Author Archives: Anthony Butler

About Anthony Butler

Anthony is a Principal at Light Partnership, a communications firm dedicated to helping companies in the Energy Efficiency and renewables space. He has worked with Cambridge Energy Alliance for the last 15 months on a variety of web and graphic design projects.

Is your home R-Rated?

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The accepted wisdom is at least 50% of the energy used in our homes is for heating and cooling. That is particularly true for residents in the North-East Corridor and the Midwest, who routinely shiver through winter and swelter throughout the summer months.

The Department of Energy says every house has an R-value, which is your home’s built-in effectiveness at retaining the heat generated within your home. They have even provided a calculator that recommends various  insulation improvements to reduce the effect of climatic changes outside your four walls.

Warm Home Cool Planet input their data and found the results…  a little confusing. Try it yourself though.

To find out more about R-values, you’ll find this explanation enlightening. Particularly the part  explaining why simply putting more insulation in your walls won’t cut your energy bills by 50%.

For those Warm Home Cool Planet readers who passed high-school physics, this Wikipedia stub on thermal resistance makes useful reading before starting an energy-efficient renovation.

Time to cool off

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Red Earth

Our Planet in 2220?

At the Cambridge headquarters of Warm Home Cool Planet we’re well served with local scientific opinions-what with the big brains of Harvard at one end of town and the super-colliding intelligence of MIT at the other. Sometimes the smart folks from Tufts University in our neighboring town of Somerville get overlooked.

That might be changing with today’s Boston Globe article covering the controversial theory expounded by Tufts astrophysicist, Eric J. Chaisson. In a recent paper Chaisson has put forward the theory that even if we solve the environmental problems caused by greenhouse gas emissions, the rate at which we are generating radiant heat through the generation and use of non-renewable energy sources could result in catastrophic changes in the earth’s eco-systems and atmosphere within two centuries.

“What this means for humans is that this is the ultimate limit to growth,” said Dennis Bushnell, the chief scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center, who urged Chaisson to publish his idea. “As we produce more kilowatts, we have to produce more waste heat.”

Some critics have cautioned that it is impossible to predict what technologies will be developed to handle the problem of radiant heat over the next hundred years or so. And, that if we don’t figure out how to limit the damage greenhouse gases are already causing to our environment, it’s kind of a moot point.

After looking at both sides of this argument, it is the opinion of Warm Home Cool Planet that we need to worry about what’s coming out of the tailpipe first before we consider how hot the tailpipe is.

Energy Efficient-from the ground up.

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From the Laconia Citizen:

“It was 30 degrees outside but inside a yet-to-be-finished basement of a home being built on Summit Road, the temperature remained above 42 degrees, with no heat.

That’s because the home, which belongs to Cecilia Rai and James Koren of Plymouth, is being built to be energy-efficient from basement to attic.”

Find out more about this couple’s experience in building an energy efficient home in New Hampshire.

Cecilia Rai stand inside her yet to be finished house in Laconia, NH.

Cecilia Rai stands inside her yet to be finished energy efficient house in Laconia, NH.

Note the use of ICFs (Insulated Concrete Forms) in the outer walls. This is becoming a popular technique for including insulation in the construction process-particularly as it is independent of material used (stucco, brick, vinyl siding, wood…) for the outer walls.

The First Mention Ever

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Sent to us by a reader:

‘I just checked, and Barack Obama’s inaugural address was the first one to mention the role renewable energy will play in our future economic prosperity.”

Since Warm Home Cool Planet is a little too busy keeping our audience updated on all things energy efficient , we’re going to take your word for it, rather than read all other 55 inaugural addresses. There are some good ones though.

For those of you watching at home, you’ll find President Obama’s shout out to the alternative energy industry on the You Tube Clip posted below at 9:25.

Click here for the full text of President Obama’s inaugural address. If you haven’t already, we would definitely recommend taking 10 minutes out of your day.

Please Standby for Energy Savings…

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Or rather, don’t stand by.

By now you’ve read a bunch of articles about how the ‘standby’ or ‘instant on’ mode wastes energy and costs money. But if you’re like us, you may not have turned this information into a set of buying decisions and habits to save energy. This phantom power consumption chart is perhaps more than you needed to know, but it gets at the underlying reality that up to 10% of the US electrical bill may be wasted on phantom powering our gadget cornucopia. 

As the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory puts it;

Limited research suggests that an informed and aggressive approach can reduce standby use by about 30%. Frankly, there are more productive ways to save energy with an investment of an hour but if high standby energy use stands between you and the goal of a zero energy home, then it’s an hour well spent.

Powering down your computer with a smart power strip which also turns off all the stuff attached to your computer can have a substantial impact. Great idea if you’re the type that turns your computer off.

Shifting from desktop to laptop computers is another idea. Laptops have been built with energy consumption in mind in order to extend battery life. For the first time in history last month laptop sales exceeded desktop sales, so maybe some people are getting with the program.

Obviously appliances need to be redesigned green from the ground up.

There’s no way anyone (myself included) is going to re-set the clock on their Sony Bravia flatscreen TV every time they turn the set on. Try to console yourself with the thought that the Sony’s Energy Star rating implies that it’s phantom power draw is relatively minor. (I’m trying to.)

Even though the blinking 12:00 LED clock mocks us as we retrofit our appliances for a reality their designers never considered, we persevere—saving money and energy in the process.

From the Politics Desk… Right Wing Department

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Our ‘friends’ over at American Daily have a unique theory about how to cut the deficit. Eliminate the Department of Energy. That’s right… eliminate.

Apparently, they believe Job#1 of the DOE is to eliminate the import of foreign oil.

According to the DOE’s Web site, however, their mission is as follows:

The Department of Energy’s overarching mission is to advance the national, economic, and energy security of the United States; to promote scientific and technological innovation in support of that mission; and to ensure the environmental cleanup of the national nuclear weapons complex.

You could certainly make the argument that lessening our reliance on oil from countries who may not have America’s best interests at heart is part of of this mission. But when the last Vice-President was known for issuing statements like “It’s our god-given right to drive around in SUVs.” It’s kind of hard for those on the right wing to argue they were helping us meet that goal. The whole ‘climate change is a myth’ thing hardly speaks to lessening our usage of carbon-based energy either.

Still, no matter what their motivation, whenever someone calls for greater accountability in how our tax dollars are spent, it’s hard for Warm Home Cool Planet to disagree. Everyone-government, business and individual citizens-needs to do their part in decreasing our use of non-renewable energy and embracing renewable energies and sustainable living habits.

Anyway, as they say at Fox News: “We report. You decide.”

OK Computer… now go to sleep.

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In a pilot study conducted by Verizon, the company found that Windows “sleep” features can actually cut energy costs by $65 per computer, annually.
Geez, you’d think Microsoft would have enough $$$ to do their own study.
Anyway, here’s the skinny on how much the communications giant is saving by having their PC monitors go zzzzzzzz… when no one is looking at them.
Hey Monitor, you're getting sleepy... very, very sleepy

Hey Monitor, you're getting sleepy... very, very sleepy

Your mileage may vary, but we suggest you check the sleep function is working properly on your own PC or laptop.

Zipcar-wheels when you want them

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Occasionally we like to give a shout out to our neighbors in Cambridge doing the right thing by the community and the environment. Zipcar, who rent cars by the hour or day, definitely fits into that category. Here’s where Zipcar explains why using one of their vehicles for your transportation around town is much better for the environment than owning your own car–you’ll probably find it’s cheaper too. If you’re not into the whole reading thing, the graphic below explains how the Zipcar works. The only thing to add is that Zipcar does expect the car back at some point…

zipcar

Unlike Hertz, Avis and all the other car rental companies, Zipcar’s policy is to locate cars in the neighborhoods where their customers live, which cuts down on transportation costs to your Zipcar.

Find out if there’s a Zipcar near you.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick Calls for 2,000 MW of wind power by 2020

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Massachusetts Governor and Presidential pal Deval Patrick has very quietly become one of wind power’s biggest boosters over the last year or so. And he looks absolutely nothing like, or thinks nothing like wind power’s biggest booster,  T Boone Pickens. Which goes to show you the search for clean renewable energy, just like politics, can make for strange bedfellows.

patrick-obama-2

Patrick-2,000 megawatts of wind power on the grid before 2020

Patrick, who called for an increase in Massachusett’s solar capacity from the current 4MW to 250 MW soon after he was elected in 2006, had this to say about the state’s (soon to be) booming wind power industry.

“With the growing interest in wind turbines we see in communities across the Commonwealth  and the abundant wind resource we have off our coast, wind power is going to be a centerpiece of the clean energy economy we are creating for Massachusetts,”

Massachusetts has also been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy for one of just two Wind Technology Testing Centers in the country (Texas also was selected), poising the Commonwealth to become a national center for wind power research and development-and thereby offering the potential economic rewards of technology development, entrepreneurship and jobs.

The folks at Renewable Energy World have the rest of the story.

‘Bird Safe’ Helix Wind Turbine Excites Enthusiasm and Skepticism

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9flSPAdOLk

It sure looks cool.

Helixwind’s manufacturer says it works at lower altitudes, is less of an eyesore, and is more bird-friendly than standard turbine designs, but many blog posters are demanding more hard data  before falling in love with the design. We’d suggest some research at  the AWEA site (you didn’t know that stands for the American Wind Energy Association?) before signing any purchase orders. 

The company has recently posted some PDFs containing more detailed specifications.