Summit Raises Ideas for Greening Needham

Whether it was planting shade trees, growing vegetables, adding bike racks to buses or recognizing energy-efficient homes in town, Needham residents and town leaders who gathered for the first on Monday, Oct. 24 had many ideas of how to make Needham “greener.”

Held at , the summit was organized by the Needham League of Women Voters, the Green Needham Collaborative and Olin College and invited residents to come together to hear what Massachusetts is working on in the area of energy and the environment and to consider what actions Needham could take to follow a similar path.

“There are many people and many organizations that have been working on energy conservation and efficiency for years here in Needham, so we thought this would be a good time to take stock of what has been done,” said Harriet Goldin, a member of the League of Women Voters and one of the event organizers. “It’s a chance to look forward as to what the next steps are.”

The evening began with a discussion between Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources Commissioner Mark Sylvia and Green Needham chairman Michael Greis, facilitated by NPR journalist Anthony Brooks.

With Massachusetts recognized last week as a leader in energy efficiency in the United States, Sylvia talked about the “ambitious” goals set by state leaders—to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by the year 2020 and by 80 percent by the year 2050—and some of the ways they were working to meet those goals.

“The revolution began really in 2008 when the legislature and Gov. Patrick worked together in a bipartisan way to pass the Green Communities Act, the Global Warming Solutions Act and the Green Jobs Act—really landmark legislation not only in Massachusetts but nationally,” Sylvia said. “Each one of those pieces of legislation put the tools in the tool chest that we needed from both an environmental and an economic perspective to really start to build the clean energy sector in Massachusetts.”

After sharing some background and discussion, Sylvia and Greis then took questions from the audience.

After the opening session, attendees separated into small groups to discuss ideas to help Needham set and reach its own environmental goals. Groups focused on seven areas: Energy efficiency and conservation, food, energy sources and choices, water, green economy, the built environment and transportation.

Groups were led by students from Olin, Wellesley and Babson colleges as well as students, with the students summarizing their groups’ ideas once everyone had returned to the main lecture hall.

On the subject of transportation, residents considered ways to encourage people to ditch their cars for other modes such as bikes, trains and walking. Olin College student Ben Chapman said the group talked about “leading by example”—encouraging students to ride bikes or walk to school as well as adults—and helping to facilitate these changes, with bike racks on buses or improved and expanded bike lanes throughout town.

In considering energy sources and choices, residents talked about setting a goal of increasing renewable energy sources in Needham by 30 percent by the year 2020.

“We hope to do that by reducing energy [use], by building efficiency, by buying renewable energy and producing renewable energy,” said group facilitator Carolyn Templeton, a Wellesley College student. “We had a lot of ideas of how we could be producing renewable energy, both on a household scale or as a municipality—[such as] on schools having solar, collecting methane over our dump, using geothermal to heat houses and buildings and also about education to see how the rest of Needham feels about how important this is to them and what they want to do and what they want to see.”

The group discussing energy efficiency and conservation also set a goal for Needham—to reduce energy use in town by one-third by 2020, according to Juliana Nazare, an Olin College student.

In talking about Needham’s “built environment”—current and future buildings—residents discussed ways of encouraging individuals to push for greater energy efficiency as well as find ways to produce energy using new technology. The group discussed the merits of and emphasized the importance of taking that step in Needham.

Group facilitator James Regulinski, an Olin College student, said that residents wanted to find ways to recognize buildings in the community that push for greater efficiency “in the same way we recognize historical buildings, so that everyone in the community knows that those buildings are doing more than their share.”

For a look at some of the other ideas and issues raised in the break-out groups, see the video at right.

Learn more about the Needham Summit on Energy and the Environment and find out how to contribute to the conversation on the Green Needham blog at www.greenneedham.org/blog/needham-summit.

Have your own ideas for making Needham greener or more energy efficient in any of the seven areas mentioned at the summit? Share your thoughts in the comments below.