Middlebury Sees Successful Launch of Biomass Energy Plant
Vermont Business Magazine › Vol. 37 Nbr. 4, April 2009
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Summary
When Middlebury College celebrated on February 19 the startup of their heating and cogeneration plant's new wood chip gasification boiler, wood chips were heating the auditorium, lighting it, and keeping its sound system operating. Bennington And Points Southward A fuller account of Bennington's biomass boiler project will have to wait for another time, but briefly they expect to begin construction in April of a 4,800 - square-foot addition to their utility plant for a wood chip storage area and a boiler that uses the chips as a fuel source.
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Middlebury Sees Successful Launch of Biomass Energy Plant
When Middlebury College celebrated on February 19 the startup of their heating and cogeneration plant's new wood chip gasification boiler, wood chips were heating the auditorium, lighting it, and keeping its sound system operating.
Almost from the start, Middlebury College intended for this move to a sustainable, local energy source to be a test, an example, and a model. Skeptics (such as the locally based Addison Eagle weekly newspaper) could see if the plant would indeed cut $1 million from the College's oil bill, would reduce the institution's carbon footprint by 40 percent, and would repay its $12 million construction cost in a dozen years - half the estimated lifetime of the boiler.Those who favor biomass as an energy source could point to it as one more chart mark indicating an upward trend (as will be seen, Green Mountain College has decided to install a system similar to Middlebury's, and Bennington College plans to...See the full content of this document
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