If anyone has read my posts of late you will have seen and heard me screaming about this economy. With winter looming and yes I know it’s 90 outside this week but with winter looming on the horizon and the large number of homes being heated with Oil here in New England I have been deeply concerned that we have been side tracked with a host of issues that are not as urgent.
For to many the ability to have resources in place to tap and to adjust to the rapid rise in heating costs is just a dream. When you were use to paying under $400 a fill up of oil that would last 4-6 weeks in November- March the shock of $1200-1500 on fixed and shrinking incomes has threatened to create a situation beyond comprehension. In today’s Boston Globe is this story that I quote to start my comments and I want to thank the Massachusetts Delegation and Congressman Ed Markey for taking the bull by the horns. I will though sit and watch to see who wins this struggle before I declare victory for the middle class. Yet what a giant leap forward.
I hope those who read this will like myself contact our congressman and thank them for this effort and also encourage them to follow it through, this is a real life and death situation facing us for many seniors and young families this aid will mean the difference between literally freezing this winter and being able to afford Heat and Food to see them through.
Now don’t think I am not with out further suggestions because I could not miss such an opportunity but why not a Heating oil Subsidy for the Northeast? After all didn’t this congress just pass a rather large Farm Subsidy to help keep farmers safe in tough economic times? I see no difference in the plight of New Englanders facing a winter of huge heating bills and little or no resources to see them through.
Here is the URL for the Article: http://www.boston.com/news/loc…
Don’t forget Call today and say Thank You and tell them to stay on it.
As Usual Just my opinions
Not only do I get hit with a huge increase in heating bills, but now people want me to pay for someone else’s heating bill. What the F, why not. Just add it to all the other things we have to pay for OTHER PEOPLE. Pay for their school lunches, their education, their subsidized housing, their transportation, their “never ending list of shit they cant get themselves”.
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p>I went to a pellet stove store last week and it was packed. Packed by people smart enough to know the winter is going to be tough and planning for it begins now. Do you think we will see this happening with people on fixed and shrinking incomes?
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p>The more you give away, the more people get accustomed to giveaways. Let start educating people about insulating their homes and apartments, saving for winter oil instead of buying Mass Millions tickets, sealing windows, insulating floors and ceilings… just plain common sense for planning for the winter.
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p>And stop thinking of more ways to give my money away. Give twice as much yourself to cover me.
Lucky for you to have the dough to purchase other options.
Maybe you can heat your home by burning some gay terrorists while you’re at it.
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p>Lots of people don’t have those resources, or the opportunity to switch heating systems. And this is going to be a bad, bad winter–in the do I buy food or heat sense– unless we are rescued by a global warming season.
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p>Perhaps we should accept your comment as an observation that touted environmental benefits of very high fuel costs are going to be balanced by some rather severe economic distress, and that distress is going to reach quite a bit further up the income ladder than is commonly assumed.
…and this proposal is going to happen for free?
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p>On another note, Conservatives always bitch about “giveaways” to individuals, but I rarely hear a peep out of people like JohnD about the giveaways to Haliburton/KBR, Blackwater, abstinence only education companies (Why does it cost $1.5 billion to tell kids abstain from sex? It seems like it shouldn’t cost a dime), big oil companies by not charging royalties on drilling spots, the defense industries and many other “giveaways” under the guise of privatization.
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p>This is not to change the subject, it’s to merely point out that Republicans like giveaways too; the difference is who receives the “giveaways”. While conservatives don’t bat an eye at the rank corporate corruption and pillaging of $920,000,000 per week poured into private contractor giveaways in Iraq, I’d much prefer government money be spent too help regular people here in the US rather than corporate bottom lines.
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p>Republicans can be against giveaways all they want, but, in general, the only difference between the Right and the Left is where we want the giveaways spent. It’s the people’s money; use the money to benefit the people.
Libertarians: We care too much about politics to ever win an election!
new tax credits for insulation.
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p>Fuel assistance helps poor people make it through the winter. Most of them rent and have disincentives to improving the energy efficiency of their homes, which they don’t own.
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p>For homeowners, and landlords, a tax credit for efficiency improvements NOW could bridge the gap between the upfront capital cost and the payback time of the improvements.
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p>We already offer tax credits for exotic supply-side solutions like photovoltaic installations. Boring old efficiency is quicker, cheaper, and available in time to cut heating bills this winter.
natural gas has gone up about 50%, heating oil 100%. If you can get gas to your house, you might look at converting.
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p>In the mean time, seems to me that the best thing we can do as a society is not to subsidize somebody’s heating oil. Rather, we ought to subsidize them making their home more energy efficient. After all, if their home is leaking heat, we’ll end up subsidizing them year after year. If we make the home more efficient, they save money on heat and we reduce our reliance on foreign oil and gas.
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p>I know, I know, there is some of that happening… but it ain’t enough. The very best policy we can implement is to raise building standards so new and newly renovated homes are heat efficient. The next best is to spend our heating subsidy money fixing the problem permanently instead of focusing on a single year’s relief.
Heating with gas is the way to go.
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p>Nationally vs. MASS
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p>Here are the percentages of heating methods in the US vs. MA…
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p>Gas 58% vs 31%
Electricty 33% vs. ?%
OIL – 7% vs. 40%
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p>The point of this data is only 7% of people in the country heat with oil while over 40% of people in New England (incl MA) heat with oil so the price increase will hit us hard. Some states have very high usage of gas for heat (Utah (88.5 percent), Michigan (86.9 percent) and Illinois (86.7 percent)) and will be effcted to a much lesser degree.
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p>Energy audits should be done at every home and appartment to ensure we are not burning oil just to heat the streets otherwise we are burning tax dollars too.
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p>So true. A cousin of mine lives in the projects and they leave their windows open during the winter since it is hot there and the thermostat dosn’t work. So they just open the windows to regulate the heat. How much oil they burn is immaterial to them, they don’t pay for it (we do!).
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p>CentralMassDad, maybe there is hope for you. I agree but only if the gay terrorist is also an illegal immigrant getting in-state tuition trying to register to vote “on election day” using the NPV system
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p>I think the reality of this winter is being ignored by many who are either foolish or plain stupid. Aside from changing the heating system, there are certainly loads of other smaller things to do for conserving heat. From wearing sweatshirts, lowering thermostats, sealing windows… which are affordable.
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p>tblade, I don’t know where you’re coming from here regarding heating assistance but… I am not in favor of any givaway. Even Republican ones. Military contractors should bid for contracts in the open. No bid contracts should be eleminated completely but I’m sure the reason is our government is too stupid to be able to create a bid in under 12 months so they no-bid them to get it done. I have no allegiance to Haliburton, Blackwater, GE or any other company other than they are businesses paying taxes and making money for all of us (as investors or 401K owners). Big oil companies are owned by me and you, not Daddy Warbucks (that’s just a movie).
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p>Joe Kennedy and Hugo Chavez can take care of this one.
I’d like to explore the “alternative” choice in the poll and maybe do some brainstorming for the long term.
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p>A couple of things I hear every once in a while are:
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p>The latter is happening now, right? So what are the alternative options to heating with fossil fuels? What might be on the horizon? If we did have a viable alternative, how does the conversion happen, both logistically and economically?
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p>The only alternatives I can think of are electric (listed in the poll), geothermal, and wood (including wood pellets). Electric is now thought of as a really bad choice because it is inefficient, expensive relative to oil (is that going to change?) or gas, and you end up burning a lot of fossil fuels anyway. So it seems we’d need to get to a point where there is a lot of cheap, clean, and locally generated (to reduce transmission losses) electricity to ever make this a reality.
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p>The only geothermal applications I know are in a couple of newly built schools, but those schools still use gas in concert with the geothermal systems.
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p>Wood seems to be a popular alternative right now, especially the pellet stoves. While this might meet the economic and security goals, it’s not so good for the environment and climate change. Also, there is not enough forest to provide enough fuel if everyone in New England switched.
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p>The bottom line is I don’t know. Any bright ideas? WoburnDem, you have some experience with green design in Woburn, right?
Lets be up front even you John D the rapid rise in Oil prices has put a shock into every aspect of our society. Just trying to adjust budgets to keep the car running to get to work has proven a chore for many. Don’t go down the road to Public Transit please because unless you work in Boston or on one of the spokes of the wheel that runs into Boston their is no real way to get their from here unless you drive look at what we use to call Rte 128 those are not people coming home out of Boston.
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p>Alternatives yes their are several Solar is a proven system but the conversions take capital and where do you think you are going to get that capital maybe a home equity on your house. I don’t think so A solar system to run the average home would cost between 20 and 30 thousand dollars if you could borrow it at a reasonable rate say 6% over 20 years the cost would be around $300 per month and you would have electricity for the next 20 years at just $300.00 per month. Think what you were paying 20 years ago for electricity and yes Solar is here and competitive under the right circumstances. The state is even kicking in to help make it even more affordable but here again it takes access to capital and with house prices falling Fannie and Freddie on the verge and Country wide et al falling like stones this is not a good solution.
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p>Here in Woburn almost 30% of the city has no access to Gas because not every street has a pipe line on it (like Mine) try to get the gas company to lay 500 feet of pipe to give you gas in one house LOL your paying for it and here again with furnace conversions and that cost is now somewhere north of $20,000 as well. A simple conversion would run an average home $6-10 Thousand dollars if the gas is right out front but if you have that in the bank you may not be as worried about the price of oil this year other wise your right back at that dry well looking for a loan.
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p>I would also like to point out a little remembered fact back in the mid 80’s on Thanksgiving many homes here in Woburn ran out of Gas no pressure in the lines the tanks were delayed getting into Boston and the storage tanks could not keep pressure up in the entire system. Since my stove is electric my wife and I cooked 4 neighbors turkey dinner that Thanksgiving. There is a limit of natural gas here in New England we do not have a pipe line to the Midwest we ship it in LNG tankers which are subject to what’s happening in the world as well. Not to mention weather and how cold the fall and winter turn out. How finite is gas in the region I don’t know but it is not like the Midwest that’s for sure.
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p>Long term anything is possible from alternatives, to tighter structures, it all depends on the economy and homeowners and property owners access to fresh capital at reasonable rates also guessing correctly what is going to stay affordable for the next 15-20 years. Unless you have a crystal ball it’s a guess and an expensive one if you’re wrong.
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p>In the mean time wood stoves, pellet stoves, warmer cloths there are no silver bullets unfortunately.
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p>I would say to John D if you’re worried about paying more taxes may I suggest a few numbers for you to chew on.
Let say their are about 3 million home in the Northeast heated with fossil fuel if the government subsidized everyone of them so no one paid more then $2.50 a gallon Currently the subsidy of 2.50 a gallon on a per fill up would be just under $700 times let say 5 fill ups so $3500.00 per home that would cost our Government $10,500,000,000 for this heating season. How could you pay that? What about pulling out of Iraq one week earlier that’s just about equal.
So the war in Iraq now 5 1/2 years old has cost us 286 winters of Subsidized fuel costs So when you blow about government waste try those numbers on for size. I think my plan deals with helping real Americans live the other just sends our young men out to die and give away our hard earned tax dollars to a country that 1/3 of them will always hate us.
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p>As Usual Just my opinions
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p>We do have pipelines coming in from Canada, where there’s lots of natural gas… the Iroquois Pipeline is directly connected to the TransCanada Pipelines, and we’ve got the Tennessee Gas Pipeline coming in and the Algonquin Pipeline as well, both E-W lines coming in through New York.
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p>It’s true that the Boston metro doesn’t have enough capacity in the pipeline, so we get some from LNGs as well… but we do have pipelines.
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p>Given that the fossil fuel needed to acquire and transport the pellets is relatively low as compared to gas and oil, and given that the wood pellet removed a smidge more carbon from the atmosphere than it will release upon burning, wood pellet stoves are approximately climate change neutral, which is far superior to oil or gas or electric.
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p>As for other environmental ramifications, like deforestation, monoculture forests, roadways through forests, impacts on migrating birds and mammals, and so forth, there may or may not be significant impact depending on where the wood pellets are coming from.
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p>Could everybody switch to wood pellets? Probably not. But, I suspect that there’s plenty of room for more wood pellet heaters in New England.
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p>We won’t stop using fossil fuel for heating for a long time. That’s OK. We don’t have to stop entirely anyway. We do need to use less per person, and that can be done both by owning more efficient buildings and (gasp!) owning smaller homes. Apartments and condos are vastly more efficient than single family homes. In my condo, I turn my heat off when I’m not home in the middle of winter. When I get home, it’s never below 58 degrees, and gets up to 65 in less than 10 minutes. The building mass just holds on to heat more efficiently, because the surface area to volume ratio is far more favorable.
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p>So, better building standards, a higher percentage of multi-family dwellings, and switching some oil homes over to [slightly less dirty] natural gas. We’ve got to be working on all three.
… this?:
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p>”…the wood pellet removed a smidge more carbon from the atmosphere than it will release upon burning…”
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p>Rifkin years ago talked about the de-carbonization of the economy referring to the fact that oil consists of less carbon per unit of energy than wood and creates correspondingly less co2 per unit of energy. What did I miss?