« Charters for New Orleans? |
Main
| And for Schwarzenegger: 0 for 4 »
November 8, 2005
Hunting for cheaper ways to heat schools
School boards across the country—north of, say, Tallahassee—know that heating costs this winter will be high. Some school districts make deals on their heating fuel in advance. Others are investigating other ways to heat. For instance: A U.S. Department of Agriculture report says more than 1.3 billion tons of dry forest material waste is available in the nation for biomass systems, AP reports. If used for energy, that would be equivalent to about 30 percent of the nation's oil usage, the report said.
Fuels for Schools was started in Darby, Mont., by a group looking for ways to use the slash, or extra brush and limbs, piled up every year by the U.S. Forest Service when it thins the forest to prevent wildfires. With help from the Biomass Energy Resource Center, or BERC, in Montpelier, Vt., the group identified several schools in Montana that would save money by converting to biomass.
Now Montana has five biomass-heated schools, and there are other biomass heating systems in neighboring states. Biomass supplies about 9 percent of all industrial energy consumed in Oregon, according to that state's Department of Energy. The AP piece reports that fuel oil is now about $18 per million BTUs; propane and natural gas are at about $14 per million BTUs. Wood chips, bought by the ton, compare at about $3.50 per million BTUs.
Posted November 8, 2005 5:01 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry
BoardBuzz Feed
