Brunswick Sustainability Committee Backs 100% Renewable Power for Data Centers

[0:07] Tom Rump: Okay. Good evening. My name is Tom Rump. I'm chair of the Sustainability Committee, and this is our September meeting. We didn't meet last month. We used to take August off, but we're meeting this month, and we're meeting a little early because we're planning to have a conversation about data centers in light of the council's current work on that issue. So we'll start with introductions. I'm on the Stationary Energy and Sustainability Working Group. Bob? [0:37] Bob Howe: I'm Bob Howe. I'm also on and chair of the Non-Transportation Sustainability Group. [0:45] Ramona Teamee: I'm Ramona Teamee. I'm the District 6 Counselor and liaison to the Sustainability Committee. [0:55] William White: William White. I'm on the Transportation Subcommittee. [1:02] Tom Rump: You're turned on here, Joe. [1:05] Joe DeRivera: Joe DeRivera. Looking forward to being on. on look joe d rivera looking forward to being on one of the subcommittees yes it's a d e and then a space and then a r i v e r a thank you [1:21] Tucker Favor: Talker Favor. I'm on the Solid Waste Committee, care. [1:26] Speaker G (unidentified): On top Federal Street, Brunswick, and I'm [1:30] Chrissy Enemas: on the Transportation Working Group. Chrissy Enemas, Economic Community Development Project Manager, and staff is on to the committee. Okay. [1:40] Tom Rump: Great, thank you. The first administrative item is to review and confirm the agenda. Does anyone have any changes to the agenda? I would like to add something under administrative items, and that's to take a look at the data which Chrissy got for us from Ryan on solid waste and recycling tonnages. Anything else? Hearing none, we will proceed. Joe, would you like to say a few words to introduce yourself to the group? [2:24] Joe DeRivera: Well, I'm particularly interested in plastic disposal, so I guess maybe I should join the Solid Waste Committee, subcommittee. Awesome. That would be good. [2:35] Tom Rump: The chair of that working group is Tyler Spillane, and he will be here later. Is Mark not coming today, Karen? [2:44] Speaker G (unidentified): He is coming. We both have office hours until 3.30. Okay. He has students in his office. Okay. [2:51] Tom Rump: All right, thank you, Joe. So why don't we look at the stuff that Chrissy got for us on, I assume this is through, oh, this is just through 25. Okay, so we have no data for 26, Chrissy, as far [3:12] Chrissy Enemas: as you know, right? What Ryan had sent us was only partial data for 26, so we only have full [3:20] Tom Rump: data for 2025. Because, okay, usually we get this sort of quarterly updates also for what? Yes, that, what we have is, oh, there we have that here under, I see there is some information under 26. [3:34] Chrissy Enemas: Okay, I can read to you what the incomplete data says, if you want to know that. Sure. Okay, just give me one second. Okay, so for 2026, totals are 2048 tons for trash and 823 tons for recycling. That's through the end of August. Okay. And I [4:08] Tom Rump: see those numbers don't agree with the table. Well, we just have to, it's probably just through June, but for half the year, this [4:25] Chrissy Enemas: but you right, so this table might include to present, whereas Ryan's data was through August. [4:34] Tom Rump: So can, what were those numbers again for 26? This is through June, I assume. [4:39] Chrissy Enemas: Just, yeah, so this is, this is through, this is to date, see, yeah, let's see at the bottom, the asterisks at the bottom. [4:50] Tom Rump: As of September, I guess. Okay. So it looks like that's true. If it is through, it wouldn't be through September, so okay. [5:11] Joe DeRivera: Could you share those figures again? [5:17] Chrissy Enemas: So not, I don't want to, I think I caused some confusion. So the email that Ryan had sent was through August, so I think we just throw that out because this has through September. So just let's refer to this only. [5:30] Tom Rump: Okay, so it might include the first week of September or something. Because we're still in September. [5:38] Chrissy Enemas: Do you need to know the week? I don't know the week. Okay. All right. [5:47] Speaker G (unidentified): My only question would be, are we apparently not doing any of the recycling other than that first line? All those others are blank, which is of course making our sums lower than I would expect for three quarters of the year. [6:06] Tom Rump: Well, they're blank for this year anyway. Yeah, well, that's what I mean, so if they were up to date, my [6:12] Speaker G (unidentified): guess is he did not get data for those particular bits and so if you just look at the bottom line nine hundred and ten is looking unimpressive compared to what we've had in the past for a three-quarter way through the year but it looks like we're not including what we're just including curbside right there's no organics there's no asphalt single not for 2026 yeah that's what I mean so like my mathematical brain was saying okay we should have about three quarters of what we had for the previous years, and we don't, we barely have half. Right. Okay, fine. And [7:01] Tom Rump: I know that we did get some data from Casella for the school and municipal building as well, and we were hoping that those data could be incorporated into our overall tracking mechanism, so could you talk to Ryan about that, about, I'm sorry, could you, I've missed the first half of that. When we met with Casella, they shared with us information on year-to-date collection for the schools and municipal buildings, which aren't on these data, and I'm hoping that can be incorporated into the table, I'm [7:42] Chrissy Enemas: not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure that we've, yeah, let me ask about that. Okay, and [7:50] Tom Rump: why, and why out, you could check and see if they have any data for 2026 on the numbers that Karen was asking about, the brush and limbs and food waste. Well, I mean, I don't really care as long as that's [8:03] Speaker G (unidentified): very clear and that we have updated numbers by the end of the year. [8:09] Chrissy Enemas: Okay, yeah, I'll ask if we can come back with the updated numbers in January for 2026, get [8:15] Tom Rump: a full year's picture. That makes sense to me. Great, thank you. Any other questions? [8:21] Ramona Teamee: Yep, go ahead, Ramona. Then this might already have been talked about last year, I started this year on the committee, but looking at some of the numbers from last year, and especially in the recycling part, it looks like leaves and grass and brush and limbs were like drastically less than previous years. Do we have any idea of like what is driving that reduction in utilization of [8:53] Tom Rump: our recycling facilities for those items? I don't know, but the big drop occurred between 2019 and 2021. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the closure of the landfill [9:07] Chrissy Enemas: down. Yeah, there's, there's the closure of the landfill, which has affected a lot of the sort of bulkier materials on this, and why there are a lot of zeros in, but then there's also that the move of the brushes, the brush facility from the Industry Way location to I think the things like Graham Road, so that might have, that might explain that 2024, 25 difference. Oh, did that happen in 2025? [9:37] Tom Rump: Yeah, got it, so they're used to brush and limbs, you spill, they've taken to Industry Road before. [9:44] Chrissy Enemas: I don't know, it's definitely brush, I don't know about limbs, but maybe they lump it together. [9:49] Ramona Teamee: For data and then I was also wondering on a longer time scale looking back like 2018 2019 19 2020 we had like very high amounts of CDD wood and that's under trash not recycling and then there's drop off a ton do we know like or were we like charging more and so contractors and stuff are taking their things elsewhere or maybe I'm misunderstanding what CDD wood would represent but it went from like 300 to like I mean most recently three so that's [10:26] Chrissy Enemas: huge decrease I'm guessing that has to do with the closure of the landfill I think that was being [10:31] Tom Rump: ground up and maybe used as daily cover or something in the landfill got it when the landfill closed I'm not sure where it goes now it's pretty low numbers but yeah I think that I think that would go to the West Bath facility I don't really know that would be worth finding out also what because I know they're still I guess looks like they're still accepting it but it's not they're not getting much they probably charge for it as well as they do for tires [11:06] Tucker Favor: so on another piece of this for the organics and food waste I'm assuming that is entirely separate from the composting program with Agri-Cycle and that those composting numbers [11:17] Tom Rump: are not included here well I think it's the organics that's going to exercise this yeah this [11:22] Tucker Favor: would be the location okay because I have the last message we received was that we didn't have a breakdown of weights for Agri-Cycle we just knew how much we had paid them in fees so if there's there's numbers now that's good just that when we asked a month ago we were told we didn't have weights available for them just how much [11:38] Chrissy Enemas: it cost us I think maybe that's for 2026 okay and it [11:52] Tom Rump: looks like we're not accepting assholes shingles anymore there are Bob can you there extra copies it's down there you can pass this way of these tables yeah I've got it yeah okay anything else on that do [12:29] William White: we have data for before 2018 like there's a obviously the big coveted dip right in 2020 but I'm noticing that our numbers are higher for the total tonnage in 2024-5 compared to 2018. Do we have anything any way of comparing that to before 2018. four just to see I'm curious about the trend like what number which item are you talking the total tonnage total tonnage yeah for collection in 2024 and five we were the numbers are different like on the I think it's I'm sorry not total tonnage trash curbside what I'm talking about We're somewhere around 300 to 400 tons above 2018. I'm wondering if that's consistent in the data before 2018 as well [13:29] Tom Rump: Well, I don't know when I'm trying to remember when the when the new policy regarding resident curbside collection on private roads was adopted, and we now have a policy that less than apartment buildings of less than six units can be picked up curbside. If it's more than six units, they have to get arranged for their own pickup. So that might have had something to do with it, but and I think I've got to assume that the number of residences in the town is increasing with all the residential construction, particularly apartments that wouldn't show up on curbside. [14:14] Ramona Teamee: One other piece of information that would be I think interesting to have along with this that I think that is available is the number of curbside pickup addresses that are being serviced by Casella. I think I've heard what that number is currently, so whether we have that information historically or whether they could give it to us, it would be interesting to know not exactly per capita but per household that's currently being served by curbside pickup over time, like our household numbers going up or down, which would sort of flatten out the question of population growth. I would hope it [15:06] Tom Rump: looks like our curbside recycling numbers have been pretty be flat or actually declining, which is interesting in light of the I just reviewed the 2020 solid waste management plan and clearly we're not accomplishing our goals relative to that. I don't know where that was adopted by the council. I don't know that it was. [15:37] Chrissy Enemas: I think one thing to watch though is that I wanted to mention is that the extended producer responsibility program is going to be sort of up and running by the end of 2026 and 2027, so municipalities are gonna CEP has said that we will be receiving guidance in the summer fall of this year on how municipalities can participate, and I believe that payments are going to be due to municipalities that are registered in 2027. So the program is about to get up and going and that will want to watch that because that should have a statewide impact on recycling rates. [16:20] Tom Rump: Extended producer responsibility for packaging, so that presumably should reduce the amount of packaging or make it more recyclable, right? It incentivizes producers of packaging to make [16:34] Chrissy Enemas: their packaging more recyclable and also reduce the amount of packaging tonnages, that kind of [16:40] Tom Rump: thing, and that will also presumably lead to some funding going to towns. Yeah, municipalities receive [16:46] Chrissy Enemas: Payments for recycling to help recycling. Yep, so I think that in, you know, there's also going to be money for education outreach and that kind of thing, and it is this coordinated state, statewide effort, which it really should be. So that's something that, you know, I think a lot of people are hopeful will help start to kick these trends upwards for recycling on a statewide level, because I'm not municipalities, but sorry, provinces and countries that have this program see recycling rates upwards of 80 percent. So granted, those are countries. We're the only country that does it by state. Canada does it by province, but those typically have much higher recycling rates because it is that sort of regional coordinated effort that you don't get when you do it the way that we've been doing it in this country for so long. So we'll, you know, something to watch, and hopefully [17:47] Tom Rump: these recycling rates start to go up because of something like that. Has the town received any correspondence from DEP? Yes, we're waiting to hear in this fall for guidance. Okay, great, hopefully that will make a big difference. Anything [18:04] Speaker I (unidentified): else? Did we talk yet about audits? No, we did not. [18:09] Tom Rump: Why don't we talk to that under the working group reports? Sure. Okay, the other thing we have is minutes, and they're actually, I found the minutes from June, which I hadn't been able to find last time, and they have the minutes from July, and we need to approve both of those. So before we discuss that, I'd entertain a motion to approve the minutes. [18:36] Tucker Favor: I move that we approve the minutes of the June 23rd sustainability meeting. [18:42] Tom Rump: And July 28th? And July 28th. Okay, do we have a second? I second it. Okay, any amendments to the minutes? Did [18:57] Speaker G (unidentified): anybody read the minutes? I did. [19:00] Tom Rump: Just hoping that this is all worth something. Okay, all those in favor, it passes. Opposed or absent? And Joe is probably an abstaining because he wasn't here. Okay, recycling artists, I guess it's on the agenda here, Talia, so we had talked I think at the last meeting about checking with Casella and with Eco Maine about what their process would be [19:33] Speaker I (unidentified): for recycling audits yeah we haven't I haven't we haven't done that yet but I did shoot an email to eco main and chrissy is there a contact that i can just get some information with casella about a potential audit or is that better served through staff i think we would do that okay yeah i 'm just curious about what's involved and not necessarily a commitment yet but just to know i'm assuming that would happen on casella's end but well [20:06] Tom Rump: I think part of the con isn't part of the current Casella contract. Chrissy called for them to monitor recyclables and leave stickers or pamphlets for people that don't, they put inappropriate things in, or yeah. So it'd be interesting to know whether they've had any, how that's working. Thank [20:34] Speaker I (unidentified): you. Yeah, we'll most likely [20:38] Tom Rump: you back to it. Okay, Ramona, I there seemed to be some confusion about the solid waste management plan update as to whether that's something we're supposed to work on or not. Did you get any clarification from the town manager or the chair? I definitely spoke to the town manager [21:04] Ramona Teamee: about it on Thursday and she said that her impression was that the amount of staff time that it would take to put together basically an updated plan could be more than is currently available from staff. There wasn't a clear like this is not going to be something that's worked on, but I think that if we are going to look into the plan and what should be updated about it, we would have to be limited in scope probably by available staff hours. Yeah, I'm a little confused. I was under [21:47] Tom Rump: the impression that the plan that was from 2020 was developed by this committee and not by town staff. You know, Chris, it takes a lot of staff time to work with [22:01] Chrissy Enemas: the committee to develop a policy, so there was a high level of staff involvement. Okay, [22:09] Ramona Teamee: my impression on that, if that's something the committee is interested in making some sort of progress on, might just be that it was worth having the members of the committee familiarize ourselves with the plan as it exists currently and then maybe just putting together like a list of areas for future improvements or something beyond that. I'm not sure what is currently possible. [22:38] Tom Rump: Okay, well the plan and I don't know whether the town call this was sent to town council in April of 2020 from Jen Hicks, the chair of the committee at the time, and I'm not sure what happened with this at the town council level, whether there was any discussion of it or not. April of 2020 we were [22:56] Speaker G (unidentified): all thinking about a lot of other things probably, or no one big thing I guess, not a lot of other [23:03] Tom Rump: but it did call for a rather aggressive reduction in municipal solid waste by 40 by 2030, which is not likely to happen at the rate we're going here. I'm not sure, maybe the producer responsibility law will help there to some extent, but and I don't, I don't know that this so-called solid waste vision statement in short-term waste management plan was adopted by the council. I guess that's [23:34] Speaker J (unidentified): Something I could look into, but nobody knows unless, sorry Tom, but I was just looking at the numbers here, the total material that actually has been falling because [23:52] Tom Rump: They're close to the landfill, I think, okay. [23:57] Speaker J (unidentified): 21, I think, was it, oh, okay, yeah, then there's no trajectory. [24:06] Tom Rump: So there were some fairly large numbers for like CDD wood and other miscellaneous things. But the total solid waste has, if you look at just the trash curbside, that actual number has not really been declining. No, certainly not. The recycling has been fairly steady also. [24:40] Speaker G (unidentified): But like Ramona pointed out, it would be interesting to see the per capita value. Right, that would be helpful. What is the population growth of Brentwood? [24:47] Tom Rump: We knew the number of residential units that had curbside, that would be helpful. I assume that's something that solid waste has, our Public Works has, rather, I'm pretty sure that the population [24:59] Ramona Teamee: growth in Brunswick over the past 10 years has been around 10 or a little below that. [25:07] Tom Rump: oh it has okay i would yeah it sounds like it would make sense given all the residential construction that's happened so if that's the case if that's the case the trash curbside is about the same per capita as it was if you had 10 to the 2018 figure that would be about 3 500 which is where we're at last year okay so Chrissy is that you 're clear on what information you're going to try and get from Public Works the number of residences that are pick up curbside as well as the other the stuff on school and municipal, okay, great, anything else on [26:00] Speaker I (unidentified): on the solid waste data, I mean, from our subcommittee's perspective, like Tucker and I are reviewing the at least division plan and looking at our current contract. I think without a clear goal that it could kind of turn into a monumental task, so perhaps a goal is just to focus on certain parts. Some parts are probably less, you know, pertinent to 2026 than they were in 2022, and some are probably the same goal, so that might be worth identifying on our end, but as far as an actual plan to come out of it that the town adopts, I don't know if that's necessarily realistic, but it could be, yeah, okay, all right. [26:48] Tom Rump: Moving on to the AI data center discussion, Bob was going to try and lead this with [26:56] Bob Howe: Tucker, hopefully I'll try, but I'll need help. Let me just review a little bit about what's happened that I'm aware of. The Italian council passed a moratorium, a six-month moratorium, on first of June. I know Tucker spoke at that, and as did I, in support of it. The council then held a workshop on the third of August, and I believe Mark and Tucker spoke at that, and I submitted some written comments, and Julie Erdman put together a memo dated July 27th, which I think is quite useful to review, and it included the draft ordinance that the council reviewed on August 3rd, and Chrissy just today sent, said, wrote us that Julie does welcome input from this committee, which I certainly am grateful for, since this could require a fair amount of effort on our parts. Her memo raises a number of the key issues that I think need to be addressed: water consumption versus a closed-loop cooling system, energy consumption and efficiency, renewable energy, backup generators, electrical, water and sewer capacity, noise and vibration, buffering and screening, decommissioning and final financial security, and annual operational reporting. There's been some email exchanges among us, and I think there's probably some agreement with respect to some of those issues, such as energy and perhaps water. Others I don't think we've had any discussion of. I think Julie, Chrissy reported that Julie would also appreciate comments on the draft ordinance, and I sent out something to most of you, I think that was before Bill was on the committee, that was August 20th. My concern with the draft ordinance was that it said that development shall have sufficient water available for the reasonably foreseeable needs of the development and shall have no undue adverse impact on existing water supplies. Whether that's specific enough and strong enough, I think is worthy of discussion. With respect to energy consumption efficiency, the draft ordinance would have required that 50% of power consumed be produced or offset by renewable energy sources, or solar panels must occupy at least 50% of the roof area. Well, one issue there is that requirements of 50 renewable energy versus 50 of the roof cover of the solar may produce very different amounts of energy. I think some of us are probably of the opinion that it ought to be entirely renewable. Someone of you, I think, has raised the question of whether that would deprive others of the use of renewable energy sources. I'm not sure quite why that would be the case, but if the data centers Were required to generate their own renewable energy. I think that might avoid that particular issue, and I think that would not necessarily have to be on-site generation. They could be responsible for having wind generation or solar generation, a combination of the two, produced somewhere else. That of course raises the question of grid capacity, and Julie did touch on that. If that, if the town is going to require renewable energy or whatever the energy would be, that a professional with expertise on the electrical grid might want to get involved and decide whether and how much would be too much for the current grid. So there's other issues. I also want it, before we have an open discussion, I also wanted to talk about a couple of process issues, and I have more questions about them than answers. One is that in her memo Julie Erdmann suggested considering contract zoning. I'm hardly an expert on contract zoning, but it does have the benefit I think of requiring the council to have the final word and arguably the council would be more sensitive to public opinion than the non-appointed board members. The downside is the potentiality, the potential that something could be put in a particular zone which otherwise would not have allowed it, ie residential. Not that I think that would happen, but as I understand contract zoning, it requires that the developer make a certain, I want to say concession, in exchange for being able to locate [32:32] Joe DeRivera: their facility in this, in a particular zone. Yeah basically I'll decide like so [32:39] Chrissy Enemas: they have to prove a public benefit is sort of what you mean by skin session, and then it goes through a more rigorous process as you mentioned with [32:49] Bob Howe: the council and i'm wondering whether contract zoning is it completely wide open or can the town establish certain minimum requirements that must be followed in a contract zoning process that's [33:07] Chrissy Enemas: a question I have. I don't know the answer. It's supposed to be only used in rare circumstances, and I don't know what the parameters around that, like deciding what that circumstance is. But I know that it's not, it's not like supposed to be used whenever a development doesn't meet the standard, you know, doesn't meet the zoning code, you know. It's not like anybody can just use it because your project doesn't meet the zoning code. It has to be like it's for like those rare circumstances. [33:38] Bob Howe: So just to give an example, if could there be a requirement that all of the energy be renewable and that would not be negotiable in a contract zoning process? So yeah, in a contract [33:56] Chrissy Enemas: zone the town basically decides what their kind of like their list of demands or their list of public benefits are, and it could be that it could be that you can have this contract zone if your project's completely renewable, you can have this contract zone if there's you know maybe this massive public benefit, maybe there's a massive tax public tax benefit or something like that, or you know, and they also have to prove all the other environmental things, so like it really is about like creating a very and that's that's what the word contract is in there for, like it's about creating a contract that they have to meet in order to get that permit, and that contract can say things like that, right? [34:37] Tom Rump: And regarding your concern about residential areas, I read this, it says that it would only be allowed within the growth industrial district. What are you reading from? I'm reading from Julie's memo. Yeah, well I would [34:57] Bob Howe: hope that would be the case. The other process question has to do with a conditional use permit that's recommended by the folks that are not with any of you looked at it, the North Star data centers policy toolbook for local governments suggested that, and I don't know whether conditional use permits and contract zoning are mutually exclusive. Well conditional use permits have specific [35:25] Tom Rump: performance standards, and it says they're proposing a conditional use permit for smaller data centers, minor data centers, and they have standards around water consumption, energy and all those things, so presumably those would be the same standards that you'd be looking at it under any contract zoning process. A conditional use is sort of a status that ex when a project [35:48] Chrissy Enemas: already fits into the zoning code, so you know you'd get that conditional use if it's in the in the table of uses, if it's already allowed in that zone, we'd still have to meet those standards, right? And I guess like you could, if the use was maybe edging outside like a sort of like almost fitting within the definition of conditional use but not quite, maybe you would bring a contract zone in into that to make to make it 100 percent and then have your agreement, your agreement in that [36:28] Tom Rump: contract potentially. Chrissy do you happen to know where the growth industrial district is, that the industrial park, or there's a zoning map [36:41] Chrissy Enemas: So I would have to pull that map up. I don't know. Okay, Larry's, if it says, [36:45] Tom Rump: according to the proposal here, even the smaller ones would be, could only be built in that district only. [36:54] Bob Howe: The smaller ones, even the smaller, even the small, [36:56] Tom Rump: either one would be subject to only being built in that district. Does that include the Brunswick [Bob Howe: Landing? Do] you want me to pull up the map? You would have to find out. I don't even know right now. I'm just, I think he's working on it. Oh good, thank you. Larry, can you find the zoning layer there. Here it is. Okay, so it should be GI or something. Maybe a, there it is, GI is that's the industrial part. That's the [37:38] Speaker J (unidentified): industrial part. There's another patch over by the bio reactor. [37:45] Tom Rump: Right. And the other one includes the northern part of the Brunswick Landing. And then there's one on the east side of the runway. So those are the three places I see that are growth industrial. Actually the other GI is out off between the highway, Route 1 and Bath Road. [38:20] Ramona Teamee: That would be over where Bath Iron Works is, I think. [38:23] Tom Rump: Yeah, it's in that area where Bath Iron Works is. And the only place on the base then is that a small area east of the south end of the runway and then the industrial park, so those would be the three places where any data center could [38:42] Bob Howe: be built. That would put it right near the golf course, wouldn't it, softened to [38:46] Tom Rump: the runway? No, the golf course is in there. Well, the geo, I guess they go, maybe that's for golf, I don't know. There it is, golf zoning, I don't know, but it does about that. Yes, okay. [39:11] Bob Howe: Well, I'm not sure how folks would like to proceed. It's a little hard, we've just had some scattershot emails here and there. [39:20] Speaker J (unidentified): Mark, sure, I have fairly strong feelings about this. Yeah, and Mark shared his little three, [39:27] Tom Rump: three-page write-up about the physical laws. Yeah. [39:32] Speaker J (unidentified): So when I spoke at the workshop, I was speaking not on behalf of this committee in any way, but just as a concerned citizen. But what I pointed out then was any fossil fuel-based data center that's added to Brunswick's carbon footprint is completely inconsistent with the climate action plan, it's, it's which was adopted unanimously by the council, and so to my mind that leaves really only one option, which is to say you can have a data center if the power is not, if the power is generated fully renewably, whether that's wind or solar, and it doesn't have to be on site necessarily. That to me is essentially the only viable or acceptable structure. I appreciate the language about efficiencies, water use efficiency and energy use efficiency, but I think they're essentially irrelevant. I don't really care whether a facility is using 90% of its carbon to do calculations or 95% of its carbon to do calculations. Regulations. It's bad either way if it's coming from fossil fuels. So water's another story. [41:20] Bob Howe: Yeah, and I know Tucker has some thoughts on that too. I wonder if, do we want to try to go down through maybe Julie's list of issues and see if there's any consensus on some of these? Would that be a reasonable way to proceed? You mean the list on the second page, the bottom of the second page, is it her second page? Yes, exactly. Sure. Yeah, all right. Well, Mark's brought up her second bullet, energy consumption and efficiency. Is there might there be a consensus that these facilities, if we're going to have them, would be required to use 100 renewable power? [42:01] Tom Rump: Does anyone have an objection to that? And the initial draft they do that are prepared to say so. The initial draft from Julie just recommended 50%, right? [42:17] Bob Howe: Yeah, one. [42:21] Ramona Teamee: Thought, which I think Bob mentioned as well, is the kind of what I would consider a loophole, which is the roof coverage part. At the council workshop on this, I brought up the idea, well, what if you just built like a four-story data center that had a very small footprint? You could have 50% roof coverage very easily and just kind of like walk your way out of that requirement. So I think just basing it on the actual like raw numbers of electrical usage and percent renewable makes so much more sense and. [42:54] Bob Howe: 100 sounds like the right for approach for that. Yeah, I think the 50% of the roof business doesn't. [43:01] Tom Rump: This doesn't work. So do people support the 100% renewables? I didn't want to have a problem with. [43:09] Speaker I (unidentified): that check why don't we do we know where the 50 percent came from i think they were trying to try [43:16] Tom Rump: Probably be somewhere in the middle and be, you know, moderate in their recommendation. I don't know, they were looking at other towns and what other towns had done. So it's a hundred percent. [43:27] Speaker I (unidentified): Requirement an effective ban of, I don't think so, since solar and wind are. [43:37] Tom Rump: Now as cheap as other alternatives in terms of cheaper and the cheaper, but the initial upfront cost may be higher and our current one first light claims. [43:49] Joe DeRivera: Anyway to have a hundred percent or no, does it? Yeah, or does, okay, the claims. [43:54] Bob Howe: All right, so it looks like we're at the top bullet, which is water consumption and closed loop cooling, and welcome Tucker's comments at this point because I know he's looked into this. [44:07] Tucker Favor: Yeah, I think closed-loop cooling is definitely going to be like the minimum requirement, but as technology continues to advance or even better methods that do exist out there, and a lot of the times the reason we're not using it is because it's very costly to do these other things, but from the perspective of protecting the environment, making sure what we're doing is actually sustainable, closed-loop cooling needs to be the minimum requirement. Now, if people wanna go on to talk about immersion cooling, and by immersion cooling, I do not mean putting a data center in the bay, right? We're not doing that. But where you actually emerge the components of the data center themselves in liquids that are designed for cooling, right? That's a little bit newer. It's a little bit more efficient because you don't have to use water. You can use these other dielectric fluids I've talked about to do stuff like that, again it's expensive, but it uses essentially no water, which is a huge improvement. Now I know that in last comments by the town council during the workshop camera it might have been the chair somebody saying, well hey, we need to compare these numbers to other major industries in town to figure out what makes sense. I understand that perspective, but we have a chance to make a good standard here regardless of that is focused on protecting the environment, not what we've done in the past. So yeah, I would, I would totally say at the at a minimum closed loop cooling with a mention that other options should be explored to include immersion cooling with dielectric fluids. [45:40] Bob Howe: How readily available is that dielectric fluid process, it kind of depends upon the types you [45:46] Tucker Favor: want. I mean, I'll put on my big America hat here and say capitalism is great, so people are making new versions of fluids all the time to sell because I know it's a big market, it's becoming bigger because of these concerns. So right now it might be a little bit nascent I guess, but it is quickly growing, and that the secondary requirement for these dielectric fluids is understanding that we need to avoid pfas at all costs, that needs to be written specifically into there because some of these fluids Might still involve those chemicals, whereas others are biodegradable, naturally occurring components, and the preference should be for those. So I can't comment on necessarily how readily available those are, but there it's definitely been a big up-and-coming improvement, and like I said, businesses know there's money to be made by producing those things, so it is starting to ramp up more. But that's why I'm not, that's why I'm not immediately saying closed lip cooling isn't good enough, just do this. That's why that should be the minimum, and then if possible, we should be pushing for even better. Maybe that discussion about [46:52] Bob Howe: dielectric fluids could become part of a contract zoning process. Yeah, I mean, whatever we [47:00] Tucker Favor: end up kind of getting through, I mean, I think a lot of this is going to come down to when we present these ideas, if we present them as a group in a message, or if we go, I believe there's supposed to be one more workshop for the town council on the subject. I think yeah, I haven't seen a date yet, but I believe so. But the moratorium will end in December for my knowledge. They have the ability, the ability to extend it again, which we might. I don't know what the current, I don't know if we've seen a new draft, because this draft came out in July I think, and I don't know that we've seen any updates. I don't know if we're on track or not for submitting recommendations and getting probably [47:35] Bob Howe: going to show up at the next Council Workshop, but yeah, I don't know. So yeah, so anyways, I'm kind [47:40] Tucker Favor: of going off topic here, but that would be my recommendation that we provide is minimum closed loop cooling, but push for more advanced methods as they become available. And can I ask if you [47:50] William White: know what the risk of leaks are for systems like closed loop or immersions? Yeah, so every [47:55] Tucker Favor: it depends on like how you want to classify a leak, right, like you know, there's a whole bunch of different ways that people try to cover these things. There are stories out there about the technicalities of there always being micro leaks, they call micro leaks, and that's why even in a closed loop system it's not zero water is used, it's substantially less. It's because you still have to recharge the system every once in a while, and like work with that. 's also why when I recommend biodegradable stuff That's part of the reason why, because if those are micro leaks, at least you know it's going to not harm the environment and it's going to kind of work itself out, whereas if you're using water with these other chemicals thrown into it and that's leaking, who knows as far as the actual rate. I don't have numbers on how much water you expect to lose through micro leaks in a regular basis. That would be interesting to see. I don't know if the numbers are there yet, but that would be something to look into, I guess. My main concern [48:50] William White: would be that any potential leaks might have an impact on other businesses or residents in the area. Like, our GI zones are not particularly large, and they're building residential complexes right next to them right now. All the new built, new construction on the base is right next to the GI zone. I think it's less than a mile away, so any potential leak would be very close to their, you [49:15] Tom Rump: know, that all the infrastructure. Are you assuming that the water would be contaminated or [49:22] William White: something? Well, that has been a concern in other places, but I'm also talking about like any potential cleanup costs or, you know, any, well, the pollution wouldn't necessarily just be water either. I guess I mentioned in the memo about heat pollution as well, that may have an impact. I think that's one of the later bullet points, but I can't, wondering what any potential impact would be on other businesses or residents [49:45] Tucker Favor: nearby. Yeah, and I will say it is, these days is increasingly rare that what they're using, the cooling, is just water for a lot of these, especially as they go to closed-loop direct-to-chip cooling, because it's touching the components directly, they have to have things that prevent corrosion and problems with the electric currents and stuff like that. And so yeah, if there's a major leak of something like that, you could have environmental concerns. So it is something to look at. I'll be honest, maybe after this, I'll go look myself and see if there's been any big stories about major leaks at data centers. I just don't know of any of them off the top of my head. That is something we do have to be concerned about, is every data center, and they should have this anyway, should have a disaster recovery plan, right, which is fairly common for these businesses, and there should just be a review of that plan at the town level to ensure that they have a plan for responding to major leaks on site and what that plan is on [50:44] Ramona Teamee: The topic of closely cooling, I think it's important to remember that what we're talking about is heat transfer. So you know, the chip heats up and then it heats up the closed loop fluid and then that heat needs to get out of the closed loop fluid. Think about like in a like a heat pump, right? You've got your mini split inside and you've got a heat exchanger on the outside of your house and that is a closed loop system. So even if you have a closed loop system where no like water is going into the data center directly to the chip to cool it down, you're you're heating up all of the fluid in this closed-loop system which means that at some point in that system you need some sort of heat exchanger. And whether that is the coolant to air like I guess with a heat pump then you're dumping that heat into the nearby atmosphere, if it is like coolant to water then again you're talking about water usage even though it isn't directly being used to cool the chips it's being used to cool the coolant that is you know cooling the chips. And then I as I understand it the other option is some sort of electronic like chiller where it's using electricity to cool down the coolant directly which obviously then means there's a lot more electrical usage. I don't really understand the processes behind using electricity to cool something down without putting that heat somewhere else but it feels like that's if that is indeed how that system works that would be the only reasonable thing because you wouldn't be dumping heat into the nearby ecosystems or using large amounts of water to cool the coolant. My concern with focusing on like the water usage efficiency is such a metric would have to take into account like the full water usage of the facility which kind of goes against the whole idea of the water usage efficiency metric as I understand it to make sure that water isn't being used like indirectly in the cooling process even though it isn't cooling the chip directly like to cool down the coolants as I understand it that's like one of the big loopholes that does get exploited in terms of regulating these data centers does [53:29] Bob Howe: the use of dielectric fluids bypass those concerns in some way you still got to get rid of the heat yeah you see oh yeah you still you still [53:38] Tucker Favor: Have heat now, they might have a, I mean, water has pretty good specific heat, but you'd still have to do quite a bit to get rid of the heat somewhere. Now, we are not a place that typically does major project planning. By that, I mean other countries like Denmark and stuff have taken that water and used it as radiant heating for nearby houses. That's a great idea. Would it work here in Brunswick, Maine? In the winter, that would be great, but, like, in the summer, you'd still have a bunch of heat that you'd still have to kind of figure out. And that's a, that makes a already complex building project substantially more complex because then you're, you're like planning an entire zone out rather than just individual buildings, so there's, there's been other proposed ideas, people have proposed using radiant heat to have community greenhouses that work throughout the year as we lose community gardens, to have those instead, but yeah, regardless of which fluid you use, the heat does have to go somewhere, well [54:35] Bob Howe: What do we want to try to agree on with respect to this issue, the heat issue, yeah [54:47] Tom Rump: Yeah, water, well, we're proposing that closed-loop cooling is a minimum, yeah, and [54:56] Bob Howe: A possible discussion about dielectric fluids, I [55:00] Tom Rump: Guess the question I had, a question about whether we didn't talk about energy consumption and efficiency, whether that's something, as long as it's renewable energy, do we care about energy consumption and efficiency, I think, I think we do because, yeah [55:14] Tucker Favor: I mean, if it's not renewable energy, then that's a no starter right away. If it is renewable energy, we still want them to be using appropriate technologies to make sure that they're still not causing other problems. Now, if they're going to go entirely microgrid, maybe you don't care about the official efficiency as much, but there's no reason not to still include that as a requirement when we've seen across the entire world at this point, since as centers are going everywhere, that those PUE metrics Have been coming down all over the place, and we should continue to push for that even here, especially, I mean, even if it's using renewable, in my mind at least [55:51] Speaker I (unidentified): Certainly we could discuss that, but that's just kind of, so is 1.6 suggested here, is that reasonable [55:57] Tucker Favor: I think 1.6 is like the old kind of expected standard these days, and I wrote it somewhere in my email to them. Some of the bigger prominent data centers go as low as like 1.1.2, and I don't know why we shouldn't go. In my recommended, maybe a little bit conservatively, was 1.4. Should be the worst-case scenario we talked about, but ideally it should be better than that. And again, that's just looking at the global numbers as they've been coming down, is tech people like to talk about the global average. But the global average includes data centers that were built, you know, already five or six years ago with nascent technology that nobody really cared about, so those skew what we should be expecting now. So now we should be pushing for something a little bit better, I would say at least 1.4. Can you just say a little bit [56:46] Bob Howe: more about those units? What do they refer to? Yeah, so the power use effect effectiveness measure [56:52] Tucker Favor: is, and I always get this wrong, so I apologize. Well, actually it might be [56:56] Tom Rump: defined in India. It says determine by calculating a total electrical demand divided by the total power consumed by the components that process, manages, [57:06] Speaker I (unidentified): store data. Yeah, so one would be perfect. Yeah, well, yeah, no losses. And 1.6 is [57:15] Speaker J (unidentified): saying that 60% of the energy that comes into this, into the place, is not being [57:20] Tucker Favor: used for calculations, right? It's doing something else, like keeping the lights on at night, or you know, something like that, fans or whatever. Yeah, so now admittedly the, and the reason we also talk about like 1.4, and this is, I think we're going to really get into leads, I don't know how much time we really have for this, there is an inverse bit there, because the more people working at a data center, naturally the more power you need, because they need their own workstations, they need the ability to go in and out and do stuff. So that's why, as we talk about these things, this idea of we don't consider data centers job creation sites, but the more employment is there, then there is a higher likelihood that their efficiency won't be as good, because it's not just processing data, there's people there, they're also doing their own work and doing things like that. Again, that's why I think 1.4 and better is the direction we should go, but there's a whole employment argument that this committee is not, we should not be focused on. That it's not, it's [58:15] Chrissy Enemas: Not for us right now. May ask a question. So one of Julie Erdman's big questions of the committee is whether the threshold of a one megawatt facility, because they want to prohibit everything above a one megawatt facility, and so maybe some of the things you're talking about, Tucker, would be true for facilities above that one megawatt and maybe are irrelevant because the town is leaning towards banning those all together. Yeah, so I guess like going back to that original question, like does her, she's interested to know like if this committee supports that threshold or if this committee thinks that threshold should be lower or higher, and then maybe once we sort of figure that out, we would have opinions about some of these other things because we would have our ideal facility size in mind. Yeah, the only reason I haven't been going down that Rose because I [59:06] Tucker Favor: I thought she had said that there was legal ramifications and that we couldn't just outright [59:10] Chrissy Enemas: ban they, there was something about doing like an analysis. I'm not exactly sure what that [59:16] Tucker Favor: looks like, but yeah, so if we're not going to necessarily worry about that at this point in time, yeah, I think one megawatt is certainly an interesting choice. My understanding is that First Light is bigger than that and that they're probably closer to one and a half to two, so they would have to be, you know, excluded from that, just like kind of a moving forward thing. [59:37] Joe DeRivera: I thought they were saying 750 kilowatt. No, they, I mean, they have two generators that are both 750 [59:44] Tucker Favor: kilowatts so my assumption is that if that's their backup power that they 're probably a little bit over one if they're using both of them now if they're only using one there's just a backup for the backup which could be but yeah so that would be i personally for me i would be totally fine with the one megawatt data center i know the chair of the town council thought that we couldn't make that distinction until we knew what other industries in town were using which is another reason why i've kind of avoided that argument because I don't know if that question was answered. I think he specifically wanted to know the power usage of the hospitals and like the Walmart, and I don't know if that information was made available. Yeah, so one megawatt I think is fine. Just for a reminder here, the state is looking at 20 megawatts as their threshold for all of their ordinances and their, the standards they're putting into place, so we would have a little bit of a gap there between us saying, hey, we're Going to stop at one and they're going to go up to 20. But that's just something to think about. I'm personally fine with saying [1:00:47] Bob Howe: nothing over like one or five, so I understand. Below one megawatt, you're saying we wouldn't [1:00:54] Tucker Favor: impose these requirements? No, we're saying anything above one megawatt, we're not even having the discussion. You're not building in Brunswick, okay, and then we're figuring out some of this other stuff. But I think, I think the reason Chrissy is bringing it up, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is you know if it's under one megawatt, we don't necessarily have to be so demanding in every single aspect because there are other industries here that are working through that, and maybe we don't have to make as many minute decisions. We can kind of let the planning board go through their process, and then we can come back and make sure that everything is still, unless I'm, unless I'm misunderstanding the, well I think that's [1:01:29] Chrissy Enemas: not untrue, but I think I was just thinking about what you're saying about the bigger facilities require more staffing, and it's like, oh yeah, like, well, we might not even get there because if we keep that one megawatt threshold, that staffing issue and the efficiencies might not get, become a problem. That's where I was going, but yes, like, you know, I think that it's also true that this committee can sort of start high level, and we can sort of dig deeper into the nitty-gritty [1:01:55] Tucker Favor: as the policy develops too. Yeah, so I mean, yeah, so maybe that's a good conversation for us. So that in, does everybody here think that anything above one megawatt constitutes a large data center from the perspective of Brunswick, or would you rather have a different, do you think a different [1:02:14] Tom Rump: metric is needed? Yeah, I think that's, yeah, well, I mean, the table that was in Julie's email showed a small data center as one to five megawatts, which is equivalent to 800 to 4300 single-family households, and if you think that Brunswick probably has around 10,000 single-family households, so that's half of a Brunswick, yeah, if you're five megawatts, so that's [1:02:45] William White: pretty big. Yeah, I would think any threshold probably have to be based on what Brunswick's capacity is, another discussion earlier about getting a professional assessment of the Brunswick power grid's [1:02:58] Tom Rump: capacity. Well, that's another question about if we're assuming 100 renewables, then it would not [1:03:04] William White: Be coming off the grid well, but there was a possibility raised that they could sponsor the production of renewables elsewhere in Maine, and then, well, yeah, I mean, it's possible that if [1:03:16] Bob Howe: you're a member, let's say you're a member of a community solar farm, solar panels aren't on your property, they're somewhere else, but you are responsible in a sense for having those built, and you're using, you're credited with an equivalent amount of power. I would think the data send us might try to do the same thing if they didn't have enough land to have gobs and gobs of solar panels right next door. In that case, it's got to get to them via the grid, the [1:03:48] Speaker J (unidentified): This issue came up at the workshop, and someone who knew something about one of the counselors who had some experience with this said you can find a power company consultant that will say, oh yeah, we can deliver the power that you need, absolutely. And then that cost of capital investment gets passed on to the local population. The rate payers. Yeah. But the physical capability of delivering the power that the data center wants is simply a matter of paying for it. It's not a matter of impossibility. That was said by someone who seemed to know. [1:04:35] William White: I also add, I mentioned in the memo on page three, the possibility of requiring an environmental impact assessment for any construction or data center, and I think a lot of our concerns will be addressed by a thorough enough environmental impact assessment process. I'm not sure what that would look like, I don't know what Brunswick's history of that is, I know on a state level, federal level, the EPA has done that traditionally, and the memo mentions hiring a third party independent assessor for that project. I [1:05:06] Chrissy Enemas: don't know. I think that having done some assessments for some agencies before, they don't necessarily cover some of the things that we might be concerned about, like the renewable, for example. Like those assessments would, they're mostly about certain acts and laws that are already in place at the federal level, like, you know, at one example is just like endangered species, sensitive rivers, that kind of stuff, but I've not seen on any of those that impact statements something about like whether or not it's 100% renewable, or what's happening with water, like with what counselor team is saying about the water that is not in the closed system, but if it's outside that closed system, like it Wouldn't touch those things, so I think that the committee should have an opinion in addition to that. Committee should, what, have its own opinion sort of on top of the environmental assessments. I mean, those environmental assessments, they're, they're good, but they're also, yeah, they're, yeah, they're just based on what's most typically at the federal level. I mean, I mean, also, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. [1:06:30] William White: okay well we did have a discussion on potential pollution that a center could produce and i personally would like for example to make sure that there's no wastewater making its way into the andrew scoggin i guess an example of what an impact assessment could help prevent so [1:06:48] Chrissy Enemas: It would, it wouldn't, that would happen if there was a cat. I wish I had like categories in front of me but that would happen if there was a category about its proximity to sensitive rivers or waters it wouldn't say like there wouldn't be in the assessment like is it gonna Is it gonna impact the Androscoggin River it would be like is it 's it within a certain number of feet from a identified sensitive at a river or body of water or something like that so if you know and maybe and that's good like we won't care about all waters and that kind of thing but It's not like it's going to in and of itself protect like the Anderson River, for example, if that makes sense. Like, it's, it's really, it's about its proximity to rivers and streams and stuff off some of, and those protected ones, and so it might not necessarily protect the Inderscoggin if it's in a certain location that doesn't touch that, it's. [1:07:56] William White: My understanding that those sorts of assessments typically involve a risk assessment more generally, and so the proximity is part of that risk assessment, like the likelihood of potential pollution making its way to whatever is nearby, and the threshold how close it can be is based on that risk assessment. So like I would like to see what that proximity would, like whatever that assessment would be, it would be an interesting thing to see, and I would hope that any potential data center would have. That kind of work done to make sure it's not putting anything nearby at risk, yeah. [1:08:33] Chrissy Enemas: I'm not saying that it wouldn't have that work done. I'm just saying that it might not have, like, if you, if there's a specific area that you wanted to protect, if it's in, if it's in a location that's like far enough away from it, then it wouldn't necessarily do that. Like you said, the Andrew Scotland River, right, if it's in a certain location, it might not. So that was just like an [1:08:57] William White: example. Like I know that's been an issue with other data centers near rivers. I know, I don't think any of the GI zones, well, a couple of them are close to Andrew Scotland, but it's the one near the base that's the biggest one that isn't. I was using it as an example. Yeah. [1:09:13] Ramona Teamee: Okay. So a little context around, like, the megawatt question, because it's talked about in the terms of residential homes. I brought this up at the workshop as well. And this isn't a residential home, of course. It is a, you know, it's a company. It's a commercial enterprise. And so, like, the actual electrical usage of Brunswick is, of course, far in excess of, you know, the average number of kilowatts used by a residential home times the number of homes in Brunswick, because we also have commercial enterprises here. So on Brunswick Landing, there is a solar farm, which is a 1.5 megawatt solar farm. You can actually see it from Katahdin Drive over by Stark Systems, just kind of peeking out from behind one of the hangars. And that, according to the description of it on the Murrah site, I think it is here, takes like, accounts for 13.3 percent of Brunswick Landing's annual electrical load, and again, that's a 1.5 megawatt array, and will eliminate more than 2 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions each year. So, you know, you could just proportionally scale back from there to figure out what approximately the carbon emissions would be of, you know, powering a one megawatt data center off of fossil fuels, and you also should be able to get an idea of what the power usage of Brunswick Landing would be, at least based on whatever year this was written in. It looks like probably 2019. So I think it in one way it doesn't matter and what we're really talking about is the absolute values of do we want to have a data center in Brunswick using more than that amount of power and therefore dumping that amount of heat somewhere. And in another sense it is you know it's an interesting thing to think about any usage of that amount of fossil fuel power. I don't know how much like a Walmart Supercenter uses but I'm sure it's quite a bit and I don't know if towns have the like zoning authority to just say like you know power usage beyond a certain amount needs to be renewable. Feels like that would be a hard ordinance to really craft effectively but this is of course only a piece of where our electricity is going in Brunswick and I think that's along with the proportionality like what the one megawatt actually means what I'd like to emphasize [1:12:11] Bob Howe: Chrissy do you have any thoughts on whether that would be enforceable a requirement to have 100 renewable [1:12:21] Chrissy Enemas: I don't know that's a good question for codes I think that probably we want to know that fairly [1:12:30] Bob Howe: fairly soon well I think we can recommend that yeah and do we want to do the same for backup [1:12:38] Tom Rump: generation that's the next bullet so I guess the option there are whether it's battery or [1:12:46] Bob Howe: generator you are not renewable energy as long as the power that goes into the battery was [1:12:51] Tom Rump: generated renewably that'd be fine well if you're requiring it to be 100 percent renewable then going into the battery would be that yeah everybody [1:13:05] Bob Howe: good with that otherwise [1:13:07] Speaker J (unidentified): it's going to be most likely gas right yeah and I think I think the risk of allowing generators to provide the backup is that the company could I see that there are requirements in the draft here saying no more than an hour was it an hour a week except for the testing but if that capacity is there the temptation will be to use it if it's if there's some spike in renewable costs or dip in a bit renewable availability and I can imagine that the company would be far more interested in paying a fine and using that rather than complying with the letter of the law rather than or complying with it just paying a fine rather than complying so I think I think battery is battery backup is essential to maintain the integrity of the carbon emissions that were gold that we have something [1:14:23] Bob Howe: we can all agree on [1:14:25] Tom Rump: So I believe all the places, well I don't know about the East Brunswick one, but the other two places, the industrial park and the one on the base, are both on sewer, but I don't know about East Brunswick, whether that one is, I'm not sure. It is, it's over near the hospital, which presumably is on sewer, so any issues regarding electrical, water, and sewer [1:15:02] Bob Howe: capacity, well in a sense we've dealt with the electrical capacity, I think, yeah. Could the town [1:15:12] Tom Rump: say asking it that be a closed-loop cooling, so that would address the water and [1:15:20] Bob Howe: sewer, as long as even that doesn't overburden the town's water supply. There's not going to be many people [1:15:27] Tom Rump: there, so there's not going to be a lot of sewer, noise, and vibration. The one thing that I have read about is that some complaints that whether the current noise standards that we have would be sufficient, since a lot of the noise is very low frequency from data centers, yeah, I mean [1:15:51] Tucker Favor: I think for a lot of people it's whether it's low frequency or not, it's just it's constant and it's noticeable, and that's kind of the persistent problem, even when you're like a [1:16:01] Tom Rump: mile away you can still kind of hear. Would that be true for less than a megawatt? Once I mean I [1:16:06] Tucker Favor: live on the landing and I've never heard, I haven't heard anything from First Light, so I mean that's very anecdotal, but I mean I think that the question is from our committee, is there a sustainability angle on the on the noise piece, or is that something that kind of falls outside of our purview, that we can bring it up but we're not really the ones to advise on that piece. I was [1:16:30] Chrissy Enemas: actually just going to make that point, the next four lines are actually a little outside our purview. I mean I think if you all have an opinion we can talk about it, but I don't know, I wouldn't [1:16:40] Tom Rump: encourage you to really dive deep on it, so it sounds like our primary recommendations would be closed loop cooling as a minimum, 100 renewable energy, and battery backup, yeah, I mean we will, I [1:16:53] Tucker Favor: will say I think the committee will have some requests for annual reporting, but on the water usage and stuff like that, will, but that's the only additional thing I think [1:17:04] Chrissy Enemas: so then for my note, so I think yeah, I think what you just said Tom was very clear, and I've been taking notes to give back to Julie, but I didn't get a strong sense about the size of the facility. Does the committee, maybe the, and it's okay if the committee just doesn't have an opinion about that due to information available, but I just wanted to make sure that we, there was one physical size [1:17:29] Speaker I (unidentified): Sounds like the right size to me. Oh, okay, not the physical size. Yes, some information about where [1:17:38] Chrissy Enemas: that number came from. Or I don't, do you know, Docker, you know, you've been involved? Yeah, I don't [1:17:43] Speaker I (unidentified): know, let's get curious. Just, I don't, I mean, five also sounds like a good number. I don't know, okay, below 20 or above 20 is banned in the state, right? Well, it's not technically, not technically [1:17:55] Tucker Favor: that's their, that's their side, their size for large data centers, so that's what they're working with. Yeah, admittedly to my knowledge there's no globally accepted standard for what makes, and admittedly I think even if there was, you have to take into account the size of the town and everything anyways, for constitutes something that's big or small, so yeah, I agree, I think one megawatt is fine. I could see up to five, but I would, I would certainly, I know, I prefer one [1:18:22] Speaker I (unidentified): megawatt as a good, from like a sustainability perspective, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of to say there. It sounds like it might be more of like a business interest perspective, like what type of data centers have been courting in Maine. Have they been in the five-megawatt range or the one? [1:18:42] Tucker Favor: I don't know. Well, as long as they meet all of these other metrics, right? Yeah. That's the key piece. [1:18:47] Tom Rump: It depends on where it is. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that our industrial zones are very big. [1:18:56] Speaker I (unidentified): Yeah, I think that's another piece of it. [1:18:58] Tom Rump: We wouldn't be able to fit anyone in there anyway. [1:18:59] Speaker I (unidentified): But, again, I don't really have a good idea have what a one megawatt worth of a ten, so it seems like one megawatt probably five times [1:19:07] Chrissy Enemas: Yeah, sorry, so I'm getting the sense that one is space, which is we don't have a particularly strong, yeah, okay, I'll just let her know that, like I'll ask the question about where that one megawatt came from, but it just feels like not one feels good to us, but we don't really have enough information to make other decisions, and it really is the other things that are most important, the energy consumption, the water consumption, and that kind of thing, and then I'll make a note about the reporting as well to make sure that the environmental stuff is in the reporting [1:19:37] Speaker J (unidentified): So I, sorry to drag this out, but I want to understand what closed-loop cooling really means. Where does the heat get transferred away in a closed-loop system? Well, and so that's what [1:19:49] Tucker Favor: Counselor team was saying is there's different variants that can work through that process, but there has to be a heat transfer somewhere, and that's what we don't really know. If they're going to use a chiller, if they're going to use an open-air duct that actually just lets it evaporate into the air by heating up the surrounding air, we could potentially look at what's the type. Sorry, it can't evaporate. Well, I got it. [1:20:13] Speaker J (unidentified): Sorry. Disperse or diffuse. Disperse or, yeah. Okay. Yeah, so you have a closed-loop system. You have some loop that is in contact one way or another with hot chips, it takes the heat, you now have a hot fluid, which is then circulated to some other location, and that heat is expressed somehow, dissipated somehow, yeah. And that can be either directly to the air, it could be immersed in the river, in principle, in principle, yeah, it could be circulated through the ground in a closed loop system there, but that's what we're talking about, yeah. Okay, yeah, I mean, but [1:21:00] Tucker Favor: Yeah, so it's called closed loop, but it's still in a way open. The water is a closed loop, the heat is not. Okay, I just, and to be fair, closed loop systems you do tend to still have some evaporation of the water. It's not like you're eliminating the need to put more water into there, but yeah, I mean, [1:21:19] Speaker J (unidentified): You know more of the science, yes. I just wanted to understand exactly where that heat transfer [1:21:25] Tucker Favor: Was occurring and how. Yeah, I mean, for some of these people though, literally they pump it up to like a roof and it goes through like a cooling tower, right? And I mean, there's all sorts of ways that they try to figure out how to make it work, but again, the whole idea, well, cooling towers are more evaporative than other things are, but there's all, there's, there's different types of methods that they use, and some are better than others, but I couldn't give you a rundown of all of the currently, sure. These ones for the [1:21:50] Speaker J (unidentified): Best option, right? Your car radiators, a closed-loop system, yeah. Okay, sure, I [1:22:00] Bob Howe: Understood what closed-loop really meant. I know that noise and vibration is not within our purview. I happen to have a neighbor who is an engineer at BIW who works on noise and vibration and chips. He might be able to suggest some standards that could be, could be adopted. [1:22:17] Tom Rump: Well, maybe he could talk to Julie, yeah, she's the lead working on this, right? Yeah, okay, thank you, that was interesting. All right, working group reports, solid weights, Tyler, okay. [1:22:44] Speaker I (unidentified): Yeah, so in August, Tucker and I met. We invited Ramona to sit in to our conversation, which was great, and we talked about a few different points. So we've been making progress on the multi-family update. Do you have an update? Tell them about the meeting. [1:23:14] Tom Rump: Yes, I can talk about. I reached out to Thornton Oaks. I happen to know the fellow who's a facilities manager there, Tim May. Reached out to him a couple weeks ago about the multi-family recycling program that ecomaine is offering, and he considered it and was thinking about it. In the meantime, a fellow that I know from who lives there also is working with the social justice group at Thornton Oaks, and he also talked to Tim, and eventually we were able to get Zoe to come to the meeting. There was a meeting of the social justice group and she made a presentation about the multifamily recycling program. Tim May and his assistant who works on the recycling stuff, Buddy, was there also, and at the end of it they agreed to pursue the program with eco-main. So that's our first multi-family facility. That's great. We'll keep [1:24:22] Speaker I (unidentified): you apprised as to what happens there. Yeah, I'll, I can follow up with Zoe and we can, and then, and the other sector now that was successful. I think I'm going to follow up with Zoe to try again at the Brunswick Housing Authority. I think some of their recent successes will probably give us a little more leverage there, and hopefully they'll be a little more receptive too. Yeah, I [1:24:43] Tom Rump: think in, the powerpoint that Zoe had, the last page of the powerpoint, last slide, showed different groups that they had worked with, and there was, they worked with Piper Shores in Scarborough, which I think was of interest to throwing out because it's another elderly community, and that's helpful to know others have done it and have brought success, particularly [1:25:05] Speaker I (unidentified): Bath Housing as well. Yeah, we talked briefly about the trash audit. Sounds like Chrissy's gonna to connect with Casella, and I can follow up with her, and you're going to check with eco main also. Yeah, I don't know what role eco main would have here, but I know they've talked about it in the past of that's a service they do, right? So I would, yeah, I'd see if, see what they would, what they would propose. Okay, the other thing we're going to look into, I don't think I have a firm update yet, but paper bag. Rate comparability, I think there had been some requests right from some people in council, and that has been going around that price has stayed the same for a while. So we were at least going to get a consensus of other towns, would just pretty much go on the sites and figure out what those costs are. And is that something Jay would have, do you know? Christy, I could ask. Okay, it's something we could also do too. I mean, that should be publicly available information too about what other people charge is. That something your committee would pursue then? Yeah, is that what you're saying? Yes, but I mean if staff could help that would be. [1:26:21] Tom Rump: Helpful to know. Yeah, we've talked about in the past, it's actually one of our annual goals. [1:26:28] Speaker I (unidentified): So we talked about the solid weight, solid waste management plan again, that's like a really big scope, but we talked about it, Tucker and I are both reviewing that plan, and I think maybe the goal now will just be to highlight what we have failed to focus on the last six years, what you might look. [1:26:46] Tom Rump: At, there's a section in there that talks about some short-term recommendations. Yeah, and see which of some of those have happened and some haven't. Yeah, sorry I missed that, but what do you, this is a 2020 solid waste vision statement and short-term waste management plan. [1:27:04] Speaker I (unidentified): There had been some conversation with some members of Council that it might be worth looking at again six years later, but we don't really have a like a hard mandate in our subcommittee of like what exactly we want to do with that, but we're at least started with let's review it, we'll figure out where we are. So a little nebulous, but some other things we reached out to Chrissy about recycling tonnage reports, but then I came and there's all these great information for the last years, but Chrissy. Was great and got us some information for our current year that I sent out to everybody right before the meeting. We also got, You connected us with Public Works who gave us information on how much those Agricycle sites cost the town per year, and now we have some data about how they're being used. So Tucker and I could review that, I believe it was like a little over five thousand dollars for both sites, so about 26, I think 2600 dollars per site. [1:28:07] Tucker Favor: It cost the town per year, so I think we're going to review it. Well, that was through, so that was, so January through, oh that was just till now, January through July, five thousand two hundred and six. [1:28:18] Tom Rump: dollars. That's now food waste. That's yeah for this too. So it was yeah agri-cycle. So it's twice [1:28:23] Speaker I (unidentified): as much essentially. It'll be yeah we'll see probably roughly okay. That's good to know. So one of our thinking is reviewing that, you know now that we have usage we have a cost we can make a recommendation if we want to add another one. There has been some conversation about possibly adding a third that's you know, I think part of that is like is their demand for a third, you know [1:28:49] Tucker Favor: It's are these being used enough and because the numbers here look like it is increase it does [1:28:56] Tom Rump: it does yeah which the trend is relatively it's up to 290 last year [1:29:03] Speaker I (unidentified): it just doesn't 577. [1:29:07] Tucker Favor: it just looks like we don't get quarterly updates at least so it's hard to know where we're at this year but that the trend previously has been pretty good yeah I think as awareness grows on them well and I was going to say at the at the town barbecue we had a few people come up and they saw the composting and many of them had no idea there [1:29:28] Speaker I (unidentified): were public drop offs yeah every time we table people learn about it yeah so if the cost [1:29:35] Tom Rump: annually is 10 000 and it was 290 that's like 34 bucks a ton which is cheaper than the tipping fee at ecomaine i suspect so it is it would be saving the town money yeah you should analyze that yeah and you've got a new member right joe is going to join you oh joyce okay i like that more [1:29:56] Speaker I (unidentified): figures hi joe and tyler that's all we got for now we don't have a plan great thank you [1:30:06] Speaker J (unidentified): sounds like you got some stuff to work on yeah we do okay mark yeah i personally have been consumed with thinking about the data center and haven't done much beyond that. The national EV promotion month has come and gone, or it's in progress. It's September. And so, I mean, we knew, once we learned about it, that we really didn't have time to capitalize on that. So I think we'll look at that for EV promotion going forward. I did have a conversation with Julia Henze, who suggested that we, as a subcommittee, take up the question of whether the charging stations at the Cedar Street lot, how best to use those and take advantage of them, because I think they're underused. So that was something that we might add to our deliberations. [1:31:05] Tom Rump: Okay. And those are level two, right? Yes. Yeah. And there are now level three chargers out at Brunswick Landing. Brunswick Landing, yeah. [1:31:15] Speaker J (unidentified): And the only other level three chargers in town are the ones at the auto dealers. [1:31:21] Bob Howe: I think I drove by one. [1:31:23] Speaker J (unidentified): Yeah, there's one at Bill Dodge, and then there's a couple on Thompson. [1:31:27] Ramona Teamee: Principal, are they available? Can I mention something about the EV month and charging and all that? this might be an idea for next year since the month is already in progress here but i know a lot of people are very aware of course of the existence of evs and the an expense of driving an ev compared to a gas car and the concern really comes around can i do this in my life right like are there charging options in my vicinity is it going to actually fit into my lifestyle to keep my vehicle charged or is it going to be like this big inconvenience i don't know that there is a very comprehensive like map available through the town of the various charging locations, but trying to make it really clear to people, like this is how close a charger is to your house, and this is like roughly what that would cost, is probably one of the best things that we can do to get people to take that step to get an easy, is just to illustrate to them that you actually can do this, and it's not going to be that [1:32:35] Tom Rump: much of a change or inconvenience. It's a terrific suggestion if we can work on. Might tie into the Cedar Street lot because I'm assuming that charging at Cedar Street would be considerably less costly than charging at the high speed chargers, which tend to be not cheap. We [1:32:57] Chrissy Enemas: We have on our website a link to Efficiency Maine's website, which takes you to the page where you can get to the find a charger. It's always a little bit tricky to link on the website to other outside organizations because they change so often that you can just lose track of what's changed, and all of a sudden you've got dead links everywhere. Everywhere, but we do have those, and I know that there are some, like there's like three, I think, like really just popular Maps out there that people go to. I think it's, there's like a Charge Point one, and then there's like another one that's Charge Hub, yeah, like there's like some, and I think I have six on my phone. Okay, yeah, so I mean it's, it's why it's one of those things where it's like, if you have an EV, I think a lot of people like know about those sites, but if you don't, then you never look at a map, and that's where I think you're going. It's like getting those new users to that, or those potential customers to it. [1:33:55] Speaker G (unidentified): A few years ago, I did a tabling event with this committee where we printed out a few of those and put them on the tables, and people were like, oh, look at that. I didn't realize there were so many so close. So exactly to your point, I think people who have them know about it, but that's not the, obviously, target to get people to buy one. So, yeah, I think hard copies, [1:34:15] Tom Rump: So whatever at tabling, yeah. The issue, I think it's a great success for people that live in apartments. If you live in a single-family home, it makes all the sense in the world to put a charger in, to put a level two charger in, and charge at home overnight. It's so much cheaper than gasoline. But to charge at these for-profit facilities is not a lot cheaper. Phase two is level two is cheap, cheaper, but the level three is actually more expensive than gas in a lot of places because they have to take a Man, they have to pay demand charges to the utility that draws so much power. Okay, one thing I was going to say, Mark, is you might think about talking with Peggy, a former member of this committee, because Peggy and Fred are working on next year's birthday event already, and they tried to do something with EVs last year and didn't have a lot of success, but there might be an opportunity to do something working with them. All [1:35:25] Speaker J (unidentified): right, anything else on your group? I don't think so, nothing to report on. [1:35:37] Speaker G (unidentified): So at the town gown whatever gathering, I saw barbecue. Would it, no, this was a boden at the community. Oh, okay, yeah, that's when I spoke to Julian. So I spoke to Betsy Beeman, who's CEO of CEI, and she's willing, so we just need to get the town and Betsy and her lawyers in the same place at the same time and say how would we make this work, because they don't want to be in charge of it, and so we would have to say is the town willing to be, you know, maintaining it, taking any liability issue, that sort of thing. So it could, okay, let's talk. It could happen, probably not. [1:36:23] Tom Rump: Okay, fair enough. [1:36:27] Bob Howe: Okay, Bob, you're on municipal building energy audits. I think that was a little dormant for a while, but I saw an email from Jay Astle this morning to John Monahan saying, yeah, I called [1:36:42] Tom Rump: Jay this morning and asked him about that. He had sent John an email a couple weeks ago which John did not respond to, so we don't know whether you've had any further conversation with John. Well, during [1:36:51] Chrissy Enemas: This meeting, we did get a response. Well, you did. Yeah, and I could, well, we'll let you know that. So John is going to let us know if he can proceed in mid-October. He's dealing with some personal issues and he's not sure if he can proceed. So he said he'll give us, he had visitors for a while and okay, energy coach, if I suppose, sorry, suppose if John doesn't proceed, we will get back together to come up with a plan B. [1:37:20] Speaker G (unidentified): So guys, proceed with what? [1:37:22] Chrissy Enemas: The contract to do energy audits for the town. That's up, it's not already happened. That was to do like a preliminary walkthrough sort of assessment type thing. This is like to do the fall. Yeah, official. Okay. [1:37:37] Speaker J (unidentified): Am I right that the conclusion of the first round was that a scaled back thing which he could do himself was [1:37:47] Chrissy Enemas: advisable and that's what we engaged him for. It would save us 90,000 about. Yeah, he had, I don't [1:37:55] Tom Rump: know whether they signed a contract or not, but he and Jay talked about that. Yeah, I think we were [1:38:00] Chrissy Enemas: waiting for that contract to come in. Anything [1:38:05] Bob Howe: else not on that energy coach program also referred to who's energy navigator i've been going to meetings of the southern maine resiliency council's energy subcommittee which has been working on this and sydney ranoletti who's a staff member at maine council of government's been doing a lot of work on this she produced what will become a website that the town of brunswick and others could use she sent me a nearly complete draft of it she had the town of Brunswick's logo on and I said well we can't do that, you have permission to that, and so we'll want to figure out how we get there to that be able to do that. But in the meantime, I made printed copies of the website pages. It's quite attractive and it's got a lot of good resources on it. What didn't work is the last couple pages which would have hyperlinks when this becomes a website, and we had, there was some interest at the barbecue and I think I got six or seven people were interested enough to give me their email addresses. So when this thing does eventually go live, I'll let them know how to find it. I did just sit in on a [1:39:28] Tom Rump: Webinar that was offered by through Sydney's group, which included some representatives, one from Acton, Massachusetts, that you know has a energy coach program, and I guess what I learned is just about all the towns, these are a couple three towns in Massachusetts that have these programs, they're led by a staff person from the town, so who sort of keeps on top of things, you know, works with people and reminds them and stuff, and trains the volunteers. I think it would be challenging for us to try and do something without a staff person to do it on our own but I guess we'll find out well right and that 's the big [1:40:17] Bob Howe: question, how much beyond putting up a website in the collective municipalities involved in this thing do with volunteers, you know, there's a pound barbecue, there's farmers markets. I mean, I suppose the question is, can we come up with a cadre of people who will staff those and somebody to manage it overall? [1:40:46] Tom Rump: There are two different training programs that they mentioned. One is through Rewiring America, which is two hours a week for four weeks, and then there's one through something called the Heat Smart Alliance, which is one and a half hours a week for six weeks. One of those is free, I think the Rewiring America one is free, so there are sources available for training volunteers. I mean, it's possible we could try and do something periodically with the library and their, you know, repair cafe thing, the thing that Abby tried to do when she was here, but I guess we'll wait to see that. Well, and there were nice fun life [1:41:29] Bob Howe: Sydney was asked if MCOG could provide that staff person for the towns within its purview, and she was going to look into that, and so I, she may have an answer to that on the next meeting on the first of October. Okay, and the other business would have been data centers. We've had that discussion, we have had that discussion. [1:41:56] Tom Rump: Okay, we have a couple members of the public here. Did you have comments for us? [1:42:03] Chrissy Enemas: If you want to speak, please come up to the podium. Yeah, if you come up here you'll be [1:42:07] Tom Rump: recorded. My [1:42:14] Mark Buck: wife and I are, hello everybody, my name is Mark Buck, which I'm a resident of Brunswick with my wife Katherine. We moved here at the beginning of August from Milwaukee. Since we've been here, we went to a Conservation Committee meeting that was interesting, this one also very interesting, and I think the topics that you're talking about are ones that we've had some peripheral familiarity with, no direct engagement, but it's nice to see a community that takes this all so seriously. That was really a, that's a nice change for us, actually. [1:42:51] Bob Howe: You came from where? [1:42:53] Mark Buck: Milwaukee, yeah. I won't speak for my wife, but she has an energy auditing background and was executive director of a watershed Association in Pennsylvania for a number of years. So I spent my career in the US Forest Service, so a lot of environmental interest in. Yeah, I did see, I think what brought me here tonight was I saw something about a urban tree canopy assessment or mapping effort is [1:43:23] Tom Rump: that something that there's a group that's trying to start a nonprofit to focus on planting trees in Brunswick? It's called the Brunswick Canopy Collaborative, and they have a meeting on the 30th of this month. They usually meet at the library. Okay, if you want to check with me afterwards, I could give you some contact information. That'd be great. And I can also point out to you that we still have a vacancy on this committee, so if either one of you are interested, we would be happy to have you join us. I think the public comment period is [1:43:56] Joe DeRivera: a reasonably good recruiting tool. Okay, thank you Tom. I had a question. Yes, I've been trying to get rid of gallons of gasoline for three years now, and every time I try and go to the hazardous site, it's taken up. Right now you got to get there the first day. Yeah, is there any way we can expand the possibilities of dumping hazardous waste, the gas, gasoline? Yeah, you must make it with water. [1:44:28] Tom Rump: Yeah, well I assume that it's quite expensive to handle hazardous waste, and that's why it's so limited, but there is another hazardous waste cleanup I noticed that it's going to happen this [1:44:45] Joe DeRivera: fall. Yeah, I'm just, I'm signed up for the fur, I'll sign up as soon as it becomes open. Most people, it's very hard. You know what most people are gonna do is dump it in the woods. Yeah, when you can't get into the site. Yeah, I don't know. [1:45:04] Tom Rump: Krista, do you know from your background within RCM whether the state has this, has a state funded, has this waste cleanup at all? I [1:45:14] Chrissy Enemas: don't, I don't know about that. It's definitely, there's, I don't, there's no product stewardship for [1:45:21] Tom Rump: gasoline program. I don't know if you could take it to a place like that could sell a facility on it in West Bath. You could ask the EP directly for a statewide hazardous waste. You could check with TEP, yeah, in Augusta, call them and ask them where you could possibly take, I mean, it, yeah, I know. Anyway, there are places you can take it, but it barely would cost you money. Yeah, for anyone who may be [1:45:56] Ramona Teamee: Watching this and trying to dispose of hazardous waste, I'll just also add that the registration links are supposed to go live on October 5th at 8 a.m. from what I'm seeing here, so do your best to get a slot I guess, get the get up early and [1:46:15] Tom Rump: call it and click in October 5th, right, okay, anything else, hearing none, well I'll ask one [1:46:33] Tucker Favor: more thing at the risk of extending this, look, we just had a rousing discussion around data centers, who are we sending that, it's Bob, are you gonna send the information in an email to somebody, what's, how's, how are we relaying that information to who, I took notes and as a staff [1:46:47] Chrissy Enemas: staff person I will send them to Julie, okay, so we don't have to worry about anything, okay, cool, [1:46:52] Tom Rump: just wanted to make sure before we all left, so you'll also talk to Julie Erdman and I said I [1:46:59] Chrissy Enemas: took notes on the conversation and I'm going to send them to Julie Erdman, okay, great, thank you. [1:47:07] Tom Rump: Okay, do we want to adjourn, I move we adjourn, second, all in favor, we're adjourned, thank you.