| Subject: biomassive |
Author:
pa
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Date Posted: 01/12/06 9:36:54pm
I've been wanting to post this regarding heating bills:
A huge revelation for me recently is that it is estimated that buildings, and the construction industry, account for two thirds of the energy use of the Western World. Some of this is the result of weight becoming irrelevant:
Until the domestication of the horse and other animals, traveling humans had to live within the limitation of their own carrying power. We developed ways for covering the furthest distances, while expending the least amount of energy. With industrialisation and the mass adoption of metals, weight became, relatively, irrelevant, an evolutionary pathway which has led progressively down a dead end. It has created many of our environmental bad habits; a reliance on heavy materials and methods, both in themselves, and for their transportation. Today, the results have included exponentially rising costs for transporting goods and people, in terms of energy input, and in terms of transport infrastructure.
Additionally, once built, buildings have a lifetime (and energy consumption pattern) that lasts 50 to 100 years. And this sector’s consumption of energy is mainly in the form of burning oil, natural gas and coal. And here lies the problem. There is no short-term or long-term greenhouse gas solution possible without addressing the Architecture Sector…even if Kyoto is ratified, and if the Architecture Sector is not PROPERLYaddressed, we will fail to make significant global gains.
On a great note, SF Community College recently has gone towards BioMass. The biomass heating system for the College adds a one megawatt biomass boiler (3.4 million BTU per hour) to the College’s heating system. This new boiler will supply approximately 80-90 percent of the College’s total heating demand. Biomass fuel sources include green waste at local solid-waste disposal sites, wood slabs, chips and sawdust from wood-products manufacturers nearby, and small- timber and slash from forest thinning projects in the local forests.
There is also a biomass system in operation at the Jemez Mountain Schools in Gallina, NM.
Any one else know of school districts using alternative sources...takes an energetic and patient visionary to make something this extraordinary happen.
One of the really cool things about it is that it can be a strong rural economic development tool in a place like New Mexico....revenue often remains in the community where it is being used because biomass heaters require a local stock of fuel.
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