going to call the meeting to order for the village of essex junction planning commission december scuse me twenty of twenty eighteen on the agenda tonight we have a public hearing for discussion of discussion of a joint town or village energy plan before we get into that  overview of the department of public service act one seventy four energy planning standards and essentially what that means for the essex community and how that plays itself out in to an energy element so you know i was here here or maybe eighteen months ago we talked about the regional plan and the regional planning commission has finished and approve ecos plan which is the enhanced energy plan for the region and our focusing our technical assistance on this polities so i just wanted to bring everybody's attention you don't know if you've seen the did a really great job of you know characterizing the process and the work that you know we've been doing with staff and the essex town planning commission so i just wanted to bring your attention to that i think that it was early in december i think it was like the december fourth or six news and you probably know you can access it online it's on the front page and then it continues on to the back page ok so how much energy goals that are rooted in both statute and the state comprehensive energy plan means big changes for the state itself for the region and for m and so as a starting point with the ease with that energy plan the goals are to reduce total energy consumption per capita by fifteen percent by twenty twenty five and by more than one third in twenty fifty and intermediate milestone is meeting twenty five percent of remaining energy needs from renewable sources and then obtaining ninety percent of energy from renewa sources in by twenty fifty and then weatherizing twenty five percent of the city's housing stock by twenty twenty we're not on pace to meet that  but it's still a goal that we're that we're shooting for and then also we're greenhouse gas reduction targets below nine hundred ninety levels by twenty fifty so that's the the free work  for the energy plan and that is what the energy planning standards are rooted in and then the remainder of the plan talks about implementation actions what does this look like on the land in terms of renewable energy generation what actions municipalities can do to lead by example to weatherize buildings do fuel switching those kinds of things and will go into more detail so in terms of where is vermont now total energy is twenty percent renewable and when i say total energy i mean transportation heating and electricity when you just look at electricity alone that sector is more renewable it's forty three percent renewable if you are thinking about it from a source person active meaning that you are taking into consideration efficiency and whine and losses in transmission it's a little bit transportation sector is the least renewable so that is that is the sector that we need to do the most work in and has the most impact on carbon pollution and climate change so that sector is about five percent  e mostly from the small amount of electric vehicles that are driven in the city so in terms of enhance energy planning for the essex community the concept here is one plan for that would be referred by reference in the updated as six junction comprehensive plan that's going through an update and will be approved and adopted the two communities and that is a determination well so the regional planning commission is the one who would approve the plan and grant the jurisdictions and determination of energy compliance so we will look at the department of public service or clairmont and checklist for these enhanced energy plans and if positive determination is provided then the village and the town once they break the plan into their plan will be given substantial deference in the public utilities commission section two for the process which is the state regulatory permitting process for approving renewable energy generation facilities and substantial deference means greater weight greater influence and that is you know the benefit for doing and hands energy planning  really the rubber meets the road in terms of the saving policies that we'll talk about later those are the saving policies that the public you to the commission will use to make their determination on whether it meets the orderly development criteria in the in the section two forty process before i want any questions about that it's kind of a big mouthful if you're not if you're not that familiar with the two for the policies are looked at from kind of a guidance first five there so they're not applied as as as strictly or transparently as if you have substantial difference or you have greater say in the process your plans for the greater weight in the process if you comply with the energy planning standards at what point does the state determine if we're not on pace to meet our that need to happen to get to the ninety by twenty fifty future and their projections is nobody knows how you know what the future holds and so it gives m sense of how much energy we need to save through efficiency and whether a station how many electric vehicle we need to have on the road but there is no there's no in force made you know you you get your energy compliance if you have these projections and data goals in your plan and we're going to be tracking them along the way the energy action network is is coming up with coming out with a new dashboard that's a whole other realm but they have targets for insulation in the void that you have to meet so that's a requirement not just you know i'm just trying to get my head around what are the benefits to the sense so i think we got one over this oh ready from one of the questions we're doing this in partnership with the public service or you know what the basis for this is the energy planning standards from th plan include analyzing current energy use we get that data from efficiency vermont identify a scenario for future energy use in terms of the three sectors i named before eating transportation and electric ity setting renewable energy generating goals mapping energy generation potential for solar and wind and then developing saving policies for new renewable energy generation  n the modeling behind that was done by the vermont energy investment corporation using a lead model is an accounting tool which looks at the fuel sources the existing energy being used currently and gives us a sense of what the fuel time and quantities need to be in twenty fifty to get to ninety by twenty fifty  model was done at the regional level and then we have portioned out of the data analysis for each municipality based on like for example essex junction and essex town share of commercial industrial buildings residential buildings and then you know the assumption about he intensity for those buildings and so that serves as the backbone to the target standards for six community so in terms of you know real world you know boiling it down what that means is switching eighty nine percent of the late duty vehicles to electric vehicles driving decreasing driving alone so decreasing the number of miles that are driven through walking biking transit carsharing thirty eight business thirty percent of businesses and sixty percent of homes using cold climate heat pumps which are powered by electricity so that's a more efficient removal source of heating homes and businesses fourteen percent of homes using would be and ninety eight percent of homes and businesses using increased electric offish and see so that's more efficient refrigerator and other appliances that are used in building annually in the essex community so that split between four hundred and thirty solar sites half of the number nineteen g n p hydro of am i say half because it's on the community and then half of of willesden and we've done that and apply that methodology for when you ski in burlington so even though like for example when you see one hydro dam even though bt owns it half of the generation is set renewable energy generation targets for the region and then apportion them out based on each municipalities share of population and electricity consumption  's rooted in the regional plan target and the low and it looks and it didn't county's ability to us and share of solar and wind resources zones about fifteen percent of the state and then the high end is based on changing counties share of the state population which is about twenty five percent so that's the difference the low end is about fifteen percent of the size of of the state sort of resource and twenty five percent of the state population so we have done and now says exercise that determines that thirteen percent of the land area is needed to meet the renewable energy generation targets for the essex community and and that is to assume it was all done through one hundred percent solar again this is an exercise just to give you an order of magnitude and you know what this is going to look like in total the asics community has about eighty  eighty six hundred acres of area that is suitable for solar energy considering incorporation of some environmental can strip in terms of the environmental constraints and where they are we have broken them into two categories so the constraints are where development might be inappropriate and we've considered those possible constraints so those are kind of the least and the process also looks at perfervid sites which are areas where we wonder gee generation is strongly encouraging the state has a definition of per se so it's rooftops previously disturbed areas closed landfills brownfields gravel pits and some of those preferred saints get an enhanced benefit through net metering if they're over one hundred  the five and it's the second section citing policies and so this next set of slides is kind of a visualization of what these saving policies look like conference so the first one deals with again her f the state designated village center in the village of six junction the essex town center and the historic preservation and business design control their it and application of  design standards to ensure that rooftop solar is integrated into the built environment and i i need to add that we we have the design standards in here as a draft but in practice because the municipality is there is not really a notification process and the municipalities are not part of the administrative approval process  opposed to standards i was talking with somebody about the public the public service department today about that that in practice there's there's little way the municipality can  require a solar developer to follow these so we need to work that out a little bit more the second policy is about ground mounted facility is and so that is talking about locating ground mounted solar and turbines outside of the state designated village center in the village of essex junction and then towns town center and the business and historic preservation design control district in those ma the intent of this policy is that the plan is prioritizing homes and businesses in these areas for growth or you know shopping and services the third saving criteria deals with the constraint several remember a few sites back i talked in terms of no constraints the most restrictive and possible constraints the least restrictive where possible  level of mitigation and so development of renewable energy generation shall not take place in areas with known constraints and in areas with possible constraints they should first and foremost avoid them and if they can't avoid them then mitigate the adverse impacts in the areas with the possible constraints so there is a set of state no constraints that are contained in the energy planning standards and not the float away the river board or the ones i just named are known constraints at the state level state d e c the agency and other state departments will weigh in on behalf of those resources  the full section two forty eight process and then chosen local constraints slopes twenty percent or steeper and conservation areas where in the resource preservation industrial district in th town are considered ground constraints and so what that means in practice is that if an apple can comes in with a ground mounted facility in the forty five day comment period staff could write a letter if one of these known or possible constrains if there's a presence of one of those known or possible constraints on the site and say you know kind of as a red flag  industrial designated areas of the resource preservation industrial district or parts of the r p i that are known and possible slopes thousand to twenty percent and then just priority forest barks and then the designated village center because of the design standards and an attention to be paid on integrating it into the built environment so the fourth s criteria has to do with the resource of preservation district and that the intent of this is to site generation facilities greater than five hundred k w only in the industrial zones in the resource preservation district in the town the fifty one the intent of it is about co locating the facilities with existing distribution and transmission infrastructure so the map on the screen is green mountain power's kind of capacity ma p that shows where the distribution and transmission is and so you know there are some areas that are constraining the orange is a signal that interconnections on that that circuit area may experience higher cost in the lead in her connection and green has you know enough capacity remaining to connect to it and so the intent of this policy is just to connect facilities in areas where there is adequate capacity and near areas with high electrical load the six citing current cheery is related to the scenic resource protection o in the town and that is a it's a possible constraint and there's mitigation standards associated with this and those there was mitigating factors are you know screening the ground mounted facility with vegetation and that you know provide screening all seasons you know siting standard so that you know you're not citing the facility out of your line of say but it is impacting somebody else's line of sight so that's kind of the the intent of those standards the next one is guarding steep slopes anything over twenty percent is one hundred percent prohibition below that is a possible constraint and i think in recently there was some good results relieving to this crude tyria i think if the sand hill proposal we were the regional plan has these local constraints in our regional plan and we worked with that town in the spring and identified that the apple in facility was kind of encroaching on some of the steep slopes and  they reduced the amount of vegetative cutting that they were doing because of the identification of these constraints in the original plan next citing criteria regarding wildlife  and that is also a possible constraint so you know that the intent of that is to not destroy or significantly imperil wildlife habitat identified in this ma dark green area is are the highest priority wildlife habitat and the lake green areas is are you seeing that is it showing up on the screen of the tree ok and then the light green is just allowed and then some others he said are potential yes these things that we have to decide on whether we're writing our plan what we're rewriting our planet in other words when you mention the  say potential in the sense that if something was proposed in that scene it overly district there would need to be mitigation to ensure that it resources are not impacted it's not potential in the sense that you need to consider it for inclusion although it could be but there was some up front work done on the side of staff in the planning commission early on who we were doing the ecos plan and we got feedback from both jurisdictions that these were the local constraints to be considered in the regional plan and that's kind of our starting point for getting to the the municipal level and so it's it's it's a possible constraint in the sense that maybe you can develop here and if you do you have to do x y and z does that you just if you're saying that something is a constraint in the energy plan then in your natural resource plan it also needs to be the same level of control you know just making sure that the the ambiguity of the constraints is room move because them the p c is looking at it you know we try to include the saving policies all of them in the energy plan but they can also have tell hands can also have land use measure in that natural resource and the land use policy in the p c to read the entire document and so if there are contradictions then it makes it hard for them to make a decision on your policy  is a statement that the intent of it is to encourage renewable energy generation developers to think about including storage in their projects were feasible so you know it's an eye towards the future as technology is going to change i think it's an important aspect of this energy transformation that we that we need to go through ok so then in terms of the implementation actions as part of the energy planning standards these start on page six and they're broken down into conservation so you know whether digester so those kinds of conservation minded types of things educating residents and businesses on efficiency for months programs for my gases  program and you know and you know just leading by example and thinking in terms of you know if a vehicle needs to be replaced how can it be replaced with a fuel efficient alternative as well as transportation energy  demands of those implementation actions look like you know more biking and walking facilities promoting dn t car share providing telecommunication  ability used for staff you know promoting this these activities educating them within the community and then land uses you know compact development you know all these things i mentioned before the drugs and already considering him it's part of the comprehensive plan the odyssey is our new concepts so compact development also looking at the zoning regulations to see how you can incentivize energy efficiency in the new building stock and having buildings you know solar ready or passive and also thinking about considering the vermont stretch code which you know there is a state there is a common state based code that all new development needs to adhere to in actually fifty projects those larger developments need to adhere to the stretch code and so those have a higher insulation value your home energy readings score increases if you have energy generation in your project and so one of the recommendations is to consider having all development meet the strict code this plan you know kind of just sets the stage for thinking about that going forward adhere to the base code and it has to do with the insulation values that are values how much air sealing is done how thick the walls need to be what the glazing is on the windows information about it the eight track system how the house how the building breathes and this ventilated so it's very technical but that's a summary version of what the base kind of says and then the strict code it kind of has the same elements but it asks for development to be built to a higher standard so the insulation values are that much higher and every three years the code is updated so what is currently the stretch code how does the plant take into account the the future growth of the community is that already factored into what you know the growth of business growth of residential oh that's factor even in the data in the sense that like so when we ran the meat model it was consistent with that population and climate projections that were part of the ego's plan so if i mean it it  for potential that's this that i mean that's a finite number you know we don't have it so does that get us to the goal or is that help me understand how that is six hundred you know  actions and even the setting policies i mean so these are these are conceptual suggestions and so when you're viewing them think in terms of whether you know they're relevant or appropriate for the essex community more residents here in the seeds so the more of this kind of stuff we can you know sort of get people interested and be very well especially  it's anything i've heard for ok thank you very much thank you very much and i do have a question for you guys before we adjourn does anybody have anything else they want to