Our Mission

Our mission is to create a community energy system for the Town of Brattleboro, Vermont generating both electricity and thermal energy, using biomass as a fuel, for the benefit of multiple stakeholders and the town as a whole. To achieve our mission, we will develop and operate a district energy system using a modern biomass-fueled combined heat and power (CHP) plant to deliver (A) thermal energy via a buried, insulated hot/cold-water pipe network to businesses, municipal and school buildings, homes, and other consumers, and (B) electric energy directly into the shared grid.

Our long-term aim is to eliminate Brattleboro's dependency on fossil fuels (primarily oil and natural gas) for heating, and obtain most of its electricity from renewable local sources.

This mature technology has become very common in Northern Europe over the past several decades. In Sweden, for example, about 50% of all indoor spaces and 75% of all apartments are heated by district heating, and the Swedish District Heating Association estimates that, at current oil price levels, it would be profitable for as much as 75% of total indoor heating to be provided by district heating systems.