Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
There's an African saying, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
Here in Vermont, we have an equally daunting task - achieving 90 percent renewable energy by 2050. The African metaphor would imply that we can do so one house, one business, and one institution at a time, and this sentiment was in full swing at the recent Renewable Energy Vermont (REV) conference in Burlington.
In addition to the single bites of solar hot water, air-source heat pumps, and farm-scale methane digesters, the conference offered lessons in stalking elephants (community solar systems and non-fossil-fuel transportation); in dressing elephants (financing options for small and large-scale projects); and a number of recipes for cooking elephants (successful wind projects, net-metering legislation that allows for people to share renewable energy systems, and designing buildings that produce more energy than they consume).
The 90-percent-renewable energy goal is daunting, and a couple of major initiatives were unveiled at the event to help Vermont move along.
Last summer, my trusty, old Motobecane touring/commuting bicycle had a bit of a seizure in the form of a cracked head tube. I did not begrudge it; he'd been a trusty friend who carried me many, many thousands of miles without complaint. I had dubbed him Morgan early in...
I just participated in a survey sponsored by the Vermont Lottery Commission. It was a little bizarre, somewhere on a spectrum between a push poll and cheerleading camp. I walked out with $100 in cold, cool cash in my pocket and a newfound sadness at the state of the...
