Clean Energy Week has come and gone without much visible progress. The current escalation of the prices of gasoline and natural gas, as well as last summer’s abnormally severe storms, are wakeup calls telling us to get serious about stopping the build-up of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. This means we must sharply reduce our use of fossil fuels for all purposes – particularly for transportation and for building heating and for electricity generation.

Nashua’s Environment and Energy Committee (EEC) set goals to cut municipal greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2025 and to power municipal buildings with 100 percent clean energy sources by 2035. As a practical matter, this means large scale electrification of city vehicles and buildings. This requires specific policy changes, not just wishful thinking.

The EEC’s focus on “municipal “ transportation and buildings is logical in that these are directly within the purview of the City. But even within that narrow sector, Nashua should be much more aggressive in electrifying its vehicles and new buildings than is currently the case.

Regarding vehicles, the City could change its vehicle purchasing policies such that all new vehicles would be required to be battery powered unless such vehicles would cost at least, say, 5% more to purchase and operate for 15 years than would fossil fueled vehicles (or unless no such vehicles were available). A requirement to consider operating costs when purchasing would be a game changer and would likely entail no premium at all considering the growth in fossil fuel costs. The City could also impose a similar requirement when it contracts with fleet operators, such as for school buses. Such fleets could be required to electrify at least at the rate at which they routinely replace old vehicles. CNG no longer qualifies as “clean energy”

For buildings, similar rules could be established. At present, electric heat pumps and geothermal heating are both competitive with fossil fuel heating, at least on a life cycle basis. It also seems reasonable to require that any other buildings constructed in the City that benefit from special public funding support, including tax benefits, be incentivized, or required, to eschew fossil fuel heating.

While Nashua can take more aggressive steps to electrify its municipal vehicles and buildings and can also better incentivize private electrification, similar ‘” clean energy” actions are needed at the State level. This includes shutting down New England’s only coal-fired generating plant, the Merrimack Station in Bow.

But demands for more “clean energy” needs to be matched by increased supply, which perforce must come from outside of Nashua. It is therefore essential that Nashua’s representatives at the General Court strongly support not just much more solar, but also more onshore and offshore wind, the relicensing of Seabrook, the importation of Canadian hydro power, and the reduction of State support for the status quo.

If Nashua would lead New Hampshire into an aggressive embrace of clean energy, it is likely that would result in attracting young, forward-looking businesses to the State rather than to fire ravaged and drought burdened California.

Gene Porter is a resident of Nashua.

Newsletter