Peabody: Green Communities and Beyond 5/16/24

by Mark Dullea

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you’re someone who is concerned about the earth’s rising temperature and all of the devastating results of that heat gain: wildfires, many declared out of control, near and far; rising sea levels; unbearable levels of heat where people have always been able to live before; drought conditions; reduced agricultural production; the decline of necessary species, such as bees and other pollinators; and much more.

Here in Peabody, we’re giving credit to the City for joining the ranks of some 300 cities and towns in Massachusetts who have become, over the last dozen or so years, designated Green Communities. That’s a fine accomplishment, and we ought to give credit where credit is due.

But. . . . . . .we can’t stop there. There’s still so much to do at the City level to get us up there with the leaders in municipal climate action. We need a number of official City responses to the situation that we in Peabody, and everyone around the world, have to face and to overcome. Such as: a Declaration of Climate Emergency would be a good start. We need specific goals which quantify How Much, and By What Year. We need someone, knowledgeable of the multiple issues involved – a Sustainability Director of Climate Planning Coordinator – to be employed at the highest levels of City government, and given a staff. We need an officially appointed Citizens Climate Advisory Committee or Task Force as major participants. We need to develop and to officially adopt a broad-based Climate Action Plan, with input from all of Peabody’s elected offices, boards, and authorities. This Plan would hopefully be put together in recognition of the already completed climate plans of our neighboring communities. The Peabody Plan needs to contain clearly stated goals and targets; it needs to have the data needed for sound decision-making and prioritizing; It needs a program of specific efforts to be carried out, along with strategies and funding sources – that sort of thing. A wider array of what city governments around the world have been doing to fight climate change – some going back as far as the early 1990s – can be found on my website: www.climateplanning.city

But all this may take a while to put into place, even if we start early tomorrow.

So here’s something that we can do right away. There is a federal grant program – part of the multi-hundreds-of-billions of dollars Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 – called Solar For All (SFA). SFA has just committed $156,000,000 (that’s 156 million) to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. You can read the details at www.epa.gov/greenhouse-gas-reduction-fund/solar-all These funds can go to public, private, and nonprofit entities that submit a winning grant application. The money is to be used for rooftop and other onsite solar installations and for community solar projects. A special emphasis of any proposal needs to be placed on low-to-moderate income, multi-family housing complexes. Battery storage of solar power, and microgrids are not yet specifically included, but advocates for each are currently having discussions with Mass DOER officials to try and add them. I hope this happens. I’m following it closely. Peabody should be actively pursuing a share of this money. Why should we just sit back and let it all go elsewhere?

Over the last few days I’ve been emailing outlines of this proposal to the Mayor, to the members of the City Council’s Committee on Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, to the Peabody Municipal Light Plant, and to the Peabody Housing Authority, which owns and manages over 500 of the type of housing units that are targeted by Solar For All funding. It’s vitally necessary that these 4 entities – Mayor, the Council, PMLP, and the PHA – all sit down together and come up with a plan to bring clean solar power to these and possibly other comparable housing complexes. Among these offices there are enough smart people to figure out how to craft a successful plan and grant application. If asked, I can suggest companies who do this kind of work, who can become involved at the appropriate point in the proceedings. If you believe that’s it’s time for Peabody to put real boots on the ground, climatically speaking, I’m hoping that you see the value of my proposal, and that you’ll do what you can to bring it into the open and move it forward.

I’m Mark Dullea. My wife, Donna Qualters and I live at 8 Longview Way, right opposite Tilly’s Farm. We believe our house was the first in Peabody to install solar panels, way back in 2012. We’ve since removed all of our home’s fossil-fueled heating equipment and appliances, replacing them with heat pumps, electric water heating, and an induction stove. I’m a retired urban planner with a long involvement in renewable energy and, more recently, climate planning at the local government level. I do some climate journalism, mainly for city and regional magazines. I volunteer several hours each week as a kind of climate technical advisor to an organization called Mass. Interfaith Power & Light. MassIPL is a nonprofit that assists churches, dioceses, and various other religious – run entities to decarbonize their building stock and their entire operations. I’ve helped them establish a Geeen Fund, and am working on MassIPL’s own Solar For All program and grant application. Please feel free to contact me with any comments, suggestions, revisions, etc., to the proposal I’m introducing here. 978-314-3301 markd9x9@gmail.com