Here’s a list of the latest Renewable Energy Tax Incentives now available to residents and businesses in Massachusetts. The highlight being if you can somehow generate hydro-electric power from that attractive water feature in your backyard and hook it up to the grid, you’re good for a $50,000 tax credit from the Commonwealth.
On the other hand, if you’re interested in available Tax Credits for Qualified Hybrid Vehicles.
The World Environmental Organization has made available a recycling database that provides advice on how to extend the life of pretty much any household item you can think of. Given our economic circumstances, this could be useful for saving more than the environment.
A couple of Warm Home Cool Planet’s favorites:
.Baseball Bats:
• Use for a plant support.
• Keep in bedroom in case of an intruder.
Hairdryer:
• Cut off electrical cord and let kids use for Dress-Up.
• Let children use as a space laser.
Washing Machine:
• Detach glass bubble from door of front-loading washing machine, wash thoroughly and use as a salad bowl.
Now that we’ve all had the chance to get up and stumble into work an hour earlier, it’s time to examine if extended daylight savings is actually doing what it’s supposed to do. The original intention of giving us an extra hour of daylight between March and and the first week of November–beyond increasing the time available for outdoor activities–was to put a little less strain on our electrical grid. With sunlight coming into our homes for another hour each evening, we would need less light and–for the first months in the North East–less heat.
Warm Home Cool Planet has seen lots of opinions on both sides of the issue. The consensus seemed to be yes, it does reduce our energy needs. But not to the degree you might expect.
The US News and World Report publishes a correction of sorts stating their previous article on that matter, which claimed that daylight savings is an energy drain, was incorrect. This is on the heels of the Department of Energy Report documenting that electricity demands declined by an average of 0.5% for each day of extended daylight. That comes out to 0.03% of total electricity demand. It doesn’t sound like much until you realize it adds up to 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours, enough to power about 122,000 average U.S. homes for a year.
Lost in this smaller calendar debate is the fact daylight savings for 38 weeks of the year will save enough electricity to power 1.16 million homes. To put that into perspective, enough electricity to power every home in Boston, Cambridge, Newton and Somerville.
“If you’re readying a resume, it might help to use recycled paper. The clean-tech and green industries in Massachusetts are hiring.”
That’s the takeaway from the article in today’s Boston Globe.
Amidst our economic woes and rising unemployment, the green energy sector continues to grow, thanks in part to the stimulus bill spending and an extension of tax credits for renewable energy generation.
Within the next two years, Stimulus Bill spending is expected to create or save 79,000 jobs in Massachusetts, and an estimated 3.5 million nationwide. In today’s economy, those are big numbers.
In the last week of February, the Ontario legislature presented the Green Energy Act. The Act includes renewable energy development plans that could generate as many as 50,000 jobs for the Canadian province. Amongst the other parts of the bill is a provision that makes it mandatory homes for sale in Ontario have an energy rating attached to it.
This rating will be generated by a home inspection using standardized evaluation criteria yet to be finalized. The controversy is around what a negative rating might do to home prices throughout Ontario.
The appliances we put in our house all have energy ratings and we certainly pay attention to these when we make consumer choices. Could a ratings for the whole house be far behind? An informal survey of local real estate agents revealed that home buyers often request energy bills from the seller before putting in an offer. So the question is: Will our state or federal government make home energy ratings compulsory as part of a larger energy efficient initiative?
Warm Home Cool Planet would like to remind all Cambridge residents and businesses they can arrange a FREE energy audit for their home or business. Why not do it while you still have the choice?
To learn about the other major initiatives in Ontario’s Green Energy Act, read this interview with George Smitherman, Ontario’s minister of energy and infrastructure at Green Inc., the New York Times energy blog.
They’ve filmed murder mysteries in the middle of a Minnesota winter, Texas Border country manhunts and CIA shenanigans in the wilds of Washington D.C. Now the two-headed directing team known as the Brothers Coen are taking on the coal industry and their claims of ‘clean coal’ technology. Watch the first in a series of ads that imagine how household cleaning products would perform if they were made by the coal industry.
If the concept behind these ads seems familiar to those who follow the ad industry-it’s from industry hotshop Crispin Porter Bogusky, who was behind the ‘truth’ anti-smoking campaign that garnered so much attention over the last few years. Including this Super Bowl Ad ‘Shards o Glass’
Glad to see that when it comes to environmental messages, our ad industry friends can ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’
When President Obama was interviewed on 60 Minutes a couple of months ago, he was asked if the drop in energy prices caused by the recession would cause him to delay many of the renewable energy and energy efficiency project he had talked about during his campaign.
His unequivocal answer to interviewer Steve Kroft: “It’s more important to do it now.”
The President has been good as his word, including close to $100 billion within the recently passed stimulus package. Yesterday’s New York Times details how that money will find its way into local communities and provide a much needed boost to their flagging economies.
This car will be competing in October in the World Solar Challenge race across Australia. About a dozen team members are expected to go to Australia for the race, although only four will drive the solar car in the competition. By the way, the car’s name is Eleanor and when the sun shines, it will do 55 mph all day long.
A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about a test program of ‘smart’ meters installed to monitor electricity use in Michigan homes. Now, as details of last week’s stimulus package are unveiled, it seems that smart meter usage within America’s homes will soon go way beyond the prototype stage.
This will provide consumers with immediate feedback on their energy use, and show the effect of turning off lights when they leave the room, or using cold water to wash their clothes.
A couple of weeks ago Warm Home Cool Planet featured a story on the 2010 Chevy Volt–the car that will save GM–and the first mass market example of transport technology that might save us all in the end. But will the public buy it.
This article about the Tesla (the all electric roadster favored by environmentally-conscious celebrities such a George Clooney) demonstrates there is a market for these cars, as long as they are appropriately targeted to customers.
The most interesting part of the article examines the company’s financial arrangements with customers to replace the car’s battery, which they estimate has a lifetime of approximately 7 years or 100,000 miles. As you can imagine, you don’t simply undo the cables and hand swap them like a vehicle powered by an internal-combustion engine. Currently, Tesla imagines the cost of replacement at $32,000. But they will take an upfront payment of $12,000 when you plunk down $105,000 for the Roadster.
If you can afford 100 grand for a car, the $12,000 upfront rather than sounds like a pretty good risk, particularly in this investment climate. It brings up a interesting point about the marketability of electric and hybrid cars. If the battery on this these cars has a finite lifespan, owners already paying a premium to cut down their CO2 emissions will be hit with a substantial repair bill after owning the car for a number of years. This will affect the the resale of these vehicles, making them a less attractive new car purchases.
By taking the money upfront Tesla is taking a gamble too. They are betting that by the time these batterries need to be replaced, technology will them to install a new power source for their car at closer to the $12,000 they took from each new car buyer.
GM has not made any definitive statements about the lifespan or replacement cost of the electric batteries in Volt. But even $12,000 is almost half the cost at which they plan to sell the car. Warm Home Cool Planet’s advice to all planning on buying a Volt… bank that rebate check and compound that interest–you may need it.
Stay tuned for more on this subject.