Fuel and Energy Alternatives

We all want to save money on fuel oil and heating oil for our homes, even the home electric bills in the winter can be slightly scary. It’s a good thing to go through your house and evaluate where wasted heat and energy may be. Is the glazing on your windows old and flaking? Do you use blinds or curtains (curtains can cut heat transmission.) Newer energy efficient windows can be a good investment, of course, you don’t want to replace your windows in the middle of winter. Does your attic have enough insulation? Can more be added? It’s even possible to retrofit walls with sprayed in insulation. Most of the homes leakage though comes via the windows and doors so those are the biggest things to check. Proper weatherstripping can certainly help your heating oil and energy costs through the long cold winters, but you should also make sure you set your thermostat around 70 degrees or even 68 if possible and avoid the temptation to run it up into the upper 70s.

THIS is exactly the kinds of thinking we need to be doing. I’ve said it for a long time that we need to find a way to make fuel out of the things that NO ONE wants and is plentiful. (Kudzu…) Add coffee grounds to the growing list of things that could be a biodiesel source. I know many people use spent coffee grounds as a fertilizer of sorts, but the article reports that they estimate that spent coffee grounds could contribute over 300 million gallons of biodiesel around the world (I assume annually.)

The conversion process taking the oils from the grounds and converting to a biodiesel was cheap, the excess solids can be used as compost and is more stable than traditional biodiesels. Waste coffee grounds contain as much as 20% oil.