Entire City of Boston to be Scanned for “Energy Gushers”

Posted on June 24, 2010 by LGlick

IR scan of a local home
Big news coming out of Boston this week. Last Friday, the Wattzy team had the opportunity to join Mayor Tom Menino and MIT Projessor Sanjay Sarma for an historic announcement – the entire City of Boston is to be scanned in infrared.

Infrared scanning is nothing new in the world of single-family homes, as any energy efficiency pro can tell you. Utilities like NStar even offer home infrared scans at free or discounted cost. They are highly effective at identifying areas of home heating inefficiency. Although commercial services have offered wide-area aerial scans for some time, this will be the first complete street-level scan of a major city.

If any place can use a city-wide scan, it certainly is Boston. Our housing stock is some of the oldest in the country, which means a huge opportunity for energy savings. The Boston Climate Action Leadership Committee estimates that Boston business and residents “could save more than $2 billion over 10 years” through basic weatherization.

It was no coincidence that this historic event took place at the offices of Next Step Living, a leading Boston-based contractor that provides energy efficiency services directly to homeowners.

Contractors like Next Step Living “are the energy drillers of the clean-tech era,” said MIT Professor Sanjay Sarma. “Instead of the Gulf, they are drilling for energy savings in our homes. This infrared technology is for prospecting.” Professor Sarma is widely credited as the technology visionary behind the foundation of the commercial RFID industry.

Continuing with the “Drill, Baby! Drill!” theme, Galen Nelson, the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s green tech business manager said, “The American home is often referred to as the Saudi Arabia of energy efficiency. There’s so much to be capped.”

In addition to developing the infrared technology to scan every square foot of Boston from the aircraft and street level, Professor Sarma isn’t afraid to put his money where his mouth is. He displayed an infrared image of his home pulsating with red highlights from excessive heat loss. A still version is show above.

“An Energy Gusher,” Professor Sarma said, “and a huge opportunity.”

We at Wattzy certainly agree! The opportunity to save with energy efficiency can indeed be huge.

That’s why Wattzy provides Professor Sarma and all residents of the City of Boston with an easy way to estimate and track their savings from energy efficiency projects.

Painting The Roof of Our World White

Posted on June 22, 2010 by JesseGorden

When we consider the many actions we may take to fight global warming and become more responsible citizens of earth, do we often think of our roofs? At most, green roofs are the topic of impassioned discussion, but other alterations aren’t mentioned or considered.

The discussion of altering roofs first became a heated (ha) topic in the U.S. when the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, a Nobel prize-winning scientist, brought the concept of white roofs to the table in 2009. He proposed that, though it may seem a silly action to suggest, if we could make all of the roofs and dark paved surfaces white, we would be able to save emissions equal to taking all the cars off of the roads for eleven years.

Using white surfaces to fight warming works because the white roofs reflect the Sun’s rays before they are absorbed; after absorption the rays are only emitted by the receiving material (e.g. a black roof, black pavement, etc.) as heat (long-wave radiation or infrared), which has a hard time getting back out through the atmosphere. The shortwave (UV) rays that the sun sends in are much more capable of penetrating the atmosphere, in both directions. As a result, the white roofs effectively send the heat back out the way it came, before it’s turned into heat!

Keith Oleson, a National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist, performed a study released in January of this year that found that white surfaces could reduce the urban heat island as much as 33% in some cities.

This concept continues to be relevant; a study came out last month that suggests that urban areas are warming at accelerated rates when compared to rural areas. The study also found that areas that have the highest potential for increased urban heat island effects, have the most potential for increased populations within the next 50 years, meaning more people in smaller spaces, including many without access to air conditioning. While daytime temperatures may warm equally, the nights in urban areas are expected to grow much warmer, resulting in a smaller difference between day and night temperatures as global warming accelerates; city residents will say goodbye to the relief of a cool night after a sweltering sunny day. Since this is expected to be a significant and near-future impact, several actions were suggested within the study, including usage of green spaces, strategic architecture, and white roofs.

Additionally, the aspect of home heating comes into play. Dr. Chu insisted that the white roofs not only reflect sunlight to keep homes cool in the summer, but that they would actually reflect heat back into homes in the winter, effectively reducing costs (and emissions) in both seasons. This was disputed by Keith Oleson, who suggests that in winter, the effects of white roofs would be the same, cooling by reflection. This conclusion illustrates the point that the world is not uniform; white roofs may be a perfect tactic for urban areas in locations that do not experience cold, but perhaps a less ideal choice for locations with less-than-mild winter months.

Here’s a video of Secretary Chu’s explanation that is posted on the US Department of Energy’s official YouTube page (also a great source for high quality video of the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, presently…).

Ultimate Re-Use: Storage Container Buildings

Posted on June 14, 2010 by JesseGorden

A new type of architecture has been infiltrating the traditional world for years; homes, condominiums, offices, and all other manner of buildings are being built from industrial storage containers that we would normally see on the back of an 18-wheeler or a shipping barge. The containers are easily stacked, and work quite well for the inhabitants once they are properly insulated, and turned into homes.

These new structures are subtly environmentally-friendly, in the most obvious way. We are all familiar with the chant “Reduce, re-use, recycle,” and this type of construction is a legitimate way of re-using the excess industrial storage containers that are finished with their initial use.

Shipping container architecture has been around for several years, but this topic presently comes to light again because the American firm Lot-EK, once again, takes it to a new level.

Their soon-to-be constructed Anyang Public Art Project (APAP) Open Art school in Korea has made news, and that’s not surprising at all upon taking a look. This is a project meant to engage the local community with its open structure, including an amphitheater layout, leading down to the river it is set along. The building will feature offices, open galleries, open meeting space, as well as work space for researchers; as has been the trend with these buildings, the non-traditional shape takes nothing away from the functionality of the new structure. These structures are a method of waste-management that results in beautification and functionality wherever they are planted: The ultimate re-use!

Home Energy Retrofits Outperform Microsoft

Posted on June 7, 2010 by LGlick

Home energy efficiency retrofits in Boston have a 39 percent return over five years compared to Microsoft's 7 percent.

Times are tough. If you’ve been unemployed in the last few years, your savings have probably dwindled as you’ve struggled to make ends meet. If you haven’t lost your job, then you’ve hopefully been saving and investing small amounts. But the stock market has been a mess over the last five years, and interest rates for CD’s and treasury bonds are tiny.

If you’re fortunate enough to have money to invest, where should you put your money to guarantee a good return?

Here’s a new investment idea for you: a home energy retrofit. Make your home more energy efficient through low-tech and cost-effective measures like insulation, furnace replacement and sealing your heating ducts.

Huh? Why put money into your house with home prices going the way they’ve been. Well, this isn’t about increasing the resale value of your home: though you can expect that it will at least help. All you really need is to live in your home for five years for this to work in your favor due to the lower utility bills you’ll see every month.

To illustrate the impact of doing a home energy retrofit as an investment, here’s a simplified example. Let’s say five years ago, a homeowner in Boston named Diane was deciding between buying $10,000 of Microsoft stock as an investment and spending that same amount of money on a home energy retrofit to reduce her utility bills. What would have been the better five-year investment?

The Microsoft stock worth $10,000 in June 2005 would have turned into just $10,700 five years later (a return of 7 percent over five years), including the increase in stock price and the dividends paid out over the course of the five years. But it turns out that the home energy retrofit would have been the much better investment. If Diane had spent $10,000 on a retrofit for her 2,000 square foot home in Boston, including attic and wall insulation, sealing and insulating ducts, and air sealing her home to eliminate drafts, the investment would have returned 38 percent over five years, in terms of lower utility bills and increased resale value: even assuming that she only gets back half of the value of her investment at the end.

So… Retrofitting your home is a better investment than the stock market. And that doesn’t even consider the fact that you’ll be more comfortable in your home and you’ll help reduce our country’s dependence on foreign energy sources.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to do a home energy retrofit, who to do it, and how to get as much of it paid for by your utility and the government, estimate your home efficiency then request an energy assessment for a report with recommendations and expected paybacks.

MIT & NSTAR partner for efficiency

Posted on May 26, 2010 by JPierce

Just announced this morning:

In an effort to dramatically cut energy use at one of the country’s premier academic and research institutions, NSTAR and MIT are teaming up to launch the single most aggressive efficiency project in NSTAR history. Dubbed “MIT Efficiency Forward,” the program has a goal of cutting electricity use by 15 percent over three years through innovative programs, substantial student, faculty, and staff engagement, and the piloting of new technologies and approaches at MIT.

Read the rest of the press release.

Mass Save experiencing difficulties

Posted on April 22, 2010 by JPierce

Due to the overwhelming demand for the Great Mass Appliance Exchange, Mass Save’s web server and phone lines were down earlier today. If you experience any difficulties requesting a rebate authorization, please be patient as Mass Save adjusts its services to meet the load.

UPDATE: According to the Boston Globe, and the rebate-only website, the available funds have already been reserved.

Measuring energy savings

Posted on March 16, 2010 by JPierce

Take a hypothetical investment in your home of $1,000 for a new hot heater that will save $100 a year. Most people will “do the math” and determine that the heater will pay for itself in ten years, then decide that this is too long and put the money into something else e.g; a vacation or stashing it in savings. Unfortunately this usually isn’t the efficient or “correct” or choice though, and it has been influenced by the use of a distorting metric. An alternative metric which is just as simple to calculate is the simple return on investment or ROI. Rather than divide the savings into the cost, do the reverse and you get the effective “interest rate” of your investment a rather favorable return of 10%¹

Some are arguing that in addition to the analogous EROI, we need to develop supplementary metrics to insure wise policies. The hope being that by crunching the numbers first we might—for instance—avoid tainting the public’s perceptions of all biofuels through bullish support of the inefficient conversion of some food crops to liquid fuel.

And what do we call the energy savings resulting from sound policy choices? One term that’s been used is the negawatt, but there is a proposal for a new unit: the Rosenfeld.

^{1. Compare 1–2% for a savings account or certificate of deposit, and a negative rate (depreciation) for common purchases such as automobiles or consumer electronics.}

Boulder finds out it’s not easy being green.

Posted on February 26, 2010 by Anthony Butler

Boulder Colorado From last week’s Wall Street Journal comes news that despite the best of intentions from the local government and residents of Boulder, CO significant energy savings are yet to be realized.

Beyond the usual justifications on the whys and why-nots of any local initiative, the really interesting thing is that energy audits have not been terrifically successful in getting people to move forward on retrofits, despite understanding exactly where savings can be realized.

The obstacles include people being reluctant to change their habits and not practicing what they preach, nor following through on small changes in energy efficiency and behaviors.

The answer? “Two Techs in a Truck”

As many as 15 energy-efficiency teams go door-to-door throughout Boulder, CO. They’ll ask home and business owners for permission to caulk windows, change bulbs and install low-flow showerheads and programmable thermostats—all at taxpayer expense.

Volunteers go door to door in East Cambridge

Posted on February 22, 2010 by LGlick

CFL exchange volunteers On Sunday, February 21, eighteen volunteers participated in a community canvass campaign to spread awareness about simple home improvements to save money, energy, and the planet. The event organized by the Home Energy Efficiency Team and the Cambridge Energy Alliance sought to help cut carbon emissions in East Cambridge through a CFL light bulb exchange.

Exchanging incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescents is one of the easiest and effective ways to reduce energy use at home. A compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) will save about $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself in about 6 months. It uses 75 percent less energy and lasts about 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb. If every Massachusetts household would exchange just one incandescent light bulb to an energy saving CFL, it would save enough energy to light all the homes in Boston for 100 days, reduce greenhouse gas equivalent to removing more than 17,000 cars from the road, and save more than $20 million annually in reduced energy costs.

Volunteers exchanged 129 incandescents bulbs for CFLs, saving over 76,000 lbs of CO₂ emissions. Volunteers worked together in teams, offered free energy-efficient CFL light bulbs, initiated dialogue about simple home energy-saving tips, and invited folks to participate in an upcoming Community Weatherization Barnraising on February 28^th. The Home Energy Efficiency Team will be weatherizing two houses in East Cambridge. Special guest Andrew Ference—Boston Bruins defenseman and avid climate change activist—will be attending this exciting event and making a donation to the New England Grassroots Environment Fund, one of HEET’s funders.

These type of events go a long way to spreading important information about climate change and energy efficiency solutions to people in our communities who may not otherwise receive it. To learn more information about community barnraisings visit HEET’s website.

CEA debuts Climate Change Art Project

Posted on February 16, 2010 by LGlick

The Cambridge Energy Alliance is debuting a poster art exhibit to inform the public about climate change and its impacts, the carbon emissions of Cambridge, and how local citizens can make a difference. Over 80% of Cambridge’s Climate emissions come from residential and commercial buildings, so eliminating wasted energy in our homes and workplaces is a priority.

To view the full CEA art poster exhibit visit:

http://cambridgeenergyalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/posters.pdf

The Cambridge Energy Alliance art exhibit displays many ways people can conserve energy and get connected to efficiency programs and resources. The Exhibit will be on display from Wednesday, February 16^th, 2010 through March 20^th, 2010 at the Clear Conscience Café (C3) located inside Harvest Coop‘s Central Square location.

Following the 4-week showing at C3, the CEA art exhibit will be rotated to other locations throughout the city. You can preview the posters by clicking the thumbnail above.

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Sustainability begins at home

Category Archives: Conservation & Efficiency