My readings this week continued to solidify an important lesson that has been formulated for me during this course: that sustainable cities require a diverse set of options in order to reduce their consumption and improve civic health. No one renewable resource, technology or green attitude will save an area from dependance from non-renewable resources. Rather, each community will have to diversify and look at a wide array of local options in order to move forward towards healthier systems. Increased community participation in civic decision-making and more social justice initiatives can help expand a region's green options by tapping into the knowledge and energy of a greater proportion of the population. Of course, creating site-specific and diverse sustainability options will tend to create very complex systems, but systems thinking approaches can help to sort this out and provide us with a deeper understanding of the immensely productive potential that ecological (and humans are included in this!) diversity can create.
Wind Turbine Cooperatives:
The Energy Efficiency and Renewables Chapter from "Toward Sustainable Communities" by Mark Roseland mentions cooperative wind turbines as an example of a useful green power program. The short paragraph focuses on Danish cooperatives that has joined together the efforts of over 150,000 Danish families and 6,300 wind turbines. The opportunity to research this amazing project was too good for me to pass up.
I am very interested in looking at wind power programs, particularly cooperative ones, because I think that such programs could be readily integrated into any regional power grid that has sufficient wind to operate a turbine. On an even more personal level, the precious growing area around my boyfriend's family farm is presently being threatened by plans to build a massive natural gas power plant. What better way to fight such an endeavor than to start a cooperative where the farmers can create and sell their own clean energy? The CREST (Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology) website claims that wind power is the fastest-growing green energy technology because it is the only one that can viably compete with fossil fuels in terms of cost.(www.crest.org)
One specific example of a Danish wind cooperative is the Working Group for Wind Turbines on Middelgrunden which was started in 1997. This project, located near Copenhagen, consists of twenty offshore turbines that are placed in a shallow area that was once used for dumping sludge and construction debris. The cooperative collaborated with Copenhagen Energy so that each organization built half the turbines. According to the project's website, "[t]he total effect of the wind farm will be 40 MW. The twenty 2000 kW turbines have a total estimated electricity production of about 89,000,000 kWh per year. This means that approximately 3% of the electricity consumption within the municipality of Copenhagen can be covered by these wind turbines."(www.middelgrunden.dk)
I found it interesting that the Middelgrunden wind turbines are placed offshore of Copenhagen. I have never seen offshore wind turbines in person, but I have often wondered why Toronto does not consider such an option in their quest for renewable energy sources. One of the arguments that I have heard against placing wind turbines offshore of the city is that people don't want such windmills marring their view of the water. I happen to think that wind turbines can be quite beautiful, and from the publicity statements from the Middelgrunden project, the Danish are very proud of both the energy production and aesthetic quality of the wind turbines. At this point, I think that the usefulness of wind turbines as a source of green power should outweigh our aesthetic condescensions. Well over 18% of Denmark's power supply now comes from the wind, and according to Wikipedia, Denmark isn't even all that windy! If Denmark can do this, why can't the United States and Canada?
No comments:
Post a Comment