HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes - Energy Committee - 12/01/2020
South Burlington Energy Committee
575 Dorset Street
South Burlington, VT 05403
(802) 846-4106
www.SouthBurlingtonVT.gov
facebook.com/SouthBurlington
Approved Meeting Minutes
December 1, 2020
Committee members present: Andrew Chalnick, Keith Epstein, Ethan Goldman, Marcy Murray, Tim Perrin, Ken Pulido, Sam Swanson Committee members absent: Linda McGinnis, Karen Mckenny, Richard Shrake, MJ Reale Community members present: None City staff present: Ilona Blanchard Meeting conducted online via GoToMeeting.
Ethan called the meeting to order at 6:35 p.m. Ken agreed to scribe. Public Comments and Questions None. Minutes Approval Since the meeting consisted of a subgroup discussing data collection/reporting issues, prior meeting minutes were not approved/discussed. Interns
The Energy Committee subgroup has interviewed four students. Two have been selected to work on data projects and two have been identified as good candidates for Community Coalition projects. Ethan moved and Keith seconded for the Committee to support the onboarding of the two interns for Community
Coalition efforts subject to one or more committee members agreeing to provide oversight of the interns and their work. The Committee unanimously approved the resolution. Members suggested MJ send a committee wide email discussing Community Coalition projects and gauge interest from any members
willing to provide intern oversight. Data Ken listed his objectives regarding the data discussion including i) provide Lou specific guidance on what data to collect so new projects can be evaluated, compared, selected and tracked and ii) identify the scope of data to be collected to measure how the City is meeting its stated emission reduction goals. New Projects As discussed several times over the past couple years with city staff, the Committee agreed that projects should be evaluated on both a financial measure and emission impact basis. It was decided (although Marcy supported also adding other metrics appropriate for situations where NPV alone can be
misleading) the financial metric should be Net Present Value but questions were raised as to what is the appropriate discount rate. Two rates suggested were i) the City’s cost of capital and ii) the “Social” discount rate as referenced in VT State policy. Sam was going to search for reference documents for the
Committee to better understand the Social discount rate.
South Burlington Energy Committee
575 Dorset Street
South Burlington, VT 05403
(802) 846-4106
www.SouthBurlingtonVT.gov
facebook.com/SouthBurlington
Also the concept of including a cost of carbon in the NPV calculation was proposed. It was decided to socialize this idea with Lou to get his thoughts. Regarding emission impacts from new projects, it was decided that all emissions should be measured on a CO2 equivalent basis and the cost of emission reductions shall be calculated on a $/CO2 basis. Ken offered to build a standardized screening tool to calculate these measures for new projects to assist
the City in its evaluation. He will send a draft version to the Committee for review and comment. Ken agreed to review GRITS and the Harvard Calculator for consideration regarding assessing and tracking projects.
Data Scope
Committee members suggested a key objective is to measure City wide energy use - including municipal, school, residential, commercial or transportation - to measure how it is tracking against its emission reduction targets. Regarding municipal emission, members suggested having the data interns work with the historic data Lou has collected and, if needed, seek to update it. Ken is going to reach out to VGS to see if the interns can pull City historic data from the VGS system. Keith noted the public works department uses a project management software package from DudeSolutions that also has an energy module. The module may be useful as a central system for collecting and reporting both project and City level energy usage. Keith will arrange for a demo in the
coming months.
Adjournment The meeting adjourned at 8:35 p.m. Next Meeting TBD