[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Because I just want to jump right into a lot of good stuff tonight. So, let's go down the line. Josh? Present. Lois? Yes, I see you. Present. Muted. We'll work on that part. Benji? Here. Perfect. Loretta?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Here.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Kathleen. I see you there. Uh, Luke. I'm not seeing Luke. Just signed in perfect timing. Uh, Dan Bob Jessica. Not seeing Jessica. John also not seeing. Will is here and Paul. Not here, but 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 is perfect. Did everyone have a chance to look over the minutes from last month?
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_11]: I never received it.
[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Yeah, I'm in the same boat as Preetha.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Perfect. That's so helpful because it means that neither of you are on our MEC major mailer. So I'll make sure that I add you right now.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_11]: Thank you. That's interesting. I'm on the Teams thing. I know you sent the Teams one, Brenda. Yeah, and that's what it should have gone to.
[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: I received some meek emails directly, but I haven't seen the minutes.
[Brenda Pike]: I think they were included with the agenda that Will put out for this meeting.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yes, I usually put them out with the agenda. The really scary part, it's always in the spam.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_11]: Oh, is it in the OU water?
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: It always finds a way into spam. It happened to me for the first six months I've been here. I've been fishing through spam trying to find it. Every once in a while, it'll still happen, but double check.
[Barry Ingber]: I never received the final agenda, and it did not go to spam. I received the draft.
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, there were no changes from the draft.
[Barry Ingber]: Yeah, I did not receive any notes to the agenda. So the draft was the final. OK.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yes. So acknowledging that some of us didn't receive it, We can still potentially move it to a vote with some abstain ease, but we will be cognizant of that.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_11]: Oh, it is in the spam, found it.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Perfect. That's good and bad, but mostly good. It means that things are working.
[Kathleen McKenna]: Sorry.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: So I would entertain a motion to accept those. So moved.
[Robert Paine]: Second.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Thank you. Thank you, Bob. I'll just run down the line here. If you didn't get a chance to read it, no worries. We have abstained just for that reason. And we'll get to next month. All right, I'm going to run down the line. Josh? Abstain. Sorry. Lois? Accept. Benji? Accept. Barry? Yes. Loretta?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Abstain.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Kathleen. Oh, I got a thumbs up. I'll count it. Rebita.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_11]: Abstain.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Dan. Accept. Still no Jessica. John. Will. I accept. And no Paul either. So the yeas have it, six to three, abstain, yeas. Let's get started then.
[Robert Paine]: This is Bob Payne. I don't think you called me, but I'll accept the two.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Oh my goodness.
[Robert Paine]: I also, by the way, Will, I sent you some notes about having updates on the committee member bios.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yes, that was my first of two little administrative updates I wanted to open with. Bob helpfully pointed out that we got two new members and some members no longer with us, and we need to make sure our bios are up to date. I know my bio was written a little over a year ago and could not be further from the truth of what I do now. Would be really helpful reminder for everyone, send in some updates. Brenda, where's a good place we can send that before we just flood your inbox.
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, feel free to just flood my inbox. That's fine.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yes.
[Brenda Pike]: Um, but let me see. There's a. You can check out what we currently have for your bio on our. Home page for this committee and I will just drop that link into the chat.
[Robert Paine]: But plus, the agenda used to have it. The minutes have it, I believe. Or something has it.
[Brenda Pike]: So actually, it's interesting. The agenda that's actually posted doesn't have the bios. So I'm not sure what the purpose is of them in the agenda. So I think, really, the bios are just on that home page on the website.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: There he is. Wow. We'll get that sorted, so please update your bios if you need to. If not, you know, keep doing what you're doing. The other piece of administrative work was I would love to get a hybrid meeting for our next session. I believe that is March 3rd. I would love to see some of you in person. I think that's really nice and makes for more meaningful conversation. But as always, we'll leave that Zoom window open so that we can have those hybrid guests as well. Just something I wanted to put on your radar. And if you have really strong feelings against it, please let me know. But otherwise, I would love to move for a hybrid meeting next month, March 3rd. Other than that, those are my 2 little tidbits of housekeeping. I'd love to throw it over to Brenda. To talk about our municipal updates are electrifying Medford all that good stuff.
[Brenda Pike]: Right. Yeah, well, let's start with Electrify Medford. So far, we have 113 people who've signed up for it. 42 have been coached. We did an info session at the library on the 16th of January. And that went really well. We had a little presentation, and then we split up into to little one-on-one coaching sessions around the room with people so we could do their coaching sessions right then. And that seemed to work really well. So we're going to do more of those moving forward. I already have one set up at the senior center at the beginning of March, and I'm working on scheduling one at the West Medford Community Center as well. I'm also looking for other locations around the city, places like that, where people are gathering, that would be good locations for something like that. So if you have any suggestions, please let me know. Places that we should be doing these info sessions. We're also planning to have some door hangers that we're going to be putting out in March and working with a marketing professor at Northeastern actually who lives in Medford. who's helping to prepare the message for it. We're going to do some A-B testing to see the best messaging for them. And then we're actually going to have some Northeastern students who are going to be going door to door, not knocking on people's doors, but just putting the door hangers up. So that should be a good influx of people signing up in March. Um, and then for the mass save community 1st partnership, part of this, um, that training was rescheduled for April 4th. Um, just because their 3 year plan hasn't been approved yet. It'll be approved at the end of this month. Um, so. I'm looking forward to that just to get some updates directly from the horse's mouth. Oh, I see in the chat, someone saying the energy group photo on the website is extremely old. Yes. So we could use a replacement photo. Yes. Yes, it would be great to schedule a time when everyone is going to be together so that we could do that. Um, let's see what else oh, the Andrews and McGlynn HVAC project is moving along. We are going to be getting proposals from construction managers this week. And then we'll be working, then we'll be meeting with our selection committee to choose 1 and then onboarding them so that we can preorder the equipment that has some really long lead time. So we can get that installed this summer. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's going to be ordered before tariffs hit, but we tried.
[Robert Paine]: The tariffs are off for a month.
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, are they? Yes. Yep, well, maybe we can get through all of that in a month and get the equipment pre-ordered. It seems like it will probably be mid-March before we actually get the pre-order in for them, but we'll see. Um, we are planning to do a plug load audit at the library because the electricity use has been a lot higher than we anticipated. It hasn't actually been a net 0. so we did some work with the building automation system, changing some schedules. But we're still seeing increased energy usage compared to what we expected. So we think that might be a plug load issue. So we're going to do a plug load audit for that. Um, and oh, I wanted to highlight for this group that the. Community development board and the city council are looking as part of the zoning overhaul that's happening. They're looking at implementing a green score. And that's really focusing on, um. It's really sort of a stormwater issue, but in a more of a natural way. And actually, let me share my screen here so you can take a look at what this looks like. Can you see the... There we go. See the Excel spreadsheet? Yes. The idea of the green score is to have a flexible way for larger buildings and buildings in flood zones to have more permeable surface on their property. And the way of doing that is there's going to be a particular score that they have to meet, and then there are different ways they can do it, different types of plants, green roofs. Vegetated walls, permeable paving, and based on the combination of items that they have on their property, then it would add up to the score that they have to meet. And this is for areas that are in FEMA flood zones and buildings that have to go through site plan review. So, those are buildings over 10,000 square feet or 6 units and there are some other requirements as well. There are things like parking lots and gas stations and things like that that would also have to go through it. But this is something that's being discussed at this Wednesday's community development board meeting. And then after that, it would go back to to city council. Frederick, I have a question. Oh, yeah, just a second. Barry, I saw you raised your hand there.
[Barry Ingber]: All right. Yeah, I'm wondering how the green roof is compatible with the solar roof ordinance. And I also thought that there was going to be some additional solar roof stipulations that would get additional points. And I don't see that on here. So I'm a bit puzzled about both of those things.
[Brenda Pike]: Not for this. The green roof is really focused on stormwater. Sorry, the green score is really focused on stormwater. Green roofs and solar are quite compatible in that the green roof lowers the temperature and actually makes the solar more efficient. Now, there could be potentially a weight issue with having both of those things on the roof. And so that's something that would have to be considered while it's being designed. But it's, yeah, they're definitely compatible.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Loretta, what were you saying? I was curious about, this is for large-scale projects, what about, could it be considered for smaller, like for three families, any development in the city?
[Brenda Pike]: It was discussed for small-scale projects, but the thought was that it was too, complicated for smaller building owners to do. And so really, it was sort of a balancing act between the complexity of it and covering as much as we could.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: It's interesting. OK. Thank you.
[Brenda Pike]: Will, did you have a comment?
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, I had two quick ones. One is, uh, if you were at Liberty to send this to us, uh, cause if they're hearing this on Wednesday, I'd love to. Read about it and maybe potentially speak for or against it, depending on how weird, how we're feeling.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, absolutely. And this is in the public, um, folder for, I can drop the link in the chat. It's in the public folder for the, uh, community development board meeting materials.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Fantastic, thank you. And actually, that mostly clears up what I'm looking for. So actually, I'm almost set. Thank you.
[Brenda Pike]: Great. And I see Josh also uses a green score during development review, and he linked to Somerville's green score. Yes, we copy Somerville a lot.
[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: It works really well and is good for our green roofs work. So hopefully, that's a reassuring case study.
[Brenda Pike]: That's great. Yeah. And we looked at the green scores that other municipalities had as we were putting this together. And we worked with the same zoning consultant who's doing the rest of the zoning overhaul for this as well.
[Kathleen McKenna]: Is there a requirement for the score level? And if they don't meet it, do they have to pay any fees? And is this something volunteered by the design people? Or how does that work?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, this is something that they would put together and submit to us. And then our department would be reviewing it.
[Kathleen McKenna]: So there must be some minimal threshold.
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, there is. It doesn't really have any meaning, I think, but there's, let me see here. It doesn't have any meaning just in terms of basic numbers here, but I can share that portion of the. of that as well here. Or you can click through and you can see this yourself. So yes, there's a minimum green score and then there's an ideal of what we're looking for and we're hoping to push developers to.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Can you remind me 1 more time, which is on Wednesday, which meeting will this be.
[Brenda Pike]: Discuss that it's the community development board. They've been getting a lot of attention lately because the zoning of the Salem Street corridor has been controversial. This was actually supposed to be discussed at their last meeting, but it got continued because the Salem Street conversation went on for so long. Um, let's see what else here. Um, oh, we're updating our hazard mitigation plan. Um, this is something that's supposed to be updated every 5 years. And our last update was 2017. So. Definitely something to to get on, um, you know, if we'll still have a FEMA. So we had our first public meeting for that last week, and then there are going to be focus groups and surveys to come to gain feedback from the public. We're especially looking for people to give feedback on what if there are areas where they're seeing issues right now, especially with stormwater flooding, any other sort of hazards that they're seeing, if there are, I don't know, if there are power issues in particular areas or something like that. Things for people to think about. And then also what they would be looking for from the city in terms of You know, what would be useful to them for the, for the city to be doing that's really going to be a lot of the focus of the, the public meetings and the focus groups and surveys. So, then the 2nd, public meeting is going to be in June and then the consultant will have done had time to put together something to present about what's going to be. Sort of included like a first draft of the of the plan that that people can take a look at they're going to be maps that people can really focus in on. And then getting feedback from that they'll have a final public meeting in in September. showing the the finished product. Um, let's see what else here. Oh, we have a couple of events coming up. Uh, well, this year, later this year. Um, so the rain, our, we, our annual rain barrel pickup is scheduled for May 14th. Um, and that happens at the high school, um, in the evening. And so we'll be sending out information to people before that so that people can order their rain barrels and then they can just come pick them up that day. And then we have a date for the Harvest Your Energy Festival.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_11]: Rain barrel thing would be advertised, right, in the monthly newsletter. Okay. Yes, it will be. I need one. Definitely, yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: And we're always looking for volunteers for the rain barrel pickup. We tend to have a lot of people showing up that day and we have a long line of cars that we're trying to move through quickly. So it's always helpful to have people from the Energy Committee helping out there too. But Harvest Your Energy Festival, October 18th is the date for that. As expected, it's the weekend after, it's a Saturday after Indigenous Peoples Day. And then I think the last thing that I wanted to mention is that we're planning to apply for a mass clean energy center on street. Charging grant, so this would be similar to the EV chargers. In are in the city parking lots right now, except we would be choosing locations. Um, on the on the with street parking where we would have those, and this is a grant where 100% of the cost is covered by mass clean energy center, including maintenance for the, for the 1st, few years. And that's for, I think they said around 3 charging sites per municipality. And Josh, I want to chat with you about that in a little more detail, actually, because I think Somerville is planning to apply for that as well, right?
[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: And yeah, I submitted it the other week.
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, great.
[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: OK, do you have do you have sites that you've worked on?
[Brenda Pike]: We don't have sites selected yet. No.
[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: OK, well, yeah, happy to talk about it offline or, you know, we could also consider submitting for the like planning side of it, not the like Not that that necessarily adds more sites and more charging infrastructure, but getting a site strategy sets us up for some pretty solid success.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And the other thing that we are still a little bit up in the air at the moment is whether we're looking to do the expedited pathway, which has a particular set of chargers that they use, which are the flow chargers, or do a custom option with charge point chargers, because that's what we have already. I think some initial feedback I've gotten internally is just the expedited pathway in order to just speed up the process. Although I would love to keep everything on one system to make it easier for me to maintain it. But yeah, Josh, let's, let's connect about this.
[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Um, so hopefully we got reassurances that the difference between expedited and custom, but where you just switch manufacturers was not going to be a major slow, uh, slow down, uh, during that, like info session that you and I were on a couple of weeks ago.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't, I wasn't clear that it was going to be quite the, yeah, quite the same, but yeah. And that's it for my updates. Any questions, comments on any of that? I know I ran through that quickly.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I thought it was great, filled out my calendar really nicely. And I will send out some reminders, hopefully the month before each one, to round up some volunteers, maybe a little sooner for Harvester Energy. That's usually a bit of a lift. But good things to have on our radar, ready to go. And with that, I'm actually going to turn it over to Barry for a quick introduction of our speaker.
[Barry Ingber]: Cool. Well, everybody knows that yesterday was February 2nd, Groundhog's Day. And in honor of Groundhog's Day, I am delighted to introduce my friend, hiking partner, and neighbor, Matt Barlow, who, in addition to being a damn good naturalist and an all-around good guy, is also a climate scientist of some renown. So let's see, reading my notes here. A meteorologist, an expert on drought, precipitation, and water cycles, but not necessarily about whether winter will end in six weeks or not. Matt teaches at UMass Lowell. He was a lead author for the chapter on water cycle changes for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's sixth assessment report in 2022. And he's also the extreme precipitation team leader for the 2022 Greater Boston Climate Assessment. And this is Matt's second visit to our group. And Matt, if I got anything wrong there, correct me.
[Matt Barlow]: No, that was great. Thank you very much for that kind introduction. And thanks very much for having me, folks. So as some of you may know, I'm a Medford resident, but I work in Lowell. So I hope you'll forgive me some divided loyalties a little bit in what I talk about today. And I did just see on the TV that two out of two groundhogs agree that their shadow has been seen. So going by the groundhog forecast, there's what, six more weeks of winter? There's some hints in the stratosphere that we may not be done with winter as well, but that would be a whole other presentation. So I'm going to see if I can share my screen. have I managed to successfully share my screen?
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: You are golden. Yes.
[Matt Barlow]: Yeah, I like to keep like 50 things open on my home page or my desktop, so I have no idea actually what I'm sharing. And I'm hoping to keep this a little short so we can have some time for discussion because I'm very much interested in what you guys are thinking about as well. So I wanted to talk just briefly about climate and energy issues at the city and neighborhood level in Massachusetts. which is something that we've been thinking about. So the two things that I wanted to cover tonight is we have a new Department of Energy funded Climate Resilience Center in Lowell, specifically to look at energy and climate change. And I think a lot of the issues there parallel, you know, issues in most areas of the country. cities and towns in Massachusetts. So, you know, wanted to sort of update you on what we're thinking about a little bit and hear, you know, what the parallels are. And then the Massachusetts is just starting its next iteration of its climate science report. So the physical climate science piece, the climate projections piece of the Massachusetts report cycle that then feeds in, I think, into the big next update to the vulnerability plan in two years, I think. So the climate science report is just starting to spin up now. So I'm also looking for any feedback or input on what might be useful from your perspective in terms of what the state should be covering in that report. I'm not leading that, but I am a contributor. This is our new center with a very unwieldy name, the Massachusetts Gateway City's Climate Resilience Center Powering a Just and Resilient Future. many words that are probably now going to be banned, and with a focus primarily on Lowell, but with an eye towards being able to scale everything we do to other, especially gateway cities, but other, you know, similar sized, kind of mid-sized post-industrial cities in New England, led by our own Professor Rooney Varga and involving several other folks. So we're trying to do a couple of different things. This is sort of pretty ambitious in scope, not in funding, but in scope anyway. So we're trying to span going from understanding better about the hot and cold temperature extremes that might be affecting the city and then link that both toward to urban green space, how urban canopy and urban green spaces, rainwater gardens, things like that may be able to mitigate some of the temperature extremes, and then also some energy modeling. And that's not my piece of this, so I'm still on the steep part of the learning curve, but trying to estimate for individual homes during temperature extremes what that might do to their energy costs. If say, they took advantage of mass save to put in energy efficiency or put in a heat pump or network geothermal, try to run through some of the options and see what that looks like at the energy cost level for an individual, but also start to understand a little bit about the peak power demands as the energy system gets more electrified. And then another big piece of this project is to co-develop a lot of this work with the city of Lowell and community members. So we're in regular contact with, you know, folks from the planning office, folks at senior centers, folks at the Cambodian Mutual Aid Association to try to make sure that we're providing information that's sort of actionable and equitable. So one of the things that we're thinking about, which I think everybody's thinking a lot about, is the green energy transition in Massachusetts. My understanding is that the Massachusetts target is to add about half a million heat pumps in the next five years, which is a pretty huge switch. The good news, of course, is that switching to electric heat pumps from gas is at least hypothetically great for decarbonization, probably for indoor air quality as well, but it does put additional stress on the electric grid. So that's something that we want to understand a little bit. And then just to address the sort of literal elephant in the room there, if you'll pardon my slide, the green energy transition, if you transition, of course, to energy production via electricity, that's only green if the electricity is produced with non-fossil fuels. And now our wind energy permitting for the state is in limbo. So that's, I think, a pretty big Question mark piece of this curious to hear if anybody has any opinions on that, but it just seems to be a pretty big question mark at the moment and then also. With that increased load, I've heard different estimates, but we'd have to need to substantially build out our regional grid capacity maybe by a factor of two or something approaching that over five years, which is a pretty heavy lift. And my understanding is that was also planned to be or expected to be dependent on federal funds. all the federal uncertainty adding a lot of, passing on a lot of uncertainty to this. But one of the things that we're interested in is temperature extremes for this project. That's our focus from the climate side of view, but not just heat extremes, but also cold extremes. We're definitely having fewer cold extremes, but we can't quite shut the door on them just yet in this past Last month was a pretty good example around the eastern US of still getting some pretty good cold temperatures. Not cold enough for Barry and for my wife, who are really rooting for some snow. still certainly going to create an issue in terms of, I think the expectation is that peak electric loads are expected to shift from summer to winter as we continue to electrify. And then, of course, blackouts, if you're depending on electricity for your heating, blackouts are a much more immediate much higher impact scenario in winter than they would be in summer. So we're trying to understand a little bit about what these plausible worst case scenarios might look like for heat waves and cold snaps, but then also model the energy response to that, as well as what the potential is to mitigate some of that with maybe increased urban canopy Other approaches, this isn't part of that particular project, but something that our campus is very interested in, and some other municipalities around the state, I think Worcester has been a leader in this maybe, is network geothermal. So ground source heat pumps instead of air source heat pumps, which are more energy efficient and may be able to take good advantage of existing infrastructure, but provide some challenges in terms of getting neighborhood buy-in and some of the costs involved. But we do have a project that's getting underway on campus heat and cool some of our buildings and one of the abutting environmental justice communities in Lowell as well, if all goes well. The picture shows drilling the wells on the parking lot. That part has gone smoothly. Everything else is challenging, and I think I've heard from community members that they would like more sort of local input into energy production and that working with a large private company is challenging. Framingham, I think somebody is pointing out the completed network. Yeah, Framingham, not Worcester, I guess. Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, I think they've had some challenges, but I think it's been a very nice project there. Another thing that we're thinking about is the new risk environments in a couple of different ways, but I think one that's really stood out this year was the wildfire season. And we're hoping this summer to sort of have a closer look at the climate drivers of this past summer and what that might say about future wildfire seasons in Massachusetts. You've probably heard the term weather whiplash, where we have hot and then cold, sort of back to back. This past year, last year was a good example of water whiplash, where one month was record wet, and then the next month was record dry, and then the next month was record wet. And so that increase in variability is expected with climate change. And we just happened to roll bad dice and get a couple of really dry months right in a row in the fall and paid the price in wildfire. So we're trying to understand whether that was more of a one-off season or more of something that we may experience more frequently in the future. We're trying to work with our community partners to understand better how to communicate climate change. And as Barry said, I've been involved with the IPCC reports and the Boston report, and now the state report. And we know a lot of ways of communicating climate risk that don't work. to communities. So we're struggling a little bit to figure out what does work. And I think what we're finding, which we kind of knew, but really getting reinforced that, of course, if you're looking in a highly impacted community, which are typically your environmental justice communities, your lower income neighborhoods, things like that, they, of course, have other very big concerns on their mind. You know, what's up with my job? What's up with my kid's school? So they're not really in a position to appreciate the degree that anybody is who isn't a climate scientist, different scenarios and things like percentage change and intense rainfall at different warming levels, but more, do I need to worry about flood risk on my street, which is actually a much harder question to answer, but we're trying to get a better handle on the information that's available to us, how do we best and most usefully get it across to the folks who can make best use of it? And then another big piece of that is that the scale of actionable information The information that people would like is usually street level or property level or neighborhood they want to know. We all want to know what's going to happen in my backyard, what's going to happen in my neighborhood. And that spatial scale, tens of meters, is typically much smaller than the available information. So the National Climate Assessment, the national process provides a fair amount of data at the county level is about the smallest they go. And the current plan for projections from the state, the projections that are currently in process are also county level. so not neighborhood level. And the difficulty is that filling some of that information gap in is possible in some cases, but it's a scale that's very difficult to find funding for because it's typically a little expensive on the city side, especially for smaller cities, but it's not typically the type of thing you can ask for federal research funds because they don't, want to fund research that's true for one city or a handful of cities. They want to fund research for the whole Northeast or something like that. So there's this kind of critical information gap that exists. And I'll show a slide of that in a minute. But this is some of the feedback that we've gotten from community members in terms of the climate information, The climate information they're looking for really isn't directly, they don't want the climate information directly in terms of temperature levels or precipitation levels, but how does it factor into the impacts of climate change? And I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but people are less concerned in percentage change in the number of days over 95 degrees Fahrenheit or something like that and more Do I need to worry this summer about arranging childcare because the school is going to be closed? A question that we got recently is, do I need to worry about fire insurance? Are these risks starting to become large relative to the very immediate concerns that folks have? How much do I need to worry about a spike in energy cost? Do I need to have an AC just as a matter of health? If you have an older person in your house, but your income is very limited, an AC may feel like a luxury, but may not actually be a luxury in some cases. which sort of relates again to these kind of spatial scales. I imagine everybody's heard of the urban heat island effect if you're in a part of the city that's heavily paved with very few trees. Typically, those parts of the cities that were redlined historically and are lower income areas of the cities, the typically less desirable parts of the cities, those parts of the cities can be 6, 7, 8, 10, 12 degrees warmer during a heat wave. So really substantially warmer. This is showing you some results for Boston overlapping the hottest parts of the city with children where there are a lot of children, where there are older adults, where there are medical illnesses. So it kind of matters at this neighborhood level where it's going to be really hot. It's really important information to have in terms of understanding impacts. And Boston. Has some of this info and a few towns, I'm going to say Worcester again, hopefully correctly. I think this time Worcester, I think, did some mapping to try to understand what the hottest neighborhoods were, but most towns don't. It's probably possible to create this information for every town in Massachusetts, but it doesn't currently exist. And Boston has a much larger budget, so they commissioned a very large study. It's probably possible to get that information from satellite data, or at least to make an estimate. This is a map of the urban heat island effect all over Massachusetts using satellite data. This is mainly meant to be an artistic map, so it doesn't actually have values on it. But I think it does give some flavor And I think the difference between the yellow areas and the dark green areas is like 20 degrees or more. So if you're in Western Mass in a valley with a lot of trees, even a heat wave isn't necessarily all that hot. But if you're in Springfield, in an area with very few trees is going to be a much bigger deal. So there are some opportunities here to try to make this kind of information available to more towns. And we're trying to figure out a way to get that done. But so far, I don't know if Medford has done that or not, to be honest. Lowell doesn't have this information, I know for sure. But it is probably possible to make it. It's a question of capacity. So I'll just end. And again, I wanted to hopefully have some time for discussion and hear from you guys a little bit more. I just wanted to end on this note of the state climate report is being scoped right now in terms of what it will cover. Resources as with everything are very limited. So, you know, in terms of what it can cover will be limited, but it's certainly better to ask for what's needed because there may be some capacity. And then also, I think, Massachusetts has a relatively new state climate office. The state climate report's going to be a bigger deal this time around, and then I expect the next time around will be much bigger even than this. So if there's information that would be very useful at the municipal level, I think the more the state knows that, the more, if it can't do anything quickly, the more it can at least think about that in the medium term. And I think I'll go ahead and end it there. I'm definitely happy for any comments or questions or discussion.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I see Dan. Go for it.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, thanks, Matthew. That was incredibly helpful. Interesting. Thank you for presenting. Thank you. One of the big things I took from that though is that a lot of people in our communities are worried about things like their utility bills or costs like reliability of service. I'm interested how some of this plays into some of the larger regional and national things going on. So things like the central main corridor, you know, getting hydro power down here, you know, nuclear power, um, or even like, you know, gas, um, you know, opposition to gas, um, transmission lines coming up here. So like, how can we, you know, maybe communicate some, uh, Or make sure that people feel comfortable about like kind of near term reliability verse how that impacts longer term climate goals.
[Matt Barlow]: Yeah, that's a great question and One that we're sort of wrestling with a little bit, I think my sociology colleagues and political science colleagues would be the first to remind me that I'm a physical scientist, not a political expert. So take whatever I say with a grain of salt. But my understanding is that a really key piece of this is simply communication, just people talking to each other so that everybody understands that the climate piece of this is important and that all these other pieces are important as well, and try to, I think, build a sort of larger community, visible community of support for some of these things, because these are issues that are going to be very hard to push for, I think, in terms of building renewable energy. So, yeah, I don't have a I'm not sure you're asking me to have a good political strategy. I'm not sure what that is. But I do think that one piece of it is if folks understand better what the issues are and if they're talking, if everybody's talking more as a community and they understand that these are big issues for everybody, I think that's how to find a base of support for some of these issues.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: Great, thanks.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: That looks like Lois is next.
[Lois Grossman]: You mentioned heat pumps versus the underground heat. You talked about when the power will be most needed, blackouts and so forth. Which of those uses the most energy to run? Is there an advantage to one kind over another in regards to blackouts?
[Matt Barlow]: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think one that we're hoping to get a better handle on, I think The network geothermal, which is the ground source heat pump, that is much more efficient. So it uses less electricity. So that part is good. The challenge with the network geothermal, the network is in the name, it works better if you're running many houses at a time. So an individual person can say, oh, I want a heat pump. as an affordable thing. Network geothermal, you can install your own geothermal heat pump, but that's really for people who are really pretty well off. It only makes sense, really, if it's a network thing. So there's sort of that trade-off between what uses more electricity but is easier to do for individuals versus what uses less electricity but is much kind of more extensive to set up. But I think what we're hoping is that, and I think what everybody who thinks about these things is hoping is that by thinking about these blackout issues now, we'll just avoid getting in a place where there really is a substantial chance of a blackout. So I think the plan is to sort of just avoid that by thinking about it ahead of time. I don't know how feasible that is, but I think that's really the goal. Yeah.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Thank you. I see Barry's hand next.
[Barry Ingber]: Matt, you said that wind permitting is in limbo for now. Now, I know that the Feds, I know that Trump, among the 4,000 executive orders, has paused siting of wind or stopped it on federal land. But But that shouldn't put it completely on pause in Massachusetts, or does it?
[Matt Barlow]: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for asking a question I don't really know the answer to. Yeah, I think. That's a great question. I mean, I think the greatest potential and most of the planning was for offshore wind on federal land, but there certainly could be some on non-federal land, on state land, you know, not in the water. I'm not under the impression, not something I know that well, I'm not under the impression that that would be a big factor. And I think you're also right to point out that that's one of a large number of executive orders, some of which have already been walked back. And ceasing the permitting for offshore wind has huge economic and job implications. So I think it's maybe not unreasonable to hope that that one gets walked back as well. But yeah, so far as I know, the main opportunity for substantial wind energy was offshore, but I could be wrong about that.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I think I see Bob next.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, just to follow up on that, I'm familiar with offshore wind. And it has the highest potential for energy for insulation costs being offshore. And unfortunately, that falls into the purview of the Department of BOEM, I guess, Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management. So it's unfortunately federally overseen Also, there was an issue about seasonality of blackouts for, let's say, electrification. And I have a heat pump system, as well as solar on my roof. And I noticed, well, in the summer, I have plenty of solar. So I basically am still getting credits in the summer, even though my heat pump is cooling my house. But in winter, I have a big penalty, a big electrical penalty. And that's what's going to happen. Now, wind is most prevalent in the winter. So that would be, at least in the summer, because you get more storms, et cetera. It would be nice to have wind really promoted. And that's going to be a key roadblock if the feds have to approve all these things. That's definitely a major issue is we have to have winter electricity, and that has to really come from wind. Solar is like puny, especially when the snow covers my solar panels, which has been happening. Definitely, wind is a key to winter electrification, and we definitely have to pay attention to that.
[Matt Barlow]: Yeah, I totally agree.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I see Josh.
[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Sorry, after five years, you know, since the pandemic, you think I'd have a better handle on where the mute and video buttons are. Something that I think has been challenged for me as an urban planner working for a municipality is the difference in responsibility that utilities have versus the municipalities. It's great that we encourage solar panels here in Medford or wind turbines, but the energy mix is much more down to the decisions of the utilities. And you mentioned earlier about how gateway communities in particular have a leeriness to sort of these utility-led programs, and also, you know, short of, you know, re-legalizing new municipal light plants or, like, nationalizing or municipalizing these, like, utilities. Like, what can we do to sort of deal with the utility dominance in the kind of decision-making space?
[Matt Barlow]: Yeah, that's a great question that I wish I knew the answer to. From my personal perspective, which seemed to be the perspective of some of the community folks I was talking to, that the utilities need to be much more heavily regulated or sort of reopen the possibility of new players or co-ops or something like that. I don't know that that's particularly feasible in Massachusetts, but the sense I get is that there's a great deal of resistance to a lot of things that pretty desperately need to be done by the existing utilities. I don't have a solution, but I suspect that, at the least, a stronger regulatory framework or more bullying from the state is really going to be necessary.
[Lois Grossman]: Thank you.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: Dan? Yeah, to add a thought to that, I know that there is a lot of interest and opportunity in building things like battery storage and offshore wind in Massachusetts and the New England area. And a lot of it gets shut down from the regulatory process. Um, not necessarily from like the utilities, but I'm interested if you have any thoughts on sort of how the kind of state, um, regulatory process might better influence, um, you know, or, or help kind of guide the process of interconnection for, um, you know, renewable sources of energy, um, that would benefit these communities. And a lot of those are going to be kind of utility driven or necessary, you know, to have input from the utilities.
[Matt Barlow]: Yeah, unfortunately, I think that's kind of the big question. Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for it. I think that the more that communities can talk amongst themselves and have a clear voice, individual communities, more communities can work together so that they have a stronger voice. That seems like an important piece of it. Massachusetts is going to start backing itself into legal issues because it does have some legal commitments in terms of reducing its fossil fuel emissions that it simply will not be able to meet unless it starts to move more quickly. I don't know if there's a legal avenue there. Again, just a personal opinion, the lack of transparency on Beacon Hill, I think, is a huge factor. Sometimes it's hard to figure out where things get blocked. So that may be another area where a strong community voice, coherent community voice across the state I don't know that it's happened yet. I don't know the potential for it. But more connection at the community level between Eastern Mass and Western Mass, I think, could be more of a political force right now. I think the two sides of the state are kind of played off against each other. But yes, I think that that is a big issue, other than more community voice and maybe there's some legal avenues to be explored. I don't have really much to offer, I'm afraid.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, I think it's difficult where you have projects that could reduce carbon output, could be beneficial to the entire region, but they face both. If you have a three-year interconnection queue, it changes your project economics, then you have local opposition to it, changes that as well. There's a lot on the regulatory side, I feel like here that blocks the development of beneficial projects. I saw someone in the chat mentioned Texas, say what you will about Texas, it's very, very easy to build a wind or solar or battery project in Texas, and that has quite a bit of benefits on the grid there. It's something that people are moving out of the New England region, trying to build these projects for exactly that reason. It's too hard to get anything done. On a local level, I feel like we need to be supporting these projects in our neighborhoods, against, you know, pushing back against them and adding more regulatory oversight.
[Matt Barlow]: Yeah. And I know Barry has a question, but just to sort of reinforce that, I think some of that is maybe a small piece, but I think some of that is community education. So there is kind of a reflexive a response to not wanting things in your backyard or as well as a very reasonable response to not wanting your energy costs to go up. But I think if people had a better understanding of what's at stake and how it works and how it can benefit other things at the same time, there might be more community level support.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: And I think, Barry, you might have to take us out with our final question.
[Barry Ingber]: OK. I sort of had to. But after asking Matt something that he didn't know anything about and scolded me for it, I figured I'd give him a softball that was right up his alley, which is what I think that Medford has done some pretty good mapping around. expectations around flooding, but that it's largely based on anticipated sea level rises. And I wonder if you could talk at all about what unexpectable precipitation events we should expect. you know, after Asheville, that should make us all rather, anybody anywhere, rather nervous. And a second thing, if there's time, which is sort of up your alley, but not quite, is a lot of people, We've started calling Hydro-Quebec clean energy, which I think is horrific, because drowning Tundra and Taiga in order to generate hydropower is releasing a huge amount of carbon. But I don't know if, do you know how, to what degree that's been quantified? And So that's the harder of the two for you.
[Matt Barlow]: Yeah, well, that's also the one that, again, I know less about, so it's easier to answer for me, which is I think hydropower is the most impactful of the renewable energies, for sure, far and away, and yet is planned to be a pretty substantial piece of our energy puzzle. So I don't know the full extent of the ecosystem impacts on it, but I'm sure that they're very extensive. And I don't know in place, you know, existing impacts versus, you know, potential expansion. But yeah, there's no question that hydropower is, if you will, for short, the dirtiest of the clean energies by far. In terms of flooding, For Medford specifically, yeah, I think stormwater flooding is a big piece of it. You know, like Lemonster saw and other places have seen around New England the last couple of years where, you know, more or less, not exactly out of nowhere, but you can have these really substantial short but really high impact flooding events, causing all sorts of storm water and sewer outflow issues. That's definitely a big risk. I think we've just been a little lucky so far. And then the one that people are trying to wrestle with, including, I think this will come up in the state report, but trying to put some numbers, even if they're very qualitative about the potential impact of a tropical cyclone like a hurricane. We do get remnants of hurricanes very regularly and causing high impact precipitation. What are the odds that we could get a really big event that comes right through Boston or Medford. It's certainly possible. I'm not aware of much quantification of that. Thank you.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: And mindful of time, but Brenda, take us home. Oh, you're muted. Oh, Brandon, you're muted.
[Brenda Pike]: I just wanted to mention regarding the flooding. That's one of the missing data points, I think, that would be really helpful if we had on a more local level. We have information about Heat Island. We have information about sea level rise and some of the flooding right along the river. But what we have to go out and get grants for and hire consultants to do on an individual municipality level is that very localized stormwater data. And so if that was something that was available to municipalities, that would be really helpful, especially for ones that don't have the resources even that Medford has.
[Matt Barlow]: Yeah, for sure. That's probably the trickiest problem, but I think it's not out of reach to figure out how to do it once and then translate it to every city rather than every city that can afford it does it on their own, which I think is more the model now. So I think we could certainly do better there at least.
[Brenda Pike]: And I also wanted to mention that Tufts is very interested in network geothermal. And they're years out from actually implementing it, but we're very excited at the idea of them doing it too. So we want to be working with them and with National Grid as much as possible along the way.
[Matt Barlow]: All right, I'll have to check in with them. But yeah, Tufts is obviously just a fantastic resource for Medford. So that would be great.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: With that, we're nearing the close of our meeting. So I want to give a special thank you, Matthew. This was fantastic. I really appreciate you taking the time to share all this with us, answer our questions. So yes.
[Matt Barlow]: Yeah, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: And with that, I'm going to quickly transition us seamlessly effortlessly to our final moments here in this meeting. The big thing I'd like to do now is get some updates on any outside projects people are working on. To kind of set a precedent going forward, I'd like to close all of our meetings just before new business with 5 to 10 minutes devoted to general updates, what you've been working on, where you're struggling, what you might need help with. So I'd like to kind of open the floor for people that are working on smaller things to share for two, maybe three minutes and talk about what they've been working on and how we as a committee can make ourselves helpful.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_11]: If it's OK, I can go first.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Please do.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_11]: Okay. I've been working on two things. I know we wanted to bring someone from any of the Zero Waste, either Melrose or someone else, to one of our meetings. I reached out to Zero Waste Cambridge from Public Works. I spoke to Mike Orr. I had just like a conversation. you know, how it all started and kind of like the lessons learned type of thing. He did, he was not so keen on coming to a meeting this late in the evening. So as an alternative, at some point, he said, if there are any questions from any of the members, we can pass that along. And based on that, he could potentially come. I'm happy to reach out to other towns as well. based on any feedback you all might have. Then the second item is, I floated this idea around to Brenda and Will about an Earth Day or like an Earth Month. Celebration in Medford, without taking too much time, I'm going to quickly share my screen. I just have three quick slides, and then hopefully we can just get some interest, whoever is interested. And then Will is already super interested and super adopter. If someone else too, then we can all just directly have a conversation separately. So without trying to waste any time, I'm going to share my screen. There's so many millions of other tabs. I hope you can see this Canva screen that's right here. I think we're seeing your whole desktop, not just the screen. Is it just a... Much better. OK, great. Awesome. So this is just an idea. Again, think about it, everyone. And we would love feedback. Earth Day is on April 22. So it'd be amazing if we can have a Medford Earth Day celebration. And a couple of ideas that, like I said, we briefly discussed and obviously open to any changes and feedback is that we celebrate an Earth Month. in April with like a social media campaign, either posting daily on our Facebook group and or like a website update if possible. Again, we'll have to think about the approvals, logistics, etc., but really just like getting residents engagement. And this is definitely one of the things that the that Mike Orr also highlighted when they started Zero Waste Cambridge is getting the residents and everyone very much engaged. in what we are trying to do, really just like highlighting, you know, either businesses, sustainable businesses, or household zero waste tips. I have like a little flyer on the next slide. And then the other one is have a big zero waste event, the weekend, we could decide on dates, potentially, the weekend after April 22, which is also kind of the last weekend in April. And, you know, like the social media useful tip of the day, every day could be even something like this. I just wrote up something. So obviously, it's not super crafted. But the idea is we have time. So if some of us can just team up, we can keep all of these ready, approvals, editing, everything can be taken care of. We have a couple of months and two meetings, as Will pointed out, to iron the details. And then finally, some thoughts that we were thinking about for the big Zero Waste event. Like a reuse rodeo, Will gave a nice web link to this. I think it's on the mass.gov website too. So basically, it's like a flea market. except that everything is free. I know some of us are like part of the everything is free Medford EIFM community as well. So that's online. This is basically an offline or an in-person event where you can donate items, people can exchange, really just to promote reusing and highlighting that it really keeps things away from the landfill. And we could also use that event to, again, spotlight some of the sustainable businesses in and around Medford. So we do have a few logistical items to figure out, like location, contacting the business, really doing the newsletter, social media campaign, and other stuff. So we would love any volunteers to work on this and we can I think it'd be a great opportunity for us to engage the community on our zero waste or low waste efforts. I've stopped sharing and would love to hear thoughts.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Looking just mostly at the clock more than anything. I'd like to remind folks, we have all of our individual emails. So, if you want to reach out to independently with thoughts, concerns, questions, whatever, please do that. And I also want to remind everyone that my email is up there, so you should reach out to me as well. If you want something publicized to the whole MEC group, if you have an idea, a thought, a concern, a haiku, maybe not a haiku, but whatever I can publicize to the group, I will do that as well. But I love these ideas, and I want to, well, keep talking about these, I'm sure.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_11]: Awesome. Thanks, Phil.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Loretta.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Hi, I liked the idea. I just wanted to add that's a really busy week and Arabiday is that Friday. And usually the city has events. So it's always like a lot going on with Earth Week and Arabiday. So if. we decide to help with this project. You know, we need some volunteers instead of up my alley for coordinating events in the past. I'm sure that Therese Medford and the city would help with that too, but they usually keep it separate. So we've never had an actual Earth Day celebration that I'm aware of, but I just wanted to share that with you that that's Friday. I'm not sure what day the city's celebrating it. It could be that day.
[Brenda Pike]: There's also, there's usually a community cleanup that weekend at some point as well, I think sort of around the theme of Earth Day.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right, right.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_11]: So we probably want to do a different day then.
[Brenda Pike]: I don't know if that's been scheduled yet, though. I haven't seen it on the calendar.
[Lois Grossman]: I really like the zero waste one. That's a great idea to put on something like that.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: It would be. Yeah.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Right, I can give, we have three full minutes. I know Lois and Benji were also working on some projects. If anyone else would like to share briefly, we'll try to find more time in the future to keep this going. Any closing updates? All right. And then final moments for any new business, anything on people's minds, things that people think need to be brought to our attention. Right. It's exactly 758 Monday night. I get it. I'm there. I'd entertain any further motions. Motion to adjourn. Looks like Louis is seconding it. I will take that. It has to count. Thank you so much.