{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.sanders.senate.gov/vermont/-heating-cities-with-renewables-", "Heating Cities with Renewables", "2016-11-10", "2016", "2016-11", "Independent", "House", "VT", "Bernard Sanders", "S000033", "www.sanders.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Heating Cities with Renewables \n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tThursday, November 10, 2016\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\tMONTPELIER, Vt. -- With a significant boost from federal stimulus funds, District Heat Montpelier is up and running, heating dozens of state, municipal and private buildings in Vermont\u2019s capital city. Fueled by an innovative wood-chip fired boiler, the project is part of Vermont\u2019s efforts to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward sustainable sources of energy. \u201cIt\u2019s been a tremendous success,\u201d Montpelier Mayor John Hollar said. \u201cThe real launch of the program started when the city received an $8 million stimulus grant in 2010. At that point, the project really began in earnest. It was constructed in 2013, operational in the fall of 2014.\u201d\r\nWhen the US Department of Energy originally announced the funds, Sen. Bernie Sanders praised the project, stating \u201cthis district energy project will make Vermont more energy independent, lower greenhouse gas emissions and create local jobs.\u201d\r\nThe district heating plant is doing just that, as the project replaces approximately 300,000 gallons of oil that would have been burned each year to heat 19 state-owned buildings including the Pavilion Office Building, the Supreme Court and the State House.\u00a0 The project also heats Montpelier\u2019s city hall, police and fire stations, an elementary school, municipal library, a federal building, the county courthouse and sheriff\u2019s office, two churches and several private buildings.\r\nMontpelier\u2019s heating plant is helping Vermont take strides toward reaching its ambitious statewide renewable energy goals.\r\n\u201cOur department keeps track of and sets goals for energy use in Vermont, including renewable energy. One of our responsibilities is to produce the state\u2019s Comprehensive Energy Plan,\u201d said Asa Hopkins, who serves as the director of the Vermont Department of Public Service\u2019s Planning and Energy Resources Division.\r\nThat plan, Hopkins said, builds on the state's goal of getting 25 percent of our energy from renewable sources by 2025 to meet our heating, electricity and transportation needs. That goal increases to 40 percent renewable energy by 2035, and 90 percent by 2050. \u00a0\u201cThat 2050 goal is among the most ambitious goals that any state in the nation has set,\u201d Hopkins said.\r\nHEATING WITH RENEWABLES\r\n\u201cWhen you\u2019re thinking about how to get that renewable heat number up, one of the main things you can do is to use wood for heat. You can do wood on the individual house scale. You can get a pellet stove. You can get a pellet boiler. But where you have density -- like what you have in Montpelier with all the state office buildings, the businesses up and down State Street and Main Street -- there you can support a larger centralized biomass heating system that is that much more efficient and cleaner for everybody,\u201d Hopkins said.\r\n\u201cYou don\u2019t have individual buildings trying to support their own oil heat systems anymore. You have one renewable heat system that can work at scale and transform an entire downtown,\u201d Hopkins said of systems like District Heat Montpelier.\r\nThe Montpelier project was a collaborative effort between the city, which runs the distribution system to municipal buildings and private businesses in the downtown, and the state, which owns the heating plant and supplies heat to state government buildings. \u201cThis was a partnership with the state. We worked very closely. It was sometimes contentious, not easy to get there, because there were a lot of issues that we had to work out,\u201d Hollar said. \u201cBut at the end of the day the state doubled the size of its plant \u2026 and built a state-of-the-art new system with about twice the capacity.\u201d\r\nThe unexpected drop in oil prices has changed some of the underlying cost-savings estimates, but the city is confident the wood-fired heating plant will continue to make economic sense over the long term. \u201cThe price is not as competitive with oil as many anticipated, but we knew that going into it,\u201d Hollar said.\r\n\u2018NET ZERO\u2019 ENERGY GOAL\r\nThe environmental benefits of District Heat Montpelier are undeniable.\u00a0 Hollar calls the environmental impact of moving away from oil \u201ca big factor\u201d in the decision to go forward with the biomass project. Instead of burning dirty fossil fuels, the project sustainably sources its wood chips from New England, including Vermont.\r\n\u201cMontpelier has adopted a goal of becoming net zero -- having all of our energy supplied by renewable sources or offset by renewable sources by the year 2030. It\u2019s a very ambitious goal,\u201d Hollar said. \u201cThis is a very important component of that: having all of our core downtown area and all of our municipal buildings heated with renewable resources. So, this tied in very well and complements a significant priority for our city.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.sanders.senate.gov/vermont/-heating-cities-with-renewables-"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 76.96346193552017, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}