A lot of energy was in the room on June 4th for the return of the annual Upper Valley Energy Committee Roundtable. Seventy people from across the Upper Valley and beyond turned out for this event designed to foster connections, share ideas, and explore potential collaborations across town energy committees.
Vital Communities tailored the event content based on energy committee input. With extremely high interest in heat pumps across the board, the event included a feature presentation on heat pump system design, sizing, and load management by charismatic presenter Matt Christie of TRC Companies, who was able to deftly speak to all technical levels in the room.
Energy committee members know that replacing fossil-fuel fired heating systems with heat pumps is one of the biggest levers we have to reduce our carbon emissions, and recent advances in cold-climate heat pumps now make it possible to use them as a home’s only, or primary, heating appliance. These systems are still relatively new and energy committee members, municipal managers, homeowners, and even contractors are all still catching up to recent changes. This was a particularly timely topic as New Hampshire is gearing up for a big heat pump push as part of the New England Heat Pump Accelerator program, and Vermont is continuing to work on its own heat pump adoption efforts.
The Roundtable also included a lightning round of topic introductions including residential energy coaching programs, plug-in solar, energy insecurity, community resilience, clean energy finance mechanisms (e.g. C-PACER), and more. In the months since the Roundtable, a few working groups have formed to build on the conversations started at the event. Vital Communities plans to keep the momentum going and host the Roundtable again this upcoming spring, and hopefully each year going forward.