 Okay, so you are recording. Okay, great. Hi everybody, welcome. This is a packed agenda. And thanks for, for attendees who joined. Early this week. So let's start with our vision and charge. So I don't know if people looked at the IPCC report that came up and it. Actually talked about a 50% chance that global temperatures would increase to that 1.5 Celsius. So the reason why we're here is to again work cooperatively and also work with a sense of urgency. So just want to highlight that in terms of our charge. We do recommend, we can recommend programs and policies to the town manager to the town council and obviously continue to educate the community. It's all important for us. The town manager goals, we talked about it. I think everyone's familiar with this by now. Pretty, pretty much the same CCA and the waist taller bylaw. The pace program, everything that we're working on are part of the town manager's goals for 2023. And our execution enablers haven't changed. We're still on the top five pillars that we've identified. And then in terms of metrics, Stephanie, I don't know how many participants we had over the last two meetings because I missed them. Please let me know and I'll add it. Again, that's something that we still need to improve on and hopefully we have more people today as part of our EV 101. From an education series standpoint, we have one today. So there'll be five. We're tracking to our goal for 10 this year. And then the annual report. I'll try to get that started this month. And maybe complete it before we join it possible. And Stephanie just heads up on the expense report. That is due in August to report out. And then goals discussion will happen. Right after the annual report is published. In terms of open action items, Stephanie, you had one here. Yeah, I did that. And that happened while you were away. They are tweaking the program. And so they didn't want to do any outreach at this time. Major outreach because the program is going to change. So rather than do a presentation where they then have to. Update with more information. They would rather wait until the program's been updated and then have something then. So that kind of put us off a little bit. So we're waiting on them, but I do have contact and we did connect. So we definitely, they're interested. They just want to wait. Okay. Is there a specific action here that I can add Stephanie that we can track to. I would just say maybe. I mean, it's in process. You know, it's, it's pending. Or I'll just say reconnect here. Yeah. Reconnect is good. Leave it at that. Okay. So this is also done. I assume then. So I'll just get rid of this. Right. Yeah. Don and I did that. Yeah. Okay. Face flyer. This is also pending. Or that's, that's really Dawn actually was working on that primarily. Yeah. I remember Don shared this. Yeah. About a month and a half ago. This meeting. Put his name. That's not here. Right. I haven't seen him. Okay. Okay. And then reconnecting with the town manager on the specialized code. And asking the time to adopt it. I did reach out to the town manager again. Before I left on occasion. But if, but everyone of you can do that, reach out to your town counselors. Then we need this. We need this process to start. I believe in June because it's a six month process. And if you want this adopted in. The count next calendar year. At the start of next calendar year needs to. Start. In June. So this is a priority for us. So please. Reach out to your town counselors. Any questions on this? I'm just going to leave this as an important item. That we can all track to. So please do reach out. We have this as part of the agenda today. Review the letter to the two DPU members, but Andra's out. So we will add it to our next agenda. And then I'm not sure if this action item was. Done around reviewing the. This website. I believe this was the spring field initiative. I'm not sure if this was discussed at all. Lori. Yeah. We didn't have time for it on the agenda this week. And I hadn't had time to work on it last week because of the building energy conference. So I was going to bring it next week. To talk about it. It's a little later than we liked, but let's talk about it next week. Okay. Sounds good. And then we got this done. So thanks, Laura. And then this happened. On Saturday. So. Thank you. Don or not. Don was there, but. Not in the picture. And. Who's missing? Dwayne. Dwayne's missing as well. So. A huge shout out to Stephanie for putting. The whole thing together. It was pretty impressive. And also Lori for leading this. So. Thank you. And everybody else for participating. And I just showed up towards the end. So I didn't do anything. It was all Lori and everybody else here. The photo. Okay. I will move on to the next part of the agenda. So you need a note taker. Yes. We took the minutes last time. I haven't done it in a while. So I don't mind doing it. I'm set up for it. If no one else wants to do it. I don't know whose turn it is. But I know last week I asked someone else to do it because I was running the meeting. I don't know if it was my turn or not. The last time was Laura. April 12. So. Okay. I will move on to the next part of the agenda. Okay. Okay. April 12. So Jesse is not here. Yeah. Don's. I think, but I think Jesse's done it recently. Oh no. Yeah, you're right. You're right. Jesse did at the meeting before Laura. Yep. That is true. Stella. Stella here. Yeah, Lori, I guess. Yeah. If you can take it on and then we'll, we'll have Don and Stella do it. Thank you. Thank you. This. This. This meeting started a half hour earlier than typical. Correct. And that was in the, when I sent you the meeting packet, I. Highlighted that in. Bold. That it was starting earlier. I wonder if we might see more people at 430. I'm thinking we will. I think we'll certainly see more at 530. Yeah. Yeah. Hello, pretty good. I think we're just thinking about our members too. Oh, our own members. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, thanks Lori for taking the minutes. All right. Let's move on to the next part of the agenda then. Well, it's actually to vote on minutes. So everybody get a chance to review the minutes. I move we accept them as they are. And I second. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. No particular order. Roof. Yes. Goldner. Yes. Breaker. Yes. Draker. Yes. Selman. Yes. And Raghavan. I'm staying. Okay. Minutes are approved. Hey, thank you, everybody. Okay, time for public comments. Does anyone in the public have any comments? If anyone is interested in speaking, I will. Unmute you. Okay. Let's move on to the next topic Adrian. If you want to. Leave us off. Wonderful. Thank you all. I'm going to share my screen. Okay. So I am here today to share the results of our. Townwide solar assessment. Outreach effort. This slide show has been shared with you all and all of the results that I'm showing today, as well as some others are included in the report that will be available to Stephanie soon. So if, if you feel I went over something quickly, you will be able to see those results. In the report and the report will have all of the unsubmarised edited data as well. Thank you. Thank you. Question for these slides in the packet because I, maybe I forgot to download them, but I don't seem to have them. They're in. They're in the packet now. I didn't send them to you, but they're in the packet online and you can get them after the, they don't have to be in the packet ahead of time. As long as you get them right after the meeting. Okay. Great. As long as they're there. Thanks. Great. So we, we had 16 responses on engage Amherst, we also had 508 survey responses. So that feels pretty good. And about 30 participants at our two interactive workshops. Those workshops were the same. So that's, that's cumulative. We had a much larger showing at the Saturday workshop. And a smaller evening workshop. Participation. To summarize quickly from our engage Amherst and emailed input, you know, we asked them of what are you most excited and concerned about. So an open ended question to just get people thinking and responding. And you'll see these things come up throughout all of our questions, but people were excited about solar generally. They're excited about roofs and parking lots. And then also excited about some of the social aspects, the level of community interest reaching that zero and multiple people voice pride and hope in being a model town. The concerns were about agricultural and forest conversion, as well as pricing and logistics. Some concerns about tax increases and fees. And then some concerns that maybe tools such as community aggregation were going underutilized and could be leaned on to increase solar uptake. And people also put in what they want more, which is great. So they want more consultation by the town with farmers and foresters about using farm and forest land. You want more education on solar generally and on other ongoing developments and more decentralized, smaller developments versus fewer of large developments. As we turn to our survey, I first want to go over the demographics quickly. I don't think that they're entirely surprising, but 95% of our participants are owners. That's primarily single family homeowners with some apartment and condo owners and 5% were renters. Most people who answered our survey have lived in Amherst for more than 10 years. With only 5% living here less than two years. And interestingly, 2% said they don't live in Amherst and completed the survey. So these may be people who work in Amherst or own a business. And then our ages who participated 43% were over 65 years old with another 40% between 45 and 60. So 3% of our participants were less than 35 years old, but 1% of that raise or 1% of the total is under 18. So a little bit of a little bit of teenager interest, which I think it's personally, I find very exciting. They're engaged at the municipal level. As we move into our survey, we had it divided into general sections. So the first was general attitudes. 59% of people who came to the survey were already aware of the emissions targets. But that means that 49% learned about the town's emission targets by completing the survey. So it seems to be a helpful outreach tool. Even though a large percentage of people just learned about the targets that day, they still felt they were important. 88% said they were very important or important. And again, when asked about their top benefits, people identified reducing fossil fuel use, balancing renewable development with natural area protection and slowing climate change is the top benefits of solar. And their top concerns were again, that conversion of forest land and farmland, as well as initial costs. For small scale development and residential development, we asked participants if they use solar energy at their homes and about 50% do. I think that, you know, we likely tapped into early uptake solar users. So we see that about 36% of our participants have solar panels on their property with smaller percentages, either having a renewable supplier through their utility or being part of a community solar program. For those who said no, that about 50%, who said no, we asked why not. And the most, the largest reason was that their homes don't have adequate exposure or that the upfront costs are too high. With a not insignificant number, 16% saying the process is too confusing. So this may open up some windows for education and increased uptake. We also asked, you know, for those people who solar is not really feasible on their homes, if they would be interested in purchasing shares of a community solar program. This is clearly a hypothetical question. We don't have a community solar program that we pointed to, but still about 50% of people said, you know, yes or likely yes. And another 28% were on the fence. They would need more information, which is absolutely understandable. Only 30%, 25% saying they're probably not interested in community solar and pretty strong results that the town should assist lower income individuals in developing solar. Adrian, the 25% not interested in community solar is probably reflects the fact that half of them already have on their roof. Absolutely. Yep. They already have it on their roof. Interestingly, throughout this, the results, you'll see there's kind of maybe a 5%, 7% response of like not interested. So some of our respondents did take this survey to say, I'm not interested in this. So that does show up or no preference about solar that shows up throughout, but most participants had pretty keen interest in opinions that they were expressing. So I went through those ones pretty quick. They're relatively straightforward. I wanted to save some of my time here for the more complex questions where they were ranking just because there's a lot more kind of data to show and sift through and think about. So this was the first ranking question, which said, where would you most prefer to see large solar developments? So your first would be the most preferred. And we see here quite a bit of canopy and then rooftop. So canopy is the most preferred, but rooftops really close behind with the second preference being mostly rooftop with some canopy. And once those already built environments were exhausted as a selection, then people generally selected at 81%, the semi-developed. So that's, you know, roadside, some open spaces near existing infrastructure and buildings. Following the use of semi-developed land is where we start to see much more agriculture, but 30% open space as well. And that open space did specifically include forest. So that was other, you know, other unbuilt environments. And then finally, the least preferred really is the open space. Throughout these graphs, you may notice that the no preference increases. Once a user selected no preference, any ranking underneath that was disregarded because they had said, you know, I don't care from here, from this point on, no preference. To really get at the crux of the issue, because we understand that there's broad support for development of solar on the built environment. We specifically asked for participants to rank their preferences regarding the unbuilt environment. When push comes to shove, where would they like to see solar? And this is much more mixed as we might expect. So the most preferred would be dual-use agriculture. But you might notice that 31% here said nowhere. I know we had a discussion maybe with this group and certainly with the solar bylaw group of recognizing that no development is an option and that that could jeopardize reaching the emission reduction targets. And so a little bit of language wasn't that question. And still 31% of respondents said no development at all in the unbuilt environment. We then see as we move into the, you know, the second most preferred location was agriculture land with dual-use still heavily prevalent and then moves more towards the open space. Here open space was more meadows and other grasslands or shrublin and forest was its own category since we know there are strong sentiments in town about forest. So forest appears to be generally least preferred with dual-use agriculture and then traditional use of agricultural land and being the most preferred if solar must be built on the unbuilt environment. Regarding the solar zoning bylaw and how it could apply to large scale developments we asked about 10 questions. So they are not all shown here because it is a little bit overwhelming, just the number of bars. But I did want to point out a couple nuances that come out of these questions. So the first question since this zoning bylaw should create strict regulations on where solar can be constructed. And, you know, about 75% of respondents agreed with that statement that they think it should prescribe where solar can go. But that next question, the solar zoning bylaw should create a new layer of review for solar projects. That only has about 50% agreement. And so this, you know, I interpret this that there's more support for prescribing where solar can go or maybe setting performance standards a solar project needs to meet versus adding additional review processes to solar development. And I think that that's echoed in the last two questions where we see a fair amount of agreement that solar should be reviewed the same as other land developments. But when we ask if there should be no additional zoning requirements kind of flipped it on its head, we see that 50% disagreement. So this is interesting to me that, you know, 50% is still quite a bit of support, but it's a little bit more mixed when it comes to changing the process while there's more consensus around prescribing where solar could or couldn't go. And then we see, again, pretty big support on these middle two questions which is that the any review process for solar should be progressive with the size of the development and that there should be a minimum size under which the solar zoning bylaw would not apply. And we understand here that current regulations the wetland protection act, stormwater standards, those would still apply. And then our next category was really about municipal development. So as the town considers solar projects, when do people want to be involved? And here it was a select all that applies. So these responses don't add up to 100. But we see that really early on, about 50% of our respondents, they want to know about the project really as soon as it's conceived, as soon as the site selected when there's a conceptual plan. So they want to know early on, and then a fair number of people want to be involved throughout the process and be updated. Here's what I pointed out, 7% here, they don't want to be engaged. They want the town to just do what the town needs to do. And so we did also ask, what are the top three questions people have when the town is going to propose a solar development? And people wanted to know explicitly how the proposed development would advance the climate goals. They wanted to know who was responsible for the long-term maintenance and decommissioning of the project. And they wanted to understand how much the project would cost and how much the project would save the town. At our interactive workshop, I know several of the members here attended. We had six kind of self-paced activities for people to participate in and so the first one was how do you feel where users, based on a photo of different types of solar development, could put in an emotion word, a feeling word. So here was forest cutting to support a solar development. And we see the most votes under angry, worried, frustrated. But interestingly, there's five people who felt, or four people, neutral or happy about this. I think they don't feel happy about the trees. They feel happy about the solar development. So that kind of stood out to me. Dual use, we know we saw earlier, dual use was pretty highly rated in terms of use of the unbuilt environment. And we see that here too. 11 happy votes. Also, people were curious. There were a lot of questions about what is dual use, how does that work? Traditional solar is a primary use of agricultural land. Here the scale is different. We had a lot more diversity of answers here, but the max number of votes was four versus 10 or 11 on the other. So mixed sentiment on farmland. And then the canopy parking lot, that was highly voted. One person was curious, but everybody else felt pretty happy and relieved about it. Another activity had this graphic, this cartoon of different types of solar with colloads for people to prioritize and rate where they would like to see it first, second, and third. And again, unsurprisingly, we see a lot of canopy solar and rooftop followed by that dual use. And then ground mounted, but not in a forest. There also were quite a few kind of write-in clarifications on this activity. So that was really great to have people kind of expressing their opinion outside of the set activity. And so all of those results are in the report. People added kind of clarification on some of their preferences. Big questions was really just an opportunity for people to voice their questions about kind of what do they want to know? What are they thinking about? And so some of these questions might look very familiar to this group. But questions about is there state financial support generally? Again, what about those homes that can't support solar themselves? Under Amherst solar questions, we've got, again, how does the community solar programs, how do they work? And here I know you all are working on this one. How many megawatts do we as a community use? And how much area would that take to reach our goals? There were also calls for thinking about Amherst regionally. How can we encourage action in other towns? And how can we coordinate more directly with other communities? There were quite a few comments actually about the Hampshire mall and those parking lots. How can we get solar on those parking lots in Hadlin? Here, this was another kind of free form Q&A. And so things people are excited about with solar. Again, happy to be providing for the future. Happy to be weaning ourselves off fossil fuels. There was a participant who was, you know, interested to see some type of financial requirements of developers to help ensure responsible development and compliance with permit requirements. And then looking to how to get state and federal support to support parking lot development, canopy development, which we know is generally a more expensive form of solar development. The rain clouds, I think highlights the balancing acts that we're all walking as we transition to renewable energy. So we had one participant worried about hasty or careless decisions. And another participant worried we're not moving fast enough. You know, we had concerns about loss of farmland impacts on water, loss of forests, and others saying too many restrictions on possible solar. So this I felt just really, really highlighted the type of work we're working, we're walking and that you all are specifically navigating. We also asked generally, what do you value most about living in Amherst? So here we had a few options already, you know, pre-filled that people could vote on and then also write-in option. So we see that people really value wildlife, diverse wildlife, outdoor recreation. Salamanders got a few votes just by itself even more specifically than other wildlife. But we also see quite a few votes in conservation, fresh food and agriculture were well represented as well as community education and equity. So those those values certainly came through in our workshop. And our final activity at the workshop, we called it reasonable requirements and these were possible types of requirements that could be in the solar bylaw. These were intentionally left broad to avoid any implication that these were in the bylaw would be, we didn't want to be very technical, but did want to understand general attitude and sentiment. So here we see a variety of no clear cutting forests, but we also see very limited tree removal or no tree removal. So that was a recurring preference that showed up and so there was also many votes for putting requirements on developments for parking lots and new non residential buildings, but we didn't see here any votes for acquiring it on residential buildings and elsewhere we saw some concerns that there might be too many requirements on homeowners. So that that's something that didn't make it into this question. So I think that's pretty internally consistent with our results. So thank you all for hanging with me. I know that was a big data dump. I think there's a lot of a lot of conclusions that can be teased out of those results and it does take some looking and thinking pretty closely about it, but I appreciate all of your attention. Thanks Adrian, this was fantastic really nice work. Any questions from ECSE? So Adrian, what are the next steps here? So this actually we are very close to the end of our contract and commitments with the town. So we were specifically retained to generate data to generate these results but not move into the conclusion phase. So we are wrapping up the final report which has both the assessment process in a fair amount of detail as well as the results both in a summarized graphical format and like I said the full tabulated data and that will be provided to the town soon. We have provided the assessment mapping data to the town and we're working with the GIS manager there to get that mapped up and running so that it is publicly usable and accessible but then that is it for here. The data is going to be with you all. Sounds good, thank you so much for the support. Appreciate it. Thank you all for your attention. Overall just it seems like a positive feedback to fight climate change and I think we have the same similar theme on Earth Day as well. I think there is a lot of people who knew how to fight climate change. In some cases education I think you brought up education a couple of times. I think Solar 101 would be great and also how do you install solar in your home? The process was complex and we had a lot of work to do. Some things for us to work on. Steve? Adrian, were you pleased with the number of responses? The 508? I was pleased. We did put a lot of effort into getting the word out there and I think 508. We were pleased with that. Based on the demographic response, does that seem to work? I think like all outreach we would have liked to see more diversity in how long people have lived in town and also their ages to see that we were engaging more Gen Z and millennials. We would have loved to see more diversity but I think having 508 is pretty good and fairly representative compared to being at public meetings and at in-person events. Right. Yeah. We didn't have a question on income and we don't have that. Okay, we took it. Yeah. I think you said only 5% were renters and half of them have solar which tells you right there that this was a pretty rich crowd and I worry that this 30% that or even 50% that doesn't want things touched and that wants everything on rooftops are the folks who can afford it. So I do worry about that being a very slanted outcome. I was not thrilled with the demographics there. Doesn't look like it really represents the community. Yeah. Laura. Sort of, I kind of agree with that, Laurie, but I think we need to be careful assuming that all homeowners are wealthy and that all people with solar are wealthy. I'm volunteer for the credit union and I believe more than 50% of the solar loans they give out are for low income qualified. So they're definitely homeowners but we can't say anything about their income without more information. Thanks Laura. Steve. I guess one other thing about the survey. I was a little disappointed at the very end after the survey was submitted, there was a prompt to submit another response and I believe we were told that beforehand there was no way to track submissions, no way to detect ballot box stuffing. So I think one thing we have to keep in mind is we don't know for sure that these are all individual responses. We don't know for sure that they're all individual but we also didn't want to have only one member of a family could submit a survey. So you know maybe partners took it, you know one and then the next. That to me is I didn't realize that and I don't know how I missed that but that is a pretty serious flaw. We, you know there are ways to do that. I mean at very least you can collect email addresses and make sure you don't get the same email address twice or something. We very specifically didn't want to collect, you know identifiable information in case that dissuaded people from taking the survey. Some survey tools can do that by putting cookies on a browser's list so you don't have to collect personal information but you can still detect if the same browser submitted more than once which is halfway there but yeah as soon as you decide it's going to be an anonymous survey you kind of give up that control over or prevention of the ballot box stuffing to be blood. Okay. Yeah I'm not sure if we're going to go back and redo any of the survey questions so this is the information we have. Steve how does this or Dwayne how does this change things with the solar bylaw process with all the information that you saw anything at all? Well I think we have, you know we just went over in terms of not, the demographics are probably a bit skewed but you know again we do the best we can. Likewise with the ballot box stuffing I think the issue with obviously folks for good reason are very interested in solar on canopies and rooftops and so forth whether that gets us you know in terms of the other part of the work that Adrian's doing we'll come later I guess in the report is you know how many kilowatts or megawatts can we actually do in Amherst on those type of sites I will say that Adrian is scheduled to give the same presentation essentially or a discussion with the bylaw group on Friday so it will be discussed amongst the members there as well. Okay great thanks again Adrian. Thank you all. Okay we'll turn it over to Don for some dates. I mean you weren't here at the last meeting the and I think everybody knows Stephanie and I met with the executive director of the chamber who seemed excited about putting on or hosting along with us an event what we're really waiting on is the updated guidelines from mass development related to the now new construction and they've really communicated directly with Stephanie and I don't want to if you can explain it better Stephanie that's fine but until such time as they've completed their regulations or their guidelines that any flyer of ours is kind of premature because it won't have the information that it needs to have until that information is updated properly so that's where that stands we're waiting on them Stephanie do you have any idea from them as to their timeline for that no they didn't really say they thought they were hoping the guidelines might be updated by May but I think it's one of those things where you know they have a process and it might take longer than they thought so we're just we have the contact information and we're just going to be paying attention to when they release that information thanks Don anything else Don or is that it for updates okay looks like that's it Duane I'll turn it over to you for solar updates yeah no sorry no formal update but can you know basically what's going on with solar in my mind is that it's the solar bylaw working group we continue to meet we do have next meeting on Friday last meeting we had an interesting conversation and presentation conversation with Jonathan Thompson from the Harvard Forest specifically about the work that he's leading up with the Audubon the Audubon mass Audubon with regard to solar and force particularly he did provide some useful perspectives with regard to solar and force presented an interesting calculator he's working on with regard to the carbon impacts of and the comparative impacts of carbon from a forest carbon benefits you get from a forest versus carbon benefits you would get from quote unquote mowing down the forest and putting up solar and it's kind of interesting and I know several people have looked at this he's actually in the process of soon to publish it sounds like a calculator an interactive calculator that should be helpful and the answer is that it depends on a number of different parameters which his calculator can control for but generally he you know obviously he's he did he did particularly distinguish which I think is useful the difference between carbon in the carbon stocks in the forest which is basically the carbon that is already sequestered in the forest in the wood in the in the in the in the wood and that is as opposed to the flux or carbon sequestration of a forest that occurs on an annual basis by the growth of the forest and he did he did you know make clear that the the scale of these things these things are quite different the amount of stock of carbon in already in the stock is much larger than the sequestrin rate on sequestrin rate on a year by year basis so when you know potentially cut down a forest not just for solar for any purpose you're really given up the main thing that you're impacting is that carbon stock but that depends on what you do with the wood he did if you if you are able to find marketable uses for that wood and it stays in housing furniture whatever then at least a portion of that carbon stock stays sequestered obviously you do give up the annual sequestion sequestration but that's generally at least in the case of solar is much more substantially much more substantial carbon benefits from the displaced fossil fuel that being said he sort of suggested that as the grid becomes more and more renewable that tends to go down but at the same time that we sort of push back a little bit on that with regard to whether that is really taking into account the average emissions rate of the iso new england grid or potentially more appropriately the marginal rate of that as we scrub out on the margin we're scrubbing out the fossil fuel he also indicated that yes while if you can find markets to keep this timber in marketable products and keep it in timber that at least in the case of solar development where you're talking about 5, 10, 20, 30 acres but the same would be with housing I would think that it is difficult market wise for land clears to go to the quote-unquote trouble finding markets for that that supply that relatively small quantity of wood product and it's not atypical that these the timber and the wood from this type of forest clearing ends up being chipped and left on the ground which does not stay sequestered for that long and so that's something interesting to think about it's not limited to solar development but to relatively small scale development so that was an interesting outcome I think his he did indicate that he with mass autobahn is working on a GIS evaluation of this in parallel to what the state DOER is doing and so it will be interesting to see both of those products as they become when they become available I'm blocking on the dates or the time frame of that but we're still ways off I suspect and I guess on some of his parting comments that sort of stuck with me was that he coming from the forestry background and to some extent mass autobahn they were sort of more suggesting that as we do need to develop more and more solar and there is going to be some need for land use his parting thoughts were let's try to use land that's already deforested open land and and so then it becomes sort of an additional mind boggling conflict about okay are we better off using some of our open lands meadows as was mentioned before and so forth which may turn out to be more visible aesthetically to to people as opposed to clearing a little bit clearing some in a forest and that's you know in the middle of the forest that people won't see as predominantly so that was also you know from his forestry background he's sort of more enamored with using using up some of the open land already obviously with the focus more on already somewhat disturbed land certainly landfills brown fields and so forth but but also also sort of open land that's already deforested primarily because you're not giving up that carbon stock of the trees would have to come down so some interesting remarks we actually then didn't really have time to dig into our real work which is reviewing the bylaw and developing the bylaw language so we have committed ourselves to start in earnest making progress on that which we'll continue to do on Friday Christine Bestrup in the planning department is leading that and has some stuff ready for us to go for Friday and we'll spend some time as well with Adrian at GZA as well Thanks Ben Jesse Thank you Dwayne for the update Did any mention of soil carbon which is my understanding of someone that's constantly trying to source wood like I think the soil carbon is a big player in that so if there's any math to be done I think that has to be part of it and then chipped wood or rotting wood that may not be carbon so I'm just saying it out loud the way that because of the various bacteria and ways that it degrades it could be other gases emitted into the atmosphere that are more potent than carbon so that's just wood left on the ground and then the third quick comment is open meadows and fields have enormous potential for rapid renewables where huge amounts of carbon in the annual cycle and then sequestered without doing damage to the soil carbon so just a couple of super high level things that I did not hear Yeah absolutely he did touch on the soil carbon and I have to look back at my notes on that I'm not sure if Steve recalls anything about that my sense is that the carbon that's in the soil would generally remain in the soil if you cut down the forest and put up solar as long as you don't do a lot of disturbance of the ground then again there is obviously a sequestration of additional carbon soil as roots grow and leaf litter turns into soil and so forth as well and you would give that up but I am blocking on the specifics of and whether he talked about that in detail Laurie Yeah I have a sort of related concern that I didn't hear discussed either Dwayne which is that we do log in Massachusetts and we don't always log in nice ways and I can give a really good example that I ran into just about a year ago I took a hike on what I thought was the New England trail I didn't realize it had been rerouted from the Leverett food co-op to Atkins reservoir and ended up bushwhacking through miles of ruined clear cut just run over destroyed forest I was appalled because it's not land that like Amethyst Brook when they log in there it's just wonderful right but this is not land that anybody would go on unless they were trying to do the stupid thing I did in following an old map and I mean it's destroyed it's gone we do this every 60 years on state forest why what about using that land if it's we're going to keep doing that we shouldn't keep doing that but if we keep doing that did he touch on that issue I'm not sure about explicitly that I did raise the issue of if to the extent that some of the products could be could go to marketable merchantable timber then are we as a reasonable to assume that somewhere else in New England or the US some sorry if we don't provide lumber or restrict this product from going into markets then somewhere else the demand for lumber and so forth will be served by cutting down trees somewhere else so there's that sort of issue but to your point Laurie in terms of you know I don't obviously I don't know what the specifics of that specific land that you had that you happened upon Latin forest I mean it was hard to walk over for all the sticks and grubble and tree trunks and just crap that had been left I was yeah I mean there if it's state land if it's state forest land it does it does need to get all sorts of permits reviews and so forth in terms of the forestry could have been private could have been coals or something like that I don't know actually any cutting of significant size has to go through forest review forest cutting practice reviews from from the state certainly on state lands while some for my understanding is that while some forestry seems to be fairly ugly in terms of clear cutting there is also some purpose behind that certainly if it's in state land it's done for a reason whether you agree with it or not it depends but there are reasons to clear cut with regard to getting rid of invasive species opening up opening up other habitat that is that the state wants to promote cutting down trees that are destined to be dying pretty quickly because of some of the pests that we have those sorts of things so I don't know I think on state land it's fairly well regulated for those reasons it's not always pretty but it's done for a purpose let's sort of wrap this topic up quickly about 22 minutes for the education team so Stella and Stephanie yeah I was just wondering if the calculator included anything because wood products obviously aren't carbon neutral to produce I don't know anybody with an electric sawmill or an electric log truck or an electric chipper there is an electric chipper coming out this summer but does the calculator include any of the machine emissions and operating I don't recall that I don't recall that I don't recall that and it would be interesting to sort of know what scale that is compared to the scale of carbon that we're talking about but I don't recall that but a good point the calculator had a bunch of sliders but we couldn't play with it he just showed it on a screen and he said he'll maybe be releasing it in a few months so we didn't get a really detailed accounting of everything that's inside of it Stephanie I spent my home meeting with everybody else that we don't have bleed over and sound so two things the first is that the presentation by Jonathan was really fascinating and I will send you all the link to the meeting after this meeting is over but if folks are interested just go to the town of Amherst Mass YouTube website and you will be able to find there's a link for videos video menu and then you'll see a whole bunch of the town's committee meetings listed and you can just go by date scroll through by date but I will send you all the meeting because it was the link to the meeting it was totally fascinating and I think Jonathan was very open to getting feedback on his calculator and Stella I think you especially might really want to take a look at his presentation and look at the calculator he was putting together and if you have feedback for him he was really encouraging people to contact him so I think if there are things thoughts you have definitely reach out he's very open thanks Stephanie okay we have three topics we have 20 minutes which one is the priority here solar bylaw development there's a poster competition for Puffer's Bond Resiliency and then keep on panel Lauria you would be the last one yeah I think there's two things that we have to cover one is the Puffer's Bond letter since we have a draft of that but the other is I do need a minute to talk about because next meeting we're having the panel so I want to make sure that everybody's ready for that I have to contact Scott Ternac again and make sure try to keep his comments to 20 minutes and then each of us so if you have a minute I'll go through that again and just we'll figure out that yeah why don't we do that now okay so this should be fairly quick I wanted to get a reading again who is planning on the way I imagine this going is Scott Ternac will give maybe 15 or 20 minutes on heat pumps and what he does and what heat pumps are but we did a longer heat pump thing a while back so I don't want to spend too much time talking about heat pumps right we want to get to the Q&A as fast as possible so then I figured a few of us who have done or as many of us who have done conversions ourselves should just introduce ourselves quickly say what we've done so that people can maybe even contact us later if they want but then for the last next half hour do a Q&A just open it up for questions does that sound like a reasonable plan and who would like to give a one minute intro as to who they are and what conversion they've done recently who's done conversions in the first place I'm most excited so we've got we've got me we've got Steve we've got Dwayne right Laura does he Jesse Don yeah I was the only one who raised my hand so Stella okay so should the should all of us just give a one minute a quick one minute you know this is who I am this is what I did to my house if your house sounds similar happy to talk to you about it right sound like a plan that's good okay yeah how do we get more participants I don't know other than sending the we do have to get it Stephanie is it I didn't look is it on the events calendar yet but now it will be okay so it needs to go on the Amherst events calendar I have a little local group I'll send it to people in my neighborhood that I've been sending stuff to I can get it on the town's stage as well as an event um there's something you can do with the front page on the Amherst website yeah that's the one I'm talking about so if we do it as a news item yeah I can see if we can do it as a news item yeah okay okay anything else Laura I think that's it I mean there's a blurb you'll see it in the probably in the calendar I wrote a little and it's also on the flyer I sent out last week a little blurb just saying you know that Scott will be giving an intro and the rest of us come talk to your neighbors about their heat pump experiences right that's should we prep some questions in advance if the audience does not have any questions or they can't think of questions maybe we can or I can ask those questions to all of you um yeah you want to you want to sort of be MC and yeah and maybe prep you all right for the meeting yeah so so the sorts of concerns that I heard I can tell you at the I don't know maybe other people heard other concerns at the sustainability festival where people there are a fair number of people who came up to me who had had bad experiences with heat pumps had had a heat pump installed or a neighbor had heat pump installed it never worked right or it's too noisy or it's and a lot of them were you know early installations and it didn't go very well and so I think some of what we're going to have to do is respond to those sorts of concerns and you know make sure that people know about abode you know that they can get consulting help that they can you know that they want to do this they want to compare quotes they want to make sure they have an installer that knows what they're about or they're going to end up they could easily end up with something that won't work very well so that that is a can still a concern and that's what I heard most about at sustainability festival what other people here I heard from three or four people that were perfectly happy although I think at least some of them had expectations that below 2030 degrees they had back up heat so they weren't expecting the heat pump to do everything right part of it is what their expectations were but the yeah three or four at least were quite pleased and had no complaints Jesse I think I'm not sure where everyone else stands on this but I think it's fair to say this is not of one size fits all panacea silver bullet type of solution it's part of the parts that's not going to work for every building every type in every budget and every that of expectation I think it's important maybe at least for me it you know and this technology is evolving as well air air to water heat pumps are now hitting the residential market as well so I think it's I don't like to be oh it's really complicated and it's not going to work I'd like the story that it's good but I think it's okay that doesn't always work and that those are good lessons moving ahead and we're the ideas we try to make good choices which may or may not be putting heat pumps in every project yeah I know I don't at all want to or suggest that we turn this into an energy efficiency but I think at least from my experience the critical first step we did to really get the heat pumps to work effectively and efficiently was to insulate our house and I forget the percentage but the huge majority of the cost was paid for by MassSafe and if you don't do that you're just not good not good and so I'm not sure if the person from the heat pump company would cover that but at least in my my story in my one minute I would sort of focus on that but I didn't be helpful if we also have mentioned that that you know having a and it is not a super insulated house but just getting more insulation your attic which is pretty straightforward is really is really key and sort of just to again not turn into an energy efficiency event but to just mention that that's really helpful to get the heat pumps to work well done yeah I actually I mean one in order to get the MassSafe rebate you've got to go through an audit and they're going to tell you you have to insulate your attic but I have very very recent numbers because and you're absolutely right MassSafe I mean of the total project cost of insulation cost of about $4400 our portion was $700 so they do they cover an enormous percentage of it so that's a pushing MassSaves and reminding people about MassSaves is going to end energy efficiency and insulating is going to be an important part of this discussion we should keep and Lori who do you say is going to be joining us Scott Chernak is the owner of Western Mass heating and cooling so coincidentally apparently did all of our conversions not that we're doing this to endorse him but he's very knowledgeable and we all seem to have come to that decision independently I use Turner use Turner okay use different one then I'll be the emcee for the discussion then and why don't if you all can send me a list of questions and you can prep for it I'll send the consolidated list by next Wednesday so if you can send me any questions that you can think of by this Friday is that something that's possible in a couple of days or do you need more time but I think mostly we should really try to get people in the audience to ask about their own I completely agree yeah if questions are not asked I just want to ask them I can come up with a bunch okay and then we do have to get the word out about the panel discussion more powerful that way we have more people okay but yeah by Friday please if you can thank you okay the next topic is around the ECAC sponsored or CER competition Stephanie yep so as I mentioned at the last meeting we are applying for an MVP grant an action grant to improve resiliency at the Poverst pond location and it's partly improving the pond itself the water quality and also the things like the recreational trail that's adjacent to it there are issues of erosion that are contributing to sedimentation within the pond so there's a number of things as part of this application to this is really for an engineering study it's not actually going to be the implementation piece of this but we have to start with the engineering first so this is for a technical technical support to create some kind of engineering study for coming up with a plan to improve the Poverst pond resiliency especially in light of the fact that it is one of our only swimmable water bodies in town and in fact really in the local area so one of the things that we'll need to sort of beef up and improve the you know the viability of having this funded is to have some kind of community engagement piece and what we talked about with our consultant Fossin O'Neill who's helping us with the application was to have some kind of a poster competition with Poverst pond the importance of Poverst pond in the community and you know what it means to our community and also sort of what improved resiliency would mean so you all were kind of a body that seems like the likely ones to host that kind of a competition it would only happen if we received the funding it's something that would be done over an academic year so it's not something that would be happening the funding I think we have you know a year and a half with which to sort of complete it because again we'd have to do it within the academic year so I just wanted to know first of all are you all on board it would probably need at least one of you to kind of be the champion you'd have to you know have the competition and then you'd have to have some judges to vote and then the final poster would be used in the materials that we do for outreach so the letter the attached letter it would need to be signed by Vasu on your behalf and I do have a deadline the application is May 4th so I would need to have you say tonight whether you're on board with doing this and you don't have to decide who would do it but generally are there at least any of you who might be interested and taking the lead on this and could I get Vasu to sign the letter so that we can include it in the packet next week so if I understand correctly we would be agreeing to run a poster competition that would involve local youth in building a messaging around some making some sort of message around this project correct exactly yeah yeah I mean would it be something that the Hitchcock Center would be able to do well we were specifically looking for you all because you are the energy and climate action committee and this is really a resiliency project so we're wanting town support not the Hitchcock support I mean not that we don't want their support we would love a letter from them too but specifically we want to engage the community through you know town supported action so this is just in support of your grant application correct and that would be I think that's something we should definitely do and it would be nice if someone would volunteer to lead it probably not me but I'll do it if no one else will I don't have to volunteer now no right now we just need you to commit to signing the letter but if we do get the grant funding then we are going to need to to do something with this and I would certainly help out it's not like it's going to be completely dumped on you right Don you had something or you're just raising your hand from the previous discussion okay I'm just raising my hand and I was actually reading Stephanie's proposed letter so that I knew what I was voting on and just along those lines and sorry if I missed it if you said it Stephanie but is your vision that this poster and this effort with the youth would be through either middle school or high school yeah so it would be through the schools and it could be it could be specifically for middle school or high school or it might just be the school you know the schools in general I mean the the middle school and high school are regional schools right which is fine because but you know it might be that we actually maybe want to go through the elementary schools yeah and would do you have or do you think would be pretty safe to say that we could find a teacher or educator at the school to sort of be a mentor at the within the school to sort of put this together as a science project or something yeah I think we yeah I was going to say I mean I think the details of that could be worked out later it's just in general but I absolutely think we you know we would want to definitely get an educator on board with us to support this effort yeah is everybody on board I move we support the letter second okay and in no order Raghavan yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you all very much I'll send you a copy over this by the end of this week oh you need it tonight as long as I get it by Friday okay okay thank you thank you everybody Steve I don't know if we'll have time we've got three minutes to talk about to her bylaw development I don't know yeah I think I can hold off on that and put it to a future meeting okay let's do that okay can I just raise the topic that I'm thinking of hardly from Jonathan Thompson's presentation to the solar bylaw working group that I saw last week and partly also observing solar bylaw working group there's a lot of focus there on creating restrictions on solar and in anticipation of some maps coming out both in GZA but also a statewide map showing where we're going to sort of prefer to put solar or at least rankings of solar I'm wondering if there's a way we might consider figuring out ways to incentivize solar in the places that we want it to sort of counterbalance the zoning bylaws which restrict place solar from places we don't want it so that's the theme or the idea I'm thinking about in my head and maybe that's a topic we can discuss at a future meeting thanks Steve okay with a couple of minutes we have let me just quickly go over the next meeting agenda items we have the draft letter to the two new DPU members we've got the spring field initiative stop the toxic pipeline review and then we've got the heat panel heat pump discussion Lori how long are you thinking for that discussion the flyers have already been made it starts at 5.30 it's going to go oh wait the discussion or the you're talking about the panel next week that's going to be an hour so it starts at 5.30 and ends at 6.30 okay so you want it to be an hour okay and then the solar pilot okay is there anything else that we need to talk about if it's okay with everyone I'll just send everyone another copy of that solar of the of the flyer for the heat pump panel for you to distribute your own you know own communities if that's okay no reason not to do that right Stephanie no laws violated there as long as you just say do not respond just send it to everybody just while we have a minute I just want to say that I if it's okay I'm sort of jumping in maybe with a little bit of a staff update but I attended a meeting that the mass municipal association put on open meeting law and public records law and it was recorded and I will actually get the link out to everyone because I think it's really interesting in some of the you know some of the the things that were discussed and sort of some of the clarification loser like guidelines now say that again I said loser guidelines are still no it's they're the same guidelines it's just and in some ways actually in some ways they're actually a little more stringent actually but yeah but it was just interesting it was very a lot of information delivered very very quickly but I think yeah it was just helpful but they had slides I can I'll forward both the the presentation as well as the slides so that you'll have the whole package and you can sort of go through it I haven't even had time to really go through the slides yet they talked very quickly skipped over a lot so there's a lot to it but I think it might be helpful Laura yeah just maybe for future meeting as well and maybe it's related to Steve's point and we could combine the two but um I did I think I emailed everybody about the climate action now group hosting the new chief climate person I was able to attend for a little bit it was a good meeting but I was sort of frustrated that we didn't get invited to it and I just feel like there's this weird dynamic in town where there's like the climate activists and somehow we're different like I even asked to join one of the groups and I was told they didn't want political people involved and like how am I a political person I'm just on this committee so like I just feel like or maybe I am a political person but I can also be a climate activist on the side right it was just a strange thing so I don't know how we can maybe get our maybe there's some kind of outreach we could do maybe there's a joint meeting we could host somehow to sort of get us focused on we have a lot of people focused on this issue which is great how do we how do we move that to be positive like how do we get move it to be focused on where do we want to put the solar that we want to put we all agree with that like that's an easy thing to do we should be working on that together so anyway just throwing that out there I don't know what it would look like but I think there's something we could potentially do there hmm yeah good point Laura I think it's important let me think about that unless anybody else has some thoughts on what we could do what was the status where do we end with the we should really go on but one thing maybe we should discuss later is where do we end with adopting the specialized code question because there are now 16% of the state has now adopted it and we're still doing it yeah I've not heard back and I've emailed the town manager he responded as well okay we can talk about that another time we should move on to the EV-101 but we don't have what was his name we don't have a representative from Green Consumers Alliance yet they're coming there was just a mix up about the link so they're on their way I just sent it to them again maybe do staff updates or I mean I'm ECAC updates and I'll work with them offline here do we they're joining now they're still joining right Stephanie you said yes they're coming they were just having trouble with the link so just let me do this offline thanks sounds good Laura to Lori's point so are you looking for is it the town council that needs to act on this yeah the town manager and the town council need to stop the new specialized code but who needs to act first I think it's the council Jesse correct right that's how it would work they would have to that's the part of the process right the town council has to vote on it they have to stop it as a bylaw have we heard it all from Alicia who's our new liaison have you reached out to her I reached out to her as well and Jesse did you talk to Alicia I mean I I tried I've tried many times okay let me reach out to Alicia could you just share with us through the email you've sent or whatever then we can adapt it to our other town council yeah sure okay any staff ECAC member updates I got one so my term is in June actually I mentioned it to everybody who I met on Saturday and then I do not intend on extending my term so that means the chair is vacant and we need another member from the community so yeah it's been awesome fantastic to learn from you all and thank you for the opportunity Stella, you had an update Duane no Vasu I presume Stephanie is aware of that yes and appreciate your service for sure yeah just to echo what was the sustainability fair thank you so much Vasu I was still a little bit hung up on what Laura said I wonder I wonder if there's a way to encourage a representative from one of those groups to apply to be on this committee so I talked well I don't know what climate action now but I talked to one person but he was on other committees I'll do that if you have people that you can recommend let me know I'll do that I also just want to go on record for anybody who may be listening just like as some of you know I have a history of pretty escalated direct action with activists and other issues and my personal feeling is that is also that a volunteer committee is not like a conflict of interest with activism so if anybody is listening and considering applying to be on this committee I would encourage them to do that there is already a fair amount of overlap between this committee and local energy advocates and mothers out front yeah there are people who are members of both right yeah yeah it's a very important topic Laura thank you for bringing that up in fact hugely important how we engage with everyone and sort of bridge building and collaborating seems just critical so yeah whoever is listening that is the goal and Laura could you send me the contact or some people in climate action now I know people in ACJA but I can reach out I think we have at least one new attendee and I think we should just point out again that we're just a little late getting the green one person online there was some trouble with the link but they should be here momentarily can you guys see the Celtics game last night very upsetting very tough tough ending for sure but big hockey game tonight we should probably open it up why don't we open it up for comments from the for the last thing on the agenda there's going to be some additional comments after the EV101 as well yeah sure any questions from the community please raise your hand Stephanie you would have to unmute I think I saw her on the phone oh there she is oh there's my phone hi Laura thanks so much for informing people that you can't judge their wallet by whether they have other panels on the roof or not that was very important to make that point I just want to ask you people now that the survey has been completed it was it appeared to me that there was disappointment on some of your parts and I'm wondering why and I'm wondering if there's a plan for the future now that you have this information I'm looking at the biggest part of this survey and seeing that 90% of the people who responded said they wanted to see large-scale solar on rooftops and canopies there was absolutely no support as a most preferred option for forests it was close to 3% and then when you got down to the point where people were forced to do unbuilt environment once again the forest portion of that was the smallest I can't read the percentage but it looks like it's single digits and when it came to the second category it wasn't much bigger so it's really clear to me that the people who responded to your survey that you put together have given you a strong message they're saying they want to see solar on rooftops and canopies and they're also saying they do not want to see it in forest land they just brush off the information questioning how many people took the survey who were the people who took the survey were they homeowners were there enough people who were renters or non-rentors as if there was some kind of qualification that you had to have in order to take the survey so basically I just want to ask you again what's the plan now you spend a lot of time, money and effort in putting this survey together as a community to share their opinions with you you now have their opinions and I'm wondering what's going to happen next thank you Thanks Michael and Laura does you want to respond to that Yeah I think just to clarify it was not our survey it was the town survey that's an important point and I don't want to speak on behalf of eCAC we were talking about there in terms of how do we we would all agree I think our preferred approach is to put as much solar on rooftops canopies and other places as possible and this is the message we've been sharing for many many months now so I think we just want to figure out how to move that forward I think the other point that we're not making ourselves but that the Massachusetts roadmap we are going to need some solar on some land to DeWayne's point maybe that's open land maybe that's the meadow entering Amethyst Brooks and not somewhere else but we need to be open as a community to have those discussions so I think we what I think we want any concern I have about this survey frankly to the point you just made that someone's going to take the results and say this clearly means we can't put any solar on on land because I just don't think that's going to allow us to meet our goals thanks Laura Steve I would just say that I'm very intrigued by the survey results we saw a summary of that today and I think it's premature for us to have a plan after a few minutes after hearing a summary of it so I'm very much looking forward to seeing the specific results that will be released in the report and the other very important part of what GZA is doing which is they're mapping across the town so all of these are very important components that will become part of a strategy or a plan as we move forward so not we're we're not dismissing it but any survey it does have to be looked at critically and we still need to do that well said Steve a couple of Renee Renee had a question go ahead Renee you can unmute sorry I had to unmute just jumping in on this since it seems like it's a little bit of a back and forth conversation here before I mean we didn't get to talk about item number six on the agenda and Steve talked about it for a little bit and he talked about incentives for building on canopies and on rooftops and we now have a new administration we have a new climate chief maybe there's hope for that we know that often people say it's just too expensive to do canopies and rooftops but we also can perhaps require new construction to have solar so we have some new options look at this as the survey informed us about how the community is feeling we have a new governor we have a new climate chief we've never had a climate chief before you know let's I think we should just hope that we can get different kinds of incentives coming from the state that will encourage the kind of development we want to see thank you thank you okay I'm going to stop for just a second because I think we do have some technical difficulty where Devin could actually see and hear us but was nowhere to be found in the panelists or attendees it was very strange but finally we got got you in so I'm here thank you I appreciate all the all of your help yeah so sorry about that that was very strange that is okay um are you all ready for me to do the presentation or should we should I wait or waiting for you thanks for joining okay great let me just pull it up quickly I will share my screen okay well thank you everybody um especially Stephanie for your help in getting me here today um so my name is Devin DeLibro and I am the program coordinator for the drive green team at green energy consumers alliance um green energy consumers is a nonprofit that's based in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island whose mission it is to harness the power of energy consumers to speed the transition to a low carbon future we do that in both policy and advocacy work but then also in our programmatic work like drive green um ignore that slide um and so why did we choose electric vehicles to focus on with our mission um well we we chose it because we found that transportation is a huge contributor to greenhouse gases and we wanted to do whatever we could to bring that notch down a little bit so that's why we chose to focus on electric vehicles to go along with that theme your typical gas powered car emits 381 grams of co2 emissions per mile in New England and that's pretty steep as you go to a plug-in hybrid model a model with a car with an electric range and then a gas backup that moves to about 176 co2 emissions per mile um and then for a battery electric vehicle that's even better it's a fancy way of saying an all electric vehicle at 96 grams of co2 emissions per mile and then this is a plug that my executive director makes me put in here for our green powered program so if you sign up for green powered you could essentially be running on no emissions uh we are based in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts but I will go with just the Massachusetts information for the purposes of this webinar um so you can see here that transportation accounts for 42 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in uh in Massachusetts and now that's not just your personal vehicle it's all types of transportation but again anything we can do to move that needle down is what we're looking to do and EVs can do that um and then just to further that life cycle emissions they are very different from gas powered cars to electric vehicles um it is true that in the initial manufacturing process EVs do have a a greater um carbon footprint because they have that necessary battery manufacturing piece but once you reach about a year or two into driving the car that you'll see that they become they're like on parity and then um the gasoline cars continue to emit far more than the electric versions of the of those cars for a gas car I think it's about 21,000 miles and for an electric truck it's um about 17,000 miles before they reach that parity point so um EVs are also great for public health reasons um if you have an all-electric vehicle there are no particular matters coming out of the tailpipe if you have a plug in hybrid there are less but still some um they are also cleaner even if you take electricity generation to account there are a lot of um clean municipal aggregation communities within massachusetts that have a very high standard of green renewables in their electricity mix but also massachusetts has a renewable energy standard which requires the utilities to put more more green renewables on the grid every year um and you know as we know climate change itself is a public health threat and we have closely the american lung association they come out with different reports every year um and this one in particular is zeroing on healthy air report um and this report assumes two things which is important to know if you're interested is one that all of the cars will be electric and two that the electricity needed to power those cars will be um all renewable but if we were to live in that utopian society where that would be to happen um you would see in massachusetts 18 billion dollars in health benefits and you would avoid about 1600 premature deaths 35 thousand asthma attacks and almost 200,000 lost work days so you can see it really does make a difference we're not quite there yet we have a lot of renewables on our grid and all EVs but we could get there eventually um efficiency is actually a really uh key point between gas cars and electric cars because efficiency in gas cars is really not great um it's around like 12 to 30 percent of energy from the fuel is used to drive the car down the road which just means that you're really when you're trying to fuel your vehicle so you can see here from the diagram that engine losses account for 68 to 72 percent of such losses conversely in an electric car um those vehicles are about 60 to uh 73 percent efficient um and that's depending upon the drive cycle as well if you put on the regenerative braking mode uh that could uh get you up to 77 percent to 100 percent efficient and for those of you who don't know regenerative braking is when you take your foot off the accelerator and it slows the car down more than it would if you took your foot off the like you know the gas pedal and so what that does is it doesn't use your brake but it uses like these fancy magnets um that slow down the car and then put energy back into the battery of your car thus extending your range which is wackily super efficient also people just really like regenerative braking mode so um then more about efficiency so you can see that really uh strongly in miles per gallon or miles per gallon electric I think that's probably like the biggest indicator for folks um you'll see on the right hand side of this graph that we have the Ford F-1 15 other like very popular gas cars um their mpg is pretty low and then once you move to your regular hybrids without a plug gets a little bit better still not amazing but pretty good and then you get your plug in hybrids and the mpg is just like skyrockets away so you know the Toyota Prius Prime has as much as 133 mpg and it even eclipses all of the battery electric vehicle somehow I don't know how but it does um but the battery electric vehicles generally have a um greater mpg e than all of the other category so really um it'll affect your wallet as well which is deciding factor with a lot of folks um and then there's fuel costs um so typically speaking we like to say that it costs you um less to drive on a mile of electricity than it does on a mile of gasoline however uh rates went kind of crazy over the winter so for the first time since I my five and a half years working here that has not been the case um so for national grid and ever source customers you're paying 14 cents per mile and 11 cents per mile respectively whereas the average gallon of gasoline in massachusetts as of earlier this month was three dollars and 56 cents which meant that the average um the mile you pay per um sorry the mile on gasoline is 11 cents almost 12 cents per mile so you're really not saving anything at the moment now these prices will change soon if some haven't already so it will be a little bit different they are projected to fall a lot in the summer so we'll see but right now um unfortunately if you're a national grid customer you're not saving anything but if you're an ever source customer at least it's like at the same level and if you want to know more about how we came up with this math and the equations that we did um you can check out our fuel cost page here so the takeaways for this is we know fuel savings aren't that great right now they're not existent for some folks but the electricity prices will change every six months um what electricity utility you have matters whether that be ever source national grid if you have like a municipally owned utility or if you are in an aggregation community um but one thing to remember even if electricity prices are high is that you will still have maintenance savings and potentially have access to free charging which I'll talk about in a sec also if anyone has any questions feel free to just chime in um okay so for maintenance like I said EVs cut maintenance costs in half and repair costs in half sorry Devon um Laura I had a question sorry I moved everyone's faces so I couldn't see them so I could see all the slides Laura go ahead oh no worries and I also was on video because I moved downstairs to make dinner um just I think you kind of answered it with your last point but that's assuming you're charging at home yes okay um but you don't have to and we'll talk about that in a later half of the presentation okay let me just move you all so I can see if somebody raises their hands okay um so maintenance we've been saying maintenance and repairs costs are cut in half for EVs for like years and then um in 2020 consumer reports came out with this uh fancy little report that says backed up all the things we've been saying for years so I'll tell you what we have to say but definitely check out this report if you're interested um so EVs have far fewer moving parts compared to a gas engine vehicle um but again that's for battery electric vehicles so all electric vehicles so there's fewer things then to maintain or repair um so that's a big savings right there um the battery motor and electronics require very little maintenance um and when we're talking about maintenance people in particular are worried about the battery for electric vehicles and we tell people you don't really have to worry about that because these cars these batteries are designed to last a lifetime of the vehicle and the manufacturers are very confident in that fact they have eight year hundred thousand warranties on most vehicles if not better warranties so definitely something to look into if you're um worried about that I mentioned regenerative braking before it does protect the brakes which means you don't have to repair your brakes or replace them as often and then just in general um EVs save on total costs of ownership and which includes depreciation financing resale prices that sort of thing so if you're interested in learning more about that you can check out that link um I believe Stephanie has the slides excuse me a little bit more on maintenance so the bottom you'll see um ICEV, HEV, PHEV, BEV that stands for internal combustion engine vehicle or gas car HEV is like the hybrid electric vehicle it's the hybrid without the plug PHEV is plug in hybrid electric vehicle and then BEV is battery electric vehicle um so going from left to right you'll see that there's a significant decrease in maintenance costs um the BEVs or the battery electric vehicles have none of those like reddish pinkish things and fewer few of those like purple um things so uh it does add up the maintenance costs can really save you over the long run um you'll notice that the plug in hybrid isn't as great of a savings that's because it still has all those moving uh parts like a gas engine like a regular gas car um because it's like a combination of both but generally speaking you can save a lot over um with maintenance costs um and then we like to say you know they're fun to drive here's a collage of a lot of our we call them EV ambassadors they're people who like to volunteer with us um they're really it can be really fast um and they're also really quiet and just generally pretty cool and interesting stuff any questions before I move on um and then we'll talk about all the things that we think you should know regarding electric vehicles um so when someone's first considering an electric vehicle they're new to the space range anxiety is something that comes up quite a bit um and we like to say that it is a thing of the past for a few different reasons so for one um there are a lot more new models of battery electric vehicles that are coming out every year that have higher and higher ranges or greater and greater ranges um I just saw our report recently that said EVs are trending to be an on average of 30 miles of range um sorry 300 miles of range soon so it's really it's definitely doable um and there are models out there that have more than 300 miles of range so you can we can really do whatever you need to do if that still doesn't assure you um you can definitely choose to go with a plug-in hybrid model there's plenty to choose from um and like the Toyota Prius Prime the Toyota RAV4 Prime those are two of my favorites they have a good amount of electric range um and then they have also that gas backup so you can have that security and that peace of mind another reason why we say it's a thing of the past is because of um all the infrastructure that's being built out so there are there's money coming from the federal government for infrastructure in Massachusetts and throughout the United States um and then the utilities the main utilities Eversource and National Grid are really committed to building out the infrastructure in the state um the funding that they have for those their infrastructure programs far surpasses the federal money coming in so you if you don't see a lot of charters in your community yet you should expect to see some in the coming years in the coming next couple of years there'll be a lot have you heard any concerns about the all-vehicle drive um most of the battery vehicles I think except Tesla um are real real drives I think no so there a lot of them are a lot of them are front wheel drive um the occasional real rear wheel drive I don't know why it always trips me up to say rear wheel drive um but um there's a lot more that are coming online that are all wheel drive right now um and so I would suggest if you're like curious I would take a peek at our our website we have an EV shopping tool and you can filter by the drive train and there's plenty that have all wheel drive right now the problem with that is the reason why I think the manufacturers didn't want to do that at first is because it cuts down on efficiency in your range but now I think that the battery technology has gotten better and they've seen that like they can do all wheel drive they've started to do it so you can definitely find those out there I mean I wouldn't get a rear wheel drive car though just for the snow okay so we talked about this the average range approaches 300 miles in the US for EVs so stay tuned it's not gonna it's not just Tesla there are other models out there so be on the lookout this is probably one of everyone's favorite topics is charging and it's not that hard it's just like a little bit of a switch of mindset so it's really easy to just plug in at night when you go home or plug in when you're out on doing your errands um there are three basic levels of charging level one, level two and DC fast charging level one and level two use a J1772 port that you see in the top right of the screen so level one is your typical 110 bolt outlet and that's something you could use to charge your phone with so that gets you two to six miles of range per hour and that's fine for some folks they really they really make do they only have like a normal commute of like not that many miles but other folks that's just not enough so you can get a level two station charging station install at your home and you can also find these around town and these are 220 outlets you can just get electricians to install for you and they can get you anywhere from 11 to 54 miles of range per hour this carries so much because there's it depends on the charging rate of the onboard charger which can change from vehicle to vehicle then there's DC fast charging which uses the other two ports you see on your screen here the J1772 combo also known as CCS is the most common port that you'll find out there it used to be just for America and European cars and Asian manufacturers tended towards the Chatham ports but they're slowly seeing how the tides have turned and they're moving towards the J1772 combo port so you can filter also on our shopping tool to see what DC fast charging port your car has the car you're looking for has we did put an example here of 90 miles in 30 minutes and it's because we can't really put an accurate range here because it really varies from car to car and it varies based on the charging station that you're using the output that it can put out and then also what your car can accept so it's limited by those two factors and it can really change but generally speaking it'll charge your car very fast I have not talked about Tesla I won't really talk too much about Tesla and to say it has its own proprietary port an own proprietary network which is a really great advantage for folks who are Tesla drivers if you are someone who doesn't want to be a Tesla driver but wants to take advantage of their charging station network well you'll be in luck because soon I think that they'll make sure that you can charge any car at their charging stations in the next couple of years they already have a few stations that they've been piloting so you should see more online soon and this is the part where I'm going to tell you about all the different apps that you can use and charging on the go so you can plug shares probably the biggest one that we like to tell people about it is a crowdsourced app so there are a lot of different charging stations within this that are networked so it covers all the network charging stations and it'll tell you things like does this charging station cost me anything is it in disrepair does it usually have a line is there a good coffee place nearby any random thing you could potentially want to know you can find out on plug share another popular one is charge point charge point is one of the bigger networked charging stations charging station networks in New England so definitely check them out and then the third one is a better route planner which for folks who want to plan out road trips it's great it factors in like whether it factors in whether you like really packed your car with a lot of weight like all these things you wouldn't think of that could change your efficiency and it also helps plan your route charging stations and just for context the green is level two charging stations and the orange is DC fast charging so lots in eastern mass western mass could use a little love but still has a lot for folks who want to install a level two charging unit at their home we have created this guide that can help you it helps you determine your charging needs like whether you really need a level one or a level two how to pick your charging station unit and what you need an electrician for so for an electrician they can do this work relatively easily as long as there's no extenuating circumstances it should only cost you about $1200 with the unit and their work combined and then as far as the charging station unit goes there's different ratings I would look at the NEMA ratings in particular and you don't have to get it installed in a garage you can get it installed externally on your house that works too whatever you need it to be done wherever you need it to be put and then you might say that's cool but I don't own my own single family home or live in a single family home we have a guide for apartment and condo folks this is something that you can just simply hand like a property manager or property owner and say like this lays out why this is good for you to do and why this is a great amenity for folks so it'll tell it'll tell them the difference between like non-network charging stations and network charging stations and what that means touch upon any incentives things like that okay this one gets a little complicated because this is the new clean vehicle credit which is the federal tax credit that was updated recently so if you have questions feel free to interrupt so this program is valid through 2032 and one of the first things it did was remove the 200,000 unit cap that it had placed on manufacturers previously which meant that manufacturers could only sell 200,000 electric vehicles before the tax credit phased out for their cars and that's no longer this is a website from the IRS where you can find all the manufacturers and models that that can be that have the federal tax credit that can that apply for the federal tax credit I said that now there's income requirements so if you are a joint filer and $7 were less and for individual filers it's $150,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are now included which say we're not in the past and there will be new vehicle requirements which we'll talk about in a second and this then look up tool so I'm going to talk about a lot of different things that are required for the federal tax credit now and then once you think it's critical hit all of these things you should still look it up using this then look up so let's talk about it one of the first requirements is the assembly location the assembly location has to be in North America now and you can again use that then look up tool there is an MSRP price cap now so it's $80,000 for SUVs fans and pickup trucks and $55,000 for sedans and hatchbacks MSRP based not the actual price you pay at the dealership so if you found an SUV that has an MSRP of $75,000 but the dealership upcharges you and you end up paying like $85,000 your vehicle is still eligible for the tax credit because it's based on the MSRP and not the final price and then there's the battery requirements which split this up into two buckets the money up into two buckets so it's $37.50 and $37.50 so you have to hit all these requirements I just talked about plus now these battery requirements so there's a mineral requirement and then the battery component requirement both are set at certain percentages which then have to ramp up over time and the manufacturers have to meet these requirements in order for the vehicle to then qualify for the tax credit and if you want to know like more about that we have that listed on our website the requirements and how it ramps up and things like that now if you want to see what vehicles qualify for that federal tax credit you can go to the US Department of Energy's website they have the whole list of the vehicles that qualify I will warn you it is not long all of these requirements have made it so this list gets is pretty short it is not a list that doesn't move there's cars added to it all the time this was just announced on the 18th and since then we've already seen the Volkswagen ID4 added to the list so there will be more cars added to this list as time goes on so stay tuned and also maybe just do your research before considering buying a car and just check which one would be available for the tax credit and which one could potentially be available for the tax credit in the future so you'll see here list things like assembled in North America MSRP limit and then the credit amount like I said this list will change over time so manufacturers will change their supply chains in order to qualify there is a lot of federal funding available for manufacturers to apply for to build factories in North America and figure out their manufacturing of their batteries in North America there is also free trade agreements to consider and some of the battery requirements doesn't have to just be from North America but a country that has a free trade agreement with North America and so the United States is still considering more of those again we have a lot more of this in detail on our website I guess before battery requirements will ramp up every year and then new vehicle models will come out and so there will be more that qualify for this tax credit but it might be slow going at first now there is a loophole it's kind of weird so the inflation reduction act or the IRA created this commercial vehicle tax credit which does not have the same eligibility requirements as the clean vehicle credit so what this means is that basically the dealership can decide to buy the vehicle and then lease it out to the consumer so by buying the vehicle they can get the because their commercial their commercial business they can get the tax credit that's separate from the tax credit I just told you about and then put it towards a leasing agreement for their customer it's all very shady and very silly but if you want to potentially lease a vehicle this is maybe the option that you want to go with and just try to lay out everything for folks if you want more information on that definitely follow up with me and we will I can go over that through email Laura yeah thanks Devin I do have to run in a few minutes for a different meeting so I will have to leave early but I just wanted to quickly share my experience so we do lease a Kona which is looks like it's shown right here that's not me but we've had it now for it'll be two years in August I we found we unrelated to this leap we decided to lease because we knew that there were more and more vehicles coming out every year and we didn't want to commit to one for a long period of time also because the rebate gets applied to your you don't get the rebate in your tax credit it gets applied at the dealership or the dealership gets it right so it kind of like made our payments pretty low like the lease payments were really low so that was great for us the point I actually wanted to make is more around the charging so we actually have not installed a level 2 we still just use our regular plug and that's worked fine for us for two years we do have another car that's gas powered so that helps but and I do drive it occasionally to Boston and there's a lot of chargers in the in particularly in the parking garages in Boston that make it kind of easy you're paid a park and then you get some free charging it's kind of a nice deal but I just wanted to let folks know that it is possible to putter around town and not have to install the more expensive charger if you plug it in overnight totally and I've heard of a lot of other folks who are just fine with their level 1 charger so it is doable okay so now there is a used vehicle tax credit where there used to just be a new vehicle tax credit this is the link to the IRS website where you can find the manufacturers and models that qualify what's really just great about this is you don't have to worry about any of the battery requirements that I just talked about the tax credit is $4,000 or 30% of the sale price whichever is lower you do have to buy from like a real dealership not just like a Craigslist person and it has to be at least two years old which is not hard and then cost $25,000 or less which makes that a little difficult because EVs do hold onto their their prices and the car market is a little steep right now it only applies to the first resale so if someone bought the car used before you and they got it you can't get it for that car and it does have a lower income threshold so it's $150,000 for joint filers and $75,000 for individual filers and we'll talk about this in a second but you can combine this with some state rebates as well my favorite part of the federal tax credit is this so in 2024 I don't know exactly when but sometime in 2024 there will be a point of sale rebate so the consumer can choose to transfer the tax credit to the dealership so you get that money taken off the top right away instead of it being dependent upon your personal tax liability so it's really more of like an equalizer for folks the details of this program are still TBD I think the government purposely gave itself a lot of time to figure this out now talk about the state rebates so more EV is the state rebate there are two columns here because things are changing soon and we have some information regarding the changes so as of right now you can get $3,500 for a battery electric vehicle that's an all electric vehicle and $1,500 for a plug-in hybrid with 25 miles of range or more but the final purchase price has to be $55,000 for a battery electric vehicle and $50,000 for a plug-in hybrid you can purchase or lease this vehicle but the lease terms have to be at least 36 months and you have to apply online at the more EV website I think it's 90 days from the day you purchased it and it can be purchased both in and outside of Massachusetts what I will tell you all if you're looking to buy a vehicle right now is expect it to be a long process it will take some time you're going to have to pre-order your vehicle you might not even be able to find a vehicle to test drive it's really frustrating I know someone who put an order in in January for a vehicle and it still hasn't been accepted by the manufacturer yet it can take some time or you might luck out depending on the vehicle you're looking for coming soon so the LI1 is the target for this the rebate is going to change up a little bit so it will be anywhere from $3,500 to $5,000 unfortunately the plug-in hybrids will no longer qualify but it will apply to both new and used vehicles and the used vehicle part is brand new so we're excited about that there will be additional rebates for low-income drivers and cars and people trading in gas cars and what's great is that you can stack all of these so it's not just you get one or the other you can stack them all quick time just a quick time check here our meeting wraps up 6.30 so I don't know how many more slides you have but we can wrap it up in another three to four minutes and make sure that the public has any additional comments right okay and then what's different about this rebate is that it is an authorized point of sale instead of applying and getting a couple months from then and then like I said before you should really check out our website this is our shopping tool we have a lot of different models maybe get set up with the dealership in your area and just compare and contrast everything and see what you're looking for and that's it I'm going to stop sharing anyone have any questions or does the public have any questions please raise your hand a lot of stuff to throw at you and one little presentation Michael yes thank you that was an incredible presentation I think I've ever heard anything as comprehensible on the topic just terrific I was wondering one thing maybe you're aware of and I'm curious about how this might be dealt with one of the things that's missing now that more and more electric cars are on the road is the fact that they're not paying a gas tax and I'm sure as you know Massachusetts has a high gas tax it's about 25 cents a gallon I think it's around 20 cents a gallon that money's being used to replace bridges and roads and even some of it's being used for mass transportation obviously if everyone's driving an electric car all that money goes away and yet you still have the same needs for fixing the roads I'm wondering if you know of anything that's in the works presently to start dealing with that issue because there's more electric cars out there and those people Amherst is always concerned about fair share right well those people aren't paying their fair share of road upkeep so I wonder if you hear of any initiatives to somehow tax these electric cars so that they're paying their fair share of road maintenance and highway maintenance and bridge repairs unfortunately I'm more of a program person and not a policy person so I don't know the answer to that question I could definitely ask that of some of my coworkers though yeah it's just one of the issues that's coming up with that I didn't expect you to have all the answers though you pretty well had every single one as far as electricity is being used in vehicles and what the choices are those fantastic presentation thank you thanks Michael and anybody else so I had one question um do you have data from R&B about vehicle types owned by residents in Massachusetts I've tried to get that data and still I know you've tried as well do you have that data to see I don't it's not as easily released as you would think I think if you're interested in it you could contact the folks at more EV they could have it based on like who's applied for the rebate um I personally work in Rhode Island and they have it right like on the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources website but they don't in Massachusetts yeah the reason why I ask is we want to know what to go after right we know residential emissions are high transportation I think in Amherst is I think 15 to 20 percent of contributions so is it a key priority for the town and having that data would be really helpful um so I don't know if Stephanie if you can or if you can email Stephanie with a contact at more EV I'll be happy to connect okay thank you okay anybody else thank you so much for your time we appreciate your time presentation was great thank you and thanks for your patience Devin thanks for all your help I appreciate that all right have a good night everybody good night thanks okay any closing comments from the public or from ECAC we have an agenda for next week I think we're good with everything right Stephanie we talked about let me just summarize it draft letter uh to the two new DPU members we have stop the toxic pipeline review e-pump discussion please send me questions uh by this Friday and then I'll email all of you by around Tuesday or Wednesday next week with questions and so you can prepare for it and then um Steve on the solar bylaw development and then we all have an action to just connect on um connect with our town council about uh specialized stretch code just an action for everybody on an agenda item anything else? Jesse do we need to um elect a new chair no not yet you're not ready for that that doesn't happen till um so technically you want to get rid of me already? I know I'm not ready for that no technically Vasu is with the committee his last day would be more his term officially ends so you wouldn't have your election until the following meeting I can't believe this Jesse only wanting me out we're all and actually we're in denial so Vasu I know you always ask so I just wanted to give you a heads up that you had five participants at this meeting yeah okay thank you and then I was uh for our meeting next week or in two weeks about the heat panel discussion or heat pump discussion just make sure you're connecting with anybody you know we need to improve our participation in these meetings in the public we had I think we started off these meetings with 18 to 20 people and then it's just when so please reach out it's important so just as far as like managing your expectations Vasu I don't think it's going to get better as the weather gets warmer it's true yeah I was actually thinking about the um about solar education and maybe it could be outdoors right then we can take a look at um Steve um Hampshire College right maybe something we could do what would it look like to have our meetings outdoors with a pizza budget I'll take that as a B-B-O-P I think I think the requirement now is that we would have to have a hybrid meeting so I don't think we can exclusively you would have to maybe do a retreat or something that gets posted and do something separate but to have your regular meeting it either has to be via zoom or hybrid there's no fully in person meeting right now I also think the great thing about remote is we can always encourage people to watch the YouTube videos which are online you know so drawing people's attention to that I think is always good yeah I think you have people who visit the site and look at the education series separately from the meeting so because they are posted now so and I think I have to get this one and the last one up have to get posted so I'll do that there was one other thing I wanted to say which I totally forgot oh vacation schedules I think folks can get me your anticipated summer vacation schedules that would be very helpful I would say through September if people sometimes people travel in September October even not you academics but others so if you could just get me your schedules that would be really helpful and I'll put together a main schedule and then I can figure out if we would have you know there's any meetings that we won't have a quorum okay great I'm just going to add I'm happy to do a special meeting or tour of the Hampshire college solar facilities if anybody ever wants to check them out up close we should definitely do that Steve especially after the results on the survey right they want more education yes yes yeah sounds good okay thank you all everybody thanks everyone bye