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Students pass project torch to neighbors
Libby Tucker, Daily Journal of Commerce
College student organizers gave their last hurrah on Friday to rally the Sunnyside neighborhood around a proposed community-owned geothermal energy system.
NICE, the student-run Northwest Institute for Community Energy established this past spring with a $10,000 private grant, spent the summer canvassing a 38-block area of Southeast Portland to raise awareness and support for developer MidTech Energy’s $7 million to $9 million project. Plans call for a solar-powered geothermal pump at the Sunnyside Environmental School that would connect to a network of underground pipes to heat and cool as many as 500 homes.
On Friday, NICE held the Sunnyside community energy festival at Sunnyside Park, drawing state and local leaders and environmental activists as well as neighbors and students. The event was a culmination of the students’ efforts to survey residents about their home energy use and support for the project in order to attract an investor to fund a feasibility study.
“From here on out it’s in the neighborhood’s hands,” Nathan Jones, an Oregon State University student who served as a NICE coordinator, said after the festival. “There’ve been a lot of great neighbors who say they want to take it on. And it was our goal to institute involvement.”
(5 August 2008)
Carpooling numbers on the rise
Michael Booth, Denver Post
Someplace between Kipling Street and the Mousetrap, somewhere between the driver’s seat where Brian Scarborough sipped hazelnut coffee and the shotgun seat where Brian McCall slurped regular, at some mark on the radio dial between Rush Limbaugh and NPR, a commuting insurgency began.
The three people riding from Arvada to Greenwood Village in Scarborough’s BMW station wagon concluded they had become committed carpoolers, rather than random employees thrown together by $4 gas. One month into their experiment, and the three road warriors have gladly given up their American birthright to drive to the office alone.
“You find out it’s easy. You don’t have to give up too much freedom,” McCall said on a recent workday as the BMW sped past Belleview Avenue at 6:42 a.m. “I used to feel guilty as the only person in the car. If gas went down to $2 a gallon, I’d still carpool.” …
(6 August 2008)
The medieval marvel: 14th century Hungarian stove cuts my monthly gas bill to just £5
Andrew Levy, The Daily Mail
With gas and electricity bills soaring, energy firms are ploughing millions into cutting-edge technology.
However, according to this man, they might be better off taking some tips from the Middle Ages.
Peter Breuer has cut his gas bill from £20 to £5 a month by heating his house with a Hungarian stove based on a 14th century design.
The 80-year-old grandfather says it is so effective at warming up his house that he has been able to switch off his central heating…
(5 August 2008)
My grandparents in Austria had stoves like this rather than central heating. We thought it quite quaint at the time. It might not be a solution for everyone, but it makes sense to question the sustainability of the current ‘norm’ of centrally heated houses with every room at the same temperature.-SO
