I just saw some reports coming out of the Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) which would indicate that the folks in Congress tweaked the allocation formula from last year. It looks the allocations I posted in the table yesterday may be off by +/- 10%. I will redo the table when and if I can find out whether the DPC’s numbers are official and final.
More on the Stimulus Weatherization Assistance state allocations
February 20th, 2009Estimated State Allocations of the Stimulus Plan’s $5 Billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program
February 20th, 2009The following table shows how much each state will receive in Weatherization Assistance Program funds as a result of the Stimulus Plan. The calculations are based on the assumption that the funds will be allocated based on the same formula that was proposed for the Fiscal 2008 funding. The proposed formula was disclosed in the Federal Register in December 2008.
So for Massachusetts, for example, the funding for FY 2008 of $6.48 million will jump to $142.59 million in FY 2009. I have read numerous articles which say the funds have to be spent within 18 months but I have not been able to trace those statements to reliable sources like Appropriation Committee reports.
In Massachusetts the responsibility for disbursing Weatherization funds has been subcontracted to various regional “community action councils” (CAC’s). These same agencies are responsible for handling disbursements of Low Income Heating Assistance funds. I have tried for about a week to get in touch with the person who handles the heating assistance and weatherization programs at my local designated CAC. This does not bode well for the prompt deployment of Stimulus Weatherization funds.
Open Coffee Boston - UnMinutes 6/11/08
June 12th, 2008Once again… rolling start. I showed up at 9:15am (thanks to the friggn’ Redline and Dan Grabowkus) and Karen was sitting with Victor and some new guy so I joined them.
Eventually about 15 people show up so we moved the meeting downstairs. Read the rest of this entry »
Distributed MicroBlogging Discussion at Berkman 06/05/08
June 6th, 2008Joe Cascio gave a presentation last evening about why the world needs a distributed microblogging protocol. He was originally calling this project “distributed twitter.” There was an interesting mix of long time (and/or old time) Berkman Blogger folks, some twitteratti and some real geeks (coders). Read the rest of this entry »
OpenCoffee Boston - 06/04/08
June 4th, 2008Rolling start to the meeting… didn’t really develop a quorum until around 9 am.
Some new folks (or people who haven’t been to an OpenCoffee in a very long timed ) …
Shawn Broderick of TrustPlus which provides reputation management services so individuals can “manage” their online reputations across a range of services they use such as Ebay, Craigslist, etc. Read the rest of this entry »
IgniteBoston3
May 30th, 2008Good crowd. Lot’s of New England ubergeeks.
The talks were consistently interesting… from what little I could hear.
Why? Why? Why does the O’Reilly team continue to use the worst possible venue (Tommy Doyle’s in Harvard Sq. ) for this possibly great event.
WordPress Crash Course
May 28th, 2008
I attended David Tames’ “WordPress Crash Course” last week at the Mass College of Art. This is where I learned to insert photos using the latest version of WordPress.
This is a photo I took of a BostonNow newspaper box right across the street from the Kennedy School at Harvard. BostonNow bit the dust about one year later.
Attending the MIT symposium “Focus on Climate Change” Feb 11-14
February 13th, 2008Lot’s of great stuff. I’ve already filled three memo books with notes. No time to blog about it. More on the symposium here.
Ethanol does more harm than good… Vinod Khosla is gonna be pissed
February 10th, 2008Some study out of Princeton says that all things considered the production of ethanol from specially grown crops will actually be bad for global warming. Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures) has sunk a lot of money into ventures in and around the ethanol space. Some of his ethanol bets include…
Sugar Fuels:
Altra (Los Angeles, CA).. producing ethanol and biodiesel
Cilion (Goshen, CA).. destination ethanol plants with greenest of corn ethanol
Hawaii Bio (Honolulu, HI).. ethanol plants in Hawaii
Ethos Ethanol (Cambridge, MA).. sugar cane biofuels in South America
Cellulosic Fuels:
Range Fuels (Broomfield, CO).. cellulosic ethanol usirng biomass conversion to syngas using proprietary catalysts
Mascoma (Boston, MA).. biochemical conversion of cellulosic biomass to ethanol reducing external enzyme demand
Coskata (Warrenville, IL).. a fermentation technology to make fuel grade ethanol from syngas
Verenium (Cambridge, MA).. cellulosic ethanol from biomass and specialty enzyme products
Future Fuels:
LS9 (San Carlos, CA).. petroleum replacements using fermentation
Gevo (Pasadena, CA).. bacterial production of Bio-butanol
Amyris (Emeryville, CA).. fermentation diesel and higher alcohols
Kior (The Netherlands).. biomass catalytic cracking (BCC) to convert biomass into bio-oil usable as crude
According to the Princeton study, sugar cane fuels may be ok. Both Hawaii Bio and Ethos Ethanol are sugar cane plays so they may be able to dodge this negative PR.