After a series of public hearings, the Cambridge City Council adopted the stretch energy code on December 21st. The stretch code is about 30% more efficient than the baseline building code and has different requirements for both the residential and commercial sectors. Visit the city’s website to learn more about the stretch code, which includes a summary table that outlines the new requirements.
By passing the stretch energy code, the city of Cambridge demonstrates its continued commitment to reduce its carbon footprint, by requiring higher efficiency standards for buildings, which produce 80% of all carbon emissions in the city. In addition, the city of Cambridge has now met one of the requirements of the Green Communities Act, that may provide grant funding for efficiency and renewable energy initiatives.
The stretch code is not without controversy, as expressed in the E2.0 July blog post. The city council weighed in feedback from the community and received recommendations for the code’s adoption from the Climate Protection Action Committee and the city’s Green Building Task Force. The new building code will go into effect on July 1, 2010.
One of the first home improvements Rachel and I made when we purchased our condo here in Cambridge this spring was a solar hot water installation on our rooftop.
The system we had put in uses vacuum tubes, a newer, more efficient type of solar collector than the black box flat panels of old. As a writer covering energy and the environment in Cambridge and China, I’d spent the past three years tracing this new and exotic technology back to the factories and cities in China where they are surprisingly commonplace.
I first read about the tubes three years ago in a story in the Boston Globe. A family in Newbury, MA was using a massive installation to provide hot water and heat for their giant barn of a house. A photo that went with the story showed their installation covered in frost on a cold winter day. Somehow, despite the cold, the tubes were still kicking out 120 to 160 degree water. The secret behind vacuum tubes that allows them to work just as well in winter as summer is, just as their name suggests, a vacuum space. The diagram at the right shows how the tubes work. Sunlight passes through a clear outer glass tube and travels through an evacuated space or vacuum where all of the air has been sucked out. The sunlight passes through this vacuum and then hits an inner black pipe that absorbs the sun’s rays converting the sunlight to heat. What’s key about all of this is that whereas light rays can pass through a vacuum space, heat can not. All of the heat is therefore trapped inside by this highly efficient, transparent insulator.
After I read the story in the Globe I found out that there are thousands of factories kicking out these tubes in China and roughly 1 in 10 Chinese people use them for their hot water.
Six months after first hearing of the tubes, I toured the R&D center of one of these factories in Beijing for a story I wrote for New Scientist.
The story also led me to Rizhao, a city on the coast between Beijing and Shanghai where 99 percent of residents get their hot water from the sun. Here is a video I made from a rooftop of the city while talking with Rizhao’s mayor, Li Zhaoqian.
By the time we had a chance to buy a place of our own I was totally sold on the technology and couldn’t wait to put the tubes in on our own place. Evacuated tubes are still hard to come by in the US, however, and most of the installers I spoke with insisted they were no better than the flat panel solar collectors that had been around since the 70s. The estimates I got for flat panel installations, however, were twice the size of what I figured I could get by with using vacuum tubes. Then I found Bruce, a contractor with New England Solar Hot Water, who, like his company’s name suggests, only does solar hot water installations. Bruce and his crew had been doing vacuum tube installs for years and were stoked to hear I’d actually toured some of the factories where they get their parts.
In mid June they installed the collectors shown on the right that heat all of our domestic hot water; the water we use for showers, laundry, and in our sinks. The system is backed up by natural gas but on a sunny day like today, its unlikely we’ll need it. At 9am, with an outside temp of 43 F, our tubes are already a toasty 95 F and climbing.
On October 24th, volunteers worked with the Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET) and the Cambridge Energy Alliance to weatherize Cambridge buildings and provide efficient light bulbs and resources to Area 4 residents as part of the International Day of Climate Action. This local grassroots effort was part of 4,000 world-wide groups that demonstrated their commitment to fighting climate change by rallying in big cities and engaging in creative community actions. The International Day of Climate Action is called on world leaders to commit to bringing carbon emissions down from its current 387ppm to a safe level of 350 or less.
Women's Center Barnraising
Over seventy volunteers came together to weatherize both the Women’s Center and the Wendell Street coop through air sealing improvements to the windows, doors, and gaps in the basement, plus other efficiency measures like installing compact fluorescent light bulbs. The communities of Reading, Boston, Waltham, Arlington, and Maynard will continue the spirit of the International Day of Action with weatherization barnraisings scheduled for the next 30 days. The buildings included homes for mentally disabled adults and a church.
The HEET team also collaborated with the Cambridge Energy Alliance to help Area 4 residents save energy and cut carbon by exchanging incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescents. The light bulb exchange was a huge success; saving Area 4 residents over 29,000 pounds of carbon per year by replacing 346 incandescent light bulbs. In addition, the Cambridge Energy Alliance completed its fall canvass in other Cambridge neighborhoods that day by exchanging 579 cfl lightbulbs, saving an additional 341,378 lbs of carbon. These outreach activities also provided energy effiency resources to help families start saving money, plus connect them to energy effiency programs for their homes or businesses.
Many of the Cambridge volunteers ended the day by joining the Boston 350 Under Water Festival. Hundreds of citizens gathered en masse in downtown Boston’s Christopher Columbus Park and engaged in positive attention-getting and imagination-catching activities. The Boston 350 event used the iconic image of sea level rise to draw attention to the threat of global climate change.
The International Day of Action reflected the famed mantra “Think global and act local”! There are a number of ways to get involved in sustainability, energy, and climate activities which can be found on the Cambridge Energy Alliance calendar. To get involved in the Home Energy Efficency barnraising events visit there website at heetma.com/.
If you’ve tried all of the of the recent tips on how to keep warm while saving energy, but are still shivering in your boots (you may or may not be wearing boots), then here are some more resources to check out: Continue reading →
We here at the Cambridge Energy Alliance have noticed that we have “busy season” when it comes to interest in Home Energy Audits. As the weather starts to get colder, people tend to start thinking more about ways they can keep their home warm and save money on their heating bills.
The follow graph shows the relative interest in the search term “Home Energy Audit” from people in the Boston Metro Area over the last year.
As you can see, interest peaked this year in January-February 2009 right around the coldest part of Winter. Unfortunately with the increased interest, comes delays in scheduling energy audits because too many people want audits all at the same time. Fortunately, there is still time this season to get an energy audit before the rush is fully on. You can learn more about energy audits in Cambridge by clicking here. You can learn more about Energy Audits generally and in Massachusetts by clicking here.
Although you could be forgiven for wondering if we even had a summer, it’s clear winter’s just around the corner. Here are some ideas to help you prepare:
Following on from an article published on Warm Home Cool Planet a couple of weeks ago on mandatory Energy Audits in Austin, TX, we have noticed a growing movement amongst the real estate industry targeting the ‘Cap and Trade’ bill and any local ordinances that might obligate homeowners into performing an energy audit on their home or making energy improvements in their home before they sell.
Here’s one from Brian Brady ‘America’s No. 1 mortgage broker’: “Sadly, the theory of carbon dioxide emissions’ effect on climate change is accepted as fact by our politicians without rigorous examination of its merits. It’s easy to turn a blind eye on faulty legislation when it attacks “big business”. Cap and Trade, however, is much more restrictive than its supporters would have you believe. Your neighbor’s penchant for bay windows and your desire for key-lime green bathroom walls might just be at stake. ”
As in all cases where people attempt to sow doubt on the accepted fact of climate change, it’s important to consider the source of these opinions. It’s also worth mentioning that the scientific community, not politicians, are responsible for deciding what is scientific fact.
Mortgage brokers make their money from arranging mortgages for people who aren’t considered good risks by banks. (Which describes at least 50% of Americans at the moment.) The mortgage broker assumes the risk of the loan for a premium on the prevailing interest rates (usually in the form of ‘points’). Mortgage companies then package up these loans and sell them to banks so they can be traded as financial instruments like CDO’s (Collateralized Dept Obligations) which in large part were responsible for the near collapse of our financial system last fall.
Mr. Brady’s business suffers if anything gets in the way of him writing another mortgage and stuffing more dodgy paper into our already teetering financial system. To prevent that from happening, Mr. Brady has hauled the “man’s home is his castle’ trope out of the cupboard and dusted it off. According to Mr. Brady soon ‘the socialists will be invading your home and telling you how many light switches you can have’.
As a recent home seller (and potential home buyer) I can assure readers that the marketplace is already factoring energy efficiency into the price of homes. Anyone seriously considering buying our Central Square home asked our broker for recent energy bills so they could figure out what their total house expenses would be each month. A gas boiler tune-up performed the previous winter, and an Energy Star-rated air conditioning system resulted in our home energy bills comparing favorably to other homes with a similar square footage. As a result our home was sold.
Given his connection to the real-estate industry, Mr. Brady should know that potential home buyers are already performing something close to an energy ‘audit’ on every home they are considering for purchase. Local municipalities are simply reacting to current market trends and ensuring that everyone gets the information needed before they make a home buying decision.
Austin, Texas–which we have always considered to be a little slice of Massachusetts right in the middle of the Lone Star state–has become the first town to pass and ratify a law that makes an energy audit mandatory when you sell a home within the city limits.
Almost 400 audits have been performed under the new ordinance which was passed in November 2008 and went into effect June 1 this year. After a furious lobbying effort by the Austin Board of Realtors, homeowners are not required to make all improvements, but the results will likely be used as a bargaining chip in most purchases.
One homeowner found that over 80% of his air-conditioning was leaking through his uninsulated attic and decided to make the repair to improve the prospects of selling his house. In this depressed market, most sellers will be looking for any advantage they can get.
Of course, Austinites have to find an energy auditor and pay for the audit. Luckily, if you live in Cambridge, requesting an audit is as simple as filling out a simple form and in many cases it’s free.
Between the extravagant claims for various forms of renewable energy, and figuring out ways to pay for energy-saving improvements and technologies in your home, we sometimes forget that major energy–and cost– savings can be realized simply by ensuring appliances and utilities in your home are operating or set at optimal temperatures.
A quick ‘temperature tour’ of your home to check the heating and cooling settings on your appliances. You can take a major step towards saving energy in approximately 20 minutes. Here’s where you’ll save the most:
Set your hot water heater at 120 degrees.
The refrigerator should be set at between 38 and 35 degrees, and freezer set to 0 degrees.
Program your thermostat two degrees cooler than your normal winter setting and two degrees warmer than your normal summer setting. Turn it down or off when you are asleep or out of the house.
Turn the water heater in the dishwasher to 120 degrees.
Wash your clothes in cold water wherever possible, and dry on an outside line or drying rack depending on the weather
Make sure all your light bulbs are CFLs. Incandescent bulbs waste a lot of electricity by turning it into heat instead of light
Simple stuff, but that is where over 50% of energy savings will come from during the next decade.
Dow Corning, the largest maker of residential insulation in the US, can expect their economic recovery to start ahead of time due to the tax rebates and incentives for housing weatherization included within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed into law by President Obama last month.
“The weatherization program is the sort of activity that is likely to spur demand,” said Owens Corning spokesman Scott Deitz. “No doubt, people will install insulation because of this program. We just don’t know how many.”
This could also boost employment at Dow Cornings’ largest US insulation manufacturing plant in Newark, which has lost over 700 jobs in the last decade.
An estimated 80 million homes in the United States are currently under-insulated. Any home built before the mid-1980s and that has not been remodeled is unlikely to meet insulation building codes in force today.
After a series of public hearings, the Cambridge City Council adopted the stretch energy code on December 21st. The stretch code is about 30% more efficient than the baseline building code and has different requirements for both the residential and commercial sectors. Visit the city’s website to learn more about the stretch code, which includes a summary table that outlines the new requirements.
