 And we are recording. Okay. So we're here. Let's go ahead and get started, I guess. I, as usual, don't have, I'm not going to start with the slides the way Jesse usually does. I just haven't had time to prepare anything. So why don't we just go right to the agenda. And first of all review and vote on the minutes from last week, but first who's taking notes. Who's on for note taking this week. Get Lori, you did them last time, correct? I did them last time. So I think I might be up. Maybe. I don't know. I don't care. It's not big minutes. Andra's next in line. Yeah, that's right. You won't be here today. So that's okay. All right. So Don, you'll do them. I'll do them. Okay, great. Thanks, Don. Okay. So first thing on the agenda is always reviewing and voting on the minutes from last week. And thank you Stephanie for fixing them up. And my apologies for sitting them so late. No worries. I'm all ready to go almost ready to go after the meeting and then forgot about it. We put them up where does anyone. I can put them up unless people had an opportunity to look at them. I moved to approve. I looked at them. A second. Okay. And then in no particular order by voice vote. So please be sure to be unmuted. Goldner. Yes. Allison. Yes. Selman. Yes. Roof. Yes. D. Yes. Bregar. Yes. Okay. Minutes are approved. Okay. So now I think we have a public comment. Looks like we've got a few participants today. Yay. Thank you. Thank you. How about we open for public comment? So if anyone in the public is interested in making a comment at this time, please electronically raise your hand and I will allow you to speak. Okay. I don't see anyone raising their hand. Okay. Then we'll go on to the rest of the agenda. So first on the list are updates. Stella. Transportation. Yeah. I talked to tack. I'm sorry. I don't know if anybody from tack will come talk to us, but that's a little TBD. That's the main update. It was really good to talk to them. Any particular. Items that are. Yeah. They really want to finish the plan. The like bike and pedestrian plan. And I was really encouraging them to do that and saying that this, I sort of spoke out. I know we have to vote on it, but I don't know if anybody in the public would agree with that. I think this committee would be happy to write some sort of memo in support of that plan once it's. Complete. And hopefully, like I said, hopefully someone from, from over there is what can come talk to us about it in more detail. They were, they really appreciated the carp. It was new. It was new for some people and they really appreciated hearing more about the car. And I think I would really appreciate hearing more about there. You sent us a link, I think last time to the. Bike map proposed bike map or something like that. There was a, I remember we had a link that was great. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about what's being planned. Yeah, it sounds like the main thing that's left is like. Finishing a map and then bureaucracy. That's my understanding. Yeah. Okay, so for buildings and heat pumps, the main update is that we're having this presentation later today, featuring Scott Chernak of Western mass heating and cooling. Let's talk about heat pumps and all of us talk about our various energy transitions. So I don't really have anything other than that. I'm not sure there's a lot more on it to do this other than just education series. Is there something else we should be talking about? And then, you know, working toward that. Pace program, which is related. Just trying to get people excited about installing heat pumps. So if there's no other commentary on that then. Unfortunately, the next agenda item is Andra. Rose and she is still out. Still recovering from, from surgery. I think we're going to have to put that off again. Right. But that gives us time to talk about the Springfield pipeline initiative, which I drafted a letter for some time ago, and I'm still a little unclear about exactly what we're asking for. Again, this was something suggested by Andra. And I thought the idea was to join a coalition. That is trying to stop so that I should give a little bit of background. Ever source has proposed to build a. Methane pipeline that runs. Wait a minute. Let me bring up my notes on this. It's all in the letter that I drafted. Yeah, ever sources proposing to build a new methane gas pipeline. This is a high pressure 5.3 mile long distribution main. So it's not to bring in new gas. It's not to bring in new gas. It's not to bring in new gas. And as much as it is to, or from, from afar, as much as it is to simply distribute it through the heart of Springfield. They say it's needed to improve the reliability of the natural gas distribution system for 58,000 customers and long metal. The effort is opposed. Now this is the part where I wasn't sure. I think Andra has some information here that I don't have. The effort is widely opposed by environmental groups in the country. So I think that's a good point. I think there's, you know, local climate action groups and a website called stop the toxic pipeline that where they're all sort of gathered. But I didn't see any discussion on any of those about the votes or input from the. Governments of long metal or Springfield. And I think it's my, I think that's my fault. I think I must be missing something. And that was what Andra knew that I don't. I don't know. I don't know exactly the exact percentage of. Efforts from within. Long, middle or now. Okay. So the question was. Who are we writing this letter to and what's the purpose of it? There are two things that I can see. And I'll share it with everyone in a moment. But I think the two things that I'd like to talk about are where. Where is this letter going and what's the purpose of it. Right. We've written opinion pieces in the past and sent them to the local papers. We can certainly do that again here. And I think that's not a bad thing to do. We can encourage people to sign the petition as individuals or we can as individuals sign the petition. But there was also a request to ask the town council to support efforts in Long Meadow and Springfield to oppose the pipeline. And that's where I'm not sure who we're sending that to. Are we joining some coalition? Are we, what are we asking for there? I wasn't clear on that. Does anyone have any input on that? Stephanie, do you remember what? No. No, if you have a date when we last discussed this I could try to scan the minutes. It might take me a minute. Yeah, I don't remember. Let's see, when did I write this letter? I wrote the letter back in March. I think it was like March 12th or something like that. I actually went looking for it and didn't find it but I didn't look in the minutes. I was just looking for a first draft of the letter on my, or my own notes. I'm pretty sure it was in minutes. Just give me, if you give me a minute, I can try to find it. Yep, I'll do the same. March one or March 15. Questions. Why don't I have the minutes here? Some reason I don't have the minutes from the first. Can't get minutes. There we go. I have it. You got it? Yeah, I just couldn't mute myself, sorry. So it says Rose recommends ECAC write a letter to Immers Town Council asking them to support Springfield Climate Justice Coalition petition to stop expanding the methane gas distribution system in Western Mass. Okay, can you say that again, Morph's Chloe, I'll just write it ready. Like to request. To request write a letter to the Amherst Town Council asking them to support Springfield Climate Justice Coalition petition, say that five times fast to stop expanding the methane gas distribution system in Western Mass. And what I also have is that ECAC members generally support the concept but want to read more about the issue and the specific petition before voting on a motion. Golder volunteered to draft a letter and submit it for discussion at the next ECAC meeting. Okay, and I can also talk more about, I'm sorry it's been delayed by a bunch of different things but I can give an overview and I don't think we've had a chance to do this yet of what the issue is and who is behind what. And I wrote a bunch of, there are a bunch of references. Let me go ahead and put this letter up because it's sort of, I summarized what I knew in there and in the footnotes. So I will share the screen if that's okay. And Laura does have her hand up. Oh, sorry, go ahead Laura. Yeah, maybe I'll wait until you go through this and then I'll ask my question. Okay, so let me make sure, good grief, where is it? There it is, you make it bigger. All right, can you guys see if this is okay? So the situation is again that every source is proposing to build this pipeline. It's a distribution line that will serve a whole bunch of customers in Longnett-O. I don't need to tell this group, I think why this is a bad idea. We don't want to be supporting infrastructure. That infrastructure could be paying for, which we pay for anyway, could be paying for transitioning these homes instead. And I actually did a quick calculation of how many homes you could transition for the cost of this line. And that's at the end of the note. And I did some, so the, right. So the new pipeline is gonna contribute something like 75,000 tons of CO2 annually, not including the fact that it's a high pressure pipeline and a distribution center, which is where most of the leaks occur. So this is a really bad idea. We also know that nothing has a bunch of negative health impacts and I have a bunch of links supporting all of that information. But the other thing to look at is there's this Springfield Climate Justice Coalition, which I can probably bring up here because I think I had it, hang on a minute, let me just find it. This is their Facebook page, but they also have, this is the page, by the way, that describes the project. Every source has a very detailed discussion of why this is important to them and a map. There is a Stop the Toxic Pipeline website, Springfield Climate Justice Coalition, this is Springfield Climate Justice Coalition, which consists of all of these different members, right? Who are opposing the pipeline. So they have also been writing to Marahili and have a petition going to stop this pipeline from going in place. I think there's what else is there, that this is the coalition website, there's, this is the actual petition, I think, Action Network, no, this is the petition. So we're calling on Marahili to ask her to declare by Earth Day that there's no future for gas in Massachusetts. I think that's the whole, I'm trying to find the, yeah, I think this is the text of the petition. So it's a very vanilla sort of text, just calling for her to move the state away from these sorts of pipelines. Yeah, so Lori, maybe I could ask my question now because I think it's related. So I am supportive of this, I don't think they should be investing money in pipelines to heat houses. We don't need to use gas or to heat houses anymore or any buildings. So very supportive of that. My concern with this, and I think that I raised this last time we talked about it, is that like I don't, and you mentioned this too. I think we needed to decide what is the most beneficial action we can take that also sort of aligns with like what benefit it's gonna have versus how much time is it gonna take? Because I don't think a letter from the town council, unless it's very clear that getting a letter from the town council or just having the town council to declare that they support this, I don't think does anything. Town council needs to do a lot of stuff, including a lot of stuff we want them to do, like the stretch code stuff. And to ask them to do this, when I don't think it's actually gonna have an impact, unless someone can prove that differently to me, like I would say I don't support getting the town council to do something. I would support getting the town council to do a whatever it is that doesn't really mean anything like the resolution or whatever, specifically to Marahili about all gas infrastructure, like that could be worthwhile. Or if like the Springfield Long Meadow Council was like, yes, having letters from other town councils will specifically help us in this case, then yes. But like if we don't know that, and it's just kind of going out into the atmosphere of like things, and I just don't know if it's the best use of our town councilors energy when they're already superbooked up with other stuff and not focusing on other actions we need them to focus on. Yeah, I hear you. And I also feel a little bad because I think Andra had a particular ask. I think she was responding to an ask from somebody and that's the information I'm missing. And I didn't see, that's why I went looking for other towns that are supporting this or some list of, and I didn't find that. I found environmental. I think the energy and climate action committee adding their name, I mean, that's something we could consider doing if it's not considered something we're not supposed to do. We could consider, I suppose, adding our name to this list where is it of the justice coalition list, right? Where'd it go there? No, that's the same thing, sorry. This Springfield Justice Coalition, I think adding our name to that, if that is a permissible use of this committee would not be a bad thing. I'm sorry. I was scanning that list real quickly. I did not see any other government bodies. I think we heard one on the list and that raises. Yep. Not necessarily a red flag, but I question why and what we would wanna be the only one. Right, okay, I get that. That makes sense. So there was one thing though that, I like the idea, Laura, of having some sort of more generic action along the lines of that petition coming from the town council, just saying that maybe writing to Maurihealy, maybe encouraging Maurihealy to oppose these sorts of pipelines. And one of the reasons I really like that is because without having to directly address the situation in Amherst, where we have been asking the official Amherst policy is to request that Berkshire gas stop embargoing us, when in fact it should be a way of goodbye to them, right? I wonder if having the council think about a more generic letter along the lines of the petition itself. Laura, if I could jump in, there's something else in the notes that I think is relevant to what Laura said. It also says in the minutes that Rose noted that the town of Amherst remains officially opposed to the current Berkshire gas moratorium. Right. And suggested ECAC also asked the town to reconsider its position. Yes, that's what I was getting at. Oh, so sorry. That's what I was getting at. Sorry to jump in. But perhaps asking the town to write this more generic letter first would be easier than trying to point out because I'm willing to bet the town council doesn't remember that that's our official policy, that we are opposing the moratorium, right? I think I called it an embargo, but that's what I was talking about. Should we take that head on instead and just, I mean, that would be a simple thing to just put forth a motion and vote on, should we continue to oppose the Berkshire gas moratorium for us to put a motion to vote on or for the town council? For us to put a motion to encourage the town council, or maybe put, I'm not sure the proper method for doing this, but I assume we put together some sort of a resolution that we then send to the town council, right? Or to the town manager for consideration by the town council. You know, we would like to see the town address this, sort of like we did with the specialized code, right? We've already sent them the message that we'd like to see the new specialized code adopted. I don't think we've gotten any feedback on that yet. I can give you some of my updates. Okay, good. But Duane, you got a? Yeah, I was just going to suggest my sense is that's where the direction to go, if we think it's politically reasonable and feasible. One, because to Lara's point, it's a lot more impactful for Amherst eCAC. And second, I think we do either a letter from the town to Mora Healy or to Springfield. It could be, we would risk being very hypocritical in asking for these things if we ourselves are against the moratorium for our town. And I think that could be raised. And so, I think we could potentially approach through some sort of document or resolution to the town council that we address our own issues first, and then we could use that as a opportunity to extend this further suggestion to the governor and to other towns or cities like Springfield. I don't know what the feasibility is and what the concerns are with making the moratorium permanent. But that might be something we should get some reconnaissance on first from the town in terms of what's the reluctance so that we can address those issues. That's a good idea, Dwayne. Maybe we can get some input from Stephanie. Do you have any insight on that? Where'd Stephanie go? I'm right here. Well, so as far as the specialized code, I can tell you that a few consulates have reached out to the town manager and we're asking for more information. And so the town manager came down and spoke to me and then the inspections department. I don't have a lot of follow-up, but I know that they were just trying to sort of gather if this specialized code were to be adopted, how would that impact the inspections department or how would this impact residents of the town? So they were trying to get a full understanding of what that potentially would mean. So all I know is that they were gathering information but at least I know there's some movement in the council to get that information. And what about the moratorium? The Berkshire Guest moratorium? That I don't, and I don't know about that. Yeah, what are the issues there? You know, I think I haven't really heard anything about that for a while now. And I know that you did, you know, you did send something to them a while ago. There was another letter. Yeah, there was a letter a while ago. I think it was even when Laura was chair. Laura, do you recall? I feel like there was a letter that was sent to them. It was part of a bigger initiative that we sort of signed on to. I'm sort of blanking, but I know that we sent something that had to do with the moratorium. I could find it, but it was a while ago. Right, but I guess the question is if they, does anyone even remember that there's this moratorium and what were the issues when we encouraged Berkshire Guest to lift it? What was the reasoning then? I wonder if there is a letter or something like that that we can look at to give us some insight. Well, we're in support of the moratorium. So we, this committee is in support of the moratorium. The town itself, I think was advocating for release because I think there was pressure from, probably mainly from contractors, also other departments who were looking to natural gas as a less expensive option. However, I think things, you know, this was a while ago. So I don't know where things stand. I mean, this was prior to the town adopting our climate goals. So, you know, the town council, you know, a lot of these conversations happened even before we had a town council. It's because the moratorium has been a while. I don't think the town council did this. No, I think it was probably the, like the last select board and it's been a while, so. So maybe we should just stick our necks out and do it. That's something I can definitely draft. Some sort of a simple letter that points out, you know, that this is the current situation and a lot of these issues are non-issues now. A lot of the issues that might have driven the original decision were before the carp and are non-issues now. And besides which we would like to support this all over Massachusetts and it would be hypocritical to be supporting the end of a moratorium here when we're trying to remove gas everywhere else. I can try writing some sort of a very, you know, simple short vanilla letter that just points out this contradiction between the carp and the current situation. I mean, maybe the carp superseded the request for the end of the moratorium in some sense, right? But I think that's definitely something we should do, right? We should definitely ask the town to. I mean, I think in general, a letter of, because I'm a little concerned about the discussion about the stretch code or the super stretch code or whatever it's really officially called, specialized. I call it super stretch, I think that's better. I think that reconfirming the need for us to move away from fossil fuels is that a good thing for us to do. We need to reconfirm it to our town council. We need to reconfirm it and you know, that's something we could do and we could give examples and including the moratorium thing. Like the reality is, is I don't know if it really means anything. Like if Berkshire gas tomorrow was gonna say we're gonna pull the moratorium and town of Amherst supports it. Like that seems unlikely to happen, but I don't know. I just, given that I don't know if anybody even knows that we have this, I don't wanna spend too much effort on it. I would rather again, have them be working on the specialized stretch code and other things to help us stop investing in fossil fuels as a community. So what else is there for us to do though in regards to the specialized stretch code other than continuing to call our counselors and write notes and contact our community? So, I mean, I think we need to ask them and Stephanie, maybe you have more insight here, but like looking into how hard it's gonna be, what is that? Like how are they doing that? Can we help them? Are there certain questions they're asking or is it just gonna never happen? Maybe just, you mean just putting in a request for information? No, I mean like what, what? What can we do? Well, what can we do? So what information do they actually want and what could ECAC potentially support them on collecting that information? I think is a question I have. Is it gonna be harder than the current? Anyway, I just think that I think, again, I think if we're trying to get, knowing how busy the town council is and how busy the town is, I think we really wanna focus on having them do things that are working towards solving an actual problem. And I don't know if this six-year-old letter saying the town as opposed to the moratorium is an actual problem. All right, Jesse? Just to also to report and say, I know that Vasu is in contact with and has had some exchanges with a number of town councilors and is working, it is made sure that they know that we are available to support them in moving the stretch code topic forward. And my understanding is you'll have more information about that next week. So I'm looking at an email string here. So- And that was my, that's what I mentioned earlier was the reason the town manager came down was because he was approached by councilors. So the dialogue is starting to happen. So I don't know, I mean, how it starts happening is, they start having conversations and I think it's likely to end up on an agenda and I can reach out to the clerk to the council and find out if it's on an upcoming agenda or if they have it slated for an upcoming agenda, I'd be happy to do that. I sort of get the sense that the action item here is just to keep track of it, just to stick it on the agenda for the next few meetings until we pass the dang thing and just get a report back from Stephanie and find out if there's anything that we can do. Also the building electrification accelerator which has been pushing all of these efforts has an incredible toolkit for how to answer any question, you know and all the details. There've been a lot of questions back and forth on that list. What about this and what about that? And does it cover, you know, the details of what does it cover? People get worried about different things and all of that is answered somewhere in their toolkits, right? Or in the vast number of emails that go back and forth. So if there are specific questions it's very easy to find the answers and I'm willing to bet Stephanie knows where all that stuff is too. So, and there's also a listserv you can write to and they'll just send you the materials you need. So we don't have to do a lot of work there. That's all been done for us by these guys and they've now got something as of a couple of weeks ago or something like 16% of Massachusetts is already under the specialized stretch code. Boston opted in Arlington, I think is a whole bunch of fairly, you know a lot of cities have now opted in. Would it be out of line for this group, someone from this group to present the by-law to, you know, to do the work and not just say you guys figured out but actually hand it to them and say, here, is that appropriate? Is it, does it need a by-law or is it just the adoption of a new building code? I'm not sure where that falls in town governance. The specialized code is just an adoption. So I don't think it even needs a by-law. That's why it's so easy. That's why so many towns have been doing it so quickly. Whatever, whatever motion or language, just one less, if the town council is jammed up and has a million things to do, which I assume they do, is there some written document we could hand them to say, this is all you have to do, rather than talking about what they have to do, hand them, which I'm not precisely sure what that document is, but sounds like it's been developed. Could we hand it to them? Would that be rude? Would we be stepping on toes, for example? I don't know, but I see Don's hand up and Laura's hand up. So Don, why don't you go ahead? I was just wondering, Apropos of what you were talking about, Jesse and Stephanie, I mean, I presume, and you know better than I do, Jesse, that this specialized stretch code exists. It is written out whatever the various terms of it are clearly spelled out. The issue to me might be, do you want to prepare, or do we want to prepare a summary of what that would be or what that would mean to aid the counselors so that everybody's not pouring through building code language, but instead says, here's the code. And by the way, here's what it says in summary form. This is what you would be adopting if you adopted this. I'm wondering if that makes sense as something we could do to facilitate the process. Yeah, and it's done. I mean, I think we need to just poach it from someone else, like many towns have done this presentation. Yeah, and that's sort of information to the counselors in English, as opposed to in a bunch of regulations might be useful. Yep, I can definitely, I've been going to these BEA quarterly meetings anyway, and sometimes the retrofits working group as well. So, and I think some of, who else has been going to those? Anyone? If no one else has been doing it, then I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. There's probably a video recording of somebody presenting it with the Q&A, which might even be easier, just to be the link. Yeah, I mean, I think the question I have is, I think that's a good idea. And I think we can offer up to the council that we can come and share what we know from reading these other forms. I guess the question maybe back for Stephanie is if the town council, if it's a question of staff capacity or staff understanding, is it better to give this information to staff or have a presentation with staff? Like the town council is not gonna vote for it if they are told by the town manager that it's gonna be too much work for staff. Yeah, I don't think they were coming at it as it's a too much, I overheard some of the conversation, and they were not at all saying that it's too much for us. In fact, the question was, how is this gonna affect you? And most of it was like, it's not really gonna be that much of a change. So I don't think that was not the issue, but they do need to understand then how might it impact some of the residents? Will there be an additional cost? Cause those are questions that the town council will ask. So that's the kind of information they're trying to understand. And those are the people that do this work. They're the ones who actually have to apply the code. And make sure that people are adhering to the code. So they're living it every day. So that's why the town manager spoke to them. The building commissioner was out at the time. So I think it's very likely that the town manager will be following up with him when he gets back, which I think is probably the end of this week, beginning of next week. So I don't think it's gonna be on their next agenda, but even if it is, I think that's why I wanna check in with the clerk to the council to sort of see what action they may have. Are they having a general discussion? Is somebody actually making a movement towards bringing a vote to the council to support this adopting the specialized code? I don't know, that's what I wanna look into. And if they do, I mean, I also think that if they have it on their agenda, if there is gonna be a discussion, that's a meeting to go to. And you may not be able to speak during the actual discussion of the code unless they invite you to, but certainly during public comment would be an opportunity to say this is the ECAC's position on this upcoming agenda item. So you could do something like that. And I'll just reiterate, my understanding is for years, the energy portion of the building code has been outsourced. It is not, building officials are no longer, they don't do lower door tests and insulation inspections. This is all outsourced to her's raiders and third party people and has for quite some time. So it's actually creating a green economy of her's raiders rather than increasing the workload of the inspection services. That's my understanding of it. Okay, Laura, and then I think we should probably move on to the next agenda item. This has been a good discussion. It's not what was on the agenda, but it sort of morphed into this. And I think it's more important. So I think we have a little bit of a to-do list already. So go ahead, Laura. Yeah, just last point on this in terms of cost to residents or costs to building, like I think something we could do if it's not already spelled out in the BEA staff is, like, I think we need to make sure we're not only thinking about the cost to the builder, but we're also thinking about the cost to the future owner or the renter or the leaser of the space, right? So I think that needs to be a message that's clearly articulated if that is one of the main concerns. All right, should we move on to the discussion of the solar bylaw development topics regarding solar bylaw development? And that's Ruf, Steve. Yes, I don't have much there. I mentioned it briefly and it was recorded in the notes. I think my personal concern having watching the solar bylaw working group is that they are sort of accumulating an awful lot of restrictions as a draft potential bylaw. And I assume they're gonna go back through and sort of reevaluate it, maybe weed some of them out. But my hope is that they and maybe we can help promote the idea of incentivizing solar in the places that are best suited for it. I think though that we probably need to wait till we have more of the results from GZA. So once we see the map in particular, I think then we maybe have some ideas that we can work with. So that don't have much to really do or ask or debate today, but maybe once we see the map, have a chance to analyze it, maybe we can formulate some suggestions for how solar can be incentivized in town and not just restricted. Other comments or questions on that? Oh, hi Vasu. Stephanie? Yeah, I was just gonna say that I think, you know, the map itself, the base map you already have in a packet from when Adrian did her presentation was just the baseline map. The interactive map isn't gonna be ready. I just talked to our GIS specialist and he's working on another townwide project and that's taking a little longer than he had hoped. So ours is kind of on the back burner till that one is more complete. So it's maybe a little while before that, I would say at least a few weeks before that mapping is totally ready. But I think you could sort of get a sense just by looking at that sort of one third of the base map, sort of where that kind of falls might be somewhat helpful, just to sort of get a sense. You're referring to the one that was in the presentation slides they showed us? Yes, not the last time, but I think the first presentation that she did with some of the actual results. Yeah, that one I have some questions about because it just doesn't look proportionately the way they described it in terms of the area that's not appropriate. Plus there's so little information about it but I think we need to wait and see that detailed map that's kind of my feeling at this point. Yeah, it'll be, I mean, again, it was the scale is part of the reason why it looked not proportional but it is. I mean, they actually looked at the land area. It really does come out to be about a third that's available. So, again, that, and I'm sorry, this is taking longer than we thought but one person working on all this by himself, it's a lot. So I just want to give him a little slack, not pressure him too much. Yeah, that's fine for me. Great, Dwayne? Yeah, I was just going to add sort of being in the middle of the solar bylaw activity going on is sort of, I think, you know, my understanding, zoning for my understanding is about restricting and sort of that sort of where what the tool is that we have to work with as zoning. And what I'm sort of grappling with in my own head as we sort of moving forward into drafting and so forth is how to balance or how to understand that I think generally there is expect understanding and openness that at the end of the day, we probably need to dedicate some of our land, open land to solar, but we don't want it to go out of control and we want to try to direct it in the areas of land that are least impactful. And, you know, I'm scratching my head in the zoning thing about how do you actually do that by, you know, not restricting it, but then, you know, only restricting in a certain amount, but then how do you keep too much, quote unquote, too much from coming in and being more than sort of was sort of the expectation. So the idea, Steve, that you bring up of incentivizing solar in ways, now keep in mind, obviously the state incentivizes solar already and incentivizes solar in ways that tries to direct it into rooftops and landfills and so forth and actually de-incentivizes it in open land, whether that's the correct scales of incentivizing and de-incentivizing is an open question and can't be precise for every parcel of land because it's a statewide program. But to the extent that there are, you know, I suspect there may be ideas and thoughts and quote unquote policies that might be more in the jurisdiction of ECAC with regard to incentivizing or motivating or informing and educating on the issues of solar siting that is separate from zoning that may not fit into the realm of zoning that could be helpful here as well. Yeah, I guess the incentives I was thinking about are those described in the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission solar guide and they talk about as of right, allowing solar as a right with building permits, that's one, that's sort of the least restrictive option. There's an as of right with site plan review is another sort of option. So certain properties or properties potentially of certain characteristics the town could say the solar is allowed or certain sized solar could be ground out, whatnot of a certain size is allowed as of right and that site with site plan review or with building permit. The third category mentioned by the PVPC is a special permit and a special permit with site plan review, apparently that gives the town and the permit granting authority for a much more discretion over whether to approve it or not, but the first two or the as of right category while it allows the permit granting authority to shape the project, they cannot actually deny it outright. So those are what I meant by incentives if the town identifies certain categories of land and that where solar could be as of right at least for certain size solar installations that would be the thing. But I guess I'm anxious to see what the mapping shows and it might be a certain types of land of slopes less than five degrees, blah, blah, blah could be designated as of right. That's what I was thinking. All right, yep, that's helpful to hear. Laura? I was just gonna ask whether anybody had heard an update. I know that how long was potentially voting at their town meeting on a solar bylaw or something of that sort. I don't know if anybody's heard any updates from that or I could be wrong, it could be not as far along but grappling with similar issues and also having a lot of push to restrict as much as possible. I mean, I guess I feel like the concern is overblown like we're not seeing people knock down our doors to put solar on our land. So in terms of restricting it as much as necessary in terms of wetland protection and endangered species protection, you know, that's all stuff that makes a ton of sense but like anything additional to try to like curb development like I think we have to weigh that with against do we have a ton of development trying to happen like it doesn't seem like that's actually it seems like we're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. I suspect some people will be worried that it could exist even if there isn't a specific proposal for a particular patch of land that it could come forward in the future and they wanna have a bylaw there to control that development. Yeah, and then I guess, you know and I know I'm kind of preaching to the choir here but like the alternative is well, what if hold on for a second what if like the, you know what if we're not anywhere in close to meeting our climate goals and we need that land to put solar on like, you know I think it can go both ways, right? Yes. Yeah, and it may be that the solar bylaw working group proposes a bylaw that the town council finds too restrictive and it may be up to the town council to then modify the proposed bylaw to account for the town's goals greenhouse gas reduction goals. I imagine it could play out that way. Yeah, I was just gonna say the solar bylaw working groups product is the initial stab at it, the initial draft. So it doesn't end with them. So there's gonna be way more process. So, you know, even if, you know even if they come up with their own decisions about what they think should be included there's no guarantee that anything that they finalize is gonna stay within that bylaw. If there's time, I have a different question about solar development for Dwayne is there time Lori before we move to the next thing? I think so. It's just that the staff updates and ECAC member updates might get pushed to the next meeting because we're hopefully Scott Churnak will show that Scott's here. Scott just showed up. Yep. So I think if we want us to, we had seven minutes so why don't you go ahead? Okay. Based on when we heard the results of the town survey the solar survey that GZA presented I think couple of last meeting two meetings ago there was a lot of interest in the agrivoltaics combining solar and voltaics. So I went back and I had some memories of reading a little bit about that. And so I went back and looked at that and according to the US clean energy extension and one of my questions is this is still true that if as a note there that says if you're town speaking to farmers if your town tax assessor's office they have the discretion to remove your property from chapter 61A of solar PV electricity production exceeds 125% of on-farm use. So is that, do you know Dwayne if that is still the case that if farmers put more solar than they need then they risk having their land removed from chapter 61A. I think that I don't quote me on this but I think that is the case unless you do agrivoltaics. Yes. And then according also to the clean energy fact sheet clean energy extension. That's actually on our agenda to update the host cause those were written before the some of the new guidelines came out with the agrivoltaics. Yeah, it was dated February, 2022 but yeah, dual use ag is limited to two megawatts and it's limited to also a maximum shading of 50%. The shading is still in place. Okay. No more than 50% shading. And do you know if that two megawatt cap is different now than it was before? I'm not, I'd have to double check on that. All right. It just, this is a little bit disappointing and the combine these sort of suggested that maybe agrivoltaics isn't going to be the solution that a lot of us were sort of hoping that it might be. Yeah, I think it can make sense in some properties others not in their state. The state drives the where what type of farmland in situation where you can have access to the state incentive for agrivoltaics. Okay. You can't get the adder for agrivoltaics by putting this agrivoltaics up on like marginal farmland. And not really do productive agriculture. Okay. So, yep, thank you. So with that, we have just four minutes left before the presentation. So Stephanie, do you want to give us any other staff updates? No, I think in the interest, I, you know, I mean, there's a lot going on, but it's a lot that I've reported out before. It's just kind of a continuation. Nothing totally new. We have an appointment about the climate change dashboard is going to be, we've got a launch meeting happening in about a week or two to start getting that moving forward. CCA, we're moving towards, we have to get our websites prepared before we can submit the application. And that has to happen. The community outreach has to happen like there's a 30 day comment period. That all has to happen before the application can be submitted. But those things are starting to come together. We have a meeting, the working group has a meeting on Friday. So those are just some bigger things relevant to this group that are coming soon. Thank you. That was a very important update, actually. So three minutes. Any, any ECAC member updates? I had a question about the annual report that was included in our packet. Oh, right. Is that something we're supposed to be taking a look at and providing some feedback or writing more for it? Yeah, that was intent. And I don't know if we have time, but I can quickly be conscious of time here. Let me just share my screen. So I started putting together the content, just think through a format that we can use in the coming years. So hopefully we'll chime in and let me know if the format makes sense. And then I think the other expectation is because we have focus areas. I wondered if it made sense for people who are leading those focus areas to write their portion. So anyway, so this is the format. I guess we were talking about submitting the report at the end of fiscal year going forward. So the format, just a summary section, what are our focus areas? Talk about our region and state policies and the intent of this is to make the town aware of what else is going on in the state. So just to create some awareness there and then talk about each of the sectors, right? So what accomplishments do we have? Any metrics that we can, should capture? What is the effectiveness? And some of this is already listed in the charge. And so that's why I have effectiveness. And then what support is needed in this sector? So very similar across all our sectors, right? With some information on metrics that I could find. And then anything that's not part of the five focus areas, what other accomplishments did we have as ECAC? Capturing that. And then our community engagement and what we've done over the years. And then finally, this section is around our goal recommendations for town manager for calendar 2024. And over here, I have a caveat that you'll be finalized in upcoming ECAC meeting, but we need to start the process. So come September or earlier than that, I think we are submitting goals to the town council for them to review and when they're discussing town manager goals. So that's the intent of the format that I laid out here. I think that's all I had. Yeah, any questions or comments on? I think we don't have time for questions or comments right now, but I think perhaps we should just all have a look at this, Bessie, you want our input on it yet? Yeah, okay. That's fine, yeah, send me an email or if we have time towards the end of this meeting, we can talk. Okay, thank you. All right, so without further ado, I'm going to actually turn the heat pump section of this meeting over to Jesse Selman to do the moderation and to give us a little bit of an introduction and context. And we welcome Scott Chernak here from Western Mass Heating and Cooling, who's going to talk a little bit about heat pumps. And then each of us who have done a transition is going to talk a little bit about what we did just for a moment or two. So if you're in the audience here, if you're attending this meeting, if there's one of us whose transition looks a little bit like what you're interested in because we're all completely different, you're welcome to contact us and happy to talk to you more about how it worked out and what we did and what it looks like. So go ahead, Jesse. All right, well, first of all, Lori, thank you for letting me moderate this conversation. Whilst you did all of the work to put this together, I'm going to stand up here and talk as if I did. So thank you for all that hard work. So tonight's topic is, and also I'm looking at this, we've got a great group of people here over a dozen people. And it is a beautiful evening out there. And you all chose to go inside and look at your computer to think about reducing energy. So bless you, that is amazing. This is like the one week in New England where you don't actually need heating and cooling. It's going to be too hot next week. It was too cold last week. So it's, it's auspicious. So heat pump panel, we have a local expert here, Scott Cernak, Western Mass, heating, cooling and plumbing. But also I think not just heat pumps. I've looked at the presentation. He's also an expert in kind of all things electrification of a house and or close to electrification near electric. And so really Scott's going to give his presentation. Well, I want to really encourage people to take notes. And if something doesn't make sense, write down your questions as you go so that we've got a good, robust conversation. We've got a solid half hour at the end planned. Really the goal of this is to answer questions. We have an expert here. We've got a host of characters that have tried this themselves. So do that, we will get nuts and bolts. Before I turn it over to Scott, I do want to say this is just one piece of the puzzle on tackling climate change. It's not a complete solution, but it's really a great companion solution to a greening grid that can serve all of this equipment to weatherization and insulation and envelope improvements that should be really seen as a part of thinking of a building holistically, not just changing the mechanical systems, but really reducing the load of what they need to cover. And as well as just to understand this as it's an opportunity when fossil fuel systems are near the end of their lifetime, wanna be ready to and skilled in replacing them with something that has lower global warming potential. But again, just becoming electric doesn't necessarily solve the problem when you actually use less electricity too. So I really wanna thank Scott for taking the time, volunteering to join us. I think Scott way back when he was an installer himself put a heat pump in my house. He was actually the guy with the wrenches in the schools and it still works, I'll tell you that. So I'm gonna turn it over to you, Scott, and thank you. All right, thanks, Jesse. I'm here with Colin as well. Colin is, he recently started with us, but he was actually ironically my apprentice back when I was turning wrenches and then went to something else for a while, but was always in the industry and in a management position. And then came back to us just a couple of weeks ago and things are going great. And he in a technical manner is gonna be taking over a lot of what I have been doing for our company. He knows heat pumps just as well as I do. Very good technical brain. So I wanted him to be a part of this meeting and I also wanted to get a feel for, because this is my first time joining one of these ECAC meetings. If this will be a continuation and you'd like me to join at any point in time future meetings or if this is a one time event, either way I'm happy to help out to whatever capacity makes sense for all of you. And I guess that's one question I have back to everybody, but I'm happy to also present. We put together Colin actually put most of this together. It's not in slides, it's really just a PDF format right now. We'll put it together in a more organized format later, but we can present this today. But I think that the Q&A is the most important part of our, I'll call it presentation, but it's not so much a presentation as it is Q&A. And I think that's why I'm here today. But again, my question back to you guys and learning what you do through ECAC is what can we do to support or follow up with us after today? So I can make a comment. So this is actually one in a series of educational workshops that we've been having or seminars that we've been having for the last year. We had one on electric vehicles just last week. We did have the heat pumps 101 sort of, who was, who gave that? Was that the CEC who gave that? So I forget who gave that one now, but I think, or do we just watch the- I think we watched the YouTube video. We watched the YouTube video together done by a boat, I think. I think it was Mike Simons at a boat, right? And then there was something before that too, that I don't remember. So this is one, we think of this as one in a series. I don't know if we'll have you back again, but if there's more to discuss, we certainly would consider doing that. Okay. Does that, does that let you know what you need to know? I think so for now, absolutely. So- Would you like me to share the screen or would you like to share your screen? It doesn't matter to me. I think I can share it. Now I'll give you the, give you the five minutes left symbol. Okay. When you get there. So can you see the screen? Yes, but you might actually consider making it wider and just doing the first half and then the second half of the page so that people can read it more easily. Yeah, I like that. Pictures are tough. Does that make sense? Yes. All right, perfect. When Colin and I talked about this a little bit and what we thought would be most beneficial to educate, whether it's this panel or the community or both, would be what to expect when you get a heat pump or in the buying process of a heat pump because the last thing we wanna do is hype them up too much and then have people with misunderstood or misrepresented expectations and then these heat pump systems have a stigma that either A, they don't work or B, they work, but we don't like this at the other thing about them. But I think if people are prepared going into the heat pump process of what they can expect, performance-wise feeling, energy-wise, all that, if they know what to expect ahead of time and we meet or any installer for that matter meets their expectations, then heat pumps are gonna continue to have a good stigma, good word and more and more people will continue to want them. So that's really my focus as from the installation and sales and the actual procurement process, I think that's important. So that's what this presentation is centered around. I don't think I'm gonna read it word by word because I think that'd be boring. But the gist of it is, I'll go right to it, the advantages and disadvantages of ducted versus ductless and what that means, what they look like, how they feel. I'll hit a couple of points, but I won't hit every single one. Advantage of ducted is there's a lot more flexibility as far as indoor air quality options. It's good for a whole house, it will hit every room in your house, including a bathroom or isolated rooms as long as the duct work can reach there. And then it doesn't take up as much space in most cases, like wall space would be a consideration or a line cover on the exterior of a house. Sometimes that's not needed. So those are advantages, but the disadvantages is it requires duct work. It's a little more expensive to install in most cases. It can be noisy depending on the existing duct work. Duck work can lead to a less efficient system, especially if the duct work is in the attic or in an unfinished space where any loss is lost for good, for example. But I don't want this advantages to sway somebody's decision away from heat pumps. It just as a decision maker, do I go ductless or ducted? And a lot of that just depends on the house and the person's needs. I went too far here. And then advantages of ductless, for example, would be multiple indoor options, meaning you've got four units, wall units, ceiling mounted units. There's a lot of different ways to install these. You can have multiple rooms with different control. So if you're not heating your house at the same time, you may be saving energy that way too, or if somebody prefers their room to be cooler than another, then they can have a better level or expectation of comfort compared to a ducted system, which is kind of all-in-one or multiple larger zones. Another advantage, no duct work necessary. So retrofit into an existing New England style home that already has hot water heat. It's impractical to put a large duct system into that in a lot of cases. So many splits are a much easier transition. And then the disadvantages to many splits, again, is something like the sizing can be difficult, depending on the installation. Some rooms are just too small to put into mini-split. You're not gonna put one in a five-by-eight bathroom, for instance, it would overpower the room. The indoor units are visible. They're not invisible. Linesets may run on the exterior of the house. So again, they're visible. Multiple outdoor units are often needed. So you may have a house with three, four, five outdoor units just to serve three, four, five indoor units in some cases. And it may not cover every room of your home. Again, the small bathroom is a great example. So those are just some things we wanna make sure that the public understands when they're making a decision on which kind of system they wanna install in their house. And comfort advisors from any company should be able to explain this, but I think it's good to have a pre-understanding of it. The more people are educated sooner in the process, I think the better they're gonna grasp the continuing education they get from the buying process and the installation process. This page is really just what the equipment will look like. The picture examples, I don't think I need to read this word by word. These are some of the examples actually of the indoor mini-splits. This is a floor-mounted unit. A lot of people don't know that these exist because they're not as popular as the traditional wall-mounted unit. And then now the ceiling-mounted units, although they can't be installed everywhere, there are a lot of applications where these make sense as well, and a little more concealed. Again, I won't read word by word, but what the equipment will sound like. It's not silent, but it's not loud. People need to understand that it won't be perfectly silent though. What it will feel like. This one's a big one because a lot of people are used to a fossil fuel that's putting out 120, 130, even 140 degree air or a baseboard that has 180 degree water temperature going through it and it feels warm to the touch. It feels warm if you're walking next to it. It's almost like a wood stove effect and you're not gonna get that with a heat pump, which can be good or bad. Some people say that's good. A lot of people say that their home feels more evenly. The heat or cooling in their home feels more evenly distributed than it did before with a heat pump. But if somebody was used to a hot air feel, then that may come as a concern to them. And that's an important thing for people to know when they're buying a heat pump. And we've definitely had plenty of callbacks for people saying that they don't have heat and we get there and they do have heat. Their house was 70, it was set to 70, but it was a mildly warm or a coolish air coming out of the vent, which is perfectly normal for a heat pump. So I wanna make sure people understand that during and after the buying process. And again, the purpose of them understanding that earlier and during is so that the stigma for heat pumps continues to be positive and not negative. I want them to understand the experience, feel the experience and meet all expectations instead of having unrealistic expectations ahead of time. You know, the defrost cycle is gonna use a little bit of energy, but it's also gonna make the air out of the duct work for about five or 10 minutes feel even cooler, or whether it's a duct or mini-split, the same thing. And then to understand different levels of systems, whether you do variable capacity, sometimes referred to as modulating, or whether you do single stage or multi-stage systems, a lot of people have no idea what that means and they'll be looking at it like a deer in a headlights and have to educate themselves. And if they're in a rush to buy a system, they may not research it enough. And again, the earlier people know about this, the better they're buying process might be. Variable capacity is generally more comfortable and more efficient than a single stage or a two-stage system. We push variable capacity as much as we can, but also understanding that some people would rather have a heat pump that they could afford than no heat pump. So, I'm not against a single stage or a two-stage system, it's just people need to know what they're buying. That's all. And not all heat pumps are created equal. So I don't want people to just be looking at a price and saying, oh, that one's cheaper, I'm gonna get that one. They need to understand the difference between what they're buying. Dual fuel is a big one. I really, really, I really like the idea of dual fuel systems. I know it doesn't 100% meet the idea of true decarbonization and true electrification, but the dual fuel system for our region, which was built on fossil fuel and already has all the fossil fuel infrastructure, at this point in time, in the year 2023, at least, it's a great, I guess I'd say transition into decarbonization, into electrification. A lot of homes only have 100 amp service or 200 amp service and they may need a larger service to accommodate multiple heat pumps or whatever they have for the situation. A lot of homes don't have adequately sized ductwork and it would be a large project to redo or add on to their ductwork. A lot of homes aren't practical to weatherize, especially historic homes and you guys have a lot of historic homes in Amherst that aren't practical to weatherize in a really good fashion, at least not in affordable way for people at this moment in time. So they may need a fossil fuel as a backup and if that's the case, we could still get to somewhere around 80 or 90% decarbonization or electrification is the better word for this. 80 or 90% electrification with a dual fuel system for a lot less installed cost. So it's better to go dual fuel than it is to go no heat pump. So I want to make sure people know that this is a really, really good option for our region and a good transition option especially. Another off, I didn't put this in here but another thing is I think that the grid isn't necessarily taxed yet but you see it on the news in California and Texas had issues last or two years ago. Sometimes when it's really cold or really hot out the grid is at its max capacity and around here it hasn't been a problem yet but I could foresee it being a problem and to have dual fuel gives you that option if the grid does become taxed. If you have rolling blackouts or if you have any situations where your neighborhood doesn't have enough power at the moment then you've got this great backup solution that could be run 10% of the year when you really need it the most. So I really like the idea of dual fuel for most older homes but I don't think it's necessary in most newer homes or homes where the infrastructure can handle a heat pump. I also put a blurb about heat pump water heater in here. I don't know if you wanted to get into much on the plumbing in but it's the same idea. It's electrification. Heat pump water heaters are a very easy way to electrify at least your hot water system. Most homes can support these with the infrastructure they have. It's a minimally invasive high impact way to go green. Very affordable to run too. The running cost of these is I think even better than natural gas. It really depends on price fluctuations in the utilities but either way it's a really good option for people who need a water heater anyway especially. I think we push these on every single water heater change out as an option if people would like to do them. And then I did a blurb about geothermal too. Geothermal is a fairly sizable part of our business. Not many other installers around here are doing it. It is expensive. It may not be the best thing for the buck for most people but it is certainly the Cadillac of all systems. It is the most green, the most efficient way you can go as long as it is installed correctly, engineered correctly. Nothing will beat geothermal and I'm happy to answer a lot of questions on geothermal. It's a personal endeavor for me that I really enjoy. So I don't know if now is a good time to open up for the Q&A. I think we wanted to give, first of all, this is great and we can share this document with our listeners out there. Is that what we call them? Like a TV show. I wanna give, maybe if you could unshare for a minute, I'd love to give, we've got a number of people here on the committee who have a kind of a quick nugget of a story to tell about doing this work themselves. And I'll start. Yeah, Laura, you gotta add something. No, go ahead, Jesse. I would like to go pretty soon after you though, if that's okay, because I wanna know. And I'll hand it to Lori and then Lori, you can pick who's next. So, and this applies. So we also, I also professionally design buildings and houses and lucky enough to own one and trying to, we picked a small house on purpose, knowing that we were gonna try to install a single point source of heat, making it a less complex. And I know that's not, you don't get to just pick things in life all the time. I happen to, we try to design small and compact spaces that can be served by a single point source of heat. So a small house was my trick for the energy electrification. Lori, go ahead. Oh, okay. So I wanted to say, I live in a 1200 square foot split ranch in Echo Hill that has had several different retrofits over the years. It's gone from electric heat to oil heat, electric baseboards to oil to gas. And so when I did the transition last February or this February for, I had a forced air system retrofitted, but it was a forced air system that I decided to keep for air quality reasons. As Scott mentioned, I have old instruments that I wanted to keep humid. And it's also for me more comfortable in the winter to be a little, to have a little humidity. So I stuck with my ducted system and I did go with a dual fuel system because I have, unfortunately, or for better or worse, I have methane, I have, you know, so-called natural gas coming into the house. And the fact of the matter is that right now natural gas is still very cheap. And it was a financial decision for me to leave the dual fuel in. Heat pumps are great. They're very efficient. They do two or three times better, usually more like two times better at very low temperatures than a baseboard, which the electric baseboard would do because they're moving heat around rather than creating heat directly from an electric coil. They're pulling heat in from the outside and they do that very efficiently, but it still turns out that below a certain temperature, it's just more efficient. It's just cheaper still to run natural gas. Now, being an environmentalist, I had the system designed in such a way that all I need to do is add one mini-split sometime in the future and I can basically turn off the natural gas. So that's my complete transition plan. I also wanted to point out since it didn't come up that there is enormous funding available for all this stuff right now. The idea of cost, I paid about $15,000 for my system. I didn't go with the cheapest bid because I knew that I was gonna be able to get about $3,800 back from the state. There's another $2,500 tax credit coming from the federal government and I financed $10,000 at 0% for seven years. Through a Massachusetts heat loan. So my complete payout on the system is about $130 a month and my heating bill has already come down by about that much. So I'm pretty happy with the transition. The system works fantastic. I can set the point at which I switch from electric to natural gas and make it lower and lower and lower if I want as the price of gas goes up and the price of electric hopefully comes down and it's quiet and it just works great. I could not be happier with the system. Happy to talk to anyone who has a similar sort of transition in mind. Who's next, how about Laura? Laura. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for Scott for the overview. I'm just quickly to speak to my experience. So I live in a house that was built in the early 1990s. We had an oil, we have a duct system with an oil fired or warm air furnace and cooled with, we did have a central AC unit. The furnace was failing. There was a hole in the exhaust, so it was not great. And we found out getting some quotes on replacing it or getting a heat pump that our ducting system wasn't quite sized correctly for the house when the house was built. So that would explain why we have our bedroom where I am right now and you can see to give away the story. We had two spaces in our home that really didn't get heated or cooled very, very well and had a lot of trouble with just the heating system not really evenly heating throughout the house. So we were going through this transition in late 2021, early 2022. We got a couple quotes at the end of 2021 that we're all pricing out the heat pump systems to be more expensive than replacing the furnace. And then very early, actually I think I was just looking back through it. January 6th of 2022, we got our quote from Western Mass saying that because of the new mass save incentives it actually was cheaper. So they priced out the too many splits which we needed anyway, because as I said we were having these problems with our heating and cooling in these two rooms and a furnace replacement would have been 32K with a $500 rebate. And then to do a full heat pump for the system would be 30K with a $10,000 rebate. So we saved about 7K in upfront costs thanks to the incentives. We were able to get a zero interest heat loan through West UMass five credit union. Recommend that process. Shout out to Western Mass heating and cooling. They made it really easy for me to go through that whole thing and get the check and do all that. So the installation went really quickly when all the pieces were in. And so yeah, we've been really happy with the system. My mom who lives in Maryland was very skeptical even though she has electric heat but she's been very impressed with the quality of the heat. So that's been good. I will agree with all the things that you said Scott regarding there does feel a little cool coming out and it does run longer. So I wouldn't say it's any louder than our old system but I did notice at the beginning that it was running longer and so I was hearing it more but we've gotten used to that. It's a better heat and I love my mini split in my office because it would get so hot in here in the summer that I couldn't really work. So now I use that a lot. Price-wise we spent, I just did the math. I don't know how much we spent on oil. The last year we spent about 1500 more on electricity than we did the year before. There's a few reasons for that. One is that we also have an electric car so that's contributing. Other is electricity rates have gone up, right? So I would say that's probably pretty even to what we were spending on oil maybe a little bit more but I would say if I did it back at the envelope I would probably say we're about even to what we were spending before. And there are some ways that we can further mitigate that. Personally, we do have solar but we could put some more solar on when we got the solar it was like 2018 and we weren't planning this change or we also weren't planning to have an electric car so I think we need a few more solar panels that will help. And then I think policy-wise I mean we need to push for obviously a total redo of the way we do electricity funding in the state but that's another issue that we touch on another time. And then of course more renewable pushing for more renewables on our grid will help the cost and also the reliability issue over time. So that's my spiel. All right, ECAC anyone else? We got two minutes, one minute before we turn it over any pithy sort of like key highlights Steve you got something? Yeah, I'll just say I have a heat pump water heater installed since the beginning of this year. And I love it, it's saving me about 75 cents a day. So that's like 275 bucks a year on cost. That was I used to be heating water with fuel oil. So that was doing that for 10 plus years. So I have a pretty good handle on the typical cost. It's a family of four here, it's a 50 gallon tank it works pretty well. We can run out of water. I'm usually the last one to take a shower at night. So sometimes I might run out of water so that is a concern because it does heat slower but we can manage that. And usually I just run the dishwasher after I finish my shower that solves the problem. So that's great. If anybody out there has questions on a heat pump water heater speak up when there's time and I'll answer any additional questions. Don, what happened to you? What happened to me? Yeah, what's your story? I think Scott can probably describe it better since he's in the process of finishing it up now. We live on a, my wife and I live on a pretty large lot in South Amherst off of Bay Road. The house is a pretty large house with living spaces on three different floors. And so we ended up with the geothermal system. Like I say, Scott can probably describe the technical aspects of it better than I can but we had a couple of things that we wanted to do that Western Mass has worked out for us. One, we really liked our baseboard hot water heating from our old system. So we are still heating our first floor in our basement area with that system because the, and Scott correct me if I'm wrong, my understanding is that because, perhaps it's because of the different temperature of the water, there wasn't enough baseboard heating on the second floor to heat that. So that has a ducted air handler system from up in the attic that comes into each of our rooms. It is an expensive system. The tax credits that we get, we can use all of. So that's something that's reduced the cost for us. And I learned to my surprise that MassSafe, and we also got our heat loan through five college but MassSafe can actually give you $50,000 interest free over seven years. And we're pretty excited about it. And the decision to do it is because we, maybe five years ago installed, because of the size of our lot, we installed a large tracker, solar tracker on our front. I presume I'm gonna get some electric bills because of the geothermal, but we haven't had an electric bill in five years. And I have an electric car. So in a lot of ways it makes a lot of financial sense for us. But it is, as Scott said, the kind of Cadillac of systems and it's a very expensive system. But we're excited. Next week, he turns it over for us. I think Dwayne has a system too that you might wanna, yeah. Yeah, I won't repeat everything but just say we're very happy we installed four air source heat pump units, three on our main level. It's also a main floor ranch with a walkout basement, three units on the main floor that we use constantly and then one in the basement, which we use as we need to. The one, two things I would note is, at least this was about seven years ago we had these installed. We had each unit inside unit has its own outside unit. I'm not sure if that was the best approach economically. So I would look at these multi-head units or work with your contractor with regard to whether you can double these up a bit more so or even triple them up from what I know. The other thing I would mention is two things. One is we also have a wood pellet stove that really helps us out to get the house warmed up in the morning and on those really cold days where we tend to use the heat pellets first and then our oil heat, which still exists in the house is always our last to be used. The last thing I wanna really recommend is I think one reason or I know one reason why our heat pumps are working so well is because MassSafe came in and put in a lot more insulation in our attic which was primarily paid for, 80, 90% of the cost was paid for by MassSafe and that really makes your house much more efficient and able to use the low temperature heat coming from the heat pumps. And so certainly encourage, I think it's required but really encourage people to look at insulating your house, at least the easy part of insulating which is generally your attic to get that that'll really help you improve the performance and comfort you get from the heat pumps. Thanks. Yeah, get the attic and basement first. Stella, I know you've been down this road. What's your tale? Yeah, I'll be quick. I just wanted to give a quick shout out to the floor mini splits. We also completed a transition. We're fully on with mini splits. When the floor mini splits, they're really great. They do because we've also noticed that it feels less warm but when it's on the floor, it's right there. I have a small child and also a cat. They love the floor mini split. It's sometimes something to manage so there's pros and cons, I would say. But there's pros. All right, let's start, let's play, what do they call it on carton stomp the chumps? Jesse, before you dive in, I just want to let those who are attendees to this meeting know that they can access Scott's presentation if they go to the town's website. And if you go to, there's a dropdown menu for boards and committees, go to the ECAC link and go to their webpage and on the right hand side, there is meeting packets or it might be listed as resources but it's either resources or meeting packets. If you click on that link, there's more dropdown menus. You can just get to today's meeting packet and it's listed as brochure one. I'm sorry, I didn't rename it before I loaded it but that is the link to the presentation and if you have any problems, please feel free to reach out to me and I can always help you. So I think the way this works is you raise your hand digitally which I think is down at the bottom of your Zoom interface if you have a question and if we don't see a question, I've got an initial question queued up for our guys. So Jesse, we do have one Adele has her hand up. I'm going to, Adele, you have allowed you to speak so you can go ahead and unmute. Okay, can you hear me? We can. Oh good, thank you. Thanks, Scott. I'm puzzled by your preference for the dual fuel systems and I hear an awful lot from Maine about how they're promoting heat pumps and doing quite well and it's even colder up there. So I'm curious about what your feelings are about completely going all electric with heat pumps. Great question. My feelings aren't necessarily temperature-based. Absolutely, any hyper heat I guess is the terminology I'm going to use because that's one of the main terms but any hyper heat or low ambient system, cold climate is another word, a key word to use but any cold climate system is generally rated for negative temperatures. So that's not a problem. Definitely all electric is a viable option for many houses. My preference for dual fuel comes when the dual fuel infrastructure is already almost in place. If the fossil fuel furnace is in great condition, five years old or less, already has an ECM motor which is a efficient motor. It's a great option that way we're not throwing away perfectly good infrastructure. And also my other preference would be when a house is a lot older and difficult to weatherize. There's a lot of historical homes that are very difficult to weatherize. And for those homes that just requires such an excessively large heat pump that would be so oversized in most conditions except for the coldest months that I'd rather the oversized condition not be a problem and use a secondary fuel to heat or cool those homes well to heat those homes. And I guess lastly related to all that, the infrastructure in a home, the ductwork may not be sized for, I'm gonna use a little bit of technical terminology here, a four or five ton heat pump which is a larger sized heat pump mostly for a larger home. The ductwork might only be sized enough for a three ton system but it's also sized large enough for 80,000 BTU furnace. And we could put in an 80,000 BTU furnace use the existing ductwork, again three ton heat pump which would get you 80 or 90% of the capacity you actually need to heat your home most of the time. And you're almost decarbonized they're almost fully electric but you're as close as you can get without tearing apart your house. And the next step above that is tearing apart your house usually. And I'm only speaking for certain homes I'm not speaking for everybody's home but again maybe 15, 20, 25% of homes out there are a much better fit for dual fuel than they are all electric. It's just a less invasive process, that's all. Can I add something to that? Well, there are definitely homes I know for which getting a heat pump saying it's difficult because they are so leaky and it's mostly very much older homes. One of the biggest concerns and it is the price of electricity versus natural gas. So the reason I didn't go all the way is because it would have been a real financial hit for me to completely get rid of natural gas at this point with electricity prices so high. It costs me, it's hard to get a good calculator for this. This is something we could really use as a good calculator. So you know once you transition what are your costs gonna look like compared to what they are now. And there are companies like Abode and that will help with this but none of them really do a complete job of it. I figured out for myself that I'm paying six cents a kilowatt hour for gas heat. Electricity, I'm paying 30 or 32 cents a kilowatt hour for at a COP of two heat pump at low temperatures I'm paying about 15 cents a kilowatt hour for my heat. So that's more than a factor of two in my bill. For a cold day. So until that changes, which is why I know Adele is working on the CCA as part of this effort. That's why it's so important that we find a way to bring electricity costs down. I don't care if heat, I hope gas heat goes up but if you're using oil or if you're using propane it's a win to move to heat pumps financially unless you're in one of these big leaky houses. But if you're using natural gas it's still a problem. Totally agree, good, really good points, Lori. Yeah, again, I think electric prices at one point a lot of people were paying upwards of 45, 46 cents a kilowatt hour this winter for electricity especially in national grid customers in certain regions. And that is at least three or four times more expensive per BTU than the natural gas comparatively. If your system is always 400% efficient then that's a net wash. But at a certain temperature outside it's not 400% efficient anymore. It's more like 200% efficient. So great point, Lori. Okay, we're gonna go to Jeffrey Turner. Jeffrey, you can go ahead and unmute yourself. Yeah, I had two questions. First, I didn't catch the website where the presentation is. And second, what kind of electrical service? Do I need a 200 amp electrical service? I've got about, I think it's about a 1700 square foot house. And that seems to be right, also right like on the border of two or three, is it two or three heat pumps? Two or three mini splits? So I'm not really sure like which way to go on that either. So I guess it's three questions. How many amps do I need? How many mini splits should I get to make it, you know? So I mean, I don't wanna stress these things to where they die in a couple of years. And then the other is where is the website for the presentation? I can answer the website question, which is it's at amherstma.gov. And if you go to the top dropdown menu where it says boards and committees, you can then find the energy and climate action committee. And on the right-hand side, when you get to their page, there'll be a link for either says meeting packets or it says resources. And the resources will bring you to more folders that you can drop down. And if you have any trouble, I'm on the town, you can find me on the town's website and reach out to me and I'll help you. To answer your question about electric service and how many heat pumps here or mini splits your home would need, that they're all situational questions and it doesn't necessarily matter what size your home is more so than it matters what the other infrastructure in your home is. Do you have an electric dryer? Do you have an electric stove? Do you have an electric car? Do you have a, you know, what kind of water heater do you have? And also what your future plans are because you may not have anything electric right now but you may want to have an electric car or electric dryer, electric stove or any of that. So to answer your question, a hundred amp service in a 17 under square foot house, if you're all gas right now on all the major appliances, you could probably get away with adding some heat pumps to that. But if your whole goal is to electrify anyway, then you might as well think about a 200 amp service as being part of your overall plan and probably the first part of your overall plan. So you're not restricted or trying to design around an inadequate service. Electric service compared to the cost of a whole home mini-split system or any, you know, large scale heat pump or large scale electrification is pretty minimal. You know, it could cost between four and six or seven grand to do an electric service upgrade. But that's money well spent for a few reasons. Also safety, a lot of older panels aren't as safe as the newer panels and newer installations. So for safety, for knowing that you won't be restricted by your panel or your service, I'd almost always recommend if it's a question at all, just to do it. So that's number one, number two, your question about how many heat pumps you would need or not wanting to undersize too much because it would, you know, they'd run so much and it would kill them. That's actually not necessarily true. They're made to run their continuous duty cycle. So they could run 24 seven, 365 and it would pretty much have the same wear and tear as a system that ran off and on frequently for the same amount of time. They're just simply designed to run a lot. So that's not a problem. You don't want to undersize so much where you're not comfortable but you don't want to oversize either. So very dependent on the house and the situation and your room layout and what your wish list is and, you know, you may have a room that you don't care the heat and other rooms that you really want to prioritize. So I can't really answer that question directly but I can say that, you know, again, it's just situational, a consultation could definitely answer your questions. Can I add something else? I wanted to say that with all of these, the way to get more insight into your own house and to figure out what you need, first of all, you always have to start with MassSave because all of the incentives only come to you if you've had a recent MassSave energy audit and that's free but there is a backlog so they tend to take a few months to get out there. So if you're thinking of doing this, call MassSave today, tomorrow, right? It'll make everything better, honestly. The other thing is that there are a number of agencies out there, Green Energy Consumers Alliance which works with abode energy systems, I think they're called, where you can go to get input on your specific house. They'll do some calculations for you, they'll compare quotes when you bring in a few different contractors to give you quotes on a system for your house, they'll tell you which one is the best. There's a fee for it but when you can, it's 100 or 150 bucks and when you compare it to the price of the whole system it's not really very much. So it's worth, I think, going to one of these Green Energy Consumer Alliance or abode and getting input from an expert. I actually paid for a couple hours of consults and a quote comparison when I did my system and I found it extremely useful. I learned a lot about my house and about heat pumps and more than you want to know but they'll tell you what works for your house. Lori Bezada, you can go ahead and unmute. Hi, thanks for doing this. I have a couple of questions. One, so we are looking at changing over to electric because we have a very old on-demand hot water heater that we've been using for our radiant floor and our domestic hot water. So the question is, do you think we should have a separate hot water heater and a separate system for our radiant floor? That's part one. And then the other part is, have you ever worked with solar hot water combined with a heat pump system? Both very in-depth answers, I guess. I'll go layman's terms on some of that as much as I can. I frequently will suggest a separate hot water system from the heating system. There are combination systems and it depends how much you want to electrify to or if you're okay still burning a fossil fuel. There's, oh man, there's so many options here. If you're trying to electrify, I'm gonna suggest electric heat pump water heater nine times out of 10. So that takes care of your hot water. That will not take care of your heat. And I would almost never suggest using an electric heat pump water heater for heating because it's absorbing heat from your surrounding air. So you're actually just robbing heat from another part of your house to put it into your radiant or your any kind of hot water source. So I wouldn't suggest that for the heating source. Unfortunately the only three options for heating hot water would be hot water for radiant that is would be a fossil fuel. It could be any fossil fuel. They make all kinds of boilers or it could be geothermal or it could be an air to water heat pump. In any case, if you want to electrify, well, the third option, I guess would be an electric resistance boiler which are not very efficient. Air to water is very efficient, great system, very expensive, more disproportionately expensive. I would never sell it as a value option. And then geothermal again, very expensive. If you have enough to enough house, I guess like a sizable house where it's gonna be a sizable system either way, the tax credits for geothermal make it more worthwhile than an air to water system nine times out of 10. So geothermal is the way that I usually approach a question like yours, if it's a feasible option in your house in your yard and everything else. Sorry about that, Laura. You can go ahead and unmute again if you had a follow up there. Just a little nuance to it. So some of our rooms have the pecs tubing on top of the floor and tile on top and some of it is underneath the wooden floor decking. And then so the amount of heat transfer is gonna be different. Is there a way to vary or make zones or something like that? There is, we can do, that's actually somewhat common for us, a lot of times we'll have like a garage or a basement that's in concrete actually and then have an upper floor that's in wood. And the two really should be at a different temperature because the same thing, it's because you're getting better heat transfer, more conductivity and a quicker reaction time out of a solid surface like tile or concrete that's right next to the radiant tubing versus a wood floor and sub-floor above the radiant tubing. And the way to do that is with two separate mixing stations. So one mixing station will be set at arbitrarily, I'll say 120 degrees and then the other mixing station might be set up at 100 degrees. 100 degree water will go through your tile floor where the radiant or any case where your radiant is the next layer down from the sub, not sub-floor from the finished floor. And then the hotter water temperature, the 120 degree, let's say would be where your sub-floor is actually over the radiant, so you have two layers of floor and you get through. Okay, great. And anything about just combining solar or? So Jen, I've definitely been involved in fixing systems like that and trying to fine tune them, but that's my only, I think it's a great idea on paper, but I also think that it's disproportionately expensive to maintain and it's another level of infrastructure in your house that I think there's better value options. For instance, you could do, if you were already gonna do a solar PV, you could just add a couple of panels to that system for less money and get more bang for your buck out of it. Or if you, there's better bang for your buck options out there that you're gonna get more value out of versus adding a solar hot water system on top of other systems and trying to integrate the two and for minimal cost savings or environmental savings. Okay, we're gonna go to- I'll just add one comment to that, Lori, and this brings up this question. We talk a lot about heating, but if one of the goals of the project is to add cooling, then a distribution system like radiators or radiant heat in a floor is not compatible with cooling. And so it is possible that the answer is to abandon the floor distribution system, add heat pumps and do a heat pump hot water or leave your radiant heat with your on-demand heater, let it go as long as it can go. But if a goal was to add cooling, then a heat pump would be something that could do that as well, whereas the radiant could not. And Heather Adams, you can go ahead and unmute. Hi, thanks for this presentation. I have a few questions. One, if our house needs some more insulation work, is that something that should be done separately and does that affect the estimate? I was reading that that will affect some of the calculations done on what sort of heat pump capacity. So that seems like it could really change the quote that we got. Second question, I was wondering why Mitsubishi isn't even listed on the Consumer Reports list of like heat pump models. And I'm getting the impression that that's a really good choice, but I don't know, that's just sort of a strange thing. I was just wondering how that's evolving. And finally, in terms of how many quotes to get, like say you find a fantastic company that everyone loves, just to be a diligent consumer, do you think we should still get like a few quotes for comparison and does the same go for the amp upgrade to 200 amps? Like should we get quotes on that? Cause it's all a long process and we're eager to get going. Just eager to hear your thoughts about that. Thanks. All excellent questions. Really, really good questions. I'll start backwards here. And I may need you to remind me of your first question by the time I'm done, but starting backwards here with your questions, number, I guess number three question is, should you get multiple quotes? I'm a little biased here because I'm a contractor. So I can't answer that question 100% accurately. I will say from my point of view as the contractor, though, I think our company does a great job of giving multiple options on the same sister or on the same house. So if you are, you know, not sure if you want mini splits or ducted or geothermal versus the air source heat pump and so on and so forth, we'll give you multiple options. That being said, I think it's smart for any consumer to look at getting multiple options and pricing on anything to make sure that they know what they're getting in their house, whether that's from one company or whether you need to go to three or four companies to get to accumulate those options and make the best decision is up to you as a consumer. And that's, I shouldn't answer that question. I think we have to, in all fairness, say, of course get multiple quotes, but it's not just the bottom line. How quickly do they get back to you? How clear is their presentation? Do they, are they listening to you? These are tricky nuanced things like is the contractor actually listening or are they just trying to shovel one size fits all down at you? So it's not, so I just remind people as you get multiple quotes, there's more than the bottom line that come with those. Exactly, I think that's a great way to put it, Jesse. And, you know, and if nothing else, you'll educate yourself during the process. I think that's maybe the biggest thing you could take away from if you get multiple quotes. And same thing with making sure you're educated about the rebates available from, you know, Massave and tax incentives and everything else. Educate yourself as much as possible on that. And then you also asked if you should get multiple quotes on an electric service upgrade. I mean, I'll tell you from our point of view, we usually subcontract that as part of our installation, I don't know what other companies are doing. If you contract, if you have an electrician that you have a relationship with and an electric service is a relatively minimal job compared to maybe the whole scope of your project, I don't think price shopping is necessary. But I also agree with Jesse, where as a consumer, I don't think, you know, you should, I don't think you should also go in blind if you don't already have a relationship with a good electrician, then you may want to get multiple quotes. And also a lot of- The first question I think was the big one, Scott, what is the effect of increasing installation, window replacement, air sealing, all that stuff? How does that affect like your, what you're doing? And spoiler alert, I think you should do that work first. I agree, Jesse. That's a good point. You should do that work first because we don't want to design in size a system that's too large for what your overall goal is going to be. I'd rather size and design for what your goal is going to be versus what your house is right now. So if you do call too early in the process for heat pumps, make sure your installer and designer knows that, knows what your plan is going to be, that you're going to be putting in insulation that you've already contracted with MassSafe and you're just waiting for them or whatever the case might be. So you could put the cart before the horse as long as the horse knows where the cart is, I guess. But absolutely weatherization is important. I think that is the first step. I totally agree, Jesse. That's the first and most important step if you're in the process. Also, can I just add, you mentioned something about Mitsubishi not being in consumer reports. I don't know what that's about, but they certainly make some of the best heat pumps out there. So I don't understand that at all. I don't know if I can answer why it's not in consumer reports or who I think there's multiple versions of consumer reports as well. Maybe they were only vetting unitary systems, meaning a ducted heat pump, single stage systems or maybe they were only, I don't know what they were vetting. And a lot of that is based on consumer reviews and consumer reviews, a lot of times are more like appliance based or more, man, there's so many variables there where I would not pay too much attention in the buying process so much to the brand or the online reviews of the brand of the heat pump, more so than I would pay attention to the company that's installing it and designing it because the company that if they've been around long whether it's us or anyone else, whether if they've been around long and they have good reviews, they're not gonna be using products that aren't good. So definitely don't focus on the product brand name as much as the consumer reports online for the product. I just wanted to get back to Adele to see if she had a follow-up question. Adele, if you do, go ahead and unmute. I don't have a question at this time. Thank you very much. Okay, you're welcome. So I, oh, we got a question. I have a final question, but it looks like Linda, you have a question. Yes, I'm gonna let Linda go ahead and ask her question. Hi, I have two questions. One is for Dwayne. I wondered why you put a heat pump in your basement. Is that living space? Or was that to increase the comfort of the rooms above? Yeah, sorry, thanks for the question, the clarification. Yeah, in fact, I'm in my basement now. And yes, it's living space. It's just, actually our kids, when they were in the house, lived down here for the most part, but they've moved away, moved out. So it's still very much living space. It's a walkout basement, I should say. And it has a couple bedrooms and a bathroom. So yes, it's living space. Sorry about that. And my other question was for Laurie. You talked, I think, about having your system set up so that it automatically switches to the natural gas backup system at a certain temperature. Yeah, all the dual fuel systems work like that. And often the set point temperature is set by the tech that installs it, and then you don't have a lot of control without calling them in, but I actually got the tech to show me how to do it. So I can change it myself, and I actually did the experiment of seeing how low I could take it before the good, low temperatures, my system capacity falls off a bit. So how low could I take that set point before the house wouldn't really heat enough? And for me, it was 35 degrees, which is why I said eventually, when I wanna go completely to electric, I have to add one more mini-split, and then I'm there. So I don't quite have the capacity to do without, but I can change that number or your tech can change the number for you where it switches between the two, which is a great thing if you're trying to reduce your costs, because depending on the cost of electricity versus gas, you can move that number up and down a little bit. And Susan A, you can go ahead and unmute. Yeah, hi. I was just gonna respond, just a small caveat about brands. I've had the experience of, I live in an old drafty house and I haven't been able to deal with my house, but I have a detached structure on my property that I had a mini-split put in in 2019, I think it was. And it's worked great in terms of keeping the space, it's also hyper-insulated, and so it's done a very good job of keeping the space warm, never had any problems with that, with no backup system. But the installer used, I didn't talk to him about the brand, he's a Dakin installer. And as I say, it's worked great, but I have never been able to have a remote control on that system. And so it's a detached structure, if I wanna go change the temperature back there, I have to go outside and it would have been really convenient. And then since then I had a Fujitsu in another location and I am able to change that remotely. So I don't know if that's still true, but it seems like the kind of user friendliness maybe of certain models might be different depending on the brand and that might be something that consumers should be asking about. Good one, that is important. I think a lot, yeah, they are increasingly smart devices. Technically we're out of time, but I've got one more question I'd love to ask and then, which is, Scott, can you and or Colin, can you guys talk about maintenance of these systems and what happens if you don't do it? Great, great question, Jesse. Actually, I'm just talking to Colin, we should add that to our presentation as well because it's another big education topic that everyone should know. And just like any system, it's not just heat pumps, any even fossil fuel, old, new, all systems should be maintained. Not everyone has always done that historically, but if you do, your system should last longer and should be cleaner and also should run more efficiently. Again, across the board, whether it's a heat pump or anything else, I will say specific to many splits, cleaning the indoor units thoroughly, the coil, the fan, the plastics around the coil and the fan and stuff, those accumulate dust which traps moisture and the trap moisture in some environments will either cause like a mold or mildew issue behind them. So if you're not up to date with maintenance and cleaning not only the filters, but also the plastics around it and the fan blades and stuff, then you could have a mold or mildew issue which will smell or cause health problems, for some people at least. So important, very important for maintenance and also if the fan blade is all gummed up, then you're not gonna get the same airflow out of it. The fan's gonna have to work harder and it's not gonna push through the coil at the same rate and your efficiency goes down anywhere between 1% and 30%, I'd say, right up until the system decides that it's gonna throw an error code. So maintenance is important, absolutely. And the cost of maintenance, to be honest with you, I don't even actually know what our cost is. We have someone in our office that does all the maintenance agreements, but I will say it's most houses for a couple hundred bucks could get a maintain once or twice a year, depending on the system and how many systems you have in your house, et cetera. And even with ducted systems, it's important, but especially filter changes on your own are important to do that at least twice a year, depending on if you have a four inch filter or one inch filter, one inch filter try and do four times a year. And then again, to have a professional company, whether it's us or someone else, come in at least once a year and do maintenance. We offer maintenance plans that can auto renew. So it's, again, it's important and people need to know about it. So great question, Jesse. This was fun. This had a real car talk vibe to it. I, Scott, Colin, thank you guys so much. It was just so great and the public, this is like maybe our biggest public attendance. So Lori and everyone else that put the word out and the public for coming and great questions. Is that it? Are you closing remarks? Yeah, I think we just need to finish up the ECAC meeting, but I think for this part of the meeting, the presentation, we're done, right? So you're welcome to stay. We're going to spend a few minutes just finishing up ECAC meeting. So thank you all for coming and thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thanks. All right, take care, everyone. Have a good night. Okay, bye. Thank you. Sorry, I just have to run for something else. So I'll catch up the end on the minutes, but talk to you guys soon. Okay, so we just need items for the next agenda and public comment and then an adjourn. So do we know what's on the next agenda? We have the letter again. This is now the draft letter we talked about earlier regarding getting the specialized code. Now, what was it on? Well, you had a few. Well, one was Andrew's letter to the DPU. It was that letter. And then there was also the letter regarding the Springfield Justice Coalition initiative. Which I think we're probably gonna drop unless we wanna write a, I think Laura was right that we should focus on what we can do. And that's how we got into the discussion of the specialized code. But I think it's probably still worth pursuing a more general letter to Maura Healy about something along the lines of the petition. I might come with a different proposal next time. Do you want me to put specialized code as the agenda item? No, there was, yeah, specialized code letter for sure. Follow up on specialized code. Yes, that should be on the agenda. So I think we should stick that on the agenda and keep it there until that is done. And then the other thing. All right. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I actually know that. Vasu, you're underwater again. You hear me okay? Yes. What's the action on this specialized code? Just to follow up and to see if there's anything that needs to be done. And I think we talked about getting a presentation together, finding a presentation that might ultimately be used for the council in making a decision on adopting the specialized code that BEA has that somewhere. And I think I was going to find that. Yeah, I sent information over to three members of the town council. There's going to be discussion with Paul this week. Yeah. And so I'm going to learn more. I can also add some commentary at the next meeting. Yeah, Stephanie, right. Okay, good. And Stephanie gave a pretty nice update on that. The Springfield Pipeline Initiative discussion morphed into that. Laura pushed us to think about things that were more immediately impactful. Although I still think that we should probably write something. We should probably withdraw, even though we can talk about a little bit more, but let's talk a little bit more about the gas moratorium and a letter regarding pipelines to the governor. Maybe something along those lines. I think that's worth discussing too. I'm just not quite sure how to frame that right now. That's all right. I'll find a way to phrase it. And Vasu, seeing as you are... Yeah. Do you have agenda items for the next week? Well, annual report. So I definitely want to stop working talking about the annual report. I mean, if you want to take a look at the draft format and send me feedback, I can continue working on it. But yeah, if you can... We'll definitely talk about it at the next meeting. All right. I'll draft the agenda as I do and send it to both of you for this next meeting just to make sure I've covered everything. Oh, you were also talking about vacation. Did everybody get it back to you? No. I've had a few people get back to me, but I don't have everybody. Yeah. I don't usually know until I actually get out of town. So I'll let you know as soon as I do. Okay. And you do have two members of the public here? Yes. And so we do have a final public comment then. Is there any final public comment? Comment from Jenny or Renata? If not, if not, then perhaps we should adjourn. Perhaps? Oh, yes. Move to adjourn. Second, all in favor. All right. Thanks, Larry. Go outside, everybody. Go outside. See you all in two weeks. Bye. Bye.