Rooftop Wind Power

  • Power lines lead from a wind turbine placed near a coast to catch steady breezes. New designs for smaller turbines might be used in urban areas where wind is more turbulent. (Photo by Lester Graham)

The government wants 20% of the
energy generated in the nation from renewable
resources. Today, we’re at a mere fraction of
that goal. Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports experts
believe the US could get there sooner if wind power
technology can be moved successfully to where the
electricity is actually consumed, America’s
cities:

Transcript

The government wants 20% of the
energy generated in the nation from renewable
resources. Today, we’re at a mere fraction of
that goal. Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports experts
believe the US could get there sooner if wind power
technology can be moved successfully to where the
electricity is actually consumed, America’s
cities:


Right next to Lake Erie, a large wind turbine spins hypnotically in the
breeze. Its three big propeller blades provide only around 6% of
the energy consumed at the museum where it’s located, the Great Lake
Science Center. So the big turbine is mainly for educational purposes.
The museum’s Executive Director, Linda Abraham Silver says turbine
catches the steady winds off the lake:


“We don’t want turbulence, that’s right. Steady wind is what produces
the best energy and saves the gears and instrumentation inside.”


The single wind turbine stands in a wide open space near Lake Erie, but here
on the streets of downtown Cleveland, the wind is blustery and
unpredictable. These conditions are hostile to traditional turbines.
So the conventional wisdom was wind power couldn’t flourish in urban
environments… that is, until now.


“I think the problem was the propeller, not the whole idea that wind
power was somehow unable to be captured in the city. Some people even tell
you there is no wind power in the city”


Bill Becker is an urban wind developer from Chicago. He’s abandoned the three-propeller design for a horizontal one.
And it kind of looks like a metal DNA double-helix strand. He says it’s
actually two turbine designs in one so the machine can function in low and high winds. The turbine, manufactured
by Aerotecture, is a lot smaller than traditional ones so it can be mounted on rooftops. Becker’s installed 16 on skyscrapers in
Boston and Chicago. They can generate enough electricity to power two homes annually in a typical breezy day.


Becker’s not the only inventor who thinks there are better alternatives
to expansive turbine wind farms sprouting up on ridges and bluffs
across the country. And in England, the three-blade concept isn’t dead
yet.


The company Quiet Revolution has a vertical turbine with blades curving
up and down it. It creates power in even the slightest breeze, but that
power isn’t any more than Becker’s model and it costs 4 times as much.


Instead of catching open wind, in California entrepreneurs are
capturing a very specific type of wind: breezes traveling up and over
building parapets. Those are walls that extend past the roof lines of
big box retailers and factories:


“There’s a potentially great wind resource on those buildings that’s
not being tapped into today.”


Spokesman Steve Gitlin says the company AeroVironment is tapping into
this wind with systems of 15 turbines each. These futuristic rotating
fans, each about six feet tall, line the parapets of flat-roofed
buildings:


“What we’ve done is figured out there’s a unique acceleration of wind over that edge of the building
so the turbine’s designed to actually extend above and angle slightly downward
over that acceleration zone.”


The AeroVironment system is the most expensive… six times as much as the Aerotecture double-helix
design and generates slightly more electricity. It does, however, operate in very low wind, five miles per hour or less.


Ken Silverstein says this range in cost and efficiency shows the urban wind industry is
still growing. He edits Energy Biz magazine, and
adds to make an impact on the market, these turbine costs must come
down. And the government could help jumpstart the industry:


“It needs to develop, it needs to reach economies of scale so that the
technology improves, so that the costs come down and so that wind becomes more widespread than it is today.”


But Silverstein says, urban wind designs like these offers the hope
that businesses and even homeowners could capture the energy of the wind
directly on their own.


For the Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton

Related Links

Brewing Greener Beer

It takes a lot of water and a lot of grain to brew a good beer. And once that beer is made, there’s a lot of spent material and water left over. This excess is usually just considered waste. But two guys in the Great Lakes region decided to start a brewery that would focus on reducing pollution and waste and then re-using whatever was left over. They wanted to show how helping the earth could also help business. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports:

Transcript

It takes a lot of water and a lot of grain to brew a good beer. And once
that beer is made, there’s a lot of spent material and water left over. This
excess is usually just considered waste. But two guys in the Great Lakes
region decided to start a brewery that would focus on reducing pollution
and waste and then re-using whatever was left over. They wanted to
show how helping the earth could also help business. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports:


(ambient pub noise)


It’s a busy summer night at The Leopold Brother’s of Ann Arbor
Brewery. People have shown up to unwind after a long week. Some are
here to listen to the live band. Others to play a rowdy game of Pictionary
in the beer garden.


But mostly, people are here to drink the beer.


Brothers Scott and Todd Leopold own and run the brewery. A family resemblance is
obvious between the brothers.


But their roles in the business are totally different. Todd Leopold brews the beer. He’s a
big, friendly guy who seems at home in a comfortable-looking pair of old
overalls. Todd went to the Siebel brewing school in Chicago and got hands-on
training in four different German breweries. He uses techniques he learned over there in
his own facility.


His brother Scott Leopold is an environmental engineer, educated at
Northwestern and Stanford. Scott spent years helping big companies
save money by using environmentally sustainable business techniques.


But four years ago he decided to put his money where his mouth was.
One night, at a bar in Colorado, the two brothers came up with the idea
to combine their talents and start the world’s first zero-pollution brewery.


They wanted to build the model, then show people that it could really work.
Their idea was met with some skepticism by family and friends. Simply put, they
thought Scott and Todd were nuts. And Scott says they weren’t all wrong.


“Most of the entrepreneurs who are out there will tell you if they knew what they were
getting into before they got into it…they probably wouldn’t have done
it. We might not be alone in that.”


But so far the idealistic business venture has proved to be a success. Scott and
Todd have reduced the volume of a typical brewery’s waste by 90 percent.


To accomplish this, Scott and Todd designed a brewery where every detail was taken into
account to conserve resources.


“What we wanted to do was put science ahead of marketing…to ensure that anyone could
look within our production processes to ensure that it would stand up to the rigors of
science within the environmental engineering world.”


(ambient sound of brewery)


In the brewhouse, stainless steel machines gleam like they’ve just been washed. They’re
not brewing today… that only happens about once a week. But the factory computer is on
and its small, colorful graphics are showing everything that’s happening in the facility.


The computer helps cut down on the brewery’s waste by tracking and regulating all
energy and water use. So there’s always an accurate record of what was
produced versus how much of the raw materials and energy was consumed.


Todd Leopold says this helps him brew better beer.


“When you know everything that’s going in and everything that’s going out, if suddenly
that changes or there’s a spike you know there’s a problem and you’re able to track it
down. So it’s really helped me run a much tighter ship.”


All the other devices in the brewhouse are specially tailored to reduce waste. In fact,
they’re so efficient that Leopold Brothers generates 25 percent less solid waste residue
and buys 25 percent less grain than most small breweries.


That means they’re saving money.


Scott Leopold says their profit margins are nearly a quarter higher than they would have
been if they hadn’t made the investment in better equipment early on. But even with all
the complex equipment, there’s still some spent grain and water left over.


It’s all put to good use. The used organic malt and hops make great food for
animals at organic farms. Excess water from the brewing process is used in the
greenhouse in the back.


Pots of basil for the menu and moonflowers for the beer garden grow in there.
Conservation even extends beyond the brewhouse to the brewery’s decor.


Fat vinyl green tubes with zippers up the sides snake across the ceiling. They’re part of a
more energy-efficient heating and cooling system. And old doors hammered together
make up the bar.


The Leopold Brothers pay the same attention to detail when it comes to marketing their
product. The labels are made from vegetable-based inks. And they use recyclable
cardboard boxes as packaging.


But the brothers want to have an impact on brewing beyond just their own facility.


Todd says they have to start off small.


“We’d love to see the larger, world class…well, not world class, but world size breweries
that distribute their beer internationally to adopt some of the things that we do. It’s just
very difficult to infiltrate the corporate culture as opposed to where there’s one or
two owners. You sit down with them, have a beer, and say this is how you need to do
things. It’s much easier to have an impact on that level, I believe.”


Scott and Todd Leopold say the big breweries have adopted some conservation
techniques simply to save money…but they still generate a lot of waste water.


Scott thinks they could reduce the amount by introducing new machinery and changing
their cleaning techniques.


But U.S. Environmental Protection Agency environmental scientist Erik Hardin says the
big breweries will have to be shown that trying more new things will help the bottom
line.


“With most any big business, pollution prevention steps seem to be incorporated after the
people in charge have been convinced thoroughly that these things can actually save them
money.”


And the Leopold Brothers say that is the exact mission of their brewery …to show, by
example, that sustainability means profitability.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Annie
MacDowell.

Related Links

Trash Transformed Into Trendy Fashion

  • This purse, made out of an old license plate and recycled motorcycle hubcabs, was created by Pittsburgh-based company Littlearth. Photo courtesy of Littlearth.

It’s estimated that Americans will spend about 295 billion dollars during the holiday season. Sooner or later, most of what we buy will end up in the garbage – filling the already crowded landfills. But one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, entrepreneurs are taking our garbage and turning it into trendy products:

Transcript

It’s estimated that Americans will spend about 295 billion dollars during the holiday season.
Sooner or later, most of what we buy will end up in the garbage – filling the already crowded
landfills. But one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And as the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, entrepreneurs are taking our garbage and turning it into trendy
products:


(music playing)


At the Rec Room in St. Louis, Missouri, Angela Bergman is eyeing the store’s best-selling
product, a belt decorated with vintage bottle caps.


“It’s different, like everyone’s got the same old thing and that’s something not too many people
have.”


It’s called the soda cap belt and it was created by the Pittsburgh-based company called Littlearth.
The belt is made out of recycled rubber and the buckle is actually from the seat belt of a car.


Almost all of Littlearth’s products are made from recycled materials.


But Rec Room manager, Ed Sievers, says first and foremost, customers go for the style.


“Not the recycled, that’s certainly far secondary. It’s the fashion. They’re attracted to because of the
coolness and the fashion, basically.”


That’s exactly what Littlearth founder, Ava DeMarco, is striving for. She and her partner, Rob
Brandegee, started the company almost 10 years ago in the basement of their home.


Most entrepreneurs begin with an idea for a product. But Ava says they were inspired by
curbside shopping expeditions.


“We got old inner tubes and just went out and scrounged around for hub caps and license plates
and we’d bring all these found objects into our house and figure out how we could make them
into products with the equipment we had.”


Those strange materials have led to some pretty unusual items. For instance, there are purses
made out of old license plates. First, the plates are shaped into a cylinder. Then they’re closed
with a clasp. And plugged on either end with motorcycle hubcaps. They also make hair brushes
out of bicycle handlebars – the kind with tassels hanging off the end.


These days, the company sells its products in more than 2,000 stores across the U.S.


But no matter how much they grow, Ava says they’ll always start with a cool piece of trash.


“I like the whole idea of taking things out of the waste stream and making stuff that isn’t just like, ‘Oh, you made that at home,’ but it takes it beyond that and it’s just an amazing, unique, one of a
kind thing that’s really beautiful.”



“This clock was a chrome lampshade. That’s the cage of a fan. This is a clock made out of an old
lawnmower.”


Patti Smythe gives a tour of her store, The Garbage Palace in Toronto. She calls herself a dumpster diver. And while she runs a smaller business than Littlearth, her mission is the same – to
transform trash into treasure.


“These are our barbie angels and in the summer they’re called glamour barbies, so with old barbie dolls, we transform them into treetops. You put them on top of your Christmas tree. So that’s
what happens when Barbie dies. She becomes an angel.”


Smythe’s store is packed floor to ceiling with works of garbage art. There are the lamps made out
of old kettles and baking pans. Vinyl records are melted into vases. And broken chairs are
turned into tables. One has a giant film canister on top. Another is covered with a mosaic made
from broken plates. And, as a last resort, just about anything can be turned into a clock – the blade of a saw, a shoe tree or even a vintage blender.


Smythe says it’s not just about making money, it’s about inspiring others to do the same.


“I’d like to change people’s views. It isn’t garbage. We’re such a wasteful society: ‘Ugh, throw it out, we’ll get a new one,’ that kind of attitude. I’m trying to change that. It’s like, don’t throw it
out, make it into something else, you know?”


Smythe says she redirects literally tons of post-consumer waste every year. She keeps about a
quarter of what she finds and donates the rest to teachers to use in their art classes. At Littlearth,
Ava DeMarco recycles about 40 tons of rubber and 60 thousand license plates each year. Both
women say they love the thrill of discovering quirky items on the sidewalk. And they hope to
convince people to take a second look at their garbage and appreciate its hidden potential.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.