In 2017 Blandford became one of the 271 communities (out of 351) in Massachusetts to achieve Green Communities certification, which granted our Town $138,425 to fund energy conservation measures in the Town Hall, at the Water Treatment Plant, and the Highway Garage. This designation is quite an achievement and reflects the hard work and tireless effort Blandford has exhibited in meeting the Green Communities Designation and Grant Program’s Criteria. We invested the funding into seven energy conservation projects across the town. The majority of these projects were lighting retrofits, where the existing inefficient lighting was replaced with efficient LED technology. Six municipal buildings have had partial or complete lighting retrofits since 2017. These buildings include: Town Hall, the Water Treatment Plant, the Highway Garage, the Library, the Historical Building, and the Post Office.
The remaining Green Community’s grant funding was used to install variable frequency drives on the hot water circulation system at Town Hall and to fund administrative support for grant administration.
Combined, the total cost of these projects was $164,803. Incentives from utilities paid for $33,742 of the project cost, while the Green Community designation grant covered $131,061. In total the completed projects are anticipated to save Blandford 80,321 kWh of electricity annually and $14,045 in annual cost savings. Click here to see what this energy use reduction means in terms of Greenhouse Gas emissions equivalencies.
Now that we have completed our first round of projects we can apply for additional funding via the competitive Green Communities grants program. Some communities have received as many as seven rounds of funding adding up to over a million dollars.
Download the full report on how Blandford is working toward reducing municipal energy.