This winter photo shows brightness where the most heat is escaping this home.

Cambridge! It’s finally here: a chance to vividly see the cool or warm air leaving your drafty home, without having to pay hefty fees to a thermal photographer. Thanks to the Thermal Imaging Project on which HEET has partnered with Sagewell Inc., Cambridge homeowners can request thermal (infrared) images of the outsides of their homes.

The images are taken with car-mounted cameras similar to those used for Google Maps street view, and taken on a “first come, first served” basis – with highest priority given to locations with highest demand.  With the slight air of a Groupon deal, Sagewell has asked for 400 requests from Cambridge before they will release our thermal images for free.

Because of fossil fuel prices… [view entry]

Under mounting pressure from 10-10-10 groups, 350.org’s Bill McKibben, and various other environmental activists, the Obama Administration announced today that it will re-install solar panels on the White House roof. After weeks of rallying support for the Solar Road Trip including over 40,000 signatures by citizens who urged the President to retrofit the White House, Bill McKibben, 350.org, Unity College students, and the 40,000+ who were following the event were ultimately disappointed; previous coverage. The White House refused to take the Carter-era solar panel which was removed when Regan took office, and has since been living in Maine. however, the administration promised that they would “continue deliberative processes” surrounding solar on their roof. Since that day, not much has been mentioned on this topic by 350.org/Bill McKibben,… [view entry]

The Gulf Oil Spill has been the event at the top of everyone’s mind for many weeks now, almost to the point of our adapting to the initially shocking concept. The images that have surfaced have been heartrending enough, though, that the shock factor hasn’t been allowed to completely fade. Predictions of the results to come in the next weeks and months are concerning to say the least, and the estimate of how much has been leaking each day continues to rise. BP comes up with a new method to “fix” the problem every few weeks, each seeming promising with a side-serving of bad news.  Effects on humans are starting to surface, some gruesome news and some simply tragic projections. With all of… [view entry]

On their face, biofuels seem like a pretty good idea: carbon dioxide and sunlight in, carbon dioxide and energy out. Certainly some hobbyists manage to recover waste grease for use in diesel engines, but commercially the field has been dominated by the fermentation of sugars from food crops into ethanol. Unfortunately, due to the large petro-chemical inputs often employed it is unclear whether the result is a net gain. In addition, much attention has been given to the competing interests of fuel vs. food (vs. land conservation).

There is hope that research into the production of cellulosic ethanol, or alcohol from plant fibers, could soon tip the balance decidedly in favor of biofuels. One could use agricultural waste or fast-growing special cover crops however, this material should arguably be composted… [view entry]

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. … [view entry]

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:

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… [view entry]

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:

Eat spicy food
Drink warm beverages
Use body heat instead of central heating: cuddle
Wear socks/slippers: warm tootsies = warm feelings

For other, more pragmatic tips, see the CEA website.

Now that winter’s just around the corner, though you might be hard-pressed to believe it with how fickle Mother Nature’ been of late, you’re probably starting to dread the heating bills that accompany it. But just because it’s getting cold doesn’t mean you cannot take advantage of free energy from the sun.

For most of us, it’s probably too late to orient our homes so most windows are on the southern face, or plant deciduous trees on the same side of the house, and evergreens on the windward.¹ But there are still plenty of ways to take advantage of this underused resourced, not the least of which is leaving your curtains open during the day, especially if you have modern, low-emissivity (“low-e”), insulated windows.

Another interesting way to use the sun… [view entry]

It’s a little known fact that this winter will be the first in which Massachusetts requires home heating oil to include at least 2% biofuels, rising 1 percentage point each year until it reaches 5% in 2012. In 2009, that creates a 24 million gallon demand, and Baystate Biofuels is here to fill it.

The company has taken over the disused tanks at an old Western Telecom building in North Andover and it plans to utilize solar power Osgood Landing had previously installed on the site, and Baystate Biofuels will tap into excess steam from a nearby waste-to-energy incinerator to heat the tanks to lower the viscosity of the pure biodiesel.

Energy 2.0 is checking on whether Baystate will be delivering to Cambridge this winter. In the meantime, check out… [view entry]