Some scientists are sounding a warning bell about the rush to plant new biofuel crops. Charlie Schlenker reports they worry the new crops could damage the environment:
Transcript
Some scientists are sounding a warning bell about the rush to plant new biofuel crops. Charlie Schlenker reports they worry the new crops could damage the environment:
The scientists warn many potential Biofuel crops have similarities with plants that have become invasive and damaging to crops and the environment. Ecology Professor Roger Anderson is the co-author of a recent article in the journal Science. He notes plants targeted for biofuel crops such as Miscanthus and switchgrass grow fast:
“They have very high rates of photosynthesis, so they’re gonna yield a lot of biomass. A second feature is that many of these plants also have few enemies and pests and diseases.”
Anderson says no studies have determined whether these plants are likely to get out of hand as kudzu, johnsongrass, and giant reed have. Anderson says invasive alien plants cost U-S agriculture more than $123 billion a year. He worries political pressure to plant new biofuel crops may cause damaging shortcuts.
For the Environment Report, I’m Charlie Schlenker.
With skyrocketing crude oil prices much of the nation’s attention has turned toward alternative fuels. While many people are focused on ethanol production, one small town is looking at turning waste from humans and hogs into electricity. In a few months, the town will break ground on a 10-million dollar processing plant. It hopes to become the first town in the nation to run completely off renewable resources. The GLRC’s LaToya Dennis reports:
Transcript
With skyrocketing crude oil prices much of the nation’s attention has turned toward
alternative fuels. While many people are focused on ethanol production, one small town
is looking at turning waste from humans and hogs into electricity. In a few months, the
town will break ground on a 10 million dollar processing plant. It hopes to become the
first town in the nation to run completely off renewable resources. The GLRC’s LaToya
Dennis reports:
To get where we’re going, you have to pass through small town after small town and
acres and acres of cornfields. Reynolds, Indiana is a farm town of about 500 people. It’s
hard to find on most maps. And it’s pretty easy to overlook. After all, there’s only one gas
station and three restaurants. But what Reynolds is doing is hard to overlook. Charlie
Van Voorst has lived there for a long time and is now the town president. He says the town is
going to provide its own electricity and it’s not going to burn fossil fuels like coal or
natural gas.
“Town board meetings went from talking about the neighbor’s dog in your yard to now
talking about million dollar decisions about what we’re building.”
What the town of Reynolds is building is a new power plant powered by the by-products
of the surrounding farms, chiefly, pig poop. The plant will use technology to pull
methane and other gases from animal and human waste. The gases will then power
engines and steam turbines. Coming out on the other end is electricity, and leftover solids,
which can be used for fertilizer.
(Sound of pigs)
Within just a few miles there are around 150 thousand pigs. That makes for a lot of
waste:
“Well, this is the bacon.”
Bill Schroeder is a local pig farmer. He’s standing in the middle of a thousand hogs.
They’re about knee high and weigh around 300 pounds each. They’re constantly eating
and pooping.
“It don’t smell to me, does it smell to you. When you walked in here, did you smell?”
Actually, it did smell, but Schroeder thinks it smells like money. He says he’s willing to
give the waste his pigs produce to the town to turn into electricity. After the waste is
processed, farmers will get a higher quality fertilizer back for their fields. But Schroeder
says some farmers still might hesitate because they’re not being paid for their pig waste.
“There should be return. Anytime you invest money, you expect a return. I mean if
you’ve got a CD in the bank you expect a return on that CD. It’s no different from
investment in machinery, hog buildings or anything else.”
Obviously, some of the financial incentives still have to be worked out, but Reynolds
town officials say there are good reasons besides money to take the town off the existing
power grid. Right now, Reynolds gets its energy from coal. That puts a lot of carbon into
the air. Methane processing produces less carbon dioxide than coal.
Jody Snodgrass is managing director for Rose Energy. That’s the company building the
processing plant. He says the project has another environmental benefit. It reduces the
amount methane from pig manure that’s released into the atmosphere because it’s
captured and used to make electricity.
“The increase of methane causes increased cloud formation. Also causes decreased ozone
layer and basically contributes to global warming as does carbon dioxide and several
other compounds. And if you can reduce those or eliminate those, that obviously is a plus
for the environment.”
That’s the reason the town of Reynolds is getting the support of the state in its effort to
become energy independent. Although everyone’s not on board yet, town president Charlie Van
Voorst is excited about what’s to come. He says small town farming communities haven’t
seen a development this big in more than 100 years:
“Oh, my goodness. Since I’ve grown up, golly. I suppose you could talk about the –
something to this magnitude would be when electricity came into our community.”
Town officials hope Reynolds is powered by pig poop and other alternative fuels by
2008. They say if things go well, their town could become the model for other small farm
towns across the country.
For the GLRC, I’m LaToya Dennis.
HOST TAG: This piece was originally produced for NPR’s Next Generation
Radio.
The Bush Administration is proposing a Renewable Fuels Standard Program. It aims to double the use of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
The Bush Administration is proposing a Renewable Fuels Standard Program. It aims to
double the use of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. The GLRC’s Lester
Graham reports:
This new regulation would require more renewable fuels at the pumps. The Bush
Administration predicts we’ll cut petroleum use by nearly four billion gallons a year.
Most of those fuels are expected to come from crops such as corn for ethanol and soy
beans for soy-diesel. But some scientists say using food crops for renewable fuels is a
short-term fix.
That’s because it takes a lot of energy to produce ethanol from corn. At best, the net
energy gain in growing, harvesting, and processing corn into ethanol is: one energy unit
input producing a one-and-a-quarter energy unit output. And, ethanol production has been
heavily dependent on government subsidies.
The Environmental Protection Agency notes that new technologies might be able to
produce ethanol from agricultural and industrial waste, such as scrap wood chips,
at a cost that’s competitive with today’s gasoline prices.
GM will build three new crossover SUVs at the Lansing plant. Production will start this fall. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
GM chose materials inside the Lansing Delta Township Assembly Plant to minimize indoor air pollution. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
GM says its new Lansing Delta Township Assembly Plant is the first auto manufacturing plant in the world to get a gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
A new assembly plant from one of Detroit’s Big Three car companies is getting attention for its “green” qualities. Big Three automakers may not rank at the top of most environmentalists’ list for companies of the year. But some say the new auto plant is a sign that environmentally-sensitive manufacturing has finally gone main-stream. It’s not just because building green plants is the right thing to do. Really, it comes down to a different kind of green. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has the story:
Transcript
A new assembly plant from one of Detroit’s Big Three car companies is getting attention
for its “green” qualities. Big Three automakers may not rank at the top of most
environmentalists’ list for companies of the year. But some say the new auto plant is a
sign that environmentally-sensitive manufacturing has finally gone main-stream. It’s not
just because building green plants is the right thing to do. Really, it comes down to a
different kind of green. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has the story:
The first thing you notice about the smell of General Motors’ newest plant is how much
you don’t notice it. The plant smells like nothing at all. Not paint, grease or even that
new car smell. GM says it specifically selected materials for its new Lansing Delta Township
Plant in Michigan to limit indoor air pollution. And there’s a lot more to not notice about the plant.
Like how much space it doesn’t use.
On a tour with reporters, GM Environmental Engineer Bridget Bernal points out that less
than half of the plant’s 1,100-acre lot has been developed. The rest is left green, including
75 acres for habitat preservation:
“And basically in that 75 acres, we have a couple of pretty large wetlands, along with
some smaller wetlands. We have a rather large wood lot. And we’ve got a significant area
that’s being developed as native prairie.”
GM says it only planted native species on the site. And it planned ditches and culverts to
help filter water as it drains into other areas. A quarter of the materials used to build the
facility was recycled. The plant uses 45 percent less total energy than a traditional plant.
And, on the day GM gave reporter tours, it rained. Even that gets used. The water is
collected in cisterns, and used for flushing. GM says the plant saves a total of more than 4
million gallons of water per year.
Put together, all these elements were enough to win GM a LEED Gold Certification from
the U.S. Green Building Council.
Kimberly Hoskin is director of the council’s new construction program. She says she’d
been traveling a lot for work when one of her colleagues asked if she’d be willing to take
a trip to an event Lansing, Michigan.
“And I said, ‘Well, who’s it for? And she said, well, General Motors.’ General Motors, a
factory, is getting a LEED Gold Certification? Yes, I’ll go. Of course I’ll go. This is really
exciting.”
GM is not the first auto company to use green elements in an auto plant design. Ford’s
Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan was built earlier this decade with a 10-acre “living”
roof that helped manage storm water runoff.
But Hoskin says, out of about 560 buildings in the nation that have been certified by the
Green Building Council, only five are manufacturing facilities, and GM says the Lansing
facility is the first auto assembly plant to get Gold, the agency’s top rating.
But for GM, the green elements of the Lansing Delta Assembly Plant aren’t just about the
environment. They’re about cold, hard cash. The lower energy use alone will save GM a
million dollars a year. That gives people like Hoskin comfort that the plant isn’t just a
public relations move by GM and it increases the chances that we’ll see more green plants
in the future.
Sean McAlinden is Chief Economist with the Center for Automotive Research:
“As we slowly replace our old big 3 plants, many of which are very elderly, they’re all
going to look like this. They’re all going to be green plants. In fact, some of them will
keep getting greener.”
That’s good news for places where there’s a lot of auto manufacturing, but many people
are not ready to absolve GM of all of its environmental sins.
David Friedman is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says a green plant is nice,
but the real problem is still the product:
“Over eight times the impact on the environment when it comes to global warming is
once that vehicle leaves that plant. That’s the biggest step that we need automakers to
take and to improve the fuel economy of all of their cars and trucks.”
GM, and other automakers, say they are working to make cars cleaner. High gas prices
may force even more changes as sales of big pickups and SUVs drop off. Ultimately, car
makers’ profits could depend on building cleaner cars, just as keeping manufacturing
costs down will depend on having cleaner plants.
That could change the way auto companies think about environmental improvements
because going green will be about more than just doing the right thing, or protecting the
brand image. It will be about protecting the bottom line. What’s sustainable for the
environment will also be sustainable for the business, and both will show a lot more
green.
Researchers say as average temperatures rise in the US, the demand for energy will go up as well. The GLRC’s Matt Shafer Powell explains:
Transcript
Researchers say as average temperatures rise in the US, the demand for energy will go up
as well. The GLRC’s Matt Shafer Powell explains:
Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee say they loaded all kinds
of climate, pollution and population data into one of the lab’s supercomputers. As
expected, they found that demand for heating in the winter will drop as the earth warms,
but not enough to compensate for the higher demand for air conditioning in the summer.
David Erickson led the project. He says that could make the problem of global warming
even worse:
“You’re going to end up having to create electricity by burning of coal, which feeds back
and adds more CO2 into the atmosphere that causes warming.”
Erickson says the computer models they’ve created can be adjusted to adapt to any
changes in energy technology or policy.
While the Department of Energy faces several lawsuits
to its proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site in Nevada,
tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste are stored at nuclear
plants. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
While the Department of Energy faces several lawsuits to its proposed Yucca Mountain
nuclear waste site in Nevada, tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste are stored at
nuclear plants. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:
A U.S. Court of Appeals recently sidelined a lawsuit challenging the Energy Department’s plans to transport high-level radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain, but at least seven other lawsuits are waiting in the wings.
The plan to store radioactive waste such as spent nuclear fuel rods from power plants
under Yucca Mountain has been in the works for two decades. The government had
planned to open Yucca Mountain in 2012. That schedule has
been pushed back five years to 2017. The government needs the time to get approvals
from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and to prepare environmental impact reports
that are expected to face further court challenges.
Nuclear power plants, which are often situated near rivers or lakes, are storing the
radioactive waste on site and some plants are running out of room and are to store the waste
in containers outside.
Most scientists believe the earth is warming, partly because of carbon dioxide from sources such as coal-fired
power plants and automobiles. A new study shows the heat-trapping gas could be pumped into deep-sea sediment. The
GLRC’s Christina Shockley reports:
Transcript
Most scientists belive the earth is warming, partly because of carbon dioxide from sources such as coal-fired
power plants and automobiles. A new study shows the heat-trapping gas could be
pumped into deep-sea sediment. The GLRC’s Christina Shockley reports:
Right now, carbon dioxide is usually just released into the atmosphere. One solution
could be pumping it into the ground, but it might leak back out.
Dan Schrag is a professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. He co-
authored a study that shows carbon dioxide pumped into sediment in the sea floor
wouldn’t come back up:
“It’s a very high pressure because of the weight of the overlying water, but very low
temperature. And as a result, the carbon dioxide sits not as a gas, but as a dense liquid.
It’s in fact denser than the sea water and so it wants to sink, not rise.”
Schrag says the carbon dioxide would be stable under the water for millions of years. He
says this is one option of many that need to be considered.
Schrag says the technology exists to get the gas underground, but cost could be a major
hurdle.
Developers want to put wind turbines in offshore locations like Lake Ontario and off the coast of Massachusetts. (Photo by David Orsborne)
Already, several environmental groups are behind the idea of putting wind farms in waterways. (Photo by Lester Graham)
The U.S. Department of Energy wants 20 percent of the country’s electricity supply to eventually come from wind power. Some of that power could come from wind turbines located on the water. The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports some power companies are hesitating:
Transcript
The U.S. Department of Energy wants 20 percent of the country’s
electricity supply to eventually come from wind power. Some of that
power could come from wind turbines located on the water. The
GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports some power companies are hesitating:
Until recently, the strength of the wind on the water was mainly of
interest to the shipping industry, anglers, and to people who like
to sail.
(Sound of sail ruffling and folding)
Lee Konczak is folding up the sail on a small sailboat that he often
takes out into Lake Michigan. Konczak says he likes the serenity of
riding on the wind and the beautiful view from offshore. Even so, he
says he wouldn’t mind if the view included a few wind turbines:
“With energy certainly being at the top of the news practically on a
daily basis right now, and with limited resources, I think an
experimental kind of thing with wind turbines would be excellent.”
Some wind power companies are planning more than a small
experiment. An effort is underway to put up 140 wind turbines in Lake
Ontario and another developer wants a wind farm off the coast of
Massachusetts. The industry would like to develop more projects. It
says the US is behind some European countries when it comes to
going offshore for wind. Compared to the US, European countries are
short on fossil fuel supplies and they don’t have as much land. So
they began placing turbines offshore a few years ago.
John Dunlop is with the American Wind Energy Association. He says the land-based
wind turbines in the US and Canada are important but often trigger local
disputes over new overhead transmission lines. Dunlop says lake-based
wind turbines would avoid some political squabbles by being close to
many cities:
“We enjoy living next to water, so consequently our population centers
tend to be close to the water which means a lake-based installation
may be no more than 10-20 miles away from that load center. Now, to get
that energy, that electricity from that wind project back to the city
you do need to have underwater cabling, but that’s a fairly common
technology so that’s not a huge impediment or a huge cost.”
Several environmental groups are getting on board with the idea of
putting wind farms in waterways. Charlie Higley is with the Citizens’
Utility Board in Wisconsin. He says there are already many coal and
nuclear plants near the water:
“Both of those have huge environmental and economic costs
associated with them, so we’re supportive of the development of
wind, not only on land but we really think the time is now to
start looking at developing wind resources on Lake Michigan.”
Higley acknowledges some people may not like the look of wind
turbines if they’re installed within view of the shoreline. Other
supporters concede there also needs to be more study of wind speeds
over the water. They also say there needs to be a cheaper way to fix
turbines that break down in waters dozens of feet deep.
Walt Musial helps oversee offshore wind projects at the National Renewable Energy
Lab. He says getting to a turbine in water is no easy task:
“You can’t drive a truck, so you have to drive a boat, or perhaps a helicopter like they do
in Europe. These add costs as well, and so these methods of accessing turbines have to be
developed and minimized.”
Still, Musial says because the Energy Department’s long-term goal is
to promote more wind production, he predicts some of that wind power
will come from offshore. But for now, the uncertainties have many
power companies rooted in inland turbines.
Kim Zuhlke is with Alliant Energy. He says his firm prefers a place
like Iowa, where there are already 800 wind turbines and a
desire from public officials to have more:
“You couple the acceptance, the economic growth, existing
transmission, all of those things together make it a logical place
for us to go.”
Still, Zuhlke says offshore wind turbines in the U.S. may become
a reality. He says engineers have to perfect a turbine that provides a big
enough payback for the additional expense of putting something way out in
the water.
A single wind turbine can change air currents, creating dangerous winds for birds and other airborne wildlife. (Photo by Michael Tyas)
Monitoring radar and thermal imaging for signs of migrating birds or putting sensors on turbines are some ways to lessen a turbine's impact on birds.
(Photo by David Orsborne)
Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sources of new electricity in the United States. For some environmentalists, that’s
good news. Wind turbines don’t spew smoke into the air. There’s no nuclear by-product. But there is an environmental risk. To see it, you have to view the wind turbines through the eyes of a bird.
The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has more:
Transcript
Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sources of new electricity in the United States.
For some environmentalists, that’s good news. Wind turbines don’t spew smoke into the
air. There’s no nuclear byproduct. But there is an environmental risk. To see it, you
have to view the wind turbines through the eyes of a bird. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer
has more:
Chandler Robbins has spent a lot of time studying how birds kill themselves. He says he
would go out on windy nights to the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. He’d
stand at the bottom of the 555 foot tall obelisk and watch the birds at the top:
“Just as they get to the tower, they just go around the edge of it and bang, the turbulence
from the winds going around the tower, sweeps those birds against the tower, and they’re
killed.”
Speaking at a conference, Robbins tells the crowd he once watched more than 500 birds
slam into the monument in one night, and that monument is standing still. Now imagine
wind turbines, some of them about as tall as the Washington Monument, with spinning
blades that reach nearly a football field in diameter.
Alex Hoar is with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He says a single turbine can now
change air currents for three acres around the turbine itself:
“So, if you put up a hundred turbines, the blades are sweeping 300 acres. So, that’s a large
space. And what we don’t know is when are birds and bats at risk.”
We don’t know because no one has really studied it. Both Alex Hoar and Chandler
Robbins say scientists know a lot about where birds take off and where they land. They
know about migration patterns, but they don’t know about what birds do, or where they
go while they’re in the air.
So, with more wind farms being built across the country, it’s not clear what affect they
might have on bird populations, but some suspect it won’t be good. Peter Kailing works
with an environmental consulting company. He recently did an environmental impact
study for a new 47 hundred acre commercial wind farm in Michigan. He says scientists
can learn a lot from the wind farms that have already been built. He says the ones that
have done the most damage to wildlife have a few things in common:
“The turbine was in a narrow valley, or a mountain-pass, or on the edge of a large
water body with steep wooded cover that was used by migrating songbirds, there’s almost
always a topographical association.”
Weather also plays a role. Peter Kailing and others say that birds tend to avoid cloud
banks by flying under them. That could put them in the path of turbine blades. So, one
way to limit damage would be to shut the turbines down on cloudy days.
Chandler Robbins says better technology could also limit damage. He says turbine blades
could be equipped with sensors:
“If a bird or a bat collided with that blade, it would set up enough vibration so that the
blade could be feathered temporarily to avoid other birds striking until the immediate
problem is over.”
Feathering essentially means that you twist the angle of the blade so that wind passes
over it, rather than pushing the blade into a spin. That way, birds aren’t sucked into it.
It’s basically the turbine’s braking system. Some say you don’t even need a sensor on the
turbine. They say engineers could monitor radar and thermal imaging. That would tell
them if any migrating birds are in the area, and if they are, feather the blades.
Of course, the absolute safest solution in the short term might be just to stop building
wind farms, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks that’s a good idea.
Most seem to realize that any way of making electricity will have some impact on the
environment. The question is what can be done with each of them to minimize the risk.
With wind energy, that work is just getting started.
Wind energy is among the fastest growing sources of new electricity generation. Now, scientists are looking at ways to make
wind turbines safer for birds and bats. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has more:
Transcript
Wind energy is among the fastest growing sources of new electricity generation. Now,
scientists are looking at ways to make wind turbines safer for birds and bats. The
GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has more:
A study published last year by the Government Accountability Office says wind farms
have had little impact so far on birds and bats, but the study says that could change as
more wind farms go up. The question is how to minimize the risk.
Alex Hoar is with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:
“Not all turbines cause a problem. There are turbines around that had bird
problems. There are lots of turbines that don’t. And we’re trying to learn why.”
Hoar says scientists know a lot about migration patterns for both birds and bats. But they
haven’t tracked the animals’ behavior while they’re in the air. Scientists are now using
thermal imaging and radar to study flight patterns in detail, and Bowling Green State
University in Ohio recently won a one million dollar grant to study the impact of smaller
turbines on wildlife.
