Pellet Stove Madness in Maine: Finding an Alternative to Oil

We may be in the midst of the heat of summer, but record oil prices are forcing many homeowners to start thinking about winter heating already. Those who use heating oil could be in for a nasty shock this year, as the price has risen so much that it can cost up to $5 per gallon. Consumers in the northeast – particularly Maine - are especially reliant on oil, so some folks in areas like Maine are looking for any possible alternative. For many, that means installing wood pellet stoves.

From The Examiner:

Here in western Maine, former ski mogul Les Otten is banking on European wood pellet furnaces with his Maine Energy Systems Inc., which he launched with two other investors. Otten once headed American Skiing Co. and was later a part-owner of the Boston Red Sox.

Otten already has 400 orders even though he hasn’t taken delivery of his first shipment - they’re not due to arrive by container ship until later this month. To fuel those furnaces, he’s arranging for a fleet of trucks to make home deliveries of pellets made at plants in Maine, New Hampshire and Quebec.

Otten, who has a pellet furnace in his home in Greenwood, said it works much like existing forced-water heat systems, except the burner is fueled with wood pellets rather than oil or natural gas. Pellets are made out of compacted sawdust, wood chips or other wood material and look something like rabbit food.

Otten wants to replace 10% of residential heating in Maine with wood pellets. Pellet stoves are ‘flying out the door’ in the state, with consumers paying an average of $4,000 up front but expecting to make that money back in a year or two, assuming oil prices stay this high or get even higher.

Wood pellets are typically made from sawdust created as a byproduct to sawmilling and other wood transformation activities. Since they’re so dense, they burn with a very high combustion efficiency. Pellet heating is a low net-CO2 solution because the CO2 emitted during combustion is equal to the CO2 absorbed by the tree during its growth. New high efficiency stoves have also lowered emissions of Nox and volatile organic compounds, making it one of the most non-polluting heating options currently available.

Link [The Examiner]
Photo credit: Wikipedia

EarthFirst.com is Getting It’s Party Groove On Tonight With The Sierra Club and Lightbulbs for Leadership

We’ve written about the Sierra Club’s Lightbulbs to Leadership campaign a couple of times but wanted to do something more tangible to help them bring awareness to the cause.

So we’re joining a few tens of thousands of people throwing a party tonight to bring people together to speak up about the necessary action we need to take to fight Global Warming. We’re so excited that we’re actually throwing two parties- the EarthFirst.com (mid)West crew will be throwing down the green groove in Chicago and I’ll be having an East Coast party in my backyard tipi here in Maine (as seen in a rave I recently threw in it in the photo above). Our friends at Ecorazzi are joining in on the fun with a party in Miami.

The premise of the Lightbulbs to Leadership campaign is that changing our lightbulbs is not enough. It’s a great small step that We The People are taking, but isn’t enough to really turn things around. For that we need our politicians and leaders to get in line and start getting some laws in place to drive change.

So we’ll be focusing on how people can take real action in prodding politicians to action. We’ll be talking about Global Warming, the need for higher fuel efficiency standards, investments in Green Jobs, cutting worldwide emissions, and then capping it all off with some good ol’ fashion letter writing. There will be a conference call with Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope and Green for All President (and EarthFirst.com’s #2 Hottest Guy in Green) Van Jones thrown in the middle for good measure.

Check out the video we shot earlier this week:

Find a House Party near you over at Lightbulbs to Leadership and get out tonight to help save the world from ourselves.

Link [Lightbulbs to Leadership]

Photo credit: Flickr user pokpok313

Clean Rivers in Maine Lead to Black Fly Swarms

Maine struggled with polluted rivers for years, and it took a lot of effort to get them cleaned up. After the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, the clean-up tasks in rivers such as the Penobscot and Kennebec began, and now Maine residents are enjoying dozens of species that weren’t seen while the rivers were polluted. Unfortunately, they’re also dealing with an infestation of black flies, which are very sensitive to pollution and thrive in pristine flowing waters.

From Boston.com:

It’s an unintended barometer of good ecological health, but Maine officials are adamant they will not mess with nature in any way to provide relief.

“They can be so thick you breathe them in and they get stuck in your throat. They even get under your eyelids,” said Julia Brilliott, an Eastport resident who showed off four lumpy red welts on the back of her neck after climbing Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park last week.

For the uninitiated, black flies are blood-sucking insects with a menacing reputation worthy of a late-night science fiction movie. Not all bite humans - some feed on other mammals and birds - but those that do are relentless daytime feeders. Even the nonbiting flies are often despised because they emerge by the millions in warm months and, lured by the carbon dioxide we exhale, swarm around people.

Situations like this require a tricky balance. Obviously, it’s better for the rivers to be clean so that more species can thrive – and animals like birds and trout feed on the flies. Though other states like Pennsylvania use chemicals to kill the fly larvae, which they claim are safe for the ecosystem, Maine officials refuse to use them, having the foresight to realize that a substance that’s toxic to one organism will likely be toxic to others as well.

Hopefully Maine officials will find a solution before residents decide that they’ve had enough of the black flies and get back to pollutin’.

Link [Boston.com]
Photo credit: Flickr user Benimoto

Global Warming Doesn’t Necessarily Mean It Gets Warmer Everywhere All The Time

One of Matt Drudge’s favorite things to do with Global Warming headlines is to set them up against cold weather headlines. One headline will be about a Global Warming protest or meeting, the headline below will shout that it was super snowy somewhere, implying that Global Warming can’t possibly be real if it’s snowing hard in Iowa.

I’ve heard the same arguments thrown out about what’s turned into the snowiest winter in New England’s recorded history. “Global Warming must be BS, we just got 13 inches of snow again”.

To a simpleton that argument makes perfect sense. After all, the second word in “Global Warming” is “Warming”. Doesn’t that mean that every place on the planet should be warm now?

No, actually it doesn’t. Weather and long term cooling and warming trends are extremely complex systems. As the earth warms up due to our love affair with releasing CO2 into the air, the temperature and weather patterns in different places on the globe will fluctuate. It could be a colder winter in one country, a vastly warmer one in another. The overall temperature trend remains going up, but the local weather conditions vary from place to place.

The answer to Maine and New Hampshire’s extra snowy winter turns out to be North Europe, which is coming out of one of the warmest winters on record. Treehugger has it:

Tourism favorites like dog sleds have been “on ice” this year, euphemistically rather than literally. With temperatures breaking records across northern Europe, there is literally no ice for the popular winter tours. Mid-December to mid-January there was only hiking. Recent snows have re-employed the idle huskies, but the weatherman is not as optimistic as the sled owners: February 2008 was the second warmest on record since 1900. Other indicators demonstrate the unusual warm streak throughout the region.

The ice on the Baltic is so thin that ferries running between Tallinn, Estonia and Helsinki, Finnland have been in operation non-stop; no need for the usual pause in services between December and April. The German daily Der Spiegel references Jürgen Holfort of Germany’s Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency predicting that this winter will have the least ice in the Baltic Sea since 1720.

Link [Treehugger]

Photo credit: Flickr user BigMcGuire