It could be a "frozen Katrina." The upcoming winter has all the hallmarks of a major crisis, according to social service providers who attended a Boston Foundation forum Monday on helping Boston residents survive the coming season of housing woes and higher fuel and food costs. Although it’s too early to tell what the weather […]
Energy
Posted inEnvironment, The Download
Little Windmill on the Prairie
A new report by the US Department of Energy and the Berkeley Lab puffs up wind power in the US, noting that "35 percent of all new electricity-generating capacity added in the U.S. in 2007" came from wind projects. That still means that we get only 1.1 percent of our power from wind, as you’ll […]
Posted inEnvironment, Politics, State House News Service
Medford embraces wind power
INTRO TEXT As controversy continues to swirl around the Cape Wind proposal in Nantucket Sound, the city of Medford is leaping to the head of the class by shoring up its renewable energy bona fides. The Massachusetts Technology Collabora-tive has awarded the city a $250,000 Renewable Energy Trust grant to design and build a 100-kilowatt […]
Posted inArts and Culture, Environment
Squeaky wheels
the specter of little toothpicks twirling on the horizon of Nantucket Sound is causing fits among the political elites who make summer a verb on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. On overcast days, they wouldn’t see anything but the soft line separating water from sky. But on sunny days . . . Those toothpicks […]
Posted inEnvironment, Politics
Performance pacts offer energy upgrades for (almost) nothing
INTRO TEXT it sounded almost too good to be true, the way the young man speaking before Newton’s board of aldermen described how improvements to crumbling firehouses and neglected school buildings could basically pay for themselves. The source of the fiscal magic? Performance contracting. Under a performance contract, clients use savings on utility bills to […]
Posted inEnvironment
Wind farms stir up trouble in the hills
INTRO TEXT Wind turbines may be a source of renewable energy, but they also generate strong feelings. That’s what William Hubbard learned from his two-year fight to build a 12-megawatt wind farm – small by industry standards – in Fitchburg. The Applied Wind Technology developer says that in December the city took him to district […]
Posted inEnvironment, Politics
Gale force
For there is a health along this golden shore,Climbing the dunes and hearing sea birds cry,Braving the winds and stormy ocean’s roarUnder an endless blue or cloudy sky;Then, freed at last, on soaring, flashing wingsin perfect tune the human spirit soars. This paean to the Cape Cod seascape, from Dennis poet Elizabeth Wysor, affixed atop […]
Posted inEnvironment
Power subsidy settlement OK’d
CORRECTION: Because of incorrect information supplied to CommonWealth by the Patrick administration, the initial version of this story said the premium for Massachusetts-generated solar was roughly 30 cents per kilowatt hour. The actual premium is a floor of 30 cents per kilowatt hour and a ceiling of 60 cents. The Patrick administration today partially settled […]