Move over turkey, Cow Power is online now.
The Associated Press reports in the Brattleboro (VT) Reformer that a 1200-head dairy farm has now joined the grid as an electrical generator, using a straightforward process to generate power from ? well ?
Actually this promises better than the Minnesota turkey plant. In this case an individual business (apparently a big-ole family farm) takes an unavoidable environmental burden — animal waste — and converts it to a significant amount of energy and a compost replacing $50,000 worth of purchased material annually, and does away with the disposal issue altogether. No need to transport manure all over the state, no incredible overcapacity built in to the project, a reduction of phosphorous in the lake ? it even has religious significance. Sounds like a winner to me.
Okay, it’s true that at $1.2 million startup cost — half of which was funded by grants — there won’t be one on every 40-acre plot in Johnston County, N.C., which is predominantly Southern Baptist and probably wouldn’t grant much pulpit attention to the effort anyway.
But in the eerie linkages of the universe, guess what prompted it all? Central Vermont Public Service wanted to sell a nuclear plant, and regulators told them they had to invest some of the savings in renewable power. Just like the Minnesota operation. Expect a pork power provision in any future licensing discussions in North Carolina.
