 Okay, let's get started good evening Thank you so much for making the time to attend this first public information session on warrant article 13 The proposed bylaw that would prohibit certain fossil fuel hookups in new construction and major renovations in Arlington My name is Anne Wright I'm a member of mothers out front the Arlington team and also a member of the steering committee and working group That is working to Support this this warrant article I'd like to introduce my colleagues on the steering committee Amos Meeks of sustainable Arlington co-chair and Pat Hanson Member of Equitable Arlington You'll hear more from them later Our goals this evening are to educate everyone about the details of the warrant article and also to Generate conversation and feedback on the warrant article as you'll hear in a few minutes The warrant article language is not sent set a hundred percent in stone. We've been working hard on it. We feel good about it We've gotten a lot of good feedback and ideas from people in different sectors around town But we do have the opportunity to change the language So we're eager to get your feedback We as we would like to get it pretty set by the March 9th Board of Selectment meeting Because they'll be considering the article then but we legally have Until sometime in April until they print up the the warrant for a town meeting in the spring So we really do value all the input. We hope you will bring today Let me first review the agenda So, you know how we're going to spend the next two hours After I finish this welcome Amos Meeks will review the scope and the fundamentals of our warrant article Coralie Cooper of the Clean Energy Future Committee in town is going to go over the need and the reasons behind this warrant article and the need for building Decarbonization and our warrant articles connection to Arlington's net-zero goals and Plans for the town Jeremy coup from Cadmus group in Boston will he's a Expert on heat pumps, which are the main energy alternative to go gas and oil He's going to educate us about heat pumps Then we have a pair of people from the mass Clean Energy Center in Boston Beverly Craig and Bob Fitzpatrick They're going to talk to us about finances and affordability of electrification and heat pumps. I will then review elements of our warrant article that address the exemptions waivers and Appeals that we've built into the article and Our final presentation will be from Jesse Gray who is a Brookline town meeting member and the main architect of the Brookline warrant article That passed in November by a vote of 211 to 3. I believe He's going to talk about how they formulated their Article and how they got it passed so we hope to learn a lot from all these people now I Imagine that this makes you a little nervous that we have a lot of speakers and that we're going to be talking at you for two hours But I assure you that's not going to be the case We're really committed to spending at least an hour in discussion in the Q&A period So Amos has promised to be a very strict timekeeper and MC for tonight and keep our speakers to their allotted time and We hope to move through it efficiently with everyone's cooperation Just a little bit of housekeeping there is water and snacks in the back snacks provided by food link Restrooms are on the first floor down either staircase and Finally I want to ask if people can limit their questions or keep their questions until the question and answer period unless it's a simple question of definition of something A term or an acronym during the speeches just so that we can stay on time So that's my intro. Does anybody have any basic questions about the agenda? Okay, seeing none Let's proceed with Amos reviewing the article Hi everyone. Thanks again for coming out tonight. My name is Amos Meeks I'm the coach here of sustainable Arlington as well as one of the sort of steering team members for this Clean heat for Arlington group. I'm gonna do a sort of quick overview of the bylaw and sort of the Concretely what we're proposing Just so that we all have sort of a common basis and then I'm gonna try to sort of allay some of the Common concerns that we've seen up front But a lot of these things will we'll go into more detail as we go through it and we sort of welcome all sorts of questions during the Q&A session so The main meat of this bylaw what we are proposing is prohibiting new fossil fuel piping so it's important to notice that this is specifically affecting the piping in new construction and Gut rehabilitation so major rehabilitation that are sort of the level where you're Gutting the entire house and it's essentially like new construction. So what this means is that Existing buildings are entirely unaffected You know smaller renovations kitchen renovations bathroom renovations any of those things. There's no effect whatsoever And additions are also entirely unaffected Next So that's kind of the meat We also include a number of sort of common sense and practical exemptions I think if we is this the first one Okay, so We First of all this only affects things on the customer side of the meter So this has nothing to do with sort of utilities nothing in sort of the private right of private right of way It's all just from the meter and in the house There is an exemption for backup generators There is you know Portable propane appliances things that are not sort of attached to the houses fossil fuel piping those are completely unaffected And then also all gas cooking appliances are sort of exempted so you can still have fossil fuel piping for a gas stove or oven and Restaurants which often rely on gas are sort of exempted it for those In addition There's an exemption for you know work being done to repair or deal with any unsafe piping They're hot water for large buildings is exempted Just because sort of the technology to do that efficiently with electricity is not there yet But there is sort of a clause in there that if the cost of these technologies come down and become comparable with gas Then they that will hot water for large buildings will also sort of fall under the scope of the bylaw Research and medical facilities are exempted And then finally because this has to do with the fossil fuel piping There's no effect on kind of the non fossil fuel piping related to a heating system So if you need to extend in existing heating system You can do anything you want with sort of the water pipes that sort of things that is not affected by this bylaw But again, this is only this only really affects new construction in which case you're installing a whole new system anyways Or a gut rehabilitation which in most of the cases You're taking out the old heating system and installing a new one But in the case where you didn't take out the whole heating system You could still extend and modify the non fossil fuel piping side of things Okay, so now to quickly kind of cover a few common questions One of the first things that people often ask when hearing about this is You know because so much of our electrical grid generation comes from natural gas Is there actually a a benefit in terms of emissions to switching to a heat pump and the answer is sort of definitively? Yes there's a pretty significant immediate reduction in emissions of Roughly half plus give or take But really the sort of what you'll hear about later the context for this is we're thinking ahead to the future And we're thinking ahead to our goal of being net zero by 2050 And so as the grid as a whole moves towards this net zero goal Heat pumps have sort of lower a lower emissions related to them. Whereas natural gas and other fossil fuel heating in your home Doesn't really change and continues to Have a fairly high amount of emissions The next question that a lot of people ask is you know does this cost a whole lot It's at the end of the day it really depends on the individual building situation But a study was done for Massave that compared sort of a model natural gas home with a model heat pump home And what they found is basically the cost difference in terms of insulation is less than a thousand dollars And that's not taking into account sort of current generous incentives in that sort of thing So in the overall cost of a building for new construction a thousand dollars is not really Significant and then in terms of the sort of operating cost they found the cost difference was around $40 per month Which compared to this is for a home that would cost over one million dollars for a new construction So when compared to the other monthly cost that they're associated with that in terms of the the mortgage taxes, etc This increased cost is about less than 1% of the total monthly costs costs so it's it's a fairly small impact and Again that sort of doesn't account for various incentives cheaper to install things like that Then the other two sort of things You might wonder about affordable housing So what I talked about before those were costs for you know new construction in Arlington relatively large single-family home 3,000 square foot home People who are you know buying that are buying like a million one point two million dollar house For those who maybe can't afford to pay any extra costs associated with this Affordable housing is actually already leading the way We'll hear more about this from Bev and Bob later, but these are two sort of example nearby examples There's one currently being constructed Finch Cambridge, which has 98 affordable housing units and uses entirely Heat pump heating and then the Ocea house in Brookline Which is a housing authority property and has 100 units of affordable housing and also uses entirely heat pump heating And this is you know without any of these existing bylaws This is just already in our current system. It actually just makes sense to use this for affordable housing and then At the end of the day the total impact of this is expected to be relatively small So the planning department did kind of an estimation of what is the total number of buildings that could possibly be impacted? And they found that it was about 70 billion buildings per year on average You know some years that might be higher some years that might be lower But we're talking sort of roughly Half a percent of Arlington's total sort of 15,000 building building stock But then One more thing I want to say before we move on to Corley is that even with all of these exemptions If there is kind of anything That's an issue we do there is built-in a waivers and appeals process So if there's anything that has an undue burden that's not sort of already taken care of there's a process to sort of get That waived the goal here is really to be very practical and economical and not create an undue burden on anyone So now Corley Thank You Amos and thank you everybody for coming tonight As Anne mentioned I'm gonna provide some context on the need for to do carbonized buildings And I'm Corley Cooper and I'm a member of the clean energy future committee and I'm also a member of mothers out front So thank you Next slide, please We hardly need to underscore the the climate crisis, but since it's an important reason for the the need to decarbonize buildings I want to mention that the scientific news about climate change keeps getting more dire the UN Intergovernmental Panel on climate change is the last couple of studies Was a bleak reed listing a certification of oceans accelerating sea level rise Increases in global temperature loss of ice sheets and other impacts and the situation is predicted to become even more dire and just this is a this is a slide from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration illustrating the point that Land temperatures are increasing every year So the red bar is showing temperatures increasing above the average and that's projected to continue If you'd go to the next slide So if there is a any silver lining here, it's the acknowledgement by governments individuals and industry about the need for action and This was a remarkable article from last week where JP Morgan an economist JP Morgan Wrote a memo talking about the fact that Global warming poses a threat to the human race and it was leaked to the Guardian But just acknowledgment of the need to act even even in a company like JP Morgan. That's a major funder of fossil fuels So in the face of this need to act towns and cities all over the country and around the world are acting and Arlington is one of those cities Arlington join the pledge to meet the Paris targets and to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and This measure that we're talking about tonight is just one in a step of many steps that Arlington has taken over the past 20 years to reduce carbon emissions They've they've taken action to reduce emissions from electricity They've done they've introduced LED street lights improve a building Insulation and building systems and taken numerous actions And so this is one more step in that process and in the process They've saved money and they've reduced greenhouse gases and fuel consumption Now if we go to the next slide, so why are buildings so important? Well, what we see here is information from the energy information Administration showing a breakdown of greenhouse gases for the US and this is an average But what we see is buildings represent about 45 percent of greenhouse gas emissions of total greenhouse gas emissions Of the inventory and if we go to the next slide We want to look a little bit closer. What what are those greenhouse gas emissions made up of well? we see that Space heating is about 45 percent and water heating 18 and so on and so forth cooking about five but a big this space heating water heating and some of these other sec these these slices Are you know represented about 60% and they're from on-site fossil fuel combustion? So that's what we're trying to reduce here the measure that we're talking about tonight would significantly reduce emissions From new buildings and major renovation because we would move to electricity for those parts of the inventory Another important point is that by moving to electrification we avoid lock-in of emissions every time There's an installation of a fossil fuel combustion source in a building We're locking in greenhouse gas emissions for 10 maybe 20 years depending on which system that is and there's a saying that when you're in a hole stop digging and so What what we're doing here is we're we're preventing the lock-in of future emissions and we're stopping the greenhouse gas inventory from from growing even further and I want to mention also that Natural gas is often portrayed as a clean bridge to a low carbon future and that's really not the case For one the oil and gas industry is emitting at least 25 40 percent more than we've suspected that was shown in a recent study And then leaks venting and blowouts are a major source of methane and one example is an Ohio facility Where they had a large discharge and the emissions were equivalent to the total emissions from the oil and gas industry in France The Netherlands and Norway combined for a year and that wasn't even the biggest one in the US There was a much larger one in California so luckily we have An alternative that is clean cost effective and commercially available and we're going to hear more about that in a moment I have one more slide and I just want to build on what Amos mentioned about the electric portion of The inventory getting less carbon intensive over time. So what we have here from mass.gov is the the the greenhouse gas emissions per unit of electricity generated over time and so So over the past ten years a very steep drop in emissions and then the red dotted line is the projected Decrease over time. So an electric system installed today will be cleaner next year and that can't be said of a fossil fuel system So to talk more about the Heat pumps I'd like to introduce Jeremy Koo who's an associate at Cadmus, which is an international Energy and environmental consulting firm Jeremy is a member of the distributed energy resources and strategic electrification team at Cadmus Hi everyone My name is Jeremy Koo. I was invited by My Ken Ken period with the town of Arlington and the other members of the committee to give a bit of a primer tonight I know there's a lot of Heat pumps as a technology have changed a lot in just just the last five years. We've really seen a remarkable shift in how Homes technologies and such are now available today So I was asked to give sort of a quick primer on what exactly we're talking about as the alternative To gas in these buildings speak a little bit more about, you know, Arlington is not the only town That's considering this and certainly not the only town in the northeast that is installing heat pumps at a very rapid and quickly Accelerating pace and then also take a little bit of a deeper dive into the actually the cost a cost example that I think Amos and I were looking at the same report that we pulled from that was done by NMR last year on incremental costs and new construction So for folks who are not familiar a heat pump is really it fundamentally is the technology I'm not going to go through the the actual like diagram and the and the Thermo and thermodynamics behind it But it's if the best way to think about it is it's you have the same technology in your home already It's in your refrigerator. What is your refrigerator doing? It's extracting keeping heat out of a space That's cold and pushing it out into somewhere. That's warmer And another way the thing about it is it's an air conditioner that can run in reverse It's trans transferring heat from the outdoor air into your building and then vice versa when acting when acting in a cooling capacity Yeah, I animated this unfortunately. Oh So There are a lot of different heat pumps that are available. I think you hit it a couple of times There are Air source heat pumps. I think a lot of the examples that have been mentioned so far our air source heat pumps There are a couple of examples of residential scale heat pumps that have been installed in Massachusetts in the last few years Amos had mentioned a variable refrigerant flow VRF heat pumps, which are a Commercial scale version of these heat pumps that are available And they there's our variety of options that are available that can work in any sort of building configuration Ground source or geothermal heat pumps are another option that are available Taking advantage of the fact that in a lot of new construction There's a lot more space to work with fewer existing obstacles and being able to plan around using the ground as a more as a very efficient and constant source of heat and For for both heating and for cooling in the summer as it is an even more efficient way of heating and cooling a building Water heaters are the third example of heat pumps that have been brought up here in this case since the Proposed article excludes larger buildings This is primarily an appliance that is going to be working in smaller residential capacities But it's effectively taking the components of a heat pump and putting it on top of an existing water heater And it's an otherwise fits in fits in a basement like any other any other storage water heater There are a few common misconceptions. I think about electric heat I think when you think about both heat pumps and about heating with electricity You know electric electric resistance heating is inherently not very efficient and very expensive to heat with You know the electric grid is somewhere between 30 to 40 percent efficient And so even though you know let that and that's what drives electric heat to be particularly expensive What's being you know in in limiting the use of fossil fuels in new construction the pushes towards heat pumps Which are transferring heat and using using electricity to transfer heat from one space to another not to actually create heat So whereas an electric resistance baseboard or space heater is what we would call a hundred percent efficient have a Coefficient of performance of one air source heat pumps throughout the year will range from about 220 to 350 or more percent efficient and ground source heat from from 350 percent efficient and up so not only is that does that result in You know, it's a lot of folks will say that Burning gas at the power plant level means that using electricity is actually less efficient than burning gas at home When you take those efficiencies into account It's actually a more efficient use of the gas being burned at the power plant level than being burned on-site at your in your home So another another one Misinception which is the one that my mother said when I told her I started working on heat pumps over five years ago Is that heat pumps don't work in the Northeast? The you know in and conventionally this has been this has been true heat pumps are a very common Heating and cooling technology being used in the south in the mid-Atlantic right now. There's I think I think 20 I think it was 28 million homes that use heat pumps across the south right now primarily as air conditioning and a bit of heating given their climate Heat pumps historically have not been effective at performing Well air source heat pumps at least have been ineffective at performing at temperatures below 30 or 40 Fahrenheit Neap the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships administers a Certification program for heat pumps to be cold climate, which means that they have to maintain air source heat pumps have to maintain efficiencies of at least 175 percent at five degrees of which all but about 30 to 40 hours per year in a typical year in Arlington are above You know like it or not. It's that that may shrink more and more from year to year So neat neat certifies a lot of cold climate heat pumps And those have been primarily the models that have been installed in Massachusetts to date And You know one of the other points is that you know it's okay It's great that you're talking you know heat pumps are are more efficient But they're probably not ideal for serving as the only source of heat in the home in 2017 which is only about four years after a cold climate heat pumps became a thing in the Northeast in Massachusetts 10% of new homes were already using heat pumps as their only source of heating and cooling that number has only increased since then We you know not to talk to discount ground source heat pumps as well Which have been installed for for decades across the US These systems are intended to be the sole source of heating and cooling and take advantage of the more consistent heat in the ground To maintain efficiency and their heating output throughout the year even when you know when it's in when it's a negative digits There was a great study that was done about five years ago about ground source heat pumps in Alaska So they're very much usable here And then in the heat smart heat smart mass program of which Arlington recently participated in and was to date the most Successful campaign of any of the 30 something heat smart campaigns. I've supported across the Northeast dozens of Dissons of homes Opted to retrofit existing buildings with heat pumps with no backup system being used We can definitely do this in new construction and even if in it's still even possible in retrofits One other another data point is that this is not something you know heat wall You know general awareness of heat pumps is relatively low What we've seen since the state clean energy center began rebating these systems in December of 2014 Is that the is that the number of heat pumps? Installed have been accelerating from year to year between December 2014 and March 2019 when the program ended over 20,000 coal climate heat pumps were installed were rebated through the program and that growth directory even came with them Reducing the the rebate twice over the over that over that time to make the make the the budget last longer So there they are continuing to accelerate now with even more incentives available through mass save Mass is not alone. Maine was actually one of the first states to begin incentivizing coal climate heat pumps Starting in 2012 since then they've incentivized over 30,000 systems and the governor recently set a target to increase Increase that even more similarly Vermont. I'm missing about two years of data since it wasn't in their annual reports But they've also continued to accelerate in Vermont and New York Also similarly has set set a lot of targets and in two years has rebated over 11,000 heat pump projects, so it's very much a reality in the Northeast and you know It's the time the timing is in a lot of ways right for for the market to have met a lot of the maturity That's needed to be able to drive more successful installations You know I wanted to just take a quick look at that and certainly if you wanted You know want to dig up that study look at a little bit more. It's called the you know mini-split Incremental cost baseline study. I was done in 20 at late 2018. I believe it compared What would be the installation of a traditional gas furnace and central AC in a tankless tankless gas water heater? With a mini-split air source heat pump and a heat pump water heater in a new construction In a home that that's built built to code so The installed costs again before any incentives that are available was about $700 in difference out of I think as a missus saying this for this home. It would be about 1.2 million in construction costs I don't even know if that included Avoided cost of the gas connection if you were to eliminate gas entirely which would be another few thousand dollars That would be removed from that as far as annual operating costs I think as Amos said it's about $40 a month over the course of the year higher for the heat pump and that's just the reflection of gas prices being Particularly low and electric costs being particularly high, but in new construction. There's also Both out of a push at the state code level and also In terms of ease of ease and cost to put rooftop solar on new buildings And if you were to power all that equipment with solar PV It would caught you know, and this is assuming you don't own the system Somebody else owns it and you're paying for the electricity from it It would actually result in a net in a savings of $150 a year no extra in increased costs to do so So there there are a lot of I think there's a lot of opportunity here, you know, certainly You know given the you know, I think the exemptions that are written into the law the the proposed article Cover some of the variations here was you get into larger buildings There's different different needs with those buildings particularly with research facilities and you know Larger hot water uses and so though, you know, those are exempted from the spy law But certainly I was also looking at the Arlington Assessor data over the last five years I think that 80% of the buildings were either townhouses or single-family homes So that that essentially covers the majority of the new construction that will be happening in the near future And so happy to answer questions at the end of the period Hi, my name is Patrick Hanlon. I'm one of the members of the steering committee and represented equitable Arlington Which is among other things a group of people who are interested in housing advocacy? And that makes me particularly appropriate to introduce the next the next speakers And I've been told it to limit it to three sentences, which I will The first is Beverly Craig and Bob Fitzpatrick, and I'll let you figure out which is which Are on staff at the Massachusetts clean energy center Bev is senior program manager low and moderate income programs and Bob is director of government affairs They will address the finances of heat pumps in more detail Thank you very much. I think actually Jeremy did a great job and covered an awful lot of the stuff that we would normally say so That's fantastic Well exactly Including covering our own our programs for us, you know, we do appreciate that We are so I should just tell you who we are Massachusetts clean energy center We are a quasi government agency funded by a Small surcharge on your retail electric bills and we use that to run a bunch of programs to encourage Clean energy energy efficiency Startup technologies etc wanted to to say one thing at the outset that as a government agency We don't really kind of comment on legislation or things like that But we do certainly encourage the use of all sorts of clean technologies air source heat pumps are fantastic And I want to give you a little just overview of where we've been through this and again I and Jeremy kind of touched on some of this but We started the ground source heat pump pilot with the Department of Energy Resources our sister agency back in 2013 and Then we committed Was that 48 million of us to our five-year clean heating program and Again, you saw that that uptake over those years 2019 we'll skip ahead. Well, we did the heat smart as And you all participated in that which was fantastic and then in 2019 we started the whole home heat pump challenge so What we've been trying to do with all of our program is just sort of push the envelope, right and to drive this Adoption of what is relatively new technology that cold climate air source heat pump and now We have through that through our efforts We've gotten mass safe to pick that up and that's why you know, you have this sort of widespread statewide rebates available through mass safe Then for for more details sort of on the technologies and how that affects cost. I'm gonna just turn it over to Beth So Jeremy covered a lot of this I just I want to emphasize again like one of these myths is that it's it's not gonna work in our climate Totally, not true Alaska Northern Canada all kinds of Maine Can you hear me now? Okay So they they definitely work no question about When we start talking about affordable housing It's usually multi-family and when you start looking at first costs It's even less dramatic of a difference in multi-family So you're usually in a multi-family building going to cost out about five different heating system options and At this point you also need to add cooling So heat pumps because they heat and cool you're not talking about two different systems You're talking about a combined one. So when you price it out for multi-family new construction You're usually finding heat pumps in one of the lower two of the five options So that's first costs very reasonable and we're seeing like a huge movement and it's really the only last two years or so Everything multi-family is going all heat pumps. It's just not even a push to talk to developers about it They they go for it very easily In terms of operating costs again when you compared to a single-family home Stretch code communities when you build a new construction multi-family So it's it's a better envelope less outside surface area, right? And so it's actually more efficient to be multi-family than single-family And when you have that good envelope the difference between the electric and gas on the heating is very low and Often multi-family buildings are cooling dominated So you actually end up cooling the the capacity of the system is determined by the cooling and you end up using cooling a decent amount more so Cooling with heat pumps is much more efficient than a central air AC So when you balance the heating and cooling it tends to be even just in a stretch code building Gonna be about the same next slide So I think you guys already have in the warrant article an exemption for central hot water and that's really important because Heat pump water heaters are great for single-family homes and maybe up to about eight units or so That would be fine, but once you get past that you're gonna want to go to a central system in almost all cases I mean you could do electric resistance individual tanks for every one, but heat pump water heater Technology is not really here yet. It's in Europe. It's in Japan, but it's not really here yet So I do think having You know a provision it sounds like you're gonna think about that in the future too because that may change in the future the other one thing We talked in Brookline as well, and I guess Our agency has sponsored quite a bunch of Passive house affordable housing grants and so the Finch project that was mentioned is the first one that's being built But in that process we've been learning sort of about when you do not have gas in it What other challenges are there and I would say the one thing that we didn't mention in Brookline But I think can be an issue is heat recovery ventilation if you don't have any ability to have gas It may be a decent amount more expensive So heat recovery ventilation so the warm air in here when you exhaust it Instead of just wasting that heat you should put a heated exchanger in and you capture 80 to 90 percent of that Heat and preheat the fresh air coming in right and then the heating system doesn't have to work very hard So that's passive house or very high Performance buildings in general are gonna use that technology a lot and again if you go all-electric it could be a little bit more expensive so Next slide So It's not we definitely should be thinking about affordability and I'm really glad you guys came and asked us to come speak about affordability so energy burden for different people of different incomes is really an important issue so Most people in Massachusetts spend less than one week of their annual budget on energy costs When you get to somebody more middle income so say a one Earner family as a teacher it might be more like two weeks of their annual budget when you get to someone below 60% of state median income it's often a month or even two months And so that's why affordable housing or one of the reasons that affordable housing has been on the leading edge of green building Because they're mission-driven they want to make sure that the energy costs are very low for their tenants And when they're an owner they want to be able to provide more services instead of spending it on energy Next slide But what we're finding is in new construction It's really going all-electric is not really an additional cost like I mentioned before Especially when you calculate the cooling in as well You're talking about sort of a net wash on a new construction building. So as long as the bar for Requiring or not allowing any gas is a Gut rehab that's a very high-level gut rehab where you're going to be triggering energy code and you're gonna have to do a Lot of envelope improvements. You really shouldn't see a big increase in costs So I will say Brookline I think put some kind of exemption in their housing authority actually was going all-electric on a number of their buildings And was not worried about it But there could be examples I guess of masonry brick buildings where it's it's tough to do a lot of Envelope improvements. So that might be the one place where your costs might be slightly higher If you don't have some kind of appeals process for for specific ones next slide That's it. So I will say Affordable housing these days is incentivized quite Quite a bit for new construction to go to passive house levels So passive house is basically the most energy efficient standard in the world It's it ends up for a multifamily building being about 40% more efficient than what you would standard build It uses as heat recovery. It has a lot more ventilation. So it's actually more healthy for tenants But we're also seeing like those projects that would go for low-income housing tax credits. They would get more More points and getting chosen between different projects if they come in with a passive project so between mass-save incentives, which every multifamily in the state should look at and and Those benefits to to being more likely to get your tax credits you're going to see a lot of affordable housing going passive and In that case, they're going to be all electric anyway all eight of the grants that we provided to passive house projects They all went with heat pump heating and cooling technology Thanks so much bevin Bob I'm just gonna I Was gonna review the exemptions, but I think we've talked about them enough. I don't really need to do that So I think we can go to the next slide So built into the warranted article is an appeal and waiver process So if there's anything we didn't anticipate or as Amos said if there's a project that comes up with unanticipated high costs a Homeowner or a contractor can request a waiver We wrote it in so that appeals would go right to the zoning board of appeals just as any appeal would would do waivers would be granted by our building inspector Who would rely as necessary and other expert staff within the town staff like department of planning community development or inspectional services Or possibly on outside experts in building or energy The decision could be based on submission of conceptual plans and financial details that would all be looked at and and the building inspector would give consideration and we want to emphasize to around Affordability that special consideration would be given to our linkedin housing authority. We have a strong Value placed on affordable housing. We want to make sure to preserve as much affordable housing as possible and build more affordable housing in Arlington and HAA Often has limited sources of capital so We felt that was important. So we wrote that in So I Guess I can save a little time. Did I miss did I leave anything out around appeals and waivers? great So you can ask more questions about that, but that's a summary of of that element Now I want to introduce our last speaker Jesse Gray. Jesse here. Yeah, there you are Jesse as I said before is a town meeting member in Brookline He's the principal architect of their warrant article which passed in November and he is also an associate professor of genetics on leave From the Harvard Medical School. So welcome Jesse. Thanks for so much for coming Okay Thank you for having me. It's exciting to be here and I'm impressed at how well organized the session is and How many experts are here and what great information there is? I came to speak about our experience in Brookline Passing a prohibition on new gas infrastructure Just in case some of our experience might be relevant here And I want to be clear that my remarks pertain only to Brookline's experience And they are not intended in any way to presage pre-judge or advise on the specifics of what you should do here in Arlington but what we learned in Brookline is that This is an idea that to many seems very controversial at first But it's an idea that once people get used to they realize it's actually just practical and necessary Non-controversial And we learned that through the political process itself, and that's what I want to tell you about tonight So what's the evidence that this is really a non controversial once it's understood? How can I claim that the evidence is is the vote in town meeting in Brookline, which was 211 to 3 Now that vote can easily be misread it can be dismissed as Brookline town meeting being a bunch of environmental activists who don't care about anything else But those of you who under who've been to Brookline and met Brookline town meeting members would know that that's not the case Actually the 211 votes included people who care deeply about lots of other issues people who care deeply and primarily about The the financial health of the town people who care deeply and primarily about affordable housing people who care deeply about many other issues and so these people had to be convinced that this policy would not harm their primary and heartfelt interests and They were not pushovers and they were not convinced at the beginning when we started in fact most or many of These people at the beginning town meeting members and community leaders The political elite of Brookline most or many said you're moving too fast You haven't given us enough time. You have to wait for the next town meeting or the next year or the next couple of years We're not ready for this You have to slow down But by the end actually they've they've these same people voted in favor They didn't make us wait two or three more years. In fact, one of them contributed to our legal fund someone who is staunchly opposed at the beginning and another is now leading our efforts to build our first all-electric school in Brookline so we learned through this process that by engaging in an intensive political process in which we talked through the Issues that were raised in which we researched the answers to the to the questions and concerns that were raised in our community We learned that once this policy was understood and once it included Reasonable safeguards such as the ones that you've heard about tonight the policy turned out to be non controversial So it seemed very controversial at first, but it turned out not to be now How can something be controversial at first but ultimately non controversial? How does that happen? Well, the way that happens is that each person who starts out thinking that it's controversial Who's a little bit shocked and a little bit surprised has to take a journey on which they discover? the facts and In this particular case the people who went on that journey and discovered the facts Came to the conclusion that the policy made a lot of sense and was non controversial And so what were the sticking points that would have prevented us from getting the 211 votes? What were those concerns that were originally raised? That if we hadn't been able to address we might not have passed More an article 21 in Brookline. I'll just briefly walk through what those sticking points were and they were You know to the point that this is a well organized Well put together session a lot of those concerns have actually already been addressed here tonight But the question of whether heat pumps work we decided in Brookline that they do Would this increase the cost of construction? We decided in Brookline that sometimes this would save costs on construction and that on the net it would not increase costs We decided also that we're very concerned about development in Brookline that there's no reason that this should slow development in Brookline We decided also we asked would this burden homeowners doing renovations and we decided no It's targeted to be triggered by situations in which it's practical and cost-effective to to go electric Does it really reduce emissions as you heard tonight? It absolutely reduces emissions. Is it necessary? Absolutely necessary. We decided in Brookline. We could not meet our climate goals without this policy Even though it's just a first step and so much more needs to be done Can we do it in a way that protects against unforeseen problems? We in Brookline decided we could with a with a waivers an appeal process And then we had some concerns about visual and noise pollution our preservation commission had discussed this in detail and We decided that no, you know, no more noise or visual pollution than than the air conditioning units that are already being installed We decided there were necessary Exemptions and we decided that there were some exemptions that maybe weren't necessary But that we wanted to build a big tent because this is just one step And there are many more steps that we need to take and having a big tent of people who can agree on moving forward is A way to take those future steps. So I've ticked these off really quickly But I can tell you as someone who knows the political community in Brookline that if we hadn't had factual Convincing answers to these questions. We would not have gotten the 211 votes that we got because Brookline town meeting is not a bunch of pushovers and That is how we found out that in fact this policy is not controversial It's just practical and it's just necessary Thanks All right. Thank you very much Jesse and thank you very much Everyone else who came so the rest of this time now is just for question answers We have all of the people who you just saw speak and more including Ken Pruitt the town energy manager here to answer questions so We're just going to do this by raising hands and trying to get through as much as we can and you know It is a fairly large room So try to make sure to speak up and we're going to try to make sure to Repeat the question into the microphone. So yes So I think just to repeat the question first of all The question was you we heard two conflicting pieces of information one that without envelope improvements that built the the cost is higher and the other was that the costs are basically a wash so We have another microphone there if either of you want to so for the former about Retrofits costing more without doing envelope work. That's strictly for retrofits of existing buildings often in gut renovations It triggers code in needing to upgrade the insulation anyways to the same level as with as with new Constructions like I live in a building that was got renovated and the insulation is actually is actually shockingly good for being maybe just a bit above code so The can the different distinction in what our examples were is that I was looking at just a single family home that has a Greater proportion of energy for heating than for cooling and so on a per unit of heating basis a heat pump tends to an air Source heat pump costs about you know, 20 to 30 percent more for heat ground source heat pump It's it's maybe a little bit lower than for gas But on the cooling side it is cheaper than then using a conventional system And so Beverly's example was in a multi larger multi-family building where there's actually over the course of the year These tighter multi-family buildings tend to have a lot more cooling needs than than heating And so that balance ends up like it ends of evening out more So that that gap is not as substantial as it is with the single family home Yeah, and I wasn't clear like If you do a gut rehab to the level that you guys are triggering this you have to make envelope improvements So it's not really relevant I guess it's when we start looking at existing buildings and trying to electrify our homes as they exist right now We should be aware you if you just electrified a triple-decker. That's very very leaky right now It would be much more expensive But if you make the right envelope improvements, you're gonna get where the cost is not really that high and See oh cooling dominated buildings one of the big reasons is you have much more density people actually generate a ton of body heat and in really tight buildings, you know You probably need a hair conditioner to a hair dryer to heat You really don't need much heat So just your TVs and the people in it makes it a cooling dominated building and when we think 20 years out in the future That's gonna be even more true. So Great, thank you. I saw hand in the back over there I'm happy to give my thoughts on this and I'd welcome anyone else to give their thoughts but I Have a couple of thoughts on this the first one is that what you do when you do that is you basically Are meaning that all of us are going to have to pay those costs down the line When we need to retrofit those buildings in 10 20 years in order to reach these emission targets That we've set in order to avoid sort of catastrophic global warming. So I think that since and it's very likely I think that you know, those retrofit costs are good costs are gonna be very expensive And they're gonna have to be shouldered by sort of us as a community rather than by individuals And so I think sort of as sort of a community it makes sense to try to Prevent those higher future costs and we get the lower emissions sort of in the meantime I think the other one is is I'm not a hundred percent on this I'd be I'd be happy to hear input but my understanding is that a lot of these buildings that are being built right now with gas for single residential homes These are developers who have already sort of like a fairly, you know, standard house plan You know that includes gas and so when they go and they build a new construction They just use their standard plan. They're not sort of optimizing it every single time And so this is kind of a push to get them to adopt this technology that is already practical I don't know if anyone else has anything else to add Okay, I saw a question over here Yeah So the question was it for the waiver process that we're proposing Would the person sort of in charge of that process have set criteria to determine that or would it be left? Sort of entirely to their discretion Do you want to talk about this Ken? The waiver process that we're considering is really based upon the one in Brookline, but the procedure is a little bit is a little bit different The standard, however the ultimate standard is the same The waivers are available if the literal application of the bylaw Would make the project financially infeasible or impractical to to implement There's also a direction as there is in the Brookline bylaw that if this is only true for a part That the waiver extends to as little as possible in other words having one thing that would be Infeasible doesn't necessarily make a waiver for the entire project Infeasible that would be a question to be done at any particular time Now it's clear that the way in which this will work in practice is that if we begin to see certain Factual patterns that produce Wavable situations the way in which the inspectional services normally operates is that they would recognize these and you would have a kind of a Common law of waivers that would emerge if something got so that it was clear that a certain kind of situation almost always required a waiver Then I imagine that Tom meeting would address that Down the road but remember that the purpose of the waiver procedure is not in general to let everything go through the purpose Of the waiver procedure is to allow those things to be considered in situations where we don't foresee them We try to make exemptions clear and specific when we do see them And so every waiver situation in some ways ultimately she isn't should be Something that is unique and that happens In a particular factual circumstance that might not even happen in circumstances that look on the surface pretty similar to this one So the answer is there'll be some kinds of criteria that will inevitably emerge as you take the basic criteria in the bylaw And begin to apply it sometimes that will ultimately leave either to a de facto or Formal exemption so that you don't have to go through the motions of Dealing with that each time but at the end of the day the question of financial and practical ability is Really essentially one that is different in each case and the whole purpose of the waiver provision is to allow people who have a special case to make that case Even though we did not foresee an exemption That would apply in that in that situation. So yes, there will be some kind of of Becoming more precise as we get more experience. We can't foresee everything We know that what the waiver provision is is essentially a faith safety net the general principle is clear And as we get more experience the application will become more clear as well I wonder if this specific example would would help As we said before centralized domestic hot water systems are exempted But they do have to meet a certain criteria to be exempted. So I'll just read the language to give you that feel Piping required to produce potable or domestic hot water from centralized hot water systems in buildings With building floor areas of at least 10,000 square feet Provided that the engineer of records certifies that no commercially available Electric hot water heater exists that could meet the required hot water demand for less than a hundred and fifty percent of installation or operational costs compared to a conventional fossil fuel hot water system so For certain things that I think we're trying to get, you know, just specifics to To guide to guide the inspection question up here So we have not talked to electric utility, but we have certainly this question has been raised before when you've looked into it So the rough answer is even if all communities across Massachusetts adopted this sort of bylaw As we saw this would affect, you know less than 1% of all the buildings in Arlington. So This would affect sort of less than 1% of all the buildings in the state in any given year and year-to-year Variability in sort of demand of the grid is around 1% So the effect that this would have would be Kind of like noise But I think the other thing to add is that the electric grid system The the electrical grid in Massachusetts and in all the state all of the cold climate states in the Northeast is Summer peak dominated the difference between the peak demand that's needed by the system In in you know that peak day in july and in january is almost to is I think a gap of about 30 to 40 percent And so getting to that point I think with adding, you know 0.4 0.5 percent of you know Total square footage every year with buildings that actually all also have central cooling because you know That's also going to be increasing the need On you know on the summer peeking side without additional efficiency. There's still a lot of room in between that in terms of You know the amount of room in the winter, which is when I think you'll see most of this demand Yes in the longer term when we look at every at all existing buildings There definitely is some sort of concern. It makes the importance of efficiency In existing buildings more important and also thinking about other technologies that can allow for Coordination with the grid as well as you know thinking about you know, not just air source But also you know options like like ground source, which is more efficient on the peak days and other supplemental technologies That can be valuable, but certainly from new construction alone There's not really a concern about what that's going to do to the current current demand on the grid No We did we did we actually we had a similar conversation through the heat smart program since we were the neighboring town of Belmont Which is you know a municipal utility they had asked the question because Belmont's town meeting also voted to Take to take electrification and fossil fuels as their primary pathway For meeting their towns climate targets and when we looked at you know What was the gap in between the summer peak and the winter peak in the town of Belmont? It was about two-fold was with the difference and so there was a lot of room in that in that in that gap you know it was Assuming no changes to the insulation or anything of the buildings if we were just looking at the existing buildings You could get you know About 15 to 20 percent of those buildings fully electrified before you started having any issues with With the mismatch there and that's assuming no efficiency improvements and not counting new construction where the balance is a little bit different and I'll add one more quick thought to that while we're sort of on the topic in the winter rather than sort of peak demand being issue one of The issues is Constraints constrained natural gas supply and that drives up prices and so because heat pumps are so efficient Even with electricity generated from natural gas They'll end up using less natural gas. This slightly helps that issue Yes the state Well Brookline's bylaw is under review by the state Attorney General's office right now And so that will obviously have an impact on any of the other towns that are discussing this this sort of Local ordinance the state is in the process of starting a net-zero building code Implementation within the stretch code which could ultimately supers that you supersede this or depending on How they decide to define net-zero there was a lot of different ways to do so could end up You know you could end up, you know effectively leading to not being able to install fossil fuel appliances in buildings Any ways to meet the code requirements. So that process is ongoing right now other cities City of Boston is in the middle of looking at a you know a net-zero zoning Ordinance so there's a lot of these conversations are happening in parallel both in neighboring neighboring towns and okay, you know Cambridge is having those conversations You know so there's a lot there a lot of municipalities that are looking to have these conversations first And but at the same time the state is actually continuing to move in that direction with each subsequent Revision of the building code and then the stretch code getting closer to requiring net-zero in all new construction So that will essentially get us to that point You know by by a requirement of the performance of the standard without needing to be prescriptive about the the the fossil fuels themselves And if I can add a couple of thoughts to that So the state also has its own sort of statewide emissions targets 80% reductions by 2050 and I think it's very likely that will commit to sort of net-zero by 2050 this year and Meeting those targets even the 80% by 2050 is not really possible with large-scale use of fossil fuels for home heating So the state is going to have to do something at some point And I think you know this is something we can do on a municipal level that can help sort of Push the bar on the state level and as far as other communities that are considering this I'm not 100% sure how how far different communities are in really getting this done this year But ones that I've heard sort of considering it our Lexington Belmont Cambridge Somerville Newton Medfield Conquered I want to Wellesley I want to say Reading or maybe one of the towns around there Just a few off the top of my head So I think there there is sort of momentum there and Pat do you want to add something? It seems to me that that it's pretty clear that the thrust of this ordinance of this by-laws is similar to the thrust of state policy And I just wanted to comment for a moment on the on the what's before the Attorney General Basically ultimately every by-law that is passed by town Meeting needs to be reviewed by the Attorney General and that was true of Brookline's or Brookline's by-law as well That proceeding is ongoing It will take considerable time. This is probably the biggest Review of this kind that has happened in a long time in that office It usually isn't quite this controversial even though of course, it's not controversial among town meeting members And so we're probably not going to find out until mid-summer maybe a little bit later That's beyond a statutory deadline, but that is normally Waved and so we are likely to find out well after our own town meeting Oh, but possibly before the town meetings of some of the other communities who are looking at this The Brookline's position is the issue there is strictly a question of law It's a question of whether the town has the power to do what it is that it is it is trying to do the It's clear that in general the town has the power to enact by-laws in order to In order to protect the public health, which is what this is aimed to do The difficulty is whether or not It violates any air or it intrudes on any area that has been occupied by state law and predictably the you do the gas utilities say that it has and Brookline says that it hasn't throughout all of the process and Jesse can I'm sure say the Expand bond banned on this in some detail a great effort has been made to not make this a building code matter Which would raise a question of preemption and also to make this not a question of Trying to regulate gas Because utility regulation including for safety is also something that is committed to state law That's why it is that it only applies inside the gas meter So it's not utility regulation and you can see by its very nature. It is not a building code is sort of thing It's not aimed to build safe buildings and that sort of thing. It's really aimed at achieving a further objective objective in terms of in terms of protecting public health and ultimately protecting the planet against the degradation of the atmosphere and the Ecosystem on which we all depend that certainly doesn't sound like a building code sort of issue to me Nobody knows for sure what the General is going to decide The question for us for me at least is are we going to let the momentum for all of this? Die away and why we all tread water waiting for a legal Determination by the Attorney General and then what? And it seems to me that that Arlington can serve a very useful purpose in keeping even if ultimately the Brookline ordinances Is overturned in some way because it doesn't necessarily have to be overturned completely it could be some part of it Is is not we at least can keep keep going and keep the issue alive And I think we are likely to have a defensible ordinance if we don't we will figure out what to do with it then But in the meantime what happens when you? When you stop is the same thing that happened to the to the bunny in the in the in the fable When you when you stop for a while you begin you begin to lose the race and that is what we're trying not to do This is Jesse Gray from Brookline I just wanted to add a political comment in answer to this question so answering this question politically of where does the state fit in with local communities and The the fact of the matter is we're not moving fast enough to solve this problem We are facing a problem that we as a human species has never faced before a global problem of immense complexity And our political institutions are ill-suited to solving this problem and have demonstrably failed to solve it over the past several decades and so The question is how do we how do we proceed? How do we move forward and how do we actually solve the problem and it's not a technological problem It's a political problem the solutions are political not technological that largely the technological solutions are ready there's some exceptions like long-haul aviation, but for the most part this is a political problem and The will to solve this problem is concentrated in our cities and in our towns It's concentrated in urban areas and so we have more will in our local urban communities to solve this problem Then we have in the state Legislature and then we have at the state level in general and we are not moving fast enough at the state level And the federal level and actually it's so many of us Fixate in on the presidential election or on gubernatorial elections But what may be more important for climate is what we do right here at home Where we have the political will and what we just need to do is figure out how to use it This I think is a great example of how we can exercise that will And we can keep exploring and finding new ways to exercise it and so towns and cities ought to Exercise the powers they have and find new ones wherever they can To solve this immense problem in front of us and once local communities start States and countries will follow so it wasn't it wasn't described tonight The the sort of recent history of this movement which started in Berkeley, California In July it was only in July of 2019 that Berkeley, California passed the first prohibition on new fossil fuel infrastructure anywhere in the country and By now we're up to almost 30, California communities that have copied Berkeley plus Brookline plus a recent announcement I don't know if you saw New York City plans to do this And so it is not an accident that local communities are leading the way But states will eventually follow if we if we show them the way at the poor river And it's fracked gas being pushed up all the way from Appalachia all the way up to Canada by a Canadian company Enbridge Family owned and then out to Europe. This Is an incredible Area that we should also be trying to impact because the towns around there are all close to it and yet our governor gave it a green go ahead so all legal means thus far have Ended which is why I got arrested there last week doing nonviolent direct action But lots more of us need to combine if we really want to stop gas Infrastructure And These are the kinds of things that work all up against and we need to think locally and we need to think regionally and look at the many many ways that gas companies are trying to keep Their growth happening and the many ways the communities all along the way There are many communities Thank you for your comment so The idea with waivers is if you can show that you know, there's not really a practical affordable option out there then you can apply for and potentially get the waiver so if For in those cases there is not sort of a practical non fossil fuel alternative Then you can certainly apply for waiver. I don't think we can say ahead of time Exactly what is going to end up being a wave or not We do that Geothermal is a fantastic technology for radiant floor heating actually because the lower temperature means that you can maximize the efficiency of that So that's actually one of the best applications for ground source heat pumps and new construction is radiant floor heating It's you only you to be able to you know first house. It's about 2,000 square feet. You need about an area that's about 40 by 40 to you know 30 You know you can spread that out over in different areas, but you only need you know Each borehole only needs to be about 15 feet from the foundation It can be even can potentially be closer in a new construction project and only needs to be separated from each from by by 20 feet And you need you only need two of those for a new building We're not you know, they're not talking about you know a lot of a lot of geothermal projects are you know a lot of Trenching and and you know, we're talking about drilling boreholes about yay-wide that need to be 20 feet apart Any other questions I think the question is what about the comfort level of heating with an air source heat pump rather than say Hot water baseboard heating The same temperature everywhere you've got different Areas that you can have cooler or warmer depending on how much you use those rooms So in some ways people will argue Air source heat pumps are better for comfort in some ways again new construction is going to have a great envelope And so you're really not going to need a ton of heating and cooling in that envelope It's sort of different when you're talking about retrofitting If you don't do any improvements and you have a really leaky house And you try and use all all air source heat pumps. You're going to probably not be that comfortable Virtually every new residential building that's being built right now is being built with forced hot air furnaces boilers are fairly uncommon in small residential new construction just because Everybody wants air conditioning now And so you need to have forced forced air ductwork to be able to provide central AC So your comparison may not necessarily be you know a hot water baseboard in an older home now But but a but a furnace and a central AC system in a newer home a lot of people don't like forced hot air My my complaint of it. I haven't you know the place that I live in came with a new high efficiency furnace It's that on a day when it was last winter when we had that day was like negative two negative three The birth the furnace ran for five hours out of a 24-hour period It went it blasted for a while heated up the space and then went and went down the temperature Temperature just dipped and kind of went up and down and up and down One of the things about a cold climate heat pump the supplies to ground source heat pumps as well Is that they're to be able to be certified as a cold climate heat pump? It needs to be what's called variable speed and so it needs to be able to go up and down In terms of temperature so instead of having you know blasts heat as you would with a furnace or a central air conditioner You have a system. That's you know putting out is running more continuously, but at a more consistent temperature so generally when when a lot of Dockless mini splits particular have been have been monitored There was a study on this done by through the Dewey funded building America project They found found generally more stable air temperatures throughout throughout the year In in bill in buildings that were zoned with many splits You know comfort is a comfort is personal But but generally you know one of the thing that I that I would like about them is is a little bit more consistency in terms of their Temperature and there's a lot of folks in the in the room here that I know have heat pumps as well So certainly feel free to ask them I Three mini splits on the second floor and I do find that Thank you. I do find that the Comfort level on the second floor with the heat pumps is great and to Jeremy's point that sort of consistent Heating level as opposed to those spikes really nice. You don't get that that really hot blast again Jeremy's other point. It is all personal, but you know, it's pretty cool days I'm getting You can smell Oh So the question was How does sort of the longevity and reliability of these systems compared to say sort of a natural gas system and especially For a grounds for a seat pump where you have to dig expensive holes and that sort of thing Yeah, so I You know, I know a lot of folks will point to you know, I've got this boiler in the in the basement It's been there since 1960 and you know, it still puts out heat As with everything else that we buy these days nothing lasts as long as it used to Like it or not, you know the days of you know, 50 year old cast iron boilers is pretty is pretty much past us The Massachusetts utilities So some that you know folks that you know amortize these costs over 50 plus years They rate the typical boiler In installed in you know, natural gas boiler installed in mass today at 20 years typical furnace I believe it's somewhere between 15 and 17 years typical air conditioner at 15 years The kip typical air source heat pump at between 15 and 18 years They don't have one for ground source heat pumps But typically we we've seen we've a lot of estimates have put them at 20 to 25 years for the indoor equipment the outdoor equipment There are some manufacturers that will offer a no leak warranty of 55 years on the on the on the on the piping the piping You know, we're talking about you know issues with you know, old You know all the steel or some cases iron or even you know, I've heard reports of there's there's old wood gas piping somewhere in the state but you know most most of the Ground loops that are being installed for grounds or seed pumps are high density polyethylene which has which is rated at a lifetime of about a hundred years So and some of them, you know the heat fusion that's used to join them actually typically increases their strength as well So Not also not as concerned there because those those systems are really circulating Primarily water with a bit of propylene glycol in them not circulating something that's going to explode Not circulating generally not in these days not circulating refrigerant or toxin So if those do leak, you know after 50 or more years, they're you know in the same way that we have to replace gas pipes every every You know every several decades It's in it's in a similar state Ever source right now recently proposed in its most recent rate case to begin installing in pilot projects Community ground source heat pump loops in lieu of their gas infrastructure To explore what that what these implications would be as part of their long you know long-term business model. So You know, I Look look to some of the more I guess the more long You know the institutions that have to be along around for a long time and are tend to be more conservative about these sorts of estimates You know what they think how long they think these will last the last thing I'll say also is that an air source heat pump when you buy off the street today has a 12 year warranty on the parts in the compressor We're the compressor being the biggest thing that can fail and be problematic. So, you know, there there's the You asked as well sort of in the you know comparing comparing different markets, you know air source heat pumps and that you know Dockless heat pump technology in particular is not it accounts for 90% of buildings in East Asia and has since the 70s So there's there's an extensive track record in Germany this year Past year more heat pumps were sold than fossil fuel equipment So it's it definitely has it may be relatively newer in the Northeast, but definitely not in the rest of the world That's 30 years from now. We're talking about assets that last something like 20 years. So We need to be thinking about making those changes now because you know, you if you're if you're looking at Oh, I'm gonna put in a new system, right? Where's that gonna be, you know, how are we gonna get to 2050 if we're not making those 20 30 year investments now because So the question is why in Europe is there equipment available that can do heat pump hot water for larger buildings But that's not available here You go first this time I think a lot of it has to do with our fuel price So technology has been around a long time But the manufacturers of it don't find that there's or didn't think that there's enough of a market here because fuels too cheap Yeah, another component to that is there there are central heat pump water heaters that are available They're just not common in the US in the Northeast market even within the US You know, one of the one of the main challenges is simply You know the coal climate systems that were brought into the into the US market that essentially started kicking things off about seven seven years ago A lot, you know, a lot of that technology was brought in from the East Asian market by manufacturers like you know, like Mitsubishi Dicen etc The challenge is that in bringing in a product from overseas into the US market it cost millions of dollars to get everything certified And so you know like or not there's a business incentive behind whether a manufacturer chooses to bring a product from a different market into the US market one of the things that a lot of manufacturers observed was that Actually under federal regulations if you install an electric water heater over 55 gallons It has to be a heat pump water heater. The problem is is that they didn't include include it for under 55 gallons So when so GE actually put millions of dollars in investments into a new plant for for this product line They found that the regulation was easily subverted by somebody needed 80 gallons of hot water They just put into electric 240 gallon electric tanks regulation regulation averted. So the initial the the Projected market that they were expecting met about 5% of their sales So a lot of manufacturers are very wary of bringing that technology into the US. There are a lot of You know a lot of you know systems that are available just because Europe in general Doesn't have a lot of doesn't have a lot of AC in homes You know the the temperature of the water being used in heating is different You know it takes sort of a specific case to bring a new product to market from overseas You said you had a comment I think it's important Value well We care about the climate we understand that it's an urgent issue It's good that industry is will be go along in this direction. So though we can accelerate We can we can push it along faster because we need to go faster And I also think it's that's a it's that's up to do more things And Great, thank you Any other questions out there? Yes I'll comment on the historic district part, which is that we've talked to several people who live in historic districts who? Have been able to have heat pumps installed They might be required to sort of put them in the back of the house or not having to be sort of visible from the street But otherwise there have not seemed to be any barriers to at least heat pump technology in historic districts That's an excellent question. I think in terms of in general using heat pumps and finding ways of using them in places Which are not that don't necessarily lend themselves and there's a problem to solve It probably isn't a problem with this legislation because the legislation only applies to new construction So that doesn't apply and it also only applies to gut renovations And I think that you're not going to see very many gut renovations allowed in a historic district So the general problem that we've been talking about about heat is Absolutely relevant and a good question and something that needs to be followed up But it's not a question. That's really decisive for for this by-law at this point, okay? Okay, but you know, I'm just saying that I guess I wouldn't say that it never could happen because you can show me that it can happen, but it's highly unlikely to happen and When it does I mean there are there is a process for dealing with that that is a that is a situation in which it is possible That the waiver provisions would come into place Precisely to a point I made earlier because it's such an unexpected sort of thing that you have to consider each of these facts on You're each of these cases on their own facts Okay Yeah, so that particular case is totally unaffected by this by-law Unless you're ripping the entire sort of house apart and doing a gut rehab in which case these costs are not necessarily added cost Because you have to pay them anyways to be up to code in your particular case, I think If Jeremy might be willing to stay for a few minutes and talk to you afterwards He was a part of the recent sort of heat smart Program here in Arlington where You know, we addressed a lot of these sort of issues and concerns from a lot of people. So I'd recommend connecting afterwards Yeah, so I recommend connecting with with experienced people offline. I just want to see if there are any more questions Related to sort of the by-law specifically we can certainly and early Yes so this is sort of the real sort of groundwork is done by the building inspector Basically who does not issue a permit unless you comply with this by-law And that's also the person who's sort of dealing with the waiver process and assessing that sort of thing So one other question I've heard other places when this kind of thing is brought up Is what happens if the power goes out for two days? Well, your gas system or your oil system will not work either So you're in the same situation and that's all the more reason that the envelope is really important Because you'll be able to stay longer So like passive house new construction for days you can stay in it without the temperature dropping so low that people have to move out So in affordable housing, that's really important Right because they don't have the often the same social networks that we do to go to family who's not in the outage area Thank you Yes Yes, so Question is if there's like a disagreement in in the waiver process or other sorts of things my understanding is that it would go to Appeals like and it would be an appeal essentially and then follow the appeal process Which is going to the zoning board of appeals which handles all sorts of sort of building related appeals issues And they basically make a ruling and then that ruling can be challenged in court And it's like eventually at the end of the day the courts decide as with most things Yes, we spoke to What were their exact titles so so the the main building inspector was sort of on administrative leave up until recently But instead we spoke to Okay, so we spoke the building inspector and the gas inspector they seemed on board said it was doable We had a good discussion. They didn't bring up any major concerns Let me just emphasize that this that Brookline did a fabulous job with this with this the way in which they've done their statute Because it was they worked it out with their building inspector as well And the concepts that are that are incorporated especially in how you define what a major renovation is Is something that was carefully worked out in order to be administrable to have as little deviation from well understood concepts of That are applicable in other areas of law as well So when we were showing it mr. Champa He was seeing things for the most part not completely but seeing things that he'd seen before And that's also one of the reasons the appeals process would probably work going to the board the zoning board of appeals in which I said and That is that that the kinds of appeals when you look at how you define what a major renovation is or what new construction is and how you define the Exemptions those are almost never based upon Something that involves an economist and an analysis of costs the question if it's a building of a certain size And you have a certain certificate then you get the exemption for hot water because that's the way it's written in So the kinds of decisions that the building inspector is making is similar except with waivers is Similar to the kinds of decision he makes already and the same thing is true with the appellate process Which already exists is the same kinds of appeals that the zoning board of appeals already Already see so the waiver process is the only thing that is outside that framework That is a little bit different and that those kinds of things It's envisioned will be done with the assistance of other town staff and potentially if necessary in a really you know important and and novel case potentially outside Outside assistance, but you know when you're talking about a total of maybe 70 cases a year the number of times That's going to come up is going to be pretty small That's a great question So the question was sort of how what are the next steps for us and what are ways that people can sort of get involved and move this forward so The most immediate next step is that we have a hearing in front of the select board that's scheduled for the evening of March 9th So we'll do probably a similar kind of presentation and then I believe they have sort of an open forum for citizens to talk and that sort of thing So showing support of that hearing is definitely something that's helpful But then you know the the big the rubber reads the road at town meeting which starts April 27th So we're sort of organizing We were having volunteers who are acting as kind of precinct captains who will sort of manage being in touch with all the town meeting members And we're trying to reach out to Every single town meeting member provide them sort of basic information and sort of answer any questions or concerns that they have because Hopefully as you've seen There is a lot of sort of initial Concern that people have but once you start getting sort of the facts And sort of the reality of it it tends to be pretty non non controversial So our goal is really to reach out to people So we have a couple of spots there for precinct captains depending on what precinct you're in To anyone who's interested in kind of learning more or or getting involved in general. We have a website clean heat for Arlington ma For a spelled out f or not the number four So you can go there we have a contact forum we have a little bit of information up there We're starting to get more information up there That's a great way to sort of get in touch with us and get involved In general, we always need more people to help You know court We're also trying to coordinate meetings with all sorts of stakeholders and people in the business communities that sort of thing And then the final thing I'd say is just you know Talk to people if you know any town meeting members if you know your neighbors Educate them a big part of this is just there are so many misconceptions and misunderstandings about heat pumps That we just kind of need to get the word out here out there that you know, it's practical. It's the right thing to do We can do this now Yeah, you want to add one more thing? See if you'd only seen the the script for this that was supposed to be my line. I Waited through this entire hearing and Then Amos stole my thunder in in the conclusion and I didn't I only got the three sentences earlier So I'm feeling There's one thing that I know that that Amos doesn't really know in the same way because I'm a town meeting member and I've been involved in Working for working on setting up Precinct meetings that are that we have last fall And that we will have again in April And I should say that that the person who is really well The person who is really in charge of setting all that up is mr. Degans who has asked questions a little bit earlier Who has done a remarkable job through in vision Arlington in trying to organize precinct meetings so that meeting members can But more importantly so that you can talk with them and they can talk with you So you'll see notices will come out They'll be posted in kickstand where I assume all of you spend at least an hour a day And the the town the town notices will all give addresses for each of the meetings There's some of the some of the precincts tend to meet together In mine one three and five tend to meet together at the Thompson school because everybody votes there So keep an eye on that go to those meetings and say what you think And I'm sure your town meeting members would like to hear that. Yeah I Can't prove it the town's energy manager and the question was Why did the town choose? ground source heat pumps for the new high school and Were there any Incentive payments from the state or utilities that helped made that possible So the high school is actually all electric and no fossil fuel combustion whatsoever It's a combination of ground source heat pumps and air source heat pumps I think there's a hundred and thirty ground source heat pumps plan and the rest of the building is going to be handled strictly through air source heat pumps and We did get actually quite substantial financial benefit from doing this we enrolled in a utility program called Accelerate performance and so we're essentially getting a minimum of a two hundred thousand dollar payment for Achieving the low level of energy usage usage that we achieved and then going forward There's a an alternative energy credit program where we can actually get regular payments over It's either 10 to 20 10 to 20 years. I think it might be 10 years because of our generation of energy from the heat pumps so there was But in addition to that The the energy savings that we're achieving are really the bigger story That the high school is going to be using less than half of the energy per square foot Then the current high school is using and so that the cost savings over the lifetime of the building actually dwarf any of the Utility incentives that we're getting Yeah, so the question is sort of when does this really go into effect and start changing things? Our current the current date that we have on the bylaw for this to begin implementation would be July 1st 2021 so not this July, but the next year and the idea there is We may not hear back from the Attorney General until July this year for the ruling there And then so we want to have sort of a significant amount of lead time to really a big part of that It's just going to be educating developers to make them know ahead of time that this is going into effect And so that they can sort of prepare for it And be ready to go Brookline's effective implementation date is January 1st, 2021. So that's sort of the soonest that this would go into effect there Although there are some caveats So my understanding there is It's there's not really an impact from changing your Sort of home heating system because there's already sort of fairly stringent regulations on sort of ventilation of those systems to the outside That sort of thing that's mainly a factor for cooking with gas at home Cooking with gas actually does does lead to sort of unhealthy levels of various Pollutants inside of your home that you're then living and breathing in and can lead to Asma and in young children and it's been connected to asthma and sort of lower income communities That sort of thing but in this case since all cooking appliances are exempted There's no kind of effect there Yeah, I could just add that you know when you're thinking about building a new home And if you're prohibited from installing gas heat and gas hot water Then you are going to be faced with a very different kind of decision than you're faced with now And that decision is you know, are you going to install a gas cooking equipment in the kitchen? You know a gas range or gas cooktop if that would then Require you to get a gas hookup and to put significant gas piping through your home and One of the reason that a lot of homes in the south are all electric is just the cost of installing the all of that piping and so The calculus becomes much different and we hope that it will become much less likely that gas cooking equipment will be installed Under this type of a policy, but of course, it's it's still still allowed. Yeah Okay It's Pretty much nine o'clock. So unless anyone has any last-minute things we will close I guess if you want to come up Pat Pat's already said his bits. So yeah, feel free to get in touch in Thank you all very much for coming tonight