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Town Of Ellicott Designated Clean Energy Community By State

Few things are as much a “win-win” for a community — and its taxpayers — than adopting clean energy standards.

Recently, the town of Ellicott announced its designation as a Clean Energy Community by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA.

The designation gives the town an opportunity to apply for up to $100,000 in grant funding toward additional clean energy projects, with no local cost share.

Patrick McLaughlin, Ellicott supervisor, said he was excited about the designation and the notion of joining both Busti and Lakewood, both of which were also designated as Clean Energy Communities.

“We’ve done a lot of hard work to get to this point … especially with Jonathan Mayr from Southern Tier West, who spearheaded this through NYSERDA,” McLaughlin said. “The town has been notified that we qualify for $100,000. Now we have to make sure the projects we submit to NYSERDA are approved to get the money.”

These projects include replacing the windows of the town hall building — many of which are nearly 40 years old — with new Energy Star windows.

“What we’re trying to do is to create less of a carbon footprint,” McLaughlin said. “The replacement of these windows is going to create less of a heat loss in this building, which is going to save the taxpayers money when it comes to our utility bills … so there’s a definite monetary savings.”

McLaughlin said the town has already installed two charging stations for electric vehicles, which also qualify as approved projects.

“We’re going to do everything we can to get more grant money and work toward more points on being a green community,” he added. “This is just Round 1, and we believe the state will come around with Round 2 of this program soon.”

The town received its Clean Energy Community designation for completing four of 10 high-impact clean energy actions identified by NYSERDA as part of the Clean Energy Communities initiative. These include: Benchmarking, Unified Solar Permit, Clean Fleets and Energy Code Enforcement Training.

Benchmarking involves reporting the energy use of municipal buildings on an annual basis and making that information available to the public.

Michael Erlandson, town clerk, said the town has collected this data for years, but only now will publicize it on the town’s website — www.townofellicott.com — for transparency and oversight.

Unified Solar Permit involves municipalities adopting the state Unified Solar Permit to reduce costs and delays for solar projects within the jurisdiction.

McLaughlin stated at an earlier council meeting that the Unified Solar Permit is a standardized permit application designed to streamline the approval process for installing solar in the community.

Erlandson said this process is already in effect.

Clean Fleets involved the installation of the two electric vehicle charging stations.

Energy Code Enforcement Training involved training the code enforcement officers in best practices regarding energy code enforcement. McLaughlin noted that the town’s code enforcement officer has already completed the training.

Announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in August, the $16 million Clean Energy Communities initiative supports local government leaders across the state to implement energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable development projects in their communities.

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