Wednesday night, the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Massachusetts starts its annual Green Living Seminar Series, which runs through April. A variety of speakers will explore this year’s theme: “Greening the City.” It kicks off with Mark Rabinsky, the Green Communities Western Regional Coordinator for the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources. He spoke with WAMC about the work he does throughout the region, as well as a preview of his talk: “Clean Energy Solutions For Cities And Towns: Massachusetts Green Communities Program.”
RABINSKY: One of the things that we've focused on really with our program is energy use. That's a big part of what we're looking at, energy use in the municipal operations. So the energy that's used in buildings and in their transportation. Specifically, their fleet is something that we work with them and help them try and reduce.
WAMC: What are some of the misconceptions around greening communities that you encounter as you go and talk to folks about ways that clean energy strategies or simply less wasteful approaches can be brought to the municipal level?
I wouldn't say it's a misconception, but one of the things that we often get asked is they asked for, let's put renewable energy or solar on our buildings. And we'll say, Okay, let's, let's take a step back, let's look at your buildings first. Because- We're, of course, supportive of solar. First things first, we're looking at their energy use, and there's still a lot of opportunity for energy reduction in a lot of these buildings. So that's one thing that we try and focus first on is looking at what they have in their buildings and trying to reduce that energy first. There's still opportunities for weatherization for air sealing. And their mechanical equipment, too, is something that we try and look at.
Now, the program itself- Does that offer funding sources to carry out these things, or just sort of instructional guides? What exactly, what kind of resources is it bringing to municipalities.
When a community is designated as a green community, we award them a designation grant. And then once they spend out that designation grant, then they can come in for competitive grants. And we offer those, we offer competitive grants twice a year now.
And what are those look like? What are the parameters?
They can apply for a new HVAC system, weatherization, we've been offering funding towards electric and hybrid vehicles for the municipality.
What's the history of the program? When did this get going? How long has it been in effect for? Do you have a sense of how many communities are [involed] or sort of what the impact has been from the program?
Well, the Green Communities came out of the Green Communities Act, I think it was 2009 or 2010. So we're over 10 years old. We have, across the state, there's 280 of our 351 communities are Green Communities. And that makes up about 86% of the population. In Western Mass, in my territory of the 106 towns, 82 of those are Green Communities right now. And you know, we're getting more every year.
Any experiences from the field or memories from talking to communities or working with communities that that sort of draw to mind maybe like a unique conclusion you've drawn from the experience?
In Western Mass, sometimes we'll have a smaller footprint when it comes to municipal building size, but that's sometimes mean we have a higher proportion of our energy in our vehicle emissions. So specifically, the municipal fleet, like emergency response vehicles, often service a wider area. You know, the highway department and plows have a lot more miles of road. And we're starting to see a big uptick in hybrid police vehicles, which has been great and has a really positive impact on fuel use. Even some of the communities out here that aren't Green Communities have begun to adopt hybrid police vehicles. So I'm really excited about the vehicle technology that's out there and it's just been growing leaps and bounds.
