Your Maine Guide to our evolving energy economy, and the funding that will fuel it.
As many years as I've been heating with cordwood, I’m getting just a wee bit tired of splitting and stacking and carrying it all here and there. Those folks with the pellet delivery trucks might just have something there.
Mainers have been heating with wood since forever, and it is a no-brainer since we have so much wood available. The new wood pellet heat technologies offer another way to go about using wood for heat. Let's hear from the experts on wood heat and also from the users about their experience with it.
On February 11, 2013, Northern Maine Medical Center in Fort Kent celebrated the opening of its biomass boiler, after 13 years of work to reach its goal. Funding for the boiler was provided by a $6.7 million USDA Rural Development Community Facilities Guaranteed Loan and a US Forest Service Grant of $750,000.
Read the full article in Biomass Magazine or in Bangor Daily News.
Photo Credit: Northern Maine Medical Center
Kenneth Fletcher has resigned his post as the Director of the Governor's Energy Office and Patrick Woodcock of Hampden, who most recently served as Senator Snowe's senior adviser for energy and environment issues will succeed him on January 7, 2013.
Woodcock, a 2004 graduate of Bowdoin College, faces an uphill challenge to fill Fletcher's shoes, as reported in the Portland Press Herald.
In a video posted on Youtube on October 15, 2012, Maine Governor Paul LePage expressed his views about how to lower Maine's electricity rates, which he says are not competetive with the rest of the US. The governor favors focusing on energy sources that require no subsidies, citing hydropower, biomass, wood pellets, heat pumps and natural gas. LePage maintains that wind is the most expensive source of power.
The city of Gardiner is celebrating the installation of its second wood pellet heating system. This one will heat the city hall and fire department buildings; the first was installed in the municipal garage in 2009. At 2012 fuel prices, the new system is estimated to save taxpayers $195,000 in fuel costs over 25 years.
Mayor Andrew MacLean said, "Gardiner is proud to be at the forefront of the alternative energy revolution and we expect many other communities to follow in our footsteps in the years to come as rising energy costs put more and more strain on municipal budgets.”
Read more in the Bangor Daily News. Read about the March 14 celebratory open house on our calendar of events.
Federal Housing Administration appraiser guidelines now include wood pellet systems as an acceptable heating source for FHA-insured single-family properties. An initiative by Senator Susan Collins is responsible for securing the approval, announced recently by HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. "This is one way we at HUD can relieve financial pressure on families while supporting a growing source of alternative energy and local jobs", said Donovan.
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On May 4, 2013 the Common Ground Learning Solutions and Southern Maine Community College (SMCC) at the South Portland Campus held the Renewable En
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One Maine company to watch is Pelletco, which has developed a proprietary, biomass fuel pellet technology.
This time, "The County" is leading the way.