 So, sorry, but Sue, I just had to let people know that we're starting to record the meeting. Oh, no worries. Okay. All right. Good evening, everyone. Delighted actually to see a lot more community members at the meeting. So welcome. Thank you for joining. I'm excited to kick off our first education series as part of these meetings. So the intent is to create more awareness among the community because climate change can only be sold collectively so thank you all for joining. So our first part of the agenda is our vision and charge so if I can share my screen to go over our vision cooperatively with the town and community to raise climate awareness and achieve results with a sense of urgency. And in everything we do, we will put environmental justice at the forefront of our decisions. All right, you see our charts basically a trim down version of our charge. One thing I'll touch on in the charge is when we're talking about today is engaging public and relevant stakeholders in education planning goal setting and development of climate actions. All right. Oh, sorry. And then the other thing that I also want to touch on is ECAC metrics so as we go through this meeting today, there'll be some progress reports by, you know, some of our ECAC members. So a couple of metrics that I have for myself is increasing our community participation at these meetings. We've had three or less than three participants. Community folks who joined these meetings my intent is to increase that and also have this education series as part of these meetings we've never kind of done this formally and I set myself a goal of 10 so I hope I can hit that. So my expectation for all the other ECAC members is as you're going through your sectors if you can also send me your information on your metrics that you have that you're tracking. It'll be wonderful for the community members to see. Okay, with that I'll change to talk about the next topic on the agenda is to look at the minutes from the previous meeting. Is there a chance to look at it? Can someone make a motion to accept or talk about changes. I'll move we accept the motion the minutes. I will second that. Sorry, fighting. So I just need a voice vote so I'll just call you by the last name, Goldner. Yes. Brega van. Yes. Breger. Yes. Allison. Don I'll come back to you. Selman. Yes. D. Yes. Dr. Upstain, please. Ruth. Yes. Rose. Yeah. Allison. Yes. Sorry, I was muted. No worries. Thank you. So minutes are approved. Thanks, Stephanie. And Lori, I believe it's your turn to take minutes because salad last time. Already on it. Thank you. Okay, let's open up to the public for any comments. Thank you. Thank you. I'm a member of the public is interested in making a comment. Please digitally raise your hand and I will unmute you. And it does not. There's one comment. Renee. I've unmuted you. You can go ahead and speak. It's just a quick comment. It's not really a comment. It's just a request. At the, at the end. Can you inform us. The number of participants sort of the range. You know, the maximum that we have. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. All right. It looks like we don't have any other public comments. So let's move on to the next topic, which is progress reports. So this is the last meeting of the month. So Don, do you want to. I'll walk us through see face. And then Stella for transportation. Sure. Sorry. Don, can I actually go first in case we lose. Lose attention. Not all means go ahead. Okay. Cause we're like on a roll here. Yeah, I understand. If we have to go dark screen and stuff. Anyways, so transport. So I'm catching up on the, the tack meetings. I prepared the Sue's great slides and those are part of the packet. But I figure everybody can kind of read those. So I'll go back over them here. But I've been catching up on. Sorry. Can we actually show the slides? Because we do have a lot of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Should I do that or should. I can do that for you. If you'd like Stella. Yeah. Okay. Let's go over that, please. Yeah. One moment, please. And I'll set it up for you. I'm going to, I'm going to do the commentary first because I'm just going to front load the important stuff in case we have to kind of. Go silent, but so. So I've been catching up on, on tack meetings. And it was actually a lot to think about it was very depressing. I mean, tack is doing amazing work. But the content of what they had to say was pretty depressing in terms of what they had to say. I mean, I guess I guess meeting because I guess there was a, they've been counting. People who walk and bike to school. And it's only like, it's under a dozen for both schools. For at least two of the schools. It was like 10, 10 kids. Or so. And it was like, it was like, it was really unsafe on the roads. So tack has a lot of, you know, great. Amazing, very comprehensive in writing thoughts about, about crosswalks and bike lanes and things like that. But one of the very depressing, but also like inspiring things about that is that. It just seems like really low hanging fruit. Because part of that is just speed limits. I mean, like we're out and about with a small child. And so just like, it seems like, like that's not, that's not really like an infrastructure. Like, I mean, I guess it is kind of a capital expense thing, but it's also just like a changing behavior thing. And the other thing that they said in the tack meeting. That's time sensitive. So I wanted to raise it here. Is that. Not next Wednesday. But the Wednesday following it's on one of the slides. I put it on one of the slides. That it's like national walk bike and roll to school day or something. And so tack is trying to mobilize around that. And so I think it would probably be useful. Like I'd be happy to reach out to them and, but it would be good to just discuss here whether or not there's interest in us jumping in on that to encourage that. Okay. So that was the, that was the quick update on like. Hack stuff. I don't know. Sue, how we should, if that should just be a casual discussion or if that should be like. People email Stephanie, if they're interested in helping jump in on the tack thing, and then we get in touch with tack. Like open meeting law and stuff. Yeah, I guess the question is how are we, how is tech creating awareness around this campaign? Yeah, that and that I don't really know. Because that. I don't, I don't know. That I think that would require getting in touch with them directly. I think it was kind of like us at the, at the. Block party where, you know, so. Okay, Steve. Yeah, this looks great. Yeah. The first or second point on the first slide, it's a lot of people individually driving to work and then this needs to change. I agree. That's something that the larger employers kind of need to take the lead on. Perhaps by tack and ECAC in the town is, do you know if tack has tried to work with the big employers in town to encourage. I mean, I mean, I think the sense of tack right now is that they've mostly been focused on bike and pedestrian. But again, I'm still catching up on their meetings. So that, that could be wrong. But no, I totally agree that that's a, that requires partnering with big employers. I mean, obviously the town is also an employer. So to that extent, I think. I think we need to play a role. I also think. So this gets into that gets into point three. What can we do? Okay. So I'll go over the slide slides now. This is a good, good transition. So what are we talking about when we talk about transportation, which is decarbonizing town transit and supporting active transit non vehicular transit. Well, I don't know our bikes technically vehicles. I'm not like enough of a transit person to know that, but. It's important because according to the carp transport accounts for over a fifth of our greenhouse gas emissions. I looked at some of the slides from the presentation later and I, I wonder if that number is low or how that accounting was done. But either way, it's pretty high. What can we do about this at. I don't know. EECAC as EECAC. Is partner with the transportation advisory committee. On active transport and other stuff, but my sense right now, like I said, is that something on active. Research and encourage electrification and modification of the town vehicular fleet. This could also be just like something as simple as, as scheduling, I think we could play a role in like, playground yesterday and they were mowing, but the grass was like fine. So like, so like, I, there's probably like a fixed rotation I would imagine. You know that if like one piece of piece of lawn falls behind then another piece of lawn falls behind but just like auditing maybe auditing stuff like that is something we could play a role in. Educating the public with respect to the need for reduction motor vehicle use overall vehicle electrification when vehicles are necessary. And also vehicle downsizing which I've talked about before. I think you see this a lot in the commercial sector and also in the civilian sector where people are just driving larger vehicles the need for the job. What can we not do as a cat is single handedly overhaul town infrastructure on the switch to electric vehicles or like force people to do stuff. The next slide please. What partnerships. Can we and do we need to have I think it would be useful to build a closer relationship with tack. Partner with universities. This gets to Steve's point about big employers work with businesses to downsize and electrify their vehicles and also also this gets to Steve's really amazing vehicle electrification document is partnering with with larger landlords and such. Leading and lagging indicators correct me if any of these are wrong because leading and lagging indicators was new terminology for me. But I do think the number of children walking or biking to school is a really good indicator. My, my friend who I've talked about before who's a transit professional loves watching that show from Japan, old enough. You guys heard about this where like two year olds go out and do errands, like alone they're obviously not alone because there's a camera crew. But it's apparently really cute and a really interesting study in infrastructure that's designed for people. I think like, I think like if, if kids feel safe on the road and parents feel safe with kids on on sidewalks independently. That's a good sign that things are moving in the right direction. And also indicators number of the time like the amount percentage of the town fleet that's electric and infrastructure reduce speed limits. Then the funding piece that gets to that report that Laura sent me on the infrastructure act and that whole long list grants. So there are many grant options, some of which were eligible for and some of which it sounds like we're not. Next slide please. Hey, hey, so on this slide, sorry. Oh yeah. You're, you're saying you're going to measure this leading indicator increase number of children and tack is trying to measure that. And then in terms of reducing pedestrian bets. I think it's tricky there if you increase the number of children walking to bike to school, then the probability of accident increases as well so we might want to be careful there because there's a, you know, potential effect because more people are going to have to do something that you just, I guess be more mindful when you're tracking that indicator. Yeah, I think that's true. I think pedestrian us should be zero point blank, you know, like anything like anything above zero in that department is something that we as a society like currently tolerate that we should just have zero tolerance you know so I, I think like that combo that makes that combo powerful right because we need more people and we need to be safe for those people. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be dead to be accidents. So, yeah. And then my. Sorry, what was your other question. Also you're frozen. Can you hear me. Yes. Oh, sorry about that. That's the passage of the inflation reduction act right there's, there are cars that people can purchase that are discounted withers. There are some cars that if you manufacture it outside the United States, you don't have that discount so I think maybe somehow capturing that for the community I think is important. And there's also a website that I sent you a link to and somehow pulling that information and sharing that with everybody would be useful. Yeah, for sure. Laura. Yeah, just a comment on the school walking and biking to school which, of course, I think is an important indicator. I don't think that's actually the best way to address GHD emissions associated with school I think to do that we need to electrify the bus fleet. Because walking and biking to school for children that are close to school I think it's always an option for children that are not close to school I think it will be an option only some of the time I also think it's sort of potentially always challenging for people who work full time schedules. So, you know, just throwing that out there. No, I think that's true and I totally agree the reason I put that and not not electrifying buses is I feel like like electrifying buses is very much like in the discourse already like people are like very like that. Yeah, I would just I would just say that there's momentum for one off bus fleet electrification when it's in the news. And what I think we should be pushing for is a plan for how we're going to electrify all the buses over time. From the school in the town. Yeah, I think that's true. Um, yeah. Can I ask Stella, is it your sense that the tack is looking at bus electrification, or is that not in their focus. Not that I'm aware of. Okay. Yeah, thanks. I guess two things one is. Maybe I'm naive but my guess is that electric buses will be the natural market in in 10 years or so. Not to suggest we shouldn't be first movers and push the envelope and help move that market forward. But they're just going to be better buses. I think in 10 years and buses of choice but what I wanted to actually say was that in my up. I don't pet peeve with regard to students and transportation. And this is more maybe at the high school level is that once, and I'm just reporting on my own experience with my older son, at least one once they learn how to drive they don't want to take the bus. And so this is a subset of the population of the student population but as much as I could try with in all my background convinced my son to not try to work as it's better to take the bus. He wouldn't hear of it. I don't, in my mind I don't, you know, if the school could just, you know, not provide parking for students without special permission that would help relieve that problem. Yeah, Dwayne, I love that idea, because I think like, and this is kind of what I was trying to get out with the pedestrian like I think I think we need to we do need to kind of have a de growth mindset right like we're not just trying to switch everything to electric like we actually also need to be using less energy. And so, I think that I think that would be great trying to increase bus ridership and and decrease high schoolers driving. And the more indicators we have for those things that like that like mindsets are actually like shifting as opposed to like purchasing habits. I think that's really important. Sorry secret. That just, I was thinking, it's really hard to convince people who are already working from their jobs. We've been trying that for decades and it's very success. But Dwayne's mentioning of the high school maybe that's a place to start somehow encouraging car pooling. And maybe you only get to be able to park at the high school if you're a student. If you're officially car pooling. So maybe there's a carpool program that could be dreamed up that would apply to those early drivers who are developing their habits that hopefully would carry longer into their lives. Well, yeah, so this was another thing that tack was talking about about the effects of COVID on bus ridership, because not only is like, like walking and biking and rolling to school very low, but bus ridership went down like for reasons that like, of course, makes sense during the pandemic. And, and so now you just have tons of people it sounds like at all of the schools just driving to school. Jesse. And then Laura, you're a new Jesse. Thanks. Yeah, I was just gonna reiterate that I think that the relevance of that approach with the high school students I'm looking for the statistic now but my understanding is that a degree of driving in this country is trips of three miles or less. It's a it's a surprisingly high amount of the gas that gets used and I think this is the students. The argument would be, Oh, well, it's not a long commute they all live right in Amherst well turns out that's a lot of the driving that happens and that hitting people young with these concepts would be powerful and relevant so just reaffirming that idea. Yeah, just find a point here. Thanks. So this has been really great. Appreciate you following, following this. Somebody I saw something probably on Twitter or something the other day that was like, if your solution is it just everybody did x, then that's not a good solution because there's never been a time where we've just been able to make everybody do something. There's something coming to my mind when we were talking about that this is like, and everything we need to focus on needs to be multi pronged right we need to encourage more walking less driving electric buses, all of that stuff. What I would say Stella is that I think potentially another reason why bus ridership is down is because they've changed the bus routes and have put a lot of the bus routes, and what I would consider unsafe locations for picking kids up. All that to say is that I think a larger conversation with the folks at the school that deal with all things relevant to the buses might be helpful. Not sure if that's something you should do or whether that's something that tack or someone else should do but just think there's opportunity there to kind of work together. What I have that I was thinking about is whether you know we all pay vehicle tax is that data that's available, you know, the cars that people are driving on the road is that a data that we can get and see whether that's increasing or changing to electric can we, you know analyze that data. It's a question for Stephanie to see if that data can be available made available to tack or Stella. Can you rephrase that question bus I wasn't totally I'm writing but not following. Yeah, no, we pay vehicle tax every year. I, you know, it talks it has information on the year and your brand of car. I just wonder if we can pull out that information to see how many vehicles do we have in town and the type of car so we try to analyze that data. To be able to get aggregate data. We couldn't get obviously individual data but we might be able to get aggregate data I know that because we've looked at that before. When we've been doing the greenhouse gas emissions inventory that's one of the metrics we look at. And it gives you some information but not everything you need. So, but we can certainly find out if we can get that. Yeah I wonder if that could be made into a leading indicator potentially or lagging indicator depending on what we think about Stella so something to think about here as well. Yeah for sure. Should we do the next slide. I just sorry I couldn't find my I raised my hand but not electronically because I couldn't find it quick enough but I just thought I'd add to that I mean another way to sort of track. Hopefully the increase in electric vehicle usage in town is to track the metrics on the electric recharging stations in town. I know you mass does this on a periodic basis, but obviously there's other recharging stations in town, and, and there's a robust data set. The charge point is is the predominant vendor of those that equipment. I don't know how open, and in what at what level. That data can be provided but perhaps it can be provided just in terms of the amount of electricity or hours of charging over time as a way to track electric vehicle use usage. Stephanie do you want to go to the next slide please. Um, yeah so how will we implement it research advocate I mean the same as we do all of our stuff. And how will we educate the. Okay, I have some some bad. Okay well it sounds like maybe you do. I think I'm going to have to bail. But, but this. Okay. Um, but this is this is the slide there's two more slides but they basically have the information that I mentioned before about about tack. And the walk by growth of school day that they're working on coming up. So I mean this is great. I think this is a great start definitely a lot to think about based on feedback that you received from the other members so for the next meeting and working with tech. You can continue to finalize this and let us know what help you need that would be excellent. Thank you. I'll keep listening this. Yeah, no worries. All right. The next part of the agenda is seat base and then we'll talk about the education. So, Don, and Stephanie if you want to share dawn slate. Sure. I'll go through it fairly quickly. I do, I do as a, as a initial matter want to apologize because I literally left for Europe. About four or five days after our last meeting and got back. Very, very late Monday night. I didn't reach out to both bid and the chamber before I left, did not get a response. And we'll be reaching out to them again this week. But in any event, let's just go through the slides and we can talk a little bit about what I see are the difficulties with the program. In any event, what is the program it's a statutory financing program adopted by the Commonwealth that authorizes local governments to incentivize owners of existing commercial industrial and multifamily residential properties to undertake decarbonization improvements both renewable and efficiency improvements. I think the key things in that is it, it applies to existing properties. Not new construction. I think the issues that arise on have to do with. I think I think it's an easier hill to climb if, if, if there's a new buyer or developer purchasing a property and who intends to do renovations on that property at the time of the purchase to incentivize them to look at the program. I think it's a harder sell on economically to to incentivize existing landowners or property owners who who don't really intend right now to do any sort of retrofitting or work that costs money to incentivize them to do it anyway, to spend the money to, you know, do some retrofitting particularly in existing residential, you know, multifamily five family residential properties. So, I think some of the difficulties with the program and we heard from the individual from Greenfield. We had one project. We haven't had any and and I didn't I didn't even find out in Stephanie you probably know whether or not Amherst has actually authorized pace. Do we know how they authorized it. Yes, we have, we have, it's already yes it's been approved we just at this point we're really needing to promote it. Yeah, so that that becomes the issue. And I think the real issue is how do we publicize the commercial and communal benefits and I mean communal as a community benefits of the program and educate and encourage property owner participation. And the only way to do that is by facilitating the dissemination of information about the program and the availability of the program. I don't know how we go about. I mean and I boy I would welcome any sort of input in how to incentivize existing owners, particularly of multifamily residential properties to undertake these decarbonization improvements. Because, no matter how you cut it. It is a loan, you are borrowing money in this program and you do have to pay the money back. So there's a, you know, there's that economic hurdle to overcome. And boy do I welcome any suggestions on how we overcome what I see as a significant economic hurdle. You want to go to the side Stephanie if there's no, I see, go ahead. Well, I wonder it sounds done, like maybe this just isn't an attractive enough program. But do you know or can we find out what property owners in town have been doing or might be doing interested in renovations and whether they would have used see pace. If they had known about it and if not, why not maybe we can learn how they are financing, even if they aren't using see pay so perhaps some kind of a survey of the property owners with that, affiliated with a larger residential housing properties might be a way to get some answers and point in some new directions that could be productive. Yeah, I agree with you Steve, you know to the extent that the landowner does want to do renovations. Then we don't have the economic hurdle that I was talking about before of trying to incentivize people who, you know, don't think they need to spend the money right now that you know renovations are not on their front burner for them. And that may make a lot of sense if there is a way we can, we can get that information. And then doing. Yes, so it occurs to me at the time when anyone is most likely to want to make use of these programs is when a heating system needs to be replaced anyway, for example. So, when that happens, presumably one needs some sort of a permit. When we get information at that point is there a way for us to distribute information when people come to the point where they're trying to make renovation is there any point at which the town has interaction where advertising see pace could be useful we discussed this a little bit last time but yeah, I don't think we talked about this particularly. I think the real issue and, and this is something that, you know, Jesse and I both talked about last time. The real issue is that by the time somebody is coming to pull a permit. All right, right. They've already gotten, you know, they've got their contractor they know what they're going to put in there. You know, and in fact it's the contractor who pulls the permit to do whatever work he or she has been contracted to do. The idea is to get the information to people somehow, you know, before they are making their decisions. Okay, so then, so then the other place this information comes to consumers is through, you know, as someone who now has half a dozen know more like 12 quotes for my for work to be done on my own house. One of them comes with a little star at the bottom that says so much of this is eligible for a massive rebate our contractors doing the same thing when they're asked to do these larger jobs do they know about it. You'd think that that would be another place where you're only limited number of contractors in the area maybe we can advertise to them maybe they already know about it maybe there who should we who we should be approaching rather than the building owners. I mean that's a that's a good suggestion. I mean I just know, like your experience from our experience, because we're in the process of putting geothermal in in our in our house. We call up the contractor, you know, who gives us a whole list of what they need to purchase and what the available programs are for me and I to, to take advantage of whether it be a tax credit or a payment. Maybe from mass save or, or whatever. Yeah, I mean, a lot. I don't know. I mean I do know that that's where for a lot of individual residences. That's the process they go through. I'm not sure that's a process a developer goes through who's trying to do a rehabilitation of a large commercial or a large multifamily commercial process. But I tell you those 0% loans are looking better and better all the time right now huh. Yeah. Dwayne, and then Stephanie. Yeah I was just going to add, and I like Lori's suggestion particularly about working with the, or informing the contractors that oh this is something you can offer to your clients of a of a incentivized loan program. But I also was going to put out there just as a suggestion is that, you know, to the extent that we are in tandem, and I don't know exactly the status of this but sort of working or thinking about working towards a energy labeling type of program where buildings commercial and I'm thinking particularly the resident multifamily residential buildings would need to disclose some information about their energy use. That would also be an opportunity to say oh and by the way if you want to have a, if you want to turn and develop a good label for yourself. If it will be publicly available and part of your marketing. Here's a C paste program, you can tap into to what to get your energy costs down. Yeah, that makes that makes sense. I don't know if the if you know when I was doing a lot of thinking about this I've been thinking about projects that had this program been available. I think that very well have been, you know, ideal projects for something like this. When, you know, the cinema was all done and redone when the old shawarma bank building was redone. I just don't know what me looking at the commercial and what. Is there anything kind of on the horizon, any sort of, you know, purchase and renovation of existing commercial buildings, I just, I just wasn't aware of any, and I don't know of any. Yeah. Stephanie, Andre and Jesse. You're a mute Stephanie. I just pressed it like three times. Sorry. So, I guess the first thing I would say it's just sort of backtrack a little bit about the permitting process is that you know we have contractors coming into town hall all the time. And one of the things that I think is just a basic thing that we need to have is some kind of flyer digital and physical. It's available on the second floor and maybe even the first floor that has information about the C paste program. I think that's just like a basic first step is just, you know, even just the marketing of getting the information out. And I think it's something that especially if it's digital that we could probably have on the page, you know pages links on the town's website that has the permitting information, you know that there could be some information or link about see pace, the C paste program. So I think that's something that we could do at least as a presence on the town website that would help at least get the information out there. And I don't personally know of any big projects that are on the horizon but you know typically there are always discussions even before permits are pulled where contractors building owners come in early in the process to meet with planning staff to discuss potential projects to sort of get a get some direction as to their, their permits that they need and what they should be doing so, you know, again, having the information for staff to distribute would be really helpful. Yeah, I mean, I, I mean, I'm happy to talk with you Stephanie about putting together some sort of two paragraph or some sort of source some sort of summary of the program and and and how it works to include in in that information. When, when people come into inquire about the permitting process in Amherst. I'm happy to work on that with you Don. Yeah, I'll definitely reach out to you because I, I spent enough time looking at the program now that I could certainly put together a, a summary that would and provide links as, as I did here in these slides to, you know, both the research and and fact sheets that that the state and and that the feds put out. So, um, as an x right. Yes, go ahead. So, I'm aware that we haven't gone through your slides. And I don't know if some of what we're talking about is on your slides, but it seems to me we need some basic information. Any buildings, do we have that are, you know, likely to be potential targets, you know, should have be done. So this is a basic question. I think it's no longer see pace it's pace, and that it's available generally, but that there's other financing sources that might be more beneficial to homeowners, you know, small building But do you know the answer to that. The authorizing legislation is see pace that the, the terminology that Massachusetts uses is is mass pace. But if you actually read this statue that Massachusetts statute it's still see pace they just drop the C in the vernacular. But but does that mean that it's not only for commercial is that why it was or is it actually not for homeowners. It's not for homeowners. It's for it's it's for the, it's for commercial industrial and multifamily five unit properties. Okay. So, yeah, I think we should know what properties we're talking about. And, you know, how many owners are there. And, yeah, I think information is would be a really good thing to start with. And I suppose we could get that from the assessor's office I don't know how, how we would go about compiling the list of properties that would meet the criteria of being commercial industrial or multifamily, more than five units. Don, I want to be mindful of time as well so let's try to wrap this up in 10 minutes and then get to the education series but I think these are all great questions. Stephanie you might have the answer to the question that under raised and do you want to quickly jump in and I will say with that, you know, I think this goes to compiling information like we were trying to do for the building energy rating system. It's not an easy way to just get data. It seems like it should be very straightforward but it hasn't been, but we can certainly try to run some reports and we can get, we can certainly get an idea but we may not have like exact numbers. So we'll try to gather some of the data that we really want to get but we can do our best and work with what we have. Jesse go ahead. I do think circling back this idea of how, how to get this information about this program out to people who are decision makers and who could employ the program. That's a very good idea. Since it's commercial, it does require any commercial construction in Massachusetts requires construction control. So you're going to need a design professional and a design team, and particularly in the scale of project that we saw at the presentation this they didn't think they thought it was hard to make the numbers work on the really small projects. And therefore, I think getting this information, not, maybe not to builders, or not only builders, but not general contractors as much as potentially MEP contractors that do design build, as well as architects so as AIA might be another target audience if you're putting together a couple paragraphs and all the local developers like again I think any energy work on a building should be somewhat holistic and not just one part of a project that comes in at the end, it's going to work much better if it's integrated into the design. So the earlier it hits that this information hits the design team the better. And then there's another track which may be what Laurie brought up before this, the repair, a new roof, a new boiler that becomes an insulated roof or something that could be served by renewables so I think, which may not involve an architect but the whole design team, maybe, like as I mentioned before, more of a design build. So, that's my quick comments. Thanks, Jason. To me that's the fundamental issue is how do we get the information to the right people who will be involved at an early enough stage in the project. So as to, you know, it has to increase the possibility that they would elect to use this program and to, and to install in their, in their project decarbonization processes. Yeah, definitely some of the leading indicators right these are things that we can do now, depending on what they are right I think we're still trying to figure out what it is but they could be leading indicators for us. Yeah, yeah. I mean the slides are available to everybody we don't need I mean the time is running short, we don't need to go through them anymore, unless you want me to, I don't really care. But we have 10 more minutes, and then we can, we can jump to education. Okay. But there's not really much else to say you can put on the next slide but I have a request. The next time we do this education series I think this is a great idea, but I would like to know what time we're aiming for the education part to start, because I wasn't sure what to tell people for this meeting and I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, thanks I was just thinking about it as well. Yeah, thank you. So, I mean in addition to what you all just added we can build relationships with bid in the chamber to educate property owners and encourage participation. They're really from our perspective there's really, there are minimal costs associated with preparing fliers or information that encourage participation. So, the funding issue doesn't seem to be an issue that would impact what we do, or what we're able to do. Next, again, like just like Stella before me, how do we implement it, you know, research advocacy educational events and by educational events. It includes educational materials, not just events, but the dissemination of materials, which I should add to that. We talked about how we can educate the community to disseminate information. For me the key milestone would be a first successful project, just like Greenfield had to me. That's, that's the initial hump to get over. Get a first successful project and I see a couple of hands up so. Yeah, Steve, I think Jesse you just need to lower your hand. Yeah, okay, Steve. Yeah, I was just sort of musing on this. I had great hopes that see pace would be really attractive to developers and then I'll jump in line to take advantage of it. And perhaps it's a little sad if that's not the case. Still, I think our goal or bigger goal, the big goal is to get more of our buildings renovated. And so if perhaps see pace isn't the greatest tool for it. Maybe we move on and try to find ways that can help encourage, particularly the owners of the bigger buildings. Now, what it would take to get them to think of go from thinking about doing an energy efficiency retrofit to actually doing one what are the stumbling blocks that they see, and how to help reduce those stumbling blocks. And it may be finding somebody somewhere who has done one of these projects, a builder or an owner or contractor talking to owners and builders and contractors are thinking about it so get that peer to peer experience and perhaps we can facilitate that kind of meeting or forum. That might be really valuable. And I agree Steve, I mean I think that went to the kind of dichotomy that I presented in the beginning if we can get existing people existing owners to embark upon renovation that they might otherwise not be embarking upon. Then this program is attractive for a number of reasons, but it's getting them over that hump to say, Hey, this is a good thing to do. And, and there's this program that that once you decide to do it could could really make it easier than it might not otherwise be. Don maybe another action would be to, you know, talk to somebody in the state to figure out who which town has implemented pays. And what can we learn from them. Is that something that, you know, Laura you had something. The list that list is right on the pace home page there is a list that we should use you were talking about a brochure before where there is a link to their home page. I mean it's hard to deconvolve all the different programs but their home page is actually pretty concise and nice. And our town Amherst is listed right up there with about 30 other towns that have already permitted C case I've already authorized it. Yeah, I mean that's just the authorization, though, that is not a list of any projects it's just towns that have bought into done the, done the authorization that the statute that statute requires the town to do. I don't know how we would get a list without calling various timing. You can go down the list of towns that have adopted the program and call somebody in the town and say hey have you had any projects and how did you go about doing it. I'm sure somebody at C pace knows I mean there are phone numbers you can just ask. Yeah. Laura, and then Stephanie. So, one thing that I'd like for us to keep at the forefront of our minds, as our vision says, we will, is the equity implications, and especially for the multi family. Even the latest legislation there were some aspects of redoing mass saving away that would make it harder for people to be displaced. And this is a really critical piece. We want the buildings to be retrofitted. They will be more attractive buildings, you know in terms of their functionality, their health, their energy efficiency, and we don't want people to be pushed out. And this is going to be something that I think we can learn from other places where this has been done more. And just, you know, let's make that are a part of our milestones and important piece of measuring our success. Yeah, thanks Sandra, and I think it's important to continue to remind us about it. Thank you, Stephanie. So, I was just going to say that, you know, we have a contact for the C pace program when we were applying, and I could reach out and see if they because they'll know I mean if there are communities that have implemented this and actually, you know implemented these topics, they're going to be aware. So I can ask them about that but then also I'm wondering about even asking them to maybe be one of your educational series presenters because it seems to me that there are so many questions about this, and I don't think it's going to be unique in having challenges with this program and implementing this program. So, you know, I wonder if you made this one of the educational series topics that you might actually even be able to get some other communities interested in attending and watching and submitting questions ahead of time. So that might be. Yes, Stephanie. I mean I think this is the biggest contributor to our emissions. And, yes, 6 point whatever 5% so I think it's important. Yeah, thanks Stephanie for taking that on a couple more slides on and but we have two minutes anything you want to cover actually one minute now. I'm not sure there's anything else to cover you can go through the slides if you want I mean I've given you, you know, just some of the things I think about I'm going to have to redo all this stuff because you guys, you all have had some really good ideas. But, and in the previous slide I've indicated, you know, the websites that can give you kind of basic fact sheets. And if anybody is wants to be bored and read the statute that's in there too. So, that's good. That's really all for me. So this is a lot of work. Really appreciate it and yeah let's make sure you're not working in silo you have support from Laura and the rest of us as well so just keep that in mind as well. I appreciate everybody's input, because like Steve says, you know, to me the biggest thing is, and what Andre was talking about the biggest thing is is encouraging getting residential property owners, multifamily property owners to undertake these projects to shell out money. Because it's, it's the right thing to do. That's that to me is the mountain to get over. Yeah, thanks Tom. Yep. Okay. I mean, I'm excited to introduce you all to Dr. Martha Hanner, Professor Hanner spend 25 years in the jet propulsion lab working on NASA missions to planets and comments in the solar system so she probably knows more about the atmosphere on other planets that I do about earth so welcome Martha and so during this part of the meeting we will pause in the middle of the slide I think it's like 13 or 14 for questions after we go over the overview of the state decarbonization plan so we'll open up to the public for questions. And then we'll open it up again for questions at the end of the presentation so also please remember that this is a safe space and there is no wrong question, no judgment. So we encourage all of you to bring up questions, whatever they are. We're all learning together in this journey. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Martha. Thank you. So let me try to share my screen here. Let's see. And slide show. There. Okay try to move this over. All right. Well thank you this is basically a talk that I gave to the solar bylaw working group a month ago. And so I first disclaimer, I am a member of the solar bylaw working group but I speak as an individual today and so anything I say or any views that I present are just mine and not representative of anyone else on the solar bylaw working group. So what I'd like to do is give a high level overview of the Massachusetts 2050 decarbonization. Whoops, excuse me. Roadmap published in December 2020, and then I'll discuss the updates and the near term goals of the clean energy and climate plan for 2025 and 2030 that was just released a few months ago. On January 2020, Governor Baker committed Massachusetts to an aggressive target net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. And in the fine print, what that really meant was at least a minimum of an 85% reduction from 1990, which is considered now the baseline level. But the important point is that net zero means that any residual emissions do not exceed the amount that's removed from the atmosphere each year. You know, there's going to be some small amount of residual emissions no matter what we do probably. And so you've got to balance the equation, you know, any emissions that you put in have to be balanced by whatever it means you draw down whatever carbon sequestration you have and that really today means natural forest lands and so on. So the roadmap was supported by several technical studies. The top one, the energy pathways to deep decarbonization is the most basic giving strategies for conversion to renewable energy to answer the basic question is net zero by 2050 feasible. And is it feasible at some reasonable costs that leaves Massachusetts with a thriving economy. So what's that report, along with the roadmap and the 2022 update so if the reread dots here are what I'll discuss and you know that there were other technical reports emphasizing the various sectors of transportation buildings and so on. So we're going to look at the greenhouse gas emissions for Massachusetts, and you can see that transportation is by far the highest for Massachusetts as a whole. This plot from 2005 to 2017 here. And that comes buildings, and both of those have remained fairly constant over the past couple of decades transportation I think has decreased somewhat as emission controls have improved in automobiles. And then you look at the electricity plot there, and the emissions from the electricity sector have decreased by about 50%. And that is because the coal fired plants have been closed and the oil fired power plants have been closed mainly the electricity now comes from natural gas plants which are still fossil fuels but have smaller CO2 emissions per kilogram generated. So just to stress that the electricity use has not decreased, it's probably in fact increased but it's just that the emission controls have really made progress. So just to summarize again then we have the transportation sector buildings, the electricity generation and then some residual industrial and other non energy arts. So each sector really has to be tackled individually and congratulations to all of you because that's what you're digging in to do here based on your reports that you've just given so. So then what are the strategies for decarbonization here. One of all is increasing energy efficiency, and that is really important, because there's no downside to that, you know, anything you do that helps reduce your energy use and increase in efficiency has has no negative side effects and so on. You have to electrify all the end use technologies that means electrify the transportation system starting with the public transportation of buses trains, the report even talks about airplanes, and so on. And then also for the building sector which now is mainly using fossil fuels for heating to electrify with heat pumps or geothermal solar panels and so on. And then once you've electrified things now you have to really focus on decarbonizing the electricity generation. And you can't ignore the carbon capture side because you still have to balance the equation of drawing down as much as possible in order to mitigate the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. So we have then from this report the four pillars of decarbonization, starting from the left here, the end use energy that means really electrifying vehicles, and I really would foresee some technology improvements coming in the years a for passenger vehicles, lighter weight batteries, perhaps, and maybe solar panels on the roof of every car to really decrease the draw on the energy for energy efficiency and flexibility that focus, mainly then on the buildings. As you folks have already been discussing here, we really need to aggressively pursue the energy efficiency both for residential and commercial buildings and that would mean installing a lot of rooftop solar and heat pumps, and again improving the efficiency. So decarbonization means switching to wind energy in particular and solar panels, hydroelectric. And the report talks about actually trying to decarbonize natural gas so that you have a supply of almost emission free fuel to use for power plants. And finally then the sequestration of carbon to balance again you need to really make an effort to protect wetlands forests and so on and try as much as possible to increase the amount of sequestration. So this technical report then considered eight different energy pathways, where they did an analysis in order to ascertain what's the reliability of a particular pathway, what's the costs and so on and does it really lead to the goal we want. The first one was considering all possible options and this was really their baseline, and the conclusion would be that there really is possible to have deep decarbonization and with a reasonable cost. They started in by, you know, varying one parameter at a time in the different pathways one being if you limit offshore wind what happens, and then you are really stressed trying to come up with sufficient clean energy resources and the report concluded that really solving some new modern small nuclear reactors for power would be helpful in that particular case. If you limited efficiency here, then they conclude that costs would indeed increase significantly and you'd have a larger demand that you would have to be satisfying for for energy. The pipeline gas, this was again being. If you if you needed to continue relying on natural gas. Again they talk about trying to improve the technology so that you could somehow decarbonize the gas, so that it would have a very low emissions. Let's see. The pipeline here, there we go. And then if you have 100% renewable primary energy so that no fossil fuels are permitted at all, then you do have a challenge trying to get to sufficient energy in 2050 from wind solar and so on. It's a hard time balancing the fluctuations and there would be a large increase in cost. And then if you have no thermal, you'd have substantially higher reliance on solar power, particularly ground mounted, and again challenges to, to, to balance the, the use. So coordination was considered a plus. Massachusetts is part of the regional grid. And finally the bottom one called distributed energy resources breakthrough. And that is a study of what happens if you can deploy a lot more solar in particular the behind the meter so to speak and I'll talk about more about that in the in it. If you could really drastically increase that amount, you would indeed be able to get a better result and decrease your need for ground mounted solar. So Massachusetts is part of the Northeast regional electric grid, and that consists of New England adjacent areas of New York and adjacent Southern Canada, and all of the entities have committed to reduction targets of at least 80%. Other characteristics here are we have a high population density, which makes it challenging to site the resources. Large winter heating loads, large offshore wind potential, the south of Cape Cod, we really have a world class wind field. And this is really something that we're status trying to take advantage of contracts are already underway, and hopefully with more to come. We have moderate solar resource quality after all we are at 42 degrees latitude. And, you know, we have a fair amount of rain and snow but still we do have ability to have a significant solar energy. We're trying to tie in with the Canadian hydroelectric system hydro Quebec, although the challenge is to get the transmission lines across New Hampshire remain down from Quebec to Massachusetts. And here in New England is no significant geological sequestration potential. And what was the result of their model calculations. They concluded that offshore wind really is going to be the most important aspect of a deep carbonized electricity system. If the offshore wind is limited, then the hydro Quebec becomes a lot more important, and we need, we need to import a more electricity, and also then perhaps institute some new nuclear power generation. Photovoltaics made up 25 to 30% of the electricity generation across most pathways, and the challenge being the cost of trying to store it and shifting from when the sun is up to nighttime when you need the power. And rooftop and ground mounted solar will both needed but the more that you could develop the rooftop parking lot, etc. solar deployment, then you could significantly reduce the amount of land that would be required. And they conclude that the share of final energy delivered as electricity would be approximately 68% in 2050, which would be about a factor of three and a half higher than the 2020 levels. Yes. Behind the meter. That means energy production and storage, particularly the solar photovoltaics that directly supply homes and buildings with electricity before passing through the meter. And one strong advantage is you have point of use generation you don't need the whole transmission grid. It's an integrated system and can still be tied into the grid, but it reduces energy dependence and depending on the setup, it could in fact be independent so that if the grid goes down and ice storms or hackers or whatever. You would still have your independent energy system. Here, installation of local solar systems can support local businesses we do have several small solar businesses in the area that advertise regularly that's local jobs and local economic support here. And robust rooftop installation reduces the land requirements for ground mounted solar, although both are going to be needed if we're going to meet the net zero goals, and as you folks have just been discussing financial incentives are going to be needed. And in that context, the legislators 2022 climate plan does include financial incentives that I think that we ought to investigate is my understanding that's that's something that's, you know, completely separate from the pace program and would be available to individual homeowners but I don't know really the details about that. So, then, to summarize the 2050 roadmap report. There are various challenges. One is being the sighting of the renewables both wind and solar due to our high population density and the expense of land and citing the electrical transmission lines is difficult for the same reasons. Wind solar and hydro generation are not located near the end you users. And so that really is going to mean that you have to have really an upgraded transmission grid. And that is part of the challenge for Massachusetts here we've seen right here in Amherst, the, the tall poles or transmission lines that are being put in across the town, they're not exactly pretty but they're going to be necessary for this purpose. Then we are here in New England we do have potential extreme weather events and we don't know what the climate change is going to do that. And then, both wind and solar there, the peak loads are not in sync with the peak production. And so one is going to need to really upgrade the storage facilities. So, okay. Oh, so I think I would like to just in you if you don't mind, and then have the questions at the end because I think the two are kind of linked here. Okay. Yeah. So, going on then to the clean energy and climate plan for 2025 and 2030. And so this plan now set specific goals for our emission reductions for this next decade. And describes the track strategies to reach the goals for each sector. And in contrast to the 2020 roadmap. There's significantly more emphasis on the carbon sequestration and preserving the natural and working lands. So, looking again at our greenhouse gas emissions with the transportation leading the way up here in the, about 40% and buildings being significant and then the electricity, the emissions have reduced but we're going to be raising the amount of electricity. And so now I'm going to show you essentially the same data, but plotted in a different way, which is why I showed this first here. So this is really the most important plot of the talk. It's from the climate plan here. And again, it shows the emissions from the various sectors now starting in 1990, which is the reference year and extended out and projected to 2030 with the diamonds being the goals here. You can see that transportation is a very large segment of this and buildings, and that electricity, the emissions have indeed reduced over the years. So 2020, we had a certain goal. And you can see that Massachusetts made the goal. But then if you look closely, you look and you see the big drop in the transportation sector in 2020. And I think that has a specific reason I think it was a certain pandemic that did that, that suddenly, you know, a lot of people weren't commuting into their offices and so on and a lot of people were just kind of staying home and withdrawing from life, and that did decrease the amount of transportation significantly and it was that decrease that made us able to reach the 2020 goal quite effectively. Now the challenge comes in for these next 10 years. And so you see the projections are essentially to have the sectors being relatively flat for the next five years or three years now until 2025. But that is assuming that after the pandemic, people did not go back to their old driving habits, which I'm not sure that's a good assumption. But there's the 2025 and then you look and you see that to get to the 2030 goal, which is a reduction of 50% overall compared to 1990. And that requires a really steep drop, particularly in the transportation sector, but also in the building sector. And for the electricity, maybe you don't need as steep a drop in the overall emissions but because you're increasing the amount of electricity you still do need a significant drop in order to keep the percentage low. So what I see as the biggest biggest challenge and whether we can get there, I really just don't know. So, here then summarize the goals. Let the goal for one reason or another. And then 2025 is further reduction and then 2030 is a really significant reduction that's needed here. So then breaking it out into the sectors and how does this 2022 climate plan proposed to get there. So transportation, you know as you're talking about need to reduce the growth of vehicle miles by improving public transportation that means adding bus service and converting to electrical fleets. And along the lines of your discussion just today, I mean, I see that the bus service in here in Amherst, and the PVTA, we really need some analysis and improvement. I mean, you know people have been talking for years and you haven't in your car report that there's insufficient bus service say from East Hadley Road and all the apartments building out there. There's no simple way to get to a grocery store. It takes hours and bus changes and so on and that's really crazy and really should have been changed long ago. But that's the kind of thing that needs to be changed and I really think that the whole bus service needs to be analyzed. I think we need a little more publicity to get more UMass student drivers and increase the bus service maybe a little bit later at night and really do a concerted efforts to try to get people in Amherst to see that that bus service can be something reliable and convenient. In addition to electric vehicles, of course that which is dependent to a large extent on on individuals really to whether they choose to buy a new vehicle and if so whether they feel that the price is right and so on. And the state is pledging to improve the charging infrastructure if you're going to have all electric vehicles you certainly need to charge them if you drive the turnpike from west west coast of Massachusetts to Boston. That is is is something that the Massachusetts is going to be investing in and the goals for the decrease in the emissions in the transportation sector are really, really significant. Again, it's improving the energy efficiency that's that's clearly going to give you the most benefit again just as you've been talking about this, this time, enhancing the energy codes for new buildings, and then getting really the financial incentives for for heat pump installation for for solar panels on the roofs, and so on. And I was thinking as you were discussing it today that that really what's needed is to somehow make it easy for people that means for the developers the contractors, you know, somehow make it easier for them to get the information they needed and to go through the permitting process of trying to maybe look at look at our town processes and see if we can do more to get it all in one place or make it more one stop shopping. The same then for residences. You know it can be overwhelming. If you, as an individual homeowner have to try to talk with a number of different contractors assess what the options are I try to learn what what reimbursements you could get and so on, and anything that could be done to somehow centralize the information somehow and and make it more of a town service. Again, somehow one stop where a homeowner could get the information. And it's my understanding again that the legislators 2022 that they've passed will really give some financial incentives and we really need to find out more about it for say from our elected representatives, because the building goal for 2030 really is a steep drop here. So, electricity generation. Well the demand is going to increase significantly if we electrify things. And so that means that the transmission and distribution systems across Massachusetts will really need upgrades and increased capacity and and that's going to be something that may have significant cost associated with it when energy will be the dominant renewable and the the Baker administration and the legislature I've heard a couple of talks from representatives about that. They enthused that this is a way to bring jobs to Massachusetts help Massachusetts economy and the goal is to make wind energy be at least 40% of our electricity generation by 2050. My understanding that there are at least two contracts that are now in operation and the work is underway. A third contract is being negotiated maybe close to being signed this future contracts, there's several large experienced solar companies that are interested I don't mean solar mean wind, wind energy companies. And this would be mostly in the deep water south of Cape Cod. So that that is ongoing. And everyone in the state seems to be enthused about that. And for solar, which is also an important contribution. There is new emphasis in this report on the rooftop solar, trying to get as much as possible there. And then the land conservation has new urgency here. So, just a statement from the report here that the deployment of solar resources has two challenges, and one being the interconnection of the distributed resources as we've discussed, you know, if you're going to install a large scale. You need to get it properly hooked up to the energy grid to the transmission lines and so on. You need to be considering what kind of battery storage you're going to have. And then the other being the impacts on the natural and working lands which is really an emphasis of this clean energy and climate plan. So, again, a further statement, quoting from the report here that DOR is going to be tasked then with working on this balance here the balance of the two sides of the equation that you want to be have incentives that promote solar, but at the same time, you need to have the balance and improve the natural and working lands for their goal of sequestration. So, and note the wording down here that it says the built environments will include two million systems installed on rooftops lawns fields parking lots and so on. Now we can ask well how many of those two million systems can we install here in Amherst to do our share. Okay, and so then again quoting from the report here of protecting our natural and working lands that these provide many benefits here. So, this clean energy plan recognizes the need for sequestering carbon and modern climate models in the past few years clearly show that we're not going to be able to control the amount of co2 in our atmosphere just by reducing reducing emissions that we really are going to increase the drawdown of co2 from the atmosphere. And so that at the present time we have no brilliant technology to do that. The natural world is doing it. And so we really need to put an emphasis on preserving forest particularly old growth forest wetlands, and in general, the natural world. So, these statements here and from the land sector report in 2050 they gave an estimate of how much of sequestration the forest and wetlands and so on in Massachusetts are achieving each year. And that is apparently only about half of what will really be needed by 2050 to balance the equation of residual emissions versus the drawdown. So, I have inserted here an interesting chart, which shows the global amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere as measured at the monoloa observatory in Hawaii so I won't read this whole thing. Here is the chart. So ever since 1957 this this one facility at about 11,000 feet on the slopes of monoloa has been measuring the atmospheric carbon dioxide consistently the same way. Over the course of these 65 years, I can attest that this is a very high dry site, because I spent many a night on the neighboring mountain at 14,000 feet at the astronomy observatory and it the humidity can be as low as like 10% and it's it's a very clean place this and on the slopes of monoloa there's no local vegetation. You really are sampling the clean atmosphere and 20 degrees latitude it's near the location where with the Hadley circulation the the air from the atmosphere is descending. So but you see that the curve, the true measurements here with the red lines, oscillate a bit. And so let me show you the next plot, which is an expanded just the past six years or so. And what you're seeing in the red lines there is you are seeing the bio steer breathing for our planet. It's the seasonal variation it's due to photosynthesis. So the red curve there it's the monthly means but you see in the northern hemisphere. At the end of summer, the northern hemisphere. The amount of co2 decreases somewhat because the, the, all of the photosynthesis has pulled it down and then the cold winter rises again. And so you see this cycle, and in fact, the natural natural biosphere. It pulls down about 30% of the human generated carbon dioxide annually. And so it really is significant and something that that we really, you know, have to preserve. Okay, well, back to Massachusetts here. Here is a map from the report of the land use in Massachusetts. The red is the settled built up areas. That's about 25% of the state land as you can see it's most of eastern Massachusetts plus the Springfield area out here. And then is the forested land which is about 57% of our state, and it's mainly here in western Massachusetts. And one thing that surprised me was that the cropland in yellow is only about 7% of Massachusetts I thought it was really significantly larger. I mean, I go to the store and buy local milk without thinking twice about it. I really thought that there was more farmland in Massachusetts but it's concentrated right around here, which means, in my view, that we really do have an obligation to take that seriously and try our best to preserve the cropland right in our area for the, for the good of the whole community. So again just summarizing the numbers here, 25% of the area is built up, forest is more than half, and the rest is just a small amount. And so according to our town's master plan, the protected agricultural land in Amherst makes out about 18% of our area. So then again, quoting from the report statement on the forests, recognizing their importance for sequestration but also for all of the other reasons for protecting the water sheds for sustainable timber products and wildlife habitat, helping to clean the air and water recreation and so on so that there are many reasons for doing our best to preserve our forests here. The state then has committed to increasing the permanent conservation on its land by another couple of percentages by 2025 and 2030 and note that here in Amherst about 30% of our land is permanently protected. A lot of that is down in South Amherst, the Lawrence Swamp area, which has several of our town water wells. That's a large area and then some other areas scattered around the town too. So the report puts in some additional goals of wanting to incentivize privately owned forests and farms, and incentivize usually means provide money. So, I think that would be again worth investigating here. Planting trees. And that's something that we can do right here in Amherst too, maybe part of the new Hickory Ridge or part of some of the other areas around town. And then the state wants to be committed to achieving no net loss of stored carbon in wetlands. And then natural working lands overall. So environmental justice then is included too, having an awareness of that and where you site any industrial scale facilities in any residential area or something. And also in where you plant trees in town, you know, can we make an effort to, to help plant trees near around some of the rental areas in Amherst that help make a create shade help make a pleasanter environment and so on. And as you've alluded to already today, there's the challenge of the high upfront costs of the new technologies of, you know, renovating resonances and apartment buildings and so on. And so there's a challenge of how do you get the benefits of the solar photovoltaics and heat pumps for renters, howdy, and the 2022 legislative bill that's been passed does include language for how to help make the utility bills actually for the renters reflect and any increased benefits from energy efficiency in the buildings where they live. And again, I think that this that whole area is something that our town really needs to pursue we really need to find out, you know, what are the possibilities of funding and try to get all that information in one place. And then as you folks are talking about doing some kind of education campaign and helping to make all that possible. And finally then my takeaways for Amherst, we've said energy efficiency is the most cost effective thing to do particularly for the near term, and to do that I think we really need to investigate what are the financial incentives and how do we get access to this. The electricity demand will rise gradually as other sectors become more electrified and wind energy will become the largest source of renewable energy in Massachusetts they say the governor and legislature's goal is 40% of electricity generation so one could ask what is Amherst share of that. So if we're taxpayers, and we pay our utility bills, both of which are helping to finance this wind development, shouldn't we be able to count some of the wind energy then, when we do our balance sheet about what is Amherst's energy consumption and so on. And then maximizing the rooftop solar is very important in order to save natural and working lands both may be needed but the more you can do in the built environment, the better and this is something that I think Amherst really needs to get busy and working on. Massage you mass is sort of leading the way to some extent, maybe we can have more collaboration there. Put projects together to try to make some savings. Now I think there's opportunities here. And then finally that the natural and working lands are important for sequestration and the land sector report from two years ago. So I think that the amount of carbon sequestration in the undisturbed soils is really significant and could even be as much as half of the carbon sequestration say in a forested area. And so that again we need to be careful and assess the quality of our soils in any places that are going to be disturbed. So next then I will stop here and stop my share, and hopefully can get to questions. Yeah, first up Martha. Thank you so much for your time. Okay, this is great. I really appreciate, you know, sharing this information on the 2050 plan in 2020. Let's open up to the public for comments and then to the panels. Yeah, I would like to know how many people are actually listening. There are 19 attendees at the most. Okay. I do want me to unmute. Yes, please acknowledge folks as they raise their hands. So the first person is a Lisa. Lisa I will unmute you and you can go ahead and speak. Martha that was excellent I learned a lot. Kind of a package of comments or questions. One of which is that it seems to me that the looking at things town by town makes no sense realize this is a town committee, but the forest destroyed in Maine. It's not as bad as a force destroyed in Massachusetts. And in that context, I think hydroqued back is an abomination. That's just a statement. But anyway, in terms of our local situation. It seems to me as a person who lives in a condo who at least so far has never had an opportunity to participate in mass save that the financial benefits of all the programs so far have gone to people who could afford to live in single houses. And while I am glad to have solar collectors behind the meter because it benefits all of us indirectly, all the financial benefits have gone to the homeowners. I still pay the same electric bill, which contributes to the subsidy that helped put those collectors on the roof. So I applaud your comment at the end. And also on the committee, who has brought up the issue of, you know, social justice, etc. We need to find ways to make the benefits. Apply to people who can't afford to own a home, whether they're renters or condo have our housing and Amherst is multifamily housing between mostly apartments and some condos. I really appreciate all the information. And I think it's great. But I think we have a lot of difficult issues to deal with as we move forward. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Alyssa. Definitely something to be conscious about. Thank you. Eric Bacrock, you're next. I've unmuted you. You can speak. Eric, you have to unmute yourself. Can you go ahead. Thank you so much for Martha that was just a spectacular synthesis of the newest information that is coming out. Regarding our climate, our pending climate catastrophe and how we can begin to avert it. I wanted to just refer for a second to my Lisa's comment just now about that the I have always felt that the, if it's a state promulgation that we have to reduce our reliance and fossil fuel, it's really a statewide problem and to see a statewide challenge. And if we could see that really has a statewide challenge and not simply a town or a village issue that if we look at it, look at it from a much more regional perspective. So I've really felt that we really need to kind of expand our focus in support of what you indicated regarding distributed solar in particular rooftop solar. I've kind of, I chuckled because how slowly information forgive the expression percolates or trickles down. And in support of the need for distributed and extensive distributed and rooftop solars deployment in Massachusetts there was a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory laboratory dated January 2016 called rooftop solar photo potential, voltaic technical potential in the United States, a detailed assessment. And if one were to look at the potential for Massachusetts to offset its total consumption. Massachusetts is the seventh highest state where if fully deployed on rooftop rooftops massive the state itself can do could defray up to 47% of its electrical needs, simply by distributing solar on rooftops. So I would not was 2016 that was over six years ago. So I was gratified to see the state coming around emphasizing the importance of distributed solar, because it's clear that the more that we have it on rooftops parking lot canopies, etc. commercial industrial and small buildings large buildings medium size buildings, they're better off, we would be so I was delighted to see that in your report. Thank you, Martha. Thank you. Looks like we do not have any other. There are. You can go ahead and unmute yourself. Hi everybody. Thank you for your good work and this educational series I'm looking forward to tuning in for more and when Don and all of you were giving your presentations I think not only is it great for you to be hosting this educational series for people to come to eCAC and learn more, but maybe you can have a educational series that you are, you're peddling sort of, you know, in in for the pace program, you're peddling that to the developers and landowners and just a thought that that is not actually what I want to say primarily but but that was something I was thinking this educational series can really go in many directions. And Martha, thank you so much for summarizing that those those climate model plans and reports for us I want to just highlight a couple of things that I know about from working with the state. And one bit on these climate issues is, these are goals, and the goals are not what are the current practices, it's just kind of important to remember that on that it sounds really good on paper, but that is not what the state is doing right now. I also want to highlight a couple of people have talked about this regional perspective, and when you were showing the math that Western mass contains most of the forest land and farm lands. So if you think about that as an organism if the if the state of Massachusetts was a was a human body, then Western math would be like where the lungs and the liver, you know where those organs are. And we don't want to sacrifice those organs, because the system has this idea to expend less energy, which is maybe done by other parts of the organism. So I'm proposing that we consider that our fair share could be really protecting our green lands, because that's what we have to offer to the region as a whole. That's the best thing. That's the biggest resource that we have. And I also want to highlight that undisturbed soil sequestered perhaps 50%. And not only is that the function of undisturbed soil, but when you destroy the underground like riso fungal networks and forest for instance. What are you destroying the entire neuro biological social biological community that is a forest that they've invested years and developing, but any logging any developing because of that disturbance of the soil reduces the capacity of photosynthesis. So all of these models. We have to take into consideration what we're actually doing on our land. Working land do not do it as best as undisturbed lands that's something even though we of course we need working lands, but that's something else to understand and the state has not protected its state forested lands their log. The legislation we tried to pass has not passed. And now we're trying to work with doer to see if from a regulatory capacity that can be changed, because finally after a few decades there's an understanding of, as you said, Martha, the brilliant technology is in the natural world of that biosphere and we're understanding more and more that that's why the later climate models for 2025 and 2050 are very different than the ones from 2020 because they're finally listening to those, those climate changes right the climate movement has been very focused on energy renewables. Sorry, but I want to be mindful of everybody. We have five more minutes and there's seven hands raised so. I will just stop right here. I will just stop right here. And, and, and I will, you know, it would be great if we could have another educational series where we talk about these topics, particularly I think that would be a really good. Learning for each hack and for all of us. Thank you so much for your good work. And if everybody could take about 45 seconds please sort of make sure we wrap this up on time. Janet McGowan, I'm unmuting you so if you unmute yourself as well you can speak. Thank you for your work on ecac I know how important this is. I have a question, I'm not sure Martha can answer it because it was a question I had when I was reading the climate action plan for the state. So UMass, and Amherst College have decided that the way they're going to get to net zero is through geothermal largely, not completely but largely. So that since they use about half of the energy and Amherst I thought well that's great news. And so you know we're trying to get to zero. You know that these, this is one way we're getting to it and it seems like a simple way. Carlton College has already reduced half of its carbon dioxide emissions through geothermal they replaced a plant and they have. I think they have one or two wind turbines like I can't remember me and my son went to Carlton so I was kind of paying attention to that. And so I also have a friend who has one of those giant houses that you look at and you kind of judge and you think oh my God those people are using so much energy and in fact they're on geothermal, you know for the last 20 years plus solar panels. So my question for the action plan, directing to Martha is, where is it in the, where is this geothermal thing because this city of Utica is, you know, using geothermal for its whole downtown it's, it's, you know, town buildings and it's, you know, their downtown buildings are going to put in a plant and do that. And it just seems to me that that has to be part of the mix because for a large, you know concentrated institutions or areas. It's better than just getting some heat from the ground. Yeah, yeah, I mean, as far as I know it just wasn't in these two reports that it's, it's one of those technologies that's now developing and hopefully. So you could hopefully that your committee can could follow up. Yeah, Steve, Steve. Janet you're mistaken geothermal. That's commonly used out here which is geothermal heat pumps, which use electricity, and they move heat to and from the ground or from the air. They're not getting heat from the ground to generate electricity so geothermal is not an energy source. The geothermal heat pumps are in the plan and that comes under the building efficiency. So that's a major major component as we move buildings off of heating oil, or natural gas, we're putting them into using heat pumps air sourced or ground source heat pumps, and then using electricity so that's a big reason why as we decrease the fuel use our electricity use is going to double in the next, well by 2050. So it's not it's not an energy source it's an efficiency tool. Geothermal is also called you said it ground source heat pump. Right. So that's why there's a confusion of language there but that's what they mean. Yeah, yeah, I was I was confused to by that. I mean the real geothermal was like what they tried to do in Hawaii right. So geothermal plants, California has some Iceland's got a bunch but we just don't have the heat close to the surface of the ground. Yeah, let's jump to our next question. Julian Heinz, I've allowed you to talk please unmute yourself. Yeah, if you can wrap it up in one minute please. Yeah, you got it thank you so much everyone and I appreciate you holding this form. And the next question which is, how is community solar being encouraged where it would give rate payers a break on their electricity increasing the environmental justice aspect, but also would prevent the chopping of trees for private type solar projects. So where is that sort of in this, I appreciate everyone's time today, and I will try to wrap it up right now. Thanks Julian. Does anyone have that answer. I'm happy to address at least to start addressing that in limited time. I mean, the state solar program has incentives for what's called community shared solar that doesn't that that includes and primarily most of the community shared solar projects around Massachusetts are still pretty large scale. And some of them are going. Some of them are on buildings, some of them are on landfills. Some of them are on the built environment but some of them are also the projects that we see that are going on. The natural, natural world. And so, but they are projects that do offer benefits directly to rate payers in the form of net metering discount rates, essentially. Thanks. Thank you. Past time. Here's a recommendation this great that more people have questions. There's, we either we can all stay for a couple of minutes to finish the questions or we can have people right to us and we will respond either I don't know Stephanie that works or if we come back in two weeks and you can pose your questions. Stephanie what do you recommend. Well, if you're all willing, I think you only have two more public attendees who have their hands raised actually in one person's put their hand down. Okay, one at this point so I would say probably if you're willing to put in another 15 minutes. Okay. Okay, so bridge water. I've allowed you to talk so you can just unmute yourself. Thank you so much. I just want to say thank you this has been very enlightening. I hope that ecac which has this wonderful desire to be educating the community will take the presentation that Martha made and put it in some really prominent place on the town website. So that somebody showing up at the front page of the town website can see something as enlightening as this amazing presentation less. All I have to say and except for thank you. Excellent suggestion. Thank you. And then we have three panelists so questions so Steve Laura and Jesse. Great thank you. I have a couple of notes here. Responding to a couple of comments. Lisa that the mass save program does have programs specific to renters and condo owners. And the renters can call up mass save and they will come and do an assessment of your apartment. I'm pretty sure they have something for condo owner so take a look at that anybody who's a renter or condo owner. And then I come into Eric back rack. You mentioned the NREL report yeah Massachusetts that that report shows that the technical potential for Massachusetts is 47% of the year 2013 electricity sales. Sounds good. Remember electricity is going to more than our consumption of electricity is going to more than double by the year 2050, though we're looking at a technical potential of perhaps 25%. And at least in other states where they've looked at the, the difference between the technical potential and the economic potential, the actual economic potential is maybe a half or a third, or even smaller of the technical potential. So solar is there's definitely potential on rooftops. It's just from whatever everything I've read it is not as great as we would like it to be. And with that Martha, the, you really emphasize the, the state looking at the natural working lands which I agree that was really emphasized in the latest CEP report. Do you get the sense that the state may be backing away from what the solar goals that it had presented earlier which was like 60,000 acres of solar in addition to maximizing rooftops and parking lots and such. You know, I, I was looking for that 60,000 and I didn't see it and I didn't, you know, I. I did not see really a statement in the latest report of some, you know, real number we're going to have this many rooftops and this much solar it just or, you know, so on it would just was was was kind of trying to shift the emphasis. So I don't, I don't know what we can do I think we're waiting now to do for the solar assessment here in Amherst to see how much we have in the way of, you know, open lands or what I mean, a lot of Amherst open land is already preserved, or is working farm lands, and so on. So I don't know, I sure looking around at a lot of roofs with nice sloping south facing roofs and say well I don't have their solar panels up. And I don't know we don't have too many parking lots but hopefully we can get get busy on them and Steve, you should be justifiably proud of what Hampshire has done. What is your total acreage of solar panels. It's not just under 20 acres so 4.6 megawatts. Yeah, and can you tell me how on the on the bay road part how what the size of that one is. Yeah that's easier. That's Bay Road they're near Atkins Market that's about 10 acres. 10 acres okay because that's something everybody sees so that's a good kind of marker. Yeah, I'm happy to lead tours if anybody wants to take a close up look at that I'm happy. We can get inside the fence and take a look at the grounds there. Laura. Thanks for Sue and thanks Martha for the great presentation. I had a similar sort of question or comment as, as Steve around sort of the amount of solar that the state is expecting us to have to put on land. So I think that's something good follow up to figure out if that number is still the same or if it's changed at all. But you did say early on Martha that we, we will still need to put on land and I think that point may have gotten sort of a bit buried. But I think it's an important point to raise. I think it would be wonderful for Amherst to, and Western Mass in general to be the lungs of the state, if we have to put solar on some land basically what we're saying if we take that claim is that other parts of Massachusetts need to get rid of some of their land. And from an environmental justice perspective, I think we just really need to think about that what what are we saying we're saying that other communities may need to put solar on land, where while we may maybe less willing to do so so I just think we need to keep that framing in mind when we're thinking about our next steps. I would also say that, you know, relying on. I think I'm super excited about the offer wind industry I think this is a huge boost from Massachusetts in terms of job creation and reaching our climate goals. So I think this is going to require people to support offshore wind and we have a history of not doing that so I think similarly with Hydro Quebec our plan does rely on significant input from Hydro Quebec which is right now is in major limbo. So I think we have to keep in mind that everybody is going to have to do some sacrificing to meet our climate goals. What I want to make is is that Martha you set you said in passing old growth for us and I think it's just extremely important to be clear that all old growth for us in Massachusetts of which there's very very little is permanently in conservation. So no solar is going to be going on old growth for us so I just don't want us to be spreading that misinformation. Thank you. I think any, you know the technical report that I report on from 2020 was the most fundamental analysis I mean they admitted right there that even if you put in the best possible data and your best possible modeling you still have assumptions and projections. And so I think it's, I really question taking literally a certain number of acres and saying oh this is what's needed is, you know, x acres of solar or x big of lots of wind or something because we just don't, you know, know it that much we have to proceed gradually. The electricity demand is going to go up gradually depending on, you know, the other sectors and what goes on so I'm just waiting for, you know, technology to catch up here with improved battery storage as I say you know I want solar panels on top of every car and truck and, you know, I think there's some other potentials to get there if we really start pushing on the technology. Okay, so thank you all. Jesse go ahead and then Stephanie. Thank I just want to thank also the attendees and the public this has been hugely engaged meeting and thank you for making that happen thank you all so much. I have a very, I think, I don't know if you have the answer to this mark that's a sort of technical question. Really in the presentation the natural gas, or the electricity emissions going down because of the shift from coal to natural gas, can you confirm if that, or do you know whether that includes fugitive emissions. Maybe Dwayne or Steve you might know as well so is that just direct emissions or the entire natural gas. I think it's just the direct. I mean they do mention in the in the category of other, which is about 10%. The sort of the fugitive emissions or the gas leaks, the, you know, uncontrolled problems and so on that that you know that ought to be addressed, but Yeah, I think it's important. If, if, if what they're calling natural gas which we call toxic combustible fuel instead. Yes. That's part of what's driving that number down let's make sure I think it's important to realize it may not be true, and which brings back, I think, just that that bullet point of efficiency load reduction, huge, and Martha again thank you so much this was really great. Yeah, well that's a that's a good point though, that when you'd see that lovely plot of the emissions going down for for electricity sector that it really is not including, you know the leaks and the losses. And that kind of thing that needs to get fixed. Stephanie wonders of fracking. So, I just wanted to make a point that while Hampshire College is being lauded for their solar installation I would like to note that the town has a project that has gone online recently. It's 15 acres it's nearly four megawatts on the North landfill. And so the town is trying to do its part although we don't own that system itself. We have certainly contributed that amount of solar to the state's portfolio, renewable portfolio and we do want to like, you know, give our town some credit because that was a long hard fought battle. Yeah. And we've got to give you the credit because you've been working on that for 20 years. I'd really love to hear more. One of our future updates, Stephanie on that project. Wayne. Yep, sorry. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you and let me first thank Martha. I have to know Martha in the solar bylaw working group, and she volunteered to do this research and present to the working group this, the carbon is a decarbonization plan. And, and she honed it even more for this presentation so really thank thank you, Martha for that. And likewise, the participants, the public. I just wanted to mention maybe one more thing that's maybe important for us and the participants to recognize also in this plan is that it's not really and it's sort of embedded in this in the in the plan and the strategies as well as that we can't really it's not really a matter of picking do we want offshore wind or solar or large scale hydro or batteries. It's really the combination of the four of them all together, bringing different attributes associated with what the electricity grid needs to be reliable and reasonably cost effective. And, you know, solar is very predictable, but more dominant, predictable that it's not going to be there at night, for example, but also quite predictable that it's going to be more prevalent in the summertime than the winter. And likewise offshore wind as a counter counter issue of being a bit more prevalent in the winter time, the large scale hydro for the, despite some environmental trade offs associated with that is a really critical resource, because it's large but also it can be ramped up and down extremely which is really critical for this grid to work with the intermittency of solar and wind, despite all the predictability that it does does have now. And then lastly battery storage, as Martha mentioned, to really make the make this grid reliable for us all. So I just thought I wanted to tie tie those that that part together. Jesse final said, and Dwayne, not as a contradiction but as a compliment to those four technological solutions, binding all that together a cultural shift and a mindset shift and a sense of compromise and teamwork and hard work, all of which is not technological but political cultural etc to really allow these things to happen. I compliment your committee, I think you're, you know, you're really digging into this in a good way, Vasu you're doing a great job here. You're cracking the whip on everyone I think, and I think people are responding so that's great. I'm doing it in a nice way, not not with a bit but but you know again for everybody, you know who's attending this for the first time. Thank you for joining thank you for sticking around for two hours and 15 minutes. We meet every two weeks. So I urge you all to join also talk to your friends and relatives about this. The usual meetings are only an hour long from 430 to 530. It's only when we have the education series it extends to two hours so we will try to wrap things up within an hour. And if you have something that you want to learn about. Let me know, or let Stephanie know, please shoot us a note email, whatever works. With that, I'm going to close so thank you all for joining and thank you Martha once again for your awesome presentation. Okay, thank you. Bye.