Two Realities | Green Energy News

October 26, 2003 – Vol.8 No.31

TWO REALITIES.

One, without some technological changes such as floating wind turbine platforms, offshore wind may never be as big in the U.S. as it may become in other parts of the world.

Where waters are shallow off the U.S. East Coast there certainly are possibilities for significant offshore wind development. But then, the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) factor is as strong there as elsewhere in the U.S. And too, the wealthiest, that may own much of the ocean-view, wind-farm-view property, have the most political clout and can stop projects.

And the West Coast? Waters may be too deep to plant turbines. The floating platform idea needs to be developed. (There’s a strong NIMBY factor there too.)

Still, there’s energy in the oceans that needs to be tapped.

Two, as great as trees are, cleaning the air and all that, there’s much waste from trees - and not just dead limbs and falling leaves. At every stage from logging to home building the wood business is wasteful.

Waste wood - branches, bark, sawdust, lumber scraps, etc - can be thrown in landfills where it can rot and release carbon dioxide. Or it can be used as fuel to release carbon dioxide which in full-cycle could be reabsorbed by growing trees.

Burning wood directly as fuel creates air pollution. But wood waste could be made into cleaner burning fuel and put to work.

The Massachusetts Technology Cooperative (MTC) has awarded $2 million divided into four grants that would help advance technologies that speak to the above realities.

-- Verdant Power will get $500,000 towards a project for a 20-kilowatt tidal current generating demonstration project in the Merrimack River in Amesbury, Massachusetts. The project will use Gorlov Helical Turbines. http://www.verdantpower.com/ .

-- Energetech America will receive $500,000 to help build a 500-kilowatt ocean wave demonstration facility at Point Judith Harbor in Rhode Island. http://www.energetech.com.au (Australian web site).

-- Biomass Energy Resource Center has received a nearly $500,000 check for a combined heat and power biomass gasification system that will use wood waste to run an internal combustion generator for 112 kilowatts of power.

-- Renewable Oil International also received nearly $500,000 to demonstrate a 10-dry-tons-per-day-woody-biomass-to-liquid-fuel project at Hubbard Forest Industries, a sawmill. http://www.renewableoil.com/

Visit the MTC at http://www.masstech.org/