This was brought to our attention by a long-time BuildingEnergy exhibitor, Consulting Engineering Services.
Gaylord Hospital is the first in the state of Connecticut to receive state funding through a Connecticut Clean Energy Fund grant for a solar-thermal hot water system. The $323,000 from the Energy Fund will be a tremendous boost to the hospital, which is a non-profit institution. The project is slated to begin soon.
Consulting Engineering Services and partner firms will be installing 70 Solarus Evacuated Tube solar hot water panels.
An evacuated tube solar hot water panel works by converting sunlight into heat, which is transferred to propylene glycol (a gel found in common products like hand sanitizer). The propylene glycol is pumped to a heat exchanger in the system’s water storage tank. The system to be installed at Gaylord Hospital will feed at 3,750 gallon tank that will supply 65% of the hospital’s hot water. This is a huge step – the system is expected to cut the hospital’s fuel consumption by 7,000 gallons a year and reduce annual carbon output by 135,000 lbs.
Congratulations to Consulting Engineering Services and everyone working on this project, and kudos to Gaylord Hospital for making a sound economic and environmental decision to go solar! Anyone interested in learning more about renewable efforts in health care should head on over to the Health Care Track at BuildingEnergy 12
Interested in learning more about NetZero energy? Join us for a net zero event with Mitsubishi Electric in Southborough, MA on November 10th, 2011. Read more and RSVP here!
Name: Travis
Bio: Communications & Development Coordinator for NESEA
Do stay in touch! "Like" us on Facebook, or Tweet at us @NESEA_org
(Proxy) Guest Post from the wonderful Jo Lee of Greenmachine PR (and the NESEA Board)
Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) will unveil its new PHIUS+ Verification developed in partnership with the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) at the 6th Annual North American Passive House Conference on October 28, 2011. PHIUS+ represents the culmination of an alignment of Passive House energy modeling principles with the RESNET Home Energy Rating Score (HERS) used by Federal and local governments and other organizations to determine eligibility for tax incentive and rebate programs.
Up until now buildings built to passive house principles could not be rated on the HERS Index – a Federal requirement for LEED, Energy Star and other rebate and tax incentive programs. As a result, developers were forced to choose between cost-competitiveness and high performance.
PHIUS+ Verification is designed to overcome this discrepancy and enable developers that build to Passive House principles to rate on the HERS Index. The PHIUS+ verification process introduces an additional quality assurance and quality control (QAQC) component into Passive House construction processes to meet HERS QAQC requirements. PHIUS+ is also based on the development of conversion mechanisms that harmonize HERS energy models and Passive House principles. This modeling represents a major step forward on the Passive House front because – for the first time – it takes into account the wide-ranging and unique regional climate challenges across the United States.
PHIUS will begin to issue PHIUS+ in January 2012. In preparation for this date, PHIUS is working with RESNET to develop highly trained RESNET raters to evaluate Passive House projects. Builders and architects can already begin submitting new projects to PHIUS for full review from plans to completed projects. PHIUS is also working to offer a special, condensed review for projects that have previously received certification from Europe’s Passivhaus Institute (PHI), allowing builders of those projects to qualify for HERS-focused ratings and incentives.
To learn more about PHIUS Plus, please go to http://tinyurl.com/6jmfx89
DON’T FORGET! The Passive House US Conference is THIS WEEKEND, October 28t-29, in Silver Springs, MD.
To view the conference’s full schedule including Passive House building tours and pre-conference workshops, please go to: http://www.passivehouse.us/phc2011/
To register for the conference please go to: http://www.passivehouse.us/phc2011/about/
Name: Travis
Bio: Communications & Development Coordinator for NESEA
Do stay in touch! "Like" us on Facebook, or Tweet at us @NESEA_org
Well, this was certainly inspiring.
Friday’s Greenfield Recorder had a great article on a great local business, Real Pickles (they’re delicious) and their steps to cut their business’s carbon foot print. What’s even better? They used a local company to do it. Pioneer Valley Photovoltaics was contracted to install a 17kw array for real pickles, and it will satisfy the power requirements for the 6,500 square foot facility, which is expected to save $300-400 in bills, and of course, plenty of carbon.
The whole cost of this process was reported around $100,000 – a good chunk of change for a small business. How did they afford it? According to several press sources they received a 30% grant from the US Treasury and Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources solar/renewable credits to offset the costs, as well as loans and accelerated depreciation benefits to fund this endeavor.
Other upgrades to the Real Pickles facility include new lighting, furnaces, hot water heater, and passive cooling (vents that cut refrigeration costs in the winter by admitting cold air into the coolers .) The Western Massachusetts Electric Company helped out with these upgrades through their rebate program for light fixtures and a grant that paid for roughly 50% of the walk in coolers.
It is truly great to see a local company with scrumptious products making such steps towards sustainability, and equally exciting to see just how many financing and tax incentives there are to make these improvements possible.
Have you made upgrades to your home or business? Let us know!
Read the original Greenfield Recorder article here.
Name: Travis
Bio: Communications & Development Coordinator for NESEA
Do stay in touch! "Like" us on Facebook, or Tweet at us @NESEA_org
We get a lot of requests from professionals who are looking to start new solar companies or expanding their existing businesses into solar. With the last Massachusetts SREC aucton clossing at $535 MWh, and New Hampshire solar incentives coming online it’s no wonder so many companies are looking to it. For those in the NESEA crowd looking to get into the space or expand existing businesses, we’ve compile a list of reading material aimed at helping contractors measure demand in their market, make initial sales, and building a profitable company, or division of an existing company.
Reading Guide for a New Solar Company
Marketing
Sales
Solar Financing
Design and Installation
Other
Name: Brian
Email:
Web Site: http://www.cammpus.com/
Bio: Brian Hayden is one of the founders of Cammpus and HeatSpring Learning Institute. Cammpus takes static content and converts it into world-class online learning programs. HeatSpring has trained more than 4,000 professionals in geothermal heat pumps, solar PV, solar thermal, and energy audits.
Curious about zero net energy and high performance buildings?
Ever wonder how zero net energy is possible?
Interested in net zero/high performance building design and mechanical systems?
Join us November 10th at the Mitsubishi Training Center in Southborough, MA to find out! RSVP HERE.
Our hosts and sponsors Mitsubishi Electric have helped us pull together a fantastic evening.
Registration, networking and hors d’oeuvres begin at 5PM
The talks will begin at 6PM, followed by Q&A
Moderating the evening’s discussion (and also sharing more information about NESEA’s Zero Net Energy Building Award) will be Mike Duclos, a principal and founder of The DEAP Energy Group, LLC, a consultancy providing a wide variety of Deep Energy Retrofit, Zero Net Energy and Passive House related consulting services.
Mike is a HERS Rater with Mass. New Homes with ENERGY STAR program, a Building Science Certified Infrared Thermographer, a Certified Passive House Consultant who certified the second Passive House in Massachusetts, holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from UMass Lowell, and two patents. See more from Mike at the DEAP Energy Group website.
Our speakers are R. Carter Scott, President of Transformations, Inc., a sustainable development and building company in Townsend, MA and William Maclay, founding principal of Maclay Architects in Waitsfield, VT. Both have extensive experience with net zero and high performance building design and the technology that makes net zero possible.
R. Carter Scott will talk about several of his recent zero energy homes built 
throughout Massachusetts, focusing on how to get to zero on a reasonable budget, including how to get the most out of current incentives for solar electric systems.
Transformations, Inc. specializes in developing and building Zero-Energy communities, building out Zero-Energy communities for other developers, building custom Zero-Energy homes and installing solar electric systems for residential, commercial and building clients. Have a look at his work over on the Transformations, Inc. website!
William (Bill) Maclay will talk about the process for achieving net zero energy in institutional and commercial buildings, sharing his experiences on two of his firm’s recent projects and his approach from design to monitoring will illuminate how to achieve net zero energy and operate at net zero energy.
Maclay Architects is an awards winning architectural practice that specializes in environmental planning, healthy building design, energy conservation and net-zero architecture. Their own offices are solar powered and net-zero, even in central Vermont! Maclay Architects most recent projects can be found on their website.
CEUs are pending through the AIA. AIA accredited sessions are also often eligible for self-reporting for other licenses or certifications.
Here is the essential info:
What: Net-Zero Energy & High Performance Building Presentations, hosted and sponsored by Mitsubishi Electric
When: November 10th, 2011 - starting 5PM (talks starting at 6PM)
Where: Mitsubishi Training Center, 150 Cordaville Rd., Southborough, MA 01772
How? RSVP HERE or contact 413.774.6051 ext. 20, or rheldt@nesea.org
And yes… it’s free. Get excited.
Bio: I (officially) joined NESEA staff as the Membership Coordinator after working for NESEA on an informal basis for about a year. I am interested in the connection between people, culture and the environment, and at NESEA, I see the relationship between people and their built environment as a key to securing environmental and economic sustainability. You can reach me at rheldt@nesea.org or at 413.774.6051, ext. 20.
Bio: I (officially) joined NESEA staff as the Membership Coordinator after working for NESEA on an informal basis for about a year. I am interested in the connection between people, culture and the environment, and at NESEA, I see the relationship between people and their built environment as a key to securing environmental and economic sustainability. You can reach me at rheldt@nesea.org or at 413.774.6051, ext. 20.
If you visited some residences at Green Buildings Open House this past weekend and were looking for some more information or next steps, you may want to check out NESEA member Rachel White’s (of Greener Every Day) talk at the Chelmsford Public Library.
Her talk is part of a two part series “Bringing Your Home into the 21st Century“. The first part of this series (delivered Sept. 21) was presented by Paul Eldrenkamp (of Byggmeister, Inc.), long-time NESEA member and this year’s BuildingEnergy Conference co-chair. (Sorry we missed your talk, Paul! We’ll just have to check out your talk “Ice Dams, Climate Change & You” at the Weston Public Library Oct. 19th, or your session at Build Boston Nov. 16th !)
Bringing Your Home into the 21st Century
presented by Rachel White, Greener Every Day, LLC
Wednesday, October 26th, 7PM
Chelmsford Public Library
25 Boston Rd., Chelmsford, MA
For other upcoming events, check out our events calendar – and as always, if you have an event you would like to promote, just let us know (nesea@nesea.org)!
Bio: I (officially) joined NESEA staff as the Membership Coordinator after working for NESEA on an informal basis for about a year. I am interested in the connection between people, culture and the environment, and at NESEA, I see the relationship between people and their built environment as a key to securing environmental and economic sustainability. You can reach me at rheldt@nesea.org or at 413.774.6051, ext. 20.
Hello everyone,
Just wanted to pop in to take a quick survey of interest in UMass Amherst’s Green Building Committee Lecture Series open to the public. Please see the event flyer here. You will likely recognize some of the names – some NESEA members & friends will be speaking, for example, our intrepid Board Member, Bruce Coldham, of Coldham & Hartman Architects.
We were thinking it might be fun to gather Springfield Area Sustainable Energy Association chapter members, any Western MA members (and of course, anyone else who would like to join us) at one of these lectures and follow up at a local restaurant/pub/coffee place to chat about the event, make or reestablish connections and have some fun!
Would you be interested in joining us? Please fill out our poll to let us know! The October 18th speaking engagement, a Tuesday, will be an opportunity to connect with our SASEA chapter chair, Mike Kocsmiersky (of Spirit Solar). If you’re interested in another meet-up, we can arrange another around Bruce Coldham’s November 15th presentation.
Please also stay tuned for more information on our joint chapter-affiliate event in Southborough, MA, November 10th, sponsored by Mitsubishi Electric. And of course, don’t forget Green Buildings Open House is this Saturday, October 1st!
Hope to see you soon!
Bio: I (officially) joined NESEA staff as the Membership Coordinator after working for NESEA on an informal basis for about a year. I am interested in the connection between people, culture and the environment, and at NESEA, I see the relationship between people and their built environment as a key to securing environmental and economic sustainability. You can reach me at rheldt@nesea.org or at 413.774.6051, ext. 20.
Here are the remarks I delivered at the annual meeting on Saturday night, for those of you who weren’t able to join us. It was a great gathering!
“Welcome everybody to the 2011 annual meeting of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association.
It feels really appropriate to me that this year’s annual meeting is happening here, in New York City. Clearly, New York is a hub for sustainable energy practice in the Northeast, and our New York City Chapter, GreenHome NYC is a shining example of that. GreenHomeNYC is one of our most active chapters, and in addition to hosting us for this annual meeting, they have a huge number of events on the docket this fall – including the blow out NEW New York Block Party Shai just described.
Any of you who read the September 2011 edition of Scientific American know that the future of our country – indeed our world – is urban. Projections say that nearly 70 percent of the global population will be urban by 2050. Cities face huge challenges, but they are also engines of the type of innovation that will be necessary for us to create a sustainable future.
Finally, as I’ll share with you later in my remarks, one of NESEA’s key initiatives for 2012 will involve “expanding the choir” – in other words, dramatically increasing the number of people we reach in order to serve our mission, which is to advance the adoption of sustainable energy solutions in the built environment. As an organization with deep roots in Red Sox territory, one of the most logical ways for us to do that is to expand our geographic reach into the southern part of our 10-state region, starting with New York City. And so tonight I am delighted to call myself a Yankees fan, and even more delighted to be here in NYC.
I want to spend a bit of time tonight telling you where we’ve been over the past year, and where we’re headed. But before I do that, a few “thank yous” are in order:
First, I would like to thank the Institute for Sustainable Cities for hosting us. We are delighted to have such a wonderful and centrally located place for our meeting, and are very grateful for your involvement. I would also like to thank Green Mountain Energy for their sponsorship of this event. Sponsorship for our annual meeting is a relatively new thing, and we greatly appreciate your support, as well as that of our other sponsors throughout the year.
Most of all, thank you to GreenHomeNYC – and in particular to Lifetime NESEA member Andy Padian, NESEA Board Member Steven Lenard, and GreenHome Executive Director Shai Lauros for the phenomenal job you have done putting together this amazing annual meeting on a shoestring budget, and a day’s worth of activities to make it worth any NESEA member’s while to travel here to the meeting. I have a small gift for each of you as a token of our appreciation.
Now, a quick review of the past year. At last year’s annual meeting I shared with you that we had just adopted a strategic plan. Just a year later, we have implemented almost all of what was in that plan. Here’s a brief snapshot of what’s happened within the past year.
We spent much of the past year focused on new partnerships. As many of you probably know, NESEA’s mission is to advance the adoption of sustainable energy solutions in the built environment. But nobody ever said that we needed to accomplish this mission alone. We have adopted a philosophy of “coopetition” – one of my favorite made-up words – under which we have actively sought out like-minded organizations, and in some cases competitors, to help us meet our goals. We identified several organizations that share parts of our mission, and that can help us spread the word to meet it more effectively.
For example, within the past few months we have struck a deal with the Boston Society of Architects to deliver a track of seminars at their Build Boston conference in November. It’s a great opportunity for us to get the good work of the NESEA community in front of a broader audience, and for that audience, which is clamoring for more information on sustainability, to sample some very high quality sessions.
We also collaborated with the German Consulate and the Upper Austria Trade Commission to bring BE conference attendees cutting-edge products and information from Europe. We hope to expand this relationship and to invite other countries to participate in BE, to make it an international hub for networking and learning about best practices in sustainable energy in the Northeast.
Closely related to these types of partnerships, we also spent time last year shoring up relationships with longtime NESEA supporters and sponsors, and cultivating new ones. We attracted support from 14 new sponsors in 2011. Although we continue to operate in an extremely challenging economic environment, we are optimistic that we will be able to work closely with these organizations to provide them with the value they need to justify deepening their support of (and involvement with) NESEA.
We also spent a lot of time last year figuring out how chapters could best help us meet our mission, and what we could offer them in return. We invited NESEA chapters to work with us to develop a new chapter structure, and seven agreed to do so. We will be working with these chapters in the coming year to provide clearer, more consistent branding and programming that advances our mutual missions.
BuildingEnergy11 received rave reviews. We tried a lot of new things, including a full day educators’ summit, which attracted 100 people, and a second plenary session, the Women of Green, which was one of the high points of the conference. We held our own with respect to attendance in an economic climate in which other conferences were hemorrhaging – attracting nearly 4,000 professionals and 150 exhibitors to the conference.
Our Green Buildings Open House program held its own as well, attracting nearly 500 host sites and 12,000 visitors to learn about sustainable energy solutions in a variety of residential and commercial buildings, both new and retrofitted. Just last week, I heard an incredibly inspiring story from one of our hosts, Max Horn, who lives in Hull, MA. Max attended the tour for several years, and was finally inspired to build his own high performance home a few years ago. And now it’s his mission to educate others to do the same, with all that he’s learned from the NESEA community. Talk about a program with real world impact!
So what’s next for NESEA? I alluded to it before.
For more than 30 years the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) has been a membership organization that has appealed to a relatively small audience of professionals and consumers interested in promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency through varying means – advocacy, consumer education, professional development, and networking chief among them.
Over time, as the sustainable energy field has become more saturated, we have narrowed our mission and our focus. Our mission is to advance the adoption of sustainable energy practices in the built environment, and we meet it primarily by connecting professionals to each other, to ideas and to consumers.
With only 1,000 members, and 4,000 BuildingEnergy Conference attendees each year, we have been preaching to a small choir, given the huge need for sustainable energy solutions in the Northeastern United States.
It’s time to expand the choir dramatically. We need to expand geographically, by doing a better job of serving our community outside of New England. We need to expand from a generational perspective, making sure we’re welcoming the next generation of practitioners into the fold, and learning from them. And, perhaps most importantly, we need to expand to reach audiences who may not yet “get” that sustainability is a business imperative.
How will we do that?
First, through an increased focus on our current members and our potential members. We’ve been surveying our community to see what’s important to them in a membership organization. And frankly, there aren’t a lot of surprises in their answers. Turns out that what they value in NESEA is real, vetted solutions, access to multidisciplinary professionals, and chances to interact and share with one another in person. So we’ll be working to create more such opportunities, largely by providing better support to our chapters. Within the next year, we’ll work with our most active chapters to develop and promote at least 6 local programs that help them serve NESEA members at the local level. The first of these is already scheduled for Nov. 10th in Southborough MA, and will be hosted by NESEA business member Mitsubishi. It will be NESEA’s first ever joint chapter networking meeting, and will feature an information session on “getting to zero” and on NESEA’s Zero Net Energy Building Award. We hope to draw members from Springfield and Boston, MA, the Cape, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.
We will also be working to create an infrastructure for collaboration. One of the primary tools for this will be the NESEA website. Yes, we’ve heard your feedback over the years, and we know it sucks. I am happy to report that I’ve just been given the board’s blessing to replace it with a cleaner, easier-to-use website that will better help you, as members of our community, find each other, show your good work, and find the resources you need to do more sustainable energy work better.
Finally, we’ll be working this year to expand BE beyond three days per year in Boston. For starters, we are testing a BE Masters Series of online courses, taught by BuildingEnergy presenters, to take fuller advantage of the wonderful content generated at BE year round and to allow those who might be geographically challenged to participate. We also plan to create a speakers bureau of BE presenters who are willing to deliver their seminars in various locations throughout NESEA territory, in conjunction with chapter meetings or other events. Ultimately – and this may be part of the multi-year plan – we hope to create a year-round on-line BE community, moderated by BE planning committee members to encourage continuous learning and connection – and possibly a BE South Conference, to be held somewhere in the NYC area.
As you can see, we have some very ambitious plans. But at its root, NESEA is a member-driven community. All of this must happen for the members, and be driven largely by the members. So if any of what you have heard resonates with you, I invite you to get involved. If you’re not already a member, join NESEA. If you are a member, attend the Building Energy Conference, exhibit there, sponsor. Even better, help shape our content by joining the planning committee for the BuildingEnergy Conference or the BE Masters Series. Register your most recent project for our Green Buildings Open House tour each year in October. Enter your best work in NESEA’s Zero Net Energy Building Award to compete for our annual $10,000 prize. Submit an article for publication in our Northeast Sun magazine. Make this organization a true reflection of the excellent work you are doing to advance sustainable energy practices in the built environment.
I hope you’ve gotten a good feel for where we’ve been over the past year, and for where we’re headed. In a few minutes I’m going to call NESEA board chair, James Petersen to the stage. James has been a huge champion of our work to “expand the choir,” and has supported these efforts personally by being a NESEA evangelist within his own professional network. James will share his thoughts with you on how to get involved with NESEA, and why it’s imperative that you do so.
But before I call James to the stage, I’d like to close with a short video, in which some of our members themselves make a compelling case for why membership matters. This video was shot and produced for us, pro bono, at BE11 by Roger Sorkin, of Sorkin Productions, to whom we are incredibly grateful.
Thank you again for your time!”
Name: Jennifer
Email:
One might think that basic tenets of military science would dictate that access to the cheapest, most abundant energy sources should be unlimited for military objectives. “We can’t tie the hands of our fighting men and women,” many a congressman has blustered in stump speeches and committee hearings. The U.S. military is the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels, so it’s only natural to think that military leaders would agree with such timeless political declarations. The Pentagon, however, thinks otherwise. In fact, it wants its hands tied on carbon emissions, much to the dismay of the petroleum industry.
During recent hearings before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power on the possible repeal of section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act, which would prohibit government agencies from buying oil produced from processes that create more greenhouse gas emissions than would conventional petroleum (Canadian tar sands being the latest example), Tom Hicks, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for energy policy, said:
“We are comfortable with 526. It is an effective policy tool. It is having an effect on the market that I think is one that is the right direction in the sense that it is providing not only clean fuels, but fuels that ultimately will be competitive….”
In addition, Elizabeth King, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, has written:
“The existing law has not prevented the Department (of Defense) from meeting our current mission needs….Further, repeal or exemption could hamper the Department’s efforts to provide better energy options to our warfighters and further increase America’s reliance on non-renewable fuels. Our dependence on those types of fuels degrades our national security, negatively impacts our economy, and harms the environment.”
So the Pentagon believes that dependence on non-renewable fuels actually degrades national security, and that policies regulating emissions are having a positive effect on the market. Why then would any congressman want to repeal section 526 if national security experts are testifying to the contrary? It’s simple: the American Petroleum Institute (API) is leading the charge for repeal, and, as we all know, they wield enormous political influence.
In my research for a documentary film I am producing on climate change as a national security threat, representatives from companies who design weapons systems and other materiel for the military, a.k.a. the military-industrial complex, have told me that they, too, are comfortable with section 526 (though they are apparently unwilling to fight for it like the API is doing). They are confident in their abilities to meet the military’s needs without further exacerbating environmental problems. The military is already deploying some units with sustainable energy technologies as well as retrofitting many of its installations both at home and abroad, much of which is designed, produced and installed by its private sector contractors.
And that’s where NESEA comes in. The military has often inspired the growth of private industry such as radar, aerospace, internet, GPS and robotics, much of which eventually become mainstream products for average consumers. It’s time for the domestic sustainable energy industry to take its place as the newest engine for economic growth, and start garnering the political influence its non-renewable counterparts have amassed over many years.
In the short term the military is offering significant opportunities for the sustainable energy industry, and members of the NESEA community should be aware of how to benefit from them. The term “military industrial complex” could get a real makeover should the sustainable energy industry muscle its way in, but first it must become a real economic powerhouse, and what more lucrative way to do so than by obtaining military contracts? Our political leaders would then certainly think twice about repealing legislation that would otherwise drive the success of this industry. Right now, unfortunately, it’s the petroleum industry that has the ear of Congress.
(This Friday I will be conducting on-camera interviews with top officials at the Pentagon including the assistant secretary of defense for operational energy. Please feel free to email me any questions you might have about their procurement process and how you might receive upcoming RFPs so that I may ask them on your behalf. I would like for NESEA members to be on the Pentagon’s radar screen and eventually benefit from military contracts they will be issuing in the coming months and years to, perhaps, conduct energy audits and retrofits for all of the military installations in the northeast — that sure would be a nice gig! I am committed to helping this industry in any way possible, so please let me know what I can do.)
Name: Roger
Email:
Web Site: http://www.sorkinproductions.com
Bio: Roger is the owner and executive producer of Sorkin Productions LLC, a video production firm he founded in Washington, DC in 2002. He has since moved to the Pioneer Valley where he continues to work for NGOs, government, nonprofit and association clients. He is a proud supporter of NESEA and its first sponsoring member. He is currently at work on an independent documentary on climate change as a national security threat. Roger is committed to serving as a resource for NESEA members and is glad to brainstorm ideas regarding any communication and media strategies you might wish to discuss.
