Category Archives: Massachusetts

BioFuels for your Home-Part II

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Last week, Warm Home Cool Planet received a phone call from Dr. Jesse Reich, CEO of Baystate BioFuels, whose company was recently profiled on NECN and on the pages of Warm Home Cool Planet. He provided us with some numbers on the use of BioFuels in the home that will be of interest to anyone who heats their home with oil and wants to reduce their use of non-renewable resources and the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere.

The average home uses approximately 730 gallons of heating oil each year-and each gallon of Number 2 home heating oil releases 22 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere. Pure Biodiesel reduces the CO2 generated by approximately 85%. As mentioned previously, Massachusetts law now mandates each load of home heating oil contains 2% of biodiesel, which reduces the amount of CO2 released into the environment by an average of 275 lbs per house this year, and an additional 135 lbs each year the Biofuel blend is raised by an additional percentage point.

Most home furnaces, however, can accomodate a 20% biofuel blend in the oil tank. Each home that uses this B:20 blend will reduce the CO2 emitted by over 2750 lbs a year. Multiply that by the millions of homes in the New England area heated with oil and you’re talking about a truly significant reduction in greenhouse gases.

To get the B:20 Biofuel Blend for your home, contact your heating oil supplier. If you want to know more about BioFuels and their role in reducing greenhouse gases, click here.

Your heating oil now contains biofuel. It’s the law

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It’s a little known fact that this winter will be the first in which Massachusetts requires home heating oil to include at least 2% biofuels, rising 1 percentage point each year until it reaches 5% in 2012. In 2009, that creates a 24 million gallon demand, and Baystate Biofuels is here to fill it.

The company has taken over the disused tanks at an old Western Telecom building in North Andover and it plans to utilize solar power Osgood Landing had previously installed on the site, and Baystate Biofuels will tap into excess steam from a nearby waste-to-energy incinerator to heat the tanks to lower the viscosity of the pure biodiesel.

Warm Home Cool Planet is checking on whether Baystate will be delivering to Cambridge this winter. In the meantime, check out the video above. More on this soon.

Cap and Trade? Or just keep your head in the sand.

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jeff-jacoby-color The conservative backlash against the Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade bill has started.

The handsome devil you see to your left is Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, one of the most vocal critics on Cap and Trade and pretty much any other idea he didn’t read in the Weekly Standard.

Jacoby, who was hired by the the Globe in 1994 to provide editorial ‘balance’ to the liberal columnists already in the Globe’s employ, has managed to stay employed despite several incidents at the Globe, one of which lead to him being suspended without pay for four months in 2000.

In his latest column, Jacoby attacks the Obama Administration for having the nerve to push through legislation that addresses climate change, when the jury is ‘still out’ on global warming.

Remember folks, this is the same tactic used by the cigarette industry for several decades. Deny reality for as long as possible while they wring the last few bucks out of the racket..

Still, even if one wishes to forget the whole global warming thing, let’s remember there is a reason why it’s called ‘non-renewable’ energy. At some point in the future, it will become obvious we are reaching the end of the earth’s resources. If we haven’t moved away from carbon-based energy sources at that time, the competition for what’s left will make the Iraq War look like a neighborhood dispute.

Foot Traffic in Wakefield saves energy, burns calories

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Dolbeare Elementary School students in Wakefield participate in a ''walking school bus'' on Massachusetts Walk to School Day earlier this month. A new initiative in Wakefield, MA sees students from Dolbeare Elementary School going to their regular school bus stop–to wait for the rest of their classmates to walk past on their way to school. They get on the ‘walking bus’ and proceed to the next ‘stop’ to pick up some new students.

At the end of their journey, they arrive at school having already done something to address two of society’s most pressing problems–childhood obesity and the release of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere.

Cape Cod wind farm approved… sort of.

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From this week’s Cape Cod Times comes news of the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board voting unanimously to approve a bundle of permits for the long-proposed (and infinitely delayed) Nantucket Sound wind farm.

This vote marks the first time the state agency has issued a super permit, wrapping all required state and local permits for a project into a single decision. Which, of course, upset many of the project’s opponents, who vow to keep fighting. Of course, Federal permits are still needed from the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Aviation Agency…

Nonetheless, Warm Home Cool Planet sees this as significant progress, but it also explains why any picture of a wind turbine operating in Nantucket Sound is likely to remain an ‘artists rendering’ for a couple of years at least.

Electronics Recycling Event

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Title: Electronics Recycling Event
Location: ~Alewife Brook Parkway & Woods Ave., Somerville
Link out: Click here
Description: Recently upgraded your computer or television to a newer, more energy efficient model? Do you have other old or broken electronics collecting dust in the basement? Residents from Somerville, Cambridge, Arlington & Belmont can recycle these items for free.
Start Time: 9:00
Date: 2009-05-30
End Time: 13:00

Massachusetts passes “Stretch Code” for higher efficiency buildings

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MIT Green BuildingLast week Massachusetts passed the Stretch Code, which allows municipalities to adopt more stringent building codes than the state requires.  Current building requirements are set by Massachusetts Building codes and have to be updated every three years to meet the international ICC building standards.

The new stretch code standards would require a Home Energy Rating System (HERS) rating of 60, which means about 40% lower energy use than a standard built home. Modeling experts estimate that the extra construction cost an additional $8,100 (above the base code), which translates to $530 a year over a 30 year mortgage. But annual energy costs would be reduced on average by $1,360, for a net savings to the homeowner of $830 a year— a net savings of approximately $300 per year. In addition, many of the additional construction costs will be covered by subsidies from the utilities.

Home renovations would require a HERS rating only when feasible and for new commercial buildings there are several options for meeting the Stretch Code.  Commercial renovations, commercial buildings under 5,000 square feet, and specialty commercial buildings under 100,000 square feet (supermarkets, laboratories, warehouses) are all exempt from the proposal.

This is an excellent opportunity for communities like Cambridge, MA to forge ahead and adopt standards that will help it to meet its climate reduction targets.  Buildings contribute to 80% of the total greenhouse gas emissions produced in Cambridge, MA.  Adopting the stretch code could help Massachusetts communities reduce its emissions and save money that would otherwise go towards inefficient heating, cooling, and electric building  needs.

Solar Incentive

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Rising energy costs, increased consumer demand, and climate change can make any of us feel overwhelmed about the state of energy production in the US, and the world.   Many of us would love to go “off the grid” but aren’t sure how or how much it would cost.  The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative – Renewable Energy Trust can help.  MTC is a quasi public entity funded by a portion of each of our electric bills.  The money goes to support communal renewable energy programs such as Community Wind Collaborative, Clean Energy Choice and Commonwealth Solar.  Commonwealth Solar, a particularly successful program, was initiated in January, 2008 by the Patrick Administration and MTC.  The program provides rebates for PV installation through a non-competitive application process.  Residential, public, commercial and industrial parties can all benefit.  If you’re curious about installing solar panels at your residence or business, it’s easier than you think!   Please see: http://www.masstech.org/solar/ to learn more.

New Energy… One Atom at a time.

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340px-graphene_xyz2MIT has just announced it is working with a substance called graphene to find new information technology and energy related applications.

For those of you without a post-grad science degree, graphene is a sheet of carbon atoms formed into perfect hexagonal patterns. Graphene has several other properties that identify it as a material with extraordinary potential. For instance, it was found to have a breaking strength 200 times that of steel.

It is also one of the most expensive materials ever produced. A ’sheet’ of  graphene the width of a human hair current costs almost $1000 to produce. This is the part of the story that got Warm Home Cool Planet’s attention, however:

“Unique electrical characteristics could make graphene the successor to silicon in a whole new generation of microchips, surmounting basic physical constraints limiting the further development of ever-smaller, ever-faster silicon chips…  that’s only one of the material’s potential applications. Because of its single-atom thickness, pure graphene is transparent, and can be used to make transparent electrodes for light-based applications such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or improved solar cells.”

If something invisible to the human eye can be used to make, store and transport energy, the possibilities for alternative energy generation would seem to be limitless. Now, if we could just do something about the price.