Seeking Alternatives To Heating Oil

After monitoring news and blogs related to unusual heating systems since January 2006, the administrators of Alternative-Heating.com, a non-profit Web site, recently noticed a sharp increase in the interest for alternative heating methods. This interest was apparently fueled in part by the steep rise in heating oil prices. Today, the Web site staff are pleased to announce the creation of a sharing platform that will enable users to exchange ideas and discuss the best ways to use alternative solutions and products to heat their homes and businesses.

Recent data derived from keyword searches and from the most frequently visited Web pages indicate that most visitors (67%) are eager to find information about solutions that can be implemented rapidly without requiring a complete retrofit of their homes, such as low-emission stoves powered by local products, including wood, corn and other grains, or wood pellets. There has also been a renewed interest in coal stoves and boilers. Moreover, 21% of visitors have shown an interest in geothermal systems, perhaps because these systems can also be used to cool their homes during the hot summer months. As for solar heating, most visitors come to realize that efficient systems either require them to retrofit their homes or to purchase a system of collectors that may not be easy to install. These solutions are better choices for new homes, and they aren’t cheap (roughly 10% more than the cost of a standard home). They take a while to be paid off, but their value generally remains steady or increases over time. Once the system is installed, provided enough thermal storage has been put in place, it generates its own heat. It should be noted that new generation passive and active solar heating systems, as opposed to earlier ones, are far more efficient, and that proper insulation plays a key role in that efficiency.

Many visitors have voiced the belief that the clock is ticking, be it due to Peak Oil or to impending turmoil in the Middle East. “If the Strait of Hormuz gets blocked or if transit is interrupted because of another war, then we could see oil prices shooting straight up to unforeseen levels,” says Bryan O’Neil, a long-time visitor and contributor. Undisputedly the world’s most important oil choke point, the Strait of Hormuz consists of a pair of two-mile-wide channels for tanker traffic to and from the Persian Gulf. The U.S. produces most of its electricity in fossil fuel centrals, while a great percentage of home heating systems still use oil or gas directly, all at a time when it would be possible to build homes that would be heated by about 20% of the carbon-based energy used in a conventional system.

Climatic changes are another concern. In January 1998, an ice storm struck the province of Quebec in Canada. According to Wikipedia, “many power lines broke down and over 1,000 pylons collapsed in chain reactions under the weight of the ice, leaving more than four million people without electricity.” Most people didn’t have any type of home heating back-up system, or else they had inefficient fireplaces. Four days into the crisis, when people learned that they would be without electricity for days or even weeks, sales of wood-burning stoves skyrocketed. The military was sent to help people cope with the ordeal. It took a full month for homes in the Montérégie valley to regain power—a population of almost one million was affected.

“For various reasons (one being their relationship with oil-rich countries to whom they sell arms), Western governments may not be willing to start a ‘Manhattan Project’ to end our dependence on foreign oil. But some people are. Through this sharing platform, individuals from all trades can hopefully get involved, and together may end up solving many problems caused by certain corporations’ appetite for obscene profits and by the political passiveness of the majority,” says Christian Laurin, founder and editor of Alternative-Heating.com. “In releasing this information about the increasing interest for greener heating solutions, we hope to get the ball rolling so that concerned individuals from different walks of life can begin to really connect and share ideas to address an issue that is sure to hit everybody—the poor in particular—seeing as fuel prices are not likely to go down anytime soon.”