Lambertville, NJ:
January 2008 was warmer than average in Lambertville, NJ: only 961 heating degree days compared to the 30-year average of 1074. This is a bad thing if, like me, you think that global climate change is already underway and that we may be too late to stop it. This is a good thing, however, if you paid $3.50 a gallon for heating oil and are still trying to find ways to weatherize your new (old) house. How knows what January 2009 will bring? Thankfully the price of heating oil is coming down ($2.50 anyone?), we repointed the foundation in August, and are in the process of adding weather stripping to every door and window in the house.
I haven't thought about heating degree days since 1990, when as a senior in college, I helped Harvard University create an inter-dorm energy efficiency competition that pitted one residential house against the other residential houses. We called it the Ecolympics until the US Olympic Committee told us it violated their rights to the use of the word "Olympic", and so we changed the name to the Green Cup (it is still active, go check it out at http://www.greencampus.harvard.edu/greencup/). It turned out that the trick in getting each house's energy use to be comparable on an apples to apples and year on year basis turned out to be the heating degree day (which is calculated as the difference between the day's average temperature and 65 degrees Fahrenheit). Some houses were on gas, some on oil, etc. and it required some complicated calculations to figure out who would win an energy conservation competition, but I recalled that the heating degree days got us to play were all of the information could be reduced to a single number, and a monthly "gold, silver, and bronze" winner could be announced.
My experience at age 20 with the Ecolympics--er, Green Cup--launched my career of thinking about social innovation, environmental protection, and communicating complicated ideas in a simple way. This blog will attempt to muse on a range of these issues. My 2009 New Year's Resolution is to take the time to reflect and engage more on the inter-connection between my avocations (innovations in philanthropy and environmental problem-solving) and my vocation (at Acumen Fund) and to share some of my thinking real time. I'll look forward to seeing if this experiment bears any fruit. Perhaps I'll joined the ranks of the many well intentioned, but rarely updated blogs... the tippy, tip of the long-tail in the blogosphere. But who knows?
