Wind Power Gets a Boost

  • The government's Recovery Act spending led to enough new wind turbines to power about two and a half million homes. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

2009 was a bumper year for new
windmills. But Mark Brush reports,
if it weren’t for government money,
it might have been a bad year:

Transcript

2009 was a bumper year for new
windmills. But Mark Brush reports,
if it weren’t for government money,
it might have been a bad year:

Companies normally have to borrow money from banks or investors to build big wind projects. And money was tight last year.

But the government stepped in with Recovery Act spending. It led to enough new wind turbines to power about two and a half million homes.

Even with government spending, experts say there’s still a lot of uncertainty in the wind business. The wind industry says the federal government should set mandatory goals for renewable energy. That way utilities will know what to expect over the long term.

Denise Bode is the CEO of the American Wind Energy Association.

“That kind of assurance sends a signal to a utility that they need to diversify their portfolio. That it’s in the public interest. And that gives them the support they need to go and make 20 and 30 year decisions. Right now, most utilities are making very short term decisions.”

A lot of the growth that happened last year happened in states that required a certain percentage of their power come from renewable energy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Wind Power Potential

  • In this study, researchers wanted to see what it would take to increase wind energy enough that it could provide 20% of power for the eastern United States. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

A new study says wind power
could meet 20% of
the energy needs of the eastern
United States. But to get there,
the nation needs to invest in a
lot of infrastructure. Samara Freemark reports:

Transcript

A new study says wind power
could meet 20% of
the energy needs of the eastern
United States. But to get there,
the nation needs to invest in a
lot of infrastructure. Samara Freemark reports:

The study was released by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That’s a federal lab that develops green technologies.

Researchers wanted to see what it would take to increase wind energy enough that it could provide 20% of power for the eastern United States. What they found was, we need a lot more transmission infrastructure.

David Corbus worked on the study. He says transmission lines would connect turbines offshore and in the Midwest to cities on the east coast.

“You have to get all that wind energy to where people can use it. So you have to build a lot of transmission. Which can be difficult to build.”

Difficult, and expensive. Corbus says those investments could cost more than fifteen billion dollars. But he points out that that’s actually a relatively small amount compared to the total that the nation spends on energy.

The lab will release a similar study on the western states in a few months.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Interview: Wind Power on the Water

  • Some people find wind turbines unsightly, and would prefer them off-shore (Photo courtesy of the EPA)

There’s a lot of wind along coastal
areas… perfect for wind turbines. But a lot
of people don’t like the idea of windmills
ruining the view. So, why not put them out
in the water, just out of view from the beach?
Projects have been planned or proposed or just
rumored off the coast of places such as southern
Georgia, Delaware, Cape Cod, and Michigan out
in Lake Michigan. There are already some off-
shore wind turbines operating in Europe. Thijs
Westerbeek is the sustainable
development expert with Radio Netherlands. He
says off the coast turbines are more popular
than wind mills on the land:

Transcript

There’s a lot of wind along coastal
areas… perfect for wind turbines. But a lot
of people don’t like the idea of windmills
ruining the view. So, why not put them out
in the water, just out of view from the beach?
Projects have been planned or proposed or just
rumored off the coast of places such as southern
Georgia, Delaware, Cape Cod, and Michigan out
in Lake Michigan. There are already some off-
shore wind turbines operating in Europe. Thijs
Westerbeek is the sustainable
development expert with Radio Netherlands. He
says off the coast turbines are more popular
than wind mills on the land:

Thijs Westerbeek: “Actually, the public reaction is excellent, because the whole
‘nimby effect’ doesn’t occur. The thing where you like wind energy, as a
principle. You like this big mill turning around and producing clean electricity.
But you just don’t want it in your backyard. You don’t want the noise, you don’t
want the flickering effect of the sun shining through, you don’t want birds to fly
into this, and you certainly don’t want to see it. Now, if the wind turbines are off-
shore, and far enough off-shore, that problem just doesn’t exist.”

Lester Graham: “One of the concerns is that the windmills will be an eyesore.
Can you see them from shore, and does it disrupt the seascape for either folks
on the beach or boaters?”

Westerbeek: “Well, that just depends. The two small-ish windparks, they are in
front of the coast of the Netherlands, are pretty far-off. You can just see the tips
of the blades. So that isn’t really much of a disturbance. The two gigantic
windparks, off the coast of Denmark, are actually a tourist attraction. People go
to see them.”

Graham: “What kind of problems are they for marine animals and sea birds
when they’re off-shore?”

Westerbeek: “This has been tested by scientists in Denmark. And they counted
1.2 million birds passing through, and not one was hit. The birds just see the
turbines. That’s just not a problem.”

Graham: “What kind of problem do they pose for ship navigation?”

Westerbeek: “Until now, and I’ve checked this with the Maron Research Institute
– that’s the maritime research institute here in the Netherlands – there haven’t
been any accidents yet. And that’s mainly because windparks are typically built
on sandbanks where there can’t be any traffic. However, if they would be built in
sea-going routes, and a ship would bang into it, you have a possible disaster on
hand, because the turbine will collapse – hopefully not onto the ship – but if it
does fall onto the ship, that could be possibly disastrous. So the suggestion of
this scientist at Maron that I called was ‘don’t build any windmills in, for instance,
the North Sea, which is just too busy’.”

Graham: “How do they get the power from the windmills off-shore to shore? You
have to have some kind of cable, I assume.”

Westerbeek: “And that’s a problem. Because the further windparks are off-
shore, the more expensive it’s going to be to get that power on-shore. And with
rising prices for copper, that really is a problem. The cable could ultimately be
more expensive than the park itself. Off-shore windparks are definitely much,
much more expensive than on-shore windparks. That is a fact. But they are a
political solution. People who don’t want on-shore parks for the reasons I named
– unsightly things, noisy things – that is just solved, that problem, if you have an
off-shore park. So, yes, they are costly, and maybe too costly, but it’s a political
choice to have them built.”

Related Links

Stone Ground Goodness

  • Using hand picks from North Carolina, Operations Manager Bill Schaubs starts his first solo millstone dressing project. He was taught by Upper Canada Village's Roland Tetrault. The deep furrows help the grain travel across the cutting plateaus--until done to the right consistency as judged by the miller. (Photo by Lucy Martin)

Today, we buy whatever we need from the
store. But what would happen if we had to make
our own butter or spin our own wool? We needed
these kinds of skills to survive. And many of
them took centuries to learn. Some people are
working to keep these skills alive. Lucy Martin
followed a man who works in a historic flour mill.
He’s taken the time to learn old skills that he
says still matter today:

Transcript

Today, we buy whatever we need from the
store. But what would happen if we had to make
our own butter or spin our own wool? We needed
these kinds of skills to survive. And many of
them took centuries to learn. Some people are
working to keep these skills alive. Lucy Martin
followed a man who works in a historic flour mill.
He’s taken the time to learn old skills that he
says still matter today:

(Sound of rushing water)

Bill Schaubs volunteers his time at Watson’s Mill in Ottawa, Ontario.

The old mill is powered by water. The water turns two huge millstones that cut grain into
flour. A few years ago, Schaubs learned how to maintain the millstones. He’s about to put
those lessons to the test – on one-ton wheels that are nearly 5 feet in diameter:

(sound of the Mill)

Lucy Martin: “Well, here are your beauties!”

Bill Schaubs: “They are. Absolutely! 1860’s beauties, if you will.”

Martin: “These date all the way back to then?”

Schaubs: “Yes, ma’am. They do.”

Millstones have something in common with car tires – their “tread” eventually wears down.
These wheels need to be dressed. Someone has to grind off encrusted flour
and re-chip the many grooves and surfaces, using hammer-sized picks.

It’s not a trade you
find in the yellow pages.

(sound of Shaubs chipping the wheels)

Bill Schaubs grew up on a farm. He still keeps some of his family’s land in production. But he
spent a lot of his career helping to build things for NASA. He thinks it’s important to know
many skills, old or new.

“Yes, keep the technology! It’s great; I love it too, OK? But we need to still keep our feet on
the ground and be realistic about everything.”

Schaubs says one reason to keep these traditional mills running is because of the kind of
bread you can make from them. These days, flour is typically milled in modern factories,
using high-speed metal rollers. A place like Watson’s Mill can’t possibly match those for
volume, or price.

But stone-ground flour is a specialty product. It isn’t always found at your nearby supermarket.
The high-fiber whole grain is cut, not crushed, by the stone’s sharp grooves. The process
preserves wheat’s natural oils and nutrients.

Larry Ellis is a big fan of bread made from this flour.

“I get at least one loaf, every week. It looks like it came out of your mother’s oven, sort of
thing, you know? (chuckles)”

Besides promoting things like flavor and nutrition, Bill Schaubs says there’s also a sort of
insurance factor.

“This grist mill here, is completely water-powered. So, if all else fails, we can always mill
flour.”

(sound of park visitors boarding a boat, speaking in French)

To keep the millstones in good shape, Schaubs had to learn from the experts. He came here,
to Upper Canada Village, an 1860’s era Heritage Park with its own grist mill.

Liam Carson works at the park. He says maintaining many different skills is important
because society doesn’t always know when they might be needed.

“If you can find a way of doing things that’s better, it doesn’t matter if it’s high tech or low tech,
it doesn’t matter if it’s now or then – better is better. And the more of these parallel paths you
have, that still exist, that’s a wealth of possibilities that can be accessed.”

(sound of the mill)

Back inside Watson’s Mill, the freshly-dressed millstones are ready to go. This is the test run.

(sound of wheat falling into millstones)

Bill Schaubs watches the gold-brown wheat trickle down while checking on the flour as it
comes out.

“There’s still a little bit of tweaking to do, but other than that, I’m happy! Good learning
experience, that’s for sure!”

Sometimes Schaubs worries that too many skills are getting lost. He’d like to see more
people taking the time to pick them up and pass them on. Old or new, he thinks we need
them all.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lucy Martin.

Related Links

Using Dams to Make Hydrogen

  • The Adirondack Trail. (Photo courtesy of the Adirondack Regional Tourism Council)

Across rural America, there are old dams and
millponds sitting unused. A century ago, they provided
vital hydro-power for local industry. But many of them
were shut down as big power companies offered more and
cheaper power. Now, one community wants to use its
hydro-dam to power a hydrogen making facility. Jacob
Resneck reports:

Transcript

Across rural America, there are old dams and
millponds sitting unused. A century ago, they provided
vital hydro-power for local industry. But many of them
were shut down as big power companies offered more and
cheaper power. Now, one community wants to use its
hydro-dam to power a hydrogen making facility. Jacob
Resneck reports:

(rushing water noise)

We’re standing beside an old dam next to a public area still known as Power Station Park.

“Back in the 1800s, where we’re standing now was a sawmill.”

Mayor Jamie Rogers is the mayor of Lake Placid, New York.

Two dams on this river create Mill Pond.

“As you look to your left, that was the old turbine house. It was one of two
turbines in the community that generated power for the village.”

After the massive hydro development in the late 1950s, Lake Placid’s hydro-electric turbines were
removed in favor of cheaper imported power.

Now the village is working on a project to again harness this local energy source. But this time it won’t
be for conventional electricity.

“We’d be generating power to start electrolyzing water to create hydrogen.”

Electricity from the dam would be used to extract hydrogen from the water. The hydrogen would then
be stored in high pressure tanks. The fuel could be used to operate vehicles without emitting any
greenhouse gases.

The researcher behind the Lake Placid proposal is Richard Greeley. He’s a former professor who’s
worked on other cutting edge energy projects.

“You use air from the atmosphere on one side and hydrogen on the other and they combine on the
electrode and it forms water and electricity.”

Greeley’s founded a company called Aqua Green Electric Energy. He hopes to develop local sources
for powering hydrogen fuel cells.

“This turbine set up I have could fit on any dam. Why you can renew it and generate electric power again from any number of dams, big, small,
little – any size. So, I’m thinking this whole feature can be duplicated once we show everyone that this thing works.”

The project is expected to cost $1.5 million dollars. The Village of Lake Placid won’t spend local tax money,
but plans to try to get state and federal dollars to pay for the project.

It’s expected to take at least 18 months to build. If it is built, it’s believed to be the first of its kind in the
country.

This project won’t be a money maker. The amount of hydrogen that could be produced would be at
most, about 25 kilograms a day – the equivelant of about 25 gallons of gasoline.

Eventually, local production facilities could spring up all over the country. Daniel Sperling is director
of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. He says as the sun sets
on the era of cheap oil, the nation and the world will have to start making other arrangements.

“It’s becoming increasingly urgent to reduce the amount of oil we use and to reduce the amount of
greenhouse uses. And in both cases hydrogen has great potential. Many people think that in 30 or 40
years it will be the dominant fuel source for vehicles, and for other uses as well.”

A 1998 survey by the U.S. Department of Energy found 212 untapped sites with significant hydro-
electric potential. That’s in the state of New York alone.

Lake Placid Mayor Jamie Rogers says all that unused power could eventually add up, cutting total
greenhouse emissions.

“If you look at small dams like this across the Northeast, across this state and probably across this
country, there’s a lot of potential to generate hydrogen fuel on sites from existing dams that are already in place.”

And he hopes his town is the first to show that it can be done.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jacob Resneck.

Related Links

Winter Sledding Audio Postcard

  • This audio postcard captures that moment as a kid when sledding down a hill is the ultimate thrill ride. (Photo by Lester Graham)

There’s a lot of talk about the effects of global warming. But on a
recent frigid night, kids were thinking only of the cold and the thrill
of sledding down a hill. Producer Kyle Norris squeezed into the back of
a couple of sleds with the kids. She has this audio postcard
of the experience:

Transcript

There’s a lot of talk about the effects of global warming. But on a
recent frigid night, kids were thinking only of the cold and the thrill
of sledding down a hill. Producer Kyle Norris squeezed into the back of
a couple of sleds with the kids. She has this audio postcard
of the experience:


“My name is Kayli Mills and I’m twelve years old. Right now we’re
sledding and we’re actually snowboarding because last year we didn’t
really get to do much. It’s dark right now and it’s really fun to do it
in the dark not only is the hill clear, but um, and it’s quiet and
everything but it’s just really fun when you really can’t see much.”


“We’re getting on the sled and you want to sit how it’s most
comfortable to you because you don’t want to fall off, for sure,
especially with two people. Um, I’m sitting just on my butt but with my
legs hanging off. But I’m going to go on my knees in a second when we
take off, just doing this so that the sled doesn’t take off on its
own.”


(Sounds of sledding down the hill)


“Isn’t that fun? Go C.J.!”


“My name is C.J. and I’m nine years old. I smell snow and woods and
we’re at the bottom of Slauson Hill ’cause we just went down and it’s
really dark out and the clouds are white and the sky it blue. Well,
it’s creepy kind of cause, cause it’s a really steep hill.”


(Sounds of the sled thrown down on snow)


“We just sat down and we’ll probably go pretty fast but I don’t know.”


(Sounds of sledding)


“That was fun. That was really fun.”


(Kayli): “Definitely the wind in your hair is the best part….”


(C.J.): “It makes your cheek red when you go down like about five times
cause the wind blows into your cheeks really hard.”


(Kayli): “I’d say that if you look at the sky it’s very, very
beautiful I think even more than the day could even be. I mean, there’s
not really a sunset but you can kind of see the colors fading in from a
blue to a pink a yellow to a blue it’s almost like a rainbow but the
whole clouds are just a rainbow, dark skies. It’s very pretty right
now.”


(Sound of sled fades out).


Host tag: Those were the sounds of Kayli, C.J., and Austin braving the cold for
an evening sled on Slauson Hill in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Crafting a House From Scrap Lumber

  • Kelvin Potter on the third floor of the house he's building with scrap lumber. (Photo by Chris McCarus)

One man and a few of his friends are using some old-fashioned methods and some cutting edge techniques to build an environmentally friendly house. The builders are also using a lot of material that other people would throw away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

One man and a few of his friends are using some old-fashioned methods
and some cutting edge techniques to build an environmentally-friendly house.
The builders are also using a lot of material that other people would throw
away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:


Four men are raising a timber frame house on an old farm
in central Michigan. Several feet up in the air, they’re piecing together
some beams, 12 feet long and 12 inches thick with some help from a small
crane.


(Sound of engine)


“Cable it! Cable it! Cable it? Yes!”


(Sound of tool dropping)


The framing is like assembling giant Lincoln Log toys. Neighbor Nick
Van Frankenhuyzen is holding a rope attached to some beams.


“Look at that. Look at how far that is extended. We lifted one of
those beams yesterday by hand and they’re not light. Now this wall has to
come back. This has to pop out again to make that one fit and I don’t
know how that’s gonna happen.”


Facing these kinds of challenges is what people in the green building
movement seem to relish. Kelvin Potter owns this farm. He’s using materials
that most builders overlook.


Potter: “Yeah we saved all these timbers, developers were burning all these.
So. These were all going up in smoke. And some of these logs came off my
neighbor’s property. They had died and were standing. We dragged ’em over here. He planted them. He’s
standing right there.”


Van Frankenhuyzen: “Yeah we’re standing on them. And then Kelvin
said I sure could use them. Because they’re the right size. Go get ’em. So he did. And here they are. Can’t believe it. Much better than firewood.”


Kelvin Potter’s home is one example of a growing trend in green building.
The U.S. Green Building Council includes 4000 member organizations. It’s
created standards for protecting the environment. The standards include
reusing material when it’s possible, using solar and wind energy, renewable
resources, and non-traditional materials. Sometimes from surprising
places.


(Sound of truck)


A city truck dumps wood chips onto a municipal lot. On other days it
dumps logs like sugar maple, oak and pine. The trees came from routine
maintenance of parks, cemeteries and streets.
Kelvin Potter is also here, checking for any fresh deliveries. While other
guys come here to cut the logs with chainsaws for firewood, Potter says he
makes better use of it as flooring or trim. Even saw mills don’t take advantage of this kind of wood. That’s because
trees cut down in backyards often mean trouble for the mills.


“Sawmills typically aren’t interested in this material because there is
hardware, nuts, bolts, nails, clothes lines, all sorts of different things
people have pounded into them by their houses. ”


Potter says sawmills use big machines with expensive blades that get
destroyed. So THEY throw the logs away. Potter instead keeps the logs and
throws away his blades. He uses cheap ones, making it worth the risk.
When it’s finished, Kelvin Potter will have an environmentally friendly
house, even if it doesn’t meet all the criteria to be certified as a “green
building.”


Maggie Fields works for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
She says there are many ways to build green. Anything that helps the
environment is a big improvement on the status quo.


“Every material that we reuse is a material that doesn’t have to be cut
from the woods, if that’s where it’s coming from, or remanufactured. And that means that the pollution that’s associated with that material getting
to that use state isn’t having to be created. So, it doesn’t matter if they
get the green seal. If they’re taking steps along that that’s great.”


(Sound of climbing ladder)


Kelvin Potter is climbing a ladder to the belfry of his new house. He
shows off his shiny steel roof, the kind now covering barns. He compares it
to asphalt shingles.


“It lasts 100 years versus 15, 20 years. We actually fill a lot of landfills with shingles. They don’t compress. They don’t decompose. Steel will
go right back into making more roofing or cars or what not. It’s a win-win
situation. It’s a lot cheaper all around and I can’t see why it’s not a lot
more popular.”


The point Potter and other green builders are trying to make is, good
building material isn’t just the stuff marketed at lumberyards. They say, “Look around. You might be surprised what you can use.”


For the GLRC, I’m Chris McCarus.

Related Links

Major Dock Corrosion Stumps Officials

  • The Duluth Seaway Port Authority's bulk cargo dock is typical of many in the port. Officials are troubled by corrosion appearing on the docks in the harbor - the steel is corroding much faster than normal. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)

Corrosion is eating away at the steel walls that hold one of the Great Lakes’ busiest harbors together. The corrosion is unlike anything known to be happening in any other Great Lakes port. But other port officials are being encouraged to take a closer look at their own underwater steel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Kelleher reports:

Transcript

Corrosion is eating away at the steel walls that hold
one of the Great Lakes’ busy harbors together. The
corrosion is unlike anything known to be happening in
any other Great Lakes port. But other port officials
are being encouraged to take a closer look at their own
underwater steel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Bob Kelleher reports:


Some kind of corrosion is eating away at the Duluth
Seaway port’s docks. The docks are those long
earth-filled metal rectangles where ships from around
the world tie up to load and unload. Those docks are
lined with sheets of steel, and the steel is rusting
away. Jim Sharrow is the Duluth
Seaway Port Authorities Facilities Manager.


“It’s corroding quickly – much faster than people expect
in fresh water. And our main concern is that we’ll lose
the integrity and the strength of the dock long before
expected, and have to do steel replacement at $1,500 or
more per lineal foot, much earlier than ever would have
been expected.”


Corrosion should be a slow process in Duluth’s cold
fresh water. But, Sharrow says, there’s evidence it’s
been happening remarkably quickly for about thirty years.


“What we seem to see here is corrosion that started in
the mid 1970s. We have steel that’s 100 years olds
that’s about as similarly corroded to steel that is 25
to 30 years old.”


It’s a big problem. There’s about thirteen miles of
steel walls lining docks in the harbor that serves
Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin. There’s half
again as many feet of wooden docks, held together with
steel pins. There’s corrosion on the legs of highway
bridges and the giant
steel ore docks that ship millions of tons of taconite
– a type of iron shipped to steel mills in Gary,
Indiana and Cleveland, Ohio.


“We characterize this as a 100-million dollar problem in
the harbor. It’s a huge problem, and what is so odd
about this is that we only see it happening in the
navigational area of the Duluth-Superior Harbor.”


The harbor links the St Louis River with Lake Superior.
Go a few miles up the river and there’s little corrosion
. So it doesn’t seem like the problem’s there. But, back
in the harbor, at the current rate of corrosion, Sharrow
says, the steel will fail quickly.


“I figure that in about 10 years at the current rate,
we will have to start replacing steel.”


“Particularly marginal operators could decide rather
than repair their docks it would be better for them to
go out of business, and we’re hoping that that isn’t
the case here.”


While the cause is a mystery, there’s no shortage of
theories. It could have something to do with stray
electrical voltage; water acidity; or the kinds of
steel manufactured in recent years. Chad Scott
discovered the corrosion in the late 1990’s. He’s an
engineer and a diver. Scott suspects
a micro-biological connection. He says there might be
something growing in small round pits that form on the
steel.


“We cleaned up the water. That’s the main thing –
that’s one of the main changes that’s happened since
the 70s, is we’ve cleaned up our water. We’ve cleaned
up our harbor, which is a good thing. But, when we
cleaned things up we also induced more dissolved oxygen
and more sunlight can penetrate the water, which tends
to usually promote more growth – more marine
microbiology growth.”


A team of experts met in Duluth in September to share
ideas. They came from the U.S. Navy, The Army Corp of
Engineers, and Ohio State University. And they agreed
there’s something odd going on – possibly related to
microbes or water chemistry. They also recommend that
other Great Lakes ports take a closer look at their
underwater steel. Scott says they at least helped
narrow the focus.


“We have a large laundry list right now. We want to
narrow that down and try to decide what is the real
cause of this corrosion. And these experts, hopefully,
will be able to get us going on the right direction,
so we can start doing testing that will identify the
problem.”


With the experts recommendations in hand, port
officials are now planning a formal study. If they
do figure out the cause, then they’ve got to figure
out how to prevent it. They’re in a race with
something, and right now they don’t even know with
what.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bob Kelleher.

Related Links