Recent Biomass Media

Wow. It's been some time, but dang a lot has happened since my last post. Mainly in the area of media.

Specifically the rally got coverage in the Essex Reporter, where I did in fact get quoted. The hearing spawned a Vermont Public Television session last night where my independent study student called in. HA! and Yesterday morning my student and I were on WGDR (Goddard College's radio station) on Carl Etnier's show Relocalizing Vermont (you can listen to the show here). And we were invited to be on his WDEV show (out of Waterbury) on March 19th. Sweet.

And our service learning coordinator invited our group to present at the March 2008 KIDS Consortium conference in Maine - the kids are really pumped about that.

All of this leads me to the question though, to what end?

Why are we doing all of this? I'm hungry for some action.
Some of our students met with the UVM board of directors to advocate for a biomass research facility, and they seemed into that. Norwich is I think a little more eager to jump in, so we're closer to some action on that front.

My folks are considering a pellet furnace, which is cool. But dang. We're asking people to make a huge capital investment if they can afford it. How do you spread the word to people with capital about the payback benefits (not to mention the ecological benefits) of biomass fuels grown in state? That's where my energy is going now, so we'll see what comes of that.

Meanwhile the students are meeting tonight and Sunday with college students from Middlebury College to possibly collaborate on Powershift 2008, or maybe even an April 1st "Fossil Fools" Day celebration of some kind. We'll see - the future is an exciting place!

March on Montpelier: Renewable Energy Rally!

Last night's renewable energy rally and subsequent public hearing on the effect of fuel prices on the Vermont economy was a HUGE success. It was a cold early-evening, so no one was just hanging out on the lawn and the legislators were not in session, so what was our goal with the rally? Media attention - bring awareness to this issue. And we certainly succeeded at that!



These are shots of us on the state house steps. Jessie (one of the student ring-leaders) spoke to the crowd, and then... we had a big dance party. We grooved to Deft Punk and Jackson 5. It was awesome. Until it was time to eat, and then re-assemble for the hearing.

I was interviewed by the Essex Reporter, so there will probably be a report about it soon, and we made the front page of the Times Argus. The best part though, was a big story by the Channel 3 WCAX news crew! You can check it out here, but you have to have Windows Media Player to watch it. They interviewed my independent study student and she was very articulate :) yay!

Since each individual only had 2 minutes to speak we chunked up our proposal for pellet stoves and prairie grasses into 2 minute chunks that students presented in shifts. It was incredibly organized and the legislators were "impressed". This was a great way to start conversation. I talked with the chair of the meeting afterwards, Rachel Weston, and she said that just because the deadline for bill proposals was already past, one of the purposes of this hearing was to gather ideas for next year.

I think in the meantime we'll shift our focus to the pilot projects. If we can show that low-income housing folks can manage a pellet stove with proper education and attention, and we can set up a Vermont-based pelletizer system, then man, we'd be golden. :P That's what we'll put our energy into for now.


Ok ~ AND:
I just found out - our group made the Boston Globe and a publication called Cogito - not for this rally, but for our proposal in general.

For more pictures check out the facebook group!

Addison County Legislators Talk to VSHI

This morning it was all bright and sunny at the Bakery and Cafe in Bristol where students from the Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative gathered with four legislators David Sharpe, Claire Ayer, Michael Fisher, and Harold Giard from Addison County to discuss next steps.

In my view this was the best meeting yet, mainly because we're at the point of taking action steps instead of just talking. Dave Sharpe said that he was willing to work on some small amendment to the current energy bill to try to allocate 1 million dollars that could go for a pelletizer station.
He also said that we need to talk to LIHEAP people about an "emergency furnace" fund - cause I guess if you're on LIHEAP and your furnace gives out, you can tap into this fund to get a new one. BUT what if instead of a new oil furnace it was a new pellet stove or furnace - for which the fuel is cheaper anyway! This seems like a very straightforward simple step in the right direction.

Claire Ayer gave us names of high up Ag folks so that we can get some farmers on board.

Harold Giard highly recommended that we get a general business plan together. If we could get 100,000 dollars right now what would that go for? He also recommended getting VTC involved with research aspect. Yay, that sounds like a great plan. :)

So, it's been a very productive morning, and tomorrow we'll have to divide up jobs among the folks there. (This is really turning into another full time job for me!) It's a good thing my intern is still teaching, I'm not sure how I would cope with this AND teaching simultaneously!

"Governor Douglas, may we tell you about biomass?"

After a small run around finding me a sub at the high school, I joined the team of students in a meeting with Rob Ide, who works with the Clean Energy Development Fund, so that we could talk about funding a demo project for a pellet burner-pelletizer micro supply-demand system. He asked us great questions, and though he doesn't have a lot of staff or time, he said he'd be willing to meet with us further about this idea, which was very exciting.

From there we went to the State House expecting to testify before the Senate Natural Resources and Energy committee, but they were not ready for us. But I should say we made an excellent use of our time while we waited (and eventually discovered that our slot to testify had been postponed). We found out that Addison County has received a $30,000 grant to do a feasibility study on putting in a pelletizer (thank you Will Stevens for that info!).

Meanwhile Greg Clarke from the House Education committee got us a meeting with Governor Jim Douglas and the Leuitenant Governor Brian Dube. So we talked with them for a short while. Governor Douglas mainly just took in what we were saying (we didn't bring up the tax part of it at all) and he seemed vaguely positive, though I'm sure that's him just being political. Afterwards he gave one of the students his card saying that he would like to meet with us further about this. Brian Dubie was very positive and wants to co-author some publications for his weekly newsletter about this - what legislator wouldn't want to claim this idea and working with kids?

Shortly after we went to the House Education committee to says hi mainly, and explain that what we're doing is good education.

The other piece that seems to be snapping into focus is a march/rally on Feb. 20th. That evening there is a public hearing on the effect of the rising price of fossil fuels on the Vermont economy. There will be a panel of experts, and then anyone can sign up for 2 minutes of speaking time, and you want to get there early to get a good time slot. So we're planning to meet at the high school and walk to the State House with signs, and we're hoping to call Bread and Puppet, and we're planning to alert the media. This is going to be fun :) hehehehe

If the students really do care, we've got to mobilize them around this issue.

"Madame Speaker of the House, may we come in?"

The plan for today was meet a core team of students from around the state at the state house cafeteria at 1pm to present our biomass plan to Gaye Symington, the Speaker of the House.

At about 11:30 I received word that because of all the snow those other schools were not coming. That left my fiery student, a senior I snagged, and myself to pitch this idea. (Deeeeeep Breathe). We were ready to go it on our own, but then there we are in the Cafeteria gathering our thoughts when 4 key students from Mt. Abe come in. WOO HOO!

The presentation to Madame Speaker of the House was very organized, very deliberate, and she sounded amenable to it. She didn't give us a lot of feedback, but did say that it was impressive but then directed us to the President Pro Tem, Peter Shumlin (which I'm not really sure what that is, I should look it up), and he connected us with Ginny Lyons who has a biomass-related bill she's working on with the Senate. So we gave a mini-pitch to her and Peter Shumlin, and she said, "can you come back Friday to testify?" "Um. Yes." yesyesyes. We would drop anything to come testify. They're voting on a draft of it tonight, and she'll fax it to us in the morning so we have an up to date version of it. Then we'll devour it, and come back on Friday for a quick 15 minute presentation with a 20 minute Q&A period. Dang 15 minutes isn't long.

Then! Some representative (I didn't catch his name) from Addison County told us to go to the House Agriculture committee which was meeting at the time, and so we interrupted their meeting getting all situated and seated, and then like 20 minutes later David Zuckerman (who presides over that committee) told us we had a few minutes to pitch our idea.

And that was a little messier. We clearly were trying to focus on the agricultural side of it, but that meant that we didn't talk about the tax until the end, which I think was a little confusing for them. But anyway, they had SO many questions for us, and ideas, and people we should contact, and altogether it was very interesting and challenging. We didn't know things like How much does a farmer make per acre of prairie grass. Yes, it's sold for like $250/ton at Home Depot, but how much of that goes to the farmer? We didn't do that calculation, and some kids started not answering their questions, but re-directed their questions to things they did know about, which we talked about after as not so good.

But anyway, we found out that there are some counties which have received grants already to install pelletizers and work on biomass and such, so we need to talk to those folks to see how they fit into this picture (Burke and Bridport).

People kept telling us "it's so much easier to start something like this if you have a pilot program. Do it small-scale first". And fair enough. So we've got to pursue that.

In addition, David Zuckerman suggested that maybe both halves don't need to come from the government - the halves being pellet stoves in people homes and a universal pelletizer for local crops. If the government bulk purchases pellet stoves for people to sell at cost (or with a low-interest loan), then perhaps there would be a private player who would build the pelletizer? It's a thought. Either way the folks said that if you do a grant proposal through the Clean Energy Development Fund it's always stronger if it's a public-private cooperative endeavor.

It took almost 4 hours and now I'm EXHAUSTED!

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!

Tony Klein says "Start a Demo Project"

Wow, what a fascinating meeting with Tony Klein (D) from East Montpelier.

The big things that came out of that meeting were:
We need to get in touch with the Clean Energy Fund to create a demo pelletizer system to prove that our idea works, which would be amazingly sweet because then there would actually be a local source of heating fuel! And then when people see that it's making a MAD profit other people will jump in! Which leads to the next thing we have to do:
Talk to the "chief number cruncher" for the state, I forget his name now, but get him to look over our plan and see if all our projections are roughly correct.
Lastly, we need to coordinate with a more extreme bill that's upcoming for a "March on Montpelier" which the high students are demanding. "They keep asking me, do you have a date yet, do you have a date yet, do you have a date yet?" So we'll just go... and make the point that
It's the young people's future, not theirs.
An incrementally increasing tax on fossil fuels would be good for the Vermont economy if that tax went into shifting our market to more locally-grown sustainable alternatives.

On a slightly separate note, today we found out that we have a date with Gaye Symington who's Vermont Speaker of the House, and when Tony Klein heard about it he said he'd try to be there as well.

He kept saying how impressed he was with this idea and at the end of the meeting he said, "you guys give me hope for the future". Sooooo yay :) It's not likely to be a bill which will pass this year, but we can get started with the demo project. In fact, that's probably going to be my new priority 1.

* rock! *

Tomorrow: meeting with Jock Gill to discuss the future of our high school's potential switch to biomass pellets!

Gosh, life is pretty exciting right now!

Whoo HOO! Biomass for Vermont

Today at the Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative meeting (composed of high school students and 2 teachers) we made a fairly major discovery. A few representatives proposed last Thursday a bill which is tantalizingly close to what we're proposing. HA! It's HR759 and it's something that we can get behind, something we can propose modifications to. Yay!

Tomorrow I'm meeting with a representative from the committee on Natural Resources and Energy with two students and another teacher to discuss the legislative process.

And meanwhile other students are working on putting together a dinner with the Governor. Crazy. (I can only pray that his schedule will be clear and that he'll actually want to meet with us).
This is SO freaking exciting.

Want to know more? Everything is on the wiki: biomassvt.pbwiki.com
:)

Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative

Wow, it's been some time, but here's the update.

Last Monday night we had student representatives from 4 schools around Vermont all gathered to talk about potential biomass legislation. We're calling it the Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative. The result of that meeting was that the kids from Addison County are "phone bombing" their representatives to ask that their addendum be tacked on to a particular bill. David Zuckerman (Progressive from Burlington) said that most representatives get 20-30 calls from constituents TOTAL per legislative session, so a phone bomb party should be pretty effective (that's where you get together and have everybody take turns calling the representative). Slightly annoying? yes. It would be better if it were spaced out, but ... nonetheless that's the plan.

The plan as it stands right now is:

• Tax non-renewable fuels to fund the transition to renewable fuels which includes
• Overhaul LIHEAP (a fuel assistance program for poor folks in VT) to help them switch to biomass
• Have the state buy lots of 1000 pellet stoves to sell at cost to Vermonters
• Develop a pelletizer station where farmers or foresters or lumber mills or wood workers could bring biomass to pelletize and, at the same location, have a university-sponsored biofuels research facility to develop grass pellet technology.
• To prevent racketeering, charter a pubic, transparent pellet fuels futures market

That way you create simultaneously a supply and demand system for Vermont-made pellets. This will also serve as a huge stimulus to the Vermont economy since farmers will have an additional cash crop (with the hope that they would not reduce food production, but rather they would find suitable crops for otherwise underutilized land).

We need SO much input though! From economics experts, biomass experts, university professors, and foresters. So if you're one of those folks please visit biomassvt.pbwiki.com and reply with your thoughts!

We're hoping to have a conversation with the Governor about this within the next week. *oooo excitment! *

Tomorrow: Meeting at the High School for District Heating Project. Maybe that will ever happen. My fiery student wants to get involved, and gosh, I feel like with this girl anything is possible. She's got more energy than even me!

Warning: Student on Fire!

One of the Montpelier students who attended the GIV Winter Weekend last weekend has now made it her mission in life to change the school's heating system over to something renewable. The whole thing made the channel 5 news which you can watch here... as long as you aren't trying to use Safari or Firefox (at least I haven't had much luck with them. Perhaps you need Windows Media Player?).

She has already spoken with the head of the school grounds and when he was like, "neither wood pellets nor wood chips will work" she said something like, "I cannot accept that oil is our only option".  Wow. Oh my gosh. This girl rocks!  

I told her about the District Heating Project with the Biomass Energy Research Center so she found their number, got some good information from them, and we're off and running. It's really refreshing to see how much energy she has to put towards this. 

It looks like I'll be advising an independent study for her around this stuff - I recommended it since she will be doing this work anyway. 

Biomass for Home Heating in Vermont

The most exciting part of the Governor's Institute of Vermont (GIV) Winter Weekend was the movement to act on an idea.

Last year a junior at Mt. Abe Union HS went to the VT State Legislature to talk about the potential for biomass fuels as a renewable home-heating option. The legislator who invited them said, "We like your ideas, come back next year with more people". So that Junior (now a Senior) came to the GIV Weekend, and told kids about her work on biomass for home heating systems.

A less-than-ideal-though-likely scenario for Vermonters:
Let's say the price of oil skyrockets to the point of basically being... well, unaffordable. What do we do? Most of us have wood-stoves, so being the independent problem-solvers that we are, we start going out to cut down trees. But do we have enough trees to sustainably harvest to heat everyone's homes? No. Our initial estimates were that we could harvest 1 ton of biomass per acre per year of wood. This is not enough. (I have not done this calculation myself, though I would really like to). Even so - we end up with wide-spread deforestation, which leads to a lack of tourism - Vermont's biggest industry.

A better solution for Vermonters:
What if we could heat our homes with something renewable that didn't shoot our forests? Turns out high-density perenials like switch grass, Jerusalem artichoke, and Japanese knotweed grow at very high densities every year. This means we could harvest 15-20 tons per acre per year sustanably. That's huge! And hopefully enough (again - I need to do this calculation).

These crops could then be turned into pellets to be burned in a pellet stove, but there's not a lot of pellet stoves in Vermont, so there's not much demand for pellets, so no one makes pellets, so no one has a pellet stove - here again is our chicken-egg catch 22. So the idea would be that the state of Vermont could help home owners buy pellet stoves, thus creating a market for pellets, and then we could have a centralized pellet station, to which farmers and land owners could bring their crops for pelletization.

Local. Renewable. Home Heating Fuel.

This would keep more money in the state of Vermont thus creating a multi-million dollar stimulus to the Vermont economy.

So that's what we're proposing. It's beautiful. I'm getting my students involved. We're going to the statehouse :)

Eprida: Biofuel Production for Montpelier?

Today after the Service Learning Committee meeting I talked for a while with Gwen Hallsmith, the Montpelier City Planning Director about my ideas around local biofuel production. She said two things:

1. One reason to not love biofuel is that the biggest issue with biofuel is water and food. Apparently it takes an enormous amount of water to create biofuel and clean freshwater is a bigger issue for humanity than transportation. The question comes down to, "Who gets the food and water, the people or the cars?"

2. Even so, she liked my idea, and she recommended a pyrolysis-type biofuel producer called Eprida. It sounds pretty much too good to be true (which, we all know, probably means it is), but it's worth investigating. As far as I understand it pyrolysis is a kind of slow burn, letting (in this case) organic material decompose in the absence of oxygen, which leaves some kind of fuel, and a byproduct: char, something like charcoal. Only this stuff enhances carbon sequestration and can be used like a fertilizer. I know - too good to be true, saves gasoline burning AND takes CO2 out of the air. They have short flash video explaining the process, but somehow I feel like that's being generous. I came away from it feeling like I'd just watched a Dharma Initiative video on LOST. It may be legit, but not being a chemist, I'll need to do some further research.

Anyway it was encouraging to hear positive feedback from her about this idea. We'll see how far we get with it.

I think Gwen may be the archetype Eco-Maven.