Lines drawn for wind turbine project
A story by Bob Kliebenstein in The Tomah Journal reports on public response to a proposed wind project in Monroe County:
If attendance at Tomah Holiday Inn on Feb. 9 is any indication, the Feb. 20 Sanitation/Planning & Zoning/Forestry Committee meeting will likely be standing room only.
Opponents of a proposed commercial wind farm in Monroe County sponsored the meeting last Thursday at the Holiday Inn. Opponents are asking the committee to take more time to review a proposed wind farm ordinance that will be considered by the committee at its Feb. 20 meeting, scheduled to start at 8:30 a.m. The committee will meet in the county board room. . . .
The Chicago, Ill., firm Invenergy is proposing a wind farm development, Summit Ridge Wind Farm, that would be spread over five Monroe County townships, Ridgeville, Wells, Wilton, Tomah and Jefferson. It would consist of 43 to 50 turbines. Company officials have secured easement contracts from landowners for 10,000 acres.
For every gallon of E85 Ethanol combusted in an automobile, 17.06 pounds of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide are exhausted to the atmosphere.
Sure, that’s less than the 23.95 pounds of CO2 that gets exhausted from burning gasoline. But it’s still an addition to the already unnaturally high volumes of CO2 gas already present in the atmosphere. Plus this doesn’t even count the greenhouse gases that are emitted by fuel burning to plant, transport and process the raw materials into ethanol in the first place.
The other thing to consider is that once all the carbon dioxide is emitted to the atmosphere, it remains in the atmosphere for an average of 50 to 200 years, before being reabsorbed back into plants, the ocean or rocks (IPCC 2001). So as more CO2 is emitted in ethanol burning, it continues to build up in the atmosphere, just like the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted from gasoline burning continue to build up in the atmosphere, which has been making the “greenhouse effect”
stronger. That’s why global temperatures on the average have been rising and will continue to rise, steadily, for the foreseeable future.
In short, for the purpose of fighting global warming, it is far better to work on finding ways to burn less fuel (drive fewer and fewer miles every year?). Another factor to consider is that if you burn ethanol, you’ll have to burn more of it than gasoline to travel the same distance, which causes more greenhouse gases to be emitted.
There is no free lunch when it come to motor vehicle driving and the environment, even if you shift from burning gasoline to burning ethanol.
Better to drive less and burn more calories instead of combustible fuels.
Source:
http://o2collective.org/biodiesel.shtml
See also:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ClimateArchive/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ConserveNOW/
Mike Neuman
February 15, 2006