 Alright, good afternoon everyone, welcome. Let's start with our vision and charge again. Okay, so we want to cooperate with the town and community to raise awareness and achieve results with a sense of urgency. And everything we do, we will put in my mental justice at the forefront of our decisions, and I just want to highlight that we want to prioritize or try to prioritize exponential improvements and not incremental. Just want to keep that in mind when we're doing anything for the community. So just here from the last meeting, I realized that might have been in violation with the open meeting law I did have two names per program, and you see that I've removed them so I had a conversation with Stephanie. And now, just, you know, one person per program, and you can still talk to your counterparts, and get information and Stephanie will talk about the open meeting laws out of the agenda. So we can talk about that when we get there but just keep that in mind that you can still communicate. But there cannot be a three way communication. The other thing that I also added here is, is this new pillar on region and state legislative efforts, things that are going on in the state that we need to be aware of and so Andra is going to look beyond our car. I mean, things that towns are doing best practices policies that are being passed and so just get a different outside perspective that we can then look at and see what we can do to support. Oh, so I'm sorry to interrupt but you need someone to take the minutes. Oh, this turn is it Lori just finished. Andra. Okay. Yeah, so any questions on this, and why we only have one name and the extra pillar there. The extra pillar is a great idea. That was one of the things I was concerned about so I'm glad to see that in there. Thanks, I can't see any hands so a few. No comments. Now I'll talk about my metrics so participation. Capturing here is kind of a month, the weekly where well whenever we have the meeting I'm going to track my two worlds here one around the community participation in these meetings. We did have 20 people come to the last one that was exciting. We just need to sustain that and potentially have more people when you have these education series. And then from an education series is the other thing that I'm tracking so there's my two metrics and then Lori you also had in your meeting minutes and I really like that you highlighted actions and bold. And so I, this is maybe a recommendation. You know anything that we talk about during these meetings where people say well I'll take the action or I'll look into it. So we can capture this and we can discuss so it doesn't get lost. It doesn't have to be a priority and I don't know how to, how we want to track this but I just thought, we're talking about it. Someone said they're going to take it on. And I just felt maybe I should just capture it. So it doesn't get lost. Is everyone okay with doing this. Yeah, I was thinking of the same thing. Thank you. Yeah, Stephanie. These are a couple of actions that you have. I don't know if you had a chance to even look into this but this is something we can chat about at the start of every meeting actions from the previous meeting or the ones prior. Yeah, and they're on my to do list for tomorrow actually so I have a list of things and that's two of them, obviously. Sounds good. Okay. Let's move on to the next part of the agenda, which is the minutes. So, someone reviewed the minutes. Yeah. Okay. Any questions or comments. I move that we accept the minutes. I'll second that motion. If you could be sure to unmute will do a voice vote. D. Yes, except. Goldner. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. The minutes are approved. Thank you, everybody. All right, let's move on to public comments. Stephanie, can you open up the public. So if anyone from the public has a comment at this time, please electronically raise your hand and I'll. Acknowledge you so that you can unmute and speak. Okay, there appear to be no comments at this time. Okay. All right, we'll move on to the next part of the agenda and talk about heat pumps. So Lori. I have a few slides to share. I made a couple of little changes. So let me go ahead and share them. By sharing. Just find it. Hang on a minute. Screen to various share. Okay. So you should be able to see this now, right? Yes. Because I see something different from what you see. All right. So since this is the first time. That we're discussing heat pump strategy. Since sort of changing the way we do things. More better defined goals and. Action items. Excuse me. I thought we'd start. Just by going through the questions that Vasu posed and making a proposal for what this program ought to look like. And the first. The first item of business is to rename it because as was immediately pointed out by both. Steve, I think was Andra and Jesse. And maybe also Steve, I don't recall. And that as we discussed before that there's no point in talking about heat pumps without talking about envelope improvements and other energy saving. There's a lot of things that you can do in your home energy saving and electrification you can do in your home. So I think something like residential energy or some a broader name like that is more appropriate residential energy. Concerns or residential decarbonization or something along those lines. So I'll refer to it as residential decarbonization or residential energy or always still try to do that. And that you can do is really one just of awareness of education and getting the word out and letting folks know what they can do and how they can go about doing it. There are a few specific things that I think folks need to know about one is the whole mass saved program. What it can do for you as a residential as a as a homeowner or as in particular as a homeowner. There's also the question of what residents can do to decrease their carbon footprint and there it can be either renters or owners. There's actually quite a lot of I could imagine having a separate discussion sometime as part of our educational series just devoted to what renters might be able to do on their own or to encourage their residents to decarbonize. And so one could imagine also having particular educational educational seminars workshops programs on specifically on envelope improvements or specifically on heat pumps or specifically on some aspect of the technology or how you buy a blank a heat pump know whatever it is you're looking for. Why this is important. It's important because emitting the colleges, which are already heading toward decarbonization residential heating residential carbon tends to tends to be about 40% of the total footprint. I don't know exactly what it is in Amherst because looking at the 2017. Anybody else who's maybe more familiar with it would have a look because I couldn't tell from looking at the 2017 inventory. How much of non university residential carbon in in Amherst was coming from. Sorry how much how much carbon was coming from residences outside of the university. I couldn't, I couldn't pull that number out but it's generally around 40%. So it's a big chunk of the carbon that enters the atmosphere carbon dioxide. Not to mention methane. So what can we do again what we can do our educational programs and so I brainstormed a little about what these should look like. I came up with a couple of ideas and sent them off separately to two different folks in the, in the e-cac and what came back I think were and this is this is where all of your input is really useful. You know if you think we should do something else if you think we should be, you know, just completely wrong let's do something else let me know if you have suggestions for people who can do these workshops, because they're going to be a lot of connections we're going to have to bring people in to help us with these right. But the first program might be some sort of overview, for example, that talks about envelope issues, including rebates available for those are incentives available for those that talks about heat pump choices, how you pick a heat pump. And that talks about other parts of the transition maybe getting an induction stove or, or even if you're a renter a simple thing like getting a induction hot plate, right, inexpensive induction hot plate just to get started on this road. Maybe as part of that seminar have a physical output some sort of a piece of paper or web page or something that is a list of resources, as well as the recording in the slides right. So that would be an overview sort of program. I think several of us really like the idea of panels. So for the second program we were thinking of bringing in a panel of experts to take questions every house is different, everyone. So why I like to talk about getting a low hanging fruit right pulling off the people who are ready to transition and getting them first because they're easy to get. But if you're going to get them first you got to answer these questions right. I have a problem with my home how do I do this right so get the panel of experts together, who can give input to individuals, you know, give a little bit of an overview of what they do and how they do it and then take questions from the audience. And this could be somebody from Mass Save, who knows all about the rebates and incentives programs hers Raider, who somebody who really knows about what your home might need how to how to understand your home as an energy system right as a, as a, where he is going, where you're losing heat and this sort of thing where you're what where your money is best spent. I guess that's probably a better way to say it. If you're a local installer or someone with similar expertise. If we can do that without creating an economic or financial conflict of interest somebody local who can talk about what's involved in actually doing the, the install. Another panel might be residents who've already done the transition we end up we frequently talk about this here in the cap right about our own experiences wouldn't it be nice to have a panel of three or four or five people who've done this, each in a different type of coming from a different starting point. Right, talking about where their challenges were and how they solve them and again taking questions from the audience. It's a good networking opportunity all of these are good networking opportunities to get residents connected. All of these are exponential in the sense that if you educate a few people and they make the transition they can talk to other people about that right just sort of the definition of exponential way and then they talk to more people and they talk to more people and it grows outward from there so you know even if we only have 10 or 20 people attending these things if half of them or a third of them or even a quarter of them actually make a change because of it. They're likely to influence their neighbors to do the same I know that's how it works in my neighborhood. And then there are other programs you might want to suggest you know other things that we can do something aimed at renters perhaps something aimed at landlords. Okay, how do I get this to there we go. So we don't have funding ourselves for anything right all we can do is get the word out. The others will needed we need for this sort of thing are exactly those that we need for these educational seminars who do we bring in right. Leading lagging indicators would be how many people attend the program how many questions get answered, and ultimately, how many transitions actually get made as a result of this and that's hard to track. So we can do something around us Fred, you know people can just just ask for their input if they do a survey, you know we know who attends these things we have their email and they usually when you sign up for the webinar you have to give your email. So just send out an email blast and say did you actually make a transition as a result of this or is here's a little survey for you to fill out, you know, if you've actually made a transition because of these, because of these workshops. The funding available is all rebates and incentives per mass saves again it's not through us. How we'd implement it I would imagine doing one of these every month at the as we've been as we just started doing last month. The panels works well, I could imagine continuing this as a sort of a WMUA radio program or something like that I know those guys are always looking for radio programs and you could imagine a panel of people getting on there every week and talking about taking questions about the energy transition just like you hear all this time on the radio. I know that station out of Albany has everything from gardening to medical advice over the talk shows right so we could imagine putting something like that together that might be helpful. I think one of the challenges that I mentioned on the next page is how we advertise this how do we, if we're going to implement this we want people to show up how to know about it. And that's possibly one of our weaknesses but I think that by using social media by targeting different audiences by maybe using, if we have a little bit of money we can spend on advertising either on local radio or, or on local servers. I think we can probably get the word out that these things are happening. In particular if we for example are going to target renters, then they're all sorts of student groups we could be sending emails to, right. So we can involve the students in this as well. If there's interest in that. Key milestones, let's do the event milestones are the events I think. One of the weaknesses of information that will, you know will be a combination of things mass saves the website flyers recordings of the events and who knows maybe a radio show down the line. We wanted a timeline to the timeline just looks like you know one thing a month for the next few months at least one program a month. What I'd like to ask for from people here today is your suggestions for you know do these programs look like a reasonable start I'll go back to that previous page and who do you have I have a list a short list of people that I might that we might contact but who would be good presenters for some of these programs or for a program that you might want to see, for example, for example right. So if you have questions for that. If you have good ideas for how to advertise these programs and if you know how to involve how to get people involved, you know good ideas for advertising. These are all things that that would be really good to get input on. Finally, I included a link here I hope this will, I suppose get added to the package for this month. There's a link here on a very nice book. It's fairly, it's a pamphlet it reads easily but it's 100 page pamphlet and it has something in it for everybody, including at the back of it really nice checklists for separately for people who are homeowners or landlords and people who are renters, what you can do toward transitioning your home and there's all sorts of ranging from very and there's prices associated with each of these right so very inexpensive things like changing to LED lights to slightly pricier things like buying an induction coil. And then there's a hot burner to, you know, getting an electric car right it's it's all in there and there's a buyer's guide for most of these things as well. So it's a really handy little guide for almost anything you might want to do to contribute to decarbonization. All right so that's all I've got I would love to get people's input and thoughts on programs and names of folks to contact. Thanks Laurie. Any questions for Laurie. Yes, definitely. So maybe these might be more comments and input, then, and feedback then questions, and this will sort of cover some of my report for the run the agenda so one thing is that we do have our funding for heat pump program. So, this is really great I mean and I've, I've been presenting that at the last couple of meetings I've mentioned that so the timing of this is really fantastic and especially important because we've, we, you know the whole idea of really getting people to focus on sort of their envelopes first. The timing is really great because if we can get that information out now this is the perfect timing to get people moving forward on their home assessments and getting the building envelope addressed now, you know while we're sort of putting the program together because we do have to start launching this like within a year. It has to happen so that's perfect timing and really great. Thank you for that funding so thank you, Stephanie. That's yes. So there's so and also as part of that. I've had an initial meeting with CET about potentially piggy backing off existing programming rather than trying to create our own. We would actually just be adding additional incentive funding to programs that already exist. So I have a follow up meeting with them more to figure out how we would put that together and we probably have to do an RFP and put out a proposal to get a consultant to work with us but those are the initial meetings that I'm having but the follow up for that will certainly be something that I would want to work with you and bring you in Lori to some of the meetings with whoever it is we work with on this program. It's a kind of community outreach and they will have resources and we, you know, you're a committee of the town, you know, we have resources to so we can get, you know, the advertising about the workshops and all of that that's something the town can absolutely do. And, you know, it's not, we're not everything you know we're not the only avenue for that outreach but certainly we're, you know, we can help with that so those are the, the sort of top things I wanted to address and I want to give others an opportunity to give you feedback to. Yes Stephanie I had the same exact question and I know you answered it on funding and because I know we talked about our funding. Lori, you know you talked about the timeline for the three education series over three months. What does it look like after those three months and, and we complete the education series. And is it. I guess I just wanted to make sure that it doesn't get lost because we have this education series let's say 1015 people show up. And what happens after that right. And maybe this is where I think CEI of CT. Stephanie that you mentioned might be beneficial where you continue to keep that momentum going I think there might be some value there. So the program that we have in place is going to be a three year program. And also the other thing is I've been attending several meetings from kind of different source resource perspectives on the infrastructure reduction act. And it's coming down the road. And so, you know, heat pumps are a big part of the funding that's coming through. So we don't know what that looks like yet. Mainly what's going to happen is that the federal government will give the programming to the funding to the states, the states have to create their own funding. And then it's sort of up to us to sort of help get that information out so really the timing of all this is just perfect. And I, again, you know, I think some of this is, you know, exactly what we're going to be looking to create over this period of time. And some of these questions might be answered and I think there'll be other resources to support us in this. So I think Lori has just provided a really great framework to sort of start moving that forward and that the panels and the events are again just really great timing and will work really well and people don't necessarily have to. They don't absolutely have to do the weatherization before installing the heat pump, but you want it. You know, you want them to be happening. You don't want someone to install a heat pump and then it'd be like five years down the road that they do the weatherization. So even if you get the heat pump in but within the year, they have their weatherization schedule that's, you know, I've heard some various feedback from, you know, program consultants who have said, you know, you want to get heat pumps in, but don't get stopped completely in your tracks by not having the weatherization done. Just make sure you get it done. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Three things one about funding available from local energy advocates for an induction cooking library loan system. That's in motion that could be a nice thing that could be, you know, a part of one of the residential decarbonization education programs. And I think another thing that AC could do is help the town, maybe with the Amherst Chamber to educate contractors because there's still a lot of misinformation out there. And then people call in a contractor and they say, Oh, you know, heat pumps don't work when it's really cold. And we, we need to get out to the right information and a lot of people are going to get the information not through our programming, but through the contractors. And I'd love to see us do something like that. And, you know, obviously, there's partners that we could work with, including community groups, CET, others. Perhaps. Yeah, I think that's a great suggestion. Well, I was actually thinking about the low income community as well. I, you know, you bring you have these education series but are they participating or coming to these ECAC meetings and I don't think so so we talk about the people most impacted and I, yeah, I think this is good the education series is good but I don't think it's the one solution I think we got to think about other ways about reach and I'm not sure what that could look like and I, yeah, I don't know if others have any thoughts. Steve and then Stephanie. Yeah, a couple of potential resources for you Laurie. One is a name Matt with a small consulting company called Powerhouse Energy and I think Jesse do you know Matt. You recommended and I him and I spoke with him about energy rating systems and he does either HES or HERS. I've been pretty excited for the concept of improving energy efficiency. I'm not exactly sure his background but he might be a good person coming from sort of the building technology side for a panel. You know his last name. I don't have that written down Jesse. I met Turkey's wonderful guy powerhouse energy I'll send you his contact. Okay thanks. What did I have in talking earlier this year with folks over in Cambridge, they have a one stop resource center to help building owners and residents to want to improve. And they use three different firms for the different types of buildings and I think you're familiar with these. There's a node for the smaller buildings, a group called new ecology for larger multi families, and all in energy for other resources. I'm pretty sure I don't have web addresses but I'm pretty sure if you do a quick Google search you can locate those. I recall that you're familiar at least two of those three. These were the couple suggestions for ideas. The only other one is the retired, the guy who helped Hampshire College build the current center. Jonathan right. Yes Jonathan right thank you. He lives over in Northampton he's a great guy. Right. R or W. WRIG. He was one of the principles of right builders but he has I believe he has retired. But maybe a retired guys away to get around the perception of financial. For purposes of the notes that Steve pass on all of these directly to Laurie and Stephanie. Thanks. I did I have been writing them down but it's nice to. Yeah, because I'm not getting them all. Stephanie. I just attended an ever source. Building decarbonization workshop that they had it was an all day. But yeah I was only able to attend a few, but there were a few presenters in the very first session and then there was one at the very end, specifically about dispelling the myths of heat pumps. I can get, I definitely have a link to the recordings and the names and I wrote them down in my notes but I have five notebooks so I can't grab it right the second but I will get them to you. But I thought that was a really, I couldn't go to all the workshops but those few were really helpful and it may I wished that I could share the recording I have to sort of reach out to them and see if I can because I felt like the, the very first workshop was especially helpful. And that was about residential, you know, heat pumps residential heat pumps for, you know, air source heat pumps but also hot water. Yeah, pumps. So, and they were sort of talking about that technology and how you can use that for things like shared use dual use it can be used for radiant flooring as well as, you know, just general hot water use so those folks I definitely have some names and I can get those to you as well. Yeah, I have at least one name from that that I was impressed with so. But I didn't go to the end of the day sessions. So I think maybe the way to proceed is to decide offline what the first, what the first. I mean, it was supposedly two weeks from now well either either will be at the ECAC meeting or it'll be something that will tag on to something CET is already doing. But we should try to aim for something in the next couple of weeks before the end of this month right. And I guess we can talk offline, depending on people's availability to speak and what folks think the first one ought to be about something on the more general side I would think. We should try to find how who's going to do that and, and where and when. So that's sound reasonable. Yeah, I think so Lori. And then Stephanie is also making that connection between you and see I as well. CT CT CT. You're talking about the possibility of a program at our next meeting two weeks, either at our next meeting or possibly outside of the meeting through CET. Is there something that they're doing anyway that's right along what we're interested in. Yeah, we're not going to have that ready in two weeks. Okay. And this is something that we're trying, we're going to have to work with them to identify, depending on what they come in with as a potential quote for services. We might need to go out to bed. So, so that's going to take a little while so I think you should just proceed with, you know I think a general panel of information I mean, what is a heat pump people. I mean that basic people don't know I think that whole idea of a heat pump on a one would be a great way to start. We can connect with massive Stephanie. I don't see why not, you know, I just think it's you know sometimes it's hard to get folks but you know I don't see why not and there are plenty of people. Some of this I feel like we can sort of figure out offline if you want to identify an organization, we can sort of do that outreach outside of the meeting. And I think one really something really quick though that FASU you brought up earlier about low income and and providing information to low income. One of the things I did talk to CET about was that this is a primary demographic that we want to reach in our community with this heat pump program. That was kind of the main thrust and so we were talking about like, do you open it up to everyone, how do you do this and what they suggested was that you open it up to everyone, but the outreach is really very very specifically targeted to low income households and renters and so that you can reach people more directly and you can sort of put all your resources resources towards that effort, because it's unlikely that the other people are people that attend the meetings, you know, the people in the sort of other, you know, a fluent homeowner in Amherst is probably going to hear about this or have resources to connect or hire somebody on their own, you know, to help them with it so the support would be to like what literally walk people right through the whole process. I just wanted to remind Basu you sent yesterday a notice there's a heat pumps 101 or a webinar coming up on October 18 by the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, which looks like it could be perfect. It's Tuesday, the 18th, 7pm and again Thursday October 20th at noon. Maybe you could forward that announcement to Stephanie and she could send it out to everybody. Yeah, that might be a perfect model to to use and maybe we could replicate that ourselves for the town. We can promote that. Yeah, promote that itself. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Jesse. Stella you were first. I just wanted to, I'm on a mailing list where this question of heat pumps comes up a lot for various reasons and I was just going to suggest that the first panel really focus on like kind of to Stephanie's point what are they and also then people's next question is like, do they work like people just want to know like, will they keep me warm and like, what do they involve like very, very, very basic. Before getting into any of the rest of it because people like want to know they work. Yeah. The other thing just like a reminder, I, this may be a little bit like of a tangent but I think it feels relevant to this point like about low income basically all of the college students are low income regardless of whether or not they're like low wealth you know that might not reflect like their financial situation in full like as a word but just like when we do have like just huge populations of like college students who are like low income functionally. I don't know what what to do with that but information but I think it feels relevant. I think that it's best if we just talk about renters because the big difference in, you know, building decarbonization is between homeowners and renters. Yeah I agree with that it feels less like euphemistic to. It's more like I think a practical, more of a practical distinction. Did you have something. No I just, I wanted to just reiterate this, this, what I think is being said, but I, and just say it in a slightly different way that if it's a series of events. Moving from large chunks of what you know what is a heat pump, and then getting more and more refined the end game, I think, and again trying to make this maybe sort of enjoyable. I'm picturing an almost car talk, ask event where it's very much not a PowerPoint, not the information I think you want to hear but very question driven with a strong hand moderator. So questions don't become whatever is not a question. Opinions really opinions polemics it said we're giving giving get. And so I would just plant that seed of like who's the expert who's not just the person that knows a ton about this stuff but loves to talk about it can talk well, maybe even has a Boston accent, I don't know, just so just think as we keep thinking about who that might be think home energy car talk kind of event I think that would be really satisfying for people. To have their questions answered in that way. Yeah, you know Jesse I was thinking about that too and I was thinking, can we make this more like a actual workshop where people like a Hitchcock Center can we use them to hold some sort of a workshop where people are learning hands on versus an actual program through the education series. Carbon talk. Oh, nice. Yes. Yeah, or like the Nessie used to do this thing called the green grand tour. And it was a Saturday I think it was in the fall this type of day like this type of day today and it was. And, and, and people would put their house up on the tour, and anyone could come all day long. That's great. I'm going to go to, I'm going to go to stuff I was just committing she's going to spend the day home and show everyone her heat pump and say well this work this didn't work and people are going to cycle through it. Yeah, that that could be another way and also a way for people to get more people involved. So it's a very successful program pre covert for Nessie is all the sort of net zero and low energy houses in the valley people kind of tour about. Again, this is, this is not necessary. This is this is absolute homeowners take that tour I think but but maybe there's a version of it that's that is a little broader and not quite as elite. Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up Jesse because I was looking at Winchester Massachusetts website. And they had a climate festival last month, and their events that took some screenshots of that. And it was exactly that is going to somebody's house and learning and yeah it's good point. Thank you all. I just had one more comment where my notes go. In terms of your leading and lagging indicators is there. Okay, so yeah, a way to track the number of transitions right so how. Yeah I guess this is this is an important one how do we document that and we. Do we have something we can work with contractors and how many projects that they're leading, or something that the town can gather for us. Like I said I think the easiest and the simplest thing for us to do is just to send out an email to everybody who's attended the webinars. If it's an online thing it's easy. If it's a if it's in person thing just ask people for the email on the way in to sign up to get follow up information and slides and stuff like that, and then send them a request. And it doesn't need to be immediately afterwards right you'd want it to be six months or a year afterwards because you don't need any time. Yep. But you know I that doing anything like that is a big project all in itself and I don't know if it's, is it worth it right if people are showing up at these things are presumably interested I take that as good in and of itself right. Because I used to do this work for a nonprofit energy save. And emails won't work. You need a really aggressive follow up program. And we could see if there's a community group that would be interested in making it their project, but more likely really want to get the results. And so maybe that becomes a part of our heat pump program that getting those metrics business is written in wonder if it's worth it if we're doing, we're doing inventories anyway, and the inventory will be periodically updated. So I think that's really the only important metric, right. You know, I don't know. It's a lot of work to as you, you know, like I say, it's a lot of work. Yeah, it is my concern with just relying on what that one metric is it's already happened. And we have an update. So yeah, I don't know something that we need to think about it. Yeah, it's, it's a lot of work, but the data is going to be important. All right, any more questions for. Thanks, Laurie. Sure, stop sharing a long time ago sorry about that. Norris. Say something really quickly too. At the ever source workshops that they had one of the presenters was talking about how heat pumps are really the United States is behind the world, for the most part, that really, you know, everywhere else, heat pump technology is sort of standard now and the US is behind and this. And that's why there was that whole session specifically on debunking the myth of that they're not. They're not efficient in New England cold weather. They're in much colder climates. So I think it's a really, you know, it is really important to get the information out there. And also the other thing that they addressed was the fact that there's so much concern about the grid being able to handle the excess load and ever source in national grid where they are to say, they are absolutely on top of it. And it will be fine, which I found somewhat reassuring, because it is such a big concern and I thought they really they know it's coming and they're working that's what they said we know it's coming. They said there've been historically advances in technology like this in the past, and they knew that they saw them and they adapted and so this is not new for them to have to respond to new technology and more demand. So I thought I would share that. Thanks to me. Okay, let's move on to the next topic. Solar progress report updates and Dwayne. Thanks to everybody. Yeah, so purpose here is to bring forward the work that myself and with a lot of input from Steve have put together to present to ecac today as a working presentation, if you will, in terms of how we see what ecac is charged to do to some extent and wants to do in concert with the solar technical assessment consultant who is coming on board with the town to assess GIS map out the town with regard to solar technical potential. And so part of that scope of work involves some input from ecac to through the town to direct the consultant or inform the consultant of a couple of different scenarios we want to look at with regard to solar hosting solar capacity hosting in town. And so what Steve and I put together is a short is a presentation of what we are proposing for our methodology to come up with these scenarios. We want to go over that with you today get some feedback. And with the idea then that we would we would then quote unquote crunch the numbers through these methodologies to come out with recommendations at our next meeting, which is two weeks the first month, the first meeting when we're back on the agenda, I guess two meetings from now. We could present sort of our recommendations to move forward to Stephanie in the town to then move forward to the consultant. So is that sound okay and I can share my screen and we can go through what Steve and I put together. I just got this to Stephanie and Vasu hours before the meeting, but it can be distributed afterwards. So I will share. And yes, sorry, just as Steve was deeply involved in this as well, Steve I welcome you to inject any any further questions as I'm going going through this. And just apologize, geez I'm going to just try to set up my screen better so I can see everybody as well. As well as my screen. Okay, great. Okay, so again we're looking at. You know, obviously this this issue with solar sighting. And as I think we're all in agreement in our carp suggests that we do need to host solar in Amherst to meet not only our greenhouse gas reduction goals, but also to contribute to the Commonwealth greenhouse gas goals. The idea here is to be as analytic as possible here to not through our process of developing these hosting scenarios is not so much to at all to suggest solar should go here or there. We can come out with some reason a reasonable range of capacities. We think that would be in line with our commitment our goals and our commitments and our desires. And then in the work with the consultants use the mapping to come out with some, some different frameworks or or possibilities for how such capacities could be technically and suitably cited in Amherst. And all would then be useful as information that then informs decision making recommendations and decision making at the town level, ecac level as well as constituents within the town. I have like eight or nine slides I think so. This one's a little bit wordy but just basically what I sort of went through. Again, our idea through this exercise that will lay out to you today in terms of the methodology is to really develop a range, say a low, medium and high range of solar capacity hosting. That would be in line with Amherst goals and the Commonwealth's goals. We would then submit these recommendations, discuss these recommendations as ecac submit these recommendations for this low, medium, high hosting capacity to the town and to the solar assessment consultant to then be able to incorporate in the GIS mapping to get a sense of under these scenarios, how the how these capacities could potentially be hosted within Amherst limitations and opportunities. Again, this is in my mind a very analytical exercise to inform decision making. It's not decision making itself. But in order to make decisions about where solar should go and might go or might need to go. This exercise will be meaningful to move that conversation forward. So, again, our proposed process here with the committee is to today present and discuss these several possible methods that Steve and I came up with, with regard to assessing and coming to some reasonable estimate for sort of what the projected solar needs are for hosting capacity hosting in Amherst in the 2050 time lock in the 2050 time horizon and using a number of different approaches, three different approaches we came up with, which will go over and set and then over the next couple weeks or four weeks, I guess, till the next meeting. We can Steve and I particularly can sort of crunch those numbers through these methodologies and then come up with this recommendation back to ecac for discussion of what of what we might move forward as a committee with regard to solar capacity hosting scenarios that would then be provided to the town and to the solar assessment consultant. One thing I might mention from the get go. Also for discussion, but Steve and I decided to remove the university and the two colleges from our analysis and and and hosting scenarios. Both in terms of the land area and their energy loads and their end of populations associated with those entities, mainly because each of our three institutions have their own carbon mitigation plans. And pretty much aligned with the state and the town. And so, if, if, if we focus our ideas to focus on the town, separate from the institutions, do what we need to do understand what we what what we might need to do as a town separate from the universities. In terms of solar hosting and then leave leave the, the carbon mitigation up to the universities and the colleges through their own carbon mitigation plans. Okay. So we came out with three approaches to estimating the solar needs or shares for Amherst and for to meet both Amherst. The goals, as well as the Commonwealth 2050 goals for decarbonization. The three methods which I'll go in a little bit more detail on each of these in the subsequent slides was what one to look at our energy, particularly our electricity usage in the town of Amherst separate from the universities and colleges this is available to us from 2017, I believe it is a greenhouse gas inventory and use a method to extrapolate that to 2050. The second is to really look at the Commonwealth 2050 roadmap. They have made projections in their along their road map on that along their path, the carbonization pathways to what they would project solar capacity needs would be for the Commonwealth to contribute to that decarbonization. And we have a method based on a couple of different ways of of calculating our share of that capacity, and then similarly also based on the Commonwealth decarbonization roadmap. They have also provided some projections for how much solar would need to be. The estimate would need to be cited on land. This is above and beyond what they project through aggressive use of the built environment. But what would be left would be on land, they have some projections from their 2050 decarbonization roadmap. And again, we can look at that. So those projections and make some estimates for Amherst based on our share of that. So let me go through these three in a little bit more nuance I guess. Again, the first one is to extrapolate our own Amherst data for townwide electric use from the present day or I should say 2017 is the green most recent greenhouse gas inventory. And that we have to work with but pretty good data on electricity consumption and can separate out the university and the colleges. And so we have that data. It's from my understanding is from from the utility aggregated for all ratepayers in Massachusetts so it's pretty decent data to work with what it does not consider is how much more electricity, we may need by 2050 if we Lori and all of us are successful in convincing everybody to electrify their heating, as well as their transportation, which is as reasonable assumption or we want to assume that for the 2050 time frame. We do have analysis on that. Again that the state had done to estimate that that process of electrification statewide would result in a more than doubling of our electricity usage. If we are our suggestions in our methodology just assume we're going to double our electricity use from the current time to 2050 to represent that the carbon that the electrification. And, and then, and then the, the statewide decarbonization plan assume obviously solar is not the only contribution of renewable energy to generate our electricity. There's also the large scale hydro offshore wind and so forth. But they do project that that the contribution of solar would be about 25 to 30% of that total. So again we can use that figure to estimate mass Amherst renewable solar generation to meet our electric load to be 25 to 30% of our electric load. And then we can calculate the solar capacity that would be needed to meet that electricity need over at least over an annual timeframe. So that's one methodology that we've have identified and sort of have the data together to sort of crunch the numbers. There are some some assumptions here. But again it's pretty robust data with regard to the electricity use today. It doesn't speak anything about potential population growth in or not in Amherst, and so forth but the idea here is not to make precise calculations or estimates because there's no need. There's no suggestion that any, any of this is going to be precise in 2050. But to come out with a number of different data points or ideas and then use those to try to sort of suggest a low, medium and high capacity amounts across across these different methodologies that we would then move forward with the the technical methods. So this, and let me I, if, if best I can just go through the methodologies and then we can open up for discussion. The second methodology, as I mentioned was to calculate our share of what Massachusetts total solar capacity goal for 2050 would be based on their 2050 roadmap. Now the roadmap, you know the roadmap is not just one singular row but a number of different pathways to get to the same endpoint, depending on future uncertainties in the future and how things sort of roll out. But they do have a, so they have a range of protected solar capacity needed for to meet the 2050 goal but they have a sort of a base base case. I forget what they call that scenario but the, the all, all, all, all policy or something. Scenario, but we can look at the range of what's being projected across a different scenarios. A lot more soldiers needed if offshore wind or large scale hydro doesn't come through as much as as those were being projected and so forth. So what to calculate our share fair share of that capacity. And there's two different ways that we can really look at this, maybe others and happy to hear others, but one is sort of based more on our, the, our population relative to the math, the total Massachusetts population. That's one way to look at it. That brings up issues with regard to, is that assuming, you know, we have much denser less dense population in Amherst than than Boston does. So another way to look at this is more. And but we have more more probably more dense population than many of our neighboring towns. And the other way to look at it is more, you know, in terms of our share is by land area, given that solar is kind of more land, the resource primarily is land or rooftops and so forth but so that's that's two ways to look at it and we can slice it and dice it both ways and see what type of numbers we come out with and see what sort of rain ranges we those methodologies provide. And then the third is, is, is a little bit similar in terms of using the state, state data, and then looking at our fair share based on either population or, or land area, but a little different in that the state in their decarbonization roadmap, you know, did specifically provide some information with regard to their projections on on the estimated number of acreage not so much capacity but acreage of ground mounted solar that would be needed. In addition to their projections of maximizing rooftop development. I would caveat that by saying that I think the state is. I wouldn't say necessarily reconsidering but recalculating to some extent, and going through as folks know they're going through a process of their own statewide technical potential study, which I think will better enable them to make to make these projections but nonetheless, in the time frame that we're working under right now. This is some data that we have to work with from the, from the state analysts and and roadmap. And so they have, again, a bit of a range, depending on which, which pathway of the acreage across across the Commonwealth that would most likely be needed for land ground mounted solar. That doesn't mean all in the forest or on farm fields and also includes other lands like brown fields and landfills and so forth but it's, it's beyond the built environment put it that way. And so we can also look at that and make some some some a method methodology to then you know estimate or calculate what our share of that land would be based on our either either either our proportion by population or by land area. Notably, that is only a portion of the solar capacity that the state is estimating we need for the roadmap, but does give us sort of this data point with regard to land based solar in particular. So those were the three methods with with data that we have to work with that Steve and I came up with, and we can, you know, we weren't really, we were sort of working with the numbers, and not really settled, quite settled yet to exactly how to present to make the calculations and settle on on sort of these numbers yet so we want to have some additional time in the next few weeks to crunch those out and prepare them. But essentially, our idea then is to sort of bring these alternative approaches together. These approaches will separately generate estimates to inform inform, not not not recommend but inform. Those goals with regard to solar capacity hosting. And my guess is these different approaches will cover a range of of of estimated capacity needed. We will then seek to look at these estimate as this range of estimates somewhat holistically to support then a recommendation for a low, medium and high solar capacity solar capacity hosting scenarios for Amherst. Based on the range that we come out with with these with these estimates. And then the idea would be that the solar assessment consultant with with their GIS mapping that they would would will be doing over the course of the next number of months. We will with through the town, offer these scenarios, low, medium and high if it comes out that way of capacity we think we would like to figure out how we what what the opportunities are to host those capacities in Amherst. And it would be really up to the working with the solar consultant to then inform, use that analytical tool GIS tool to then inform us and the town and constituents on the range of possibilities given the limitations and opportunities, we have an Amherst of how that range of solar capacity could potentially be cited in in in town. You know, for any given solar capacity. There's many different ways that could be hosted it could be all on one type of siting it could be all on another but there may be constraints we only have so much of this. We only have so much of that. And then in those constraints and those opportunities have of how much built environment we have how much parking lots we have how much suitable land we have what would be reasonable range. These illustrative ways in which these capacities could be distributed in different is around Amherst around the town and different solar siting different solar sites. So that's that, and that's the that's what Steve and I sort of came up with to offer to ecac for your input and thoughts and rec and suggestions as we go forward to, you know, try to put these capacity scenarios together that ecac itself can can can move forward as recommendations to the, to the town. So I'll stop there. And maybe happy to hear anything first from Steve if he wants to add, add to that. No, nothing to add I think let's see if there's any questions from ecac about the methods. Yeah. This is a lot of good work. Steve and Dwayne. Thank you. I can, I can bring that back up if we need to but easier to see. Yeah, just to clarify and just make sure I understand it. You're proposing to take three methodologies. And then for each of those three do a high medium and low scenario, and then conform all that or are you trying to pick a method, the preferred methodology, or something else. I think for each methodology we would put in a range of data that we see in the roadmap and the affiliated reports. And so for each methodology we would get a range, but that range would be just based on the different estimates say of total solar capacity that the reports say some of the reports sometimes say one value and then a newer reports as a slightly different value. So we would try to pull out that range of values say for total solar capacity, run that through and get a high and a low for a particular method. I imagine a chart that shows three bars that show the range of acreage needed solar capacities in terms of megawatts but also convert that to acreage needed for each of these three methods. And that'll get us a better idea of what we're looking at. And then for that we'll come back to you all and we'll then discuss what that high, low and medium. To provide to the consultants would be. Yeah, and I would agree with that I would not. My, my, my thought is not to necessarily tie our low, medium, high to any one methodology. Because, you know, different people might want to select different method, think different methodologies are better, better ways of going about it. But if we can, and Steve was fidgeting a bar graph I was visiting a scatter plot of, you know, maybe, you know, eight or 10 different estimates that come out, come out from these three different scenarios. And then, you know, if they're if they're sort of cover a range, then we sort of go, you know, one side middle and the other side as sort of a low, medium and high. So all of all of your methodologies and come kind of come out with three, three numbers. Yeah, that again that are not necessarily tied to any one method, but cover the cover the range. Yeah, and all with the calf. Yeah, we got to see what it looks like when we get to the other side. And then, and then figure out how best to go about it. What was the, I'm sorry, Jesse, go ahead. I'm just gonna say when you get to the end, if you want to turn it into a graphic that is more user friendly. Feel free to shoot me any data. I think we've got some capacity in the office here that like plotted on a map or turn it into households or something we could kind of do some translations. I think that's where this is headed or if it's just some hard science that's going to the committee that we don't need to make it user friendly. Yeah, I mean, I, again, this exercise is not to suggest it should be on. It should be this capacity should be cited on on in any in any particular way that's going to be the second phase. The, the, the technical potential resource mapping from the consultant to help us then then look at at how, how these different hosting capacities could, or ranges of how they could be cited in within the town. Yeah, so I was thinking when we were talking about fresh and I know we've talked about this quite a bit for proposals B and C. You're going to have two scenarios, essentially low, medium, high for proposal B for using current population data and a low, medium, high youth for current land data, and you're going to do the same for proposal C as well. So basically you're going to end up with 15 total numbers, right. It could be I'm not sure where you're coming out with low, medium, high with each of the different methodologies. So I was thinking you would have a low. Okay, I guess, when you come out of each proposal, you're going to have a specific number, and you're going to say you're going to create a range for low, medium, high or These aren't, I wouldn't, these different methodologies are not proposals they're just different methodologies, analytical methodologies to help ecac in the town to grapple with the question of how much solar is reasonable for Amherst to strive to host. Again, based on either different methodologies their energy use our fair share of what the state capacity needs are where a fair share of the state of the state expectation of what ground mounted solar might need to be across the state. Each of those, each of those methodologies have assumptions as Steve mentioned methodologies within the reports that we're drawing from, as well as, you know, some uncertainties about, you know, even uncertainties about what our, what our population is compared to the, the commonwealth, there's, you know, different, we can consider different ways to consider our population given our student body, and so forth so there may be, you know, within each of those methodologies, as well as data coming from the roadmap which is a range of data. They will will in each methodology will consider a range of data, each one coming out with a capacity. And I'm not sure if they're going to be three in each one but they'll be several in each one to sort of cover the range of of uncertainty or projections that the state has, has, has offered. And, and, and all those results will then be sort of commingled together as these different methodologies in my mind we can sort of separate them in different symbols so you can see which one came from which, which methodology, and to sort of use those to try to come to some reasonable consensus or thought in terms of here's a low medium and high range that we, we want to at least as an analytical exercise see how that would fit into Amherst, the town of Amherst in terms of Yes, Steve has a, I knew you were drawing some. So this is what I'm thinking. Yeah, just conceptually methods A, B and C, each one of those will provide a range and hopefully they'll be. And then we can pick if you can see across the bottom. Yeah, we might not pick the lowest of the low but we might pick something close to the low end of the low. So three values would be low, medium, high based on the overlap in the extension of the three different methodologies like that. And each of these bars would be different assumptions about are using different inputs from the roadmap, or perhaps different assumptions about future population. So our chart might explain why there's a range for method A and why there's a range for method B, but then the net result would be done. Yes, that is the bottom medium and high. I'm sorry it's done. You guys agree. We'll send that to the consultants. And then you'll install it. Sure. That'll be a lagging indicator. Okay. So, you want our feedback today on the different methodologies, or any other methodologies, or any other things that might also be asked of the consultant. And then you're going to crunch numbers based on reports to show us what, you know, maybe we'll say one of those similar methodologies should be scrapped. So you won't do crunch those numbers. Is that that's the kind of feedback you want. Otherwise, we would have just come to us with the numbers for all of that. All of those, maybe not 15 possibilities but Yeah, if you guys say that you don't like the assumption in methodology a where we're starting with current or 2017 electric data, you don't like extrapolating that out to 2050s like now now we don't that doesn't seem reliable. If we could use method a, we could use methods B and C, or likewise maybe you consensus comes out here that we don't like the approach of ratioing Amherst population to Massachusetts population methods B and C both rely on that. If you are collectively we're uncomfortable with that approach, then we're stuck with method a, perhaps, maybe we come up with a different method. We're thinking caps back on and see if we can come up with different methods. So yeah so take a look at those assumptions associated and see if you're comfortable or not with them and let us let us know. I'm hoping that maybe some of the public attendees might have some other ideas or some suggestions that they can relate to us at the public comment at the end of the meeting. And just to clarify the discussion that you want right now is about some of those general questions like, how do we like using population how do we like using landmass. And perhaps you could remind us of the other major question I think that would be a good way for us to go about this discussion. Or any other ways of slicing and dicing this up. Again, I think the substantial assumption also with the method a which was based on our electricity load was one doubling this for 2050 for electrification but also, you know going with the state assumption that 25 I think the 30% of our electricity statewide will come from that's that's that may be a reason why Smith but does that mean that number should apply to Amherst as well. If there's any thoughts or suggestions otherwise, you know that that would be great I think the, the, what we do need is some analytical methodology to get to some scenarios we want to use this technical this consultant to help us envision how that capacity could be hosted in Amherst to help inform the conversation and decision making from there. Yes. Yeah, so I mean, it sounds like this is, this is both a scientific and a philosophical question and right one is an analytic methodology and one is which one feels right, which one do we like. I mean that's so my sense is, I would not get rid of anything in fact if anything add another this sounds like a classic example of like you'd have mutually canceling errors. You know, a sense of what this number should be and be able to back that sense up with some data but it's very much these this is like back of a very big envelope if I'm not mistaken here. We're just you're trying to like backup, you know, people have made all kinds of sweeping generalizations about numbers you're going a step further for the town and say to back up some numbers but there's still kind of made up based on myriad assumptions that will change and therefore like the more the merrier I think as far as the sort of perceived accuracy, we looked at all these different ways. If you go this direction it's low if you go this direction it's high therefore we think somewhere in the middle makes sense I mean, I can't. I wouldn't take anything out as far as methodologies they only. They work. It seems like they work together. And I think more methodology is the better to see a point yeah five seems like you've done your due diligence we're not make we're not just big solar coming in and running rough shot here we like actually done some math, based on some values and some philosophies and and they all come out in this range now if there's a huge outlier. Yeah. It's going to be interesting. But until that happens. I'm excited to see your number. And we'll obviously also take into account how much Amherst already has cited, which is not. It is, you know, it is a, it's a, it's a start along along these ways. It's actually pretty, pretty impressive. Yeah, Laurie if I can call them. I wanted to also agree that this looks like a reasonable cross section of methodologies to use and I also wanted to be a little careful I Jesse. You know, I'm comfortable with error bars with the idea of uncertainties. Hopefully these things aren't wildly off that that point of putting a range is that you know the range is stating that this is where we reasonably think we're going to end up. If we use this method to calculate what we should contribute. So, I think, you know, educating the public, I think in the process will be educating the public a little bit about measurements and uncertainties. But, you know, hopefully, the uncertainties are sufficiently large that, you know, we will fall somewhere in that range is where this method would bring us. I think it's quite as a shot. Jesse said something that made it sound like it was a bit of a crapshoot and it's a little better than that. It's six o'clock. Anyone have any additional comments to add. I just think it would be cool because it sounds like a lot of this is going to happen in like, I don't know, Excel or our Python or however this like. So, so if it's a spreadsheet, I like, I would encourage that to be formatted in such a way that it's clear what assumptions led to what numbers, and then that just be available. So if I like want to download the Excel spreadsheet and I'm just like a citizen who's not, or a person who's not on ecac and like play with some numbers, I can just do that and it's like, if you kind of know how to use Excel you can kind of see how some of this plays out if you want to make your own assumptions or change assumptions or, or so on so I would just suggest that it be like heavily commented and well formatted and then made available. Yeah, even the large numbers of geeks in this town that might be totally yeah. Yeah, or even not in this town like for other towns would be like an incredibly cool little like calculator, you know what I mean. Yep, yep. Thanks. So I think the consensus then is to use all the assumptions and come up with this data that we can look at. Yeah, the marvels will come back. I think, let's see. Yeah, I was going to say that so the consensus, then is to look at all the data, all the assumptions put them together. Let's look at the data and then, yeah, figure out what how to approach it. Does that make sense for everybody. How soon can we get this spreadsheet out to everybody and not the spreadsheet this PowerPoint that Dwayne has put together, because you might come up with some ideas after you've looked at it a little more closely. And I think if you do that in the next few days this next week or so then Dwayne and I can take any comments that might come to you in that time. I just forwarded out Steve as soon as the meeting's over. And I'll also post it right into the packet I can do that right away in fact the presentations that we have that came in last minute will be loaded into the packets I think I was able to put lorries but I didn't have Dwayne's or mine which is pretty small but Yeah, I'll go out. Perfect then yeah then read then read it send your comments I guess the Stephanie and Vasu and they'll forward them to Dwayne and me. Andra closing comments maybe in a minute. I have a possible just gonna throw it out there. Brought it up before but as a possible methodology for slicing and dicing is wealth embers wealth relative to the rest of the state. That would be very interesting. And if you know I don't know how this could be done but some members of our community are wealthy and some are very much not. We, you know in this area, we have a higher percentage of children on reduced or free lunch. It's like 45%. So, I don't know how you how you work, something like that in. But just wanted to throw it out as I'm thinking something like median income for the town of Amherst. The thing median income doesn't get at it. I know. It gets out. I mean, our gross regional product would be another approach but I don't know if that if that's data that's available right to the town and I don't know if the environmental justice stats, I thought that there are some statistics in that chart that you could utilize. We can look at that I just, I'm just trying what what is the, what would be the method. What would you, what would we do with that. Sort of waiting factor. Yeah, it's just like your population and land and you have wealth. So, if we're wealthier, we should host more proportionally or we're. Yeah, the question is what if you cannot what if you don't have the land like you. I was thinking about how I'm assuming that people are working on making solar more and more efficient, but the cutting edge is more expensive at any given time. So, maybe if we're wealthier and want to save on how much land we use. We should go with the more expensive, more efficient, you know, so, so it would come out somehow in the options as a value. Yeah, I think it's complex. It's a good one but it's very complex. We can give it some more thought I grappled with that a little bit and I haven't quite figured out a way to do it, but we can give it some more thought if you guys come up with more concrete ideas or know of a data source about wealth. Across the state that we might be able to use that would be a great help. I wonder if there's a correlation between how much energy we use and wealth. There is wealthy people use more energy have a bigger carbon footprint, in which case it might come out in, in that way, looking at actual usage. Yeah, but percent of the state. Yeah, I mean a little bit. I don't know exactly how I mean Amherst, we have relatively little industry, or even commerce, compared to. I think the state average. I don't know if that's true but certainly compared to more, you know, 495 and in. I don't think residential usage, you know per resident, but I'm not, but we can we can look I'm not sure if that that is available. We can look at that. Still a final thoughts we have. Oh no I was just really I was wondering if maybe if the fair share amendment passes if that would be a data set that would be available, but similar to like in that's just income that's not that's not wealth. Which I don't think is, is necessarily the best way of pulling that data. Alright I would say if there's more suggestions send it over to Steve or Dwayne in the next couple weeks or next week. Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, great great conversation. Thanks everybody. All right let's go to the next topic we have a few more. So the next one is around the strategy execution and I covered that so I don't think we have anything else to discuss there and then we'll jump to the open meeting law. So, okay, definitely if you want to. I have just a few slides and I'm going to make this really super quick because I'd rather get to my report more so than even this particular issue. But what's come up repeatedly over the years has been the ability of members to work together. And there's been a lot of different viewpoints on an interpretations of what means and, and who can work together. So I got clarification from Athena O'Keefe who is clerk to the council and very much the town expert on open meeting law. I, I trust her feedback implicitly so I'm going to start with a few things. So just give me one moment and I'll share my screen. I'm sorry to interrupt number five on the agenda is review strategy execution. Yeah, that's the thing we covered at the start of the meeting where. So very quickly. I just provided you with some hyperlinks to the open meeting law and just sort of help get you to some sections that I thought would make it. Things that are probably more relevant for you. This is the, the main link to open meeting law. There's a lot of information. So, from this main site I pulled out some of these other hyperlinks. The guide is really what you want to look at. It's just your very quick summary it's been sent to you before. You've probably had it you probably look through it. The problem is it's it is very generic it doesn't cover any you know every scenario which is virtually impossible, but it does give you a kind of a good summary and general guidance. The frequently asked questions I am going to open this hyperlink real quick. So, there's a whole list of frequently asked questions and the ones that I wanted to direct you to that probably seem the most relevant are the questions about public bodies. And then the questions about open meeting law deliberation and electronic communication I thought those were questions that are not sharing. Okay, well, if you go if you go to this. Sorry about that. I don't know what happened. I'm going to stop sharing and open up again. Sorry about that. You'll make sure we get that slide right. Yes, I'm going to send I'm going to send all of the slides out after this meeting and I will post them in the meeting packet online. So are you seeing this now. I'm not seeing that we weren't seeing I think you clicked on the link. Yeah, I'm not going to even bother with the link then I just don't want to take up the time just all I want to mention is that when you open up this particular link it's going to give you a list of questions. Frequently asked questions and what I wanted to direct you to are the ones about the public meeting in general for public bodies. So the one about electronic communications. And then I wanted to point out this last link will open up the access to the trainings that are coming up and there's one in one in October one in November and one in December. So there are trainings to attend. I'm even thinking that I would like to actually sign up for one of these again myself it's been a while. But they can be really useful. And the town. Discussed having another open meeting law training session that would be facilitated probably by cobalt men and page which is our town legal counsel for committees so for not just easy AC but for other committees in town. Sorry, I'm having some technical difficulties here. I'm going to stop sharing and just switch and sorry. Okay. So Stephanie one thing that I was trying to read the open meeting law to if you if there is a seminar that you're aware of, you can forward that to everybody. And that's okay. Yeah, that's fine. That can be fine. I wanted to just what I wanted to point out and I'm going to now share some correspondence from an email with Athena that I wanted to direct people to. So just bear with me one second I'll share this screen. So, the thing that we get into and I'm trying to discuss open meeting law is going down an incredible rabbit hole. I have gone down this rabbit hole with Athena on things where we have gone back and forth. And the more we communicated, the more confusing it got. So, I just want to cover the scenario that we most run into that really has the simplest guidance. So I'm going to focus on this one, which is just that, you know, when we have more than one member meet with another member so Vasu directs more than one person to work on something. And if you say he said Dwayne and Steve, go work on this together. That is a subcommittee. If he directs Dwayne to go work on it by himself. And Dwayne reaches out to Steve to work on this with him this issue whatever it is with him. And then Dwayne comes back and presents it to the committee as he's done. That is not a violation of open meeting law. Now it's not to say that you cannot work in groups of two or multiple members, you absolutely can do that. Vasu can direct you to do that. However, then you are a subcommittee, and you are subject to the guidance and rules of open meeting law, which means it has to be posted you have to take minutes. You know, and it has to be at this point now we're recording our meeting so we'd probably want to have it recorded as well. This guidance is from our legal counsel so as much as I greatly value and appreciate all of your viewpoints, your interpretation of me open meeting law does not stand because you're a committee that is a town committee. It's KP laws guidance that we have to follow. So the reason why is because we can be subject to a civil penalty of up to $1000 for each intentional violation. Now how do you define that as an intentional violation is that I have communicated with you all and let you know that this is the case this is the town's interpretation and if you choose to ignore that and then work outside of a meeting. And Vasu directs you to work with a few people, or you on your own, reach out to five people. And so you've exceeded a quorum, and there's six of you that you've reached out to. You're collaborating on the same thing there's a quorum, that's also going to open you up to a violation of open meeting law. So first you have to be careful you don't want to exceed a quorum in your outreach you want to keep it. I would always say just go shy of a quorum. By at least one member, and you don't want to each talk to each other. You probably want to just communicate through that main member who's been identified as being a sort of leader on a task. And you also want to ensure that the members that you reach out to don't then themselves reach out to other members right so Lori reaches out to three people. But you don't want those three people to reach out to the additional members because then again, you're in violation of open meeting law. I'm trying to keep this as sort of basic and as simple as I can because like I said, it can easily bring you down a rabbit hole. So I just wanted to clarify this just so that we all know. We're clear about it and that we don't run in, run a foul of open meeting law. So, again, you just can't be. Vasu can't name more than one person as leading a task and if that person then after the meeting wants to reach out that's fine. So, and the other thing is if you all wanted to go off on your own and create some whole other group. Outside. That's an advocacy group. You could, you could do that. But, but the work that you do for ECAC specifically has to be open, you know, for transparency to the public. So that's all. So if there is information that we're sharing about a lot of the past about some training that can be emailed to everybody. We don't have to email it to you and have you forward it to everybody correct. Um, you can. Yeah, I mean you can what you want to be clear and that the best thing to do when you're sending out information like that is to make sure you write do not reply. Like no one should reply. Do not reply all because the minute you reply all if someone has a comment to what you've sent and sends it to the whole group, you're potentially in violation. So you just want to make sure that you're not, you know, just, you can send things out but no one should be replying to it and there should not be any back and forth about what you're sending at all. And you should always copy me when you send something out to the group. And, you know, whoever does. I know it's complex and it slows things down but it's the law so. Well, but there's a reason it's, it's, you know, it's to make sure that decisions are being made in the public view so that people can weigh in and you know we've got people that, you know, attend and want to weigh in and other people you know other people can watch the recordings so it's not like they're always necessarily here but they're watching and they wouldn't get the information if they don't have the option. There's a lot that I could say but I really want to get to our updates, so then given time. I won't but as the new head of work area state and regional issues. Anyone who is interested in what's happening in changing updating given meeting law to, you know, the 20th century, really, in terms of electronic access and true access to be able to participate in government. I think about a lot and. Yeah, I could use help thinking about what might be done in terms of advocacy. Okay, Stephanie I know you have a lot of updates though. I can do them quickly, and I've narrowed my list because I gave you some of it earlier. So, the big thing that I wanted to share is that we have a contract with gza geo environmental for doing the solar assessment. So, they would like to be on the schedule for your next meeting on the 26th. They are starting with solar survey list of questions for a solar survey to go out to department heads and then probably the general public as well. They wanted to review those questions both with you and the solar bylaw working group. The solar bylaw working group will have them a week before you. They also want to be able to just give kind of a brief overview and presentation to you as well but it would not be for the whole meeting. It, you know, again, because we only have limited funding and limited amount of their time that they can commit to meetings. We just want to sort of chip away at this a little bit and give them an opportunity to first introduce themselves, and then to talk a bit about what they're doing and about the survey questions. So, starting with that, they're going to take the questions get your input get solar bylaw working groups input to the questions. Maybe tweak them based on your feedback and then they would submit them to department heads we would have a department head meeting that I would work with them with on. We would present the information to select department heads it probably won't be all of the department heads they're not all necessarily relevant to this topic but we would certainly have probably a good fair number of the department heads to present to. So that's the first thing. I mean Stephanie yeah we can add them to the weeks agenda. Next meeting. So, and again it might be only at the very most I would say 20 minutes I don't think they're going to want to take too much more time than that. I also wanted to let you know that I submitted applications proposals for two fellows for the summer of 23 one for the greenhouse gas inventory update and one for a municipal building inventory with creation of a timeline to change out fossil fuels. Also, still working on that entering a contract with utility mark for the fleet greenhouse gas inventory in timeline for conversion to EVs. And let's see, I think. Oh, and the other thing. So, when we were, I think I told you like over a month or so ago we had met with consultants, engineering consultants to identify some projects for green communities grant application and sadly, they did not get me the report in time so that I could not apply for this round of green communities funding however. I was not totally lost because we can apply for the spring round. We do have the you know we do have the information they provided so we have information it just means we have to wait till the spring round, but also one of the things that we discussed when we had a meeting with the consultant was which buildings we were going to focus on for heat pump installations and I brought up town hall I asked where we were with our with the town hall and it sounds like we actually the building is well insulated and it's actually poised for some heat pump technology. However, the consultants said that they weren't able to really come up with anything I don't really buy that I think they just felt pressured for time. So we could reach out to see the clean energy extension and also been while, and see if we can get somebody in before the spring to actually get that data that we could use because we could, we could easily make town hall our first fossil fuel free building. And that would so many reasons that that would really be a great achievement so that's really kind of my goal for green communities funding. I think that's number one. We do have other projects they're smaller. I think some of those we can cover with other funding sources so that's kind of my punch list that I have off the top of my head today. Thanks Stephanie. And then Jesse. No, I just didn't want my hands. Oh, Jesse and Steve. That's super exciting. Just for me to wrap my head around it. Do you can. What is the current space conditioning heating and cooling system serving town hall right now. So we have forced hot air, and we have a chiller unit out back so we could actually just like replace the chiller unit with other technology. So we have a gas fired furnace and a chiller. I think oil actually. And furnace and a chiller. Yeah. Yes. So I think we could change those out. I mean we're already drawing in there. You know the air exchange I feel it all the time it's right over my desk I feel like there's ways we could definitely tie into the existing and make this work and Jeremiah, I met with a facilities manager and he was the one who, when I asked him about it he was sort of thought about it from and he said yeah we could probably do that and I said okay can we move this to the front of the line. So, because we're looking at months in library to and I think you know, absolutely we should be doing months in library there's no question, but I just think it would be really nice to sort of make this the first building. So, yeah, so it's just a, again, it's just a matter of finding the right technology and it's, I know it's out there, I know it's out there. So, I'm, we just have to get the right information and we have to have people who know where to find it so again I look to Dwayne and his team of folks. Steve you had a question. Not a question I have updates I guess I jumped a gun there a little bit. And question. What can we do to get our to get KP law to make it a priority to move the joint powers agreement for the CCA KP laws not the problem. They already responded Rick responded. It's, it's more waiting on Northampton's legal console to respond. We've had KP laws response a while ago. And Chris is now leading that effort so I am stepping back from cracking my whip about it I've I've done. And I know Chris reached out. I saw his outreach communication so we don't need to go back to KP law to. It's like ready to go. Well, I think it was a matter of KP law suggestions and Northampton's legal console reviewing their, the last edits that they had suggested. And I, I don't know what I don't know what the disconnect is and I don't I don't want to spend time at this meeting getting into all of that I just want to say that it's not KP law that's holding this up and I, I suggested to Chris Mason that he reach out to the mayor. And see if the mayor can move this along. That's that was my suggestion at this point. Thanks, Stephanie. Let's move on to easy I see member updates we don't have a lot of time so Steve. Okay, I'll do this quick. Mandy Joe from the CRC wrote to me just a couple of days ago and they are moving forward on the residential rental property bylaw developments. It's quite a major revamping to it. If you're interested in that there's the documents are available from the town on that. Right now they have sort of a placeholder for energy efficiency standards as part of the rental permit process. And they have some meetings coming up one is tomorrow CRC will be discussing this they'll be presenting a little bit of information to town council on the 17th of October, and then a public forum on the 24th. They're moving forward it'll probably not really become a formal draft until November but what I would like to do is to recommend in to Mandy and CRC that rather than adopting actual energy efficiency standards now that we take more of a data gathering approach, which is what we've talked about this in the past. The current draft has town inspectors doing what looks to be a pretty comprehensive inspection at least every three years, some cases five some cases one year of rental properties. That looks for quite a quite an extensive list I was surprised, including checking that outlets are correctly wired and that windows have latches and locks on them and such. What I'd like to propose is that inspectors do a quick building assessment that will help us one would be to confirm the age of the building, the type of fuels that are used for heating and cooling, the age and efficiency of the, of the HVAC and domestic hot water appliances. Perhaps a quick estimate if there's insulation and a qualitative assessment of air leakage. The inspectors can do that I think that would go a long ways towards helping us identify the buildings that will need help. And then suggest also as a recommendation to CRC that they have rental properties be required to get a mass save audit, an appropriate audit for the property size. And that might be something like within five years or every five years. As a third recommendation would be that the apartment complexes with five or more units, maybe it's seven or more units, larger units are required to report to begin to report aggregated energy use and energy use intensity. As part of the rental process so we can begin to collect that data, there's already many towns and cities in Massachusetts requiring the bigger buildings to report that kind of information. So those are the recommendations I love to make to CRC in the coming week or two for the energy efficiency component of the new rental registration bylaw. Thanks Steve. Any comments on that. I didn't get the second recommendation sorry. The second recommendation would be all rental properties are required to get a mass save audit within five years. Why, why five years. I don't know that seemed like a reasonable time to give people to do it. It could be sooner. We could say three. I don't think you can have them more often than that can you. That's good question. Yeah, maybe more often than every two years. Yeah, this was I guess the way I was thinking into that they would need, they could have a couple of years they would need to get it and report it as part of the rental permit process within five years. And I didn't think about whether we would the town would require an audit every five years that's not what I was thinking just at least one audit. That's not more than five years old. Something like that. Okay, I'll say three within three years. That sounds good. Three. Yeah. Thank you. All right, other member updates. Budget cycle is coming up so we, we have to figure out how we're going to propose as part of the agenda or part of our charges to plan and prioritize so how are you going to help the town prioritize actions and. Okay. Something that we need to discuss. And, and so that means we, we need to start preparing our annual report process to not just budget. Correct. Yeah. So I know Stephanie you send me some information on the budgeting process so take a look at it and see what we can do. Items in the car that we can push forward. I have another update I didn't see in my emails did the announcement go out to this group about the multi family retrofitting without displacement. To the group. Yes, I forwarded it. Thank you. Specifically for municipal officials. It's good geared towards their questions. So we are municipal officials turns out. Okay, so for the next agenda we have the consultant coming and then we have the two progress reports so for the progress reports we don't have to go over everything again it's what's changed since the last meeting that's that should be enough. And hopefully that can, we can be under two hours I was hoping be under one hour, but we'll see how it goes. So I guess that the draft minutes go out sooner. The people can see the items or perhaps also your summary of action items could go out sooner. Soon after, as a reminder for people. Yeah, that's right now it's all Stephanie so I can send one thing I can tell you is that with draft minutes it also depends on who's taking the minutes, how thorough and complete they are. I've had to spend time watching rewatching entire meetings, depending on who's taking minutes so, and it's not just this committee I spent four hours watching another committee's minutes last week to fill in the gaps. Everyone does them a little differently. Definitely. I would be, I would be very open to feedback. I want to make your jobs. So if I'm one of those people you feel free to email me separately. I think, and if anyone else is open to feedback, you're not going to step on any toes. Let's let's let's keep this easy for you so any anything that can help that. But also, it's our responsibility. And so we should read it and say, this was an important piece that was missed that needs to go in and not your responsibility. I mean, I feel like maybe a reasonable compromise is Stephanie just emailing out like three sets of minutes that are really good to model off of. Because like minutes taking I mean like, it's not like a taught skill do you know what I mean like it's helpful to have like a template. So I think if Stephanie just emails out like three really good minutes that didn't require rewatching meetings. That should be enough. Is it okay if I call somebody out right off the top to say who typically consistently has the best minutes that I have very little to do. Is that okay. Is everyone okay with that. Okay, yeah. Okay, I have to give the price to join. Nice. That surprises me because I've read other minutes, which I thought seems pretty clear here that Dwayne should just do all the It does put the pressure on for next time because I think I'm next. Well, I don't have any secret secret sauce I just, I literally, I don't know, I take the minutes and then just in real time and then send it to Stephanie like 10 minutes after the meeting. And she does some magic on it so I that surprises me Stephanie, but that sounds good. I've never considered myself a good note taker. Now they're, they're consistently good thank you. All right. Thanks Stephanie so let's open up to the public for comments. So Eric or Renee if either of you have a comment you can just virtually raise your hand. Okay. Eric ahead you can unmute. Can you hear me. Yes, we can. Thank you. Thank you so much for your continued hard work on helping to mitigate climate climate change on behalf of the town and the rest of the planet actually what I'm doing is in the work that has preceding is preceding the guiding the solar siding survey that whether I think Andrea just touch on it very briefly whether a consideration of forward looking consideration of the increased efficiency of solar panels is being considered. That's all I thank you very much I'd love. I think, I think at my last I made a comment a couple of weeks ago regarding a national renewable energy laboratory report that cited that Massachusetts can deal with almost 45 to 50% of its electrical needs through rooftop solar deployment. Steve indicated those that was old data, but I'm wondering but but but panels are getting more and more and more efficient. I've had panels on my house since 2014. And I know that they're not the most efficient panels anymore. So I'm wondering whether in your metrics is there's a, there's a way of including the increased efficiency of the technology as we move and I'm sure it is increasingly getting increasingly efficient very fast. Just if I can quickly respond I think embedded in that and I think what what I can look at is whether the state projections for capacity assumed any change in the efficiency of the panels, because that that would that would be important for us to know or not that it, that it doesn't make any assumptions and then we can look a little bit in terms of what the projections might look like in terms of greater efficiency. Great. Thank you very much and thanks again for your hard work. Thank you. Renee you can unmute yourself and go ahead. I did owe on what Eric said in terms of thanking you all for your hard work. I just have one quick thing. I'm wondering if you're also considering in the scenarios going forward about looking at this issue not just as Amherst share and not just as what is Amherst need to do are we thinking about it, it all in a regional way. We're thinking about working with the other towns with just being just looking at things just in a more regional way because then we may have greater alternatives on how we can find more disturbed land or just maximize our capacity by working with neighboring towns. So that's basically all I have to say and my usual question. How many people were listening before maximum and only down to three most of the meeting. Okay, thank you. And I saw six Stephanie but yeah. Oh, I don't know where you ever saw. I never had six. I only had four. And then we had three, it was the same people. Okay. Thank you because I'm I documented six. Yeah, another four. Thank you. And yeah, thank you run in Eric we're sticking around. I think running brings up a good point. Are we partner with other towns. I don't know if that's something to consider. I think it's very chair reached out to me and he was interested in being part of the education series so what's he doing for solar. I don't know. I can send you contacts and I don't know if that would help at all. It's a good point. Okay. So we have the time for. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. We went 11 minutes over, but hopefully this won't happen again because we've gone over the meat of the slides for the four pillars. So we'll keep it short and sweet. Hopefully. Going forward. All right. Thank you all.