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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007-09-25-CAPAH-minLexington Climate Action Plan Ad Hoc Committee Meeting Minutes 25 September 2007 Room 111, Town Hall Attendees: Toby Sackton, Marilyn Campbell, Sam Silverman, Andy McClaine, Adam Sacks, John Huchra, Rick Abrams, JJ Krawczyk, Jeanne Kreiger The meeting was called to order at 7:05pm. 1) Liaison with Energy Committee After introductions, the first topic of discussion was liaisons with the Energy Committee. No member of the Energy Committee has been identified to attend the Climate Action Plan Committee. Toby and Adam will try to attend the next Energy Committee meeting. Jeanne noted that one of the topics of discussion at the Energy Committee, in the next few months, will be defining standards for new construction. Standards higher than code requirements should be required to ensure the construction of low energy use buildings. It was noted that the town is using EPA software to track the energy use in school buildings. Can this be used for all municipal buildings? There was some discussion about the use of low energy lighting in town and in particular using shielded light fixtures to focus the light on the ground. It was agreed that many of these issues properly belong to the Energy Committee. The work of the Climate Action Plan Committee needs to complement the existing town committees and to minimize duplication of responsibilities. Questions: How can the Energy Committee and the Climate Action Plan Committee work together? What advice does the Energy Committee have for the Climate Action Plan Committee? What information has the Energy Committee gathered that will be useful to the Climate Action Plan Committee? 2) Minutes of last meeting The minutes of the 25 August 2007 meeting were approved unanimously. 3) Technology Sub - Committee The basic conclusion of the sub - committee review during the past month is that the software offered by the ICLEI Cities for Climate Protection Program (CCP) is usable but it doesn't measure certain emission sources, such as air traffic, the manufacturing and transportation emissions due to goods consumed in Lexington, nor emissions from lawn care. The use of the software will require a single official version. Some assumptions will need to be made but they should be reported as they are made to capture the method used to measure greenhouse gases. The group expressed a desire to hire an intern to enter data. Jeanne has a contact at Tufts. She will call to see about intern availability. ICLEI is compiling data via the CCP program. Andy McClaine volunteered to review the software with the intention of being the point person on the committee for software use. The software manual defines what gets measured. Our method should be to make some initial observations using assumptions so that we will not spend too much time gathering data on low emission issues. The Somerville report on data gathering was discussed. Many lessons can be learned from the Somerville experience. The comparisons made were particularly helpful. There was a brief discussion of how to get data. A basic question is do we measure the emissions that Lexington's government and population are responsible for (wherever those emissions occur) or what is emitted geographically in Lexington. The consensus seems to be the former. Automotive emissions: Data on vehicle types, and miles traveled may be available from insurance companies. Excise tax data may supply some of this information (vehicle type and age of vehicles). Some of the things we measure will depend on what we plan to do with the data. We had a short discussion about what the data will be used for. It can be used to educate the citizens about how we are using energy and how much greenhouse gases are produced. If we estimate the CO2 from the airport or from Rts 128 and 2, we might provide support for more rapid transit opportunities or carpooling. The Department of Highways and the Metropolitan Traffic Council have data on highway use. How can we rank sources? We need to define what the sources are. We might get a sampling of people from town to do the carbon calculator to give us an idea of the energy use in the residential sector. Total electric consumption can be provided by NSTAR. We should evaluate the airline travel of the town's people. We should define it as business and pleasure travel. Business travel is not as easily controlled as pleasure travel by the individual. For air travel, we should record destination, size and number of flights from each carrier. There is a data base of flight statistics. What should be the approach of carbon offsets? As Prof. Moomah stated during his talk a few days ago, carbon offsets are like asking someone else to lose weight for you. Carbon offsets do provide a means of providing funds for building renewable energy systems that will directly reduce the amount of coal used to make electricity. List of greenhouse gas sources: travel, transportation, oil, natural gas, electricity, waste, lifestyle — flying, product issues... John will work on air travel. Toby and Rick will begin a list of sources. 4) Report on ICLEI meeting. Adam Sacks attended the meeting and reported that 25 people attended and there were lots of interesting ideas. All were committed to CCP. Winchester town meeting voted $400k for energy audits on town buildings. Next regional meeting is in Hartford, CT on Thursday 29 November 2007. Cambridge has web based energy tracking from NSTAR. Toby expressed the appreciation of the committee for Adam's attendance at the ICLEI meeting. 5) Report on Communications subcommittee. Marilyn reported that Linda Moran, Charlie Wilson, and she had met. Ken could not make the meeting. The subcommittee wants to report to the community on the work that the Climate Action Plan Committee is doing. We want the community to be aware of the climate action plan so that it is anticipating the report to the Board of Selectmen and will not be surprised by it. The subcommittee is particularly interested to engage the business community in town. Toby suggested that we write up something after the next ICLEI meeting. 6) Discussion about involving local business. The Chamber of Commerce will be contacted. We need to know the concerns of business with respect to energy and CO2 production. Adam noted that we might also contact the Economic Development Committee to define groups within the business community. Lincoln Labs is largest employer. We need to know how we can help them and we need information from them. 7) Grant application We did not apply for the Mass DEP grant as our proposal for a carbon calculator was too similar to other existing options. 8) Relationship with GWAC GWAC is well represented on the CA-PC. GWAC did not intend to ask participants in the Low Carbon Diet to give data. GWAC is trying to get people thinking about these problems. The committee asked if a request from CA-PC might be made to participants to volunteer data for use by CA-PC. There are 10,870 households in Lexington. The 200 household goal for the program will represent just under 2% of the households in town. The comment was made that since the sample is self - selected it is likely not representative of the town in general. 9) Miscellaneous We may be ready to put together a Guest Commentary for the paper after the November ICLEI workshop. The November and December meetings were rescheduled: November: was 13th, now 20th. December: was 11th, now 18th. 10) Action Items Rick and Toby will meet to compile list of greenhouse gas sources Toby will talk with Chamber of Commerce (Mary Jo Bohart) Jeanne will call Tufts about availability of an Intern. Next meeting Wednesday 17 October 2007 in Room 111 of the Town Office Building.