To Switch or Not to Switch?

It's a snowy day outside, school has just been let out, but my fiery student is not frolicking through the slush on her way home. No, she's with me and Jock Gill in the boiler room of the school discussing our energy future.

There are many reasons to switch us over to pellets, but there are many reasons to stay as we are.
Reason to switch:

• Pellets are cheaper than oil per BTU (with a Co-op contract, it's about $13/MMBTU, whereas fuel oil is $18/MMBTU). At this rate, and for the amount of BTUs our school uses, it would end up saving us money, but not tons because of the new building it would require).
  
• 10,000 gallon fuel tanks tend to leak, or float in a flood (which Montpelier may be prone to?)
• Pellet stoves don't put out the amount of SOx and NOx as fossil fuel exhaust.

Reasons not to switch:

• The current boilers are only 13 years old (or roughly half-way through their expected lifetime)
• They're running fine, not leaking, they're well kept up - no maintenance reason to replace them
• The boilers themselves are high efficiency models for the type of fuel they burn.
• If we put in a pellet furnace we'd need a new building to house it and a chimney.

Perhaps instead of focusing on the high school we're going to look at the Middle and Elementary Schools to see if they would stand to benefit more than the high school. We'll let you know how that goes!