A city committee aims to put Concord on course to operate totally on renewable energy by 2050, but is that soon enough, one woman asked at the first public input session for the plan held this week.
Concord Energy and Environment Committee member Chuck Willing said the timeline was set to balance the urgency of climate change as well as recognizing that it will take time for the entire community to gradually shift its habits of energy consumption.
“The latest word from the climate experts is that to avoid the worst effects of climate change we’re going to have to decarbonize our economies by mid-century,” Willing said. “It’s a pretty tall order … but the good news is that renewable energy costs are coming down.”
the first draft of its plan in March to ease the city into using renewable energy sources for municipal operations as well as the entire Concord community.
The draft of Concord’s renewable energy plan calls for the city to gradually use more and more green energy sources for municipal operations as well as the entire Concord community.
The plan, expected to be presented to the city council this summer, calls for the city to use electricity generated only from renewable sources by 2030. It then sets goals to use renewable sources for thermal energy and transportation by 2050.
Willing said the city’s use of electricity should come from solar and wind energy in the future as prices drop.
The cost of solar energy has dropped by about 80 percent in the last 10 years, Willing said, citing an energy cost analysis by Lazard, a financial advisory and asset management firm in New York. The study reported the average cost of solar energy in 2018 was $43 per megawatt hour, down from $359 in 2009.
The cost of wind energy has also come down in that span of time, dropping by about 69% to $42 per megawatt hour in 2018, according to the study.
The plan also calls for the city to use hybrid and electric vehicles in its fleet, including public works trucks and emergency vehicles. This could be done through a purchasing plan to convert the fleet over time, which would be up to the city council, said Kelsey Sullivan, a committee volunteer.
Another aspect of the plan’s transportation angle, Sullivan said, is to encourage more people to use public transportation, walk or ride a bicycle to simply cut down on the total number of miles being driven in the city.
The city joined more than 70 other towns and cities in the U.S., as well as a handful of states, when the city council voted last summer to adopt a resolution setting the goal for the city to operate on 100% renewable energy by 2050.
That number has now grown to more than 100. Earlier this week, New Mexico became the third state after California and Hawaii to implement a 100% renewable energy pledge.
Originally, the resolution in Concord referred to the renewable energy goal as a “policy,” but the language was changed before the vote to emphasize that “this goal is aspirational in nature and shall not be construed to either impose any mandate on the City or its residents and businesses,” the resolution reads.
With or without a mandate, members of the public who spoke Wednesday hoped more residents and business leaders in Concord engage with the plan and recognize the urgency of climate change.
“We have to do this; this is not a choice anymore,” said Helmut Koch, a longtime Concord resident and former business owner. “The city is being proactive, as they should be. This is the right initiative at the right time. If we don’t do it now, we’ll be playing catch-up.”
Wednesday’s meeting was the first of three public input sessions of the plan. The second is May 4 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Penacook Community Center, 76 Community Drive. The final session is May 6 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the City Council Chambers, 37 Green St., in Concord.
The first draft of the plan can be found on the city’s website at concordnh.gov.
(Nick Stoico can be reached at 369-3321, nstoico@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @NickStoico.)