By Pat Desmond
Times Staff
12/23/10
There were five hoops the town needed to jump through to become an official Green Community and, after years of work, the last was successfully hurdled last week.

The designation opens new grant opportunities. This week, the state awarded $157,000 to Milton.

Henry MacLean, chair of the Alternate Energy Committee, said the state has accepted the work of his committee. The town is one of 53 Green Communities. The committee met Dec. 15 to go over the town’s energy reduction plan, which will continue to provide energy and consequently financial savings.

The Alternate Energy Committee and the Wind Turbine Committee were both created by Selectmen in 2007. The cost of energy motivated the officials to work with a group of volunteers to look for innovation.

In 2008, the town was using 82,237 MMBTU to power its 30 municipal buildings and several hundred vehicles.

Since 2008, the town has reduced its energy use by 23 percent to 63,415 MMBTU. The report credits the School Department for that reduction. Much of that reduction came through better control measures in the six public schools. The report credits staff education and the hiring of an HVAC specialist.

The schools’ energy-use reductions have been praised by the town and state – Tucker Elementary and Milton High have earned Energy Star status.

Besides the changes in school energy consumption, the town plans to replace petroleum-based energy use with alternative energy. Solar arrays are either in place or in draft stages for school and municipal buildings.

The first solar array was installed at Milton High School last year with a grant obtained through the work of the volunteers of Sustainable Milton.

The latest project is at Town Hall. The town was awarded $150,000 in federal funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment block grant program. A 28.6-kilowatt system was installed in October and will produce close to 36,000 kilowatts a year, roughly 19 percent of Town Hall’s electrical load.

The solar panels at Town Hall are already working.

“The project included the creation of a “data acquisition site” – a place where the public can go online to see what the roof is producing, saving the town, and how much the town’s carbon footprint is being reduced. There is a computer screen in the lobby of Town Hall dedicated to viewing this Web site. The site will eventually connect to the wind turbine and other renewable projects in town; you will be able to toggle between the various sites,” the report says.

The turbine is in its final design stages and scheduled to go on line next fall. It will generate enough energy to meet 56 percent of the town’s energy as calculated in 2008, according to the report.

The town’s energy consultant, Johnson Controls, has identified other energy-saving measures that are expected to reduce the town’s energy consumption by another 6.3 percent by 2013.

Last spring, Annual Town Meeting accepted a change to the building code aimed at requiring energy saving measures in construction. That was one of the state’s hoops for the Green certification.