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Let me tell you about something
rather amazing that happened to me last week. I went to a condominium
association meeting one night after work, mostly because another resident and I
started an energy efficiency task force to see what could be done about saving
money on heating oil and reducing our building’s pollution. Through the winter,
we looked at the heating bills, surveyed the residents, and studied everything
from the heat loss to radiator steam traps. Now it was time to report.
Our building is a challenge, for
sure. A handsome faux-Tudor relic of the 1920s, the four story structure is
made of concrete block and steel, faced with brick. You need a big oil burner
to provide heat and hot water to the 32 apartments, even though the compact
building, which sits on a spacious single family lot in a densely populated
city, is a lot more economic and efficient than, say, 32 single-family homes
would be. But as in many older multifamily dwellings, you have to run that same
big inefficient burner to get hot water in the summer. Changing to natural gas
or electric heat and hot water is a non-starter; it would mean purchasing new
equipment and tearing up the building to install new ducts, radiators,
thermostats. It wouldn’t pay for itself in years and years: Did I mention the
walls are made of cement block and steel?
At the meeting, I started to hand
out a page showing the increase of heating costs over the last five years, and
to explain our recommendation that we needed a professional energy audit to help
us find the low-hanging fruits—the most relatively simple and cost effective
things we could do.
“Given we’re stuck with the oil
burner, did you think about biofuels?” asked one condo owner. “There was a
piece in the newspaper on Monday saying that biodiesel made from restaurant
waste oils could run in a conventional oil burner.”
The problem with biofuels, said
another owner, is that they are driving up the costs of the corn and other
products they’re made from and that they don’t obtain the same amount of energy
as oil from the same volume of fuel. So you don’t get nearly as much energy
from 5,000 gallons of biodiesel as from 5,000 gallons of heating oil. You have
to compare BTUs, he said.
Then someone else joined in: solar
collectors on the roof could provide hot water and allow us to shut the oil
system down in summer.
Maybe solar could provide all the
hot water and electric, too, said yet another. If we went about it the right
way, we might be able to sell back excess power to the grid.
I stood back and listened in
wonder, as this detailed discussion of energy alternatives went on for about 15
or 20 minutes. I felt like I was at an engineering school. How had all this erudite
consciousness about energy spread to a bunch of condo owners in Passaic, New
Jersey?
We’re going to lick this global
warming thing, I suddenly realized. We’re going to do it, all of us, together.
The big change has already started. It won’t be a joyride to energy
independence. We’ll suffer, oh, yes, we’ll suffer. We’ll make more mistakes
along the way, for that’s the way of our flesh. We won’t get out of this
without calamitous storms, epidemic diseases, Biblical flooding, famines and
droughts. But the only thing that can stop an awakened humanity now is the
self-destructiveness of nuclear war.
When ideas like energy efficiency,
alternatives and energy independence spread to the mass of individuals, it’s a
sign of the times. We’re going to whip global warming and restore the balance
of Nature.
Who says?
The Passaic Arms Condominium Association.
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