Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

276National Energy Securitynow being planned will integrate these functions with on-farm production of fuelalcohols from crop wastes, using waste heat for successive processes and sharingother infrastructure, then selling the alcohol or using it to run farm vehicles.• Another common variation on this theme is to heat the digester in thewinter with waste heat from the bulk milk chiller (a giant refrigerator whichmany state laws require). This often boosts the methane yield so much thatone forty-cow dairy farm’s output can meet all its own energy needs—beforeefficiency improvements—plus those of five other farms.• Still another common pattern integrates the wet or dried residues of alcoholproduction into livestock feeding: the high yeast content makes the stillagea premium, high-protein feed. The carbon dioxide from fermentation can alsobe sold to refrigerant or soft drink companies, or used on the farm to raise thefood output from a greenhouse. The greenhouse can also provide a productiveenvironment for growing algae or other crops, perhaps partly fed by sparenutrients from the digester.• Greenhouses can be integrated with other features of a building so as tosave energy and money. 25 For example, an attached greenhouse can providemost or all of a house’s heating requirements; a frostproof site for a simple,year-round solar water heater; a cheery “sunspace” that extends winter livingspace; and a place to grow food in all seasons. 26 In such a building, simplesheets of hard plastic can be wrapped into cylinders to form very inexpensivefreestanding water tanks which both store heat and grow fish. In one CapeCod greenhouse, each tank pays for itself annually through its oil saving (viaheat provided by the storage function) or through its fish production, with theother output being effectively free. Some houses are now even integrating foodproduction with water recycling or sewage treatment: water hyacinth sewagetreatment plants, now commercially available, 27 yield better water quality thancostly and energy-intensive tertiary treatment plants, while sequestering heavymetals and providing a feedstock for producing methane and fertilizer.• Swedish researchers are exploring the use of wood wastes for steel production—notonly because wood chips are cheaper than oil (or, in some places,than coal) and contain no sulfur to degrade the quality of the steel, but alsobecause the ironmaking reaction converts the wood into liquid or gaseousfuels which can be recovered and used at virtually no extra cost.• Where wood wastes are burned for cogeneration, as is now common inthe forest products industry, it appears to be possible to cascade process heatto produce methanol—a premium motor fuel—as a cheap byproduct fromsome of the “junk” wood input. This could also be done in the kind of smallwood-fired power station proposed in some parts of the northeastern U.S. andCanada. 28 Indeed, if property designed, such plants could simultaneously pro-