New Hampshire, United States — The renewable energy industry has grown substantially in recent years, despite the down economy. But while solar, wind and to a lesser extent, geothermal energy put up solid growth numbers, the bioheating market has lagged behind.

The reasons are simple enough. Low rates of new construction, a declining housing market and lower oil prices have made capital intensive investments in wood pellet, chip and gasifying systems a tough sell.

But the signs of recovery are now being seen in this space. Consumer demand is improving and policymakers are placing renewable heating higher up on their energy agendas. In the last six months, the American Renewable Biomass Heating Act of 2010 (S.3188) was introduced in Washington, D.C. The bill would add renewable heating systems to the list of technologies that qualify for federal renewable energy tax credits. New state- and utility-level incentives were also created in New Hampshire, with more expected in other Northeast states.

Charile Neibling, chairman of the Biomass Thermal Energy Council (BTEC) and general manager of New England Wood Pellet, said the policies being put in place at the government and utility level signal a return to pre-recession thinking, when oil was expensive and both consumers and corporations were looking to be more eco-friendly. The result, he said, is that the industry is seeing momentum return, leading leading policy makers and utilities to put incentives in place to help get the market moving again.

“In Washington, there are three pieces of legislation we’re working on. All of them are demand side incentives for commerical, residential and industrial applications for high efficiency biomass thermal technologies,” Neibling said. “The utilities, which have historically been focused solely on electricity, are starting to view their role more expansively and are viewing the efficiency monies that they administer in a more technology and fuel neutral way, and that’s a really encouraging sign.”

Niebling wasn’t alone in his optimism at the Heating the Northeast with Renewable Biomass (Heat NE) event last week in New Hampshire.

Lew McCreery, Biomass Coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service’s (USFS) Northeastern Area said that he’s encouraged by the increasing cooperation taking place between government agencies. But he cautioned that there is still a lot more to be done politically to increase the adoption of high efficiency bioheating technologies. Recognizing heating and combined heat and power technologies under renewable portfolio standards is a top priority for the industry, McCreery said.

“The thermal use of wood is almost the ideal use as an energy source,” he said. “The biggest concern I have is the inefficiency of wood in standalone electric plants, which are being encouraged by things like renewable portfolio standards that don’t include heat as a recognized technology.”

Joe Kohler of Kohler & Lewis, Mechanical Engineers said that the recession caused some customers to put plans for biomass systems on hold as a result of the recession. Now Kohler said he’s seeing interest come back and expects it to remain high for the foreseeable future. The keys to keeping interest high, he said, will be the availability of systems and the quality of the work being done in the field.

“Once it gets to the point where oil is $3.50 a gallon, I think this will be a self fueling industry, we don’t even have to do much to make it happen. We just need to have the product out there for consumers to buy and we have to have successes,” he said

Though higher oil prices will undoubtedly lead people to look at new choices for heating, challenges to market adoption still exist. Mark Froling, president of boiler installer Froling LLC said that installers need to act as both marketers and educators by building showcase projects — even if it means working for a reduced price — in order to prove to consumers that biomass thermal projects work. Showcase projects will allow people to “kick the tires,” he said.

“Right now we’re building a project in Peterborough, New Hampshire and doing it at a reduced cost so that it’s a showcase [and] people can see the project and see that it works. There’s really no one out there that has equipment installed and there are only a handful of boilers out there running,” he said.

As is the case with any new industry, consumer education plays a big role in renewable energy implementation and adoption. Educating regulators and policy makers is also important. During his keynote address, John Kerry, Director of the Maine Office of Energy Independence & Security, reminded Heat NE attendees to make more effort to communicate the industry’s message in order to provide people with a better understanding of the benefits of the industry.

“I think the very first thing thing needs to be knowledge, that is, the legislature, the public, and the industry itself needs to become fully engaged in understanding the newest of technologies, the resources and the impact of harvesting the resources to create jobs and economic development,” he said.

The energy transition is a cultural transition from one based on fossil fuels to one based on conservation and sustainability, said Kerry.

Christiane Egger, deputy manager of the Upper Austrian Renewable Energy Agency (Oberösterreichischer Energiesparverbund) used her European region, which is on a path to get 100% of its primary energy from renewable sources by 2030, as an example of the sustainable culture Kerry alluded to. The most important component to making the move she said, is to make a commitment and to stick to it.

“My state decided in the mid 1990′s that sustainable energy was a crucial question for us and we’re now in the third phase of state action plan, under which we said that by the turn of the millennium we would have 30% of our energy from renewables. And we did it,” she said.

In order to overcome many of the challenges in front of the biomass industry, BTEC recently issued a report called a “Bold Vision for 2025.” The report calls for a shift to 25% renewable heat in the Northeast, with 19% from biomass and the rest from solar thermal and geothermal heat pumps.

BTEC, Maine Pellet Fuels, the Pellet Fuels Institute, the New York Biomass Energy Alliance and the Alliance for Green Heat laid out a series of steps needed to achieve this goal, including increasing state and local government support for renewable heating through the use of regulatory requirements, tax incentives and rebates. The report also said that in order to hit this figure, academic institutions will need to develop improvements to technologies currently on the market and work to create new, more efficient ones.

Were these targets hit, the industry would bring more than US $4.5 billion in economic activity to the region and would create more than 140,000 permanent jobs, as well as thousands of temporary and indirect jobs in the construction, farming, forestry and transportation industries. The expansion of the bioheating industry would also prevent $1.6 billion from leaving the U.S. for petroleum producing nations in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Check back with RenewableEnergyWorld.com for more coverage from Heat NE in the coming days. We’ll be releasing video and podcast interviews from the event as well as more information about the “Bold Vision for 2025” report.

by Graham Jesmer, Staff Writer

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/05/fired-up-bioheat-gains-momentum-as-recovery-takes-hold

There’s a lot of talk about what you should do to become successful, but I would argue that it’s more about who you are that makes the biggest impact. It’s the decisions we make on a daily basis, the habits we naturally form in our lives that determine the level of success we can achieve. Who we are determines how we react to life, even when we’re not consciously in the act of ‘being successful’.

So here are 10 traits that I’ve seen as essential for obtaining lasting success in any endeavor.

1. An Independent Nature

If we rely too much on those around us for assistance and/or support we will be setting ourselves up for disappointment in the future. This is not to say that we shouldn’t look to others for help when the time is right, but crafting our pursuits in such a way that requires the intervention of another is like handing over the keys and getting in the back seat. Our friends and colleagues may help open the doors of opportunity, but it is our own responsibility to take the wheel.

2. Self Confidence

Every decision we make in life will have some kind of effect on future outcomes. If our choices our filtered through fear and doubt, we can be assured of the life we are trying to avoid. Trust your instincts and listen to your heart. When you make a mistake, don’t look at it as reason for doubt, but instead, realize the opportunity for wisdom as you continue to push ahead.

3. Persistence

It’s been 5 years since I started my consulting business. 5 years of long hours and hard work. Many times did I consider throwing in the towel when things didn’t go my way. But every year that’s gone by, every road block I’ve pushed through, my business has grown as my resolve to make it a success has strengthened. Persistence is not an optional trait for those who desire success, but an essential attitude that must be embraced!

4. A Big Imagination

When I think of some of the greatest ‘achievers’ in American history I see great innovators and people of purpose. Names like Henry Ford, Walt Disney and Bill Gates come to mind. From cars to cartoons to computers, their personalities were as diverse as their pursuits. But one thing they share is the wonderful ability to see what’s not yet visible to the naked eye. It was the imagination of Henry Ford that first painted the picture of a car in every garage, and Bill Gates, a computer in every home. And it was Walt Disney who continues to inspire millions with the idea that ‘anything is possible’.

Those with inevitable success can see the unseen. They’ve become successful in their minds before they laid their first brick.

5. A Thick Skin

I’m a people pleaser at heart and can be devastated by disappointment. But as a necessity in business, I’ve grown a thick skin that allows me to deflect defeat while maintaining my focus. Whether in corporate conflict or the liabilities of life, it is those with a strong armor who will maintain their momentum.

6. Clarity Of Self Understanding

If you don’t know who you are, you will never truly know what you’re capable of. It is in our daily pursuits that we need accurate information on our strengths and weaknesses to succeed. Because being blind sided by your own inability or missing out on your true talents will bring nothing more than failure and frustration.

7. Clarity Of Intent

Continuing with the analogy of Ford, Disney and Gates, we can see three individuals with very clear intentions. No one ever questioned Ford’s intentions of filling the roads with his Model T’s. Disney was never far from his pursuits of capturing our imaginations. And even when no one believed in his dream of populating every home with a PC, there was never a question of Gates greatest goal.

8. Focus

There’s a lot of talk about multi-tasking and single tasking when it comes to getting things done. But however you go about accomplishing your goals, focus must be at the core of your character. Successful people have the knack for deflecting distraction and keeping their nose to the grindstone. It is our drive that pushes us forward and keeps our momentum, but without focus we will just be moving for the sake of motion.

9. Optimism

Many of the traits mentioned thus far would not be possible without this key ingredient. Without being able to constantly see the cup as half full, we would never be able to stay focused. Being blind to that silver lining would paralyze our persistence. So it is absolutely crucial that our minds maintain a positive outlook on life and never give in to the destruction of defeat. Optimism is at the heart of a successful human being!

10. Passion

Success can be obtained by many, but maintaining the drive to reach our goals requires a passion for pursuit and a lust for life. We can create a to-do list and set our goals with the best of them, but without this necessary habitual hunger, we will most certainly fail to bring to the table the results we imagined.

This guest post was written by Eric Hamm. Eric writes about personal growth at his blog Motivate Thyself. You can subscribe to his RSS feed .

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/successful/

This composite image, created by Stanford researchers Fumiko Hoeft and Allan Reiss, shows the difference in growth of brain regions from first measurement to second measurement in study participants with Fragile X compared to controls. Areas in green grew in volume faster in Fragile X than controls. Areas in red started off large in Fragile X at time 1 and remained large at time 2, and areas in blue started off small in Fragile X at time 1 and remained small at time 2. (Credit: Image created by Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD, and Allan Reiss, MD, of Stanford University.)

ScienceDaily (May 3, 2010) — Fragile X syndrome is the most common known cause of inherited intellectual disability and autism. Now, researchers using advanced, noninvasive imaging techniques have shown how the brains of very young boys with fragile X syndrome differ from those of young boys without it, providing critical information for the development of treatments for the condition.

In a longitudinal study to be published online May 3 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine and collaborators from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill monitored anatomical changes that, over time, progressively differentiate the brains of children with fragile X syndrome from those of children without it.

Triggered by a mutation in a gene located on the X chromosome, fragile X syndrome affects about one in every 4,000 people, with more significant symptoms occurring in males than females. This condition’s genetics and neurobiology are relatively well understood, accelerating the pace with which potential drug therapies have been moving through the pharmaceutical pipeline, said the study’s senior author, Allan Reiss, MD, the Howard C. Robbins Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and professor of radiology.

Reiss, who directs Stanford’s Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research, has been studying fragile X syndrome for more than two decades. “A number of years ago, we saw new treatments quickly coming down the line,” he said. “So we wanted to provide information that could be used to guide those treatments.” Application of these new findings might enable scientists and clinicians to tell if a therapy is working in the very youngest of children diagnosed with this condition.

Fragile X syndrome alone accounts for about 2-3 percent of all cases of autism, making it the most common known, specific genetic risk factor for that disorder, although not all people with fragile X syndrome develop autism. Autism is increasingly viewed as not a single disease but a spectrum of them. A large number of diverse genes have been identified as contributing to autism, but with each responsible for only a sliver of cases. Fragile X syndrome patients often manifest discomfort with eye contact, hypersensitivity to sound or touch, abnormalities of language and movement, and varying levels of developmental delay.

In the study, the Stanford and UNC investigators used high-resolution MRI to obtain detailed images of 1- to 3-year-old boys’ brains, and followed up two years later with a second imaging session. The MRI results were analyzed at Stanford, primarily by Reiss and the study’s lead authors: Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD, an imaging expert and instructor at the CIBSR, and medical student John Carter. Brain images from 41 fragile X syndrome boys were compared with those from age- and developmentally-matched control subjects: 21 boys who were developing typically, and seven others who were experiencing non-fragile-X-related developmental delay.

While many aspects of brain anatomy were similar from one group to the next, the fragile X brains evidenced at an early age (that is, during their first imaging session at 1-3 years of age) an overabundance of gray matter in such regions as the caudate and thalamus, and a diminished presence in a part of the cerebellum called the vermis. This suggests that the fragile X syndrome mutation had already begun to cause identifiable, consistent alterations in brain development, perhaps even before birth. However, the basal forebrain as well as a different part of the thalamus and many regions of the cerebral cortex of fragile X patients, while indistinguishable from those of control subjects during the first imaging session, diverged from their counterparts two years later. These results suggest that certain downstream effects of the mutation become evident only later in brain development.

Knowing the locations of fragile X syndrome brain-structure abnormalities and the developmental time course over which they occur — and being able to noninvasively detect those changes in young patients — will make it possible to monitor new therapies’ effectiveness in (it is hoped) restoring patients’ brain structure and function to normality.

The imaging study was funded by a grant from the National Institute for Mental Health. CIBSR research associate Amy Lightbody, PhD, is the other Stanford co-author.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100503161239.htm