I am 32 years old and it seems like my whole life I have heard that we are running out of oil. It wasn’t until college that I truly understood how heavily the world relies on oil. This is also when I first heard the term “peak oil”. Read more
Posts for Tag : policies
Rebates – Get them while you can!
Solar Electric System
I started the Energy Emporium just about 3 years ago and I find I have to devote a good number of hours every month to keeping up with the changes in financial incentives. I know it must be difficult for home-owners or people who are not working in this industry. One of the reasons I started this business, was to be able to provide up-to-date information on products, pricing, permitting and incentives for renewable products.
I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised at gross fluctuations in renewable incentives when we look at the harsh political atmosphere and the poor economy today … we can’t decide if we should be boosting the green industry to help create jobs or shutting down as many federal and state programs as possible to reduce the deficit.
Read more
Investment Planning
Solar PV System
At the same time we are also learning more about what fossil fuels do to our ozone, what a “finite resource” really means, and that we need to be prepared for extreme weather including deadly tornandos, hurricanes, and sunamis.
One solution (and not just mine) — an investment in a renewable energy system for your home. A renewable system can provide some self-sustainability for your family if a local disaster hits; the value of renewable energy will increase over time as governments and economies invest in it; the value of your home will increase if it relies less on fossil fuels.
A solar hot water or electric system today can provide at least a 5%-10% return on your investment. Depending on state rebate program, it can be significantly higher than that.
What is your investment strategy for the new millennium?
Keeping PACE with VT
Keeping PACE
In the renewable energy world PACE stands for “Property Assessed Clean Energy”. It is a program designed to make renewable energy projects affordable for any home-owner. The basic idea is that a home-owner can sign up for PACE financing and get a renewable energy system installed for little or no money up front. Their property taxes are increased an amount that is less than what they pay for electricity over the same period of time. It shows up as a new line item in the property tax only for the home-owners who are part of PACE, and that line item never increases — it is a fixed amount. After 20 years (or the required amount of time to pay for it) that line item of the property tax goes away.
From the home-owners perspective, their electric bill goes away and they pay a little more in property tax, but the amount they pay is less/year than what they paid for electricity. If they stay in the house long enough, they own the solar PV system, and the renewable energy line item on their property tax goes away. It is a savings for the home-owner from the very first year.
40 Years of Earth Days!
2010 Earth Day
According to the Earth Day Action Center, Earth Day was founded on the principal that people have a right to a healthy, sustainable environment. It was recognized that people have an affect on their environment and some things that we do are not healthy for the environment and can cause destruction that we cannot recover from. We knew that more than 40 years ago, so how would you describe the progress?
Read more
Sustainable Fresh Food
Fresh Food
I found both of these movies provide a great insight into how our food is created and brought to market. Yes, they are both a little depressing with pictures of chickens, pigs, and cattle that are never given more than a few inches of space in which to move around during their entire life … but the uplifting part is there is something we can do about this. Most of us can choose which foods to buy at the grocery store.
Read more
Historic Preservation – Embodied Energy
There is a new document that has recently been published to provide ideas and advice for energy efficient improvements for historic buildings. This document, “Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, and Historic Preservation” is available from the “Clean Air Cool Planet” (CA-CP) website.
First a note about CA-CP. This is a non-profit organization whose mission is “Finding solutions to global warming”. The work I am familiar with is in the ‘Communities’ section where they provide the Small Town Carbon Calculator, documents on getting an Energy Committee started in your town, and resources to help you find funding and write grant proposals. Good stuff.
Read more
78 Main: Cutting through the Red tape
Cutting through
Since this house is on the Mascoma River, and we want to add a garage, a driveway and a solar storage tank (excavation required), we needed a bunch of permits including the NH Shoreland Protection Permit, NH Heritage Bureau report, NH Energy Code, as well as Enfield town building and garage permits. I finally have them all in hand… and with a General Contractor officially starting this week.
In the meantime we have repaired foundation: repointing, filling in the windows, removing old crumbly mortar and adding new. But the majority of the work on the house and the solar heating system has been waiting for the permits.
Read more
350 – Do something for the Planet
 Energy Emporium, 10/24/09 |
 Zoom in |
Sat, Oct 24, 2009: Today is the International Day of Climate Action! I added a couple of signs to my store window to try to spread the message. Look for lots of interesting pictures from around the world: 350.org
Also, I signed up for the Huffington Post’s week of ‘no impact’. Each day they send me a suggested no impact action that I can take. For instance, Tuesday was focused on transportation — riding to work or sharing a ride. Monday was trash day — pay attention to everything you throw out and try to recycle instead. Today was food day — see if you can buy and eat only local foods to keep down the amount of transportation that was needed to get it to you.
I think this is a great idea and I would like to pick a few weeks in the year to try this. It is not unlike the program I am working on with my spinning class (exercise) — tracking everything we eat and counting all the calories that we exert. Basically if you measure stuff you have an opportunity to improve it.
Read more
78 Main: Permit me to make a ZEB, LEED home
Bureaucracy
Ahhh… the bureaucracy of state and local permits. We are trying to build a net zero energy building (ZEB) with LEED certification (leadership in energy and environmental design) but we can’t start until we get all the right permits through all the right bureaucracies.
I thought it would be relatively easy to get a building permit from our town (Enfield) to build a back deck, detached garage and driveway… but when I finally got around to starting the application I saw this little note at the end that said I need to get a permit from the NH Department of Environmental Services, Shoreland Protection Group. My house is within 250′ of the Mascoma River, so this rule applies to me.
78 Main St, Enfield, NH 03748
Hours: Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm, Sat (in summer) 10am-2pm
603.632.1263