The Island Energy and Waste Plan

In 2006-2007, a group of islanders met to discuss an Energy and Waste plan for the Vineyard, as part of the larger Island Plan effort. The group was Sharon Strimling Florio, Kitt Johnson, David Nash, Paul Pimentel, Bill Veno, Kate Warner, and Susan Wasserman with additional help from Phil Forest, Don Hatch, Fred Lapiana, Bart Smith, Russell Smith and Paul Strauss.

Two Caveats to the work:
First, the issues of energy and waste were somewhat of a forced marriage. While the topics have several similarities, this report gives less attention to waste than to energy. This imbalance is no implication that waste issues are less important than energy issues. Second, only the energy aspects of transportation are addressed in this report, but it nevertheless offers perspective and recommendations for other work groups examining topics that interrelate to transportation, energy and waste.

Following are excerpts from the document that was produced. The document in its entirety can be found above OR at www.islandplan.org/planning/energy.html


MISSION
The Mission of the Energy and Waste Work Group was to examine the Vineyard with respect to energy and waste issues and to recommend a wide-ranging plan for our community to constructively address energy and waste issues to 2050, in ways that are environmentally sound, consistent with community values and responsive to twenty-first century realities. We have chosen 2050 as a target timeframe giving us enough time to develop comprehensive strategies, test initiatives and measure progress.

What We Hope to Achieve for the Vineyard
The following recommendations are designed to ensure that the Vineyard community:
• has reliable, secure, ample, and affordable energy supplies to meet its needs;
• recognizes the “big issues” and finds multi-pronged approaches to meet energy and waste challenges;
• promotes incentives, wherever possible, over regulations;
• obtains as much of its energy as practical from renewable, and from increasingly local, sources; and,
• eliminates as much of the waste created by island life as possible, drawing us nearer to a zero waste community.