Please note: This website presents a Draft version of the Windham Regional Plan for 2025
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Energy Policies

Energy Conservation, Efficiency and Resilience

  1. Support energy efficiency and conservation measures that reduce cost, usage and emissions.
  2. Encourage energy conservation in municipal buildings, businesses and homes.
  3. Support education around energy conservation and efficiency.
  4. Promote decreased use of fossil fuels for heating.
  5. Support utility, municipal and resident efforts to make our electrical power infrastructure more resilient to damage, both weather and human related.
  6. Support improved energy conservation and efficiency strategies as a preferred alternative to the construction of new energy generation and transmission capacity
  7. Promote energy storage and systems that can supply energy to support critical functions in times of primary supply interruptions.
  8. Support the State in achieving its Total Renewable Energy and Comprehensive Energy Plan goals

Transportation and Land Use

  1. Encourage new development in the region that meets the highest state and regional standards and exhibits best practice in terms of energy conservation and energy efficiency.
  2. Promote a shift away from single-occupancy vehicle trips through strategies appropriate to region
  3. Promote a shift away from gas/diesel vehicles to electric or other non-fossil fuel transportation options

Renewable Energy Development and Siting

  1. Ensure that all energy generation, transmission, and distribution projects further the regional goals for providing a reliable, sufficient, and economical energy supply to the region, promoting energy conservation and efficiency, and furthering the development of energy sources that have zero or low Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.
  2. Encourage a shift toward zero and low-GHG emission energy sources.
  3. Support the continued availability and increased use of net metering electrical systems, including both individual and group net metering installations.
  4. Support renewable energy solutions that cross-town boundaries.
  5. Support efforts of the State and regional organizations to increase training for new energy contractors and provide avenues for residents and businesses to easily find approved energy contractors.
  6. Support sound energy facility siting practices and ensure that new developments give adequate attention to facility siting requirements, development constraints, natural resource protection, and land use compatibility. Development should be located to avoid state, regional and local known constraints, and to minimize impacts to state and local possible constraints. Constraints are based on statewide, regional or local policies that are currently adopted. As with all maps included in Regional Plan, the map of constraints is intended to provide a general overview of existing conditions. The accuracy of information presented in the maps is limited due to scale. Errors and omissions may exist. These maps are not sufficient for delineation of features on-the-ground. To determine whether a site has constraints, surveyed information, engineering studies or other site-specific information will likely be necessary.
  • Definitions:
  • Known Constraints: Signals likely, though not absolute, unsuitability for development based on statewide, regional or local regulations or designated critical natural resources
  • Possible Constraints: Signals conditions that would likely require mitigation, and which may prove a site unsuitable after site-specific study, based on statewide or regional/local policies
  • State Known Constraints (as defined in Vermont Act 174)
  • Vernal Pools from Vermont Center for Ecostudies (confirmed)
  • DEC River Corridors
  • FEMA Floodways
  • State-significant Natural Communities
  • Rare, Threatened, Endangered Species
  • National Wilderness Areas
  • Class 1 and Class 2 Wetlands
  • Regionally or Locally Identified Critical Resources
    1. Examples could be source protection area for public drinking water supply, town-designated scenic roads and viewsheds
    2. Land use policies applicable to other forms of development in this area must be similarly restrictive
  • State Possible Constraints (as defined in Vermont Act 174)
    • Vernal Pools from Vermont Center for Ecostudies (confirmed)
    • Agricultural Soils
    • FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas
    • Protected Lands (State fee lands and private conservation lands) 
    • Act 250 Agricultural Soil Mitigation areas
    • Deer Wintering Areas
    • The following features from ANR’s Vermont Conservation Design:
    1. High Priority Interior Forest Blocks
    2. High Priority Connectivity Blocks
    3. High Priority Physical Landscape Blocks
    4. High Priority Surface Water and Riparian Areas
  • Hydric Soils
  • Regionally or Locally Identified Resources
  • Regional Known Constraints
    • Compliance with State Known Constraints
  • Regional Possible Constraints
    • Lands over 2,500 feet in elevation
    • Vermont ANR identified bear travel corridors
    • Shore lands
    • Steep slopes over 25 percent
    • Prime Agricultural Soils or Vermont Significant Soils
    • Siting a system that would require large amounts of forest clearing
  • Town/Local Constraints
    • Any unsuitable areas as identified in a duly adopted municipal plan
  1. Stormwater runoff should be identified and mitigated for all new energy siting projects.
  2. WRC encourages the development of Renewable Energy Generation Facilities
    • After considering State, Regional and Local constraints, different levels of suitability exist for different scales and types of renewable energy generation depending on locations within the region. To determine an appropriate location for a facility, first review the constraints above and then look at the polices below to determine how and where WRC encourages renewable energy generation facilities. WRC recommends the location of renewable energy generation facilities in accordance with the relevant guidelines below. Inability to meet these guidelines does not necessarily preclude the ability to develop renewable energy generation projects.
      • Encourage the placement of facilities on previously impacted land, such as gravel pits, landfills, brownfields, former industrial land, etc.
      • Rooftop solar is highly encouraged whenever possible, but should comply with State, Regional, and Local historic preservation requirements.
      • Ground mounted solar is recommended after consideration was given to rooftop solar.
      • Ground mounted threshold for utility scale solar arrays should be located outside of Village Centers and Downtowns to promote compact development in Village Centers.
      • Renewable energy generation facilities are encouraged to be installed close to existing distribution and infrastructure with adequate capacity
      • Encourage the placement of renewable energy facilities along currently maintained town roads.

Equity

  1. The Windham Regional Commission, in conjunction with the Department of Public Service, should develop diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies to advance the transition to a just and equitable energy system for Vermonters and to guide actions moving forward.
  2. Equity should be considered as core criteria in all decision-making, alongside least-cost and environmentally sound principles.
  3. The Windham Regional Commission supports the establishment and implementation of frameworks for consistently addressing issues of equity and justice across Regional and Municipal energy policies.