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

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]

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?

[emilper]

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

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

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: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: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.