Last week as part of Vice President Biden’s announcement of 200,000 homes weatherized under the Recovery act, we asked you to send us your questions and comments about the weatherization process. Today, we’re following up with answers experts from the Department’s Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program:

1) From edmooney via Twitter: @Energy Besides caulking, what are the best values in weatherization for the Northeast region. #weatherization

Nationwide, the energy-efficient retrofits that consistently provide the best return on investment involve sealing gaps in the building envelope which allows conditioned air – either heated or cooled – to escape the interior of the home. States in the Northeast region, which on average have an exceptionally high number of heating degree days each season, are particularly susceptible to energy loss through poor air sealing of the building envelope.

These gaps in the building envelope can include joints between materials, gaps around doors and windows, and penetrations for piping, wiring, and ducts. A blower door test can be used identify these gaps and measure the aggregate degree of air infiltration into your home. Retrofit measures such as caulking, weather stripping, gaskets, and duct sealing can be used to seal these gaps and improve the energy efficiency of your home.

Continue reading: Response to Weatherization Questions

When it comes to saving energy, many Americans seem to get it — and at the same time they don’t get it at all.

That’s the takeaway from a new study by researchers from Columbia University, Ohio State University and Carnegie Mellon University who found that people are far more likely to focus on switching off lights or unplugging appliances than on buying new bulbs or more efficient refrigerators. But people’s perceptions of the relative savings of various actions are significantly at variance with reality.

“Participants estimated that line-drying clothes saves more energy than changing the washer’s settings (the reverse is true) and estimated that a central air-conditioner uses only 1.3 times the energy of a room air-conditioner (in fact, it uses 3.5 times as much),” the researchers wrote.

Continue reading: Delusions Abound on Energy Savings, Study Says

If Alaskans aren’t at a crossroads politically, we’re drawing close. Most all candidates running for statewide offices this year have given due time to talk about the state’s energy future, since we’ve been living off of our energy past for so long and change is coming. A dwindling flow of oil down the pipeline makes it impossible to ignore. It’s the way the state pays for much of what it does, so it impacts nearly everyone. Two of the five questions posed to candidates by Alaska Newspapers Inc. deal directly with energy and how we acquire it.

We also asked them about other issues important to rural Alaskans: subsistence, fisheries, jobs. Every candidate running for the U.S. House, U.S. Senate, governor’s office and lieutenant governor’s office was sent the same questions. Below are answers from those who responded.

Continue reading: Finding energy at the ballot box

A friend says that among his most satisfying moments are those he stands contemplating his pile of firewood. He inhales the sweetness of birch, the tang of aspen and the sharp bite of spruce while he ponders the moisture wafting out of his wood.

My friend knows how to have a good time. And he is appreciating a process that is important in places where people burn wood and release its smoke into an air column that doesn’t stir much in winter — burned dry wood results in much better air quality than wetter wood.

“I think it’s a big issue,” said John Davies, a longtime woodburner and senior researcher for energy policy at the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Fairbanks. Researchers at the center recently collected firewood from people in Fairbanks to check it for moisture content, and are also measuring the drying progress of cordwood they have stacked on the grounds of the center in Fairbanks. Fairbanks often exceeds Environmental Protection Agency air quality standards. Its poor winter air quality is due in a large part to the emissions from wood smoke. People make the problem worse when burning unseasoned wood.

The recession is lingering, and so is the unspent stimulus money that was meant to help end it.

The latest example is the $3.2 billion that Congress voted in February 2009 as part of an economic stimulus package to simultaneously provide jobs and improve energy efficiency through block grants to states and cities.

Only about 8.4 percent of the money had been spent by the beginning of this month, according to an audit released on Friday by the inspector general of the Energy Department, and it has produced or saved only about 2,300 jobs as of the second quarter of this year.

The program was to provide money for the purchase of better lighting or heating and cooling equipment for buildings like city halls and schools. But it is off to the same slow start as a bigger program that was initiated at the same time to weatherize the homes of low-income people around the country. An audit of that program in February, also by the  inspector general, found that only $368.2 million of $4.73 billion, or less than 8 percent, had been spent.

Continue reading: Energy Funds Went Unspent, U.S. Auditor Says

The borough began taking applications last week for its wood stove repair and replacement program.

“The program is up and operational,” air quality director Glenn Miller said.

Applications are available at the borough air quality office on Peger Road.

The program is still evolving, and applications won’t be available on the borough website until final modifications are made, Miller said.

Qualifying residents will receive government assistance replacing outdoor wood boilers and old wood stoves for cleaner-burning models approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. Cash payouts and tax credits are available to those who switch to gas or oil heat.

The program is part of a larger endeavor to improve the air in Fairbanks.

The Borough Assembly passed a resolution approving the port authority’s plan to purchase Fairbanks Natural Gas LLC and launch a natural gas trucking operation.

A separate measure calling for a public vote on the plan narrowly failed.

The $250 million project now goes before the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.

“People are waiting for energy relief,” Assemblywoman Kelly Brown said. “I don’t believe they need to wait anymore.”

Architects of the plan include municipal officials who belong to the Alaska Gasline Port Authority’s board of directors. The agency is backed by the Fairbanks North Star Borough and the city of Valdez.

They say the trucking operation will result in a 25 percent drop in natural gas prices in Fairbanks and a 6 percent drop in electric bills.

Continue reading: Fairbanks Borough Assembly gives it approval to plan to truck liquefied gas

A plan to transfer Fairbanks Natural Gas LLC from private to public ownership and truck liquefied natural gas to Fairbanks from the North Slope is doomed, according to an Alaska Gasline Port Authority board member.

Board member Merrick Peirce wrote in an e-mail that the assumption behind the $250 million business deal — that crude oil prices will continue to rise — is flawed because more crude oil production is coming online in Iraq, increasing the world’s supply.

In interviews, other port authority board members defended the plan and refuted Peirce’s claims. They said the proposal, to be financed with bonds, provides the best possibility of quickly lowering energy prices in Fairbanks.

Decades of talk about building a natural gas pipeline have yet to produce results. “We have not given up on the pipeline,” said Dave Cobb, Valdez Councilman and vice chairman of the port authority governing board. “That is still our No. 1 priority, but you have to do something in the interim.”

The port authority is a partnership between the Fairbanks borough and the city of Valdez that was created to build a gas pipeline to Valdez. Peirce offered his criticism in an e-mail to the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly, which tonight considers a resolution to accept the authority’s proposed purchase of Fairbanks Natural Gas. The assembly also will consider an ordinance that would require a public vote to broaden the port authority’s mission statement before it goes ahead with the trucking plan.

Continue reading: Criticism mounts for call to truck liquefied natural gas to Fairbanks

Assemblyman Guy Sattley has drafted an ordinance requiring a public vote on the plan to truck liquefied natural gas to Fairbanks, but Borough Mayor Luke Hopkins said delaying the $250 million project is risky.

“If we stretch this timeline out,” Hopkins said Thursday at a Borough Assembly work session, “basically, the project is going to be very difficult to be financed in the way the port authority wants it to be.”

Hopkins, who belongs to the governing board of the Alaska Gasline Port Authority, said the main problem with delaying the project for a public vote is an expected rise in interest rates.

“As financing money begins to cost more, it could cost the project greater and greater amounts,” Hopkins said. “That would take away from the revenue stream.”