Carmel committee reviews municipal energy updates; asks for clearer carbon and cost metrics

A meeting of the Carmel Climate Action Advisory Committee on Jan. 28 reviewed 2024 updates to the city’s public dashboard and discussed next steps to report energy savings and greenhouse-gas reductions from municipal projects.

Committee members and city staff reported that a guaranteed energy-savings contract for the community center’s HVAC work was completed in 2024 and that the city’s east-side solar installation produced roughly 325,000 kilowatt-hours last year. The committee also noted a published estimate of about 909 tons of CO2 avoided from that solar output and asked staff to confirm the calculation method before reposting it to the public dashboard.

Why this matters: committee members said translating performance into common units — metric tons of CO2 and dollar savings — will help the public track progress against the Climate Action Plan and support requests for additional resources.

Key details and requests - Staff said the HVAC retrofit work is complete and that utility and performance tracking should allow reporting of cost and energy savings over the coming year. The committee asked that those results be added to the dashboard as they become available. - Members requested that staff convert the city’s performance measures into metric tons of CO2 equivalents and, where feasible, annual dollar savings or return-on-investment estimates. Committee discussion acknowledged that dollar-saved figures require accounting for upfront costs and payback periods (example cited: typical solar payback timelines of about 12–15 years), while CO2 conversions are more straightforward once energy-use data are available. - The committee asked utilities (Duke and AES were discussed as data sources) for building-level meter readings for 2024 to support a Scope 2 municipal emissions analysis. Staff said they have utility account representatives and can request interval or roll-up reports per building.

Context and next steps Committee members agreed to ask city staff to (a) request meter-read and interval data from utility account representatives, (b) produce CO2-equivalent conversions from 2024 energy data for municipal buildings, and (c) add verified kilowatt-hour, CO2 and (where feasible) dollar-saved figures to the public dashboard. Members said they expect initial results to appear in the dashboard update in the coming weeks.

Ending The committee will follow up at its Feb. 25 meeting to review progress on obtaining utility meter data and the initial CO2- and dollar-savings calculations.