JR: Gives new meaning to GIGO. Your jokes are welcome!
“The average cow makes enough waste per day to power a 100-watt light bulb.”
One Moos and One Hums, but They Could Help Power Google
Hey diddle diddle. Guess what the cow has done this time?
America’s dairy farmers could soon find themselves in the computer business, with the manure from their cows possibly powering the vast data centers of companies like Google and Microsoft. While not immediately intuitive, the idea plays on two trends: the building of computing centers in more rural locales, and dairy farmers’ efforts to deal with cattle waste by turning it into fuel.
With the right skills, a dairy farmer could rent out land and power to technology companies and recoup an investment in the waste-to-fuel systems within two years, Hewlett-Packard engineers say in a research paper to be made public on Wednesday.
“Information technology and manure have a symbiotic relationship,” said Chandrakant D. Patel, the director of H.P.’s sustainable information technology laboratory, which wrote the report. “And having these data centers locally will give farmers a new opportunity.”
Companies have historically tended to build their large computing centers — often called server farms — in or near large cities and industries. As this practice has continued over the years, it has become difficult for companies building the largest data centers to find enough cheap electricity and real estate to meet their needs.
The rise of higher-speed data transfer networks, however, has given technology companies a chance to move farther from large populations and still be able to get information to them as quickly as they need it. So companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com and Microsoft have been engaged in a mad dash to find spots in the United States that have plenty of electricity and land. As a result, more data centers have been built in states like Washington, Texas, Iowa and Oklahoma. If those locations are near dairy farms, so much the better.
Rather than being an alternative energy convenience, this approach could benefit companies operating in countries like China and India that need to find an economical way to power their computing centers.
Back on the farm, dairy producers have increasingly been looking to deal with their vast collections of smelly cow waste by turning it into something called biogas.
To make biogas, a farmer needs to buy specialized equipment that runs the manure through an anaerobic digestion process, which results in a large quantity of methane that can be used as a natural gas or diesel replacement.
“The average cow makes enough waste per day to power a 100-watt light bulb,” said Michael Kanellos, editor in chief at Greentech Media, a research and publishing firm.
According to H.P.’s calculations, 10,000 cows could fuel a one-megawatt data center, which would be the equivalent of a small computing center used by a bank. Mr. Kanellos has tracked both the data center and green technology industries and agreed that there was some convenient overlap. Computing equipment produces a lot of heat as a waste product, and the systems needed to create biogas require heat. So, there is a virtuous cycle of sorts possible.
“The cows will never replace the hydroelectric power used by a lot of these data centers,” Mr. Kanellos said. “But there is interest in biogas, and this presents another way to make manure pay.”
White House to announce energy-loan plan
The White House is expected to soon announce a multi-billion dollar package of new loan guarantees for nuclear and renewable energy projects to be supported by adding $180 million to a pending war funding bill.
The proposal follows talks Wednesday between Energy Secy. Steven Chu, White House officials and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.), who used her leverage to ensure solar would share in the funding together with the nuclear industry.
The administration has already proposed a greatly expanded loan guarantee program for nuclear as part of its 2011 budget. But Chu would like to advance a quarter of the planned increase into 2010 to make $9 billion more immediately available.
In Senate testimony last month, the secretary said his goal is to put three reactor projects on a faster track and believes this can be done for a relatively small up-front cost of $90 million to satisfy congressional budget rules.
South Carolina and Texas, two Republican-leaning states, have a direct stake in the outcome, and Chu has a valuable ally in House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, whose own state of Maryland is home for a proposed new reactor with financing helped by the same loan guarantee program.
Pelosi has been open to Chu’s request but wants parity for her priorities: solar and other renewable energy programs. Within the California delegation, there has been criticism, in fact, that the Energy Department has been slow to advance major solar proposals in the state. And quite apart from solar, the speaker wants the White House to restore an estimated $2 billion previously “borrowed” from a program she favors to promote more fuel efficient, clean energy type automobiles.
This was the background to Wednesday’s meeting attended by Chu, Budget Director Peter Orszag, and Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy. Hoyer and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), a strong Pelosi ally and chairman of the Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee, were also present.
Report: Kan. could have 30,000 green jobs by 2012
Kansas has the potential to create up to 10,000 “green” jobs in the next two years, adding to the 20,000 people already working in that sector, according to a new state survey.
The Kansas Department of Labor released results Tuesday of a voluntary survey designed to gauge potential employment growth in sectors including renewable energy development, energy efficiency, agriculture and natural resource conservation, pollution prevention and remediation, and alternative transportation and fuels.
The report said the largest increases were expected in renewable energy, up 121 percent; energy efficiency, up 57 percent; and clean transportation and fuels, up 37 percent.
“This gives us our first good look at the areas of the green economy where we have jobs today and where we’re likely to grow jobs in the future,” said Kansas Department of Labor Secretary Jim Garner.
Bill Thornton, secretary of the Kansas Department of Commerce, said the survey supports efforts to provide programs that educate and train workers in biofuels production, installation of efficient furnaces, manufacturing of products for wind farms and dozens of other occupations.
“The survey shows clearly that the future demand for green skills and knowledge is significantly greater than the current demand,” Thornton said. “That is good information to have as we consider future training efforts.”
The report was based on a survey sent to more than 6,000 Kansas employers in late 2009, with about 55 percent responding.
Senate Energy Bill Less Costly than Alternatives
A proposed climate bill unveiled last week by senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is getting the support of some economists and utilities as a relatively inexpensive way to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions that will initially have almost no impact on electricity prices. The supporters, however, worry that the legislation won’t be passed, which would open the way for far more expensive regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The bill, called the American Power Act, is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lay out a national energy strategy. Last year Congress seemed to be moving quickly on passing a climate and energy bill after the House passed such a bill in June, but Senate versions stalled. It’s not clear when the Senate will officially take up the new bill, which was put together with the help of Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who recently withdrew his support. Meanwhile, the EPA is drawing up regulations for controlling greenhouse-gas emissions that could go into effect in January if Congress fails to pass a climate bill.
The new bill seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent as of 2020 and by 83 percent by 2050, compared to 2005 levels, by limiting the amount that major emitters can release into the atmosphere. These limits will be enforced via a type of cap-and-trade system. This would require utilities, and eventually heavy industry and refiners, to obtain allowances for emissions, some of which will be given out, and some sold. Companies can decide to either reduce emissions or buy enough allowances to cover their emissions. The allowances can also be traded between emitters. Some of the proceeds from purchasing allowances will go to pay down the federal government deficit, some will go directly to consumers in the form of rebates, and some will fund programs to encourage the development of new technologies.
The bill includes incentives for nuclear power, natural-gas vehicles, and carbon-dioxide capture and storage technology, which would be most useful for coal power plants. It funds R&D for renewable energy and advanced vehicles, and includes a variety of measures to help decrease petroleum consumption. It includes incentives for offshore drilling, but states that could be affected by oil spills can veto projects.
Unlike the bill passed by the House last year, the Senate bill does not require utilities to use renewable energy, but such provisions exist in a separate energy bill sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), and they could eventually be incorporated into the new bill. Another key difference with the new bill is the introduction of the rebate program for consumers that will offset the costs of the bill.