Sustainability

Hi, I'm Stephanie Ciccarello, the director of sustainability for the town of Amherst, and today I will be discussing the sustainability department and how it works. So, the sustainability department is basically comprised of myself as the director of sustainability. I work as the liaison to the energy and climate action committee, of which I am actually an ex officio member, which means I get to attend the meetings, I interact with the members, but I'm not a voting member, but I do participate in the actual meeting as a member. And then I'm also a member of the Valley Green Energy Working Group, where I serve as the facilitator for the group. That group is from representatives from three communities, so the town of Amherst, the town of Pelham, and the city of Northampton. And Valley Green Energy is our town's municipal community choice aggregation, so that is the electric supply where you can actually choose to with the community can choose their electricity supplier, and the town helps oversee how that gets chosen. We help work on securing rates that can be competitive, and eventually we will also be hoping to provide some programming. So, I am the staff liaison that works with that group. I'm also on the Valley Bike Advisory Committee, which is also another inter-municipal effort, and that is the Valley Bike Share program that we have operating in the region. Originally started as just four communities, and now has expanded quite extensively throughout the region. Amherst was designated as a Green Community in 2012, and that really helped launch a lot of the initiatives that we will see in a future slide, but we've worked to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions within the community, and that has provided funding to allow us to do projects and programming. We recently became a climate leader community and that will also help us by providing state funding that will additionally help accelerate some of the projects that we are hoping to implement in future years. So primarily the department is funded by capital funds and also from grants as I mentioned green community really really provides the majority of the funding for a lot of the programming and projects that we do. So we rely a lot on on state funding and grants as well. So the work of the sustainability department is guided by several documents. The first of those is the Amherst greenhouse gas emissions inventory. The inventory is what shows us where we are in terms of our emission levels within both of the municipal sector which are the buildings and facilities and and the fleet operations of the municipality and also the community sector which includes everything else. So that would be the institutions of higher education, businesses and residences. So we looked we had that baseline done in 2017 and the baseline year is actually 2016. So when we look at reducing emissions and when the town council adopted their goals for reduction the goals are to reduce below those 2016 levels. The town council adopted three goals primary goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The first one is to be 25% below the 2016 levels by 2025. The second goal is to be 50% below those levels by 2030. And the ultimate goal is to have a 100% carbon reduction by 2050. The Amherst Climate Action Adaptation and Resilience Plan is actually somewhat of a roadmap of how the town can begin to achieve those climate reduction goals. So, it takes what the town council set as the reduction goals that were recommended by members of the Energy and Climate Action Committee. Takes those goals and then looks at projects and programs that can help us achieve that. So, currently we are looking to see if we have met our 2025 goals and we'll be looking at doing a greenhouse gas emissions inventory to let us know if we're on track. That plan was developed by the Energy and Climate Action Committee with the help of a consultant. So, the consultant firm worked with the town for 2 years uh with me as project coordinator with a lot of input from the Energy and Climate Action Committee. Again, a board and committee that is made up of community volunteers. So, they had a big influence in how that plan developed and what it eventually looked like. The Mass Municipal Vulnerability and Preparedness Summary of Findings is another document that was um developed through a state program, the MVP program. And that was to look at how vulnerable is the town to the impacts of climate change. And the Summary of Findings is also an additional report that identifies many projects um in response to things like flooding infrastructure that needs to be approved improved, but it was also one of the things that identified developing a climate action plan, which was um one of the ways in which we secured funding through the MVP program to develop our plan. So, this summary of findings is also like another kind of baseline report that helped us move on to getting a deeper investigation of what it is we needed to do. And the Amherst Municipal Decarbonization Roadmap was a document that was prepared in order for us to become a climate leader community. The Municipal Decarbonization Roadmap really looks specifically at how we can decarbonize the municipal buildings. So, it identifies which buildings contribute the most carbon and are the most carbon intensive, and then how we can prioritize moving along to decarbonize those buildings. And that plan is actually what will provide documentation for us to apply for funding through the Climate Leader Community Programming to do some of that work. So, in terms of sustainability operations, um the department really oversees the town's um the town's Sorry. The the town's um efforts to reduce emissions. So, it's looking and working with other departments, um also other communities. There's a lot of collaboration. So, even though I'm a department of one, a lot of the work that I do is in collaboration with many others. So, this isn't obviously a, you know, one-person operation. This is very much a collective effort um that can be even a regional effort effort in terms of addressing things like transportation needs through the ValleyBike Share Program. So, a lot of the work is working with other um departments to transition the town off of fossil fuels. So, the two biggest sectors that contribute to car contribute carbon emissions are the stationary or building sector and transportation sector, which is the the fleet. So, those are our primary targets and the things that we're trying to work on to reduce emissions. So, ways in which we can do that are things like the Valley Bike Share program, which offers not only town residents, but even municipal employees an opportunity to utilize the bike share instead of getting in and using their cars for errands. Bike share isn't really meant to be a recreational opportunity. It's really primarily a transportation opportunity. So, if you have to run errands in the middle of the day, we would encourage you to use a Valley Bike instead of getting in your car and running errands. The Valley Green Energy Community Choice Aggregation, as I mentioned earlier, is the town's opportunity to take control over its electricity supply. So, we can choose who we get as our electricity supplier, and we can actually request like a higher green content in what we offer as our standard option for when people um choose their electricity provider. So, you might have Eversource as your utility, but if you are part of the Valley Green Energy program, your supplier would actually be who we choose, even though Eversource is still identified and bills you, they are providing the distribution of that energy, but the town can actually choose who we have as the supplier for that electricity. So, it's a great opportunity, and we can, you know, ultimately try to find better pricing, and that's a goal, but it's not the primary goal. The primary goal is really to try to provide more green power. So, more green content as part of our electricity supply. Then, we also have other things like the Solarize Amherst Amherst Heat Pump Incentive Program, which were community programming opportunities where residents can do things to help them reduce their emissions. Solarize Amherst was a state campaign that the town participated in and allowed our residents to provide um or to to place solar on their residences at a reduced price. The more people that participated, the less the cost was to install solar. The Amherst Heat Pump Incentive Program was a program that was offered to provide additional incentive funding for people to install heat pumps in their homes and to get off fossil fuels. So, a requirement of that program was to to discontinue heating your home with fossil fuels, either gas, propane, or oil, and to convert instead to electric heat pumps. Some of the ways we get information out is through things like the annual sustainability festival, where we have a lot of vendors that are advocates, um sustainability professionals, uh home uh home improvement contractors who uh actually work in sustainable um options. So, we provide these things at the festival, so people can come to a sort of one-stop shop, if you will, to get information about how to have a more sustainable um home and business. And then, this department also assists with policy development. So, currently, we've been working with um developing a solar bylaw, which has evolved into now a clean energy infrastructure bylaw. Um sometimes these processes can take a great amount of time. Um but it can be working with both staff and the town council and town council subcommittees. Um also there are other initiatives that started through residents that also collaborated with the department to move um policy through. So there are many opportunities for um residents to bring forth or propose legislation as well as just coming from the town council or the town itself. Residents have also sometimes proposed um regulation uh that has been implemented in town. So these are many of the sustainability initiatives that the town has um promoted, participated in, implemented over the years. Um if you'll notice, this is broken up by town programs and partnerships, which are opportunities that we've had to either create ourselves or to partner with other organizations, as I mentioned earlier. This department does a lot of collaboration um also with other state agencies as well. Uh looking at municipal efficiency, these are efforts that we have um implemented to improve our efficiency and to try to um transition ourselves off fossil fuels. So some of these are either the programming or the actual projects that we've done to make the municipal sector more efficient. In the transportation sector, we've had several upper programs and opportunities that we've offered to assist people in transitioning off using fossil fuel vehicles and to maybe have incentives towards purchasing and driving electric vehicles or using ValleyBike Share instead of driving. So, some of the things we've done is by installing EV charging stations in town uh that are in municipal lots and that are available 24/7 to the public. Um we also have installed uh DC fast charge stations uh which are much quicker and those are often what EV drivers who are maybe traveling and looking for a faster charge because they don't have the time to stay in town, those stations offer a much quicker rate of charge um and are actually very desirable for EV drivers to locate. So, that actually helps bring people into town. Um then we also, as I mentioned earlier, we have bylaw uh bylaws and resolutions that have been worked on. Some of these in collaboration with other departments, also with residents, um also with town council or previously select board members. So, there's been a lot of um resolutions that have happened over time that have helped the town become more efficient and sustainable. So, one of the things that we offer residents um and businesses and really anyone who's curious about what we're doing in Amherst is an opportunity to visit our sustainability dashboard. This resource is incredibly an incredibly valuable tool in that it lays out um basically how the climate action plan um is segmented. So, if you'll notice there are sort of five categories in this image that are highlighted and that's basically how the climate action adaptation and resilience plan is laid out. And so, you can get information about each of those sectors. You can learn about things that we're doing, but you can also learn about things that you can do. Um sometimes there's information about some industry uh standard or there's information about something some new development, but there's also a banner at the top of the dashboard that is also updates and highlights some of the programming that we're currently engaged in. So, it's a great place to go to find out what we're currently doing, what you can get involved in, how you can help. Um so, we really encourage people to visit the sustainability dashboard often because it's always updated and changing. So, the ways that you can get involved with sustainability is really primarily through involvement in things like joining the energy and climate action committee. Um we currently have nine um nine representatives of the community. Uh they serve three-year terms. And they are staggered, so it's not like everybody comes in at one time and leaves at one time. So, there's always you know, there will always be other people with information about how the how the committee works and operates. So, you'd never walk in sort of having to figure it out. People are already there. It's very established. Um and uh as I mentioned, there are nine slots. So, we're always looking for people to um to come join us. Another way you can get involved is just to participate in the programs and attend the events we do. Come to the sustainability festival. Um if we have a program like the heat pump program, you can learn how you can transition off fossil fuels and you can um in that program, we provided an additional financial incentive, so you can get involved by participating in the program and saving even more money on transitioning to heat pumps. Um we also offer opportunities at times to volunteer and assist with some of the programs or initiatives. So, sometimes we're looking for people to help out with the sustainability festival or we're looking for people to help promote some of the programs we're doing. Um in the picture at the bottom here, we had folks that were helping with a gleaning event and we had students from the University of Massachusetts as well as residents gather that day. Um and we spent uh you know, a few hours gleaning in a farm field and to the left of that photo is the just an example of the the amount of produce we were able to collect. And if you notice on the right, that's So, again, that's all the produce we collected from a field that basically looked like it was empty. So, there's always opportunities to help provide more food for the community uh by doing initiatives like this one. So, that's it. I hope that you will participate in some of the sustainability department programming and thank you so much.