Conway Sustainability Committee pursuing study to explore the town’s solar future

CONWAY — The Conway Sustainability Committee plans to follow the lead of 10 other Franklin County towns and pursue a study on solar power opportunities.

“This was inspirational to us,” Beth Girshman, co-chair of the Sustainability Committee, told the Selectboard last week, referring to the Ashfield Energy Committee’s participation in the study. “We don’t know where it will lead to for Conway; it’s just something that, as a group, we’ve been talking about ever since we started.”

The University of Massachusetts Amherst Clean Energy Extension leads and funds the study, called the Community Planning for Solar Toolkit. The process begins with a “desktop analysis of the different types of potential for solar,” explained Zara Dowling, a senior research fellow with the Clean Energy Extension. From the rooftops of houses and businesses to agricultural land, parking lots, discontinued gravel pits and undeveloped land, the assessment will map out all potential sites for solar development in town as a baseline for the study.

Next, Dowling and Barry Fradkin, a municipal clean energy educator with the Clean Energy Extension, will work with the Sustainability Committee to craft and send out a survey asking residents to reflect on questions like, “How much solar development do you want to see in your community? Do you want not a lot more? Do you want enough to make the community basically be producing enough electricity for its own needs? Do you want to help the western Massachusetts region? Do you want to help the overall state goals?” The survey will also ask residents for their thoughts on installing solar panels on their own homes and any concerns that have been holding them back.

“As a town, we, of course, would have a lot of say in the solar survey: what would we want the shape of that to look at, what information are we looking to gather,” Girshman told the Selectboard.

“We take all that information, based on that [and] say, ‘Well, this is what you have, this is what you want, here’s an action plan for how to move forward to get there,” Dowling said of the final step, which is typically presented to residents in a community forum.

Past action plans have outlined educational programs, ideal locations for town-owned solar power on municipal properties, steps to solicit development on sites that residents prefer, and areas residents wish to preserve and protect from solar development.

Selectboard member Elaine Campbell noted that she feels the timing of the study is “perfect considering the discussions going on in town.” The Selectboard meeting followed a Jan. 13 information session on BlueWave Solar’s potential plans to develop a solar array on Roaring Brook Road. In an email on Monday, Planning Board Chair George Forcier said BlueWave Solar has not submitted a special permit application or corresponded with the Planning Board further since the information session.

Selectboard member Chris Waldo encouraged the Sustainability Committee to look into opportunities for solar energy at the Highway Garage and the Conway Grammar School parking lot. He described solar panels above the school parking lot as a “two birds, one stone” option for expanding solar energy while also protecting vehicles from snow and intense summer heat.

“Seems like a no-brainer to take the next step,” Campbell said.

After hearing from Girshman and other Sustainability Committee members, the Selectboard voted to move forward with a letter of support for the study.

Dowling said on Friday that the timeline for the process is uncertain and depends on when the town sends out the survey. She added that past participants have distributed the surveys at spring Town Meetings. While UMass Amherst students have helped towns with studies in the past, only the Clean Energy Extension will take the lead on the Conway toolkit, shortening the typical timeline of about nine months.

The project, the Community Planning for Solar Toolkit, started in 2020 with three pilot towns, Westhampton, Wendell and Blandford, using a roughly $150,000 grant from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which was recently renamed the National Laboratory of the Rockies.

“At Clean Energy Extension, we had been hearing from communities that solar development could be fairly contentious in certain circumstances, but also there’s a lot of interest in towns across the state to meet state goals in renewable energy,” Dowling said.

Since its start, the Clean Energy Extension has helped 10 more towns — Ashfield, Deerfield, Whately, Colrain, Monterey, Heath, Leverett, Leyden, Montague and Northfield — plan for future solar development and invite residents into the conversation. Now, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources funds the toolkit, leaving the cost of town surveys as the only financial burden that municipalities must shoulder.

With a small troop of town planners in many rural towns, Fradkin said the Clean Energy Extension offers its expertise in planning and analysis as a boost, educating residents and town staff on the ins and outs of planning a solar project and the benefits beyond the environmental impact, like potential cost savings.

“There are state goals that we need to reach if we’re going to actually combat climate change, but actually making that happen on the ground requires working with local communities to make it happen,” said Dowling, a New Salem resident. “We need that amazing workforce and volunteer-force of municipal staff and municipal volunteers. I live in a small town and I’ve seen the incredible amount of effort that people put in to help our communities.”