By John Bradley
The Town of Claverack has been awarded a $5,000 decarbonization grant from The Partnership for Climate Action (PCA). The Town will use the grant to help fund an energy audit of the town garage, which is primed to shift toward clean energy options for heating and electricity. An additional award from NYSERDA covers all other project costs.
The town garage is a 17,000 ft2 fabricated metal building that serves the Highway Department offices and fleet of over twenty trucks and heavy equipment. The building emits 42% (42 tons) of the total GHG emmissions from all town operations (about 100 metric tons annually). The cost for heating oil and electricity is over $36,000 per year.
The goal of the energy audit is to evaluate all aspects of energy use in the building and identify options to harness cleaner energy, thus drastically lowering GHG emissions and decreasing heating and electricity costs. As the garage’s boilers are nearing the end of their life, the study will provide a full energy and cost analysis of the available replacement options such as heat pumps. Electricity usage will similarly be evaluated with options provided such as solar panels on the garage complex, which the town has previously considered. The audit report is expected to be available by this summer.
Claverack was one of twenty grantees with a total of $660,000 awarded. Seventy applications were submitted requesting over $4 million. The Village of Philmont, through its Climate Smart Committee, was awarded $15,000 to underwrite a design/engineering plan for their multi-use village hall. All grants address some aspect of the building decarbonization process, from planning and design to implementation. For more information on the Building Decarbonization program, check out the PCA website.
The grant application was prepared and submitted by the Claverack Climate Smart Committee, which is made up of residents who volunteer to guide the Town toward a climate resilient future. As Claverack moves ahead with planning for a new town hall and a comprehensive plan update there are many areas for involvement. And there are many other areas, such as conservation and education, where our volunteers are active.
To learn more, join us at our next meeting on April 8th at 5:30pm at the Claverack Free Library or over Zoom.