Town of Sharon, MA

ENERGY COMMITTEE

Minutes

Wednesday, 1/17/07  7:30pm to approximately 9:30 pm

Members present:

            George Aronson

            Ed Connelly                                         

Thomas D’Avanzo                                           

Ernest Kahn    

David McCabe                                    

Joan Spiegel                                                                                        

Rosemary Tambouret

Members absent:

Arnold Wallenstein

Lynn Wolbarst

Observers:

            Mike Sherman

            Alice Chiar

            This was the fourth meeting of this committee.

Items Discussed:

1. George Aronson and Lynn Wolbarst were elected co-chairs.

2. George has begun entering data he obtained from TransCanada onto the spread sheet prepared for the 17 town buildings and 9 DPW pumping stations; Joan Spiegel and Lynn Wolbarst obtained information on heating bills and electricity bills for the town but need to collate; there are 18 accounts with TransCanada; some buildings pay 2 bills, one to NStar for transmission and one to TransCanada for the energy; proposed another meeting on Jan. 31, 2007 at 7:30pm for data entry.

3. Ed Connelly: has information from the library on kilowatt/hour for electricity and gas usage; plans to contact the National Weather Service in Taunton to obtain heating degree days.

4. Tom D’Avanzo: edited mission statement has been sent to Ben Puritz; will present the statement to the Selectmen on February 13, 2007 at 7:30pm.

5. Lynn Wolbarst has arranged for the energy committee to have a place on the town website; Dave McCabe suggests that important links be added to the website.

6. Dave McCabe continues to gather benchmarking information from other towns including climate action plans; noted that the data is usually presented as carbon emissions; need to determine a conversion factor to go from BTU/sq ft or kilowatt hour/sq ft to carbon emissions.

Plan:

             1.   Data assembled in spread sheet

2. Benchmarking established

3. Create subcommittees.

4. Investigate ways to get information out to the community: in annual report, as an attachment to tax bill

Next meeting:  Wednesday, January 31, 2007 7:30 PM

Each member to bring laptop for data entry.