Cape Elizabeth’s Alternative Energy Committee will have a joint workshop with the Town Council on May 14 to discuss a townwide energy audit that recommends $2.6 million in possible renovations.

The council and committee will discuss long- and short-term projects that could cut down on the town’s energy costs, said Town Council Chairman Jim Rowe.

“This is something we’re going to have to pick away at,” Rowe said. “We will need to look for projects that have a very quick payback.”

Some of those projects might include upgrading and recommissioning boiler controls, a $142,000 job that would pay for itself in nine years; and replacing the current boilers and adding a biomass boiler, a $1 million project with a 12-year payback.

“It’s critically important to save money and to also ensure we’re reducing our energy footprint,” Town Manager Michael McGovern said. “The high school energy audit shows that the boilers are too big for what they need to do.”

The recommendations are in a report by CM3 Building Solutions, which spent most of January and part of February auditing the town hall, high school and middle school. CM3 studied the electrical, mechanical and water systems, and the HVAC systems, as well as how much oil the facilities burn.

The $15,000 analysis was part of Cape’s mission to become more energy efficient and study alternative sources of energy, McGovern said.

The report found that the high school is the biggest energy user, and that Cape schools overall consume about 2.2 million kilowatt hours of electricity and burn about 150,000 gallons in oil a year.

The individual upgrade with the shortest payback period would be replacing the boiler controls at the police station, costing about $5,000, Rowe said. It would save about $1,500 a year for a three-year payback.

The report comes at a convenient time for Cape as it recently hired Verrill Dana law firm of Portland as its lobbyists to tap stimulus money that could pay for energy projects, Rowe said.

The town has a contract with Verrill Dana not to exceed $10,000 for its services, McGovern said. Included in that price is between $3,000 and $6,000 to review where money can be found.

James Cohen of Verrill Dana told officials that the town’s best chance of receiving money lay in applying for energy assistance, for which $9 million is currently allocated to Maine for competitive bidding. “You need to focus on a handful of projects that you can make a good case for,” Cohen said.

Rowe said Cape could easily do that with some of the audit’s recommendations, such as replacing the boilers. He also said the town could apply for money to replace lighting in the buildings. According to the report, that would cost about $733,000 and it would take a little more than six years to recoup the money.

“We need to look at shovel-ready projects,” Rowe said. “That’s something that can be done incrementally, too.”

The workshop begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Town Hall and is open to the public. The committee is expected to present a list of priority projects, McGovern said, although no decisions will be made that evening.

“We will explore as many projects as we could possibly afford,” Rowe said. “We obviously can’t bite off $2.6 million right now, but we can be sensible and pick things that we can afford and things that have a reasonably quick payback.”