The Swampscott Renewable Energy Committee and Resilient Swampscott will be holding a community meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 27 regarding the town’s potential adoption of the Commonwealth’s new Specialized Energy Code.
The meeting’s purpose is to inform community members about the energy code, while also giving them the opportunity to lend their thoughts. The adoption of the code will be voted on at Swampscott’s Special Town Meeting on March 11.
More than 30 Massachusetts municipalities have opted in to this new code, which emphasizes reducing greenhouse-gas emissions as opposed to the previous Stretch Code, which focused more on overall energy efficiency. If the code is approved, all new structures in Swampscott would have to comply with it by being powered entirely by electrical energy.
“Most simply said, it highly incentivizes the use of electrification versus fossil fuels,” Doug Thompson, the committee’s Select Board liaison, said.
Thompson explained that it would still be possible to build structures that run on gas and oil, however, they would need to have solar panels installed on them.
Last year, the town passed a comprehensive Climate Action Plan with the goal of reaching net zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050.
“52% of our greenhouse-gas emissions in Swampscott come from buildings,” Thompson said. “And so getting more and more of our homes and buildings electrified will greatly enable us to achieve our greenhouse-gas emission reduction targets.”
According to Thompson, other sources of greenhouse-gas emission in town include transportation and solid waste.
