As towns develop plans to increase renewable energy, Dori Drachman of Peterborough warned there’s no “silver bullet.”
“There’s not one thing that’s going to get us there,” said Drachman, one of the featured speakers during a Community Conversation sponsored by the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript and Monadnock Center for History and Culture May 4. “People who think about this a lot call it ‘silver buckshot.’”
Drachman is a member of the Peterborough Energy Committee and co-leader of the Peterborough Renewable Energy Planning (PREP) team, formed to develop a plan after Peterborough Town Meeting passed an article last year that set goals of transitioning to 100% renewable energy for electricity by 2030 and 100% renewable for heat and transportation by 2050.
One piece of the puzzle could be community power, which allows towns to buy energy in bulk for businesses and residents. Peterborough’s community power plan is on the town’s election ballot Tuesday, and Harrisville Town Meeting approved its plan in May 2021. Harrisville Select Board member Andrea Hodson, another of the event’s featured speakers, said Hanover, Lebanon, Rye, Walpole, Wilton and Marlborough are also among those that have passed community power.
“As cities and towns adopt community power throughout New Hampshire, we have the opportunity to accelerate the rate in which New Hampshire reduces its carbon footprint,” she said.
However, Hodson said approval is the first step, with implementation the second, and none of the towns that have passed community power have been able to implement it because the state Public Utilities Commission hasn’t developed rules.
Beyond community power, Drachman said potential policies, programs and projects include hiring an energy coordinator, simplifying permits for solar panels and electric-vehicle chargers, making energy bills available for potential home-buyers, prohibiting fossil-fuel-burning equipment in new municipal construction, organizing solarizing and weatherizing campaigns and developing community solar so people who don’t have good sites at their homes can still buy panels on a solar array and get a benefit on their bills.
Approximately 30 people attended the session, sitting in a semicircle while Drachman, Hodson and moderator Jeanne Dietsch sat at the front of the room. The third scheduled speaker, Bev Edwards of Temple, was unable to attend.
During the discussion, Bill Frantz, a resident of RiverMead in Peterborough, said the financial incentives for landlords to improve energy efficiency is poor.
“This is a public policy issue we ought to try to deal with,” he said.
Steve Walker of Peterborough – the founder of New England Wood Pellet whose current company, IMBY Energy, is developing an energy system for residential and commercial buildings that would provide all of the building’s energy – said he is a landlord, and if landlords include heating, cooling and electricity as part of the rent, it gives them incentives to upgrade their buildings.
However, Donna Crane of Wilton, also a landlord, said if the landlord covers utilities, tenants have no incentives other than their own ethics.
“People who use the electricity should have a sense they have skin in the game,” she said.
On the topic of home energy audits, RiverMead resident Joel Huberman said individuals can get them, but no one can do a facility as large as RiverMead. Drachman said the PREP team is working with BlocPower, a Brooklyn company that provides energy projects for towns “from soup to nuts.”
“They will do it all, and they can do it from an apartment building to a whole community,” she said.
Bryan Field of Peterborough said one of the big pieces of a renewable-energy plan has to be finding a way to help low- and middle-income people take part.
“It is key to be able to move forward with this program,” he said. “This stuff is expensive.”
Harrisville’s renewable energy plan has three tiers with various prices and levels of renewable energy – Peterborough’s proposed plan has four – and Hodson a reason for that is so people can do what they can afford.