 Wonderful. Well, welcome and thank you everyone for joining us this evening. We're here to discuss the townwide solar assessment project and kick off our public engagement phase of the project. Before we go too far into the details, I want to introduce my team. My name is Adrian Dung and I'm the project manager at GZA Geo Environmental Inc. GZA for short. I've been working closely with my team, our principal in charge Steven Leco and Jackie Claver the GIS specialist. GIS is geographic information systems. And it's a process of using and creating maps to answer questions. We've been working closely with the town of Amherst sustainability department on this townwide assessment. Our project team, our project has three components to support solar planning. The first is an assessment. This involved creating a map of where solar may be the easiest to build and can be allowed based on current laws and rules. The second is engagement and that is to conduct public engagement, which is why we're here tonight. We're interested in understanding your opinions and values about where you would like to see solar developed in Amherst. And what other information you might need to feel comfortable with solar developments around town. Finally, we will compile all of the results from our map assessment and our engagement efforts into one report for the town. And this report will be publicly available. I'd like to pause here for a moment and pull the audience. You can go to the website at the top of the screen, menti.com and enter that code to answer our first question of the night, which is, are you familiar with the Massachusetts carbon reduction goals? Okay, so it looks like we, our audience has some information, but it's maybe not too familiar. A second question should now be familiar. It should now be available to you on the app. And that's, are you familiar with the town of Amherst carbon reduction goals? Okay, it looks like we're holding steady at about six participants tonight in the polling at least. So to, to give us all a baseline, this project really exists because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the town of Amherst have both set carbon reduction goals. So the town are the, sorry, the state made binding commitments during the Baker Polito administration to reduce carbon emissions. And they headed towards an interim target of reducing total emissions by 50% by 2030 with a goal of net zero by 2050. The net zero is further down to mean 85% reduction in emissions and 15% carbon removal. And these percents are all compared to 1990 levels. For more information, there's three documents provided by the state, and they're linked to on our project website. We'll show a QR code at the end of this presentation where you can go to the website and read these documents if you're interested. In 2019, the town of Amherst established its own goals that were approved by the town council. Amherst set a timeline to reduce total carbon emissions by 25% by 2025, then 50% by 2030, and ultimately to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. The Amherst goals are all compared to 2016 carbon emission levels. To access the climate action adaptation and resiliency plan or the car on the project website as well for more details. I'd like to cover a few terms so that we are all understanding as we go through this presentation. The first is net zero or net neutral. And this is balancing the total emissions of greenhouse gases by removing some and minimizing others so that on the whole there's no new emissions. We'll also talk about ground mounted solar that solar panels that have a foundation in the ground, you could have one panel at your house up to several acres of panels. We'll also discuss canopy solar. So these are usually solar panels on an elevated structure, typically over a parking lot. And you may have seen these at the UMass Amherst campus. And finally, we'll also talk about rooftop solar. And again, this can be a few panels on your home, all the way up to many panels on a large manufacturing or other large building. The polling app. I want to ask the audience when I say solar development, what are the first couple ideas that come to mind. You can enter one word or more through the website. All right, it looks like all six of our participants have responded. So we do have several we have two primary ongoing efforts in town, one of which is the energy and climate action committee or the ECAC. And this committee is charged with guiding the town to meet its climate goals and using the results of this project, they will share recommendations for how much solar town should try to install. They meet every Wednesday, or every other Wednesday, and the meetings are open to the public. So if you're interested, please feel free to join the solar bylaw working group is another organization in town. They're working on language for solar development bylaw. And they've been charged with writing this language, and then they will, it will give the town additional guidance for how town should review and consider future ground mounted solar installations. The language they prepare will go to the town council for review. This group needs every other Friday through late May. And these meetings are also open to the public so you can listen in and provide comment if you so desire. So our assessment, our first element was to really look at where in town solar could go with the overall purpose of graphically showing where in town solar can be supported. So after looking at where it would go and filtering out parts of the town where it can't. We ranked the remaining areas and how feasible they were. I do want to be clear that our working definition of feasibility is related to the relative ease or convenience of solar development. This is not an end all be all assessment. It's designed as an initial screening tool for use in high level decision making. Anywhere solar is eventually proposed would require additional on the ground review. And then the final stage of the assessment was to characterize the feasible areas by current land use. And then through each of these steps and more detail to identify where in Amherst solar could go we started with the whole town. We then remove properties owned by the colleges and you mass, because each of these entities has a renewable energy plan, and they're well on their way to meeting their personal targets. We removed wetlands and streams because the state wetland Protection Act and the town wetland bylaw would prohibit or dissuade solar development in these areas. We removed properties with a conservation restriction, because the deeds for these properties do not allow development. These lands include conservation areas, state forest, agricultural preservation areas, and some other public properties. And finally, we removed roadways utility right of ways and railroads, because these areas would pose significant logistical and possibly physical restrictions on solar development. Ultimately, we were left with about one third of Amherst being available for consideration. Once we understood where solar could go, we worked to understand that relative feasibility or ease of possible develop. We rated areas from zero, really challenging to 10 pretty easy for four criteria associated with the level of effort to develop solar. Those criteria were slope, where how steep is the land aspect, which direction does the land face, because solar panels facing south perform better than those facing north capacity. How much electricity can the grid accept. And distance. How far away is the nearest utility connection point from these independent ratings, we then combined them to come up with a final score. And that score again goes from zero least feasible to 10 most feasible or relatively easiest constructs. We used our assessment mapping to understand the land use in Amherst where solar could go. This map shows the blacked out areas, which were excluded from the mapping. The areas that are not blacked out were scored. And this map shows those the land use in each of those feasible areas. You can see. And maybe as you expected. Most of Amherst is considered unbuilt. That includes forest agriculture and other open space. Built areas. Those are residential or commercial areas are only 14% of it. And the map views and more in depth data analysis will be provided in the final report. So interested people can look at that more closely. But tonight, we really want to kick off our public engagement. This will run from now through the end of March. And during this phase, we want to hear your thoughts on solar. Where do you think it should go. Where do you think it should never go. And how do you think we should get there. The town wants community input as it works to set goals and develop plans to meet that 2050 net neutrality goal. Our map assessment provides one line of information about what infrastructure and development exists today. But you will provide input on what could exist tomorrow. So let's get us input in three primary ways. The first is to complete the online survey will show you how in a minute, and over 100 people have already completed the survey to date. You can also participate in engage Amherst online. And join us in person at an interactive workshop. As a reminder, you can also attend the solar bylaw working group and the energy and climate action committee meetings. So we have developed a survey that is available in four languages to gather your thoughts on solar development in Amherst. You can do this survey on a computer or smartphone. You can answer as many questions as you like before submitting the QR code on this screen will link to the project website. And from there you can access the survey. I want to let everyone know the survey is completely anonymous. We do not know who will answer. And we cannot find out any information about your location or identity by completing the survey. The survey is also currently live on engage Amherst. This is a public discussion board, and you can access it from the town website, or by Googling it directly. It's a great way to learn about and comment on many ongoing projects in town. And we have a couple of questions already posted. So please feel free to head over there and make your thoughts respectfully known or comment to others. Finally, we're hosting two in person interactive workshops. These workshops will be on Saturday, March 18 from noon until two. And Thursday, March 23 from six until eight. Both workshops will be in the Woodbury room, which is on the first floor of the Jones library. These workshops have been designed to have small tables with activities and are not a presentation. We will be there to help facilitate your participation or guide you to resources that you requested. But the sessions are self paced, and you can participate by attending for five minutes for the full two hours. These two sessions will be the same. So you only need to attend one if you're interested. During these sessions, we will have translation services available. We'll offer light refreshments and we'll have children's activities. These have been designed to be a safe place to voice your opinion. And they've been designed to avoid any confrontation. So whether you have in a popular opinion or an unpopular opinion. You'll be able to be heard in these forums. And again, participation is completely anonymous. So this project will conclude our public participation phase at the end of March so that we can process our results and generate the final report for use by the ECAC and the solar bylaw working group and the town. The results will all be compiled into that report, which will be publicly available. All the information from the public meetings, all responses will be tallied and included. But outside of this, this project and outside of this month, you are welcome to attend the ongoing public hearings with the ECAC and solar bylaw. These groups as well as other boards and commissions in town are volunteer. So if there is a topic you're interested in or passionate about, you're always welcome to learn more and join a committee. So one final poll. How do you plan on participating in this effort? Okay, it looks like our six participants have answered. We look forward to seeing you at the workshop. If you still have questions, you can scan the QR code and go to the website to learn more on the website. You can also submit your email, and I will send updates and reminders as the project progresses. You can attend our interactive workshops. Even if you just have questions and don't want to participate in events, you are absolutely welcome. Again, those are going to be this Saturday, March 18 from noon until two. And next Thursday, March 23 from six until eight. You can also head on over to engage Amherst and respond to the questions posted there. Thank you all for attending. And we look forward to hearing your thoughts on solar and the town looks forward to working towards a net neutral future.