Category Archives: Cambridge

MIT Sustainablility Summit Friday April 24th

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Just another reminder of the MIT Sustainability Summit-Starting this Friday:

Location: Walker Memorial Building 50 142 Memorial Drive Cambridge, MA 02139
Click here for more details
Description: The MIT Sustainability Summit, Discovering New Dimensions for Growth, brings together students, engineers, business leaders, academics, environmental activists, and public servants to discuss how we can most effectively support each other as we face the opportunities and challenges of transitioning to a sustainable world.

For questions contact:
Catharina Lavers clavers@MIT.EDU
Start Time: 9:30
Date: 2009-04-24

Available Renewable Energy Tax Credits & Rebates

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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.

water-statue

On the other hand, if you’re interested in available Tax Credits for Qualified Hybrid Vehicles.

Green energy companies still hiring in Massachusetts

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dollar-sign“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.

MIT Introduces new Solar Car

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solarcar-1-enlarged-1

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.

Green is the New Crimson

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harvard_green

Harvard University has opened a Office of Sustainability. This marks the formalization of the long running Campus Green Initiative at Harvard. The creation of this organization is tied to the University’s long-term energy use. The goal they are aiming for is simple:

30% reduction from 2006 campus-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 2016.

The office has an interesting business model for funding insofar as only 20% of their operating expenses comes from the Harvard’s general fund. The other 80% is generated from working with various University departments on a fee-for-service basis to produce energy and cost savings on building maintenance and construction, and to help each department adopt green policies in operations and procurements. Way to go Harvard!

Cambridge Energy Barnraising

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Last week, we showed you how a local Cambridge organization (HEET–Home Energy Efficiency Team) ‘weatherizes’ a house for fellow Cambridge residents.  Weatherizing a house involves making some basic non-structural changes to a house to reduce the energy needed for heating and cooling and save money on utilities. The homeowner supplies all the materials and HEET provides the knowledge and manpower needed to finish all energy efficiency improvements in a single day.

It’s a great community activity and a fantastic way to meet your fellow Cambridge residents while learning from skilled tradesmen how you can make your own home more energy efficient. And there is always a party to celebrate the completion of another successful Weatherization Barnraising.

The next HEET Weatherization Barnraising is scheduled for Sunday, March 1 between 12:30—5 pm at 120 Chestnut Street and 100 Henry Street, Cambridgeport.

The Work to be carried out on site includes:

  • Spraying the basement rimjoist using RetroFoam, led by Tom Lawler (the head of RetroFoam, a Massachusetts-based insulation company)
  • Using Plexiglas to insulate windows
  • Repairing drywall
  • Weatherizing doors
  • Possible building of an insulated cover for an attic hatch

The number of participants will be limited to assure that everyone has guidance and support from a skilled team leader.  You can sign up today by contacting Steve Morr-Wineman at swineman@gis.net or 617-876-4753.

HEET Barnraisings—a green twist on an old idea

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You may remember the scene from the 1985 movie Witness starring Harrison Ford. A group of Amish people converge on a neighbor’s property and assemble a barn in a single montage, a single day. A Cambridge-based co-op  HEET (for Home Energy Efficiency Team) does weatherization work that’s less lofty, but arguably more important to the modern world. It’s a model for what can be done by harnessing the power of progressive community which emerged during the Obama campaign.

As Bob the Builder might say, ‘Can We Caulk it? Yes we can!’

Combining the materials purchased by the homeowner with free knowhow and labor from HEET, the team has weatherized several low-income  homes in Cambridge, with the goal of performing a barn-raising per month. As they do so, they transfer the skills needed to make—and keep— a home more energy efficient to both homeowners and groups of new volunteers. The energy savings persist, putting cash in the pockets of Cambridge residents, which can be spent in the local economy in different ways—a Cambridge mini-stimulus.

HEET grew out of neighborhood organization called GreenPort. The purpose of both groups, according to co-founder Steve Morr-Wineman, is to bring neighbors together to respond to the environmental crisis. A recent project included weatherizing the Cambridgeport Public School, a pioneering public-private-volunteer collaboration with the savings going back to Cambridge’s tax-payers.

Daily KOS thinks the model needs to go national, and so does Warm Home Cool Planet.

Somerville, MA will soon hold their first weatherization barnraising and Watertown, Brookline, Lexington, Medford, Milton, Newton, Beverly, and Boston are thinking about starting their own groups.  I think it would be a good idea for this idea to go nation-wide.  In fact, a weatherization barnraising on the White House might be a very good way to kick-start that process.

Our hats off to the HEET team. You’re doing great work. Expect to hear from us soon.

Crawlspace 101

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This weekend, Warm Home Cool Planet received a message from Lands’ End specifically targeting everyone shivering their way through winter here in Massachusetts.

lands_end

You know it’s cold when folks from Wisconsin are sending you winter sympathy messages via email. Beyond how cold it might be outside, the recent patch of artic weather here in Cambridge has resulted in lots of time spent inside for most residents. For Warm Home Cool Planet, that also means plenty of time to ponder why the ground floor of the house is always colder than the floors above.

A quick search around the Internet revealed a wealth of information on how most houses–particularly those built before the 1970s–don’t have properly insulated crawlspaces.

So if your bottom floor feels like a skating rink, find out why crawl space vapor is reducing your comfort–and increasing your heating bills. We also recommend looking at your all your options for properly sealing and insulating your crawlspace. Depending on the situation under your house, you need to check your polyethylene sheet has the right thickness, and you have the right kind of membrane to deal with moisture build up under your flooring.

Cambridge Energy Alliance on NOW

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhYwgx449Nk

This PBS NOW show from last year is still an interesting watch for those interested in the Cambridge Energy Alliance’s model for immediate, real-world energy savings with proven, here-and-now tools and technologies. The folks at Warm Home Cool Planet always enjoy cutaway clips of our fair city: the show contains the following unattributed fun factoids and figures:

  • Cambridge is one of the greenest city in the country
    (according to POPSCI.COM we’re actually number 6, after Boston at 5.)
  • 80% of Cambridge’s carbon footprint comes from buildings
  • 25% of Cantabridgians walk to work
  • Cambridge is replacing its streetlights with LED-based models

Can Coal be Clean? Cambridge-based Greatpoint says Yes

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For those of us at Warm Home Cool Planet old enough to remember the last energy crisis, the current talk about Clean Coal, and Coal Gasification feels like deja vu, all over again.

Coal-to-liquids technology isn’t new— according to the WSJ the process was developed in Weimar Germany in the 1920s. South Africa used the technology to escape sanctions during the Apartheid era. Today, coal-rich, oil-poor China is hot for coal-to-liquids.

Closer to home, Cambridge-based Great Point’s coal gasification process, which includes carbon sequestering (not simply for sake of carbon sequesting of course, but for use in enhanced oil recovery) looks pretty good on paper. Depending on how much biomass is used as a feedstock, Great Point claims that its Bluegas technology can actually be net carbon negative.

bluegas_process

The real question is will federal regulators, who during the Bush Administration relaxed clean-air standards to allow Coal plants to postpone cleaning up emissions, actually make utilities spend the additional money required to do what is theoretically possible to reduce the damage done by using coal?

Clean(er) Coal costs more than dirty coal. Does the political will exist to enforce cleaner technologies which will cause rate-payers to pay more for electricity? Obama has said he’s open to the idea of clean coal technology. At this point in time, however, the only thing ‘clean’ about it is the carbon sequestering the industry is obliged to do under state and federal regulations. As more facts indicate the true costs and effects of making ‘clean coal’ a widespread production mandate for our energy needs, political opinions will be sharpened and sides taken.

As the price of oil falls, interest in goofing around with coal, shale, and tar-sands will most likely wane, just as it did in the 70s. Greatpoint’s technology began life back when the Disco was King. Will we all be wearing silver unitards and popping food pills before pilot efforts turn into wide-scale deployment?