Cape & Islands News

Cape Codders mull promise, challenge of going green

Meeting at Cape Cod Community College draws businessmen, activists

Ian Bowles, secretary of the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, speaks Tuesday morning at Cape Cod Community College about state green energy initiatives.

Participants discuss growing demand for green technology services, jobs

By James Kinsella

The green spirit is willing, but the flesh could use help in making it happen.

That was the theme that emerged from a discussion of clean energy initiatives on the Cape and around the state Tuesday morning at Cape Cod Community College.

About 80 business people, academics, politicians, students and green activists turned out for the gathering, held in the solarium of the Lyndon Lorusso Building at the college.

A series of speakers spoke at the meeting about the burgeoning interest in the marketplace for environmentally friendly approaches to meet the energy needs of individuals, homeowners and businesses on the Cape.

But they also spoke about a gap between what people want, and what the market can deliver.

At present, for example, Cape Codders are looking at waits of up to three months for home energy audits.

Chris Powicki urged participants to pursue the possibilities that would be unleashed by approval and construction of the Cape Wind offshore wind projecOne of Tuesday's speakers, Ian Bowles, secretary of state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said he'd be starting a green energy company if he wasn't already working for the state.

The good news is that people inside schools, government and businesses are laying the groundwork for a response to help meet the green demand.

Richard Lawrence, who coordinates clean energy at Cape Cod Community College, said the college is offering courses in fields such as photo-voltaic energy.

Lawrence and college President Kathleen Schatzberg said the college was an early pioneer in environmental technology, an initiative that got under way in the mid-1990s. The college's interest in clean energy arose directly from that initiative.

In opening Tuesday's meeting, Schatzberg described how the building where the meeting was held, the Lyndon Lorusso Building, had received a Gold LEED (that is, "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design") rating from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The building has windows that let in much natural light; electric lights that dim as more natural light comes into a room; uneven bricks along its walls that shade each in the summer, when the sun is high in the sky; and heating and air conditioning units in rooms that switch off if windows are opened.

Preachers of the clean energy gospel included Lawrence, Chris Powicki of the Cape and Islands Renewable Energy Collaborative, Daniel Dray of the Cape Cod Economic Development Council and John O'Brien of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce.

"Massachusetts is long on talking about renewable power. We haven't ended up building as much as we need to do."
- Energy Secretary Ian Bowle

Powicki said people need to get beyond whether they are for or against "The Project Not To Be Named" (ie., Cape Wind's proposal to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound) to determine how the Cape can best use renewable energy and decrease fossil fuel use now that it appears increasingly likely that the project will be built.

The key, Powicki said, is to tap into possible benefits offered by the project such as job creation, green tourism and a long-term energy supply contract.

Dray said bringing the Cape building trades up to speed on green technology offers a way to add support and expand the high-paying jobs in those trades. Demand is expanding, he said, for people who can do energy equipment maintenance, do retrofits of exising buildings, and carry out energy efficiency and weatherization projects.

The younger generations in family-owned businesses, Dray said, already are aware of the growing market for green technology, and want to move in that direction.

O'Brien said the chamber has found that Cape residents aged 25 to 45 are leaving the Cape. Work in the green technology, he said, may be a way to entice them to stay on the Cape.

He said the chamber's micro-loan program, carried out through a subsidiary, Coastal Community Capital, would lend itself well to people looking to start a green business or move an existing business in a green direction.

Bowles, a Falmouth resident who passed for the keynote speaker in the quintessentially low-key Cape Cod gathering, spoke about the interest of Gov. Deval Patrick's administration in encouraging renewable energy and discouraging fossil-fuel use.

State initiatives described by Bowles included the Oceans Act of 2008, a pro-active initiative to engage in kind of ocean zoning; a move to offer tax incentives for biofuels; a Green Communities Act, which will provide carrots and sticks for local towns to engage in green energy; and a proposal to allow smaller, renewable energy projects to qualify for review by the state Energy Facilities Siting Board, which can override Not-In-My-Back-Yard objections.

Asked by Barbara Hill, executive director of the non-profit organization Clean Power Now, if he could say how important the proposed Cape Wind project is to the administration green energy goals, Bowles deadpanned, "No."

After the laughter died down, Bowles said he would withhold comment, given that the project is being reviewed by the siting board. But he also said that the state will need 10 projects of that size in the next 20 to 30 years to meet its demand for energy.

"Massachusetts is long on talking about renewable power," Bowles said. "We haven't ended up building as much as we need to do."

Daniel Dray, left, of the Cape Cod Economic Development Council, and John O'Brien of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce told participants that their groups want to help businesses meet the demand for green technology projects and services.