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Welcome to the first edition of the New York State Southern Tier’s Clean Energy Communities (CEC) quarterly newsletter.
The purpose of this newsletter is to keep municipalities, elected officials, and others in the counties of Steuben, Chemung, Schuyler, Tioga, Tompkins, Broome, Chenango, and Delaware informed about the great work being performed in the Southern Tier to make our communities more sustainable and energy efficient. As coordinators our focus is NYSERDA's Clean Energy Communities initiative and other energy-related activities taking place throughout the region and we want to be a resource to your local government and community.
We are pleased to report that our work to promote and implement the Clean Energy Communities program has garnered significant results. Several communities are working hard to complete High Impact Actions in pursuit of CEC Designation, with over 25 communities submitting completed actions and 3 communities (more on them down below!) becoming officially designated as Clean Energy Communities. CEC designated communities are currently developing projects to be funded through the program and we'll keep you updated on their progress as we send out these newsletters on a quarterly basis.
Our job as coordinators is to be your municipality's advisor when it comes to energy. If you're interest in joining the movement towards becoming a Clean Energy Community, or if you have any questions in regards to energy, please don't hesitate to contact one of our coordinators.
Sincerely,
Tara Donadio and Terry Carroll - CEC Coordinators for the Southern Tier
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Tara Donadio
CEC Coordinator for Delaware and Chenango County
Cooperative Extension of Delaware
Email: TJD238@cornll.edu
Phone: (607) 865-6531
In this issue of the Summer Newsletter, we are pleased to introduce Tara Donadio as the CEC Coordinator for Delaware and Chenango Counties. Tara works for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Delaware County and her office is based in Hamden, NY. She originally hails from North Syracuse and previously worked for a non-profit environmental organization in Albany that educates businesses, parks and golf courses all over the world in sustainability practices.
Tara received her MA in Global Environmental & Climate Policy at American University in Washington, DC, and BS in Environmental Science at SUNY Albany. Tara is excited about the prospects of working with our Delaware and Chenango communities. She has already begun to reach out to municipal leaders and is offering advice and support as these municipalities begin to implement CEC High Impact Items.
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The Town of Meredith began its journey towards Clean Energy Communities Designation with the passing of the Unified Solar Permit and the Benchmarking Resolutions at their recent July board meeting. Other High Impact Items they plan to complete include Code Enforcement Officer Training and either Clean Energy Upgrades or the installation of an EV Charging Station.
This program is important to Meredith, which is a town of 1,500 residents located in Delaware County.
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“The Town of Meredith has decided to begin working towards designation in the Clean Energy Communities Program because we want to make clean energy technology, like solar, accessible to our town residents.
A grant of $50,000 or $100,000 would go a long way to help us with projects we already already have in mind, like a new town hall, but would also bring a sustainable approach to the project."
---Jim Ellis, Town Supervisor
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In addition to his duties as Town Supervisor, Jim is an Assistant Professor of Applied Technologies at SUNY Delhi in a program that includes integrated energy systems like wind and solar, so he’s very familiar with alternative energy and the benefits it can bring to a community.
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Benchmarking
An essential and basic High Impact Item within the CEC program, benchmarking is important to every community in the Southern Tier. It is the consistent measurement of a building’s energy use over time. Benchmarking makes it possible to compare past energy use with present energy use and to compare present energy use with similar buildings’ energy use. By entering a year’s worth of energy bills into Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager, municipalities can begin to make significant reductions in energy use, energy bill costs, and greenhouse gas emissions, resulting in a healthier community.
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According to an EPA study, municipalities become more aware of energy inefficiencies in their buildings through consistent benchmarking, resulting in energy use reductions of about 2.4% a year, with low-performing buildings tending to see even greater reductions. As municipalities use less energy for municipal buildings, they pay less on their energy bills, opening up funding for other budget sectors. Reductions in energy use also cause greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution to decline, leading to fewer incidences of respiratory illnesses linked to air pollution, especially in larger urban areas.
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Town of Dickinson Town Hall and Town Garage Energy Usage 2016
Usage summary:
kWh in 2016: 94450
Therms in 2016: 5900.2
About:
Address: 523-531 Front Street, Binghamton, NY 13950
Building type: Social/Meeting Hall
Area: 12,539 square feet
Annual summary statistics:
Site EUI: 74.1 kBtu/ft²
Weather normalized source EUI: 135.3 kBtu/ft²
Annual GHG emissions: 81.2 metric tons CO2e
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By undertaking benchmarking energy use in municipal buildings your municipality can save money and energy; and as a bonus it leads your municipality closer to receiving Clean Energy Communities grants!
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Congratulations to Tompkins County, the first large community and first municipality overall to become designated a Clean Energy Community in the Southern Tier region and to the Town of Ulysses for becoming the first small/medium municipality to become CEC-designated. The latest municipality to become officially designated, and the first city in the Southern Tier, is the City of Binghamton.
Both Tompkins County and the City of Binghamton are eligible for $250,000 grants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the Town of Ulysses eligible for $100,000. We will be giving you updates in future newsletters with what those municipalities plan to do with their funding as well as highlighting the road they took to designation. There are still 15 grants remaining, so if you’re interested in becoming designated and getting access to non-matching sources of grant funding, please contact the coordinator in your area!
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While not strictly Clean Energy Communities related, congratulations to the 76West Clean Energy Competition winners. Via NSERDA,
“76West is an unparalleled competition focused on growing entrepreneurs and attracting resources from the U.S. and around the world to build clean energy businesses and jobs in New York State’s Southern Tier region. The competition offers $20 million in prize money and support services, including a $1 million top prize.”
The winners this year include:
- Top Prize ($1 million): Skyven Technologies, a Dallas-based solar heating company looking to expand its operations into the Southern Tier.
- 2nd Place ($500,000) Sun Tegra: Port Chester, NY-based company that specializes in solar products integrated directly into the roof of a home instead of being mounted.
In addition to these two, there were four more companies each awarded $250,000 to help companies already in the Southern Tier grow, and to attract new companies to move here. They include: Biological Energy (Spencer, NY), EthosGen (Wilkes-Barre, PA), SolarKal (New York, NY), and Visolis (Berkely, CA). More information can be found here.
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September 7 - Maximizing Your Municipal Building's Energy Efficiency Webinar - a Capital District Regional Planning Commission webinar on how local governments can improve municipal facilities while saving energy costs. For more details and to register, click here.
September 14 - Tier Energy Network Meeting at the Tioga County Office Building, Owego 10 a.m-12 noon.
If you have an event related to energy that you would like others to know about in our Fall (October) CEC Newsletter, please contact your CEC Coordinator.
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