The Municipal Energy Assistance Program (MEAP)

Vital Communities, partnered with SERG and Clean-Air Cool Planet, completed comprehensive energy inventories for 6 Upper Valley municipalities, including Cornish, Danbury, Enfield, Grafton, Lebanon and New London in a NH state-wide program to inform municipalities on their energy use in buildings, vehicles and streetlights. Recommendations were made to Energy Committees and Selectboards on the most cost effective and engaging ways to reduce municipal energy use.

The statewide MEAP project seeks to address municipal energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission through energy inventories, building audits, renovations and energy consumption awareness. The project’s overarching goal is to reduce energy costs at the municipal level.

In the Upper Valley Region Cornish, Danbury, Enfield, Grafton, Lebanon and New London are part of the 48 total participating towns in the state.

Funded through the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the MEAP project has several statewide and regional partners, including Clean Air – Cool Planet, Jeffrey Taylor and Associates, Sustainable Energy Resource Group (SERG), SDES Group, and Vital Communities.

A town participating in the program will first go through an Energy Consumption Inventory. The Energy Project Assistant hired to coordinate the inventory will enter each town’s data into Clean Air-Cool Planet’s Small Town Carbon Calculator (STOCC) and the EPA’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager Program. These two programs calculate and benchmark the energy consumption of all town owned buildings, vehicles, and street lights.

In the next phase of the project SDES Group will work with the data gathered and conduct a comprehensive Building Efficiency Audit on the least performing building. For a select six towns statewide, a Policy Audit performed by Jeffrey Taylor & Associates will be conducted in order to highlight places in the town’s Master Plan that may unnecessarily contribute to green house gas emissions and other energy inefficiencies. Once the audits are completed and the recommendations are produced, the project team will assist towns with implementation.

The goal is to reduce the energy costs of one building in each town by 50%. Additionally, all towns that participated in the programme received detailed reports, thoughtful, useful recommendations and selectboard presentations. These towns are well informed and ready for future energy reduction projects.

You can read the Lebanon Report here and view a poster about the project.

For additional information on the Municipal Energy Project, go to this website or contact Megan Shannon by email or by phone at (802) 291-9100 ext 109.