Fairbanks Museum details decade of upgrades from LED retrofits to mass‑timber Science Annex

Fairbanks Museum staff told the Vermont Senate Natural Resources & Energy Committee on Feb. 12 that the museum has completed a decade of energy-efficiency and renewable-energy projects, including LED retrofits, multiple solar installations, buried power lines, battery backup across its campus and a new mass‑timber Tang Science Annex.

The presentation matters because the museum sits on an acre‑and‑a‑half campus in downtown St. Johnsbury that includes National Register‑listed buildings with old systems; the upgrades aim to lower operating costs, protect the historic collection from flood and water intrusion, and support downtown economic activity.

Em, a presenter from the Fairbanks Museum, said the museum “doesn’t really have a lot of money” and described a stepwise program of projects paid for by federal grants, state programs and private donors. The museum replaced roughly 400 museum fixtures with LEDs and installed an initial 11‑kilowatt rooftop solar array; later projects included off‑site community solar, a 60‑kilowatt off‑site array, and a 26‑kilowatt solar parking canopy with two Level 2 EV chargers that was funded in part through an Economic Development Administration grant.

The parking canopy project also paid to bury power lines that previously ran through the museum’s backyard, a change cited as important to aesthetics, grid resiliency and the ability to build a backyard addition. The museum added battery backup in all four buildings on the campus; the presenter said that backup preserves an on‑site weather broadcast and public‑safety functions.

Construction completed in 2024 on the Tang Science Annex, a roughly $8,000,000 project that the presenter described as Vermont’s first mass‑timber building of its kind. The annex uses cross‑laminated Eastern Hemlock panels assembled on site and is heated and cooled with a ground‑source (geothermal) system tied to wells in the museum backyard. Major funders named by the presenter included USDA Community Facilities, the Northern Borders Regional Commission, the U.S. Forest Service Wood Innovations Program, the Vermont Capital Investment Program and downtown/village tax credits.

Museum staff said the National Park Service's Save America’s Treasures grant supported restoration work on the historic main building, and explained an aggressive below‑grade perimeter drainage and foundation renovation that protected the collection during intense July flooding that delivered roughly eight inches of rain in five hours to St. Johnsbury. The presenter said the perimeter drain and waterproofing likely prevented catastrophic basement flooding.

Museum leadership described the projects as cumulative and incremental: reductions in electric bills followed fixture upgrades and successive solar and net‑metering steps; later investments added heat pumps, batteries and buried lines. The presenter said the overall effect has been to increase net assets and organizational capacity — noting net assets have grown from the low millions to more than $15 million since the start of the program — but cautioned that funding is the biggest ongoing challenge.

The presenter flagged several implementation risks and constraints: (1) tight capital that required stitching together multiple federal grants, state programs and private donations; (2) permitting complexity — including a slow Public Utility Commission review in one siting process and an Act 250 permit required for a separate off‑site project; and (3) uncertainty about federal tax credits tied to the Inflation Reduction Act, which the presenter estimated as approximately $375,000 in expected credits that are not yet secure.

Committee members thanked the presenter and indicated follow‑up by e‑mail on technical items such as the building’s battery storage and the geothermal system. The presentation closed with a committee note that the museum’s projects have economic-development effects downtown by increasing visitation and spending.

Funding sources and grant programs cited in the presentation included the USDA Community Facilities grant, Northern Borders Regional Commission grants, Economic Development Administration funding, Green Mountain Power solar grants, and private donations. The presenter said Efficiency Vermont rebates helped offset the initial LED retrofit.

The committee did not take formal action on the item; discussion concluded and the hearing moved to the next agenda topic.