 So the meeting is now being recorded. Great. Hi, everybody. So we will start with reviewing the minutes and also identifying the minute taker. Who was last? Darcy, right? Darcy was the last, yes. Minute taker. OK, yes. So then, Sarah, I think that means you're the next to go. That's OK with you today. Sure, it has to be, right? Yeah. I mean, you could put somebody else. I'm staying. So then let's go ahead and review the minutes from last time. Is Darcy here? Is Darcy coming? No, Darcy, no, our son is getting married this week. And so he she's not available. I think it's being held at her house, too. So they could all come. Well, I hope they have weather like today. Does anybody when they're ready want to motion to approve the minutes or have any questions or comments? I'll move to approve. I'll provide a second. That means you want me to do the vote or? Sure, sure. I well, I can do the vote. Sorry. All right. So, Drucker? Yes. Rose? Roof? Abstain. Breger? Yes. Selman? Yes. Der? Yes. All right, great. You want me to let me see if I can get the agenda up for you. OK, can you see that? No, I can just see your folder. OK, I never understand why it does that. OK, I'll try again. Sorry. That's OK. I think next up is public comment. Are there any public attendees? I think that works, Stephanie. OK, good. We don't have any public in attendance. OK. And then staff updates? Sure. So the one grant funding opportunity that I think that's coming up that I mentioned to you all was the BRIC grant, the federal grant, which really focuses on resiliency in infrastructure. And I had mentioned something at one point about dam safety, and then I said we sort of switched gears and are maybe looking to do solar siting. And I spoke with Andra the other day and Jim Newman. And I think what we're going to try to do is to put something forward for townwide solar siting. So we're going to ask niche engineering to maybe help draft something that sort of starts the process. It wouldn't be like a full blown report because, frankly, we just don't have the kind of funding for that. But to do something that would sort of move us in the direction of having material to apply for the grant. So I'm going to follow up with Jim. Jim, I'm going to follow up with you after this meeting, maybe tomorrow if you've got a moment when we check in actually to speak about this specifically. So there are two other projects that the town is proposing. One is a stormwater project. One is a bridge project. So this isn't the only one. I don't know if the town, at this point, I'm not clear if the town is intending to put all three forward or we're just trying to sort of go through and see which seems like the most well-rounded proposal. I haven't reached out to Northampton and Pelham, but I was hoping that maybe there might be a way that we could get them involved to look at regional solar siding as part of the CCA effort. And that might make the application a little more interesting, especially if we pair it with battery storage. So that's just a sort of update on some of what I'm working on at the moment. And I've got a lot of reporting. Everything I have just a lot of reporting to do right now to different agencies. That sounds exciting. Not the reporting part, but no. The reporting part is not. But the grand part is exciting. It's a lot, though. So we'll have to see. I mean, I'm just I'm not again, I'm not clear what the town's thinking is right now in terms of if they're trying to prioritize out of the three projects. So it's not necessarily means we're actually going forward with this one. So I'm not clear yet. And I'll hopefully know sooner than later, certainly by the next meeting, I would know. Can I ask a question? Sure. So Dwayne, I remember that you had some kind of solar site study that a student did. Am I right? That was a while ago. That being said, I was going to offer after Andra went, which I think might be more helpful. Just something for you to look at as sort of an example. Maybe it's not an exact example, Stephanie, but we do have for the NREL, National Renewable Energy Lab grant that we have that you're involved with and some others maybe. They're draft reports, but we do have these solar solar assessment reports, solar siding assessment reports for three towns, pilot towns that could serve as an example, I guess, for you. They're drafts. I don't want them distributed, but you might be happy to send them to you or they might be on the NREL box that we have. I think you're part of that. I am. And I haven't been able to attend more recently, because I was only peripherally involved in that. But yeah, we can follow up, Dwayne, because I definitely wanted to check in with you about that and ways we could maybe use some of that information to bolster the application. Andra's point also, I do recall we did have a student. We had several projects that just students that are working in the GIS course. They're always looking for projects. I think we had a student take a project on for us on solar siding in Amherst. So let me dig back in and see if there's anything that came out of that that would be worth sharing. Great. That would be very helpful. Thank you. And I haven't looked into solar siding work in the past, but does it typically, or is there a way for it to include some sort of environmental justice element? And I'm thinking about it, because I was listening into a talk today about a proposed substation siding in Chelsea. And it just made me think, how are we going to equitably move forward with energy siding projects? Is it sort of taking a look at the region or the town and figuring out where things have been sited before, making sure we're siding other things in the places they haven't been sited? I don't know. I'm just wondering if there's a best practice there for how that's being done equitably moving forward. And if that's something we can incorporate. I can't speak for the past. And I don't know. Duane, I thought there was sort of a piece of that in the work that you all were doing. I seem to recall for the NREL project. Two aspects to that on both sides, maybe. One is there's a lot of interest in solar equity to site solar equitably where people want it on roofs and so forth so that low income and others can have access to the benefits of solar on their own roofs behind the meter, if you will. So there's that aspect where you actually want to find mechanisms to get solar access for lower income, middle income, other equity dimensions, I guess. And but then there's also more, I think, what you were getting at, Laura, also you don't want to necessarily site larger scale solar projects in areas that unduly burden one don't abide by sort of the sense of environmental justice. And so that's an issue as well. And I don't know. I mean, there it's also the one thing we're working with on this NREL project is to the extent to which third party developers come in and site systems and reap all the large majority of the benefits, that doesn't really provide too much economic or environmental justice to the community. And we tend to have a fair amount of pushback on siting solar in your midst. But if solar siting and solar development can be done with really community-based so that the community is invested literally economically into the project and that they can benefit directly either through the CCA or through para-purchase agreements, net metering, and so forth, and through the rates of return of owning these projects, then I think the sense is that solar siting will be, there'll be more interest in potentially hosting solar within communities. And my hope is that we're not just sort of looking at rooftops that we're also looking at parking lots and I feel like there's plenty of parking lots around town. So I'm hoping that we're looking at that and I don't know of any brownfields off the top of my head in numerous, but sort of not the usual, for one thing, not just agricultural fields or if they are sited in agricultural fields, ways in which they'll be sort of a dual use in those locations so that they actually benefit the agricultural operation as well. And I know there have been some projects where that's been the case where they've actually worked with farmers, have worked with solar development to actually do something that is consistent with what they're doing agriculturally. Yeah, and the smart program has a substantial adder for that. We actually review applications that come in for that dual use with their agricultural colleagues in extension. So yeah, there's quite a few of those being proposed, not any maybe constructed yet, but that's just because of the pipeline of development pipeline. So that's all I have. Okay, great. Any ECAC member updates? I have one thing to raise. Which is about... So I learned about this through some of the investors that I work with in my roll-it series, but others may know of it from other ways. Sir Andrew, you probably are well aware, but there's the Attorney General of Massachusetts has filed a petition to the DPU. Asking them to come forward to open an investigation, I'm gonna read it from here. Open an investigation into potential changes to natural gas distribution operations to support the Commonwealth legislatively mandated greenhouse gas emission reductions. And so the investors were actually writing a note to say that as people that are invested in things in Massachusetts, they want this to go through and they want to see them come up with a path forward. And it got me thinking about sort of the topic that we've discussed in the past around, there's things that we need to do in Amherst and that we can do. And then there's a lot of things that need to happen at the state and national level and what role does our committee have or can have in making sure that's clear. So like what role could we have as a committee or could we ask the town to have as a committee of the town to like support this petition and to support other things like this where there's movement at the state level and a legislative level to help address things that will be imperative to us meeting our goals. Yes. So glad you brought that up. I actually was about to say something that was related. I think that we should consider one of our roles being writing letters for the council perhaps to sign or suggest that they vote in favor of certain legislation that kind of thing to at least get something to their attention or perhaps we could write letters ourselves if we had the town manager's blessing. So that would be a good thing to find out what would be appropriate. And I'd be very happy to kind of give the committee some ideas of things that are happening as they happen. Yeah, I think that's my fundamental question is what is appropriate and maybe not to say that what has been appropriate in the past doesn't mean we shouldn't come up with something new because we have to do what we need to do but what is the, could we, can we draft, can Amherst as a town because we have these goals that we've agreed on, do we have some obligation or ability to then reach out to the state level and say, hey, we support this work because it supports our town's climate action goals. Like I just don't know what the precedent is for that. Yeah, Stephanie. I was gonna say, I think you absolutely because you're the body that's been tasked with doing this work. So I think certainly if there's anything that might be controversial that you're unsure of, you as chair or in the future, whomever is chair can always reach out to the town manager just to inquire whether or not it would be okay. If that's appropriate, but then I would just say, always drafting a position. You can always draft a position, take a position and forward it on to the town manager and the council. And maybe you can either draft it on behalf of yourselves making the recommendation or you can draft it for the council and then they can vote whether they wanna move forward with it. But I think you're always as a committee can take a position on something that you're specifically working on, especially when it's regarding state policies and procedures. I think you always have a right to weigh in on those things. I like Andra's notion that the town council send it. I think that's, as elected officials, I think that's got some weight behind it. Then it becomes an official piece of legislation or resolution, which I think is gonna be one of the ways that the state will move forward. I was gonna mention one thing that has come up in the community choice segregation conversations. And that's a way that it looks like the DPU is not being very welcoming of greenhouse gas reductions or creative approaches. And so I'm thinking we might need to have that law rewritten so that it's required that CCA is for greenhouse gas reductions rather than the other way around having to prove your good intentions and dot your eyes and cross your T's, which is what they're doing right now to Boston. Okay, yeah, I think this is a place where we could start to take some action. And I think this will be an important piece to include in the climate action plan that this is, we haven't talked about it much since we've started the task groups, but I think this was always an overarching thought of our committee that we're not gonna be able to go out and do it on our own. I think we could start with this particular example and just say that, write something for the council to say as a town that has set a greenhouse gas goal for net zero emissions by 2050, we support the attorney general asking of DPU or we could even just say we need to make sure that DPU is to Andra's point, not being unwelcoming to GHG reductions or whatever we wanna say, but I think we could start to move in that direction sooner rather than later if folks agree. Okay, great. What about? I agree with that. I think that it would be more effective if we had specific elements in our Amherst Climate Action Plan that needed support from the legislature and focusing our attention on those statewide initiatives, the ones that directly impact Amherst. Yeah, I think that's a really good point, Steve. And I think recognizing things like even into transportation work, we're not gonna, as a town, we're not gonna be able to fully find our own public transportation system. Like that has to be state level and even federal level support and recognition of the importance of public transportation, not only for an equitable society, but also for a society that's relying less on single use vehicles. So I think highlighting those in the report will be really important. Andra, you were gonna say something? Yeah, I was wondering also about writing letters to the editor, make our opinions known. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, of course, anybody is always welcome to do that, but I think particularly if there's issues for which more voices are better, I think we could put out calls through letters to editors to let other members of the community know, hey, you can submit a comment to this for this or things like that. Nice. And to pile on Steve's notion, I think the consistency of messaging, if we're writing a letter to the town council, that we want them to move to the state that's connecting to our climate action plan, we're also got a letter to the editor that describes that exact same topic. And so for each, there's a layered approach for each statement that we're making. It's pretty easy to imagine relevant state level actions. This move by the attorney general is, the only way that everyone will be able to afford to get off gas is if the gas companies transition to geothermal or get into the business of installing electric heat pumps. And that's the only affordable way to retrofit all of our buildings. Yeah, and in some of the language in this particular document, and I can send you all this article that I'm looking at is talking about how is the DPU gonna make sure that low income customers rates remain affordable as their own revenue shrink because they have a shrinking customer base, right? Like, I mean, I think there's some real practical things that need to be thought out as we're, really, we have to transition away from gas. So like, what's the plan? Okay, so I think that's something, I think we can sort of keep this as an action item. And maybe we can start, or Andra, if you had some ideas of other things that we should be putting forward to the town council, we can start to work on those. Another update is that I haven't finished writing our comments to the council committee, CRC community resources committee about the next zoning overhaul, but it is going slowly. So I will, and is that something, oh, I was gonna get people's input by through Stephanie. This is something that you want to come back to the committee and vote on, or once everyone's had input, just send it under your name, Laura. Yeah, I think we were gonna make sure everybody had a chance to look at it. So potentially if you could send it through Stephanie, maybe we can just include it on the agenda item for next time. I was gonna say what you would want to do is have me collect all of the comments and then distribute it to everybody and you can all decide at a meeting. You'd want to do it, you have to do it in public process anyway to make a decision about, because that would be something you'd all want to vote on. Okay. That's it. Okay, so we'll note that for the next meeting. Okay, okay. Any other ECAC updates? I have a colleague who's reached out to see if maybe she might get some FaceTime with this group at one of our upcoming meetings about the school buildings and potential collaboration and action there. Do we have a sense of what the best way to incorporate that kind of thing? Like the new school buildings? I think just know just the idea of what's happening with all those existing and new how are we, I think it's a general question. I don't want to spend too much time on it. Maybe I can ask Stephanie offline, but when people reach out to us and express an interest of like engaging our process, and I think it's my response was, Oh, go ahead. Yeah, I think your colleague reached out to me as well. And I thought it was more just attending the meeting, not specifically wanting to speak to the meeting, which is why I gave just general information. But so there's two ways that people can do so. That's to sort of just attend and speak during the public comment periods, unless it's a very specific agenda item that you all want to get into a more involved conversation, then they can make the request to me goes through Laura, because Laura ultimately is the one who sort of creates the agenda for the meetings. So those are two ways, two pathways. Okay, I'll follow up. Thanks. Sure. Okay, great. So next agenda item is discussion of cap framework goals. So I had put something together for this conversation, but I wasn't sure if there was a larger conversation that the committee wanted to have around this. So Laura, I want to defer to you as far as what the vision was for the full conversation before I jump in. I actually think this might have been a agenda item suggestion from Jesse. Am I remembering that incorrectly? I think I emailed you at the end of the last meeting. It seemed to me, and I looked at the presentation that you put together the slides. I actually would love to hear from Lauren and Jim about, as we start to pull all the ideas together, at what point is there kind of like an outline where we, like when did the buckets show up that we start throwing things into? And maybe just to talk about that process so we can kind of wrap our hands around it. To me at least it's a slightly opaque right now. I trust the process, but I'm not sure where it's going. That's a great question, Jesse. So I can speak to that a little bit and Jim jump in if there's anything I'm missing or anything you want to add. The way that we're thinking about it right now is that when the task groups conclude, that's when we're going to have a clear picture of what's come out of those. And we know there are going to be gaps. And so we're going to be trying to fill those gaps with actions and strategies and things that we know are important to the town but that have not come up in those discussions. And then to go back to both the participants in the task groups and city staff and you all to get feedback on how we filled those gaps, whether they are adequately filled and how we might make them even more robust, make the strategies that are coming out more robust. So probably by the time we are wrapping up with the task groups and starting to fill in those gaps, that's when we're going to have a pretty clear idea of what those buckets are. Where we're going to start developing those buckets and that's when we're going to be filling in the gaps to make sure that those buckets are full. Does that help Jim or anything you want to add? The only thing I'd say is that the material coming out of the task groups has an impressive amount of sort of ideas and strategies that are pretty well thought out and kind of discussed. More than I had really realized when we started to really look at the material. And so I think that process is not going to be, it's not like, oh, we talked about a couple of things and then we're going to really build out through it. It's like, no, I actually covered a lot of territory. So that's kind of cool. It is better than I had really expected. I'm not sure if everyone's had a chance to look at the notes that have come out of the task group meetings yet, but I think that was a very helpful process for me in pulling out what some of those actions are likely to look like. So can I say something here? To me, group conversations can riff off of some ideas someone threw out. And what we want, I think, is to really start with what we know or the basics and take those ideas that align with those basic ones look at those that nothing was discussed, those gaps and then consider, but not necessarily put into the bucket, things that came up in the task groups. But I think it has to start with those of us who have already been thinking about this in terms of an outline or, you know... Outline is the word I think, I have to say, I'm having a hard time proceeding in this process without an outline. And that's what I was taught in third grade on how to write an essay and it's old school maybe, but if we are, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like this group has been tasked with overseeing this process and managing it to some degree and if we don't see where it's going and the information comes back to us, it seems to me like it's too late. Like I want the conceptual design before the construction drawings. And maybe that's already happening in the works, but I guess I just don't see it happening. I will say, and Stephanie, I'll turn to you. So it feels like five years ago, but like in February, we, our group did develop an outline. So we spent like most of our first few meetings this year working on the outline before Linnean became part of our process and COVID happened. So that's out there somewhere. And that was the basis for which Jim and Lauren and team like built the task groups. And we haven't looked at it or talked about it for a while. So I think Jesse, your point's well taken that it's, that as we're moving into this third task group meeting, as we're starting to think through the next step of actually drafting a draft report, like we need to go back to that and see what, because there's pieces of that that we've definitely covered in the task groups. And there's pieces of that that we've expanded on through some of this really rich work we've done. There's also pieces of that that weren't really applicable to the task groups. Like a big piece we wanted to make sure we included was like staffing at the town level. Like that's not something we talked about at the task group but that's something we all want to have be a piece of our plan. Yeah, Stephanie, did you want to add in? I had a few things. Well, first of all, I just wanted to say that I think what, you know, what I heard from Lauren and the way I've understood this process all along has been that at the end of the task group work because a lot of information will be formulated there from pretty much constituencies that typically aren't at the table and which is why we did this process in this way, right? This was something that we're doing differently. And so they weren't, some of the things that were coming from that process weren't gonna necessarily be reflected in some of what you've already discussed or they had been, but maybe not to as much of a degree. And then that the outline was gonna come. So the outline is coming. I think it's just, the outline is coming. And then when that outline exists in front of you, that's when you can also look at the outline that the group had done before to say, okay, where are their gaps in this outline with maybe the outline that you had previously created that we can fill in? I think that's really, I'm just sort of reiterating what Lauren said because sometimes maybe hearing it twice is helpful. I don't know. But it's just that, you know, the outline, yeah. So there's gonna be, I mean, you had an outline. This is like another outline that's being created based on this process. So I don't know if that's helpful. And then that information that you had that isn't reflected in the outline that gets created from the task group meetings, that's where we're talking about filling in, you know, the gaps with that information to make sure that it's a more comprehensive document that reflects both what you've already started working on and identified as wanting to work on, but also additionally with some community input on some priorities that maybe you didn't have identified so much at the beginning. Again, I keep going back to communication, but that seems to consistently come up. So again, not specifically identified in earlier framing but really important in moving forward. Thanks, Tiffany. Yeah, failed to mention the previous outline. So I think that was probably a helpful reminder for everyone. I see the, I was reading the Somerville carbon plan that Lauren, you sent out earlier today, I believe, and it's like, wow, why don't we do that for Amherst? I think that would be, that's what I'm hoping we can do which would be a greenhouse gas inventory analysis and then identifying pathways and then identifying implementation plans. That seems to have the perfect framework and outline for us. And then all this outreach that we've been doing that will provide some additional ideas and has provided principles on which sort of how we prioritize or make decisions. I just want to add to that, Steve, that that's part of the reason I think we were doing the work in the way that we were doing it too is because when these plans get developed and created in order to implement, sometimes people aren't at the table when these conversations are happening so that implementation suddenly becomes something that people feel that is basically imposed on them in some way, whereas this process is giving people an opportunity to have more of a voice and to get more involved and also to have some buy-in and to be more invested in what this is all about and understanding it. And I think that's what's something that's been really valuable is that we basically are working with people to sort of create ambassadors, if you will, of this information so that as we move forward, we have people who can really get behind it and sort of communicate it within their neighborhoods, their complexes, their layers of influence, if you will. So Steve, I wanted to address the issue of the pathway study. I'm glad you brought that up. And I'm glad that you had a chance to look through those slides. I'm not sure that everyone did. I see Andra shaking her head now. So maybe it would be helpful for me to go through them quickly. I see some thumbs up. All right, so let me just share my screen. Here we go. Can everyone see that? Yep. Great, thanks. So, sorry, I'm just having some issues here with Zoom. Okay, there we go. So there was a question out of the last meeting about how the plan will address carbon measurement. And I wanted to respond directly to that. But before we jump in, I just wanted to create a little bit of context around Amherst's current trajectory. So moving on to the next slide, this slide just shows the chart on the right is actually taken from the town's most recent greenhouse gas emissions inventory, breaking down emissions by subsector. And so you'll see all the different categories included. The colleges and university make up almost 50% of the town's emissions. And they've also made these really ambitious climate commitments, as I'm sure Steve Dwayne Ashwin, he's not here, but also, and Laura formerly, can attest to you. And they're working really diligently towards achieving them. So UMass and Amherst College have both pledged to become carbon neutral by 2030. And Hampshire College has pledged to become climate neutral in the next two years. So what this means going on to the next slide is that if the colleges meet their goals, then the town is going to meet its goals handily. But obviously the ECAC wants to be way more ambitious than that, and we're taking action to reduce emissions even further to prepare for carbon neutrality by 2030. So to really quantify that trajectory, that's why I put in this pathway's slide and why I sent along that study, a more in-depth analysis than what's possible within the current framework of the CARP will be necessary. So this graph shows the summary of the city of Somerville's carbon neutrality's pathway, carbon neutrality pathways study, which analyzed actions across all their emissions sectors using some pretty complex modeling and projections to evaluate their emissions reductions potentials over time. And they started with business as usual projections, which Amherst has from their last greenhouse gas inventory, which reflect the assumption that no new actions are taken beyond what is already being done. And then break down the relative contributions of different emissions reduction pathways on the way to carbon neutrality by 2050. So carbon neutrality pathways studies are highly individualized analyses. And as I'm sure many of you know, they take into consideration the unique emission sources and potentials of the location under study. And they're typically done in conjunction with an update to a greenhouse gas inventory, which is something on the immediate horizon for Amherst, given that the last greenhouse gas inventory was conducted in 2017 using data from fiscal year 2016. So next year, we will have the data from fiscal year 2021, which is we're actually in fiscal year 2021 right now. So that will have been five years since the last emissions inventory was conducted. So rather than abbreviating the current planning process to meet the town's budget request timeline, which we've talked a little bit about, we wanna recommend to the committee that you consider putting forward a budget request that includes funds for an updated carbon greenhouse gas emissions inventory and an accompanying pathway study that can go really in depth into what these different trajectories over time might look like. So what we will be able to do with the Climate Action Adaptation and Resiliency Plan is to use widely available information about the relative impacts of different types of actions on carbon emissions in other similar contexts to provide an indication of the relative magnitude of the carbon reductions associated with different types of actions, similar to how, for instance, Concord's Plan lays that out. And I know Concord's Plan is one that this committee has referenced extensively. So I can actually just wanted to pull up a page from it to show you an example of what I'm talking about. So give me one second here. I'm almost done, I promise. So here is just a page from the buildings and energy section of Concord's Plan. And you can see that the way that they've done this is that their actions are coded according to whether they contribute very positively or positively to greenhouse gas emissions reductions or neutral. This is the buildings and energy category. So most of them do have some greenhouse gas emissions reduction relationship. Some of them are just neutral with respect to emissions and other categories and that's indicated as well. Then for some specific actions, we will be able to provide an estimate for the associated emissions reduction potential, for instance, with the CCA. We can provide an estimate of how much greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced as a result of the CCA, assuming that a certain percentage of renewables is in the mix and the program gets a certain retention rate. We can do things like that. But the sort of in-depth pathways analysis that I sent to you that Somerville did, that's sort of the next level above and beyond. So I just wanted to share that with you all. And Lauren, I just want to say something on this page if that's okay. Yeah, of course. I really like sort of a combo of these two approaches. And I would even liked us to think about how we could add to this in addition to GHG reductions in resiliency, like a framework around environmental justice or equality or like a just transition, thriving economy, whatever terminology we want to use. And we won't be able to check it for all of them, but I think it would go a long way to make sure we're thinking about the impact all of these actions have in that space. Absolutely. That's a great thought, Laura. I feel like it also relates to the previous conversation around sort of how to integrate advocacy and policy into the plan and sort of, I think we're really talking about the larger framework of the plan here and definitely having those types of equity and justice analyses built into how we're thinking about actions is considered a best practice in the field right now. So definitely great thing to be thinking about. The Anchorage Plan, 2019 Anchorage Plan has that. They've got co-benefits, the section describing those benefits and then in the sections that look like the one that Lauren has showed up. In addition to columns for greenhouse gas reduction and resilience, there are other columns that might be equity or might be environmental or other, where's the list of them here? Other advanced quality, local environmental quality improve health. So they do evaluate their potential initiatives on the four additional things besides greenhouse gas reductions. The other dimension that might be worth qualifying, not quantifying but qualifying in this sort of way is ease of getting it done. So things that get good greenhouse gas reductions that aren't easy to get done. Let's go for those straight up. Others might have little reductions and hard to do. So it might cast those aside a little bit. So that might be another dimension to bring into this. Yeah, Jesse. So I think the pathway's analysis is very compelling, the graphics of it. You know, is it reasonable without the in-depth modeling and without the analysis to give order of magnitude predictions based on large primary strategies, the ability to look at a single image and say, here are the 10 big things we have to do and this one's gonna do between this and that. I just think the story being told here can we tell that story without the number, basically have the numbers be accurate but not necessarily precise? There's an interesting thought here where this is kind of a cheap answer but it's a good answer nonetheless. And that is that actually the committee itself has a ton of relevant knowledge on these topics and it may be that there's a series of meetings with the ECAC to quantify a series of things because of the specific knowledge that you bring to this process. And I think that there's a real opportunity there. You know, that's one of the fantastic things about the ECAC is that it really, you know, as a committee, it's loaded with people with tons and tons of knowledge on these topics. I think some of those answers, Jesse, can come out of the analysis of the Amherst Greenhouse gas inventory and then we might be able to say, let's reduce building energy by 15%. We kind of make up a target and then we try it. We see how much we accomplish in the year and then we readjust the target and the implementation strategies as necessary. I don't think we need to get too hung up on trying to predict what the outcomes will be. I think we're better off implementing the initiatives rather than trying to predict them. Yeah. And that's a great point, Steve, that how things get quantified or thought about is going to depend on the specific goals that the ECAC sets that then get codified in the plan. Yeah. Andra, did you have something to add? Well, I'm remembering back to a conversation maybe several with Stephanie over the years about how hard it is to get really accurate greenhouse gas measurements that it's a lot of guesswork anyway. And so the idea of getting ballpark, accuracy level, but reasonably derived estimates makes sense to me because there's so many assumptions you put in to predictions and even measurements of current greenhouse gas reductions or emissions that I'd like to keep that idea of not spending too much money getting too accurate. Well, accurate, stay accurate, just not too precise. I mean, and this has been my experience through the years is my one page spreadsheet and the 20 page passive house spreadsheet tend to end up with about the same number. And then there's some people that just like, yeah, that's the number. And then don't even turn their computer on. I- That would be Henry Gifford. Yeah, there's the Henry Giffords of the world. So I wanna, yeah, I like this idea, but you need certain language. Once you start giving images and numbers that say, this is what we can do and this is how much it's gonna cost and this is how hard or easy it is, you need something to back it up with, but, you know, I- I'm sorry to jump in, but you need the accuracy as you stated, but you need consistency. You just have to be doing it in the same way consistently in order to have anything that's a meaningful measure. So what I was saying before was that, you know, we have these numbers and so to a degree, you know, there is closest we can get to the information that we have available, right? But we can't then, you know, in the next inventory, unless we go back and sort of change how we gathered some of that information, we can't come back with a new inventory and do it completely differently. And then look at the two and compare the two. I mean, we either have to go back and change what we did or we have to create a whole new inventory in a way to start. So that's why I was saying it's, you know, it's about the consistency and how we do it. Yeah, I would just also offer, and I'm wanting to go with the 20 page spreadsheet, but I'm good with the single, the one sheet as well, but, and particularly for this reason, and let me just first say, I agree with Stephanie in terms of, for greenhouse gas accounting, you wanna be accurate, but also consistent over time. So, or at least know how you've made those adjustments so you can make adjustments so you can basically monitor yourself reasonably accurate in terms of the progress you're making during this time. But in terms of the pathways, I guess, I'm not sure if I agree with what I'm gonna say, but to some extent, I feel like we have an easy case here, because we were going 100%. So it's not like, do we do this or that? We gotta get rid of all of it. So it's not like we have to say, okay, well, you know, we gotta do this and that. You know, it's like, let's just do it. You know, it did all, all the wedges have to go down. And so it just a matter of what are the techniques and challenge and technologies to do it. So I would sort of be, you know, maybe what's more helpful is not, you know, showing the wedge that goes down to zero, because we sort of know the, we know the end of that story that we wanna show, but really get at what are the technologies and the business models and the costs and the challenges and the policy changes and the early actions we can take in the meantime that will start us off on this path. I think we did say early on that while we wanna report that shows how we get to 100% reductions by 2050 or whatever we said, that we really also wanna focus on what do we do in the next five years. And so to some extent, I, well, I did, I actually liked that AECOM, the, was it Somerville? Nice report and so forth. I didn't think it had too much in there in terms of how you get things done and costs and so forth. It was more technical, which I think helps, but at the same time, I think any of us, not maybe most of us could probably just had, had guests in this method that, you know, you need building energy efficiency, some district heating, some heat pumps, and some electrification in the gas and then in the transportation sector. And then electrify, a clean energy for all the electricity. And so to some extent, I think we got an easy analysis because it's all gotta be scrubbed out. Yeah, and then I think, yeah, I think, Jim, you're exactly right. I think we have a lot of talent and expertise in this group. We also have several of us, myself included, who sometimes try to get too detailed and so we'll have to be helped to stay above the fray. But I think even just like clearly recognizing, even for our own group, because I think sometimes we get caught up in topics that maybe, you know, we have to keep reminding ourselves. That's actually a really small part of our footprint. And so like, how much time do we wanna spend on that? Like it would be great if our report could show, yes, any new capital that buildings, any new buildings we build in the next 20 years have to be energy efficient, you know, and fossil fuel free, whatever. But even if we do that, that's only gonna be this much of our footprint because we still have all these other buildings. And so we still need to focus in on retrofits and, you know, just moving the whole system. That will be really helpful for when we get, then when we get questions or when we get pulled into conversations about library or the library or something, like we can make sure we're balancing that with all of the other work that we're trying to do. And that's why this effort is town-wide and why we're engaging community members because we need people in their own homes to be doing things and to take this seriously. And we need to reach landlords. We need to, you know, get people to really rally to advocate to get the landlords to do the right thing because we have several complexes. Because again, as was pointed out already, you know, the university and the colleges are 50% of the town's emissions. So on the municipal side that you have sort of a more direct influence over is so small. So it's really this sort of time-wide approach where we really need to engage everybody that's different than what we've done before. Okay, just go ahead, Andra, yeah. I think there's some things that we can decide like that as the town's committee, we have members of the university and college communities, but we don't have any control. And so I'd like us to agree that we are focusing on, when we say 25% reduction by 25, 50 by 2030, we're talking about what we have influence over and that, you know, we're really glad that the university and colleges are making progress, that's icing. But our job is really the cake. I would agree with that from a perspective of we shouldn't be focusing our actions on the colleges and universities. I mean, I think to Stephanie's earlier point, if the colleges and universities are part of the footprint, which they are, we'll continue to include them. And if they're doing their job, that's gonna help us meet our goals. But yeah, we need to be focused in on what, you know, assuming that we guess we could make some assumptions about where they may or may not be in five years, but I think we need to focus in on what we can do in the community. Yeah, that was gonna be my same question actually, was, you know, what is, and I think we talked about this early on, but I sort of forget. I mean, what is, what's the boundary we're drawing around the greenhouse gases for our purposes with regard to our goals. And I guess I agree with Andrea that, I mean, the university and the colleges are, you know, they have comparable sort of committees to some extent, working on their own plans. And I think our attention should really be focused on everything else. Exactly. And I wanna first credit Lauren with that point that if the colleges are successful, then the town is successful. I just wanna make sure that was Lauren, not me, but I do, I agree and I hear you, but I also wanna be, you know, us to be mindful of the language that the town council passed, you know, and it was pretty much community wide. It wasn't, you know, just over committed to this piece that we have control over. It was like an agreement that community wide, the town would be carbon neutral by 2050. That's everybody. So it's just, and yes, I would say, don't focus so much on the pieces that you don't have control over. Yes, absolutely. And that's why this effort to do so much citizen outreach and, you know, resident outreach is so important and also business engagement. It's just to get everybody actively engaged in this and to realize that every little thing that everybody does matters and contributes. But I guess I'm talking about the, that we ought to have a dual accounting system, community wide, including the campuses and within the town community. And that we should hold ourselves to making the kind of, you know, meeting our targets within the town community and not rest on the work that's happening on campus. You know, what I heard Lauren say is, you know, if they're successful, we're successful because we don't have to do anything. We don't have to do as much. But that's obviously not true. Yeah. And we can't use the call just to buy us time. All right, somebody wants to say hi. Say hi. Hey. Hi. Hi. Oh, I should go grab the puppy. He's been a little hyper. Yeah, I was gonna say that, you know, to that point, that's, I guess what I'm saying is you are working with the part of the town that you have control over and influence over. And that's not necessarily the colleges and the university. I mean, you're certainly, I think want to work with them and collaborate with them to this goal, especially if they have those existing committees, then we wanna have some more maybe interface with them. You know, that's something maybe that can develop over, as once this plan is done, maybe that's one of the things you wanna do is like have more interface or have our representatives to each of those institutions liaison with them in some form or other, if you all are willing. You know, and then that's a way to, to sort of have a common purpose. But again, your, you know, your influence is over the community members, the businesses and the municipal sector, you know, the buildings, the town buildings. And there's plenty to do there. Again, and I really, I can't say and emphasize enough about the residential sector that I just think that's a really big piece that keeps getting missed because it's not something you have direct influence over and why something like CCA will be important and CCA programming, hopefully that is gonna happen, eventually will be important. Those are the types of things that I think, you know, the kind of thought processes that need to be looked to. Yeah, Lauren. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify too that by no means is I saying that with the colleges meeting their goal means that you guys don't have to do anything. I think if anything, it means that you can be more ambitious because there's more, we know that you are taking action and those actions are going to have impacts. And so we're gonna go above and beyond those goals, which is great. Yeah, and I just add, yeah, Andra, I think you're right. I mean, I think we should be trying to identify enough projects that we think are gonna move us to our goal by 2025 without the colleges doing anything. I mean, I think we should do that analysis, right? I don't think we should take them out of our pie for a few reasons. One being that just the fact that they're in our pie is part of the reporting requirements of doing an inventory for a community. But also because what if they stop doing what they're supposed to be doing? We would want the town to be able to use its influence to say, hey, Amherst College, the town has a goal and you're part of it and you need to do your piece. So I think we wanna be able to play both sides and but yeah, I agree, we shouldn't be, and I don't think that that was Lauren's intention, but I think we should be trying to identify projects that we can do now in the residential, municipal and community space that help us meet our 25% goal. Anybody else have any? This has been a really, I think, helpful conversation and bringing us back to some of the pieces of the work that we know we need to do. Which is great. Any other comments specifically on this presentation or just thoughts about this topic before we move on? I just think quickly just to restate the importance of the story that's being told with the images and where it's very clear and where it's not. And I know that the pie chart is not, it didn't come from Linnean, but for example, just the word community. I don't think anybody knows what that means and you have to dig into a long explanation in the back of that spreadsheet. So just as we continue to, as this continues to evolve, just asking what story is being told, how clear is it? Because I think it's very exciting. I was very excited by this presentation. Great, so I'm trying to just pull up my agenda here. Discussion on communicating goals to town regarding zoning and budget. So we talked about the zoning discussion having next time. And the capital inventory were West. We did get a proposal through from Darcy or draft from Darcy. Laura, can I just jump in real quick because there's a piece about the communications that I wanted to, I did some follow up on and I just wanted to report out on that I asked Brianna Sunrid, who's the communications manager for the town to attend the next meeting because she and I were talking about dashboards which is something that Darcy had brought up several times and I'm aware of, but just ways in which there might be something we can do, but she can sort of talk a little bit about what's been done for other committees, what we might have the capacity to do, some of what our constraints are. So she'd be willing to come to the next meeting on the 7th, on October 7th or whatever that date is, provided we put her at the beginning and we front load her. She'd be able to come. Yeah, that sounds great. And maybe on that, Lauren or Jim, could you let us know when the next task group meetings are? Yes, sorry, I thought we had, I did send out calendar holds to everyone with those meeting times, but just for the larger groups' knowledge, we did need to spread them out a little bit more than last time this time just because of scheduling conflicts with folks being at home with kids right now and yeah, dealing with those types of things. So they're spread out over three weeks. We have the first one happening the first week of October on the, sorry, I was blank my calendar. The first one is happening October 8th. That's gonna be the land use task group from 6.30 to 8.30. Then we have the following week, the transportation task group meeting that's happening Wednesday the 14th from 4 to 6 p.m. Then we have the renewables task group meeting happening on Sunday the 18th from 3 to 5 p.m. And the buildings task group meeting happening Thursday the 22nd from 6 to 8 p.m. And if anybody did not get a calendar hold from me, please let me know. And also I'll be sending out the Zoom invitation links with those dates to everybody and with the meeting notes from the second meeting. So I'll be sending it all together. And that'll happen by the end of this week. Okay, great, that's helpful. Yeah, so I think in terms of timing, I think it'd be great to have Rihanna come next week. Annabelle, can you go? And I'm thinking that we probably wanna have maybe, like I think on this topic of outlines and sort of the framing of the report, I think we probably need to move forward on that while we're going through the task group. I don't think we can wait until the task group series are all done. So maybe we can figure out how to add that as a, I guess I'd look to you all for feedback on how to do that in a way that's not making you overdue or redo work, but like how can we push that forward? And if we wanna start like digging into some of these questions that we were just talking about around like percent reductions and things, we could do that in the next couple of meetings as we're waiting for that final task group feedback. So the next item is around the capital inventory process. And I believe Stephanie forwarded this, maybe Stephanie, you could pull it up. Yeah, I was just gonna say, let me get it for you. So just to remind folks, this is a point that Darcy had brought to us that we were requested by the finance committee to make suggestions regarding the capital inventory process. And so Darcy's done a first thought that what information we think is important, I think what's missing here that we've talked about, which we can add is just like in general, they need to do the inventory that they already have. Like we know that the inventory includes questions about operational energy use, but they don't necessarily fill that piece out. So I think we need a tactful way to maybe add that here and potentially offer up eCAC support if they have questions or want help on how they can do that. So I'm sorry, I'm sorry, we have like chaos happening behind me. So you didn't see it right. I don't know anything about that Stephanie. Yes, so I'm sorry, is it not showing? It's hard for me, I can't see what you're seeing. It's not, I have it right here, I can pull it up. Is it showing now? Oh, you got it, okay. Okay, page or face now, sorry. So I guess if we could just maybe look through this quickly and if anything's hopping out at anyone as being missing, let me know. Otherwise I can just add that point about the life cycle costing and energy use and we can send it on. I think this looks really good. I just wanted to like on, and turn also to think about it from their perspective in terms of what will they be confused about and unsure of how to respond to or provide information. So like for HVAC systems, I mean, do we really want them to give us how many, would the greenhouse gas emissions from that? That would be, I'm not sure if they're in a situation. Yeah, I was gonna say some of this, there's way more here than the town is gonna be able to do. And even with the tools and resources that I have, I don't, I'd have to look to our inventory to get some of that information. But I would like on either HVAC systems or maybe it's buildings is, in addition to what you do have there is how much their energy use if Stephanie thinks that's possible. I think, I mean, and again, that's something that we're more able to do if we were doing a sort of basic reporting out on kilowatt hours per square foot or something. If we were doing something that was a more straightforward calculation then we can do that. Trying to do emissions or- Yeah, maybe- What about EUI? What about just a simple EUI? Yeah, that's- It'll all be the same units. Right, exactly. Like we could do EUI for the facilities and HVAC systems, but we can't, you know, we're not gonna be able to do just greenhouse gas emissions. Yeah, I think potentially maybe we're just looking for the information we need so that we could do that calculation, right? Exactly, exactly. On the buildings, I think it would be helpful to know if they're steam heated or hot water heated. Oh gosh, now I've got another one. Chaos over here. I'm feeling so much better. Oh, okay, the cat's to the cat. Yeah, the cat was writing on- Thinking for you. If I am on mute, there is like a battle going on just outside my door. If you all, they could hear it right now. It's bad. Okay, that's helpful. Anything else? I think maybe Stephanie and I can go through this list and just update it to remove. I think that's a good point, Wayne, that it should be stuff that they can easily answer and that we could use. Is there anything else that's missing? Maybe plans already in place for upgrades, replacements, not just routine ones, but the water treatment plant is going through some changes already, right? Yeah, there's some buildings that we're specifically targeting to look at changing out the heating systems to, oh my goodness, sorry, I'm tired. Help me. To electric, yes, just something more efficient. Yes, thank you. Yes, heat pumps and yes. Yeah, I think that's a good point because even like projected lifetime necessarily doesn't necessarily say that when it's, they're thinking, but if they're thinking that this piece is gonna be replaced in the next two to five years or something, that would be helpful information to know. Yeah, and that's the kind of thing I think that I was saying to Darcy too, that the town is starting to work on. We've got this new person who's really great and it started with the building commissioner and he started to try to put things together and create sort of a master list so I know that there's an effort underway. I mean, they're looking at sort of the status of each municipal building and what state it's in and what heating systems are, exist and what can be changed out and we have funding to do some work too. There's definitely been projects that were, there was funding allocated for them that just haven't happened yet. So we still have lots of things that we can do. So this is a good timing to try to get this in front of them to consider all this. Okay, great. Yeah, and I think we can, I noted it here, but I'll add it to the top. Like just make this, make it clear that we're here just to help and support and be partners in this work. It's what I often say. Okay, well, we'll sort of make these changes and send this through. If anybody has any thoughts that come to them in the next couple of days, let us know. Let's see. I think that was everything on the agenda. We've talked about the next meeting agenda as well. Anything else, any last thoughts? That folks have? Or we can give ourselves some time back. Okay, great. I'm gonna take that as a no. All right, thanks everybody. We will talk soon. Thanks, Laura. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Bye.