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Vermont Launches 'Cow Power' System
odyaws writes "Central Vermont Public Service has launched Cow Power, a system by which power users can opt to buy 25, 50, or 100% of their electricity from dairy farms that run generators on methane obtained from cow manure. Cow Power costs only 4 cents/kWh more than market price, so a household like mine would only pay $5-6/month more at 100% usage. The big question now is whether Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream will use power generated from the manure of cows treated with Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone."
That idea really stinks!
Who would want to pay more for crappy power?
Way to go... let's marginalize every single attempt to seek out alternative power sources. This way we can be married to oil for that much longer. Look on the bright side.. your kids get to see the middle east.
I don't get what you're saying. How is it a scam? They pay the farmer for the power, plus a little bonus as an incentive to use otherwise wasted gas to provide an environmentally friendly source of power. I personally think it's an awesome idea - I wish there were more incentive for people to use and produce alternative power sources.
$0.04 per kwh on top of the regular rates is about 50% higher.
I think someone misplaced a decimal point. I use about 1500
kwh per month. This extra cost would be $60 per month, not $6.
It would be cheaper to pay farmers not to farm than to come
up with kooky schemes like this that pay them twice - once for
their crazy milk subsidies then again to get rid of the methane
gas that it produces.
We might as well run power plants fueled by combusting dollar bills.
Ok, I get the whole "pay a bit more because it's a GoodThing(TM)" concept, but as a marketing strategy it stinks (forgive the pathetic pun).
So let me get this straigth: you (the consumer) enrols to receive a percentage of your "power" from these guys (up to 100% only from them), and all your money (including the extra 4 cent per kWh, no idea how much the actual price per kWh you have, but I personally pay only about 10-15 cent per kWh, so an extra 4 cent would increase my bill easily by 30% or more) and only "markert price" (no idea how that much that is, but definetely way less than what you get charged as end-user) goes directly to the "manufacturer".
In other words, you basically just make a donation to the "cow power" people, but a donation that's not regarded as donation per se (well, it doesn't specify that, I was just assuming).
So what's stopping you from just using regular power and donating as much $$$ as you want directly to the people involved ?
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
No, it doesn't, because the carbon was recently removed from the atmosphere by the growing of the plants that the cows ate to produce the, um, fuel. OTOH, when we burn oil, we're bringing up carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere millions of years ago, and putting it back into the atmosphere instead of leaving it in the ground. The only way this isn't closer to carbon-neutral than burning oil is if the cow manure that is going to be burned for power would otherwise be buried deep underground, which I kind of doubt would happen.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It's also worth mentioning that methane is a greenhouse gas. It's actually worse than Co2 in this regard, though far less common and also less stable.
Since decomposing cow manure is going to emit methane whether we tap it for power or not (as will the cows themselves) it stands to reason that letting the methane go to waste is more of a greenhouse gas contributor than burning it. After all, the Co2 we release from combusting it will be resorbed by the plants the cows themselves eat, whereas the methane will not. And if we don't burn the stuff, it'll just end up in the atmosphere anyways.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Feed the cows lots of beans.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
The Bush Administration emissions could power the entire planet!
(And who knew Al Gore had such incredible ecological foresight in not contesting the 2000 election?)
Also, its methane obtained from cow manure. I imagine the farmers keep the cow manure and uses to fertilize the grass.
Well in case you're not familar with the area, Vermont used to be something like 95% farmland in area that wasn't forested. We're losing that out to relatively large urban development and a huge influx of people to the Burlington area to hit our new array of large chain stores (WalMart, Home Depot, Circuit City, Best Buy, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc). Less than ten years ago, the only big store in the state was Costco, and that's about 20 miles north of everything else (which is a decent distance in VT, considering how freakin' small we are) and has been there for as long as I can remember. Prior to the development, there used to be nothing more than large open fields with a whole lot of nothing.
Long story short, you're actually exactly right - we don't want this becoming extremely popular in the area. The simple fact is that we don't have nearly as many cows as we did ten years ago, since it's all done in massive superfarms out west. We've had laws passed that keep the milk prices artifically high just so the few family-owned farms still in business don't go under - they're all operating on razor-thin margins as it is, and many are losing money but stay around out of love for what they do.
We actually have a fairly large percent of our population that ARE willing to pay more to be green. My neighbors coughed up for a hybrid not for the gas savings (my father did the math pre-Katrina - even at $3.50/gal, you need to drive about 250,000 miles before you break even after the premium over a standard model) but because it's green - they also paid what I'd imagine is a good bit more for an electric lawnmower instead of a gas-powered one. We've voted down at least half a dozen times a bypass that connects all of the largely-retail areas together, simply due to pollution. While we're largely divided on things like the same-sex civil unions, most of the people in my state put the environment before the economy.
So while the idea may sound like a load of shit to you, the fact is that there wouldn't be enough shit to go around. I hate to be cliche', but this is a perfect example of "if we all do a little, we can all do a lot". Yes, one person using an alternative energy source just makes that person feel good inside, but if we all do it, there's a significant impact. It's not our only alternative idea - we've also looked into using trees in a similar way to a potato-battery (which largely did nothing, one tree had less power than a potato) among several other out-there ideas.
If we've got a dozen different alternative energy methods out there, and each has just 2% of the population using them, we've gone and shifted a quarter of the country - 75 million people - away from oil. While vehicles do tend to need a standard, there's absolutely no reason for every house in the country to get their power from the same method. And already they aren't. But say that we can make all farms not only self-sufficient but even generate a bit of extra power. It may not do a lot out here where the farms are going the way of the Dodo, but out in the land of megafarms, it could actually make a significant impact. I actually know Jerry's (of Ben and Jerry's) wife and son personally (had class with him, in fact), and I can assure you that it would certainly be a B&J thing to do if they found yet another way to support the local community and do something good for the environment.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
more This one has a tons of facts covering replacing various industrial materials, historical uses, etc.
more Much shorter page but some others on the site are good reading.Jonah HEX
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Over here in good old-jock-land, we've been doing this for years. When we are not drinking whiskey we are building hydroelectric dams and wind power farms. Several of the electicity companies offer schemes where you pay a little more for your energy, but get a guarantee that it's coming from green sources.
It's not the feel-good factor or the money that's important. What matters is that you aren't pissing in your childrens swimming pool.
As others have said, reactors built today won't meltdown even at a rate of "one meltdown per 1000 years". Even if they did, there are far more containment structures in place to prevent it from getting off the plant grounds.
TMI was the USA scare that got us to pay more attention to disaster scenarios. Even IF we had a Chernobyl type explosion in the states, it wouldn't be the big deal it was in Chernobyl since all nuclear reactors are covered by a pressure rated dome. Basically, they're pre-enclosed in a sarcophagus already.
Basically, even with Chernobyl you can argue that coal has killed more people.
Nuclear Power deaths: 3 Japanese workers*
Chernobyl: 47 workers/accident responders, 9 children died of thyroid cancer, and IAEA/WHO estimate that 9000 more might die of cancer. Please excuse me for not using Greenpeace numbers, as they are both biased and known to exaggerate. 9000, in the last 20 years.
Let's take a look at coal.
Wiki says:2004 alone cost China 6,000 workers, though some estimate as high as 20,000. US Coal mining is far safer, with only about 30 deaths/year. Still, we have yet to cover the health effects. 23,600 per year due to air pollution, in the USA alone.
If you figure 1 nuclear meltdown/worst case disaster every thousand years, that kills the same # as chernobyl, that's an average annual death toll of 9 people. Meanwhile, coal mining in the US kills 30, even if you figure in that pollution controls eventually stops all the air pollution.
There's a reason I'd love to shut down every coal plant and replace it with a nuclear one. Preferably breeders that allow us to take all the 'waste' piling up around current reactors and burn it as more fuel again.
*who violated every safety reg in the book, mixing many times the amount of nuclear materials in a steel bucket rather than using the provided shielded equipment meant to do it in limited, but safe, quantities.
I don't read AC A human right
Being from Vermont, I think you have a skewed view of dariy farmers (in VT). I don't know about where you're from but most of the dairy farms here are small family owned business that have been operating for generations, and out of all of the ones I know, NONE of them have mansions. They all have small family farms, work long hours for low income and constantly worry about being able to do it again next year. They do it because they've always done it, because they love it, and its a vermont way of life. They don't do it to get rich, they do it to keep Vermont's agriculture industry alive.
What I see is a local family owned farm which was suffering the same fate as most of the other farms in the state (1-2 bad years from being broke and out of business) finding a unique way to increase their income (and be sustainable, hey novel idea), provide "green-power" in the state where there is a huge demand for it, and be kind to the environement.
These people don't own mansions, these people work hard, bust their ass all day long, and continue a tradition dating back generations, while at the same time doing good for the state, and the environment.
Now, it may not be efficient, but it is a good use of what was being wasted before. What exactly is the problem you have w/ it again?
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
Being able to turn to other countries for a valuable resource = good.
HAVING to turn to other countries for a vital resource = bad.
It's particulary bad when many of those countries are hostile to America, or could become so at any point. Our Middle Eastern peers aren't likely to shut off our oil supply any time soon - they like those oil profits, and we're an awfully big consumer - but they COULD. Or they could jack up the price to something even more obscene. They could play major havoc with our economy and way of life with very little effort.
Knowing we have other options would be a good thing.