So, I'm going to do the old recording thing. All right. Uh, hi. It's uh what are we? Th today. Monday, July 7th, uh 6:34. Um it's the gathering of the green
committee here. Uh those folks who wanted to could participate through Zoom. rest of us are participating here. Uh I let's see I I got let's I got with me from here I'm D I'm Dave Blad the
chair Kim Duffy our illustrious notetaker here as well as a member Chris Holden member and we have our guest tonight John Arno. Oh I got sorry Mr. Pacius is coming in now. Okay see I
spoke too soon. No just kidding. I'm going to give a second for Mr. Pacios to join and I'll start my Okay, give a second here. Dave, you getting in? You can throw me off mute. Just I'm gonna I'm gonna leave my video off.
The signal here is really uh weak. No. Well, no. We were just hope we were just want we were just worrying about you because you know usually you're you joined would have joined already but no big deal. So we also have Dave Pacio's vice chair. Okay. So um um I'm going to keep the agenda real simple tonight.
What I wanted to mainly do was go over I was able to the first time since I now don't work a nine-to-five job able to go to the Mass Safe Summit that they had at Holy Cross University and it was a a full one-day summit um with breakouts
and all this other wonderful stuff. A lot of great information and I wanted to share some of that information here because I think it's going to be beneficial for the town and give us the tools we need to move forward. So, what I'm going to do is, if you bear with me
a minute, I can go into here and we can go into uh Oh, hold on. Let me go into back into Zoom. We are going to uh where's my share? Here we share. Share this.
Share that. And go into slideshow. Okay. You guys see that in the wonderful slideshow view? Oh, I got no. Excellent. Excellent. I'm gonna give a second. Let Mr. Stevens um his uh audio
go in and all that wonderful stuff. So, I'm going to move this if I move this out of the way. Nothing's nothing's ever in the upper right corner when you have these slides, right? Of interest. Okay. Okay.
All right. Chris, just give me Mr. Stevens, give me a okay when you can hear audio. Okay. Can you hear me? You got it. All right. Perfect. So, I'm just getting started. I'm going to I wanted to get you guys together. I want to get the team together and talk about
what I learned at the Massafe Summit. There is a lot of really good stuff that they're offering us to try to get us to get become more energy efficient as a town to really jumpst start us on here. So, I'm going to go through this. I'm
going to go through quickly. It's not a canned speech, so feel free to interrupt me at any time. It's usually a good thing if you do, but the fact of the matter is any questions, ask them at any time. I'll let you know if we're going to get into something later on or something like that.
So, just before you start, I think I was I was gonna say I think it zoomed way in, but now it looks like it's okay. All right, go ahead. Okay, so our green community contact is Kelly Brown. Kelly's been with us since
day one. She's probably one of the few in this group that has been there since day one. Really a good asset. Um, helped us along. She was extremely excited that somebody from Lunberg finally attended one of these. So if that's how much grief I got for not attending in the
past years the from national grid there's a gentleman by the name of Shan Cruz. Shawn is our contact from National Grid. He is his job is to help us uh coordinate different people, different teams, different agencies to try to get
things done so that we can start getting to be more energy efficient and basically reduce our carbon. Their thing is reduce our carbon footprint. So if you looked at the fiscal year 25 municipal energy efficiency accomplishments, I'm not going to read
all the things, but what you're going to see is bullets one and two, I'm sorry, two and three are the most important to me. 109 municipal buildings installed heat pumps. 23 went from oil propane to electric. 86 went from gas to electric.
The other big thing here is 165 municipal buildings will weatherize. Okay, this is really their big push now. There is lots of funds, lots of programs available for both winterization and also the conversion uh to help with
conversion and things of that sort. So if you look at the electrical projects, almost 50% of them are still lighting. This is changing. They're no longer giving a lot for lighting. But you can see between heat pumps, HVAC,
and variable frequency drives, that was almost the another, you know, 40% 30 40% of of what's going on when it came to electrical pro projects. The big one you see is in the gas projects, heat pumps, weatherization,
boilers, building management systems. So we're looking at 90% of the money given out was basically to convert from gas to some kind of electric or some kind or some kind of more energy efficient that
they're wanting to give out. Um they're not letting out residential with this is their overview and plan from from now till 2027. Reduce the greenhouse emission. Um lots of incentives for customers. Um, I'd like to get more involved and have us more
involved in teaching customers in the neighborhood, how to go into getting into thinking about heat pumps in their home, um, as they move forward and, um, you know, weatherization for homes and small businesses. I'm just showing you because this is kind of giving you a feel for where mass save is heading over
the next three, four years. So, K through 12 school decarbonization initiative, um, this is a big push for them. is that what they have now is they have this thing. They're trying to get towns whether it's an individual for an
individual town or an individual that's shared among towns for this municipal energy manager. This is somebody who will come in help us to decide you know to look at buildings to look at opportunities to look at the whole infrastructure the whole campus and help
us go into this. It was an interesting thing that I saw there because um most towns that I most towns that were roughly that I got to talk to that were roughly our same size had a dedicated
municipal energy manager slash grant writer that they were full-time and these folks averaged about 10 times their salary in free money for the tax. So I thought that was really this is really this is really something that's interesting to me. I want to hear
ask a couple questions. Sure. You said um that this is a position that was shared with a grant writer and communities of our size. I find a grant writer position to be a little not normal. I will say as a standalone.
So I'm wondering if if by that they mean it was shared with the person who does a lot of grant writing typically in a community, which is like your planner, economic development person. Was it parked there or Yes. So, so, so it was a dual role. They called him as the municipal energy
manager, but their I the idea was is that they mainly were in look charged with finding and and developing grants to help with this energy conversion. I'd be Yeah, I'd be interested in
hearing which communities so we can touch base offline about that if you don't mind. Sure. Not a problem at all. Not a problem at all. Uh and thanks to that. So there's enhanced incentives for energy efficiency technical assistance. Uh Chris, Chris, as I mentioned to both
of you, there is a free class on building management systems. Both a first part that just basically goes over the basics. A second part that goes a little bit more into the detail of programming and what to expect. Uh these are both free classes that uh Massave
and through um through UNATIL they will pay for you guys to do this class whether it's online it's a two-day class and whether it's online or in person these classes are um I'm understanding are really good from talking to folks. Um and that's that one. Let me keep
going. So let's look at the I'm going to look at the stud what they they're going to be offering first decarbonation scoping studies. To me, this is our biggest issue we have in town is that we need to be able to scope the projects to be able to have them ready when we find
a grant or when grants come available. Uh Chris, you missed out. Mr. Stevens, you missed out. It's hard because it's Chris and Chris, but Mr. Stevens, you missed out on the uh mini splits when we first got into it, but basically the green community got involved late, but we were managed to able to throw
together like five entities to manage to get the mini splits, you know, uh 60% of the project done for on on based on grants. So, this is something we thought if we can be ahead of the curve, we'd be much better off. So, what they say is
they have new study offerings. They help you with choosing a study type and how to participate in these studies. So here is a a little bit of a comprehensive look of question or
okay here's a comprehensive look of what we got. I'm going to talk about these in more detail, but the benchmarking prioritization, the portfolio prior prioritization plan is basically looking at all the buildings in in the town.
Looks at the whole campus throughout the whole town. And that will look at giving you a huge overlook of the town of what the system looks like today and help you with help us with when things should be looked at for upgrading maintenance and
things of that sort. The comprehensive building assessment is now going down into the individual buildings more looking and scoping out the buildings and getting prepare buildings getting us prepared for being able to go after a grant with data and other things for the
uh buildings. The decarbonization roadmap is an idea of helping us. So there's a new program out called climate leadership. I'm not going to get into that tonight, but I can if you want. But climate leadership is one step above
green and it allows for like you know up to a million dollars in grants if you can make this but it's like you have to have a 2030 plan 2050 plan and it's really much more detailed than we've been a able to do so far.
So let's look at the priority portfolio prior to the PPP. All right, I'm going to move this over here so it gets out of the way this way. Okay. So the purpose of this is a highle energy use analysis. This is you know more than five buildings. If this would be every single
building we have in we have in town we can do um I would also look at this as maybe being able to throw in the um uh the variable speed drives for the weight um waste management system or anything else that we see as municipality that we
might want to throw in and have this. So it'll give you a list of buildings prioritization. It'll help you to get um a pre a report presentation next steps together. The big thing is it gets all the information into the mass save collection tool. The
collection tool is imperative when you want to go through the grant. Once we say go and get this thing going, they say it's 60 days, you know, um from the initial engagement to having this study ready. So, it's really fairly quick on things like that.
This is 100% utility funded through the uh Massave program. So we would work with uh Massave as well as um Matt O'Keeffe with Unatil on this. Okay. I was going to ask so this is this is funding
outside or in addition to our typical annual aotment from green communities. This is a supplement. It sounds like it. So this has So actually this has really nothing to do with green communities. This has only to do with mass safe.
Well, in that but wouldn't it help us if to scope a green communities project better to be more correct. Well correct. It's well it's going to help you scope a project period. So even if it's not a Greek community grant, it might be a federal grant, might be a state grant, if there's a grant available, you'll have
it ready because you would have had the data. Excellent. Okay. So the next step from that is the CBA, the comprehensive building assessment. Now you drill down to five or fewer buildings to do. If we look at this, we basically if I looked at this
and I said, okay, what would be five buildings? I'd look at the three schools, the public safety and the uh DPW is like a possibility for five buildings that we can do this with. This goes into a full indepth going into
setting us up for the requirements needed for weatherization, the requirements needed to do uh modernization, moving for from an HVAC, telling you about which system would be best for you, whether it's going to be um uh an air to heat conversion or
whether it's going to be an air to heat like a heat pump or whether it's going to be variable refrigeration or what kind of systems it going to be. This also looks at hot water and everything else. So it's an in-depth comprehensive building assessment on here from there. There's also a dec Oh, I'm sorry. Let me
go back one. This is also 100% funded. So this is once we have we could do both. We can have this is 30 days from the initial engagement to having the presentation together. So this is now going to give you one step past the mass save collection tool. It's going to give
you the supporting calculators to have you ready for systems to be deployed. So, this is really cool with the fact that it's going to have, you know, really get into like the nitty-gritty of how much you're going to save, all those stupid, all those wonderful things you have to have for the green community
grants that take us a while to get together because none of us really are true professionals in this. The deep carbonization roadmap studies is that exactly for that. This is a comprehensive town study to look at, you
know, everything in town and looking at the annual energy consumption, looking at decarbonization, looking at greenhouse gases, um, uh, giving you a time temp table for implementing and identifying strategies, compliance documents. This is you need
pre-approval from Massave or Unatil. However, this is also um um usually a co-pay. So, I'm looking at this as once we had the first two steps together, if we wanted to look at the climate leadership, the decarbonization roadmap
would be something we would have to look at. If not, I believe the two first stages will get us everything we need to be ready for grant grants when grants are available, be ready for the spring, get us ready for the spring uh green communities grant round when we have
everything taken care of and we're ready for it. So, show me the money as I was going to say because that's the important thing. Show me the money. All right. So this was a consulting firm that came in and talked about talked about this and the biggest mistake that we can make and
this is something we've made is that we're not prepared. We waiting for the last minute and you're trying to throw everything together. You don't really know which projects are which. You don't really you you see a grant available. You get 60 days to react and by the time you get all your vendors together, get
everything together, it's it's it's hectic at the end. So their recommendation is you know un understanding what's already in the capital plan what's highlighted by energy plan facilities plan climate plan
what's your high energy high maintenance or other buildings and what are your critical facilities shelter buildings such as use you know things used as shelters extreme weather events and things of that sort. So this is what you're going to end up doing is putting they say as you build a relationship build a partner. So here they talk about
bringing in the schools, the facilities, DPW, mayor's office, but that would be uh our our board of selectman and our town manager, brand team, community partners, and basically your national brid team. So here's a little picture of
from the Everett small business community, electrifying Everett. Um they they've done a really good job in trying to really do getting their fair share of money and things of that sort. So at the end you're going to build a pipeline. You're going to understand what's your
low cost low priority high cost high priority high cost low priority but basically have a a comprehensive idea of all the projects you want to do when you would like to do it and what makes sense and what doesn't make sense.
So you know short turnarounds. Yeah you get we see that all the time. We might not have heard about a grant when it first came out, but we heard about it later and we're going to be ready because we'll have the information. Um, grant criteria and scoring. Is this a good fit? You know, these folks, they're out there to help.
They're help they're telling us that they will help us make sure the project is a good fit. Um, don't twist yourself in a pretzel. This was what we did when it came to um the HVAC system. And bring the partners in. They gave us the data. We were able to work with the team that
was wanted to install the system. We were able to work with um uh they brought in a a consultant on on units dying to help pay for what we needed and getting everything in there. There's matching funds. There's also kind funds available too through the state and
through the federal government to help us with this as well. Uh so I'm not going to repeat this, but this is basically what what I just talked about. Okay. So, here's the I'm going to get into some of the offer. Any questions so far, guys?
Uh, was Unatil not there? UNT. I'm sorry. UNATIL was there, but Massave is the conglomerate of UNATIL, National Grid, you know, it's all I'm sorry. It's it's the conglomerate of all the utilities in the state of Massachusetts. So the mass safe program is a little there's a little dollar
figure in your electric bill and your gas bill which um goes for that. Yeah. No, I just wanted to show his contact national grid. There's no unit representation. So unit here, right? So correct. And so the gentleman we have is Matt O'Keefe really. He's been on the
police on the he's on the uh uh building side and then there's another I I blanked on the name but there's another name also. Yeah. um by that means yeah I forget by now it's in minutes
it seems like it seems like the way to do it would be the portfolio view and then that would give you kind of a a good feel of how the the entire community is sort of functioning right now before picking the five buildings is that the way they were saying it too or were they saying trying to do the same thing in parallel
no so they they exactly that they look at as the PPP is kind going to give you a full view of everything you have because we might think a certain building makes sense. Yeah. They might when it comes down to it when we look at the PPP, we'll see that another building actually makes more
sense once the engineers look at it. Yes. Exactly. They'll tell you. Yeah. Is the water district considered a municipal building? Is the water district municipal, Jack, or is it No, it's private. So then would it be the water district? But the sewer the sewer
is part of this. Is the sewer part of us? Yes. Yeah. So, the seweries, I don't understand that, but that's okay. Water is sewer. So, those pumps that we were talking about for the water pumps, those wouldn't count. No. So, they were actually for waste water. So, they went for the sewer district was the pumps. And that
actually has changed. I'll get into that in a little while. That's changed. They now change the incentives so that those might become more applicable going forward. But there's other grants. I don't know if I put that tie that into a green community. Okay.
So I'm going to go into some of the incentive offerings. So the big thing on incentive incentives was weatherization, heat pumps, and then just traditional energy incentives and rebates available. So let's start with the weatherization. Um the weatherization, it's you know
improve the performance of a building. Uh three tiers. There's prescriptive for small commercial for small buildings. It it's now less than 20K square feet. This is an increase from 8K. I don't know if we really have anything that's under 20 square feet right now. The custom
express is now up to 100k square feet. I felt that was almost every building we have in town. Not sure if there's anything that's above 100,000 square feet. Is the middle high school above 100. I think that's still under I think it was something like 65 or 70 something
like that. And then there's a customer approach. Yeah. Uh I couldn't remember. I I don't have it in front of me, but yeah, I think it was just under. It might have been 90. Okay, it's up there. It's pretty good size. Okay, so perfect. So, it sounds like, you know, basically we everything we
everything we pretty much have is that is in that custom express uh category. Uh on the school side, David, is the town side, Ritter building, senior center, town hall are all under 20. Oh, okay. Perfect. So prescriptive is
really is actually the easiest way to do it. So we'll talk about that in a minute. So custom express weatherization tool, you know, this is used for both the prescriptive can be used for both the prescriptive and that this is a new tool that they have out. Um this tool was I
don't know a lot about it. I will try to get you guys hooked up with the folks who do this who have this tool so we can walk through it. But this tool is basically designed to help with setting up projects for this weatherization idea. So you can go in look, you know,
input what you have for the current structure, what you would and it would tell you what you would need to do as far as the different weatherization projects and, you know, buttoning up the envelope of the of of it. So if we look at the prescriptive methods for weather stripping, air sealing, insulation,
there's there's some huge savings in there. The air sealing, that's in air sealing incentives, $103 per hour. I hope they have eight guys working. I mean, four at least four guys working. That's a lot of money per hour that they're giving you as an incentive, but that's I know I know it's expensive. I
I've been through that once already. So, an idea there. um incentives are based then the weatherization for more details if you're going to be uh savings from oil propane as well as gas if you're going to do more um if you're looking at it as
a as a BTU savings um that's what they're going for there a firm savings and all projects over 20,000 square feet must pass the benefit cost ratio which basically means that the cost has to be the benefit has to be at least 50% of
the cost right now which I don't think is too for some of the projects we have. I don't think that's too hard right now. Do they mean immediately or like did they give a time for that ROI? It it's basically just showing the ROI.
So, usually they look at it as over a 3 to five year period. Okay. Okay. They're really they're really they're fairly relaxed with this and they they'll be they'll be you know they're looking at it as well we talked about is it's going to be you know if it does it by 2027
they'll be they'll be golden for it kind of thing. Okay. Thank you. All right. So that's kind of it for the weatherization. I'm going to move into the heat pump incentives. So this is the big push for them. They're looking for heat pumps as well
as chillers. Um they we'll talk about chillers in a little while, but the heat pump there they're well these are both seen as heat pumps, but there's two different types. There's an air airsource heat pump. This is what we think of as mini slits. And then there's an airsource variable
refrigerant flow heat pump. This is where you would have a multiszone system, a larger building where you had um a single unit on the roof and that was providing multiple units that would be, you know, and just you you're adjusting the refrigerant level to go
with the loads. So, you can see the rebates. There's $2,500 per ton, $3,500 per ton for that. I don't see us doing any ground loop heat pump, groundwater heat pump, even though we might claim we have land. Um, they showed us, what was
it? I'm trying to say Swamcott did a school and they had 48 loops of ground loop to make up the heat system for the school. And I think 48 was actually low. I might even be closer to 60 if I
remember right, but it was something we reticent. And they claimed it was a 10-year ROI. They're extremely efficient. Yes, I know they're extremely efficient, but they're not not unless you're building something new, right? They're not cheap. They had
them under the under the parking lots. They had them every everywhere you could see around the whole building. It was, you know, and you couldn't see them because everything was underground. And my fe feeling was, God forbid something happened and you'd have to start ripping up parking lots to fix it. That was not
going to be fun. So this is I'm going to talk about this in a little while, but partial displacement must include integrated controls. Chris, this is what we came up with when it came to the schools when we were able to integrate the heat pump,
the uh the mini splits with the integrated controls. That's what opened it up for the incentives. And we'll talk about this in a little bit, but the really push they're saying right now is instead of looking at it as doing 100%
of the load, look at the be the real big emphasis is on the beginning on the beginning part of the load, 50% and below of the load. So traditional energy efficiency, there's also we don't I don't think we have steam traps here. Do we have any steam traps in town?
No. Um nothing on the town side. Yeah. Uh water heating, there's a incentive to move from traditional G electric, I mean to traditional propane, oil, natural gas to move to electric. So there's incentives
there. Um not that much, but there's also some huge incentives that saying for pipe tanks and valve uh installation as well. The only thing with this is Chris, uh, I think you understand this one, but basically when you have the, uh, um,
prevailing wage, it becomes twice as expensive for doing installation as it does without it. So sometimes the incentives aren't even worth it. Yep. All right. So, building management systems. I was thinking that this this especially when we talked about the library looking at a new building
management system a steam boil hydraulic boiler furnace is eligible for a schedule and occupancy uh optimal start stop finish thing a temperature control a demand control so there's a lot of things that are
eligible um this is going to be replacement of a 15year-old system um add-ons and things of that sort there's a decent and incentives. Incentives are either, you know, five or 10 cents per square foot times the number of sequences, but up to 13 sequences are
are eligible for this. So, building management systems are eligible. I just don't know exactly how much based on the cost of the system, how much we'll get paid for. Then the other incentives are for variable frequency, variable speed
drives. Um they say no changes but the big change is right here. Replacement of failed bypass BFDs may now may now be eligible. So this is like the wastewater VFDs excluded from prescriptive offering but may may be eligible for custom etc.
So, this is something new, but this would also be for like maybe um the public safety building if we're using a uh hot water circulating pump to go from the hot water tanks back to the prison cells uh and all things like that. Those
could be up up ready for upgrades. There's other upgrades in there. I'm sure you guys can see up top that you're using some of those systems, but these will be available for variable speed drives. I would think that most of our usages would be in that 15 horsepower
and below for us. So incentives were pretty good I thought. So up to 50% of the project cost for these things um available for committed to between so we have up until September
20th to to commit to a project. So that doesn't give us much time but they feel that this is going to go on through 20256 and 2027 as well. Um other electric offerings are for
refrigeration systems and that's going to be the the next thing um out there and I'll move this again. Hold on. And then they talk about, you know, uh, air source, air conditioning, water,
evaporating, cooled systems, and things of that sort. So, we'll we can talk about these in a little while. Oops. And then the new thing is going to be a big push on electric lawn equipment. Um, I thought this was really cool. Well, for for homeowners, uh, leaf blower,
string, a lawn mower. If you look at a If you look at this for a homeowner, you know, you it's for a string trimmer, it's almost a wash. The difference between a battery and and a gas. For a lawn mower, you know, if you're doing a just a straight push mower, it's a it's
a wash. For self-propelled, it's about $100 difference. So, $75 come back to you. For a zeroturn lawn mower, which would be for the town. So, if you look at like a 42 inch zeroturn lawn mower, there's about a two there's about a uh
uh 2,200 $2,500 difference between a gas and electric. And you would basically get $3,500 back. And as we know, the maintenance on an electric one is a lot less than a gas one. And the same thing with string trimmers and lawn m leaf blowers. And I think we would all enjoy
hearing a lawn mower versus a gas lawn mower or leaf whacker at any time. Yeah. At one point when I talked to probably last November, I was talking to the cemetery commission. They were asking about battery powered lawnmowers. Yeah. For their use. Um nothing really came
out of that, but they were at least interested. Lawnmowers, they're going to be loud anyway. The blades are threequarters of the noise. Okay. One more. So quiet. Yeah. My electric different styles. A commercial one has a
high high lift blade on it and they make a lot of noise. So I think good point. Yeah, I don't have a commercial. No, very good point. Like some of these things are silent. The little robotic ones. Yeah, they use a flat disc with basically small razor blades on them and they're
they're silent. I don't know if we can do that, but that in town that makes sense. So the lawn mowers Oh, you can't see it here. I got to keep moving. Do do you guys see the thing where it says, you know, the the little box for who's on Zoom on your side? Yep.
Oh, you do? Okay. Sorry. I I apologize. Sorry. No, but I we can see all the slides fine. Dr. Dave. All right. So, this is actually like I say the professional grade battery powered. Um if if any of the towns if
any of the folks in the town wanted to do this, there is actually once a year there's a local show that they got put on where you get to drive these things. You get to play with the things and all that stuff and you can see it. The electric lawnmowers, they talk about eight hours of continuous use on a
single charge battery. So, and that's for talking about 42 in zero. So, I thought that was quite impressive. Yeah. All right, any questions on incentives? All right, I'm going to go jump into
solutions. So, as I talked about moving the idea was is that you're moving from just an AC only if you're using a chiller for AC to now making it as as well as put running it in reverse and using it for heat as well.
The basic idea is to take 10 degrees out of the air and make 10 degrees with whatever you're doing or if not more and just run this on electricity. So here's where I was talking about where they talked about the percentage
of total load covered by doing this. So if you look at the annual decarb, they talked about the idea of looking at 50% load and below. So this is where we we mentioned that you don't use the heat pump for everything. So you don't have
to oversize the system. You still have a supplemental heat system to kick in when the outside temperature doesn't make sense to be running a heat pump. So when we're trying when we're sitting there above and we're trying to get you know it's below zero and you're trying to get
heat out of it, it might not make as much sense. So therefore you kick in the supplemental system. So they're giving a huge incentive to say, "Hey, 50% of your usage." That's that's a huge that's that's that's a that's most of the year that
they look at three different kinds. I talked about a boiler, electric water heaters, and the heat pump. Of course, the boiler is the least efficient. It is um you know it is fairly low cost to install
um on there but you know the idea is as we know boilers there's a lot of maintenance um you're basically doing that heat exchange through it um and it's not really efficient. electric water heaters. It's a little bit better because you don't have the carbon
emissions as much. But the idea on the heat pump is it's it's basically a direct it's a direct source more than anything else. So how else can we decarboniz decarbonize? Man, oh man, I think I got
to practice these words more. Okay, now the other thing was they talked about new and existing ventilation systems. So the idea here was it's usually not the motor or the pump that's running the fan that's going first. We we also talked about the fans being
incentives for variable frequency both variable speed fans, but they now talked about rooftop units and air handlers and what you can do to change that. So if we look at on the bottom right, you have the idea of how a rooftop unit works. Um
here here you know you basically have a uh this one's doing both heat and AC but you have a coil in there. That coil is used to ma mainly there's a furnace that's either heating the water or some kind of condenser or some kind of unit
that's either cooling cooling the refrigerant that's going through there. You're blowing the air across and it works really well. So they talked about what you do is you replace the two coils, your heat and
your cool coolant coil with a single heat pump retrofit and you add a chiller unit. So the chiller unit is as we talked about is going to be what's going to convert the um the air temperature to either raise or cool the refrigerant to
help with the heat. So here's an example they gave of a town hall. This town hall has uh four rooftop units, rather large town hall, but it has four rooftop units running one for storage area, one for the, you know,
main seating hall and then two for running the offices type of thing. Lots of duck work and all that stuff. So an example they have is now they took this and they went to three chiller units. So the chiller units with the two on the top, you're going to retrofit the air
handlers in the in on the the rooftop units, you're going to use the chillers now instead of a hot water system or other system to do it. So since this is larger square footage and a more open area and it's just a sing basically a single room, they felt it was more
efficient or more cost effective to just use the existing unit. However, when it came to the offices, they went to the idea of using a uh chiller with and with a refrigerant system. And the idea would be the refrigerant system would be a
central unit and that unit would now control individual heads and individual um offices so that each office can now have their individual control. So uh you reduce here you just eliminated all the duct work um all the issues that you're
going to have with ducting and each individual room can get to do do what they needed. So the benefits 100% decarbonization of a building 100 the components 100% utilize 100% incentivized
increased yearly operating efficiency and the other benefits of reduced maintenance built-in controls uh you know they say less intrusive installations. Some pumps people don't like the way mini splits look but they now have the the uh ceiling unit so it
doesn't look that bad. They even have units that look like a picture frame on the wall if you're building one and uh type thing. So here we're going to talk a little bit about the rooftop units. So they say decarbonization is a no-brainer. Um so
the idea here would be is to replace as as your older units that are used in the refrigeration is uh R the R45 becoming obsolete um and you're having to move to the R32. This is really the big push.
and they talked about it as below 0 degrees or below using it as a backup heat or supplemental heat um for these rooftop units. So they you're not using them as much and they're they're therefore that's where you're going to
get your b biggest bang for the buck. The other things I talked about was ventilation. This was the idea of heat recovery from the ventilation units. So this might be the uh the fan the the exhaust fans in the kitchen and areas
like that was also a huge area that they're giving incentives to upgrade those fans and to look at getting some kind of energy recovery off of those fans. But they're looking at two ways here. One would be to move to the variable speed drives variable frequency
drives here and also then to add that heat recovery and then wastewater energy recovery. I didn't feel that pertained to us. I don't think we're going to sit there start wrapping the toilet pipes in uh in in and to try to get that last degree. But this was seen more for um
weight, you know, sewer sewer folks that were doing their own wastewater treatment plants and things like that. Refrigerant transitions they're talking about right now, you know, getting the last few R4 410s, they're moving to the
new ones. Um, uh, VRFs are still available, but basically R32 is moving into into effect. Uh, more efficient, less refrigerator, less refrigerant, um, you know, more money that basically
they're trying to, you know, things that the incentives are there and the systems are getting more and more smart as we as we're going along. So, new roof in the future, they talk about when you're going to put a new roof in, plan for your ventilation upgrades, thinking of adding an AC or a
chiller, considered a heat pump chiller. And uh, you know, you work with the utility partners planning for three years before equipment's end of life so we're not scrambling and get a comprehensive building assessment. And that was everything for me. I had
more slides, but I didn't want to do a death by PowerPoint here. I kind of tried to do this fairly quickly. See my clock took away the clock. 7:16. Okay, I did. Okay. Okay. Um, questions from anybody or anything like that.
Dave, I don't have a question. I just want to I have a comment and a thank you. So, um, thank you first of all for, um, making sure we knew that you were going to be providing this update tonight, but more so, thank you for going and getting all of this great
information for us. You know, I think a lot of this, um, is a no-brainer. Um, it's just some of it is figuring out when makes sense to do certain things. But I will say that, you know, at least in terms of developing a plan and
getting ready for scoping, this is something that Chris Ruth and I were talking about that the town doesn't have, you know, funding set aside for how to scope these projects and even get ready for a capital project. So these are things that we have to be doing anyways. And so for the things that
qualify under that first grant program, why not do them through that grant program, right? because they have to happen anyways as we get these projects ready for capital. So, thank you so much. Um, and this has been great. So, I just really appreciate you. Okay. So, I I'd like to take I'll take
I'll give myself an action item and that's going to be I'm going to I'd like to get schedule a meeting with Chris. Chris and Sean from um National Grid to well mass safe I'm sorry mass safe and uh you know let's start talking
about this PPP and uh and kind of moving this thing forward. So you know how finding out how we do the next steps basically from now I'll involve Kelly with this from the green and probably Matt O'Keefe from um unit
as well. I'll look to have that um probably uh beginning of August. I'd get to have that because by the time I got everybody scheduled the summer, it's not too much fun right now. And give you guys a chance to breathe a little bit during the summer. Does that work out
okay, guys? Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Sounds good. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. Like I say, guys, you have enough to do. Um, I I if anything that we can get folks to do, you know, the if the if the state's going to help us and the and the
utilities are going to help us, let's use them if we can, right? Yeah. As homeowners, we pay for it. Yeah. I mean, most homeowners get energy audit, right? Like, it makes sense. The maintenance building never had energy audits. They take energy audits.
We We haven't really done a good job. Not comprehensive. global yeah view global approach to the whole thing right we usually will do a individual building however we're doing that you know sometimes through third parties that are
looking as their incentive to do the work right so this is kind of different this is a um not as much this is done not as an incentive to get do the work more to get the work it's more of just doing it because they know the towns need it
for gust to you know get buildings into the program. Yes. You know, don't not doing it for free. They're doing it, you know, if they've got a game plan here. But so I think it's a great idea, a great approach to it. It's like, you know, get the biggest users the first, you know,
first and move from there. Yeah. And and like I say, I think the biggest thing is is that, you know, look, we don't really know. We could just guess as to which projects make the most sense. Having the professionals tell us what makes the most sense probably helps you guys on the capital
plan more than anything else that as you go forward, right? I mean, when you can argue with folks saying this, you know, folks told us this works, makes sense. Exactly. And and you've repeated it enough times that now they're going to start asking us have has this capital project gone by green communities for a
grant consideration yet? So, excellent. Excellent. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Okay. So, that's kind of was my thing, guys. I'll I'll hook you up um when I get, you know, I'll look forward to an email. I'll put you on copy and we can coordinate a date
with uh uh Sean Ke uh uh Kelly and and and Matt to uh start talking about this this program. Chris Chris, if uh Stevens, the the thing that we're doing for Turkey Hill um kind of we'll I'm
going to look to do the PPP before we do that. So, we'll kind of put that on the back burner for now and um and go for, you know, let's get this together and and do it right. And my feeling is let's, you know, guys, let's get ready because um I think we we would have
spent everything from the last grant by the end of this year, which would make us eligible for applying once again in the spring for the next competitive grant. And if we can have a project ready for the spring, that would be amazing to to take that money. And you
know that's in fact they say the spring branch is a lot less competitive than the fall. So um because you know everybody's town budget is done for the fall. Okay. Excellent. Oh, Jen, you put yourself on mute again.
It seems like the timing is going to dovetail nicely. Excellent. Excellent. All right, guys. I'll let you if you want. You can drop off. Um, you know, that's everything I had for you guys. If you have questions, you got my email, so feel free to hit me up with questions. And if you want, I'm
more than happy to do this, you know, do something maybe more condensed, just talking about the incentive programs for the borders like men and the uh and the finance committee if that makes sense to you. Awesome. Thank you. Excellent. You're welcome. Okay. Enjoy the rest of your meeting.
All right. Thanks. Did the did they talk about theation like project how like whole system isn't like up we didn't have to support all the projects.
So uh hold on. Okay. So I got this um bear with me second here. Uh is this the one? So Unil is going to be upset with us for hatching your lines. Yeah. Oh, I went to last year I went to a meeting about like the grid electric
fusion upgrades and they pretty much were like, "Yeah, they're not quite where you need to be yet to support all things that we're being asked to do." Um, but that was last year, so I don't mention any updates of how that was going. Okay, you're right.
Just turn everything up to 100,000 votes. We'll be fine. See where I go in the next. Oh, okay. Couple decades. I do this. That is right. Let me just do it this way. Okay. So, national grid. So, they talked
about national grid. This was right. This is yesterday's grid. You know, we all know that one. Well, talking about what they're moving into the future. Uh digitally hardened substations. um um you know distribute just kind of getting more automated but also getting
themselves better prepared for back feeding into the grid. So what the differences there is battery storage correct as well as vehicle storage and vehicle consumption.
Yeah, that's using the electric. No, no, no. So the idea is that yeah the new vehicles now will feed back to the grid. Yeah. So you what you do is when you plug your car in, you can it will drain your car's battery and then start charging in the middle of the night when
you have, you know, when the electric brakes low when you have an emergency and you need to go to the right battery in your car. That's a wonderful idea. No, I mean it doesn't it doesn't go to nothing, but that's the the idea is that if you wanted to you can if you wanted to, you can back
during like peak load times. It makes sense like you come home with a full charge from work or something because in my office they let you charge for free if you don't have a vehicle. So you get home, peak demand hits the the grid, a signal comes and it takes some charge from the battery of your car. Maybe not all of it, right? Maybe like leave 25%
or something and you have to fill it at night. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. I saw in town hall the other day a um presentation on a battery storage project in town here. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's going to be Yeah. Yeah. that over by where that looks like should be
an Amazon distribution center that is I think it's just near it. Yeah, I heard about that because when the planning board was redoing it bylaw they were which was last year they talked about making it so that they could do that.
Yeah. So battery backup. No no there it's it's not really a battery backup. What it's doing is it's basically since it's converting at first the battery and then back to electric, it's it more of cleaning up the electric. So you as as well you don't
get the you don't get the little spikes, the little surges. It wasn't for lunar use. It was okay. It's f it's usually I mean through the clean peak program where you get incentivized to have capacity and discharge during certain signals that are sent
but yeah the power wouldn't go to the town so it is a private system but privately developed we could do that if we wanted to which would be by law would have more grounded batteries um you know but the houses a lot of the
like solar panel companies aren't allowing battery backup systems for a lot of the older um solar systems for those houses for on top of your house. So it the idea was is that if you got your solar system involved installed
over three years ago, they did not give you an inverter that was ready for battery backup. So they don't want to change the inverter, right, to allow you to do it. So like I I knew I wanted to go battery. So I forced them to give me it was $100 more for the one
I could do battery. Now I can't afford the batteries but yeah and then all the departments storing them to be in the garage behind like posts like the safety
power Tesla power walls just mount on the outside of the garage and stuff. Well, no. So, here they trying to say that you have to have it. So, it has to be so nothing can hit it, you know, like like Well, yeah. So, if it's in the garage, you can't, you know, you have to have a post or something that stops you from moving into it.
Whereas on the outside of the house, you probably sidewalk, right? Yeah. So, there's a lot of about that. Um, so, so, okay, let me just go a little bit further. Um, uh, interconnection tariffs. I'm going to skip this. They're
trying to streamline the process. Um, you know, they're talking about these pro construction projects of different things that they're doing. Um, study fees. So, let me go right into here. So, flexible interconnection, process
improvements, affordability. So, that they are supposed to be doing something. Yeah. The electric. Yeah. So, did Unatil is Unatil doing this too or just not? They Yes, they so it's well National Grid's talking about it, but it's supposed to be across the state.
Oh. But who knows what that means because Unito only has two towns in the whole state. Yeah. Yeah. Aren't we lucky? Is there any way that we could like switch to they they talked about it, but that's the way the state the legislation
divided up the state was to give UNL, you know, they said that they were doing X amount percentage people before. So you get these towns of towns online. When does that like expire? I have no idea that. Yeah.
Yeah. It would um be a huge help because like what are the rates between the differences for national grid's still expensive right now from Yeah. from what I hear. I mean units grid caught grid and every source I think caught up with where our prices
were. um back after they jacked them up couple years after the pandemic right now and they haven't nothing's come down. Okay, so this is this I wanted to go over with you guys a little bit. Okay. I don't think you know as I mentioned we're not ready as a town but they put
this new thing in called climate leader communities is actually some so the whole I'm sorry go back the green communities was established and the idea that it was supposed to reduce your carbon footprint for that by 30%. Okay.
Well towns have accomplished that. Now granted, I don't know how whether they had, you know, older buildings that went became new, whether they got rid of fleets or whether they had more buildings. Well, I guess if there's more buildings, a little bit easier to do that, but some towns of accomplishment.
I think we're at like 18%. As as all we did, all all we've accomplished. I don't have the numbers now. Well, and unfortunately for us, the street lights didn't count because, you know, and I'm trying to work they're working on that now to
change that that idea because they helped us pay for them. So, why would they count towards the 30%. Thank because that was a big but the street lights where where would that put us if they did count? So we'd be close we'd be a little over 20 because if you remember
the street lights 50% of the charge was for maintenance of those lights right that was the as thing that if you really thought you were getting a great deal with unitel so you know for them to change a bulb once every 5 years you were doubling your electric you're
doubling your bill which was utterly insane it says 20% energy reduction goal there is that different oh I'm sorry you're right it was 20% and I'm sorry 20% % we're down at like uh uh 14%.
And you know, we'd be closer to uh 816. So, we're not that far up. No, but if you looked at it, 297 out of 351 pounds. Now, first of all, those 50 whatever pounds, I don't know what the hell they think because this was free
money. I don't think it cost anybody a dime when it came to the stretch code and doing improvements in your house. It only takes effect if you're doing a a th00and square foot or more renovation
to your home. That's when the stretch code would take into play. Now, if you're doing a thousand square foot renovation on your home, you're doing something major. And the idea of putting in better insulation would seem like a no-brainer to me. But anyway, basements. No, because it's not it's not a
renovation. Well, it's not it wouldn't include the basement. Because you're in Are you heating the base? You're not ready. Is it heated already? That's hypothetical. Okay. All right. So, this is kind of the road map. There's few of the climate leaders right now. It's funny how most
of them are near UMass Ammerst. They're out in the you know, right there. So, that was the interesting thing. Climate leaders, the building the success of the green communities. Um, let me go into it a little bit. the difference here. Um, green communities. This is what we
had to do as of right sighting for residential and larger um solar solar arrays energy efficient arrays. Um, adopt an expedited permitting process. We have that. Create an energy reduction
plan. We had that. Purchase only fuel efficient vehicles. We don't have that many vehicles. It's been police. All the new police cruisers have beencome hybrids. Um they complain a little bit, but I think they realize, you know, I think if we went fully electric on them, they'd have more
they'd have more pickup than they would realize, but that's okay. We're not going to argue with them right now. And minimize the life cycle cost in new constructions, aka adopt a stretch. The climate leaders goes this where you have to have that 2030 to 2050 plan. That's really the there's the two big
things is there's a specialized stretch code. So it's even more stringent stretch code. And there's this idea of having to start decarbonization plan with 2030 goals, 2050 goals and things like that. They don't give you exact numbers, but you have to have a plan.
And that would go to that PPP, CBA, and all those wonderful things that we can participate. And then it's the um electric vehicle first policy. So instead of doing hybrids, you would have to go electric. Well, the fuel efficient vehicle, you don't even have to go a
hybrid. You just had to do a more efficient one. So, we run into that like I'm arguing right now with the DPW like, you know, getting a electric truck versus a gas truck. How many miles are they putting on a day? They're not using
the truck to plow. So, why not go electric? Certain vehicles you could, right? Other you really probably shouldn't, right? But there's DPWs, you know, the the directors for driving around in an F-150, right? You know, that kind of thing, you know, um
you're not doing 300 mile days. No. No. Yes. And Exactly. So So things like that, they give you they give us a $10,000 incentive. So that's what they're saying is the incentive is not worth it right now type thing. Other than that, there's really no other
vehicles because everything is over the the the threshold for green communities. However, there's state money available for like an F3 a one ton and above. Well, sorry, one and a one and a quarter ton, one and a half ton truck and above.
So, if you're going to do a like a 550, 650, you know, that kind of size trucks, which would be like the dump, you know, which would mean you would just do a larger dump truck, larger cloud truck or something like that. And that they give you incentives for going more efficient
on those kind of thing. Okay. Um, we talked a little bit about this energy code adoption. I'm not going to go into this. Um, climate leaders, like I say, could do the road map. So, this is weird. They gave me the
slides and you can't read the bottom of it, but that's okay. So, this is more of when we're looking at new buildings, looking at retrofitting buildings, you have to have an option for zero, you know, zero fossil fuels.
Whether that's the ground pump, whether that's the chillers or things like that, you just have to have an option that the town could be looking at. And they they could say it's not cost effective, but it has to be there. I think they keep giving us.
Yeah. And then, you know, building envelope upgrades. That's the big one. That's the thing we really don't do with the job here. everything. You wait till there's a whole, you know, we we kind of laughed as we were here during the winter. These windows really don't close. They look good, but they don't really Nobody had them latched so you
can see the curtains moving with debris and all that stuff. Plus, this room it's, you know, either too hot, too cold. It just doesn't make any sense type of thing. Like a perfect location for a mini split just for this room. Just air conditioning up there. No, that
Yeah, that they did the split for just air conditioning because the heat's coming from those those big thing right there. Yeah. So, it's being pumped from all the way over there all the way to here. And that's fairly new. That's new actually. Yeah. Like I don't remember seeing that.
Yeah. So, they No, it is new. And they didn't come to us to look for money. I that's so that's you know Chris is finding that he's finding that because of mass prevailing wage and he has somebody in his in the in the his team
that's able to this is Chris Ruth for the facility side who's able to do the refrigerant do the soldering and all that stuff he's it's cheaper for him to just do it than to ask for the incentives and that's why you know but that's
because of as page my example was I was wrapping the pipes in the teen center in the basement, wrapping the hot water pipes and the heat pipes. I got a quote, I jacked the quote up 50%. I got the green grant, went to get it done, said
to the company, I have the green grant. He says, "Oh, that means mass prevailing wage." The price went up three times. And out of that 10% of that cost was materials. That's when you pay for wage, I think a painter is 80 bucks. is something like 60 bucks.
60 bucks an hour. I'll gladly do it. Yeah, I'll pay you. Yeah. Okay. I can do that. Yeah. I for some reason I haven't paid myself that, you know. Um end of you know decoupar zero over time. So end of life h equipment building. This is it's
all mom and pop stuff that to get to to get to this climate leader. Um they talk about you're going to have this road map. So you'll have a road map out to 20 here. is showing out to 2035, showing your buildings, showing checkups, showing different things that are going
to need to be done, triggering events and different things that we that tell you it's time, you know, we're going to be doing something. This is going to be a major event that's going to happen, whether we're decommissioning a building or whatever we're doing. There are tools available. This is this mass energy
insight tool. I don't know who in town even does it. We used to have uh this was John Manda way back when somebody did it once. I think we have um the folks uh what's her name?
Kathy um is Kathy. Anyway, the person that helps us do the grants and do the yearly report. Somebody from that that helps us out. Um if we had that energy manager, this would probably all fall under. Very nice. Right. Yeah.
So then it talks about the emission scenario plan. The the the new data pumps out this emission scenario plan of if you went if you know if you're moving from that gas gas to electric and all that stuff how how it's going to help you.
Um climate leader grants community grants are available. So for implementing this thing for decarbonization on-site solar PV system for ourselves if we wanted to ever do one ourselves
support for geothermal here's the big ones that we have tech support there's $150,000 for just tech support to get this together and put it together and then there's a decarbonization accelerator where you can go get to up
to a million 10% of a project cost up to a million dollars to actually do something and then they have the upcoming deadline. So, and then they just added a a municipal school a regional school district because that was the problem that some of the communities had is that
they regional school one community needs part of the program the other one's not. One community, you know, so they they did that now. So, this was a for ride-on mowers including zeroturn and standup battery up to 75% of the total cost of the
equipment. 75%. That's huge. Exactly. I don't care if it's not as good, you know. I could replace it more. Yeah. So, anyway, and they have something else interesting in there on the bottom right. Potential grant adder, pollinator habitat creation
adder. What did they say? Anything about I didn't say I would I would have to get with Kelly on this. Yeah. I'm curious because that's a little bit outside of the scope of this, but we have like the pollinator habitat. I don't know if that would even Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then some Well, I'm near
the library here. They have something. And then there's there's like a whole like I don't know. Nice. But yeah, there's talk about stuff be interesting to Yeah. I can see here.
And then so this is interesting. So I am on the radar. Um DOE is new a new permitting division is being formed. Uh by bylaws are being developed. So they're going to have model bylaws for towns help
implement this. So we don't have to pay a lawyer who doesn't know really know what we're doing he's doing. Uh anything about that? And we have um bylaw re redoing committee soon that's like starting to get people right
I think so bylaw review committee there is they got to talk about a bylaw review committee. Yeah they do that I think every four years. Yeah. Yeah. That's be good to be involved in that somehow. Okay. Yeah.
Really? Yeah. Well, if they were doing like, you know, the bylaw thing, like you want to make sure your head No, I I agree. I agree. So, as an example, when it came to the solar bylaw in this town, they didn't talk to us as a green committee, which really pissed me off.
We tried in one time. We well, we forced them to kind of come to one to one meeting and they had already made their mind up because, you know, you had people screaming. This was when they were doing the one on route 13, that solar field there. So you have the
people all screaming and jumping up and down. So they push the bylaw in and you know unfortunately that that's where you got the 20 acres, you know. So basically every homeowner gets locked out of having ground base solar than 10k on
there. So that should as a homeowner you can't put in a ground mount system bigger than 10k if you don't have 20 acres. No, I think they changed that last year. They're talking they were talking about changing it. I don't know. It might have been bumped up to 15, but it's not a
major number. Yeah. I mean, the people of these giant houses often don't have a great roof line for solar, and they look to put something in and, you know, they're going to need a 20k system in some of these houses. Well, the other issue they're running into that now is that they did the 10K
when the panels were only generating 250 watts and now that the panels are doing 400 plus watts. Well, panels are twice as big though, too. So, well, still the 3x, you know, they still, you know, then they're more they did get bigger, but but they are much more efficient.
They went from 60 cell to 72 cell for standards. Okay. Used to be 60 cell for residential. Now they're 72. It used to be just commercial. Now they're so they're bigger. They're more like six feet by four 6 feet by three and a half size. But yeah, 460 watts per module now
instead of 175, right? Pretty crazy. Exactly. Look at that. And that we we've actually had we had you know we had the prime example we had is there was a gentleman trying to join our committee then he realized we didn't go save him and he left but he had 13 acres
his abutters was comm the community owned the land between him and then the houses. So there was no house there and he worked for a company I think solar and he wanted to put 30k in his backyard and you know just
looking at it as an annuity for the future and 13 acres and of course the neighbors are like not in my backyard and it's like and so he got he got nits. Well actually it got worse because he came to the zoning board first and they
you know when you go to the zoning board they give you a list of butters. Well, his ab was the community property. So, it got sent to the owner of the community property, which was still the builder who had died and they ne and the community never
turned that over. So, nobody was paying taxes on that land. And of course, now it came time for the planning. So, the zoning board said, "Oh, this makes sense. 13 acres, you're not, you know, there's going to be nobody's going to see this."
Fine. So, I went to the planning board and of course all the people showed up and they said, "Not in my backyard." And he's trying to pull the fast one, but he's like, "Look, I just sent it to who they told me to. It wasn't my fault that you guys didn't change your HOA and have
this mail to the right to an address." So, you know, they would and the thing I was saying to him is he could have put a pink school bus in his backyard right at that spot. They would have noticed a pink school bus a lot more than solar panel. Mhm. But a lot of things you can do by right
that people wouldn't like pig farms. Yeah. Yeah. But that so he got next 13 acres. You have 13 acres. Might as been ticket to a solar array. Just start a pig, you know. Yeah. Start permanating pig farm. Yeah. Exactly.
If I right, I'll do it. So So that was that's the whole thing. So we I would like to get you know we would like to get involved on the thing. So a couple of things. One one of the things that came out of this is they talked a little uh there there are a lot of incentives if you guys if I don't know if you've looked at it but for heat
pumps for the homes not only just as a straight you know single unit for the house but if you're going to convert your whole house and it doesn't have to be the full thing. It's it's based on that supplemental heat as long as you have a method for it to turn over if the
outside temperature goes below a certain a certain temperature. So, um I think they were trying to say like for the schools I think they're going to set it at think they were saying 20° or 20 30 I think it was could be 20 or 30 degrees.
I can't remember what they define for the schools but that's the idea at 30° that's when the fossil fuel system kicks on to heat the hallways. The majority of our winters are above 30 degrees. Our average winter temperature
around here, I think, is 32 or 33, something in that range. We just all seem to remember that, right? Um, did did anyone mention either about
compostable methane to produce electricity, different energy sources? They did not talk about that. However, they did talk about speak here a second. It's utilities are doing like
for compost and cow farms. They're installing these like compost systems that take the methane from the waste as anorobic bacteria and making it into like either renewable natural gas or you can burn it to
renewable electricity. And um that also reduces greenhouse gases a ton because oxyto methane is not going into them and you know air which produces most of our greenhouse gases naturally. I think it's a really cool idea.
Um so they do they have a new organization that's basically this federal funds and infrastructure federal funds and infrastructure office. So this is a office that's helping communities get federal funds for you
know that the federal government has for different things. So identifying and tracking key federal funding uh uh leading you know bi-weekly meetings I haven't you know and all that stuff. is it's a lot.
Um they talked about like you know awards for concerning communities with US Department. This is this has to do if you guys looking at the whole idea of the uh what are they talking about? There's a new uh NBTA thing that we just claimed uh 40 hours compliance. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. Um or something. It's it well it's the idea is it's um you have to have an area that's going to be high density for um as a commute um folks who will not traditionally have a vehicle
so that they have a a way of getting around. Yeah. All the communities had train through their town like the Shirley they had to do this already and then all adjacent to it have to do it and it doesn't count towards your low income
housing. It's a whole separate like medium of density housing. Where's that going to be? They chose payment clients for um what was it? Try town. Yeah. Try. We have apartments on Try Town. It's the old Tritown is basically the old used to be a tri town drive in
there. Yeah. And that's where it is. Is there a train station? No. So the idea would be is that so you would either go to the Lemonster or or Fitsburg train station from there using the MBTA buses
and things of that sort. But since we're in adjacent town and No, I'm sorry. Do you know do you know where there's a bus stop in town? I know it stops in front of Walmart, right? You know, right, but other than that, does it
really go any Yeah. How do you even get one? It's I see them pop in there pop in there once in a while but yeah never see them stop anywhere else right I just figure that people get off once in a while at Walmart so they they talked this is the big one
this 450 million multi-state award for a pump adaptation it's really the big I can't emphasize it enough sorry there's a very big push on it where I work they're trying to get as many people under fossil. It used to be
it had been 100 100% displacement that they were looking for. Yeah. And uh some customers were having very bad winters because of that. Yes. So they backed off on that and they're allowing a lot more partial displacement. So do they mention like where all this
electricity is coming? I guess is big question. Where are they getting all this energy? So, so you know, think about it when UNIL is probably the only I think the only one that doesn't generate any of their own electricity is UNIL in the state. I think the rest
of them still generate some whether they do wind or or their wood or or or solar or whatever, you know, they generate their own electricity. um municipal engagement uh monthly municipal meetings. There's a
partnership meeting um oo 2 p.m. on the on the 20 July 22nd. Okay. And then they had this uh federal funds and infrastructure office community tour. It made no sense the direction they went because they
went Pittsfield, Worester, Averil, then down to Brockton, then to Boston, then out to Springfield, then to Cer. But that's you'd be as energy efficient as possible. Yeah. So, and then this was the other one. Uh
matching funds start to do. So, if you qualify for federal funds, the state's giving matching funds on top of that. And then um you know we this this is just some state agencies, municipalities
and things like that and I I can send you guys all these presentations. Not a problem at all. Yeah. Um are they anticipating that federal funds will continue to exist? Yeah, they are. Uh then we got open grants. Here we go.
Open grants. So buses and bus facilities as we talked about there. um rural and tribal assistance pilot program. This is federal funds going to make available. So I don't know if we can make that uh
port infrastructure. I guess we can can we put the dot at Will Lake as a port and then public works programs uh was more for this was um I I you know I guess I didn't see
anything open that was going to be earthshattering for us other opportunities and other stuff like that. That's it. That was it. So I can send what I'm going to do is I'm going to send a link. There's like this here if I look at it this way. Uh oh. Hopefully
this pops up. Here we go. Yeah. So, this was the summit, but they had like a welcome and things like that. Decarbonization and heat pump solutions, case studies, state funding opportunities that we talked a little bit about, new construction, which I didn't get into at all because I didn't
think anything here was being planned. There's nothing planned in this in this town for new construction for a while. That was for municipalities. uh how national grid is planning for and supporting electric vehicle charging station program. I don't think we're putting that in town. So I didn't really
go into that as much. Okay. But I'll send I'll send you this thing for the link to if you want to go through it. That's most of it in there. Most of all the slides are going to be in there. Those that's the link to all the slides. Some of these like 60 slide presentations. So I kind of try to
condense and to skip just the next one is supposed to be in October. at um in down at Gillette. So, and that one's actually open to businesses, too. So, that's supposed to be that big one. They're going to roll out some new program for businesses. So, I don't know for both you guys for
workwise whether it be that's something interesting that be interesting if I if we can get there or if I can get there, it' be uh right as soon as as soon as I hear I I'll look. Yeah. Hey, it's a free lunch out of the deal. Bunch bunch of swag. You know they had like in fact the other
side of it they had folks what's the Nancy Carrian rise so they had people like that you know they had people like that that do the installations all that and same thing they said they'll have somebody come do a whole audit for the town
and the idea would be they would be getting you know they would them or their subcontractors would get the projects and so there's a couple people like that but they had uh Dyken Mitsubishi um and a bunch of other couple of other folks there um all at all all this little southern at Holy Cross.
My first time at Holy Cross. So it was pretty exciting. So that's interesting. I did. So John, welcome. I would like to you got a chance quick introduction for the rest of the team. I don't know if you might want to tell these folks what you you know who the heck you are. Give
your soap box there. I mean I just moved from town um a few months ago but have been sort of close by for a long time. I grew up at Actton. Um I've been in the solar industry since 2005. So now I work for a company that
develops um solar battery projects. So I'm pretty familiar with like how they interact with the grid. Um I don't have solar in my home yet, but eventually I might. I mean, we don't really do residential stuff, but I've my my background like my I have a masters in in environmental policy and so I've
always been interested in sort of the the policy side of things and like the more you know public side of things, but but spent the last 20 years just like learning about the you know renewable energy and energy efficiency um industry. I I started my career actually
doing energy audits. I used to work for uh I used to work for a company and I was certified to do you know Energy Star rating rating and stuff like that on building envelope and air ceiling installation stuff like that and then um throughout and then eventually moved into doing more solar um I've been doing
that ever since. I've been working for a little company called Barago Solar since 2007. Now we're New Leaf Energy. We just do development. So we just develop sites usually we do like landfills. We do like around we're doing a lot of like battery storage in New York City right now. So
like developing small sites in Staten Island into 5 megawatt energy storage facilities. All the permitting, all the design, engineering, figuring out what to do with the energy and then we sell those projects to people that build them and operate them. So I don't have any sort of like interest from my company to
try and do any projects or anything like that. I just like really feel like it'd be great to be part of, you know, the the voice of the community and bring my knowledge and experience to try and help make good decisions. So, just to give a little history here, you know, with green community, we've
been a green community since 2013. Yeah. Okay. The green committee was the committee was established 5 years earlier. The original committee was established by the uh planning department um in town. racial committee had um three builders and an architect
on it who all believed that nobody would pay for a house that had to have you know pay the extra money for a house that had to be stretch code. So so for three years they they basically mixed it. They all started to leave committee. I got I got by attrition to become the
chair. So I put I got to push it. 2013 we finally became the green community. Um, I think the amount of dollars has impacted anybody is actually zero because, you know, the stretch code kind of went away for years because they, you
know, they didn't upgrade enough or they made it so it was too ridiculous. So, you know, that's the the whole thing. They had to make a house more stretch code, more energy efficient. And as I mentioned earlier, it only affects if you're doing a thousand square feet. Yeah. type of thing of the home or
actually it's it's 50% or 1,000 square feet and so whichever is large you know whichever is larger. So being firsted. So in other words, if you have a 3,000 foot home, it would be 1,500 square feet of affect.
Oh, if I remember right, being a green community, you said you mentioned something about an aotment earlier. There's like funding that revolves every year for doing energy efficiency projects and stuff like that. Correct. So every well they there was
there's the the original grant you were having a grant up to $250,000 to help do these energy efficient upgrades in town. After that you went into a phase of competitive grants. So now you compete against other every other community that's green community
in the state for the amount of money that's available for your so that you know the programs had to be a little bit more stringent. You're we're allowed up to $225,000 per grant. Um I think this last grant Yeah. And so
we just the last one we did is the uh mini splits at the primary school. Yeah. Um I'll get into that a little bit. The one before that was converting the street lights to LEDs with dimmer. I don't know if you've ever seen the dimmers go. So at midnight the lights
dimmed to 50% in town till 5 in the morning. And I even asked my neighbor is a overnight police officer and I said, "Did what do you think about the street lights, Jimmy?" And he says, "What do you mean?" Right? Because you know, do you really notice it? It's LED. Do you
really notice 50% with an LED? So that so like every year it sound like there's fall and a spring grant that those are through green communities. Correct. Do um and so you have to put specific projects up for those grants.
Correct. Yes. And then the only there was a mention of fines for CO2. Like does that apply to the towns paying fines for CO2? It was in the slide. Oh, um they're talking about it, but that's you know, we're not we it's more
because it's more for this more the city side where if you had buses and lots of vehicles and all that stuff, they're looking at trying to do something where forcing them to go, you know, lower the CO2 emissions. Because it had I mean I I was on the
other side. I was in the chip world. So I went to guys developing electric vehicles. Yeah. And you know electric cars everybody who wants an electric car you know because they want it to be green has already gone. Now how do you do the next wave? Now you have all the people who are scared of
the uh uh you know uh uh distance range the range range anxiety and just don't want to don't understand the whole thing. However, if a city like New York said, "Listen, we need every delivery vehicle, every taxi, every limo, every
bus to be to be electric." Yeah. Or else you can't come in. It's going to happen. Y right. You know, I'm not UPS is not going to stop delivering to New York City type of thing. And so that's the that's what we see first. We see that
the next big wave is going to be municipal stuff like you know California is making a new thing where every lawn mower weed whacker and things like that are now have to be electric that the cities that the towns buy. Oh wow. That's going to be huge. I mean
that's going to flip the whole tip the whole industry over. Exactly. Exactly. So that's what you're going to see as a residential. Then you'll start to see the residential one. You know, you could probably be out there for eight hours with your weed work if you really wanted to be. I've been looking one of those autonomous lawnmowers that just drives
around your yard for you. Yeah. Yeah. They've got a few very interesting models of those. I still like I still like sitting in my school. I enjoy it. I enjoy doing too, but like we Yes. So, to give you an example, like so the idea was is the school did this
primary school has many splits. They did a first project. They went to this town and they got funding for it. We we we went to them and said, "Get us involved. Get us involved. Get us involved." They didn't get us involved. So, they just got like I think it was like eight
12 minutes paid like $600,000 for the It was some stupid number. the the second time around we said to look we can get you more units at a lower cost if you get us involved
like less than 60 days before the grant would had to be submitted they finally said okay and that's when we talked about pulling it into the management system they already had so they were just using them for mini splits for AC only they weren't never going to use
them for heat and so we had to go through the educ ation process. Luckily, we had somebody she just left the school system, but she actually had a dual major of mechanical engineer and uh education. Oh, wow.
And she had worked as a carrier in Connecticut. So, she was able to understand the whole idea of mini splits and heat and was able to say this makes sense type of thing because, you know, and that's what we have. We have teachers complaining this room's cold, that room's hot.
Yeah. Yeah, that tells me it's the perfect solution. Exactly. Exactly. You know, there's no way you're going to be able to put baffles in to deal with that. I've got many in my house and I love them. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even run them on AC mode. Just run them on a dry mode. Perfect.
Conditioners dry. Yeah. It's been great. It's been 90 degrees. Been totally fine in the house. Leave it at 75. Leave them on dry mode and perfect. We like them. Agreed. try to convince people that you do.
Yeah, it's just it's just the desicant mode, the dehumidification mode, and it keeps it super cool in there, and it doesn't run the compressor nearly as much. Wow. It's Yeah, the guy who installed it told me that. He's like, "Yeah, trick is leave all three of them running. They're designed to work together in the house. Leave the doors open because we have like one
upstairs and two downstairs. And leave the doors all open and just run them on dry and don't turn them off. you turn them off and it gets hot, that's when it takes a lot of energy to bring it back down, right? Leave them on and electric bill's been okay so far. So, we just had extra solar panels, you know.
Well, my house is like I got a gamrell and it's a different angles and stuff. And then I have some beautiful trees that I really don't want to cut down. I don't really have room for a ground mount. So, we developed that project on 13 a while ago that next bought. So, we'll buy a share of that.
Okay. So, so, so actually that was the project. We we we as the committee said that that project whatever the distance was width was you had to have double that on either side as a setback. Yeah. Well that's what we proposed as the
green commit which made sense because now you can't you got to put it in the middle. Yeah. And then if you want to expand you can only go so far. Yeah. Well no one of the neighbors was screaming up and down. He says I want 200 feet. I want 200 ft. So they said
fine 200 feet they put it exactly on the 200 you know it was put 200 feet from the houses there. Yeah. And then he complained he could see it. I'm like well you know it would have been further away. Yeah. But anyway and and it would have been
now you know because now that system could expand over the over that whole field if they wanted to. I don't know if it's ever expanded. Yeah. They have to redo the interconnection. Like you have a 5 megawatt cap on the interconnection. Oh yes. Okay. Yeah. But no, that's like that's an example. So my company developed that
project. Gotcha. Gotcha. We sold it to Nex amp who then built it and owns it now. So did were you also the twin the Twin City Lex church electric? We did a who developed that.
Okay. Actually yes you um Okay. Because we actually taught you about the street lights maybe. Yeah. Yeah. A different division but yeah. out of California. Oh yeah.
Okay. So, so that is a packet, you know, been really appreciate if you guys could join. Yeah. Um I I these guys know we're once a month. Um this one went a little long, but my
deal is you I asked you give me an hour and a half. If I'm still babbling at 8, you know, after an hour and a half, we are you're welcome to say motion to adjourn. I I shut my mouth and we leave. Okay. If you have you ever been to a
conservation committee? Planning board, zoning board, cons conservation. Conservation's a marathon. You ever been to conservation? Been to so many not in a long time. The one in here is it was zoom only and it was four hours.
Yeah. Yeah, you do what you want. I've been before, but those decades ago. Yeah. Yeah. So, so no problem there. But that's thing. Um, you know, the big push is going to be this thing is, you know,
August, you know, is I wanted to let's get the, you know, the think for the committee is going to be to push this whole idea, this townwide plan. Yep. And getting something in place if that's all we can get accomplished. So the issue we've had is that nobody talks to
us until we hear about it and go after it. They've started to tell us something about capital, but it's like here they're planning on new doing a new building control and a new system in here and it's like that's you can get your money or you know the state there's money available.
We have meetings here once a month. Yeah. We try to have it here because these chairs are comfortable, right? and but sometimes we have to be at the planning board in this upsets the planning board. So, but as I said,
we have our new town manager and a lot of the facility directors and everything now we used to not have some of those people. So, I'm hoping that that makes the communication better because Jen's very active. Yes. So, she's been Yeah. And we went we
went through basically a year of building. And the woman before was good helping push us. However, she wasn't strong with telling the town boards to make sure they came to us and that's been the big thing. So, um, you know,
cap capital plans definitely needed and, you know, there's things you can do. As I said, the police can complain, but they they're only getting hybrid vehicles now kind of thing. And it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. Why not? I mean, what are they doing? They're sitting there half the
time they sit there idle. We don't have like high-speed chases going on, right? Freeways. No, but still even what's a high-speed chase going to be? Yeah. Right. You know, you a you have a radio, right, to tell somebody the next time they're going to be in there.
Just chase them in shortly and then you're done for. But he does say it has enough pickup to catch somebody coming out of like bedrocks or um on the rocks and it and he you know he he basically just sits there waiting for them when they're when
they're stupid you know on the wrong side of the road or something like that. Yeah. All right guys I hope we presentation I thought was I thought you know next time I'll let you know ahead of time. Great. It was a good good meal. Did have a good meal. Got some good swag things like
that. every right. Isn't that why you go to those things? It's for the swag and things like that. Yeah, I'll plan to come if that's okay with you guys. I don't I mean I don't know what the process is, but love to be part of it. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to I'm actually going to have uh Have you ever filled out one of the talent? I'll
send you an email, but there's a talent talent bank talent bank form, okay, that you need to fill out. Once you fill that out, you're on the list. Notorious on the list, but I'm going to be meeting with them. I'm letting Jen get a little little bit feet wet, but we have another gentleman, a
young gentleman. Oh, sorry. I forgot about that. Um, G gave me an update on the he basically he applied for a grant for the styrofoam. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Tyler Tyler, thank you so much. I was trying
to say Trevor. So, Tyler and I wasn't but Tyler applied for the grant. So, he's just waiting to hear on the grant. The idea is that he worked with the this young younger gentleman. Okay. Worked with the manager, new manager at Hanford. And what he's coming up with is
a is a large styrofoam recycle. So, you know how like you buy a TV or refrigerator and you have that big styrofoam and how do you get rid of it in Lunberg besides burn it is, you know, and that's the idea, right? Either that or you pay for the big bags, right? And then you're
paying 10 bucks to get rid of styrofoam. So the idea would be is have a styrofoam recycling available at Hannerford and some place would come and pick it up. So he's get trying to get a grant for the dumpster that they would Hannifford would be used to to collect.
Yeah. Like recycle the styrofoam and use it to make stuff. They like sell it like they get like a raw material that's used to like Yeah. They basically they reduce down to the pellets, right? So you have different color pellets and all that stuff. That's cool. Yeah.
Um did we So did the school start to install those HVAC upgrades? So they they started with the HVAC upgrades. Um um they were supposed to do I should have asked Chris, but um they were supposed to do cing this week is
this week is cing, drilling holes through the cement and therefore the systems will be installed next week. He's gotten the refrigeration go ahead to do the three refrigeration. So do the upgrade in the refrigeration system at
all three schools and um that's supposed to happen by before school starts by the end of August and then we'll be done with the all the grants and then we'll be able to apply for the next one. We just have to get our act together to do that this time.
So that's what we've had is we've had the problem we've had is that it's like how do we as a group find programs because I can't walk around buildings. I don't really have the insight as to what their energy usages are, how old the systems are. Yeah. So you know we've looked we have to look
towards the facilities directors to do that. Comprehensive department would be an amazing thing. Exactly. Exactly. Then it's easy. Then it's easy. Then it's just more managing the project. Then you just prioritize things. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing idea.
It really is. Yeah. But I have to say I also looked into the committee. Did we talk about last time like how there's too many of us on the same year term expiry? Oh yeah. I looked into that. I actually looked at those. It kind of all around this story
something. And I found our mailbox. Had a lot of stuff in it helpful for this. Yeah. Because I found everybody's initial like swearing swearing in copy. So I got everyone's dates except for yours. There's something in there. Oh,
because yeah, according to the charge, we have two three year, two two year, and one one year appointments after our initial thing. So, it sort of would be two people on one year frequency, probably one on two like on another one and one on another one. Um, unless
there's like a way that it all matches up because there's three of us that are all expiring in 2027. That's possible. I I I I look at it as they probably just did it. Well, who knows what how they did it because uh I I got no idea.
Yes. Me, you, and Chris all expired seven. Okay. Well, Matt just expired and just reop threeear plan now. Yeah. I just don't know if like maybe mine was done wrong. I can look at it more, but I didn't even know there was a mailbox
by the way. There is a baseball stuff. I put back in. So you can be a group. One more trip. Is it town hall? Yeah. Town hall. Building a town hall. Okay. So you go into town hall, you go straight through the hallway and you hit the town clerk or whatever in the back
there. So you take a left and then the first left and it's like the mail room. And we have our little slot. Wow. All right. I'm gonna have to go down there. Learn something new about your town every day. Holy cow. Creep around and do stuff. Um, so yeah, I found that out. So we can
figure it out if we need to, but okay. I did that. Cool. Did we look at meeting minutes? We have two to look at. I know. I didn't look at it. Um, did you look at meeting minutes at all? I mean, I was okay with it. I read them at
I did. I glanced at them, but I No, I read through them. I don't remember any of it. Um, I'll make a motion we approve the the minutes from April 7th. Yes. Okay. Oh, f. No, J's not there.
But we got our So, we got a call. Want to make sure Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Bab's not there. Okay. You'll as you know this meeting I will never be this will never be a full
meeting. It's all I I've given up on those I can't stand up but that's okay. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. I make entertain a motion call. We don't need That's right. All right.
Perfect. So easy.