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MAPC helps communities work on energy planning issues
in a variety of ways, including creating energy master plans
and increasing local capacity.
LEAP is our Local Energy Action Program
and it's designed to help communities
work on a variety of energy efficiency and renewable energy
projects.
Not only in the municipal sector,
but also in the residential and commercial sector.
Our Local Energy Action Plan has several pieces in it.
The first piece, because Medford has
a history in energy and the environment,
was looking at our old Climate Action Plan,
looking at what Medford has done,
and sort of recapping that.
One of the aspects of our Local Energy Action Program
is helping a community put together a Local Energy Action
Plan.
And the plan is really designed for two reasons.
One, it helps the community identify
the past accomplishments done around clean energy,
whether it's renewables or efficiency.
And it also helps them create a path forward of opportunities
they have to pursue this type of work
in the residential, commercial, and municipal sector.
We had been focusing on municipal energy usage.
But through the work that the MAPC did,
they helped us realize that actually 63% of the energy used
in Medford is residential.
Thirty percent is used by our businesses.
Five percent in our commercial sector, and only 3%
of the energy used by the entire City of Medford
is municipal energy usage.
We had a goal that we had set for 2014 to reduce our carbon
footprint greenhouse gas emissions by 20%.
By 2013 we had already reduced it by 30%.
They helped us realize that we need
to focus on residential and business energy
if we really want to make a difference with our carbon
reduction in greenhouse gases.
We bring together stakeholders from across the community
to help identify energy goals and also identify
what projects that the community can do to reach those goals.
And it's really important to bring stakeholders
together early on in the process because it makes it much more
feasible that these projects will
get implemented in the long run.
These actions plans work well for a variety of communities.
From communities that have already
done a significant amount of energy work,
such as green communities, this program
allows them to think about new and innovative projects
that they can get involved with.
And for communities who are just getting started in this field,
the Energy Action Plan allows them
to understand where their energy consumption is in the community
and then identify which projects they
should get started with first.
Part of the Local Energy Action Plan Program
is that the MAPC would not only help us develop a plan,
but then they wanted to make sure
that we got started on that plan and started
moving on our actions.
Because having a document is one thing.
But actually implementing is the important part.
That's where you start making a difference.
In what they did for us, when we were working
on 12, 14, 15 different subjects they brought to two of them.
Solarized Medford and also energy audits
for the residential users.
Part of what the LEAP recommended
is that we really need to do some capacity
building in Medford.
So since the LEAP has been published,
actually, our office now is staffed
with two full-time people.
And to realize that sometimes when we have some grant money,
the right place to spend that is to get
some additional internship help.
One of the things that we paid close attention to
was the need for communities to increase their capacity
to work on these energy issues at the local level.
To address this need, we helped two communities
together, Arlington and Bedford, to hire a shared energy
manager.
With the MAPC's guidance, legal expertise, and help,
we drafted an intra-municipal agreement
which had Arlington as the hiring agent,
or the employer of the position, but shared somebody three days
a week-- two days in Arlington, one day in Bedford,
to be the energy manager for both communities.
One of the benefits of having an energy manager
is it's a person who focuses specifically
on energy-efficiency and lowering consumption,
and that's their job.
Since she's been on, she's developed
projects with various departments
within various facilities.
And we're now moving forward to implement projects
that just a year ago I don't think
we thought we'd be in the position
to implement so quickly.
So it's been a great success here.
There really is a lot of cross-pollenization between
the two towns, as well as whenever I go to a regional
energy managers' meeting, I then being information back for both
towns.
So grant opportunities or new initiatives.
I go to one meeting but I can give it back to both towns.
Since it's been very successful, we've
been continuing to work with other communities
in our region to help them identify what capacity needs
and interests they have and connect them
to neighboring communities to develop their own shared energy
positions.
MAPC has also helped by having their own staff talk with us,
meet with us, work on some of our projects.
That's part of the grant that we have through the LEAP program,
Is that they actually just sometimes do things
that we would be doing.
They take and they do themselves out of their office.
And that's a wonderful asset to the City of Medford.
Part of our LEAP process, and generally all of our planning
work, part of what we do is try to figure out
who is the best partner to work with the community
on the project that they've identified.
That might be a state agency.
That might be a local community group or another nonprofit.
Or that might be a for-profit company
that can come in and provide services.
MAPC has developed relationships across the board
with these partners and we're able to help communities really
think about OK, this is what we want to do
and this is how we can make it happen.
When you work with the MAPC, they're
advocates for municipalities, for the residents,
for what's best for the environment.
And that's really important and helpful to us.
Working with environmental issues and conservation issues,
it is an addiction.
Because once you do one thing you
feel so good about what's been accomplished that you look
for others to continue and go take it a step further.
LEAP allows communities to take a step back and look
at the big picture to ensure that they're expending
their energy in the most efficient way possible.