Home & Garden

Town to Participate in Solarize Massachusetts Program

The Planning Board and the Climate Action Committee are applying for a grant from the state to solarize Brookline.

A community plan is in the works to solarize Brookline. Kara Brewton, Acting Director for the Planning Department spoke before the Board of Selectmen last Tuesday about participating in the Solarize Massachusetts program and cooperating with the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center in an effort to increase the number of solar installations in town. 

The Department of Planning and Community Development is in the process of applying for a $2,500 grant and technical assistance in order to flesh out a marketing plan to solarize Brookline.

“This is the second time we have applied for this grant,” Brewton said. “We feel like we have a good chance of the state accepting us for this grant.”

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Lara Curtis, Senior Planner for the Planning has been working with the widely popular Green Homes Brookline Program, which provides, what Brewton believes, strong evidence to support their ambitions.

Selectmen Nancy Daily asked Keske Toyofuku, Citizen representative to the Climate Action Committee what made a resident a good candidate for solar panels. “Part of this program is to pull together residents, volunteers and partners to make assessments. Financing, is your roof south facing, are trees in the way will be the kinds of issues our group will work with people on,” Toyofuku said. “We are putting into the application a goal of One Mega Watt for the town. You’ll be able to feed power back into the grid or use it.”

Find out what's happening in Brooklinewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Board of Selectmen supported this application and wanted to get more information out to the public. The Board unanmiously authorized the Department of Planning and Development to submit this proposal to the sate.

There is more information on the Climate Action Committee available here.

 


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