meet your wind farm: maple ridge wind farm is creating new jobs, lowering taxes and generating income for locals
after my post new yorkers: did you know you could switch to wind energy? a few people asked me about where the wind farms are located and how many there are. there are currently two main wind farms in ny, tess please correct me if i’m mistaken, one is fenner wind farm in madison county, ny and the other is the maple ridge wind farm in lowville, ny.
for anyone who is interested in how people that live in lowville feel about the farms, this video provides some perspective:
some of the main takeaways are:
the wind farms are more like real farms than most people think. individual farmers actually put them on their land (the guy in the video says he receives $6,600 a year for one).
people are proud of them and love the boost to their town economies.
the technicians that handle the turbines are called windsmiths (i never knew!).
the farmers call the turbines “cash cows” because they don’t need to maintain, feed or do anything to them. they just get paid.
the wind farm keeps the town taxes low (in lowville, haha).
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new yorkers - did you know you can switch to wind energy?
i didn’t even know about this option until sam carroll of community energy inc. told me about it at the sustainable nyc store. don’t feel bad if you didn’t either, to quote the late notorious BIG, “if you don’t know, now you know, pigga.”
the fenner wind farm in madison county, ny
okay, i admit i changed up that last part a little bit. now for the question everyone is dying to know that answer to: how much is the switch going to cost? here’s the skinny:
not bad, right?
sam also explained to us that one wind turbine creates enough energy for about 500 families. 5 double OH! and when 500 new households sign up, they build another turbine. so in essence, by switching to wind, you’re also helping put up new turbines.
how fresh would it be if con ed ran a promo where if you could get 500 families in your area to sign up, you could see your turbine being built and customize it with your own patterns, family’s names and pics?
email sam to let him know you want to see that idea come to fruition at new.wind.energy.ny@gmail.com or enroll here.
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on wind energy: warning, this is going to be a sappy one
the fact that obama gave a shoutout to wind and solar energy in his inaugural speech yesterday was a major boost to all of us who have been using our voices (and fingers!) to get the word out on blogs, twitter and in our communities. it’s going to take a lot more work, and i applaud people like wind4me who keep the momentum going - just like the awesome force that we hope to harness.
cheers to everyone who is creating their own force!
“perhaps we cannot raise the winds. but each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it.” e. f. schumacher, small is beautiful
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clean coal ad makes coal look shady
peabody energy, the world’s largest coal company, just launched an ad campaign advocating ‘clean coal‘. although some people argue that the term ‘clean coal’ is an oxymoron and marketing scheme because there is no way that coal can be clean, others insist that the group of technologies that lie under the clean coal umbrella are a desirable way to reduce harmful byproducts associated with burning coal.
regardless of all that, LOOK AT THIS AD! what is going on here?!
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while i certainly won’t purport to know whether or not clean coal is a complete sham as some environmentalists say it is, i can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that this ad is ridiculous. i mean, was the goal to portray yourselves as the marketing scammers that everyone is saying that you are? personifying the lump of coal is, possibly, the most out of touch with humanity strategy i have ever seen. was the focus group that tested this ad stonehenge? while thisisreality.org, where i first saw this ad, compares peabody’s coal lump person/dude/lump to joe camel, noting the propaganda behind both characters, at least joe camel was actually cool! he had a motorcycle, leather jacket and look here, he’s even wearing a tux. was he also riding a horse one time. wait, i don’t think camels ride horses, so scratch that.
just putting sunglasses on something does NOT make it cool. it just makes you look more suspicious!
wow. that really got me heated. am i alone here? does anyone else think that this is ridonkulous?
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lean mean free green dry clean deal
madisonclean dry cleaners is offering new clients $10 towards their next order with a new account signup. the signup is free as well! check out the deal here.
madisonclean is one of many “green” dry cleaners that you may have seen popping up on the scene. but what exactly makes one dry cleaner greener than another?
the traditional method of dry cleaning, strangely enough, uses a liquid solvent called tetrachloroethylene, also known as perchloroethylene, or perc. here is what the environmental protection agency says about perc:
the main effects of tetrachloroethylene [perc] in humans are neurological, liver, and kidney effects following acute (short-term) and chronic (long-term) inhalation exposure. adverse reproductive effects, such as spontaneous abortions, have been reported from occupational exposure to tetrachloroethylene; however, no definite conclusions can be made because of the limitations of the studies. results from epidemiological studies of dry-cleaners occupationally exposed to tetrachloroethylene suggest increased risks for several types of cancer.
in light of the above knowledge, you really want to ask your dry cleaner 2 questions in order to decide whether or not they really are green:
1. do you use perc to dry clean clothing?
2. if not, what alternative methods are used?
so how did madisonclean fare? here are their answers:
1. while perc is currently still used to clean our clothing, we offer a green option (only $1 extra per garment) that is advertised on every counter.
2. we use wet cleaning and CO2 cleaning as alternatives to using perc.
although 100% perc free is ideal, i applaud madisonclean for taking the initiative to evolve. some other changes they are in the process of making are using biodegradable plastic bags and re-usable garment bags as well as offering promotions via email only as opposed to paper.
but wait - upon further research, i saw that madisonclean is actually located in long island and differentiates itself from other dry cleaners by offering free pickup and delivery from anywhere in nyc and long island. problem: “green” and driving around all over the city daily don’t really go hand in hand. i wondered what steps, if any, they were taking to reduce their carbon footprint in terms driving, and am awaiting comment via email or perhaps even on this post if we’re lucky.
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can we power new york city on clean energy?
last thursday, the new york academy of sciences hosted a panel discussion picking the brains of three experts to try to answer the question “can new york city transition to 100% clean energy in 10 years?”
the symposium was held at 7 world trade center, a building that receives much less publicity and credit than it deserves. for example, did you know that when the it was re-built following 9/11, it was nyc’s first green office tower? close to 30% of the structural steel used in the building is recycled and rainwater is collected and used for irrigation of the surrounding park and to cool the building. another fascinating feature is the elevator system which is integrated with the lobby turnstile and card reader system that identifies the floor on which a person works as he/she enters and can automatically call the elevator for that floor (source: wikipedia).
sick.
thanks for the pic www.jets.org.
but let’s get down to business. sanjoy banerjee, distinguished professor and director of the institute for sustainable energy technologies at ccny was the first to present. he was kind enough to send me his slides. let’s go through some of them and what they mean. professor banerjee, if you are reading this, please correct or clarify what i’ve written as you see fit.
first, professor banerjee illustrated where the main power plants in nyc are.
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then, he showed us what our daily and annual energy consumption look like.
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these charts are pretty common-sensical. our power demand goes down at night when we go to sleep and our heating fuel demand goes down in the summer when it is hot.
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the following chart, to me, was by far the most interesting. it illustrates how much photovoltaic (or solar energy) power can be generated throughout the day vs. the amount of electricity we consume. logically, pv generation spikes around noon because that is when we receive the most sunlight. the most important thing that this charts shows is that the sun provides us with more than enough energy during the day to power us through the night, and professor banerjee dispelled the myth that we either do not have the technology to place solar panels on our rooftops or that it would be too expensive. “the achilles heel of solar power,” he explained, “is storage.” how do we store the energy that we collect from the sun during the day so that we can use it to watch tv, charge our cell phone and light our lamps at night?
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now, professor banerjee had a very nice slide about different types of batteries, but as a normal, less than super-smart person, i couldn’t really distinguish it from a map of brooklyn. what was very clear to me, however, was his identification of metal-air batteries as the main contender because they, unlike lithium-ion batteries, are cheap(er). the issue with metal-air batteries is that dendrites (like the ones in the slide below) can form, growing and growing until they completely clog the battery. i had to leave the room for a moment to go to the restroom, but i believe what professor banerjee was saying was that if we can somehow come up with a way to prevent dendrites from forming, we can use metal-air batteries to efficiently and inexpensively address the storage problem.
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a breakdown of figures associated with the energy storage challenge:
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professor banerjee also discussed wind energy, using renewable energy for our transportation needs and using our wastes for power in his talk as well. instead of reiterating every word that he said, i’ll leave you with his conclusion slide:
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as you can see, the project will be costly. we currently pay about 20¢ per kilowatt hour for electricity where we would be paying about 40¢ per kilowatt hour (roughly double) if we transition to alternative sources of energy. however, the most important thing to takeaway is that it is doable.
i’m interested to see how many people would be against/for paying the extra 20¢ in order to make our city more sustainable. you guys already know how i feel about it.
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why is this a site?
swyyne has always been an experiment for me. with all of the other super eco sites out there, i've been feeling like i want to contribute something just a bit different. so for now, here are my random musings.
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