Local Energy Committee
Citizen Volunteer of the Year Award

awards go to special people, projects, and organizations who have contributed to reductions in energy and greenhouse gas emissions.

Each year, the Local Energy Committee (LEC) Working Group acknowledges citizen volunteers, municipalities, and officials along with staff throughout New Hampshire for their contribution to the reduction of energy and greenhouse gas emissions. This year, the Citizen Volunteer of the Year Award was presented to Jack Marsden of Richmond, NH, a member of the Volunteer Energy Committee.

From Pete Majoy, Richmond Voluntary Energy Committee

"For over a year now, we have been involved in an energy audit of our 5 municipal buildings, an arduous, data driven activity under the very involved and watchful eye of Jack Marsden, one of our generous volunteers. Aid in this task has come from Clean Air-Cool Planet and the very knowledgeable and helpful people there. Our goal is to eventually apply for federal stimulus money when the application process is finally decided upon.

As a result of Jack's hard work along with great support from fellow committee member, Charles Schroeder, we got to the point where we selected the largest building in town, Vets Hall, for an energy efficiency assessment. We recommended to our Board of Selectmen that Margaret Dillon of S.E.E.D.S. be hired. They agreed with our suggestion. Ms. Dillon was here several weeks ago for over 4 hours and her assessment report which includes several high tech components like infra-red photography will be ready some time near the end of November. Following the report, there will be two more steps in the process: (1) pricing what needs to be done to make Vets Hall energy efficient; (2) applying for stimulus funds.

In the meantime, we were informed that for all the intense and time consuming work Jack Marsden did to get us to the point where we could hire Ms. Dillon, he was chosen for the "Citizen Volunteer of the Year" award from New Hampshire's Local Energy Committee Working Group, a collection of state agencies, private businesses and nonprofit companies. The award was announced on October 17, 2009 at the Office of Energy Planning (OEP) conference. We are ecstatic that Jack was chosen from among all the nominees across the state. Ms. Christa Koehler of Clean Air-Cool Planet presented him with the award at a gathering on Thursday evening, October 29, 2009, at the Vets Hall. The spirit of this award celebrates the incredible volunteer work of all folk in our town and across the state."

Congratulations to Jack Marsden