Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said he is working on a pilot program for food composting, electrifying more buses and adding solar roofs, among other measures.
Elrich spoke Thursday at a town hall forum focused on climate change at the biotechnology company United Therapeutics in Silver Spring. It was an opportunity for people to hear about steps the county is taking to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.
Elrich said that this month, the county will roll out the food composting program.
“It’ll start with restaurants and retail establishments and then move into residential. I’m excited about this,” he said.
Adam Ortiz, the county’s director of environmental protection, said in an interview Tuesday afternoon that the pilot program will have specific targets.
“We’re gonna focus on bigger generators of food waste. Restaurants, schools and food distributors. So we’re capturing the big stockpiles first,” he said.
Ortiz said the pilot program isn’t exactly curbside pickup, but county officials will pick up compost from the establishments, sometimes at loading docks.
He said the county plans to release more details in April about the future of the compost program. The county eventually plans to have curbside pickup service.
Ortiz said processing compost is cheaper than burying it in landfills or incinerating it and avoids the production of methane gas. Food scraps, he said, make up 20% of the county’s waste stream.
“There’s so much in our waste stream that has value, and one of those things are food scraps,” he said.
Ortiz wasn’t sure how much revenue could be generated from products made of composted materials.
Elrich said during the town hall meeting that the Department of Environmental Protection is looking at sites for a composting facility in the county, he said, to reduce dependence on a neighboring county’s compost facility.
“We’re piggybacking right now on Prince George’s County, but we think we can move this forward,” he said.
Elrich mentioned a number of other climate change initiatives, including electrifying Montgomery County Public Schools’ bus fleet over 10 years and a proposal to require all new homes after 2022 to have solar panels on their roofs, a measure he announced last fall.
“I’m hoping that we can move forward the way California did … where people can pay for their solar projects and other energy projects on their property tax bills over 20 years. And it can be financed at basically no cost, with very low interest, if any interest at all,” he said.
Elrich said that after installing solar panels on his own house, his electric bill went down by half.
As part of a series of proposed walking and biking infrastructure improvements, Elrich suggested adding plastic pylons at intersections that are dangerous to pedestrians, similar to those seen in D.C.
“It makes you come to a much lower speed when you come to a turn. They’re much cheaper than concrete,” he said.
The town hall meeting came after the county executive’s office convened six work groups. They started meeting last summer and came up with 850 recommended climate change solutions.
The recommendations include:
- Developing a scholarship in partnership with a university or trade association for building operators on the latest energy efficient technology
- Banning natural gas in new buildings
- Evaluating fuel sources of backup generators
- Establishing water efficiency standards for new and existing buildings
- Developing land-use policies that lead to the removal of carbon from the atmosphere
- Working with the Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation to work with outside investors interested in carbon reduction
- Increasing the amount of paper and wood recycled while reducing the amount of food and paper waste
- Doubling the size of the tree canopy and urban and suburban areas of the county
- Establishing a countywide composting system
- Possibly reinstituting the county’s tax credit for solar and geothermal energy systems
- Evaluate locations for solar and wind energy installation sites
- Updating construction codes to incorporate solar, battery storage and vehicle charging stations.
- Offering a tuition-free Associate of Applied Science degree in renewable energy at Montgomery College for county residents
- Possibly instituting a county tax on carbon
- Promoting and subsidizing energy-efficient air conditioning in low-income neighborhoods
- Creating a network of small temperature and humidity sensors
- Conducting a survey among homeowners to determine flooding “hotspots” in the county
- Better management of the deer population to reduce risk of disease
- Establish a Montgomery County Public Schools work group on climate change made up of parents, students, teachers and administrators
- Offering information on environmental sustainability in different languages in schools
- Providing tax credits and incentives for electric vehicle purchases
- Investing more money in MARC rail, Metrorail and bus rapid transit services.
In September, during a town hall meeting in Silver Spring, multiple environmental groups accused Elrich of inaction on climate change, giving the county executive a score of 32 out of 100 on a scorecard put together by activist groups.
Elrich was asked during the question-and-answer portion on Thursday whether he thought getting rid of greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 and cutting emissions by 80% in seven years was realistic. Those are goals the county has set.
Elrich said he wanted to set goals that people would “never be satisfied with because nobody will take the heat off until we get there.”
“If I had set a different goal, I might have achieved it, and our work wouldn’t have been done. So I wanted to set really, really difficult goals. There is no path right now to get to either of those numbers. The technology is not there in some sectors,” he said.
Elrich added that he wanted to hear feedback from resident groups, because it will help shape his environmental initiatives.
“Rather than blowing half a million dollars on a consultant … we got you to do a lot of work and cover a lot of territory that wouldn’t be covered by a consultant. And that’s gonna give us a blueprint,” he said, addressing the work groups.
Ortiz said in an interview after the meeting, that the department will work with experts to prioritize some of the 850 recommendations from the work groups and determine which ones will “make the most impact.”
“It’s gonna be a work in progress, but we’re also not gonna wait until we have a perfect plan. Certain things that we can execute right away, we will,” he said.
Dan Schere can be reached at daniel.schere@moco360.media
