HEET Home Energy Efficiency Team, a Cambridge, MA nonprofit which organizes public weatherization parties and barnraisings, is crowd funding a natural gas leak monitoring project in Cambridge and Somerville.  Boston University Professor Nathan Phillips, who drove the streets of Boston last year with a high-precision methane analyzer to find 3,356 natural gas leaks, will loan HEET his methane analyzer and other equipment to drive the roof Cambridge and Somerville roads mapping every leak. Moving at 15 MPH, covering both sides of every street should take about three weeks.   You can learn more about HEET’S Squeaky Leak project and help fund it, if so inclined, at http://www.heetma.com/what-we-…

Professor Phillips will analyze and map the results and HEET will do the driving, following up thusly:

Map of the leaks on the HEET website

Report the leaks to NSTAR to get all Grade 1 leaks fixed

Share the location and amount of leaks with the governments of Somerville and Cambridge so they can work with NSTAR to fix these leaks

Publicize the map to raise awareness about natural gas leaks in order to make sure effective actions are taken on the ground and in our legislature (https://malegislature.gov/Bills/BillHtml/122690?generalCourtId=11) as soon as possible to reduce the leaks not only in Massachusetts, but across the country

Lastly, to compare the amount and number of leaks between Cambridge and Somerville, to see whether Cambridge’s decade-long policy of fining NSTAR heavily for opening any roadway that the City is not already working on, while charging it nothing to repair pipes under the roads the City is about to work on succeeded.  Since NSTAR has not shared with the city any map or information about the current or past gas leaks, Cambridge does not know whether this policy worked or not.  HEET’s and Prof Phillips’ project would provide that data.

Peter Wilson (in a Cambridgewickedlocal with news from the Chronicle and Tab LtE http://cambridge.wickedlocal.c… wrote that “Net zero is not a practical goal in New England” and that may or may not be true.  There are a number of net zero energy single and two family buildings in NE, including in colder climates than Cambridge like Vermont, although the experience with larger and high rise net zero energy buildings is just beginning.  However, there are a few examples that approach net zero, including one in Vienna, Austria, the Raffeisens Bank, a 21 story building built to PassivHaus standards ( http://www.viennareview.net/ne… ).

Whether or not net zero is a practical goal, it is an essential thought experiment we need to run.  By viewing net zero energy as an approachable goal, the way statistical quality control views zero defects on a production line under Total Quality Management, we will assuredly come across many different ways we can reduce our energy needs, perhaps significantly.  

I say we are not going far enough.  We should be thinking not only about net zero energy but also zero emissions throughout our infrastructure.  We know that pollution causes problems, that pollution is waste, and should be smart enough, wise enough to think about reducing the waste we generate to as close to zero as possible.  I like the motto of Zero Waste Europe ( http://www.zerowasteeurope.eu ), “If you are not for zero waste, how much waste are you for?”

If you are not for net zero energy, how much wasted energy are you for?

However, even if we mandate that all new buildings achieve net zero energy, we still have to fix our existing buildings and probably have to start developing district heating and cooling to become a net zero energy community.  This is a hard problem and requires concentrated efforts.  Net zero energy for new buildings, if it is achievable (and I believe it is), is still only a start.

Thanks for your time and your work.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sailing-for-solar-bringing-workshops-to-caribbean-communities

Help empower coastal Caribbean communities with a solar sailboat that will provide workshops and materials for solar electric modules, solar cookers and phone chargers.  Campaign now going on at Indiegogo:  $18,000 over the next 40 days.

This is a project of Dr. Richard Komp, a solar scientist who has worked since 1977 empowering rural communities with solar energy projects around the world, providing both hands-on teaching and renewable resources.  

Susan Murcott, Bob Lange, and Richard Komp are three grassroots environmental activists who are changing lives all around the world.  Susan is a water researcher whose work on simple water filters has benefitted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people from Guatemala to Ghana.  Her latest project is building a block of toilets for a school in a village in Ghana, the second project of this kind she has been involved with.  Bob is a physics professor who has been doing science education in Africa for many years, an activity that morphed into installing small solar systems for villages in Tanzania and now into designing, building, and installing efficient cookstoves with the Maasai people.  This year, his work is expanding into Uganda.  Richard is a solar expert who has worked on everything from the physics of solar electricity to building solar stoves from scrap.   He has been teaching people all around the world how to do solar as a cottage industry for about three decades now.  His latest idea is to outfit a sailboat as a floating solar workshop that can teach people throughout the Caribbean how to better their lives with simple solar technologies. You can read his reports on his international work at http://www.mainesolar.org/Komp…

I consider myself immensely privileged to know all three of these remarkable and remarkably effective people.

Wakawaka ( http://us.waka-waka.com ) makes a

super efficient, sustainable, lightweight, sturdy and compact solar phone charger and lamp. It enables you to charge virtually any type of (smart)phone or small electronic device within just a few hours and will provide you with up to 80 hours of safe light.

They are offering a buy one/give one program which provides their solar lights and chargers to Syrian refugees:

http://www.solarforsyria.org/e…

Perhaps a way to promote the Christmas spirit of peace on Earth and goodwill to all.  (Bah Humbug!)

hat tip to http://inhabitat.com

Cambridge, MA has been debating a net zero energy and/or emissions standard ( http://www.netzerocambridge.org ) for new buildings over 25,000 square feet since the Spring of 2013, partially because of an ecodistrict plan with MIT and others on a large parcel in East Cambridge (a plan MIT refused to make net zero even though they are rumored to be building a net zero project with some of the same partners in Basel, Switzerland).

The City Manager (Cambridge has a city manager form of municipal government, along with proportionate representation so city politics get weird fast) has established a “Getting to Net Zero” Task Force to study the issue.  Cambridge Community Development Department produced a fine overview of the state of the art in larger buildings for zero net emissions at (pdf alert) http://www.cambridgema.gov/~/m…

As the national Ecodistrict Summit was in town recently, the Community Development Department and Sustainable Performance Institute ( http://www.sustainable-perform… ) hosted experts from Integral Group ( http://www.integralgroup.com/ ), a deep green engineering firm to present lessons from the more than 40 net zero buildings they’ve worked on.