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1. Obama: We Will End Dependence on Middle East Oil in 10 Years
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2. The Daily Sprout
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3. Nexterra Ignites With $3.6M for Gasification
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4. 'Cleantech for Obama' Group Starts Rallying
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5. Toyota Plugs All-Electric Vehicle As 2009 Sales Outlook Dips
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6. Green Mountain Energy Cites Policy, Not Price, for FPL Program's Death
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7. Xcel Energy: Did We Say Profit? Not When We Count Carbon
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8. Look Out, First Solar: AVA Solar Scorches With $104M
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9. The Daily Sprout
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10. NBC Bans Pickens Ad, Boone Responds
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11. Fill up your fridge
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12. Plug in and drive
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13. Don't judge a wine by its box
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14. Vote for the winner in our blog-naming contest
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15. Bike beautiful?
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16. Run your big appliances at night
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17. More names please!
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18. Latest ad from the We campaign
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19. Clean energy on the move
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20. New projects: coast to coast
Obama: We Will End Dependence on Middle East Oil in 10 Years
Katie Fehrenbacher - CNN Green
No wonder cleantech investors are standing behind Obama in droves. In his monumental speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama pledged that the U.S. will end its dependence on oil from the Middle East within the next 10 years.
In an effort to achieve that goal, Obama said, he would turn to natural gas resources, invest in clean coal technology, find safe ways to tap nuclear power, help the auto industry deliver more efficient cars, and help consumers buy these greener cars. He repeated his strategy to invest $150 billion over the next decade in renewable energy solutions — wind, solar and next-generation biofuels — which he says will create 5 million green jobs that “can’t be outsourced.” He also defined his position on offshore drilling calling it a “stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution.”
For all the critics who doubted Obama could get tough, he also hit Republican presumptive presidential nominee John McCain’s record on energy and oil:
Washington’s been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years, and by the way John McCain’s been there for 26 of them. And in that time, he’s said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil that we had as the day that Sen. McCain took office.
For a closer look at Obama’s energy and cleantech policies check out the town-hall style discussion next week in San Francisco, which features a variety of politicians and investors that back Obama’s cleantech plan, as well as Obama’s Energy and Environmental Policy Staff Adviser Heather Zichal.
The Daily Sprout
Craig Rubens - Misc
Toyota Puts Tesla, Fisker & Volt on “Death Watch”: Bill Reinert, a Toyota technology manager and antagonist in Who Killed the Electric Car?, said that some at Toyota have started a “death watch” on the Tesla Model S, Fisker Karma and Chevy Volt. A bit morbid, but then again, so are we - Greentech Media.
$5M Green Energy Job Training Center Dedicated: The Marshall Training Center will train 2,000 utility employees a year to “meet the challenges of the 21st century, including service to a growing renewable energy market” - Press Release.
Texas Approves $2.3B Biomass Energy Deal: The Austin City Council unanimously approved a $2.3 billion contract for 20 years of power from a 100-megawatt biomass plant operated by Nacogdoches Power LLC - American Statesman.
China Suspends Coal-to-Oil Projects: China has ordered a halt to all but two of its coal-to-oil projects amid high coal prices, short supplies, water concerns and mass blackouts - Reuters.
U.S., Australia, Iceland Partner for Geothermal: The U.S., Australia and Iceland have formed the International Partnership for Geothermal Technology, designed to foster and promote enhanced geothermal systems - Green Car Congress.
Nexterra Ignites With $3.6M for Gasification
Craig Rubens - Startups
Gasification technology is key to the hopes of so-called “clean coal” advocates. Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants turn coal into syngas, removing some of the polluting impurities before combustion. The technology needs more commercial-scale testing to prove its economic and environmental feasibility. There are only two IGCC plants in operation in the U.S., and financiers and regulators are hesitant to green-light new coal-fired power plants.
Other startups are trying to apply gasification technology to their clean energy endeavors. Plasco Energy, a fellow Canadian cleantech company, uses "plasmagasification," where a gasified garbage stream is exposed to an electrical arc — the so-called "plasma torch." Gasification is also the key to GM-backed Coskata’s ability to turn any carbon-based feedstock into syngas, which its proprietary microbes metabolize into ethanol.
Graphics courtesy of Nexterra.
'Cleantech for Obama' Group Starts Rallying
Katie Fehrenbacher - @NYT
Several national co-chairs of the organization, including Sunil Paul, Jason Scott, Josh Becker, Aimee Christensen, Jeff Anderson and Andrew Beebe, helped host a reception near the convention center in Denver on Tuesday afternoon. Carol Browner, former EPA administrator and Albright Group principal, who is an Honorary Co-Chair of the Cleantech for Obama organization, was signed up as a “special guest” at the event.
But the DNC appears to be just a low-profile warm-up for Clean Tech for Obama. Next Wednesday, Sept. 3, the group plans to hold a launch event in downtown San Francisco, called the "CT4O" (Cleantech 4 Obama) Thoughtraiser, dubbed a “townhall-style dialogue.” The lineup plans to include introductory remarks from Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and speeches from Google’s Dan Reicher; green collar job advocate Van Jones; UC Berkeley energy researcher Dan Kammen; Steve Westly, former California State Comptroller and Managing Partner of the Westly Group; and Heather Zichal, Energy and Environmental Policy Staff Adviser for the Obama Campaign.
The upcoming event, along with the rousing endorsement speech by Nth Power investor Nancy Floyd at the DNC this week, shows just how high-profile cleantech has become in political circles. With the high prices of gas and concerns over global warming hitting the news at the same time as the election cycle, politics has been swept up by a variety of energy plans from well-known politicians.
Obama’s comprehensive strategy to tackle carbon emissions is the hands-down favorite of the cleantech crowd — his campaign has grabbed donations from cleantech investors 6 to 1 over McCain. And as of yesterday he now has the added clout of his official vice president choice, Joe Biden, who has been pushing for climate change and energy legislation for decades.
Toyota Plugs All-Electric Vehicle As 2009 Sales Outlook Dips
Tony Borroz - Big Green
Toyota (TM) says it has rolled back its sales predictions for the upcoming year, but the company remains committed to hybrid car production and its plans to produce an electric vehicle to compete with rival auto manufacturers.
Despite a 700,000-vehicle predicted drop in sales, Toyota says it is still on the path toward its goal of selling 1 million hybrids a year by the early 2010s. The company also announced that Toyota would start producing an electric car by early next decade, which offers a direct challenge to the plans of Nissan and Mitsubishi that plan to mass produce their own electric vehicles within the next two years. Toyota stock rose slightly, indicating that The Street agrees with the company’s pursuit of efficient technologies.
Are slower sales sign of tough economic times? Yes, of course, but they also point out that Toyota can’t get away with producing larger, fuel inefficient vehicles any more than Ford or GM or Chrysler. Toyota’s big sales drops have, like Detroit’s big three, largely come in the full-sized truck and large car segments. Hybrid and small car sales remain robust.
The heart of Toyota’s future growth remains hybrid vehicles, and Toyota is not slacking off on its hybrid push one iota. Toyota still plans to unveil the next-gen Prius as promised, on schedule, next year as well as to introduce a new Lexus hybrid. It’s also forging ahead with other, more fuel efficient models. President Katsuaki Watanabe says Toyota plans to use the foreseen slowdown to streamline its already lean manufacturing operations, making its production system in the U.S. more agile, and to develop more hybrid cars and other fuel-efficient vehicles.
The undercurrent here seems to be, ‘OK, we were a little off in our production estimates, but we’re still pressing ahead with the next Prius, and we’re serious about producing an electric car too!’ To which we can all say, “Good!”
Green Mountain Energy Cites Policy, Not Price, for FPL Program's...
Celeste LeCompte - Energy
After the Florida Public Service Commission unceremoniously shuttered FPL’s leading utility green power program earlier this month, citing high marketing and sales costs, Green Mountain Energy has released data disputing the claim.
Costs for sales and marketing accounted for just 52 percent of Green Mountain's revenues. That figure is comparable to other top-ranked programs in the U.S., including Portland General Electric. Thor Hinckley, green power program manager for PGE, says Green Mountain Energy spends 56 percent of its budget on marketing costs for the Portland program.
The Florida PSC told Earth2Tech in early August that voluntary programs like FPL’s were no longer necessary, thanks to the state’s forthcoming Renewable Portfolio Standard.
Xcel Energy: Did We Say Profit? Not When We Count Carbon
Craig Rubens - Policy
While cleantech investors are betting that global warming will make their investments perform well, most publicly-traded companies have had their head in the sand when it comes to warning its investors about the financial risks of global warming. That is until now — in an agreement between environmental crusader New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Minnesota-based Xcel Energy (XEL), the utility will disclose to its investors in detail the risks global warming pose to its business. This first of its kind disclosure could be a sign of things to come for the electricity generation industry, the single largest contributor to the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Under the agreement, Xcel will disclose in SEC filings the risks of future climate change regulation and legislation, climate-change related litigation and physical impacts of climate change. Additionally, Xcel will also disclose its current carbon emissions, projected emissions from proposed coal power plants and its plans to reduce emissions.
Xcel already provides such information to the voluntary Carbon Disclosure Project and in its annual “triple-bottom-line” report. Xcel estimates that, at $9 per ton (lower than EU prices, but higher than current prices on RGGI), its carbon emission would have cost the company $603 million last year, according to TwinCities.com.
In 2007, Xcel reported just $577 million in profit. (Numbers like these are why banks have been taking into consideration what carbon regulation could mean for their investments and scaled back their plays in areas like coal.)
Xcel is the first of five utilities subpoenaed by Cuomo. The Attorney General’s office is still negotiating with AES Corp., Dominion, Dynegy and Peabody Energy. In the carbon-constrained economy of the future, just as the SEC likes to keep track of corporations’ financial dealings, they will want to know about companies’ carbon dealings as well.
Look Out, First Solar: AVA Solar Scorches With $104M
Katie Fehrenbacher - CNN Green
AVA is working on making thin-film photovoltaics out of cadmium telluride — the same material that has boosted First Solar to its solar darling status — so everyone is interested to see how the company will stack up to the leader. In some of the Fort Collins-based company’s literature it boasts it can produce solar PV modules at a cost below $1/watt. First Solar calls its manufacturing cost per watt of $1.14/watt for the first quarter of 2008, “the lowest in the industry;” that production cost will also likely come down over the coming months and years.
We’ll see what AVA’s production costs end up being after it starts up its 200-megawatt solar PV factory sometime this year. The company appears to be using a similar process to First Solar, depositing a thin layer of cadmium telluride on glass.
AVA says it has reached “distributed conversion efficiencies around 11.5 percent” — First Solar has similar efficiency, and has reported an average of 10.7 percent with its cells, and a goal of 12 percent.
If AVA could end up being able to produce its PV more cheaply than First Solar, it would put them in a good position to enter the new, massive market of utility-scale and rooftop solar. First Solar brought in revenues of $267 million for the most recent quarter, 36 percent above the $196 million in the previous quarter and more than three times larger than the $77 million in the second quarter of 2007.
It’s not always hip to be a company a little later to the game. Eric Wesoff and the Greenlight crew, who tipped off the story of AVA’s funding yesterday, talked to investors that passed on AVA’s funding, because the valuation was too high, and the deal was too much of a copycat of First Solar. But AVA could still create a sizable business. AVA was incubated out of the labs at Colorado State University with a partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and formed in January 2007.
The Daily Sprout
Craig Rubens - Misc
Florida’s First Energy Farm Planted in Destiny: Destiny, Florida, a city claiming “eco-sustainability” (whatever that means), says it has created the Sunshine state’s first energy farm where it will grow energy crops like sweet sorghum, algae, jatropha and other crops for alternative fuels - Press Release.
EcoMotors Expanding Operations in Michigan: Khosla-backed EcoMotors, a startup which aims to deliver a 100 mpg diesel engine by 2011, says it’s moving to a bigger space and will be hiring 157 new people - Cleantech Group.
U.S. Gas Price Heat Map: We do love maps, and this one from Gasbuddy shows the varying price of gasoline in the continental U.S. It’s interactive too, so make sure to click around - Gasbuddy via Autoblog Green.
GEOSmart Loan to Help Homeowners Go Solar: Arizona utility APS and the non-profit Electric & Gas Industries Association have created a new loan to help eliminate to large, upfront cost of residential solar - Press Release.
China’s Zero Energy New Great Wall: Beijing’s Media Wall is one of the world’s largest LED displays, standing four stories tall. The wall charges itself during the day using integrated photovoltaics and then performs a show once the sun goes down - ScribeMedia.
NBC Bans Pickens Ad, Boone Responds
Craig Rubens - Big Green
The Pickens Plan media blitz hit a glitch this week when NBC refused to air the latest television spot promoting the former oil tycoon’s natural gas and wind energy plan. The 15-second ad, entitled “Iran” and embedded below, asserts that Iran is converting its own cars to run on natural gas “and we’re not doing a thing here.” NBC wants the Pickens Plan to prove that we are indeed a do-nothing nation when it comes to natural gas transport, according to the group. While it is a strange nit to pick, NBC has a point. Things are being done, some of them by Pickens’ own natural gas car venture.
Find more videos like this on PickensPlan
The ad was cleared by all the other major networks, and NBC has only taken issue with this one ad, out of four new ads that will be running on television this week. T. Boone sent a letter to NBC Universal CEO and President Jeff Zucker expressing his dismay and again proclaiming his patriotic duty: “To deny this advertisement is to deny Americans their fundamental right to information and the ability to make their own decisions.”
Fill up your fridge
Conservation tips
by TerraPass
The fog has cleared around TerraPass towers and we’re feeling the heat. Here’s a way to save energy used by your fridge or freezer during the summer months: keeping your fridge and freezer at least three-quarters full to reduce the amount of energy they use.
How this helps
Items in your fridge have been already been cooled, so they help to keep the overall temperature down when you open the door. The more of them, the better. Still not convinced? Try putting one ice cube in a cooler and see how much more quickly it melts than if you filled the whole thing with ice.
More information
- Don’t need all that food? Try a brick.
Related tips
- Clean the coils of your fridge and freezer.
- Ditch the second fridge. You only use it at Thanksgiving, and it’s probably really old.
- Buy an Energy Star fridge.
Plug in and drive
Science & Technology
by Adam Stein
There’s a lot to chew over in Wired’s profile of Shai Agassi, the entrepreneur engaged in an audacious experiment to electrify an entire nation’s transportation system, and in the process rewrite the automotive industry’s business model.
The nation in question is Israel, with Denmark and Hawaii possibly to follow. Agassi’s idea is that electric cars should be sold on a subscription model, like cell phones, with fees used to underwrite a network of intelligent electric outlets that ensure batteries are always topped up.
The plan is quite a bit more complicated than that, but in essence Agassi is trying to solve the same problem that plug-in hybrids and the Chevy Volt are meant to address: batteries have a limited capacity and take a long time to charge up. Hybrids work around the problem by bolting a gasoline engine on top of the electric motor. Agassi’s start-up, Better Place, hopes to cut gasoline out of the picture altogether by remaking the electrical grid. It’s an audacious vision, and the company has the financing and the partnerships in place to upgrade their prospects from pipe dream to long shot. They hope bring their all-electric cars to market in 2011.
Like I said, there’s a lot to chew over here. A few thoughts come to mind:
- Agassi doesn’t like plug-in hybrids, but his criticism seems overstated. In fact, plug-ins could fit nicely into Better Place’s model. Or, just as likely, plug-ins could co-exist as a competitive mode of transport. It’s even possible that the market will segment geographically. Better Place’s strategy of focusing on small, isolated locations — real or virtual islands — is both ingenious and self-limiting. Plug-ins might fill the gaps in the grid.
- Agassi has hinted that his company would be willing to purchase green power to fuel its fleet. This is like placing a tax on transportation to fund the build-out of renewable energy. Which actually seems like pretty good public policy. (It’s also an interesting commentary that such a system might come out of the private sector, rather than the government.)
- Although electrification of the transport sector is a clear benefit to the environment, the subscription model realigns incentives in ways that may alarm some greens. Remember all those conspiracy theories about how Detroit and the oil companies had teamed up to keep Americans driving huge, inefficient cars? Well, consider the implications of the pay-as-you-drive model for electric cars.
There’s a lot more to be said on this last point. It’s an article of faith among many that “car culture” itself is a problem, and that a green future will involve a lot more walking, public transportation, and bikes. While such a scenario may come to pass, it’s by no means a certainty (nor, it should be said, are such solutions incompatible with Better Place’s vision). The advent of the electric car could mean that the future looks a lot like it does now, only without any gas stations. It’s notable that under Better Place’s model, the cost of car ownership actually goes down, which means miles driven should go up. As alarming as this prospect may sound, it isn’t necessarily a problem. Personal mobility is a wonderful thing, a luxury for many and a necessity for most. If we can have mobility without the environmental cost, then so much the better.
Don't judge a wine by its box
Society
by Adam Stein
Tyler Colman, aka Dr. Vino, takes to the pages of the New York Times to report on the latest developments in green wine, one of our favorite topics here at TerraPass. Boxed wine, you might recall, is more environmentally friendly than wine shipped in heavy glass bottles. And, contrary to popular impression, not all boxed wine is terrible.
The Italian government just announced that some wines that receive the government’s quality assurance label may now be sold in boxes. In the south of France, most fridges are stocked with a box of rosé during the summer months.
This makes sense. Boxed wine is not just environmentally friendly. It’s also consumer friendly. Boxes are cheaper, easier to handle, and neatly eliminate the problem of wine waste when you can’t finish a whole bottle. The large majority of table wines aren’t meant to age, making them perfectly well suited to box packaging.
Of course, most boxed wines in the U.S. aren’t of a very high quality. But this, as Dr. Vino notes, is a solvable problem. America will soon be the largest wine market in the world. Put better wine in the box, and consumers will surely come around. (Could this be a job for Wal-Mart?)
Vote for the winner in our blog-naming contest
News
by Pete Davies
Wow. We were totally impressed by the number of submissions for our blog’s new name. We received over 500 suggestions, many of them great options for our blog and newsletter.
We’ve come up with a shortlist of eight names and now’s your chance to vote for the winner. One lucky person that votes for the eventual winner will also receive a gift certificate to use at the TerraPass green store.
To see what made it onto the shortlist click here and vote. We’ll update with a progress report next week.
Bike beautiful?
Society
by Erin Craig
I like bikes. Great for transportation, great for exercise, fun for the kids, what’s not to like?
Unfortunately, I’ve found a fault with bikes in the past week which I can’t seem to shake.
It started a few months ago when I cleaned out my garage so well I could fit a car into it…as long as the bikes were vacated. No problem, we hung hooks on the ceiling and hoisted the “spare” bikes up to the ceiling, and put the two daily-use bikes in the semi-covered atrium near the front of our house. The atrium is secure yet makes for faster bike entry and exit compared to the garage or the side yard. As a result, moving the bikes has had an unexpected side benefit — we use them more because they’re right there, ready to go. But the new location also has an unexpected consequence: the bikes are quite visible through a big glass window, from every part of the living room. There they sit, just leaning against the plants. Ick.
Then this past week, we reorganized the TerraPass office space. A by-product of the reorganization is that all the bike commuters now have their desks in the same large room. The same large room where I have my desk, in fact. Since we have an open space with no cubicles or dividers, the bikes are, shall we say, prominent aspects of the room’s décor. Everywhere you look you see a bike hung with locks, train tags, helmets and sometimes clothing. It’s not unusual to have a half a dozen bikes strewn around the big room. Ick again. To me, it makes the place look like a either a parking lot or a dump.
Which brings me to the challenge. Is there no way to beautify a parked bicycle?
I scoured the internet for creative, interesting ways to store bicycles at home and found next to nothing. Most solutions — hooks, trees, cables — were described as “perfect for the garage” and at least as ugly as a bicycle. I looked for cool bike racks, and found a few great examples (see here and here and here), though most are designed for commercial applications and none of which would work inside an office.
As the bikers start to arrive at the office this morning, I notice that they park their bikes behind their desks, out of their sightline (but directly in mine). Even the diehards would rather not look at them.
Anyone have good ideas for beautiful bike parking? I’m looking…
Run your big appliances at night
Conservation tips
by TerraPass
Another tip for keeping your house cool in the summer: run your washing machine, dishwasher, and drier at night. These big appliances throw off a lot of heat, and during the day you’re just going to make your air conditioner work overtime to keep the house cool. Another benefit of using your big appliances at night is that you reduce strain on the electrical grid during peak hours.
How this helps
Using appliances when the ambient air is cooler reduces strain on your air conditioner. Avoiding peak power times can also cut your electric bills and spare the air.
More information
- Britain kicks off a nighttime dishwasher campaign.
Related tips
- Wash your clothes in cold water.
- Skip the dryer — use a clothesline instead.
- Open a window instead of using the A/C when the outside temperature drop below 70° F.
More names please!
News
by Andy Martin
Last week, I told you that we are looking for a new name for our blog. A big “thank you” to everyone who has already submitted a suggestion (an even bigger “THANK YOU” to those who have submitted multiple suggestions). We’ve received over 160 name suggestions in total. But we want more!
Submit your new name now, and you could win a Trevor Baylis Eco Media MP3 Player or a TerraPass gift certificate.
Already submitted a name? No problem. You can submit as many suggestions as you want. There’s no numerical limit to your creativity.
Here are our style suggestions from last week:
Let your creative juices flow. Your names can reference climate change and carbon directly, or they can be more on the poetic side. Incorporate our company name or leave it out. The only stylistic suggestion I’ll offer here is that, this being the web, shorter is often better. Suggestions longer than 25 letters are unlikely to get selected as finalists.
What are you waiting for? Submit your new name now!
The full rules are available in last week’s post.
Latest ad from the We campaign
Politics
by Adam Stein
I continue to like these. A lot of people criticized the previous campaign on the grounds that it “legitimized” people with less-than-sterling environmental records like Newt Gingrich, but that seems to me to be missing the point. The ad was meant to legitimize climate change as an important issue among the 50% of the population that didn’t vote for Al Gore. I don’t know whether it worked, but certainly this is a worthwhile goal.
The new ad rallies people around Gore’s call for 100% clean electricity in ten years. Again, I like the optics here. Cutting carbon makes for such a dreary slogan, particularly as we keep blowing past previous emissions records. 100% clean electricity — that’s something folks can get behind. (And, no, I don’t think it much matters that this goal is not likely achievable. Any significant progress on this front would be huge.)
Clean energy on the move
Science & Technology
by Adam Stein
Lots of renewable energy in the news lately:
One: California is building two massive solar photovoltaic power plants, together big enough to generate 800 megawatts of power. To get a sense of the scale, consider that the current biggest PV installation in the U.S. has a capacity of 14 megawatts, and the biggest one in the world is a 23-megawatt Spanish installation. The new plant will roughly double the amount of solar PV in the U.S.
Two: Big box stores and grocery chains are getting in on the act. Hurrying to take advantage of tax incentives that expire at the end of the year, retailers like Wal-Mart, Safeway, and Whole Foods are decorating their rooftops with solar panels. Cumulatively, these efforts add up. Wal-Mart’s rooftop acreage roughly matches the size of Manhattan.
Joe Romm notes that the Times biffed this story a bit by implying that solar energy carries a high cost for retailers. In fact, the installations compare favorably with the retail electricity they displace.
Another small complaint: the article notes that retailers are combining solar panels with “other rooftop technologies like skylights and solar water heaters.” It’d be nice if these technologies got more than a one-sentence aside. Using the sun directly for heat and light can be a far more efficient than using it to generate electricity. These solutions deserve their chance to, ahem, shine.
Three: Speaking of technologies that deserve more attention, who doesn’t love a good heat pump? The Times takes a close look at a dead simple technology that can slash energy costs for buildings. Consisting of little more than some pipes run into the ground, geothermal heat exchanges provide warmth in the winter and cold in the summer, baseload power that is most available when it is most needed.
No surprise that geothermal systems are a booming business right now. Equipment manufacturers can’t keep up with demand, and the industry is hurting for trained installation personnel. Given the massive energy demands of building heating and cooling, it’s hard to imagine that geothermal energy won’t become an increasingly important part of the energy mix.
Four: Then there’s the big fancy kind of geothermal energy. Google has funded two companies working on “enhanched geothermal systems” that tap into super-hot rocks deep below the earth’s surface. Fun fact for the day: an MIT study estimates that “just 2% of the sub-surface heat in the U.S. at reasonable drilling depths would provide 2,500 times the country’s total annual energy use.”
New projects: coast to coast
News
by Erin Craig
The TerraPass project team is excited to bring you two more projects for public comment.
The New Beulah Landfill methane capture and control project in Dorchester County, MD is a brand new project which isn’t even under construction yet. New Beulah is one of the smallest landfills in Maryland, and TerraPass purchases would help fund the immediate installation of a landfill gas collection system and enclosed flare to destroy the methane. Though engineering estimates predict the landfill won’t generate enough gas to make electricity generation economic in the immediate future, the project developer is committed to installing generation capacity as soon as there’s enough gas to run one.
George DeRuyter and Sons Dairy is a relatively new digester project in the state of Washington. In November, 2006 a dairy digester replaced the open lagoon management system for the dairy’s manure, effectively destroying the methane generated by the manure while also producing both electricity and heat for on-farm use. Excess electricity is sent to the regional electricity grid.
If you’re interested, you can check out the project details for New Beulah or George DeRuyter and Sons, and send any comments or questions to projects@terrapass.com. The comment period closes September 18th for New Beulah and September 12 for DeRuyter.
Also as a reminder, the comment period for LP Gill will close on Aug 21st.
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