My previous post mentioning the use of microturbine generators to convert landfill biomass to electricity is running through my mind today. Combine that with Gov. Rendell's plans to use an increase in tipping fees to fund a green initiative, and I think you can develop a way to reduce pollution and our reliance on fossil fuels.
I received an e-mail from John Quigley, Govt. Relations Manager at Penn Future:
The Governor has proposed $80 million in PA Energy Harvest Funding, and reviving the PA Energy Development Authority. Methane recovery from landfills could indeed qualify for support, and there is a possibility that this source of energy could be included in the advanced energy standard that the Governor has proposed. This would create a wider market for energy from biomass.
The sticking point is that the increase in tipping fees is viewed as a tax. But landfill emissions are a tax, too. And how the commonwealth disposes the trash of this and other states should not be the sole purview of a private operator.
Even still, the additional tipping fee money generated is different from most taxes. Energy Harvest Funding can be an economic generator leveraging other sources of money. Part of the construction costs of a landfill generator could be financed by growing greener funds, and the other part could be financed by a bond paid by proceeds from sales of electricity.
Since Pennsylvania is the #1 importer of trash we have a market -- or should I say resource -- advantage. With energy harvesting, Pennsylvania will be able to reduce landfill emissions, and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. The biggest benefit is perhaps in employment. Pennsylvania will be able to train and recruit talented people to design and maintain new technologies in biomass-to-energy, microturbines, and small-scale energy distribution. By taking advantage of this investment opportunity right now, Pennsylvania might retain the first-mover advantage.
Pennsylvania needs to be thought of as a forward thinking state. As CMU professor Richard Florida states, "Low tax rates and deregulation don't attract people. They're looking for economic opportunities and lifestyle opportunities."
High tech jobs = economic opportunities
Improved environment & less reliance on fossil fuels = lifestyle opportunities
Truly a way to take the lemons that Pennsylvania receives and turn them into lemonade.
That malls are boring and soul deadening is a truism. Just how boring and soul deadening is never much discussed. In the Sunday P-G's Teresa F. Lindeman reviewed Paco Underhill's Call of the Mall, a book that seems to get to the nitty gritty of mall ugliness. Lindeman says Underhill "immerses himself in a subject with substance."
In fact, he drags mall executives out [to the mall's parking lots], too -- those ignoring whiners who just want to look at the security monitors in the mall office -- so they can see the deadly dull approach to their business through a customer's eyes.
"I march my captives to the farthest extreme of the lot, and then make them stand there a minute."
Also on the subject is this link by 120 seconds hitting heavy on the big box experience. "Soul-wearing" is the term they use along with "broad-scale landscape litter." The site is also a good example of using animation and graphics on the web.
Was thinking of malls, big boxes, and parking lots when I was visiting the Carnegie Science Center, and made my way with son Thomas through acres of non-designed parking lots. The only good part about the disjointed and cyclone-fence-surrounded abominations was the unfinished aspect of the lot where I parked. The lot was unfinished hard ground, the ruts and dips of the lot were a relief from the endless asphalt of the typical lot. I hope that someday a Carnegie exec takes a tour of the parking lots to see how unappealing the experience is.
Post-Gazette political reporter Timothy McNulty reviews the letter sent by economic recovery coordinators to the City of Pittsburgh. One would expect the finely honed minds of the economic recovery coordinators to come up with some solutions to the City's financial mess. After all not a week goes by when some P-G letter writer doesn't identify the problem as the city's hugely corrupted, bloated, and mismanaged government. This is done from folks who live far away in McCandless Township and Bethel Park. So what did the folks downtown who have access to all the financial information and the key players come up with?
freezing discretionary spending, including travel costs and purchases of supplies and equipment; freezing all hiring, including temporary and seasonal employees; requiring advance overtime approval; writing citywide "crisis" spending plans for the rest of the year; and halting spending on non-emergency capital projects.
Meaning if there is political patronage or bloat, we're certainly not going to find it. On the off chance that a "'crisis' spending plan" is any way an efficient plan or effective plan, there seems to be no way of rewarding a manager for creating such a plan.
I'm reminded of a surgeon who might cut off a few toes in the case of a patient suffering appendicitis. "Some of the body was causing the patient trouble, so I cut some of the body off."
The coordinators' other idea is to rely on privatization as an axiomatic good. In the short term privatization saves money. The jury is out on how private vendors compare to public vendors in the long run. My guess is that private vendors can take a loss or small profit in the first few years, but after a few years begin recouping the losses, and start sticking it to the tax payers. Has anyone compared this month's water bill to the one they had eight years ago?
Perhaps my criticisms are premature, and as the economic recovery coordinators get to work they'll find ways to reduce costs, increase productivity, and improve the quality of life for those who live and work in Pittsburgh. I do want to say I'm not too excited about how things are starting out.
Just read an article in MIT's Technology Review (requires one time registration) about the increase of small scale, 25-250 kilowatts, generators. Unfortunately, the article, as so many articles about new technologies doesn't mention the scale of micro-generator use, or whether microgenerators would make us more efficient users of energy. Reading the article does make you feel that possibilities abound in "distributed" energy generation. One particular story about using methane emissions at landfills gives you the feeling that eventually we'll solve all of our problems.
Microturbines can use as fuel energy sources that would otherwise be wasted, such as methane emitted from locations like public landfills. When brownouts hit California in 2000, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) had to rededicate itself to finding alternative means of power. According to LADWP spokesman Randy Howard, LADWP has "one of the largest green power programs in the nation," with about 43,000 paying customers. “Under the Green Power for a Green LA program, customers can choose to pay an additional 3 cents per kilowatt-hour for renewable energy," he says.Late in 2000, LADWP installed 50 microturbines on the Lopez Canyon landfill. The 30-kilowatt microturbines were linked together to leverage the cumulative power of the devices in one power array. It was, at the time, the largest deployment of microturbines in the world.
Previously, the methane gas generated by the trash in the landfill had been extracted and flared. The flaring, and its attendant pollution, were necessary to prevent a gas buildup and explosion near adjacent populated areas, according to Robert Blue, the LADWP supervisor who oversaw the microturbines' installation. LADWP tapped into the existing piping, he explains, so the methane could be diverted into gas compressors that feed the microturbines.
Blue says the system—including the microturbines, the gas handling system, additional electrical infrastructure, a new high voltage electric line, and a substation—cost a total of about $4 million. . Indeed, says Howard, “LADWP entered the project knowing the capital cost of development was higher than traditional generation.” He adds that LADWP is required by state law to spend 2.85 percent of its gross revenue every year—about $60 million—on "public benefit programs" such as new and renewable energy technologies. The microturbine installation "fit the definition for public benefit spending by reducing emission from flaring, generating electricity from a renewable fuel, and developing a new technology," Howard says.
Blue says the solution "eliminates about 10,000 pounds of oxides of nitrogen a year—that is equivalent to the emissions of about 500 cars for the same period—and produces about 1.5 megawatts of electricity." Howard adds that though the capital costs were substantial, the ongoing savings are also appreciable. “At current prices,” he says, “the cost of fuel from the landfill is one tenth that of natural gas.”
I think using Gov. Rendell's proposed tipping fee to subsidize methane-eating electricity generation could be a way to placate landfill operators. Of course, if it was such a great idea, landfill operators would already have methane-eating micro-turbine generators. Right?