solve those problems now when Dwayne he when Stephanie get into the solar working group that's a different scenario right but like I think we can bring out a strong statement. And I think your data, Dwayne is really going to help us do that in a meaningful way. There is one other thing I want to throw out there, which is the factor of two increase in electric usage has always struck me as low. I know that if you just calculate, you know how much heat you use if you're using fossil it's going to be typically two or three times the amount of power you're already using an electricity if not more. So I mean I personally have a factor of five there between pre electrification and post electrification. So I wonder if that factor of two is realistic. That's something that we can address here but I'm just throwing that out there. It's an interesting point I'll look into that I mean do keep mine with at least with the heat pumps you're getting you know, two and a half three units of heat for each kilowatt hour that you use. Yes, and electric vehicles are inherently more efficient. Yeah it's more like two two and a half averaged over the year. But yeah, it's there's a factor two in there but it's still it's still a lot more. You add an electric vehicle and electric, you know, water pump and you change your stove to electric and all that sort of thing it's, it's a lot. Yeah, we're running out of time so we'll quickly wrap up with Andre and Stephanie. Yeah, I just wanted to question how much Massachusetts is really going to be relying on solar. I thought 25% was the, like, limit that anyone imagined us going. I thought it was lower frankly. Not, not according to their their roadmap. And, you know, keep mine. I mean that's one with the one that we had well that an offshore wind is what we have control over. And they work very well complementing each other. And if we don't get the hydro it's going to be it's going to be a lot more or bring on the new new plants. More so. But yeah. Jesse. I just, I, you know, I think we've all seen a lot of contentious issues in this town divide people in general, all the time. I did and things. And I think just want to like, if as best we can set the tone of being open minded and collaborative with all the points of view, not everyone's going to agree. We're really taking that, that mindset of, of really opening and trying to find ways to create dialogue and find out early and not, not have an argument show up, you know, right before a big project goes to permitting that kind of thing so I'm just like good, positive dialogue about this topic because I think it's, I think it has the potential to be divisive and, and if we really set that intent to not be divisive and to really just in our hearts. I think this, all of these projects will have more potential success. Throw that out non scientific comment out there. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, thanks to Stephanie. I kind of want to get back a little bit to what Steve and Laura said and also to a point that I keep coming back to in that you are all appointed by the town manager. You are advisory to the town manager. I feel like there has been some connection with the council that has blurred lines a little bit. And I think what the town manager is looking for is your recommendation with the expertise that you all have as to what he should be presenting to the council as to what the town's goals are. And so, I think that knowing that that's kind of the pathway. I think some of this controversy is not really, it shouldn't really be necessarily engaged with with this body in that you are all trying to take a very scientific expert look at this issue and deliver your recommendations to the town manager. I think some of those other controversial, that other controversial dialogue will happen, and it may happen at a different level. So I'm just putting that out to you that I think just for clarification that, you know, you all are recommending this to the town manager that's ultimately and he even commented to me commented to me recently that he really appreciates the advice that he gets from this committee. So I just wanted to share that with you and to remind you that that's kind of a pathway and should really be a focus for you. And I'll just maybe follow that I know we're a little bit over time but I mean I don't really see recommendations coming out until this is put together with the resource assessment because because you know I don't think we want to see what the resource assessment looks like in in for the town. Both in terms of the built environment and there's a lot of land in Amherst it's not appropriate for solar that we started to look at with GCA because of various different different issues. And so, you know, the, the, you know, whether how this range of solar fits into Amherst, I think we have to wait and see to some extent, before making sort of a recommendation if we're going to recommend sort of a certain target of solar that that should be accommodated with Amherst by a certain date, because it may turn out to be that we just for various quirks of our town. We don't have the geography for the built environment or the geography, and we do have to work with the likes of Hadley and and share their roof space, for example, or farm space of its dual use, given given they're probably, you know, more abundant land and less load. Well they probably have decent load because of all the commercial enterprise there. So, because I think that's going to be some of the thoughts from the public, in terms of more how this fits into a regional approach. Steve, I'm finally coming in. I see these from this spreadsheet and this work that we've done is not a recommendation for how much the town should have, but really just some order magnitude estimates of what the town might consider given the Massachusetts plan. A recommendation for how much the town should develop, not at all but here's if we translate what the 2050 roadmap predicts will need. This is a prediction of what Amherst would need and I think that gives background then to a future recommendation as Wayne said combined with the resource assessment. But I think getting a number out there just to let people know what the ballpark amount is likely to be is really important. Thank you. And do we want to have the meeting in two weeks before I forget is everybody going to be available. Yeah, I'm not having a Hanukkah party that night. Is there anyone else who knows for sure they won't be able to attend on the 21st. So this should be take a break, a pause, and just meet in January. Done a lot of work in this year. Should we. I mean do we have any pressing needs actions. I personally personally more likely to be gone in January than I am on December 21. I don't mind continuing on next time, but happy to take a break to either way. Any pressing actions discussions for next week. Well, in two weeks. My recommendation is we will take a break. I second your recommendation. Okay, so let's do that. Let's meet on the fourth of January will that work. I think at least on my calendar recurring meeting has expired at the end of the year, but I think in my mind, it probably makes sense to just keep it going on every other Wednesday. Yeah. Yeah, it only lets me schedule so far. So I can probably start adding those other dates so I'll just continue to do every two weeks. So we'll keep it to the fourth might. Yeah, we'll just keep it to the fourth. If we can get the agenda done sooner than later. I'll have to post it way in advance. Okay, any closing comments. Thank you. Have a great holiday and New Year. Yeah, everybody. Relax. Happy holidays, everybody. Yeah, relax and recharge. Yeah, sounds good. Take care everybody. Bye.