A common Sense Solution

When it comes to power generation two things are becoming increasingly clear: 1) the world is under-powered and 2) electricity generation needs to become greener. Booming economies across the world are building up power plants, like China erecting a power station about once a week according to some estimates. Other nations are suffering from power shortages such as South Africa. Even the American economy is going to face power shortages unless new generators are built soon, since there has been no nuclear built in three decades and over half of the applications filed for coal plants have been dropped in the past year. (according to a recent article on reuters.com)

As far as greener energy goes, it looks like that’s going to be the trend since industrial nations as well as less developed nations such as Costa Rica are striving to become carbon neutral and public opinion is turning in favor of carbon caps in other countries. At a time like this many Americans are relying on policy changes at the national level but it is state and local governments that are taking the lead. Despite relatively small budgets, local governments can make big changes that make sense. One way to make renewable energy more cost competitive with fossil fuels is to choose energy sources that provide alternate benefits. Case in point: anaerobic digesters. Municipal sewage needs to be treated regardless. Why pay to treat it when you can use a treatment process that produces energy.

According to Power Engineering International out of over 16,000 waste water treatment plants operating in the U.S. only 100 use the biogas generated to produce power. Municipal waste and power consumption will only rise with the population so the common sense approach is to kill two birds with one stone.

Tell me what you think. I would really like to hear an argument against this because it makes sense but is not applied on a large scale and there must be a reason.

For more information: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN1535162120080215?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2008-02/americas-50-greenest-cities?page=1