 Hello, my name is Amos Meeks, I'm a member of the steering team of Clean Heap for Arlington and today I want to tell you about warrant article number five Which asks to file a home rule legislation that would allow the town of Arlington to create a bylaw amendment that would prohibit fossil fuel infrastructure in new construction and gut renovations First some background on this bylaw So our goal is to reach 100% clean energy by 2050 And this is mandated by both a state law the global warming solution act which commits us to reduce our emissions by 80% by 2050 And in 2018 when the Arlington Select Board voted to set a goal of net zero by 2050 Fortunately the recipe for reaching 100% clean energy is relatively simple. We electrify everything and we green the grid So if we look at Arlington's total emissions We see that the vast majority of our missions about 60% come from buildings residential buildings and industrial buildings And of this the vast majority of this is space heating. So we want to focus space on space heating as a place to start Fortunately electric solutions for space heating exist in the form of heat pumps Heat pumps are very different from electric resistance heaters that you might think of which are expensive and inefficient Instead they're more like an air conditioning unit that can heat as well as cool And because they just move heat around in terms of heating efficiency. They can be incredibly efficient Something like 200 or 300% efficient In addition cold climate air source heat pumps work in our climate They're rated to be highly efficient down to five degrees Fahrenheit and many of them work down to negative 17 or even negative 22 degrees Fahrenheit and it simply does not get that cold around here And they work as the sole source of heating in 2017 a large portion of new homes in Massachusetts Used heat pump as the only source of heating and cooling and even in Arlington in Arlington There are many buildings that use heat pumps as their sole source of heating without backup heat Heat pumps are also affordable. So this study in 2018 modeled a house being installed with gas and electric air conditioning compared to a house using an electric air source heat pump and Heat pump hot water heating and what they found is that the installation cost differed by less than a thousand dollars Which in the case that they were looking at of a large single family? House newly built can newly constructed house This difference cost difference shown in this red slice here is tiny compared to the overall value of the house In addition, they found a small difference in annual operating cost But again for a new 3000 square foot home if you look at the monthly Expenses and compare that difference, which is this red sliver at the top here. It's pretty much negligible So in the case of these large new new construction single family houses the difference in cost ends up being more or less a wash But of course, some people can't afford to pay anything at all Fortunately affordable housing is already leading the way on heating electrification These are some examples of buildings outside of Arlington that use heat pumps as their sole source of heating and cooling But even within Arlington all of the affordable housing construction projects that are being planned or built by the heart housing corporation of Arlington use heat pumps as their sole source of heating and cooling and this is often because for the sort of High density high efficiency new construction being built for affordable housing heat pumps are just already the most economical option So to get into what this bylaw actually proposes we would prohibit new fossil fuel piping in new construction and gut renovations This would not affect existing buildings that are not undergoing some kind of Gut renovation it would not affect kitchen renovations or other sort of renovations that are not Literally stripping the entire inside of the building down to the studs and rebuilding it and it would not affect additions We also include a number of practical and common sense exemptions this bylaw would affect only the customer side of The fossil fuel piping all gas cooking appliances are exempted Backup generators are exempted since it deals with fossil fuel piping. It would not affect propane fossil fuel cooking such as outdoor grills Hot water for large buildings is exempted due to technical reasons and in addition research and medical facilities are exempted also due to technical reasons and of course repair of Existing and unsafe piping is exempted and to be clear this only affects fossil fuel piping So any modification can be done to the water side of a water heating system without this bylaw coming into effect however, this may not account for all cases and and so in order to avoid any sort of undue expense or burden Anyone can seek a waiver for the bylaw and the waivers would be Granted by the building expense inspector potentially with consultation with town staff and local energy experts and Finally as a quick clarification the reason this needs to be a homeworld petition is due to conflicts with existing state law So over the summer of the Attorney General Maura Healy found for a similar bylaw in Brookline that while she Strongly supported the policy of this bylaw It does conflict and is preempted by existing state laws However, homeworld petitions are a very common way to deal with these kinds of kinds of conflicts as you can see in articles 11 through 15 of this special time So with that from me and everyone else at clean heat for Arlington We hope that you will join us in supporting warrant article number five and we'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have