Twice each month, BuildingGreen publishes an email news bulletin with current news and product information briefs. Sign up here — it's free. We will never share or sell your email address, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

Last week, I addressed some of the benefits of capturing waste heat from power plants and distributing it to buildings--a technology referred to as combined heat and power or CHP. This week we'll look at how this idea could be implemented in Brattleboro--using sustainably produced wood chips as the fuel source.

Twice each month, BuildingGreen publishes an email news bulletin with current news and product information briefs. Sign up here — it's free. We will never share or sell your email address, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

The majority of our electricity in the United States is generated by using a heat source to boil water and produce high-pressure steam, which then spins a steam turbine hooked up to a generator. To generate this steam, our utility companies burn fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, or--as with Vermont Yankee--they rely on the heat of nuclear fission. (Only hydropower, wind, and solar electricity generation do not rely on a heat source and production of steam.)

Plastics — chemical compounds which are compressed under heat into desired shapes, and thereafter are not subject to corrosion — are increasingly in use. Some are made of coal-tar products, some of milk; and one... utilizes the Chinese soy bean. This useful plant, is, next to rice, the staff of life in the Celestial republic; like beans, peas, and other "legume" plants, it contains the proteins, or nitrogen compounds, for which we eat meat. The mechanical uses of the soy bean (which does not resemble American beans) are of more recent discovery.

While energy prices have dropped from their record highs a few months ago, many area residents are still wondering how they'll pay for heat this winter. The most common fuel in northern New England, heating oil, is still priced at over $4.00 per gallon.

But how does the price of oil compare with the price of other fuels and electricity? That sounds like a simple enough question, but it's actually fairly complicated.

Today the Department of Energy's Building Technologies Program launched the Zero Energy Buildings Database with an offering of three Zero Energy Buildings (ZEBs) and one near-ZEB. A lot of work has been put into defining ZEBs and you can learn about the different types at the Net ZEB page. Also make sure to look at the overview page for each building to learn the associated types of ZEB.