Energy, Heat, Power, Lighting
WHY IT MATTERS
Every type of municipal infrastructure uses some energy, therefore, Green Community Technologies® incorporates an energy component into every aspect of our service. We help communities understand their options with respect to reducing energy consumption while continuing to meet community needs. We recognize that every community has a unique set of issues and opportunities for energy conservation and use of renewables based on available energy resources and local knowledge.
For communities interested in comprehensive energy planning, Yellow Wood offers You Get What You Measure, our trademarked approach to values-based strategic thinking in conjunction with Green Community Technologies®. You Get What You Measure provides a proven process to engage members of all sectors of the community, including resource people, in defining goals and identifying key leverage points with respect to a community’s energy profile.
Yellow Wood has partnered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 1 to assist communities that take the EPA Energy Challenge in identifying the most cost-effective approaches to reducing energy consumption at the local level. Visit the EPA site for more information about the EPA ENERGY CHALLENGE.
Solutions That Work!
Community Roadmap to Renewable Woody Biomass Energy
Yellow Wood partnered with the Biomass Energy Resource Center (BERC) to develop the Community Roadmap to Renewable Woody Biomass Energy: A step-by-step decision-making tool for NH communities through a contract with the North Country Resource Conservation and Development Area Council. This workbook is a civic decision-making tool to help New Hampshire communities through the information-gathering process required to decide whether woody biomass heating technologies applied to one or more buildings can help meet one or more community energy goals. This valuable tool was created so that communities will have the information they need, and a logical process to follow, to make informed decisions about the role biomass may play in their energy future. Click here to access the Roadmap electronically.
Town office building, Richmond, Vermont
An energy audit of the Richmond, Vermont town office building (built circa 1907) identified multiple opportunities to consider energy efficient measures. New technologies for insulation materials, lighting, and heating could save the town over $75,000 over a 25 year period (measured in constant 2003 dollars) in addition to significant reductions in fossil fuel emissions.
Highly efficient pumps and motors, Richmond, Vermont
In summer 2003, construction began on Richmond, Vermont’s wastewater treatment facility. In replacing some of the older equipment, such as pumps and motors, reliable alternative measures to the currently planned modifications were installed that use less electricity and save money. These measures, recommended by Efficiency Vermont, are expected to save 159,000 kWh of electricity per year, leading to savings of approximately $16,000 per year.
Energy and heat, Thetford, Vermont
An inventory and assessment of Thetford’s municipal infrastructure helped Yellow Wood to identify steps that could be taken with Thetford’s buildings to save energy, including better insulation, better windows, and a new furnace or radiant floor heating to heat the town garage.
Energy and heat, Barnstable County, Massachusetts
An inventory of Barnstable County’s buildings showed that none of the buildings inventoried have insulation, which Yellow Wood identified as a means to help to make these buildings’ heating and cooling more efficient, in turn saving on heating/cooling and electricity costs. Yellow Wood also recommended that the buildings could benefit from an energy efficiency audit, as the heating and electricity bills provide room for improvement.
Community energy planning, Montgomery, New York
We conducted a workshop with residents and local government officials to identify goals with respect to community energy production, conservation, and use for all sectors in the community. Yellow Wood used You Get What You Measure®, our values-based approach to measuring progress toward shared goals using systems thinking principles, to find key leverage points that will help the Town of Montgomery achieve their community energy goals.
Wood Energy Utilization Services
In an effort to help the Northeast and Midwest meet their needs for renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction through the sustainable utilization of woody biomass, the U.S. Forest Service is engaging Yellow Wood Associates in conducting third party feasibility analyses that help agencies, communities, and institutions evaluate how wood energy can meet local energy needs; what technologies are available; at what scale and cost; and what benefits could result. Over the next three years, Yellow Wood will be partnering with Richmond Energy Associates, and another U.S. Forest Service contractor, to work throughout the 20 state Northeastern Area with a variety of state and local partners and a project outreach and education contractor to facilitate the use of wood energy in heating, cooling, power (electrical), and/or district energy applications.
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This all sounds good and I’m ready to START WORKING WITH GCT
* Present Value (Present Worth): The discounted value of a payment or stream of payments to be received in the future, taking into consideration a specific interest or discount rate.
* Present value represents a series of future cash flows expressed in today's dollars.
