Smells Like Green Spirit

With Dreams of Sustainable Alternative Fuels, This is Kinda Frustrating

The federal government has called upon oil companies to buy 4.7 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel in 2007. Normally ethanol is more costly than gasoline, adding pennies at the the pump, but because of overproduction, ethanol is currently cheaper than gasoline by about 5-10 cents per gallon. Other pro-ethanol mandates in the past that are helping contribute to this overproduction include a 51 cent per gallon tax credit, subsidies for small ethanol producers and payments to corn farmers.

Although ethanol is higher octane, burns cleaner and helps engines last longer, it’s long been known that, contrary to the support it’s getting from the government, ethanol is not an ideal fossil fuel alternative due to its inefficiency (taking about as much energy to produce the ethanol as it burns), and it’s taking away from corn production for food sources, making corn products more expensive. It’s less fuel efficient than gasoline, because it contains only around 2/3 the energy content of gasoline.

So what’s going to happen as a result of this government mandate? It’s currently raising food and energy prices, and being that America consumes around 140 billion gallons of gasoline, is this mandate little more than lip service in the right direction?

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This is just insane!

I first stumbled upon this a while ago at The Healthy Green Blog, but apparently a few years ago the winner of the British Ashten Award (which honors sustainable energy products) was an overpopulated Rwandan prison which had begun converting prisoner waste into combustable biogas for cooking and fertilizer! That’s so wonderful! And gross! And amazing! And creepy…

Sewage disposal had been a major health hazard for the prison and the surrounding area, and while not a new development, Rwanda was the first to impliment it on such a grand scale with such grand success.

The organization which is responsible for this amazing and disgusting development is KIST, or the Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management, established in 1997 to “transfer technical innovations, managerial, and entrepreneurship skills into community applications”. For more information, visit the KIST website.

What the Heck is Biogas??

The production of biogas involves putting organic material into an air-tight tank and letting bacteria break it down, where by it releases gas. (Does this mean we could eat lots of beans and produce our own sustainable biogas? That I do not know.) The biogas can then be used as fuel, with its remants usable for organic composting.

To greatly simplify the process, the human waste is flushed into things called air-tight “digesters” where the gas-making process takes place. It is then piped into kitchens for cooking, and this process somehow also deals with the smell and unsanitary-ness of the waste.

For more information:
Ashten Award
Kigali Institute of Science and Technology

By the way, I read an amazing book about the Rwandan genocide by journalist Philip Gourevitch entitled We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda that I’d highly recommend anyone read who wants an indepth, moving and fascinating history of those dark days in Rwanda. The last story in the book made me bawl. It’s a sad but important history we should all know more about.

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No Breathing Easy In Beijing

Imagine air pollution so bad that you can’t even go outside…that’s what Beijing is currently experiencing - such horrible smog that government officials are urging citizens to stay in.

Suspended particulate matter, largely from coal burning plants and auto emissions make up the awful pollution, exacerbated by the lack of wind recently.

Beijing’s air quality has long been considered among the world’s worst, whereas…

England’s Ecotricity

On the other side of the planet, self described hippie Dale Vince has been using the windy air of the UK to create his highly successful company Ecotricity, providing wind turbine energy to over 22,000 customers. With the ability to be backed up by the grid if the wind ever falters, Vince promotes his turbines reminding us that wind will never run out, is 100% renewable, it produces no pollutants, and the turbines pay for themselves within the first 6 months in energy saved.

Wind energy is now price competitive with traditional energy sources in the U.K…too bad Beijing has had had such a lack of wind!

More about Ecotricity’s turbines:

*They’re quiet enough not to disturb people living nearby.

*They need to placed strategically so as not to disturb television signals.

*Turbines must be placed in areas sensitive to bird habitats. (Ecotricity’s statistics suggest that millions more birds are killed by cars each year than would ever be killed or harmed by wind turbines.)

For more info, click here for Ecotricity’s website.

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