EAC Assesses Progress

Swarthmore’s Environmental Advisory Council (EAC)’s November 26 meeting was largely spent reviewing goals from 2011 and assessing how much progress has been made toward those goals to date. That year, a state grant funded a Temple University greenhouse gas inventory and action plan for the four communities of the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District. Recommendations were made for specific steps municipal governments and broader communities could take to reduce future emissions — everything from encouraging residents to limit car trips to planting more trees. 

An LED street lamp on Riverview Road. Photo by Greg Hoy.

Some things that have been done so far:

• promoting green power

• replacing most mercury vapor streetlights with LEDs

• providing energy coaches to help residents retrofit their houses

• educating the community about energy efficiency

Goals that may be prioritized for the near future:

• promoting more green-power purchasing

• organizing a solarize campaign in which collective purchasing would lower the cost of installing solar panels

• exploring a program for joint purchasing of electric vehicles

The next EAC meeting will be January 27 at 7:30 p.m. in the Community Room of Borough Hall. The meetings are open to the public.