Members of Middletown Township Committee and others with a stake in Clean Energy for Middletown,
We hope this finds you and your loved ones well during this Covid-19 crisis.
SUMMARY
REGIONAL ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE: One of the March 31 Monmouth HUB (regional Green Team members) agenda items was progress on a regional cooperative for Renewable Electricity Aggregation. (One of our advisors suggests that some towns are calling this “Community Power”.) All of you probably know, and some of you were involved in the exploratory meetings on Feb 6 and a follow up about 2 weeks later. After Pat appeared before the Committee on Feb 18 and our private meetings with Mayor Perry and Deputy Mayor Fiore, we reported to the Hub that Middletown appears interested in this concept, but perhaps it would be more straightforward to do it as a single town. (We had provided Tony Fiore and Tony Mercantante with a template RFP for selecting an energy consultant.) Below is a brief note on the discussion from the March 31 Hub minutes:
· The Millers (Middletown) – Mayor and Twp. Committee is interested in renewable energy aggregation
Lauren Skowronski (SJ)– Discussed progress on renewable energy aggregation outreach and discussions with municipal representatives.
Some have decided to move forward. Opportunities are still available for towns to join. Contact Lauren for more information.
It was reported that several towns have decided to go forward with the consultant search, and Red Bank has agreed to be the agent that submits the RFP for the consultant. Other towns are encouraged to join in this effort. Steve and I still believe this would be a great opportunity for gathering more specifics about what is possible, and if greater saving are available due to Middletown’s larger size, it would be worthwhile to enable this savings for the other towns as well.
MIDDLETOWN MASTER PLAN REEXAMINATION: Several members of Middletown for Clean Energy are continuing to research and document how the Middletown Energy Plan would be part of the “Green Building and Sustainability Element” for the revised Middletown Master Plan. We look forward to discussing this work with you when we are allowed to meet again, or even possibly earlier in a Zoom conference. (We have subscribed to our own Zoom account and have hosted meetings several times in the last few weeks.) We are also planning online forums for the community at large.
ONGOING: We (Steve and Pat) spend part of every week caring for and home-schooling our 2 grandsons (7 and 6 months). But we continue to devote a major portion of our time to our clean energy advocacy through online conferences, webinars and campaigns of the various environmental organizations to which we are connected. (Includes the “Monmouth HUB”, reported above).
Steve and Pat Miller, Middletown for Clean Energy
(emailed 4/2/2020 to Middletown Committee, Amy Sarrinikolaou, San Chavan, Laura Mattes, Maureen Raisch )