VSHI in Montpelier

Since the Governor's Institute for Engineering I've found at least two other students who were interested in joining me in VSHI work in Montpelier. This is exciting since it's only been one other student and I representing our capitol so far.

This original student and I worked with the head of LIHEAP, Richard Moffi, to send out an interest survey to Montpelier LIHEAP clients, and have since received back several surveys for strong candidates to receive a pellet stove from the Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative.

So far I've been on three site visits in Montpelier, some were stronger candidates than others, but man, we've got a bunch more to follow up with before we can make any decisions. After having met some of these families I can see that it's going to be ridiculously hard to turn people down. Oh my gosh - I think I may have caught the bug. All I want to do is help these people.

Renewable Energy Projects

As my vacation winds down, I think increasingly about the classes I'll jump back into on Wednesday. When I left them we were two days into talking about renewable energy projects. I offered a menu of project ideas, plus an opening for students to come up with their own. So far, though, the feedback has been "Can we do all of these?!" I am seriously tempted to cancel the rest of the semester's curriculum to do that, but I also feel like people may get sick of these projects. Anyway, here's the menu of projects listed from simplest and most doable to most difficult to implement (roughly). Any suggestions are welcome as well. 

• Light Loggers - Donald, my intern, and I placed light loggers in a few rooms around the school which recorded when there was motion in a room and when the lights were on. The goal would be to see *how* worthwhile it would be to install motion-sensors on the lights. 

• DDC Boiler Control - The boiler room is controlled by a Digital Display Controller (DDC).  We could monitor the temperatures in each room in the whole school and see which rooms are perpetually too cold, and which are too hot.  That would ultimately lead us to going over some of the duct joints with aluminum tape to prevent leaks. We could even then see if it made any measurable difference. 

• Solar Hot Water Panel - Turns out the cafeteria's hot water comes from an electric hot water tank located under the cafeteria. We could run a calculation to see *how* worthwhile it would be to install a solar hot water panel above the cafeteria.  As I'm told solar hot water has a higher return on investment than photovoltaics. If our conclusions showed that it would be of significant value, then, we could propose this to principal, head custodian, head of facilities. Our high school recently won $10,000 from AARP for being awesome at sustainability (mainly because of our greenhouse, and the biology curriculum's dedication to growing food for the cafeteria there). That money isn't earmarked for anything, and in keeping with the spirit with which we won it, this may be an entirely appropriate use of it. But we'll see. 

• Operation Plastic Removal, Think Outside the Bottle, Plastic Bag Fee Statewide or Countywide - In the fall my 7th period physics students were moved to spread the word about BPA in water bottles like Nalgene. They formed a group they ended up calling Operation Plastic Removal. The wrote a mission statement, made a facebook group, made a video, and a tee-shirt design, which many students are excited to purchase. Its sort of taken on a life of its own. For a while I squelched it because we had to move on in the curriculum, but now that we're back to renewable energy, it's now appropriate to return I believe. There are many directions we could take this. 
  

1) We could work with Think Outside the Bottle, who has recently had a campaign to get municipal facilities to cancel their agreements with bottled water companies. According to a rumor I heard a representative from Think Outside the Bottle was going to target Vermont's Statehouse next. 

2) Students from Mount Abe in Bristol are pushing for a statewide plastic bag fee. A version of such a bill has been introduced in both the house and senate, but according to an environmental lobbyist friend of mine, she says that no one is talking about it. Sad face. However, (hehehehe) it sounds like the Central Vermont Solid Waste District was eager for ideas at their most recent board meeting.  They have a zero-waste policy which helps guide their decisions, and this would fall right in line with that.  It looks like there might be a good opportunity here. It would be easier to go to a statewide fee or ban after it had been piloted at the county level. 

3) There is a bill with Natural Resources and Energy Committee that would ban DECA (a particularly toxic flame retardant) as well as BPA in baby-bottles and in the lining of baby food containers. According to my friend people *are* talking about this bill and it's likely to pass. Nonetheless, I think the kids would be thrilled to go there and be a part of the discussion.  

• Pellet Stoves for Low Income Families in Washington County - I've been working with a group of students and teachers calling themselves the Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative whose main goal has been to reduce the amount of fossil fuels burned as heating fuel in Vermont, and their specific action to do this has been to raise money to switch LIHEAP recipients (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) from kerosene, propane, and fuel oil to pellet heat systems. Pellets are cheaper and (in my opinion) will continue to track lower than fuel oil per BTU, so people with capital to make a switch will do that, but those without capital will have to continue burning the more expensive fuel oil.  And if sustainability is to become our reality it must be accessible to the poorest in our community.  So this group has raised money to switch LIHEAP recipients in Addison County, but why couldn't we do the same in Washington County? Many students wanted to do this. 

• Wind Energy on State Owned Land and/or ski resorts - Vermont Representative, Rachel Weston is sitting on a bill that would open up state land for renewable energy development. Primarily this would mean people could put wind turbines on ridge lines - there would be special exceptions for particularly well-known vistas, and all the regular rules would apply: not in a migration area, not interrupting endangered species habitat, etc. A friend of mine came up with an interesting amendment to this bill - what if there were wind turbines at ski resorts - they're already (in my view) ecological disaster areas, visually unnatural, they're easily accessible, and ski resorts could get a little green-washing to boot!  Ok... probably I shouldn't frame it that way if we move forward with this, but you get the idea. :) 
  

Wow. That was a lot of writing. I hope you can see why the kids are excited about this. I'm excited as well ~ we'll see what can be achieved in the next few months.  

Peter Welch, David Sharpe converge on a LIHEAP-VSHI recipient home

This past Thursday the Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative met with Vermont Congressman Peter Welch, and Vermont State senator from Addison County David Sharpe.

They and VSHI members from UVM, Mt. Abe, and Montpelier gathered at the home of a LIHEAP recipient whom we had given a stove. Peter Welch seemed enthusiastic about our work, and David Sharpe hopes to write some legislation to change the way LIHEAP is funded. He encouraged us to move now rather than wait for the next legislative session to begin.

We made the Addison Independent paper - pretty cool, but again I am eager for action rather than talk.

I was just on a conference call with Tim DenHerder-Thomas from MacAllister University along with Tom and Jessie-Ruth. The three of us may play host to Tim's new program called Summer of Solutions, an opportunity for high school and college students to spend their summer working on projects like the Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative. That would be great. Last summer VSHI was basically my second job, and this might actually allow me to delegate some responsibility and make me freer. Perhaps that's a pipe dream, but I'm not committed yet, so I have some time to mull over it.

An Update on VSHI

Things in the world of the Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative have been cruising for some time now. So here's where we're at:

The director of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program sent out a survey to its petroleum consuming recipients, soliciting interest in our pilot program. So far we've received more than 40 surveys back indicating interest (yay!). Now all we need is money to buy them stoves.

How do we get money to buy them stoves? That's where the Carbon Offset Program comes in. Since we're specifically targeting fossil-fuel users and converting them to biomass heat, this warrants a carbon offset since the biomass is a short-carbon-cycle fuel and the fossil fuels are long-carbon-cycle.

At the moment we're selling offsets for $25/ton, but that may be lowered. We've done the calculation like four times, and it comes out slightly differently each time depending on our assumptions. So it will probably end up somewhere in the range of $9-25/ton. The page is about 90% done, and we're hoping to get some big name corporations and legislators to participate. Until everything is up and running I don't expect it to generate a lot of money.

Just a piece on the logistics: Families who receive a stove will be asked to pay us a down payment + whatever they can afford per month until they've paid off the stove. Thus it's not so much a grant as it is a no-interest loan.

Meanwhile I'm meeting today with Garth of CVCLT to discuss how to engage landlords in this transition as well as brainstorming how to convert my condo complex, the apartment complex next door and across the street. Actually I should probably go so I'm not late :) Wish me luck!

Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative in Bristol

Last Tuesday morning we had one of the most exciting events in the short history of the Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative. As one of our student members put it, it was "one of the most important things we've done."


Basically we gathered all the players in the Bristol biomass heating community to discuss a potential LIHEAP pilot program in that area. There were people from LIHEAP, the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, ACORN, Norwich University, Pellet Vendors, Farmers, the Extension Service, the Bristol Selectboard, and two Addison County Legislators, among others.

It was (needless to say) very productive. We discussed the basic idea, and then broke up into sub-groups to address different aspects of the pilot project: the Human Side, the Burning Technology/Production & Farming side, aaaaaand Funding.

These committees will continue to meet, and hopefully make further headway. I was on the Human Side, which I'm particularly interested in as I would like to be certified to do Home Energy Audits in the future.

This will be followed by a meeting this Thursday in Montpelier about the heating situation in that area. We'll discuss a bulk purchase of pellets (or pellet purchasing co-op), and how we can make this transition. More on that to follow.

Legislative Action This Session? Wow. Dang. :)

The exciting news of the day comes to us through Rep. Dave Sharpe from Addison County. I'm sorry Dave that I did not ask your permission ahead of time to publish this, but it's just so exciting:

Hi Gang,

Well it's crunch time. The Senate finance committee is looking at S.350 with an idea that they could do something to help the VESI project. Senator Ayer has asked me what in particular you would like and I have indicated three possibilities. 1) subsidize or otherwise create incentives for a pellet manufacturing facility 2) use LIHEAP funds to install some pellet stoves. 3) Use LIHEAP funds to purchase pellets. She suggested that possibly a grant to UVM to study the issues and plan a course of action.

What do you think? and what suggestions would you make?

Regards,
Rep. Dave Sharpe


It's SO great to know that in this small state our representatives are so willing to listen and move on our behalf. I'm feeling pretty good about democracy right now.

Meanwhile, I am also shocked that we may actually get some movement during this legislative session. We had mentally put the legislature on the backburner since there wasn't much time left, and usually bills like this take at least two sessions anyway. But here we are with a legislator proposing our ideas THIS FREAKING SESSION! :D Probably that's because we acted early. Now we've just got to get it passed ~ and hopefully without a veto :P We'll see!