The Holland City Community Energy Plan Strategic Development Team voted Dec. 10 to recommend a redlined update of the Community Energy Plan to the city council, concluding a months-long review of strategic levers covering electricity, buildings, transportation, education and carbon offsets. The motion to forward the revised report passed after members said staff would clean formatting and prepare the package for council review.

Joel, the staff presenter, said the redline and clean versions “just tried to reflect what we heard from the group throughout these meetings and just kinda wanna walk through that today,” and walked the team through edits that align targets and strategies with how the city measures electric-sector emissions and customers. He noted the electric-portfolio changes align measurement with utilities that report to the Energy Information Administration’s EIA-861 survey.

The update strengthens language across levers to reflect the group’s repeated focus on distributed generation and customer-owned on-site renewable generation. Committee members debated where distributed generation belongs in the plan—under the BPW-controlled electric portfolio or under building energy consumption—and agreed to clarify strategy wording so distributed generation is visible without duplicating action steps.

On procurement, members proposed evaluating vendors’ environmental stewardship as a factor in contract awards for city and BPW contracts. Discussion focused on whether procurement guidance should be housed with education (as a candidate for outreach and trade-allies), under a building-lever action step, or as a separate evaluation criterion; members settled on researching best management practices and developing options for procurement scorecards rather than adopting prescriptive criteria immediately.

The report adds a new action under education to increase outreach to HVAC contractors and to expand rebate and heat-pump outreach for multi‑family projects. Joel described planned meter-data analytics and reporting incentives to capture energy savings from heat-pump installations that occur outside the city’s incentive program.

On carbon offsets, the team recorded that staff has not yet fully captured REC retirements and business offsets; several members recommended focusing early outreach on the city’s top 50 key accounts to capture the largest energy users. Joel and others said the formal target language in the plan will remain; members agreed to prioritize key accounts as a pragmatic implementation step.

A motion to present the revised report to council as written was moved and seconded; after a recorded aye vote the chair announced the motion was approved. Staff will finish formatting and notify the team of the council presentation date.

Votes at a glance

- November 12 minutes: motion to approve by Christians, supported by Williams; outcome: approved (transcript records motion as passed).
- Recommend redlined Community Energy Plan to council: motion moved by Peugeot, supported by Enbergs; outcome: approved.
- Motion to adjourn: passed unanimously.

The team closed by thanking staff for advancing the review on an accelerated schedule and agreed to reconvene on the plan’s next cadence in future years.