I just read in the April issue of Ode Magazine (http://www.odemagazine.com/) that Thisted Denmark is now producing 100% of their energy from wind. They have a population of 46,000, and now have 250 windmills running. They also have a few farms producing biogas, and many homes have personal wind mills. The town is attracting lots of jobs within the alternative energy sector.
By my rough estimates, here is what we would need to do in Ithaca. With a population of 30,000 people, we would need approximately 160 wind mills. Looking at this WI wind farm as an example, http://www.mge.com/environment/wind/, they have 17 turbines operating on 30.5 acres leased from 7 parcels of agricultural land totaling 600 acres. We would need to build about 10 of these farms. Probably more, since WI no doubt gets better wind than Tompkins County, but that's a start. At a cost of $14.5 million per farm, that's a total of $145 million to be energy independent. Feedback on my rough numbers? Shall we hold a bake sale to get started? Eric ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
