By Roger Wrubel, Brian Kopperl, and James Booth According to the Belmont Energy Committee’s most recent inventory, the town’s carbon emissions dropped from 177,000 tons to 150,000 tons per year between 2014 and 2021. The drop, which measures emissions from gasoline, natural gas, fuel oil, and electricity, results from residents shifting away from home heating oil to other energy sources, driving more fuel-efficient vehicles, and drawing their electricity from a cleaner New England grid. Except for the shift away from fuel oil, none of these reductions are happening at a pace sufficient to reach zero emissions by 2050. The committee [READ MORE]
How to Make Decisions About Heat Pumps
By Will Brownsberger Edited and reprinted with permission from Brownsberger’s blog, willbrownsberger.com/heat-pumps. Many people are seeking to shrink their personal carbon footprint. Many also seek to participate constructively in the energy systems transitions necessary to achieve net zero carbon emissions. There is a broad consensus among climate planners in Massachusetts that we need to electrify heating in buildings. However, each building raises unique challenges. This article attempts to summarize the environmental and consumer considerations for people seeking to electrify home heating. Many of these issues are explored in more depth in this heat pump outline. Several good heat pump applications [READ MORE]
Ground Source Heat Pumps Make Heating Easy
By James Booth One of the best options for home heating that doesn’t burn oil or natural gas is a heat pump. Heat pumps reduce the amount of energy you need to heat or cool indoor air. If you use fossil fuels to heat, a heat pump will let you use less fuel, which means fewer climate-changing greenhouse gases and less local and indoor air pollution. Heat pumps work by using electricity to move heat between the inside and outside of a house, allowing efficient heating or cooling. There are two ways to do this: air-source heat pumps and ground [READ MORE]