May I moot an unconventional source of power: It is my firm belief that CO2 from ethanol fermentation process can be compressed on its own without compressors and without damage to the bugs and drive turbines for electric power. Alas I only tried it to turn a toy turbine in fish tank minus the fish. Remember that CO2 is 45% of sugar mass and that production is continuous as long as the sugar is there in the fermentor.
Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2302/
-- In These Times
Features > September 2, 2005
Shooting Down the Breeze
The promise of wind power has been impeded by species-protection
scandals and a lack of public trust
By Mischa Gaus
Faced with news that its wind turbines were killing thousands of bats
at two wind farms on Appalachian mountain ridgelines, the nation's
largest wind power company reacted quickly.
The company, FPL Energy, barred scientists from pursuing follow-up
work, pulled their $75,000 contribution from the research cooperative
studying bat mortality and ended the doctoral work of a graduate
student who had produced two years of data showing unusually high
rates of bat death at the sites.
The move stunned bat biologists and conservationists who had joined a
cooperative scientific effort with the company. Known as the Bat and
Wind Energy Cooperative, it is made up of industry members,
government agencies and bat researchers. The group released a
peer-reviewed study in June that estimated up to 2,900 bats died last
fall at the farms in West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The company's decision rejected the study's favored recommendation,
which proposed shutting down selected turbines briefly at the sites
to see if stationary blades would reduce bat fatalities.
"This is an argument on economics," says Ed Arnett, a conservation
scientist who directed the cooperative's work, because halting some
turbines for the bat study would marginally affect power production.
But the company may be even more concerned with the precedent the
recommendation sets: If stopping blades during certain weather
conditions and times of day dramatically cuts bat death, wind power
companies could be forced to implement similar restrictions on other
turbines in the region. About 700 turbines have been approved or
proposed to be built in the mid-Atlantic.
FPL Energy spokesman Steve Stengel disputes that the company is
stymieing research, noting that its contribution hinged on the type
of research conducted, and that scientists were only offered access
to the company's property to pursue the approaches it supported. But
bat biologists within and outside the research cooperative disparage
the company's solution-acoustic deterrents to drive bats away-saying
that it's unproven and potentially counterproductive.
"My judgment is that they really don't want to know the answer," says
Tom Kunz, a bat biologist at Boston University who sits on the
cooperative's scientific advisory panel.
The controversy casts doubt on how wind power, championed as the
greenest of renewable energy sources, will overcome a lack of public
trust as it rapidly expands.
Puny, but promising
The environmental credentials of wind power are remarkable. Besides
producing no air pollution or carbon dioxide, wind power does not
clear forests, flood canyons, poison soil, or leave behind permanent
or toxic waste.
"If we want to be around as long as other civilizations have lasted,
we need to think ahead 1,000 years," says James Manwell, director of
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's Renewable Energy
Research Laboratory. "And you can't do it with coal, oil or nuclear."
Currently, wind power is tiny in the United States, responsible for
less than 1 percent of energy production. The nation has about 16,000
wind turbines producing enough electricity for 1.6 million
households, according the American Wind Energy Association.
Since the days of homemade, backyard windmills, the technology of
wind energy has advanced dramatically, with efficiency improving
about 5 percent every year. New turbines can rise as tall as a
40-story building, produce power at wind speeds around 13 mph and
generate as much as 4.5 megawatts of electricity-enough for 1,200
households.
Federal support for the industry is still dwarfed by the $18.4
billion in subsidies that the nonpartisan group Taxpayers for Common
Sense estimates the coal, oil, gas and nuclear power industries will
receive in the recently-signed energy bill. But thanks in part to a
federal tax credit extended two more years by the energy bill, the
industry is growing tremendously, by as much as a third this year
alone. Some estimates predict it will produce 6 percent of the
country's power by 2020. The technology is decentralized-making it
harder to attack or disrupt-viable across large swaths of the country
and, with the tax credit, the most affordable way to produce
renewable energy available today.
Growing pains
But despite this promise, wind power has been plagued by persistent
problems with wildlife. While wildlife-impact studies have
established no significant impact across swaths of the Midwest and
West, the deaths of birds of prey at wind harvesting farms in
northern California's Altamont Pass have led to a lawsuit and
negative publicity worldwide. An investigation into reports of bat
deaths on an Oklahoma wind farm was quashed by FPL Energy's research
ban, and another site in Tennessee will also go unstudied.
With the growth of wind power, industry habits have emerged that
trouble the scientists trying to understand why wildlife collide with
turbines.
In August, researchers at England's University of Birmingham released
a survey of all wildlife-impact studies worldwide that hammered wind
companies, saying they settle for poor-quality science and restrict
access to their data on economic grounds.
"They're used to working with consultants, so the industry owns the
data," says Jessica Kerns, the University of Maryland doctoral
student whose degree was cut short. "It's a kind of a rough position
to be in. You never really know that the ground is solid underneath
you."
Consolidation is also following the industry's expansion. Major
corporations, like Shell, General Electric and John Deere, are moving
into wind, chasing contracts enabled by state laws mandating that
minimum percentages of power must come from renewable sources.
Some conservationists welcome wind's consolidation. Jeff Miller is
Bay Area wildlands coordinator for the Center for Biological
Diversity, one of the groups suing wind companies in the Altamont
Pass. He says some of the smallest companies have been most
intransigent and that size matters less than recognition of larger
environmental responsibility."Companies that aren't going to address
this in their business plan aren't going to survive out there," he
says.
The decisions of a few executives at these corporations dramatically
affect the fortunes of wind power. One company, Winergy, set off
panic along the Eastern seaboard when it announced plans-before
meeting shoreline residents or policymakers-to install almost 3,000
offshore turbines. The company has yet to actually build anything,
but its flurry of press releases was enough to prompt New Jersey to
place a 15-month moratorium on offshore wind turbines.
Strange bedfellows
Opposition to wind power has its predictable sources, like the Cato
Institute, which receives part of its funding from oil companies, and
Glenn Schleede, a former senior vice president for the National Coal
Association, who has since moved on to a career as a freelance hitman
set on whacking renewable energy sources.
But to the continuing delight of such foes, opposition also comes
from environmentalists, whether the head of Maryland's Audubon group
or Robert Kennedy Jr., who has objected to plans for an offshore wind
farm in Cape Cod, near the family's summer house.
A common thread ties together the hell-bent ideologues and others who
share such concerns as loss of views, open space or wildlife. Both
sides include locals who weren't consulted, and don't like the idea
of outsiders, especially faceless companies, profiting from their
land.
Mike Tidwell, executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action
Network and a vocal wind power supporter, says these arguments are
smokescreens for parochial concerns. Wind farm proposals undergo
local review, allowing for community participation that sometimes
derails projects.
"Until the anti-wind people are as concerned about mountain-top
removal, natural gas pipelines that go up and over mountains, acid
rain, code-red smog days and asthma," he says, "they just don't have
a lot of credibility."
Whether or not wind opponents act in good faith, their critique is
bolstered by corporate decisions that are perceived to place revenue
over other values.
Denmark does it better
Wind power has developed as a vital part of communities elsewhere.
The majority of Denmark's wind turbines are community-held
cooperatives. Some prohibit anyone who doesn't live around the
turbine from buying a share in the cooperative, preventing
consolidation under outside ownership. Today, wind generates 18
percent of the country's power and is expected to produce 50 percent
by 2030.
But Denmark is much different politically-and smaller
geographically-than the United States, where long distances between
the best wind-generating areas and big energy consumers hinder wind
development. The Dakotas, for instance, have enough wind to generate
one-third of the nation's electricity, but lack transmission lines
tying them to urban centers.
The problems raised by wind's ownership, both economic and communal,
have been labeled "small truths." But if wind is the energy solution,
they may become too large to bear. Legitimate or not, wind is being
held to a higher standard, and if it appears to behave with the
casual disregard of other, more entrenched industries, it may fail to
fly.
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