Energy Commission 2/26
The Energy Commission met tonight. As usual, there was lots of stuff on the agenda. Some items of interest...
1) the pool report - I was rather annoyed to learn that the pool consultant has not yet met with the energy commission, nor even scheduled a meeting... despite my repeated requests. And they're set to report within a week or two.
2) fuel cells - CT Clean Energy Fund is currently reviewing proposals... look for an announcement during April, either on grant recipients or just proposals that make it to the next round... not sure which.
3) CCM aggregation of town/school energy purchases - the desire is simply to ensure we, the taxpayers, get the most bang for our buck. So we want to make sure the schools and town coordinate on this. For background, this concern/idea probably came to light most recently as a result of the Town entering into a long-term electricity purchasing agreement with CCM. (So, in other words, we're buying our "generation" from CCM... while the "transmission" is still provided by CL&P.) However, the schools are not included in this agreement. So I think the EC wants to make to sure that "the right hand talks to the left hand."
4) Public library window replacement - these windows were getting replaced for a number of reasons. But the EC is going to try to calculate the estimated cost savings for the windows, in turn determining a payback period.
5) Energy Star / benchmarking portfolio manager - work in process, but we need this data to do various cost analyses on projects to determine their value and to prioritize the projects. I think the holdup on this project is "institutionalizing the program." Thing is, it was a volunteer EC member who did this up until he resigned and moved out of town in October. Now we're trying to get this done by town staff... shouldn't be real time consuming. Maybe an hour or two per month... just entering kWh/building to a website... but the data could be immensely helpful in prioritizing energy efficiency projects.
6) 20% by 2010 - Cheshire has 171 households signed up for clean energy. There was a discussion on how to spend a recently received $5,000 grant for promotion of clean energy... I think we should spend it all on newspaper advertising! haha... just checking to see if the newspapers are paying attention!
7) biodiesel in town trucks - we've been using B5 for about a month now and have had no problems. We're hoping to switch to B20 by springtime. I also mentioned my desire to get our school buses using biodiesel, but mentioned that I began that discussion about a year ago... and have made no progress. However, if you think biodiesel in our school buses is a good (or bad) idea, maybe you should contact the schools yourself. And here's one person you could contact: Greg at gflorio@cheshirect.org
8) An Inconvenient Truth - There was discussion about getting the EC to air this again. I mentioned that Diane Visconti and I had discussed doing just such a thing. So I think this may happen... and before anyone jumps all over me about this... the idea is for discussion purposes. I haven't seen the whole movie, nor analyzed much to do with it. But similar to our discussion here on the northend, I think a discussion can often elevate the dialogue... and that alone could make this worthwhile.
9) ESCOs for townwide energy project - ESCO = Energy Services Company... my hope is that the town issues an RFP for ESCOs to propose a townwide energy plan.
Tim White
Town Council, Energy Commission liaison
7 comments:
One issue that will become more pressing in the future is the disposal of compact fluorescent bulbs. Although they consume less power and last longer than conventional bulbs, compact fluorescent bulbs contain small amounts of mercury and cannot be tossed in the trash. These bulbs are being heavily promoted (even by Walmart) and justifiably so, but communties will need to devise convenient means for their safe disposal.
The movie is pure fiction, devoid of facts. Is there Global woraming, yes, is it the direct result of human intervention? No, there is no cerdible evidence to state this as fact. The Gore movie is nothing but left win fearmongering and propoganda. If you recal, the int eh 1970's they said that global cooliing was going to lead to the next iuce age, in the 80's acid rain was going to detsroy crops and food supplies and lead to mass starvation. Did not happen, aint gonna happen.
adb
I.E. Tim white must love it.
If you are going to air the propaganda film by Mr Gore perhaps you should also air the other side.
Also...Mr Gore's houses (per the national media) use 20 times the energy of us mere mortals' abodes.
The hypocrisy of the Limosine Liberals is priceless!
4:10 "perhaps you should also air the other side."
Absolutely... at least two sides to every story. That's was my point really... not to simply applaud Al Gore, but to discuss the merits.
All too often in politics (and presumably in his movie), arguments for/against are painted in stark terms that are possible, but unlikely.
Again though, haven't seen it yet. And certainly haven't researched it. But would be happy to have a spirited discussion about it and opposing viewpoints.
emma... good point. I'd heard about that... thanks for mentioning it here though.
I need to spell check!!! I get so fired up over this stuff, my fingers move faster than my brain! Sorry for the typos!
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