A Town Hall update on the energy grant

With regard to the energy grant that I began discussing here and here, I offer this excerpt from an email I received today from Town Hall:

In short the Town is being asked to participate in this Connecticut Clean Energy Program, and in order for us to participate they want a letter of support from the Chief Executive Officer, and in order for me to sign this commitment letter I would need the Town Council’s approval.

The Town’s role in this program is to support/coordinate/promote the programs associated with the clean energy fund ,which are a number of energy efficiency initiatives, and to get participation among our residents, businesses, civic organizations etc. The energy efficiency programs offered are varied and if the Cheshire community demonstrates a specified reduction in energy consumption over a fixed period of time, the Town government could qualify for credits, which allowed us to get the solar panels at the Library, and/or incentives such as LED street lights for a parking lot.

With regard to "if the Cheshire community demonstrates a specified reduction in energy consumption over a fixed period of time," this is something the Energy Commission has been partly working on for several years. The basic idea is that if the Town is to have a townwide energy conservation plan, two things must happen:

1) Energy consumption must be benchmarked,* then

2) We begin to reduce our energy consumption.

So in relation to town government, the EC has already acted. However, I understand that this grant would also require a benchmarking for household consumption. So this program is more comprehensive than the actions taken by the EC to-date. And to do this I understand CL&P will be involved.

Here is a sense of the number of households that may be included in the program in both Cheshire and statewide:Anyway, this program appears to be a fairly large undertaking. But considering that much of our energy comes from the middle east, I think the effort is not only worthwhile... it's necessary.

Tim White

* This benchmarking requires that all energy consumption (i.e. electricity, natural gas & heating oil) be documented in a database for a number of years. And to that end, on Friday I sat down with the Town's Public Properties owner and the Energy Chair, Rich Ogurick, and discussed the progress on this initiative. As it turns out, all electricity and NG for the past few years are in the database... and the lion's share of heating oil consumption for the town (a small part going back to fall of 2007) should be entered in the database by December 31. At that point, we'll know our consumption. And I thank George Noewatne for his efforts in this. I know he's spent quite a bit of time on this over the past few years.