By BOB AUDETTE, Reformer Staff
Saturday, March 29

BRATTLEBORO -- When you have the right mix of people, brainstorming can be a relatively easy task. What can be tough though, is figuring out a way to channel the flood of information that results from a brainstorming session.

"I meet a lot of people who have good ideas," said Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, who was visiting businesses in Windham County on Friday. "But the challenge of execution and implementation is so hard."

During a meeting with representatives from the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation, Marlboro College Graduate Center and Building Green, Welch learned about the ways in which area residents are trying to make that leap from idea to reality.

One idea, which sprang from the mind of engineering consultant Bob Stevens, is to develop a professional training program that would integrate traditional engineering knowledge with the growing field of green design.

Another idea, said Jeff Lewis, executive director of BDCC, is to make Brattleboro home to a "resource facility," that would be available to design professionals interested in green technology.

The BDCC has been hosting a series of brainstorming discussions over the past few months to define ways to achieve those goals, said Lewis.

"We have some significant intellectual capital present," he said.

These ideas "build to the strengths in Brattleboro and avoid its weaknesses," said Lewis, making the town "an attractive place for intelectual people to practice their craft."

An aim of those sessions is to bring together "good minds" that can have a positive economic impact on Brattleboro and Vermont, said Peter Van Oot, a member of BDCC's board of directors.

The time is right for a green resource institute in Brattleboro because many people around the world are thinking very hard about a future with diminishing energy resources and a changing climate, said Ralph Meima, director of Marlboro College Graduate Center's MBA in managing for sustainability.

"I suspect that places like Brattleboro are really on the cutting edge," he said.

"There is both a need and a hunger for this kind of 'thought leadership,'" said Lewis, that would provide strategies that people around the country can put into action.

"Just having an idea is just the beginning," said Welch, but by showing the depth of committment from the different stakeholders in Brattleboro it makes it easier to put into action.

"My goal is to get an idea of what you are doing and find out ways where I can be helpful."

"We would welcome any support you could give us to do this in a Vermont way, a Brattleboro way, that makes sense in a business way," said Van Oot.

Two projects the green resources institute could focus on are "passive survivability" and ways to upgrade existing homes to save energy, said Alex Wilson, of Building Green, the publisher of Environmental Building News. Passive survivability is the design of buildings that will provide livable conditions in a coming time when supplies of energy may not be consistent, he said.

"The most effective way to proceed with that approach ... is to actually legislate it into building codes as life-safety issues," said Wilson.

For the 124 million housing units around the country, upgrading means more than weatherization, he said.

"We need to do a major program to go into these existing homes and retrofit them."

The country needs a public works program similar to the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s, to make that happen, he said. This "environmental service corps" could do other work as well, such as ecological restoration and invasive species control.

Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com or 802-254-2311, ext. 273