From Turbines and Straw, Danish Self-Sufficiency

chrnb writes "Last year, the Danish island of Samso (pronounced SOME-suh) completed a 10-year experiment to see whether it could become energy self-sufficient. The islanders, with generous amounts of aid from mainland Denmark, busily set themselves about erecting wind turbines, installing nonpolluting straw-burning furnaces to heat their sturdy brick houses and placing panels here and there to create electricity from the island's sparse sunshine. By their own accounts, the islanders have met the goal. For energy experts, the crucial measurement is called energy density, or the amount of energy produced per unit of area, and it should be at least 2 watts for every square meter, or 11 square feet. 'We just met it,' said Soren Hermansen, the director of the local Energy Academy, a former farmer who is a consultant to the islanders."

Comments

All I can think is...

[bennomatic]

Mmmm.... Danish....

Re:All I can think is...

[MonoSynth]

girls and cookies!

Re:All I can think is...

[sorennielsen]

Funny thing is that in Denmark we call "Danish" Wiener(-brød) refering to another location.

Re:All I can think is...

[bennomatic]

I've heard that what we Americans call "French kissing" is referred to by the French as "Turning Shovels."

Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Rei]

"Nonpolluting straw-burning furnaces"? Given that wood-burning has a pollution profile as bad as coal burning (the exact amount of different pollutants in each case varying depending on pollution controls), I seriously doubt straw burning is all that clean.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Carbon Neutral" I imagine is what they meant (no, I haven't RTFA).

They grow the straw, then burn it, then grow it again, etc. So the carbon that's released from burning gets fixed again when the next crop comes up.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Rei]

To put the amount of pollution into perspective, here's the particulate matter emissions from different types of home heating.

The uncertified wood stove puts out several *pounds* of fine particulate matter each day of winter operation. Even the proportionally clean pellet stove dwarfs the emissions from oil and gas heating.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[wizardforce]

At least you can make more straw.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[MaXintosh]

But in many areas, PM 2.5 isn't a big issue. Definitely not in a windy area like this island. So long as the stacks are tall enough, air quality doesn't go down commensurately. It's only in places that form inversion layers, or places that are just otherwise calm that have PM 2.5 issues. Compared to other sources, though, the Straw is much better because a) I'm guessing it doesn't take as much energy to get there and b) is carbon neutral.

Or, that's my understanding of PM 2.5, anyhow. Fairbanks, AK has PM 2.5 issues due to its inversion layer and large number of wood stoves. So I've learnt what I've learnt from the happenings, here.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Rei]

Even if that's what they mean:

1) Other pollutants are very relevant as well, esp. in terms of human and wildlife health.
2) Other pollutants have a profound effect on climate as well. For example, carbon black has been shown to be a significant cause of global warming.
3) I'd *imagine* that straw has a pretty good ratio of fossil fuels in -> energy out, but there still is going to be some input.
4) Land use changes can have a profound impact on global climate, and using land for growing crops for heating (capturing only a small fraction of the light that hits the land as energy) means a *lot* of land. It also means consuming land for farming that would otherwise be wildlife habitat. And there's the whole water issue. And the runoff issue. And so forth.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[mcrbids]

"Nonpolluting straw-burning furnaces"? Given that wood-burning has a pollution profile as bad as coal burning (the exact amount of different pollutants in each case varying depending on pollution controls), I seriously doubt straw burning is all that clean.

You don't have to interpret this as "straw-burning furnaces, which by nature of burning straw, are clean...". What you could just as easily interpret is "straw-burning furances, which have been modified to burn cleanly..".

Wood can burn horribly, generating thick black plumes of carcinogenic smoke, for example, when it's too wet. However, under controlled environments, wood can burn *very* cleanly. Take a look at a pellet stove - basically a wood burning stove, with the wood pellets providing a much more optimal burning profile that produces dramatically fewer pollutants.

On the flip side, you can purposefully create smoke, and use it as fuel in an internal combustion engine. This is called "wood gassification" and it's being used right now to drive a truck across the country. The Mother Earth News (magazine) built one more than 25 years ago back when the memory of the 70's oil embargo was still fresh and painful.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Rei]

A pellet stove still emits two orders of magnitude more PM than an oil or gas stove; see the above graphic.

Wood is dirty, dirty, dirty. And no, wood gas is not "smoke". Smoke is particulate matter. Wood gas is a toxic mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[techno-vampire]

3) I'd *imagine* that straw has a pretty good ratio of fossil fuels in -> energy out, but there still is going to be some input.

Why? If they're that determined to be self-sufficient, they can use horses instead of tractors on their farms. No need of fossil fuel at all if that's the way they go.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[wizardforce]

Another name for it is "water gas" and it was originally used in homes before natural gas became common. Sources of Carbon are heated with water to very high temperatures ~1000C and react to form CO,CO2,H2,CH4... The CO and hydrocarbons in the gas can be removed and further reacted with water to produce a mix of CO2 and H2. Or the mixture can be reacted in the presence of an Ni/Al catalyst to form hydrocarbons and water. New Zealand produces approximately 1/3 of its petrol in this fashion. The advantage to synthesizing "water gas" or "syn gas" as it is often called is that you can convert many Carbon sources to liquid or gaseous fuel and can strip out the more toxic chemicals normally found in coal and other Carbon sources. As conventional sources of petrol become less available, this process may account for a significant quantity of the liquid and gaseous fuel consumed in the world.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Rei]

1. Wood pollution problems can happen anywhere, even at low population densities, and even without an inversion. Wood stoves pump out two to three orders of magnitude more particulate matter than oil and gas furnaces.
2. Inversions can happen anywhere -- for example, from warm fronts. They're more common in some areas, certainly (central Alaska being one of them), but everywhere gets them.
3. Very little energy is wasted in natural gas extraction and transportation compared to the energy in the fuel. The straw almost certainly takes a larger percent to grow, harvest, and transport.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Rei]

Yes, why don't we all go back to a middle age existence. We can enjoy their wonderful quality of life and have a planet carrying capacity a fraction of what we have now.

Why do people pine for this mythical "good old days" before all that pesky modern technology? Between starvation, plagues, and endless manual labor, pre-industrial life sucked.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Rei]

Indeed indeed. Too few people realize that you can *make* hydrocarbons, from almost any source of carbon. Just burn it with insufficient oxygen for full combustion, and you have your (pick a name): "wood gas", "town gas", "water gas", "coal gas", etc. The challenges are when you want to use biomass for that source of carbon. You can just mine or pump up fossil carbon sources. Growing fuel crops takes a ton of land (habitat), water, leads to runoff, and all sorts of other problems.

But, if we end up in that situation, we may not have a choice. Humans are not going to choose a stone-age existence. If it comes down to either doing actions with major adverse environmental consequences or tossing society in the gutter, humans can be counted on to choose the former every time.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[techno-vampire]

Why do people pine for this mythical "good old days" before all that pesky modern technology?

I don't, and not just because if we did, I'd be dead. If you'll read my post (and the one I'm replying to) you'll see that the OP was assuming that the straw couldn't be produced, harvested and transported without the use of fossil fuel, and I was pointing out that his assumption just isn't true.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Anonymous Coward]

major adverse environmental consequences or tossing society in the gutter, humans can be counted on to choose the former every time.

And when their crops stop growing and their faucets run black, they get the latter as a bonus!

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Lehk228]

except the natural gas is being depleted when used, the straw converts energy from the sun. gas is also carbon trapped millions of years ago, the carbon you burn from straw was absorbed that summer.

so yea it is the same in a superficial and meaningless sort of way.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[emilper]

yes, horses and subsidies from the mainland, that's the secret for self-sufficiency on an island.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Rei]

The natural gas doesn't consume vast amounts of habitat per person, lead to massive dead zones near estuaries, or drain rivers of their water, either.

Switching from natural gas home heating to biomass is like trying to reduce your lighting bills by burning candles. Natural gas is an abundant, low-carbon fuel that has literally several orders of magnitude less air quality degradation than biomass. If you want to tackle global warming, it's coal that you need to fight, not natural gas.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[__aagujc9792]

There's a critical difference.The straw enterprise is C02-neutral on an annualized basis. The carbon in the straw was C02 a year ago. And now it's C02 again, big deal.

There are hazardous substances associated with most every form of energy generation. There's U, Th, K40 and other radionuclides in a coal smokestack. The emissions from a coal plant would get a nuclear plant shut down instantly. There would be mass evacuations if enough radiation leaked from a nuclear plant to be comparable to the everyday background in Denver. And don't even get me started on the DHMO hazards associated with hydroelectric power. That stuff kills thousands in the US every year.

--
olderphart
"disjointed ramblings since - Get off my lawn!"

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[EsbenMoseHansen]

The natural gas doesn't consume vast amounts of habitat per person, lead to massive dead zones near estuaries, or drain rivers of their water, either.

Obviously, you have never been to that island. There are no rivers, and DK usually gets enough rainfall that no artificial watering is necessary. And take a look at the landscape. There will be plenty of surplus straw from a place like this. And transport? You could almost throw the bales of straw to the furnace. Besides, I presume the straw is burned at biggish plants, which (of course) have particle filters, leaving your concerns about those moot.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[jabithew]

Gas-phase combustion is more efficient too, because you can use combined cycle combustion*. Gasification probably reduces that efficiency to moot anyway.

*You burn it in a turbine, getting energy out of it like a jet engine, and then you remove heat from the hot exhaust by raising steam, like a traditional power plant.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[bemymonkey]

You do realize they're doing this for heating and electricity, right? Not much middle-aged about that...

Not to mention that with a few more wind turbines or solar panels you could switch from horses to electric tractors or something like that :)

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[gmack]

They were burning the straw as waste already so the change is that they use the heat to do something useful.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Anonymous Coward]

The New Zealand Synfuel plant stopped producing petrol many years ago. It cost too much. Refined petrol is cheaper to produce. They survived for a while selling the synthetic petrol for blending.

It is now a methonal production plant. (owned by Methanex) Methanol was an intermediate step in producing petrol, so the point that the parent was making about syn-gas "water gas" is still valid, just not for making petrol.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[smoker2]

Planet carrying capacity ? You do realise that without fossil fuels, we are already way past the planets carrying capacity already. What with plastics, fertilizer, fuels for agricultural machinery and fuel for refrigeration and transport, we could not support as many people as we currently do. There is a growing trend in the UK to use vast plastic sheets over fields to bring on the crops faster. These sheets are not re-used. Baling machines use plastic to encase straw instead of natural twine. This plastic is not re-used. Chicken sheds use vast amounts of heat and light because it is all done inside huge sheds. The food processors and manufacturers have massive factories burning untold amounts of power to create products with subtle differences to their competitors, looking for any way to use every last scrap of material. This is efficient for them monetarily as they already have the materials, but the overall mechanical efficiency is pants.

I'd like to see the alternative proposals for providing all this stuff *without* dropping the planets carrying capacity.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Marsden Point refinery was just a typical refinery?(they make 70% of NZs petrol as well, not 30%, the remaining 30% is imported normally from either Australia, Singapore or one of the gulf states) I didnt think we made much syn gas at all.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Yes, why don't we all go back to a middle age existence.

False dichotomy. Next!

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[drinkypoo]

Why do people pine for this mythical "good old days" before all that pesky modern technology? Between starvation, plagues, and endless manual labor, pre-industrial life sucked.

Your comment is laughable on every level. People are still dying from starvation and plague, and medieval serfs worked less than you do. The only thing they were "missing" that we have is conspicuous consumption which does not make people happy. More money has been proven not to translate into more happiness. More food was produced per acre before the green revolution. On one hand, you have a choice of how you will live. On the other hand, society is structured to give you feelings of inadequacy if you are not keeping up with your neighbors; people will give you dirty looks all day if you live a simple life in the midst of people in the rat race. What we've given up to get to our modern life of video games and desperate housewives is community, and humans are pack animals.

Industrial life very much sucks, too. (I won't believe in a post-industrial age until we have true nanotechnology.) Cancer rates in England doubled during the first part of industrial revolution, and they moved up much faster than life expectancy. Our "modern" lifestyle comes at a cost, and it may turn out to be higher than we can bear.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[astar]

The parent is right on.

Energy density is not a bad measurement, but a minimum energy density for the world should be at about the energy density of the United States, for instance. Anyone know what that is?

Energy density has a better meaning. Consider that simply emperically, increased energy density in physical phenomena reveals new phenomena and generates new industrial processes. So we should reject solar power as a dead-end. Straw burning is simply insane. I hear there are about 100 promising novel approaches to fusion, that could all be tested out for a total of one or two hundred million dollars. Why has it not happened?

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[polar red]

People are still dying from starvation and plague

People are still dying from working 18 hours a day providing you with sneakers, computers, TV's, toys ....

fixed that for ya ...

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Natural gas is good once it gets into the pipe to your home. But the wellhead doesn't do as well as you describe, at least with the new style horizontal drilling that is increasing gas stores. The "frac'ing" requires chemicals, water and frequently leads to polluted aquifers.(recently heard an author of a new book RE this on pbs - I had been thinking of allowing drilling on my farm, now, no thanks)

But coal is worse!

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Per Abrahamsen]

Modern coal, wood and straw burning plants are all quite clean. If you see a polluting one, it is either from the 70's or before, or build with technology from that era. I guess countries with lax environmental laws will still allow such polluting power plants to be build, but Denmark's environmental laws are not lax.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Anonymous Coward]

"You do realize they're doing this for heating and electricity, right? Not much middle-aged about that"

The straw was for heating, and I think they did have heating in the middle ages, mostly by burning stuff that grew nearby.

The electricity comes from wind turbines, I am not sure what they did when the wind wasn't blowing. Maybe it always blows there, like ND

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[drinkypoo]

People are still dying from working 18 hours a day providing you with sneakers, computers, TV's, toys ....

That's very true, and it's a big part of why I do my best to buy used. It's difficult in the clothing area because I am so gigantic, but I've rescued a lot of computers (and several cars) from landfill over the years. It does not change anything about the fact that people who are NOT working to make me toys and TVs are dying from starvation and plague, literally, and all over the world. There's a lot of people starving right here at home, and there will be more before the recession ends (as it will be a depression before then.)

P.S. Putting you in strong text when you are also part of the problem (I see you posting) makes you a hypocrite. Fixed that for ya... Hmm, you didn't fix anything for me, did you? You just pasted your own rant onto the end of mine in a desperate bid for relevance. Try again, kid.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, why don't we all go back to a middle age existence. We can enjoy their wonderful quality of life and have a planet carrying capacity a fraction of what we have now.

The planet's carrying capacity has not increased. What has changed is that in the middle ages we only used maybe a few percent of it and nowadays we are using way more than 100, which is obviously not sustainable. Not only that, but continued overuse of resources is probaly DECREASING the carrying capacity.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[conureman]

I don't know about UK farmers, but the plastic twine used on hay bales on our farm never gets thrown away. I miss the wire, though, it was much more versatile. all the old bits are starting to rust away. (They switched to plastic about 20 years ago).

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[camperdave]

Between starvation, plagues, and endless manual labor, pre-industrial life sucked.

So if the points between starvation, plagues, and endless manual labor sucked, does that mean that starvation, plagues, and endless manual labor were the high points?

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[conureman]

Very succinct, much better than most of your other posts, AC.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[conureman]

Here on the farm, (going back to the ghetto Monday, snif...) I have a very efficient air-injected woodstove, lots of stray wood and the Old Man planted a bunch of Giant Bamboo. Harvested by hand, I think it'd be carbon neutral. We do have AQMD restrictions, but mostly when it's warm. We're above the inversion; Sunny up here when it's pea-soup down below.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[conureman]

"If it comes down to either doing actions with major adverse environmental consequences or tossing society in the gutter, humans can be counted on to choose the former every time."
As an eyewitness to the "Rodney King Uprising" IMO humans can be counted on to choose both. What I'm counting on is to survive the upheaval, and make better use of the resulting lower population density. YMMV, of course.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[blindseer]

But, if we end up in that situation, we may not have a choice. Humans are not going to choose a stone-age existence. If it comes down to either doing actions with major adverse environmental consequences or tossing society in the gutter, humans can be counted on to choose the former every time.

That's only if nuclear power is taken out of the choices available.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[blindseer]

So if the points between starvation, plagues, and endless manual labor sucked, does that mean that starvation, plagues, and endless manual labor were the high points?

Yes.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Rei]

First off, even if they do have particle filters, then it's at best the equivalent of a coal power plant which also has filters. Secondly, saying it has enough rainfall that they don't need to water yet there's no sort of runoff is pretty much contradictory; if it's raining that much, there's going to be need for surplus water to flow away. Third, "surplus straw" is ridiculous. For one, straw left on the fields helps prevent erosion. For another, straw is livestock feed and bedding. If they weren't making use of it before, then they were just being wasteful; that's hardly an excuse for them to choose a bad use for it.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Rei]

Yep. Synfuels are more expensive (the cost largely depending on the feedstock). But as oil becomes harder to get, we're not going to have a choice but to rely on them more until we can switch off oil as a transportation fuel.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[32771]

More food was produced per acre before the green revolution.

Because artificial fertilizers came before the green revolution which among other things attempted successfully to produce plant varieties that can use fertilizers more efficiently? Or did you just make that up?

Anyway, I would like to remind you that a citation is needed.

Otherwise I will have to conclude that you are full of shit.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[El Torico]

You're bitching about the post-Industrial era on an Internet message board?
Hilarious.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[physburn]

Quite right, burn straw makes smoke particles, atomospheric particulates in various size ranges, and semitoxic Ash, and carbon dioxide of course. When the said Nonpulluting furnaces, perphaps they ment ones designed to be less polluting than a normal furnace would be. They lucky they can live on 2 watts per square meter, i couldn't imagine a large city living on 10 times that much.

---

Green Technologies Feed @ Feed Distiller

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Brickwall]

I shouldn't speak for the OP, but if I read his post correctly, he wasn't talking about "plastic twine" - he was talking about encasing the entire bale of straw in a giant plastic bag. I have seen this infrequently in Ontario, and wondered why so much extra packaging was used. I vaguely recall my farming friends telling me that the if the straw wasn't allowed to dry out, it would rot.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Brickwall]

OK, 2005 statistics, and clearly incomplete (hardly any African countries represented) but: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mor_lac_of_foo-mortality-lack-of-food Shows a total of 298 starvation deaths for 2005. Boy, I'm really upset about that. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070327044448AAMio1U Suggests there are 1-2K deaths from plague each year. Now, in the US, there are approximately 10,000 deaths each year attributed to falls. Don't see you getting all worked up over ladders and stairs, there, bunky.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[EsbenMoseHansen]

First off, even if they do have particle filters, then it's at best the equivalent of a coal power plant which also has filters.

Yep, if you are looking solely at particle emissions. Of course, it doesn't have the e.g. quicksilver emissions coal does, nor the CO2.

Secondly, saying it has enough rainfall that they don't need to water yet there's no sort of runoff is pretty much contradictory; if it's raining that much, there's going to be need for surplus water to flow away.

I was talking about rivers. Of course there is runoff, that is pretty much unavoidable. However, with good crop rotation and fertilizing strategy, the runoff can be reduced to a level where it is not a problem. As you know, even a completely unused area is going to have runoff, but the sea can absorb some runoff without any ill effects.

Third, "surplus straw" is ridiculous. For one, straw left on the fields helps prevent erosion.

Erosion?! Many problems we have in Denmark, but except for a very few places erosion isn't one of them. We are a flat country.

For another, straw is livestock feed and bedding. If they weren't making use of it before, then they were just being wasteful; that's hardly an excuse for them to choose a bad use for it.

Modern farming produces much more straw than can be used for feed or bedding. Which is why, as you say, it is usually plowed down as fertilizer. (I won't comment on further on that contradiction ;) )

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[mcrbids]

The challenges are when you want to use biomass for that source of carbon. You can just mine or pump up fossil carbon sources. Growing fuel crops takes a ton of land (habitat), water, leads to runoff, and all sorts of other problems.

I guess you don't live anywhere near an orchard?

Every year your average orchard generates TONS of wood material in the form of prunings. See, they have to prune the fruit and nut trees every year in order to optimize their growth for fruit/nut production. Currently, they use big tractors to pile the "waste" wood prunings into huge piles, often 30 feet high or more, and then burn them - flames that reach 100 feet or more into the sky, and take weeks to burn out.

Having grown across the street from Almond orchards, I can assure you, this is commonplace. Can you imagine just how many miles we could get out of a single pile, if we were to effectively harness this fuel source?

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[rhakka]

dead zones are a result of fertilizer usage, not simply the use of a field to grow something.

and particulate matter is a concern, primarily of respiration. it can be solved by using good appliances, which could be required by law if these things were ever used in any density that really mattered.

you keep pointing at coal but it's not even close to the same. the problem with coal is not mostly particulates, it's things like mercury. wood is simply mostly inert particulate last I knew. they are not even remotely the same, and neither are the impacts of production of the fuel.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[CrimsonAvenger]

So if the points between starvation, plagues, and endless manual labor sucked, does that mean that starvation, plagues, and endless manual labor were the high points?

They at least had the virtue of being interesting....

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[conureman]

They leave it in the field after cutting to keep it from spontaneously combusting, if it's baled too soon. If it gets wet after it's baled it'll mildew. Bagging sounds excessive, but may be necessary in that environment to keep it from prematurely composting. Just my Wild-Ass-Guess. I was referring to the plastic twine, of course, which does not degrade gracefully.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[szilagyi]

I believe wood gas and water gas are distinct, although, as you say, used as a synthetic municipal fuel for a long time. The difference (as I understand it; not a chemist) is that adding steam is necessary with coal, which is mostly carbon, whereas wood can be gasified efficiently without water, as it contains plenty of bound hydrogen, some bound oxygen, and significant moisture.

Water gas, syngas, and wood gas imply different ranges of CO:H2 ratios, corresponding to the content of the feedstock. Also, as you mentioned, you end up with significant pyrolysis products like methane in your typical wood gas, depending on how it's done. (Usually, that's what you want, if you're burning it directly, like in an ICE. Natural gas, which is mainly methane, has much higher energy density than syngas, and pyrolysis is more efficient, thermodynamically, than gasification.)

And also as you mentioned, synthesis of liquid fuel via Fischer-Tropsch becomes economical at a certain price point.

"Energy Density"...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the island import energy or not? This "Energy Density" has the feel of weasel words...

Re:"Energy Density"...?

[Rei]

They exchange energy back and forth with the mainland.

Re:"Energy Density"...?

[Patch86]

If they're on the same grid as the mainland, there's no guarantee that they'll be using "the same electricity" as the stuff they're putting in (not that that makes any sense in any case).

Self sufficiency would just involve putting in as much as they're taking out. "Energy density" is just their way of measuring that, it being quite a tricky thing to measure over a 10 year period.

Re:"Energy Density"...?

[pohl]

If one's goal was to make a particular patch of land self-sufficient in its energy needs, the amount of energy produced per unit area would be an important metric, would it not?

Re:"Energy Density"...?

[fistagon7]

is it just me or can we all agree that this is the island in Lost?

Re:"Energy Density"...?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is totally you.

How much?

[clandonald]

Seems to be a wee bit more than the 12 cents per KWH that I pay in Canada.

Samso?

[MadFarmAnimalz]

This being one of the few enclaves of the Internet where flagrant nitpickery is acceptable, let me say that it's "Samsø" and not "Samso".

Samsø is in fact carbon negative. The island produces more renewable energy than it consumes. That's a good way of summing it up and I'm surprised neither the slashdot summary not the NYT article point this out. It's easily more interesting than them burning straw.

But what I really came here to say is, they produce fantastic potatoes on Samsø. As far as I'm concerned, they could power their Hummers with liquified kittens if it keeps the (Samsø potato) spice flowing.

Re:Samso?

[mybecq]

let me say that it's "Samsø" and not "Samso"

Take your fancy ISO characters back where they belong -- this is Slashdot, dang nab it, where ASCII is not just a good idea, It's the Law!



(Yes, blah blah blah ISO-8859-1 blah blah blah.)

Re:Samso?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would add it's not only a question of type style. This is an example of several letters that native English speakers *think* are identical but actually mean something quite different - "okänd" as opposed to "ökänd", for example.

You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. Except for the liquified kittens, of course.

Re:Samso?

[jabithew]

they could power their Hummers with liquified kittens

Sir, I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to invest in your startup.

Re:Samso?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that what you call a catalytic converter?

Re:Samso?

[Hymer]

"Take your fancy ISO characters..."

That will be "sexy UTF characters" for you, you insensitive clod.

Re:Samso?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, all non-danes who have gone to denmark know how addicted to potatoes you guys are. Get treatment asap, kthnxbai.

Re:Samso?

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsø is in fact carbon negative. The island produces more renewable energy than it consumes.

This is only because they've externalized the funding and production of their industrial equipment.

Re:Samso?

[selven]

99%+ of people have no way of printing that character aside from googling "o with a line through it" and hitting Ctrl+V.

Re:Samso?

[kasperd]

99%+ of people have no way of printing that character aside from googling "o with a line through it" and hitting Ctrl+V.

Anybody using a Mac can produce that character by pressing option+o. If you are using X and have a key mapped as compose, then you can produce it by pressing compose o /

Re:Samso?

[ignavus]

"Put a tiger in your tank" - for rather small values of "tiger".

Re:Samso?

[Reservoir Penguin]

If this ever makes it to 4chan your life WILL be ruined forever. Just pray it doesn't.

Re:Samso?

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you determine that Samso is carbon negative? I'd be very interested in seeing that data. For instance:

Where are they converting CO2 to fixed carbon to offset the CO2 they are generating by:

-burning grass for heat
-burning gas/diesel in cars
-CO2 created in the process of making these renewable energy products
-the rotting of their waste products (anything organic, paper, etc) in dumps
-such imported organic products as meats, grains and veggies whose carbon generally leaves the island as CO2
-Their collective breathing

As I inferred, it would be quite impressive if they actually lower the amount of CO2 in the air. I'd enjoy reading the data that proves such a thing.

Thanks in advance!

Kevin, the apparently anonymous coward :(

Re:Samso?

[elrous0]

In this house, we use the English alphabet, young lady!

Re:Samso?

[Poisoned-Bunny]

Sir, I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to invest in your startup.

Not before I do. I represent the dogs...

A Møøse once bit my sister

[XanC]

No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink".

Energy density my ass!

[Iffie]

These metrics are a way to put a barrier up for the alternative energy business. Of course it is possible to generate all energy locally. The 1 dollar per watt myth does not count for coal fired power plants. If you win a race are you going to let an expert tell you your steps per second where under par?

Show me a good way to produce...

[PaulBu]

... "panels here and there to create electricity" from straw and wind, and it would be a *major* break-trough!

I am not sure that running any kind of a modern semiconductor process can be done in "carbon-neutral" way, and undoubtly it could produce much more nasty stuff than CO2 in the process -- but YMMV.

Paul B.

For anyone who has bothered to read the article...

[Antony-Kyre]

the thing that should stand out the most is the part mentioning how someone uses cow milk to heat his house.

More information:

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.energiakademiet.dk/default_uk.asp

Pollution and Renewable energy are NOT the same

[Anonymous Coward]

They may be Energy self-sufficiant, they're definitely not pollution-free.

Even a Bad Solution that Really Works Now

[Greyfox]

Is worth more than the shiny solution you're promised 2 years down the road. Most of the time, the shiny solution fails. Yeah that bunch of excel macros or bash scripts someone put together with duct tape and spit may not be pretty, but it gives you the answers you need NOW. And it doesn't matter how good the existing solution is, at some point some jackass will come in, barely look at it and think he can do better if he designed it from scratch. And that jackass will inevitably fail and quit or be fired and the next person will come in and look at the pile of crap he produced and think it would be better if he designed it from scratch. And three years down the line and 3 times the original estimated cost they will have nothing to show for their efforts and everyone will still be using the original system that worked.

So given this conundrum, how is it possible to engineer a system from scratch? Obviously it can be done, but it seems it's more by luck than any particular skill of the people involved. Truth be told the best solutions always seem to start small and grow into what they need.

One thing is always certain though, when those guys come in with the promises of the shiny system 2 years down the road... someone's going to make an awful lot of money one way or the other.

That's Odd...

[Greyfox]

I'm pretty sure that's not the story I was posting to..

Re:That's Odd...

[MadFarmAnimalz]

That comment looks like it's the slashdot equivalent of a skeleton key. It commits itself to so little that it can probably earn you puzzled but appreciative moderation on any story.

First thing that comes to mind...

[uuddlrlrab]

...is Capitol Hill's very own coal-fired power plant,. Sucker is still belching tons of pollutants without producing a watt of electricity, thank you very much Senators Byrd & McConnell. And take a look at all the other coal-fired plants in the US. Awesome. Obviously, doing nothing is a bad idea. Even if what the Danes have pulled off isn't truly 100% clean & pollution free, could it possibly be as bad as what we have now?

Re:First thing that comes to mind...

[khallow]

Even if what the Danes have pulled off isn't truly 100% clean & pollution free, could it possibly be as bad as what we have now?

The answer is "yes, of course".

Re:First thing that comes to mind...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Sucker is still belching tons of pollutants without producing a watt of electricity

. . . and this "Sucker" you refer to is also known as "Congress?"

Re:First thing that comes to mind...

[khallow]

Sucker is still belching tons of pollutants without producing a watt of electricity

I read the story. It produces heat not electricity. Appropriate for Congress, and it is a valid thing for a coal burning plant to do.

Also, you mention "tons of pollutants"? Over what time frame? Are you counting carbon dioxide? I'll say already, that if you are, then you shouldn't be. The idea that everything is equally a pollutant and hence equally harmful is a particularly toxic environmental myth. Consider that a ton of "pollutant" could be a ton of carbon dioxide or a ton of botulin. The former gets sucked up by local plants that night, the latter if properly distributed could kill ever human on Earth.

Re:First thing that comes to mind...

[uuddlrlrab]

Because, as we all know, when you burn coal, you get botulinum (that's what you're looking for). CO2 is what you get when you leave food out. This is fact. *Sigh* It was meant to be "tons" in the colloquial sense, not actual measurement, but if you want specifics, just look at the chart in the Wikipedia article (which is taken from the Federal Government's own report, incidentally) about the emissions. For 2002, that's 83 tons PM2.5, 129 NOx, 483 SO2, 84 PM10. In respective percentages for all pollution in the DC area, that's 65%, 10%, 20%, 46%. One plant. To provide heat. For maybe just a handful of buildings. 65% PERCENT. One can only reasonably assume that those numbers have continued since then more or less at the same levels since then, considering...

Residents of the Capitol Hill neighborhood interviewed the Architect of the Capitol about the plant in 2006. They were informed that the only way to optimizing the plant’s efficiency was to rebuild it. This however, requires an act of Congress.

...and I'm not aware of any such thing having happened just yet. So, simple multiplication gives us, as of the end of 2008 (for sake of simplicity, and leaving open any changes that might have started in 2009) 498 PM2.5, 387 NOx, 2898 SO2, 252 PM10. Again, still measuring in tons here. So, let's just stick with the coal plant. No harm there, right?

Re:First thing that comes to mind...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, something that took millions of years to create gets sucked up by local plants overnight after you burn it.

Re:First thing that comes to mind...

[blindseer]

I read the story. It produces heat not electricity. Appropriate for Congress, and it is a valid thing for a coal burning plant to do.

I also read the story and I also found that the power plant producing "more heat than light" to be amusing and appropriate for the District as well.

Where I went to college there was a coal fired power plant on campus. It's primary purpose was to produce the heating and cooling for the buildings on the main campus. It had the capability to produce electricity but the generators where mostly kept at low power since it was cheaper to buy electricity from the city than produce it themselves. Best I could tell from my tour was that the generators were only running because the plant was not designed in a way to allow them to turn them off completely.

I've come across other places with a large number of buildings that have a coal fired plant to provide heat and cooling for their buildings. It makes sense. Coal is cheap when it comes to heating. The efficiency of an electric power plant goes up with the size of the plant. Making a power plant large enough to compete with municipal power on efficiency (and therefore cost of electricity) would be difficult with the exception of a facility the size of a city. Making a power plant big enough to justify burning coal instead of natural gas or fuel oil is a much smaller hurdle. I've even seen coal furnaces for residential use.

I do not find the use of a coal fired plant to produce heat, and not electricity, to be inappropriate. I see it as quite the opposite. Coal is perfect for heating. It's energy dense, it is produced domestically, it's cheap, and really not much good for anything else (which is probably why it is so cheap).

Burning coal only produces pollutants in excess of other energy sources if the combustion is incomplete (and any modern and well maintained plant should not do so) and if one considers carbon dioxide a pollutant (which I, of course, do not).

Re:First thing that comes to mind...

[khallow]

Heh, I've been schooled. Particulate matter is as I recall, relatively nasty too. This plant is remarkably dirty for what it is. Guess that's yet another example of how Congress doesn't have to follow many of the laws it passes.

Re:First thing that comes to mind...

[MartinSchou]

Also, you mention "tons of pollutants"? Over what time frame?

From the article:

Last year, the Capitol Power Plant burned 17,108 tons of coal.

If the coal:sulfur ratio by weight is 1:17,108, it will release exactly one ton of sulfur. This will be as sulfur dioxide (SO2), which weighs 64.07 g/mol, half of which is from sulfur (32.065 g/mol). In other words, one ton of sulfur becomes two tons of sulfur dioxide.

From what I could find (ufl.edu), coal usually contains more than 1 percent of sulfur by weight.

That means we're looking at a minimum of 171 tons of sulfur last year, and 342 tons of sulfur dioxide. That definitely qualifies as "tons of pollutants".

Re:First thing that comes to mind...

[Tumbleweed]

. . . and this "Sucker" you refer to is also known as "Congress?"

Two definitions of 'sucker' I know of as far as Washington, D.C. goes:

1) Anyone voting Republican who isn't rich
2) Anyone voting Democrat expecting actual liberal change.

Re:First thing that comes to mind...

[Thing 1]

Huh. So, the Republicans get the dollars, and the Democrats get the change? Now I understand what the campaign was about!

Re:First thing that comes to mind...

[tibman]

I also read that article, i thought it strange that Eva Malecki wouldn't talk about the plan because of security concerns. If the plant only provided heat/cooling i don't think either of those systems would be considered critical. Perhaps it actually DOES power something? Just not anything that is on the books. Built in 1910? When was that bunker under union square built? around that same time?

Re:First thing that comes to mind...

[khallow]

Most power plants release little sulfur because they have scrubbers and other devices to pull most impurities and undesirable incomplete combustion products out of what is vented to atmosphere. However, apparently the DC plant doesn't have these pollution reducing devices in place. Nor is it likely to since apparently any such improvements (and replacement for that matter) require an act of Congress. But in any case, you are right, it releases hundreds of tons of pollutants (as I would define them) into the atmosphere.

Re:OK You Guys Ready?

[lul_wat]

wat

the straw exists anyway

[CdBee]

Straw is an agricultural waste-product which will either be fed to animals, burned or left to decompose (also creating CO2) - it also has a very short carbon cycle unlke burning fossil fuels

Re:the straw exists anyway

[blindseer]

Straw is an agricultural waste-product which will either be fed to animals, burned or left to decompose (also creating CO2) - it also has a very short carbon cycle unlke burning fossil fuels

Having lived on a farm I can tell you that any thing that can be fed to animals is not "waste". Animals raised for meat, milk, hide, etc. take a lot of feed. Most of that feed is quite expensive since it is also used for human food, like corn and soybeans. Farmers and ranchers will fight over that "waste" if it is a suitable substitute for the more expensive alternatives.

After decades of taking the straw off of fields to be used for feed and bedding for cattle local farmers have realized that erosion is washing their fields down the Mississippi. They need to leave some of that straw in the field so that there is something to keep the soil from blowing away. Completely removing the carbon content of the soil is also not good for the crops. Leaving some of that straw in the field means a bio-available carbon rich cover to protect the soil from erosion. Using some of that straw for livestock bedding means it can be used to soak up the manure (another highly bio-available carbon source) to allow for a healthier livestock and the bedding can be placed back in the field for fertilizer.

I am very suspicious of people that claim that straw is "waste" and can be taken from it's traditional uses without serious affects on the future viability of the agricultural land from which it was taken. That carbon needs to be returned to the soil for the next crop. Without that straw it's quite likely it must come from somewhere. Perhaps the increased CO2 in the air will make up for it. Perhaps it must come from artificial fertilizers. If artificial fertilizers are needed to keep the land viable then I have to wonder about the wisdom of burning the straw for heat.

Re:the straw exists anyway

[0100010001010011]

Straw is not edible.
Hay is edible.

Straw is what you sit on at the county fair and people spread over mud.

"Straw is an agricultural by-product, the dry stalk of a cereal plant, after the grain or seed has been removed. Straw makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat. In times gone by, it was regarded as a useful by-product of the harvest, but with the advent of the combine harvester, straw has become more burdensome to agriculture"

Three bean salad

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god Im gonna poop!

There will be so much poop!

Oh my god the poop!

parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[khallow]

"Last year, the Danish island of Samso (pronounced SOME-suh) completed a 10-year experiment to see whether it could become energy self-sufficient. The islanders, with generous amounts of aid from mainland Denmark

Parse error. Receiving "generous amounts" of aid != self-sufficient. If the rest of Denmark attempts to follow them, who is going to generously give to Denmark?

And has an independent party verified that Samsa is actually carbon neutral or just faking it? Remember that in the brave, new world of carbon cap and trades, carbon fraud is going to be (if it isn't already, considering certain would-be, for profit, carbon sinks) a popular activity.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[Zumbs]

The recieved generous amounts of aid in order to investigate what it would take to become self-sufficient. This is similar to producing a prototype of a technology before putting it into mass production: The prototype is likely to be much more expensive to produce than one of the mass produced items. Why do one build a prototype? To see how well it works, discover problems and issues before it is put into mass production.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[khallow]

So what was the prototype? I just see an uneconomic mess of well-developed technologies. Subsidizing an expensive alternative isn't the same as a "prototype". It can be, I admit that. But I don't see the novelty here. Another qualm I have is whether this program is sustainable. It apparently depends to a great degree on locals burning their hay in an heating plant rather than leaving it on the field. That might lead to soil loss in the long run.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[uuddlrlrab]

Let me spell it out for you, since the simple concept seems to escape you. The island wanted to see if they could change their Infrastructure, basically the way all'uhv that tharr 'lectrissty stuff was gettin' made, ah-hyuck! So they went an' asked the gonverme- govmer- gomerv- tha guys in charge, an' whatnot, fer sum money ta try outa' whole buncha new ideers. When they dun found one what warks an' all, they went an' bilt it! Ah-hyuck! Now that they dun figger'd out whatta'do an' whatall that don't make all that stinky smoke, thar gonna start bildin' it all over So thar it is! Gawrsh... Now I'm off to down a bottle of Ibuprofen. Could someone else please field the next potential Darwin Award nominee that starts spouting off rhetoric and trying to cloud the issue? Talking down to that level physically pains me.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[Xarius]

Denmark obviously thought it was worth investing in this experiment to see if the things tried worked and were viable long-term. I would expect the aid given was an initial investment and not an ongoing requirement for the sustainability--sort of like venture capital.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[Anonymous Coward]

Otoh, energy self-sufficiency is not the same thing as financial self-sufficiency.
They showed it's technically feasable, not that they can pay for it themselves.
Then again there are individuals who can pay for this ten times over out of their own pocket.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[Anonymous Coward]

"become self-sufficient."

Energy wise. They are not self-sufficient in terms of economy.

Your prototype idea is flawed. A prototype that works is sold and makes more money back to the company or person than was invested in it. This island receives aid from Denmark, which probably in turn receives aid from the EU or from carbon shifting policies that offload emissions to China.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[drinkypoo]

It apparently depends to a great degree on locals burning their hay in an heating plant rather than leaving it on the field. That might lead to soil loss in the long run.

Topsoil-based fuels are always wrongheaded if they don't do something beneficial to the soil. It would probably make more sense to just grow native grasses, because they tend to feature nitrogen and phosphorus fixers.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[Anonymous Coward]

We haven't been leaving the hay on the field for centuries, so I don't think it is going to be a problem, but tell me: How do you manage to talk out of your ass?

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[swillden]

I notice you ignored the point about the soil impact. Removing the straw from the fields rather than burning it in place is going to increase fertilization requirements.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[uuddlrlrab]

So they'll need to fertilize a little bit more... So what? Point please?

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[hey!]

So what was the prototype? I just see an uneconomic mess of well-developed technologies. Subsidizing an expensive alternative isn't the same as a "prototype". It can be, I admit that. But I don't see the novelty here. Another qualm I have is whether this program is sustainable. It apparently depends to a great degree on locals burning their hay in an heating plant rather than leaving it on the field. That might lead to soil loss in the long run.

Your point about the soil is worth considering, but it is not necessarily a telling one. The question is whether they are removing enough biomass to disturb some kind of equilibrium or generate some kind of physical disturbance. It leads to another important issue which you don't raise: scalability.

My wife is a scientist who worked on the planning stages of the Boston Harbor cleanup. The basic design the engineers came up with was this: a large scale conventional primary and secondary treatment plant, discharging through the world's longest single heading tunnel down to a long array of deep water diffuser structures. In a way, this design triggers some of your objections in the Danish scenario: it's all well developed, proven technologies, just deployed on an unusually large scale. The engineer in me happens to *like* that.

Now as they were planning this design, the media went looking for other models, and the found one: a town in California that uses a salt marsh after primary treatment as a natural treatment plant. Why couldn't we do that? Well, Arcata is a residential and college town of about fifteen thousand souls which probably has more marshland in its municipal boundaries than developed land. The Boston plant had to serve over two and a half million people, not to mention industrial users. Combine that with the fact you have to design sewers around the well known fact that water flows downhill, there just isn't enough marsh to handle more than a couple of percentage points of the required sewage flow.

Scalability is the Achilles heel of any environmental panacea. Traditional Inuit hunters clothed themselves sustainably with seal leather. If you tried to clothe all 300 million Americans in seal leather, it wouldn't be sustainable.

As far as the subsidy is concerned -- that's neither here nor there. Nothing gets done in this world without money being spent. Even saving money, if you exclude simply not doing something. You don't need to commission engineers and scientists to answer the question, "Can we make this Island energy self-sufficient if they stop heating their homes, using electricity or internal combustion vehicles." You *do* have to spend money to answer a question like, "How much of this straw can we burn before the soil dries up and blows away."

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[Anonymous Coward]

So they'll need to fertilize a little bit more... So what? Point please?

Fertilization is an environmental problem:

The use of fertilizers on a global scale emits significant quantities of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Emissions come about through the use of:[67]

        * animal manures and urea, which release methane, nitrous oxide, ammonia, and carbon dioxide in varying quantities depending on their form (solid or liquid) and management (collection, storage, spreading)
        * fertilizers that use nitric acid or ammonium bicarbonate, the production and application of which results in emissions of nitrogen oxides, nitrous oxide, ammonia and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

And so on. I'd be interested to know if their carbon-neutrality claim takes the increased fertilization needs into account.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[khallow]

Let me spell it out for you, since the simple concept seems to escape you. The island wanted to see if they could change their Infrastructure, basically the way all'uhv that tharr 'lectrissty stuff was gettin' made, ah-hyuck! So they went an' asked the gonverme- govmer- gomerv- tha guys in charge, an' whatnot, fer sum money ta try outa' whole buncha new ideers. When they dun found one what warks an' all, they went an' bilt it! Ah-hyuck! Now that they dun figger'd out whatta'do an' whatall that don't make all that stinky smoke, thar gonna start bildin' it all over So thar it is! Gawrsh... Now I'm off to down a bottle of Ibuprofen. Could someone else please field the next potential Darwin Award nominee that starts spouting off rhetoric and trying to cloud the issue? Talking down to that level physically pains me.

Oh my. A slashdot native being uppity! Quick! Get the camera! Honey, let me put Junior on his shoulders first. That should be a great shot!

More seriously, if you have a problem with something I wrote, maybe you could bring it up rather than just being an entertaining idiot. There are four problems you've ignored: 1) they took a lot of somebody else's money to build this infrastructure. That's one strike against the claim of self-sufficiency. 2) It doesn't scale to most people. Denmark isn't exactly a land of straw burners. 3) we still have the problem that they're growing a lot of straw. That's got to be cleaning out the carbon content of their soil even if, as they probably do, recycle the ash from the burnt straw back to the land. So it means that fertilizer is another input to this supposed "self-sufficient" system that they've made. And 4) they weren't self-sufficient in terms of heating. Apparently burning straw only covered 75% of those needs. The rest was covered with fossil fuel imports. We're up to three strikes against this claim of self-sufficiency.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[khallow]

Your point about the soil is worth considering, but it is not necessarily a telling one. The question is whether they are removing enough biomass to disturb some kind of equilibrium or generate some kind of physical disturbance. It leads to another important issue which you don't raise: scalability.

I mostly ignored this issue (though needing subsidies is a related issue). You definitely bring up an important point there. Not everyone has a lot of biomass to burn.

As far as the subsidy is concerned -- that's neither here nor there. Nothing gets done in this world without money being spent. Even saving money, if you exclude simply not doing something. You don't need to commission engineers and scientists to answer the question, "Can we make this Island energy self-sufficient if they stop heating their homes, using electricity or internal combustion vehicles." You *do* have to spend money to answer a question like, "How much of this straw can we burn before the soil dries up and blows away."

It's certainly not my money that they spent. But I think it's quite cavalier how most of the people in the story were about the money that they used. And that's another point here that I think is worth emphasizing. Money spent making a small island carbon neutral (or if you consider heating, almost carbon neutral) probably could have been spent better or even not spent at all (said money being returned to the taxpayers of Denmark and perhaps the rest of the EU). Nobody in the story even paid lip service to that. So yes, you do have to spent money to answer questions like the above, but you also have to spend money to do whatever wasn't done because of this redirection of resources.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[cduffy]

1) they took a lot of somebody else's money to build this infrastructure. That's one strike against the claim of self-sufficiency.

Let me distill what others in this thread have been trying to make clear:

The capital required to set the system up in the first place is completely irrelevant to whether the infrastructure is self-sufficient on an ongoing operation basis, which is how any claim of "self sufficiency" is generally understood.

The reasonable counterargument would be that any interest paid on the initial outlay should be counted against "self-sufficient" status, and such a counterargument is one I'm willing to accept -- if you have the numbers to sustain the argument that the cost of funds outweighs the ongoing expenses avoided. Are you prepared to make that argument?

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[khallow]

The capital required to set the system up in the first place is completely irrelevant to whether the infrastructure is self-sufficient on an ongoing operation basis, which is how any claim of "self sufficiency" is generally understood.

No. That's not how self-sufficient is generally understood. But you make my point in the next paragraph.

The reasonable counterargument would be that any interest paid on the initial outlay should be counted against "self-sufficient" status, and such a counterargument is one I'm willing to accept -- if you have the numbers to sustain the argument that the cost of funds outweighs the ongoing expenses avoided. Are you prepared to make that argument?

I never saw any indication that this actually saved money. If it actually does, then we can consider whether it saves more than the interest cost of the capital outlay.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[swillden]

Among other issues, production of fertilizer consumes energy.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[cduffy]

The capital required to set the system up in the first place is completely irrelevant to whether the infrastructure is self-sufficient on an ongoing operation basis, which is how any claim of "self sufficiency" is generally understood.

No. That's not how self-sufficient is generally understood. But you make my point in the next paragraph.

Quoting from the Wikipedia article: Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy.

This refers to an immediate state, independent of how that state was achieved.

I never saw any indication that this actually saved money. If it actually does, then we can consider whether it saves more than the interest cost of the capital outlay.

If the energy needs of the island are able to be met without sending the island's funds outside on an ongoing basis, there is no question that money is saved from the perspective of the economy of the island as a whole; the only question, then, is whether the interest and maintenance costs of the infrastructure exceed the funds which would otherwise be spent on ongoing energy imports.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[khallow]

This refers to an immediate state, independent of how that state was achieved.

The same could be said of dropping someone naked in the Artic tundra. They're self-sufficient till they freeze to death (and hence no longer survive).

If the energy needs of the island are able to be met without sending the island's funds outside on an ongoing basis, there is no question that money is saved from the perspective of the economy of the island as a whole

I don't think it's a good idea to take this plan only from the point of view of the island. The thing that bothers me here is that there's absolutely no mention of cost in most of these stories. The best I've found is an estimate of 11,000 euro per person which allegedly includes some amount of local investment. The link mentions a farmer, Jørgen Tranberg who happens to own 2.5 million euros in two windmills (one on his property, one offshore), has another 4 windmills (probably another 5 million euros value and generating rent) sitting on his 150 acre farm, and who speaks glowingly of the whole plan. My view is that if I picked up a few million euros on this sort of thing, I might speak well of it too, purely for selfish reasons.

That massive investment in windmills (much of the power being exported to the mainland) indicates to me that we probably have a large wind power subsidy distorting this economic picture further. All I can say, given that there's at least two large subsidies going on here (and I suspect they are massive enough to turn dairy farmers into multimillionaires), is that we can, when we throw enough money at the problem, turn a small region into a carbon negative region. I suppose you could run numbers, but the experiment has at least two big subsidies throwing it.

I give up on actually trying to figure out the numbers for this system. There's just too much stuff going on in this particular example to figure out whether this approach works or not.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[uuddlrlrab]

The same could be said of dropping someone naked in the Artic tundra. They're self-sufficient till they freeze to death (and hence no longer survive).

LOLWUT? Self-contradict much? The very definition he posted, and that you'll find in most dictionaries, includes that nagging little conditional "survival," or in other words, NOT death. Argument fail.

I don't think it's a good idea to take this plan only from the point of view of the island. The thing that bothers me here is that there's absolutely no mention of cost in most of these stories. The best I've found is an estimate of 11,000 euro [milkproduction.com] per person which allegedly includes some amount of local investment.

Of course there is cost. No one said this stuff could get done for free or dirt-cheap. That's what pilot programs are all about, seeing if the initial investment is worth it. I really hate having to repeat arguments already made, but allow me to explain yet again: as net-positive energy infrastructure becomes common to meet increasing demand, the setup costs go down as the techniques are refined and companies find less costly materials and manufacturing techniques to achieve the same results. Just look at what's happening in the newly emerging consumer space-flight market. Also, you fail to acknowledge the fact that if they are now able to produce more energy than they consume, they can sell back the excess they don't use to the grid.

The link mentions a farmer, Jørgen Tranberg who happens to own 2.5 million euros in two windmills (one on his property, one offshore), has another 4 windmills (probably another 5 million euros value and generating rent) sitting on his 150 acre farm, and who speaks glowingly of the whole plan. My view is that if I picked up a few million euros on this sort of thing, I might speak well of it too, purely for selfish reasons.

Yeah, because the only thing that motivates people is pure selfish greed, and couldn't possibly be that, although he is benefiting, it's good for everyone... Nice to know you think so highly of people. Benefit to him: makes money from selling back excess power. Benefit to government: proof that self-sustainability can be achieved, at least on a small scale, reason to invest similarly in other regions. Benefit to Samsø/region: less power draw from grid to power that island. Benefit to nation: long-term reduction of coal burned for power. Also, quick question of little importance: where'd that link to milkproduction.com come from? I see no such link in the /. article, nor in your top level comment, or in any subsequent replies to you...

That massive investment in windmills (much of the power being exported to the mainland) indicates to me that we probably have a large wind power subsidy distorting this economic picture further.

Alan Shore says, "Objection, your honor: Speculation." Proof plz? And just for the record, you do know that a subsidy is, right? Denmark is not exactly known for corruption problems, so I doubt they'd claim something like self-sustainability (including monetary) which could be disproved by checking the local government financial records.

All I can say, given that there's at least two large subsidies going on here (and I suspect they are massive enough to turn dairy farmers into multimillionaires)

I didn't know you had one of these.

..., is that we can, when we throw enough money at the problem, turn a small region into a carbon negative region. I suppose you could run numbers, but the experiment has at least two big subsidies throwing it.

Incredible You should call the Catholic Church. Nice to see how, somehow, what sta

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[uuddlrlrab]

know that a subsidy [wikipedia.org] is, right?

Typo. "That" supposed to be what.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[khallow]

I'll just repeat two things. First, the earlier poster added to the definition of self-sufficient:

This refers to an immediate state, independent of how that state was achieved.

That was the context for my reply. Self-sufficient doesn't mean much when it requires a bunch of outside money to start up and to maintain.

Alan Shore says, "Objection, your honor: Speculation." Proof plz? And just for the record, you do know that a subsidy is, right? Denmark is not exactly known for corruption problems, so I doubt they'd claim something like self-sustainability (including monetary) which could be disproved by checking the local government financial records.

Denmark is as is most of the EU, well supplied with subsidies. I said nothing about "corruption". And where do elected officials say anything about self-sustainability in terms of money?

Incredible You should call the Catholic Church. Nice to see how, somehow, what started out as your unproven assertions and baseless accusations have now trans-substantiated into irrefutable fact.

Sloppy editing on my part. Here's a link illustrating the extent of their wind power subsidies.

Until 1999, the government provided direct grants for each kWh turbine owners sold to the grid. Now Denmark has about 15 subsidy programs for both energy production and consumption. The largest subsidy is a production subsidy per kWh for electricity generated from renewable energy resources.

I find it amusing how this article later speaks of the "temporary nature" of the subsidies even though there have been heavy subsidies for wind power and later renewable energy since 1979. We also know of the particular subsidy (of indefinite size) for the Samso project. Do I still belong to the Roman Catholic Church? My early suppositions are now facts.

Sure, it's a pilot program. But my beef has been that it is so heavily subsidized (and you and I both know what subsidies mean) that we can't conclude how successful the program really is. With enough other peoples' money, you can do anything. As I see it, it's also a boondoggle, a tremendous waste of public funds to little consequence.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[cduffy]

Sure, it's a pilot program. But my beef has been that it is so heavily subsidized (and you and I both know what subsidies mean) that we can't conclude how successful the program really is. With enough other peoples' money, you can do anything. As I see it, it's also a boondoggle, a tremendous waste of public funds to little consequence.

You're conflating Other Peoples' Money used for one-time costs with Other Peoples' Money used for ongoing operation.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[khallow]

Sure, it's a pilot program. But my beef has been that it is so heavily subsidized (and you and I both know what subsidies mean) that we can't conclude how successful the program really is. With enough other peoples' money, you can do anything. As I see it, it's also a boondoggle, a tremendous waste of public funds to little consequence.

You're conflating Other Peoples' Money used for one-time costs with Other Peoples' Money used for ongoing operation.

While I don't actually do the conflating in the quote you mention, it is a natural consequence of public spending. One-time consumption (which rarely actually gets all spent at one time) of OPM routinely becomes indefinite consumption of OPM.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[khallow]

Denmark is not exactly known for corruption problems [infoplease.com], so I doubt they'd claim something like self-sustainability (including monetary) which could be disproved by checking the local government financial records.

I looked at my original post. So I see now how corruption figures in. My view is that there's enough money at stake, perhaps tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in renewable contracts and subsidies across Europe, to run a raw, corrupt fraud in Samso even if Denmark isn't perceived as "corrupt". Maybe I can trust the Denmark government with a billion dollars. But how about sums of money similar in size to a year of Danish GDP (that's 200 billion dollars in PPP GDP)? As I mentioned before, I don't see politicians actually making claims of financial self-sustainability.

Remember, the actual claim is that the island is self-sufficient in electricity consumption and that the region is at least carbon neutral. It is not self-sufficient in heating, for example. That's a pretty weak claim to make for ten years of activity, which due to existing wind power subsidies, probably would mostly happen anyway.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[cduffy]

While I don't actually do the conflating in the quote you mention, it is a natural consequence of public spending. One-time consumption (which rarely actually gets all spent at one time) of OPM routinely becomes indefinite consumption of OPM.

It's undoubtedly true that programs intended to be self-funding are not always so -- but to read that this is always true (or near enough to the same as to be usable as a premise in a debate with a third party who doesn't accept your assumptions) strikes me as akin to resorting to "but the Bible says so" in a discussion with an atheist. If there's no commonality of premises, how can one have reasonable and rational discussion of conclusions?

Not that it matters...

[jchillerup]

... but it's 'Samsø.' And 'Søren Hermansen.'

SOME-suh?

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon, these pronunciation hints are getting ridiculous. I'll consider them again when native English speakers can pronounce "grenouille" or ""Khrushchev" or "Brno" without any recognizable accent. We are all forced to use some kind of conventional transcription (if the alphabet is different) and pronunciation for about any language we can't speak.

The NYT is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

A small point, but the reason it's pronounced "SOME-suh" is that it's spelt Samsø and not Samso. In Danish, ø means island.

Also, while I'm complaining, can we please have summaries that do not just copy and paste whole paragraphs from TFA.

It's a great accomplishment

[Anonymous Coward]

If a small island with little sunshine can become independent and carbon negative what's stopping the rest of us? I hear lots of arguments why it can't be done but like the health industry the real problem is far too many people are making money off the current system. Wind only works well with large towers in certain locations but everyone has sunlight, okay except Seattle. Europe has had grass pellet burners for years and wood pellets are getting popular in this country. There's nothing wrong with burning wood or grasses if you replant and you are in areas where it won't affect air quality. Coal plants hardly improve air quality and between the two I find wood smoke pleasant and coal acrid. We should already get a 1/3 of our power from renewable sources so it proves we aren't really trying. Large wind towers and solar cells can be installed faster than power plants can be built. There's plenty of non lumber quality wood for pellet stoves and the ones that can run on corn pellets make far better use of the corn than ethanol. Other than grinding and pressing them into pellets corn requires no processing. I love hearing about places like the island it just shows how far we have to go.

Re:It's a great accomplishment

[HornWumpus]

If a small island with little sunshine can become independent and carbon negative what's stopping the rest of us?

We don't have a mainland to pay for it.

While the might be carbon negative on a going forward basis (only time will tell), they should account for the energy inputs of all the green technologies and state a break even year.

The again I didn't RTFA so they might have, I doubt it.

Perpetual Motion Danish Style

[Anonymous Coward]

... it just requires energy from an external source

Re:Perpetual Motion Danish Style

[Kharny]

yes, it's called the sun, you might have noticed it.

Re:Perpetual Motion Danish Style

[longhairedgnome]

zing!

And no, it isn't pronounced like that.

[Anonymous Coward]

My apologies to all non-Scandinavians out there, but you really don't have the background here to properly pronounce 'Samsø', regardless of what TFA or the summary says.

In English you have the vowels A, E, I, O, U and Y.

Danish adds another three independent vowels to that list: Æ, Ø and Å.

It is literally impossible to pronounce Samsø when using only sounds found in English. In fact Danish children are known to dare foreigners try and pronounce 'Rødgrød med fløde' - the name of an old fashioned Danish dessert. English speakers basically don't want to try, as that sentence neatly throws another few unique Danish pronunciation and language rules into the mix. :-)

Re:And no, it isn't pronounced like that.

[Anonymous Coward]

'Rødgrød med fløde' - basically you say it with your tongue loose like a rubber flap. Nothing to be proud of.

Re:And no, it isn't pronounced like that.

[Sri.Theo]

Danish children? I had university lecturers try to get me to say that in Copenhagen.

I lived there for a year and still can't get that right... Strøget, is another pretty difficult one for such a short word.

Re:And no, it isn't pronounced like that.

[mrsquid0]

To make matters worse even the five English vowels have different pronunciations in Danish, and the distinction between E and I is very subtle, and can be hard for an English speaker to reproduce. In general Danish pronunciations can be quite hard for an English speaker. When I was living there I found it far easier to read and write Danish than to speak it. It did not help that essentially every adult under the age of about 50 is fluent in English, so when I tried to practice speaking Danish they tended to just switch to English.

Re:And no, it isn't pronounced like that.

[Zontar The Mindless]

My apologies to Scandinavians who confuse orthography with phonology, but you're wrong. Easy enough to make this sort of mistake, since the written representations of your languages are almost completely phonetic, whereas written English is anything but -- please refer to photi for a rather extreme example. :)

I'm a native English speaker with a fair command of German and Spanish, and I can get by in Swedish (have been living in Stockholm for 2+ years now). Having been born in the Southeast US, grown up in the US Midwest, worked for a British publisher, and lived for many years in Australia, I also have rather more than a passing familiarity with several major different English dialects. Linguistics and phonology are lifelong interests of mine, backed by some university-level studies as well.

One thing that a lot of non-natives (such as you, apparently) fail to realise is this:

(a) English has only 5 letters representing vowels*.

(b) This has absolutely nothing to do with the number of English vowel sounds, of which there are about 20. Wikipedia lists only 13, which might be true of US "NBC Handbook" English, but this is definitely well short of the mark when you account for British, Canadian, US Southern, Australian, etc.

Just because we lack a Ø (Danish, Norwegian) or Ö (Swedish, German) character does not mean that we don't have or can't pronounce the sound. The "ou" in could or should comes quite close. If I show a Swede the letter sequence KÖD and ask him to say it aloud, my English ear will inform me that he's just said the word "should". (Not "could"; the high vowel makes the "k" soft.)

Native English speakers also have absolutely no trouble with Æ / Ä ("a" in bad, as pronounced by 90% of Americans) or Å (the "ore" in more as pronounced by many Brits and most Aussies), once they are shown what sounds these signs are intended to represent.

...

And it is annoying as fuck to have a Scandinavian keyboard and yet be forced by this site (alone amongst all those that I visit) to use the HTML entity references for Ä, Å, Æ, Ö, etc. Can we get with the 1990s and adopt Unicode sometime before the end of the decade, please?

-----

*I do not include Y, and you shouldn't, either, when talking about English vowels, because most English speakers do not consider it a vowel -- it's used 90% of the time to represent the semivowel that other Germanic languages spell with J. Depending on where you go to school, you might be taught that it's "sometimes" a vowel, or that it's simply a consonant that gets pronounced like a short "I" when it sometimes accidentally gets stuck in between other consonants, for lack of having any "real" sound of its own. It is almost never pronounced as Scandinavian Y or German Ü because that vowel sound is seldom if ever used by the majority of English-speakers, regardless of country/region.

Re:And no, it isn't pronounced like that.

[drinkypoo]

And it is annoying as fuck to have a Scandinavian keyboard and yet be forced by this site (alone amongst all those that I visit) to use the HTML entity references for Ä, Å, Æ, Ö, etc. Can we get with the 1990s and adopt Unicode sometime before the end of the decade, please?

Please add Unicode support to slashcode or shut the fuck up.

Re:And no, it isn't pronounced like that.

[emj]

Just because we lack a Ø (Danish, Norwegian) or Ö (Swedish, German) character does not mean that we don't have or can't pronounce the sound. The "ou" in could or should comes quite close. If I show a Swede the letter sequence KÖD and ask him to say it aloud, my English ear will inform me that he's just said the word "should". (Not "could"; the high vowel makes the "k" soft.)

Native English speakers also have absolutely no trouble with Æ / Ä ("a" in bad, as pronounced by 90% of Americans) or Å (the "ore" in more as pronounced by many Brits and most Aussies), once they are shown what sounds these signs are intended to represent.

You might be right usually it's the 'A's that are hard to pronounce.. But I would like to know how hard it is to show how to pronounce ö.

For what it's worth taking on a dare to pronounce Danish sentences even as longtime linguist isn't that smart. Even though it's very unfair I've heard people here in Stockholm referring to danish not as a language but a throat disease, in a loving Scandinavian brotherhood kind of way (or a arrogant big brother kind of way you choose.)

Re:And no, it isn't pronounced like that.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Hello, drinkpoo, I work for a major Open Source project and I already deal with my fair share of bugs reported by our users. The Slashcode devs can now kindly get up off their lazy arses and deal with theirs.

Meantime, please kindly go fuck yourself.

Re:And no, it isn't pronounced like that.

[xaxa]

It's too bad it's not a bug. Slashdot is working as designed. We don't need those characters.

Closed-minded, arrogant and incorrect, good work!

I end up typing £ (£) and € (€) here regularly. I see broken/missing characters regularly, typically copy and pasted curly quotes, long dashes and currency symbols.

Slashcode supports unicode, for proof see Solidot (Chinese Slashdot).

Re:And no, it isn't pronounced like that.

[32771]

There are not just 5 english vowel sounds though.

http://faculty.washington.edu/dillon/PhonResources/newstart.html

Oddly enough I remember my english teacher talking about 25 vowel sounds. I wonder how people come up with those numbers.

Since english is my second language I have to say that the way Americans pronounce the letters 'c' and 'z' if they spell them out, really is difficult for me to understand and reproduce. I just can't hear the difference. So while english has been easy on me some aspects are more demanding.

Re:And no, it isn't pronounced like that.

[Anonymous Coward]

that's fine, I'll just call it Sampo and move on.

Re:And no, it isn't pronounced like that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because we lack a Ø (Danish, Norwegian) or Ö (Swedish, German) character does not mean that we don't have or can't pronounce the sound. The "ou" in could or should comes quite close. If I show a Swede the letter sequence KÖD and ask him to say it aloud, my English ear will inform me that he's just said the word "should". (Not "could"; the high vowel makes the "k" soft.)

Native English speakers also have absolutely no trouble with Æ / Ä ("a" in bad, as pronounced by 90% of Americans) or Å (the "ore" in more as pronounced by many Brits and most Aussies), once they are shown what sounds these signs are intended to represent.

I am a native Danish speaker, and I can assure you that every single statement you make about the pronouncation of those words is incorrect.

I doubt it

[jipn4]

Samsø is in fact carbon negative.

Even if their entire domestic energy usage is slightly carbon negative, that's only 20% of a person's energy footprint. The other 80% goes into manufacturing goods, transportation, commerce, communications, etc. That carbon footprint accrues simply because the people of Samsø are Danish citizens and participating in the Danish economy.

So, it's unlikely that they are "carbon negative". Furthermore, they probably compensate for some of the inconveniences by externalizing energy usage--saving energy on their island by consuming more energy remotely on the mainland. Overall, they may have reduced their actual carbon footprint 10-15% relative to the mainland, but it's unlikely that it is more than that.

Imaginary self-sufficiency.

[Hurricane78]

with generous amounts of aid from mainland Denmark

Doesn't sound very self-sufficient to me.
More like the mainland payed for some power generators that are now used by the island. Same as if they would simply buy energy from the mainland.

I would have given them more respect, if they would have been able to finance it themselves.

And WTF is it with that:

straw-burning furnaces to heat their sturdy brick houses

They could as well just dig for coal or use manure for those fires. Not very progressive...

Re:Imaginary self-sufficiency.

[JJJK]

"energy self-sufficient". That means they produce all the energy they need by themselves. You are ranting about X not being Y, when X never claimed it was anything else but X. Go to a car-manufacturer and complain about how their prototypes are way too expensive.

Re:Imaginary self-sufficiency.

[uuddlrlrab]

Problems with their model?
Point out the flaw. I'm glad to point out yours.

1st quote & comments: Taken out of context. Funding was 1x time only for testing & startup. Also, the prototype for any project like this is going to be a big initial cost, likely more than what a local government can handle; the idea is that after a workable model is developed, that has a low to maybe even negative carbon footprint, ie more energy produced for less CO emissions, and as more investment is made into and research done on these alternate power sources, as more cost effective methods are found, implementation & upgrade costs will drop. That's called market development, genius.
2nd quote & comments: Pure batshit fucking insane cockamamey nonsense. How do you suggest they "just dig for" it? Strip mining? In a country that has reclaimed a good portion of it's land from the ocean, and faces an ongoing struggle against natural erosion to keep the land they currently have? With a (est 1/1/2009) pop density of 331.2/sq mi? Yeah, great plan. Besides that, the whole point is to get away from coal which is a notoriously polluting fuel.

If you have anything other than more hot air, ludicrous proposals, and childish sneering to contribute, I'd love to hear it. Until then, STFU.

...with generous amounts of aid from mainland...

[John Hasler]

"Self-sufficient". Right.

Re:For anyone who has bothered to read the article

[swillden]

the thing that should stand out the most is the part mentioning how someone uses cow milk to heat his house.

That is funny, but if you've ever been around a dairy farm, it makes a lot of sense.

When you milk a couple hundred cows twice daily, each giving about 3 gallons, the resulting 1200 gallons per day of blood-warm milk contains quite a lot of heat. Not only that, if the milk is intended for human consumption, it has to be heated further in the pasteurization process, raising it to about 170 degrees F -- and then it is often chilled, especially if it's going to sit in the tank for more than a day or two before being picked up.

I worked a little on my uncle's dairy farm as a kid, and I remember the big stainless steel holding tank being almost hot to the touch, and that was when he was producing grade B milk which didn't have to be pasteurized. Over the course of the day the chillers would gradually get the temperature down into the 50s (IIRC), but the next milking would heat it right back up.

There's a huge amount of waste heat that could very easily be exploited for heating.

What is still unknown...

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Can the power generated by ONE windmill build, from raw materials, another windmill, assemble it, transport it into place and erect and maintain it. The EROEI / emergy figures on this are obscure and hard to find and deeply contested. The windpower industry says either "yes, over the lifetime of a windmill, it will vastly exceed that value" or they make excuses like "it doesn't matter for () reasons".

The bottom line is if it generates less energy over its lifetime than is required to mine the metals, refine them, cut them into parts, assemble it, transport, erect and maintain it, then the windmill is actually not a source of energy, but an energy sink.

Experiments like the Danish island in TFA are interesting exercises, but there is much more fundamental work to be done. Like ascertaining the true EROEI of wind power.

Personally, if windpower IS positive EROEI, I would cheerfully cover much of the urban landscape with the damn things - people complain about how ugly they are, but acres of hideous shopping malls, towers designed in brutalist architecture aesthetics, and decades of craptasitc cartoon suburban ranches don't seem to raise much ire... It's a big challenge, and it needs to be met NOW.

Re:What is still unknown...

[mspohr]

The power used to build a windmill has a cost and this cost is reflected in the price of the windmill (plus wages, profit, etc.) so it is easy to calculate whether or not the windmill pays back the energy cost. If the windmill pays back its cost in the revenue from the power it generates then it is indeed generating more power than was used to build it.

Re:What is still unknown...

[32771]

So you want another study on top of the large number of studies already done. Fine - I question your motives though. It seems to be a smoke screen at best. I mean you could have looked it up yourself and presented your somewhat better founded ideas here instead of spreading FUD.

Regarding the EROI you could start here:

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_investment_(EROI)_for_wind_energy

and here:

"Food, Energy, and Society", David Pimentel, Marcia Pimentel, Edition 3, illustrated, CRC Press, 2008, ISBN 1420046675, 9781420046670

Interestingly the second source presents a much lower number for the EROI than the first.

After all, all power conversion systems currently in use have a higher than 1 EROI, does this come as a surprise to you? Personally I count on the people who build power conversion facilities to have an interest in a properly filled wallet and the major energy storage medium being sold in some currency.

Re:What is still unknown...

[CrimsonAvenger]

The power used to build a windmill has a cost and this cost is reflected in the price of the windmill (plus wages, profit, etc.) so it is easy to calculate whether or not the windmill pays back the energy cost. If the windmill pays back its cost in the revenue from the power it generates then it is indeed generating more power than was used to build it.

At this point, if you were talking about anything but "green" power, someone would chime in about cost externalities that aren't covered by the cost of making everything, yada, yada.

So I'll do them the favour of doing so: you're not including the externalities like the cost of the pollution produced in the mining, manufacturing and transport parts of this transaction.

Re:What is still unknown...

[mspohr]

Good to see that you understand that the cost of power and most manufactured goods involve creating pollution and that pollution is not included in the cost.

Why is it that I only see this argument when people are trying to discredit 'green power' and never when they talk about how cheap coal and nuclear power are to produce?

I'm sure that you understand that once you have built a solar panel or windmill, it produces electricity without pollution but with coal and nuclear they keep producing pollution forever. So... I am happy to include the cost of all externalities in calculating the cost of power... solar and wind both come out far ahead. (If you have any references that try to prove the opposite, I'd love to seem them.)

Re:What is still unknown...

[CrimsonAvenger]

citation?

Also, a citation listing the continuing pollution of fission plants?

Re:What is still unknown...

[uuddlrlrab]

Pollution from nuclear plants? Unless I'm mistaken, the only "pollution" (in terms of what goes directly back into the environment) might be heat pollution, and that, I do believe, depends on design. See this article about Nuclear plants. The biggest problem I see is what to do with the spent fuel. Research is ongoing in regards to that, I do believe. Wacky idea: take over some of the old, abandoned pit mines that mining companies failed to reclaim, keep digging, and turn those into spent fuel repositories, and charge the responsible mining co. for upkeep.

Re:For anyone who has bothered to read the article

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that odd it has a side effect of cooling his milk, which is probably the primary purpose of his device. The waste heat gets pumped and dumped in his house.

Bricks

[gatkinso]

Bricks take a tremendous amount of energy to produce and transport.

Esp "sturdy" ones.

Re:Bricks

[uuddlrlrab]

lolwut???

The houses were already there, genius.

All I can think is...

[Anonymous Coward]

um, Vienna?
Sorry, just another ignorant American.

More problems

[Tweenk]

1. There are only 4000 people on this island.
2. The island has an area 114 km2.
3. Thus it gives us a population density of 35 people per km2.
4. Even if people were distributed evenly across earth's land area, it could support slightly more than 5 billion people in this matter. Of course a lot of earth's area is not habitable, and people are not distributed evenly.

Other problems:
"However, its heating plants, burning wheat and rye straw grown by its farmers, cover only about 75 percent of the island’s heating needs, continuing its reliance on imported oil and gas."
"The islanders, she said, have all the necessary home appliances, like washers and dryers, refrigerators and stoves. Yet, she added, "Electricity is expensive, so they buy the basic models.""

If the energy density is 2 watts per square meter, they need 228MW. I highly doubt this figure, because the entire Pomeranian voivodeship in Poland (over 2 million people) uses 600MW during winter evening peak hours.

[citation needed]

[mangu]

medieval serfs worked less than you do

Care to elaborate how did you come to that conclusion? How do you compare the work done by a medieval serf with the work done by a typical worker today without comparing their respective quality of life levels?

The quality of life enjoyed by someone in the middle ages, serf or squire it doesn't matter, was way below that of a homeless person today. We see people calling it a "pandemic" when a few thousand people die of flu, how can you compare that to an epidemy that killed one third of all people in Europe, because they all lived in a filthy rat-infested environment and didn't have water to take a bath to get rid of the fleas?

More money has been proven not to translate into more happiness

Then give yours to someone who needs it, that will make both of you happier.

More food was produced per acre before the green revolution

Only if you compare an acre in England with an acre in the Mexican desert.

A new approach to self-sufficiency

[purplie]

Will someone please give me "generous amounts of aid" so I can become "self-sufficient" too?

One gearbox to bankrupt them all.

[tjstork]

Let's do some math. At 4,000 people, that's around 8mw of peak demand assuming 2kw per househould.

So one guy plinked down 1.2M to buy one windmill. The best windmill gets you I think 3Mw, and even then, only if it is windy. By contrast, for about a million bucks, I could pick up a diesel generator station that delivers the 8MW and have power for everyone, whenever they need it.

Re:One gearbox to bankrupt them all.

[uuddlrlrab]

And you'd still be burning a fossil fuel, albeit not as dirty as some, which defeats the entire point of the Samsø project. Of course, for those still trying to pretend global warming is a myth cooked up by nutcases and that the ice caps aren't receding, a diesel generator is fine too...

Re:Spuds!

[conureman]

As one who has just tasted my first fresh-harvested potatoes, I'd say you don't know what you're talking about. I have always enjoyed potatoes, but this year we grew a few (two square rods) and the flavor was transcendent. I would suggest that every bit of spare ground be sown so the people can share in this experience. Stored and dried and shipped &c. is truly not the same at all. I am so sorry that I didn't learn this fifty years ago. What a wasted life.

Re:For anyone who has bothered to read the article

[0100010001010011]

MooThermal Heat Pump?

Re:For anyone who has bothered to read the article

[timpaton]

the thing that should stand out the most is the part mentioning how someone uses cow milk to heat his house.

That is funny, but if you've ever been around a dairy farm, it makes a lot of sense. ... There's a huge amount of waste heat that could very easily be exploited for heating.

To me, that just goes to highlight the vast amount of low-grade heat that is available, effectively for free, and the absurdity of burning virgin fuel to produce low-grade heat suitable for house heating.

Warm air is a waste product of almost every process in the home (to say nothing of industry, or the warm air available free from a very crude solar-thermal collector), yet we choose to consume fuel to produce special warm air to heat our homes. Insanity.