Maine college looks for wind energy to buy. Can't find it. Buys it anyway.

[NNadir]

BAR HARBOR, ME-College of the Atlantic, offering one degree in Human Ecology, has been a leader in both education and the environment since it was established 35 years ago. With no walls between disciplines, close mentoring relationships between students and faculty, and education by action as well as thought and study, COA has helped to change the shape of college education. Today, COA takes the lead again, becoming the first college in the nation to make a multi-year commitment to purchasing 100 percent of its electricity through new, renewable sources for the next 20 years.

Believing that finding sources of clean energy is a global necessity beyond dispute, the college has thoroughly investigated all possible power options. Of the options, wind power stands out as the cleanest and most accessible power source on the horizon.

Today, Earth Day, the college is signing two contracts to effectively eliminate its production of CO2 and other pollutants. The first contract is with NativeEnergy, LLC of Charlotte, VT. By purchasing enough renewable energy credits, or "green tags" from NativeEnergy to match one year of its electricity use, the college will help build the first Native American wind farm, being developed on the Rosebud Sioux reservation in South Dakota. This is an interim contract because there is still no wind power available in the Maine electricity grid.

http://www.megreencampus.com/COAEarthday.html


It's the thought that counts.

Six out of every 10 of the actual energized electrons purchased by The College of the Atlantic under this contract were actually propelled by burning natural gas, petroleum or coal. Two were powered by wood. Two came from hydroelectricity.

[kestrel91316]

1. Yeah! We all know what a BAD thing actually funding wind power

projects is.

[NNadir]

2. This isn't "funding" anything. It's a scheme to pretend.

That is the real fucking problem: People substitute pretend for action.

The College of the Atlantic could have invested in wind power by - get this - building a wind turbine, right on Campus. Is the wind any cleaner in South Dakota than in Maine? But they didn't build a turbine. Instead they chose to play pretend.

The discussion of the grand renewable future in Maine (and California and a brazillion other places) is fucking decades old. When does the posturing get replaced with actual power generated? While Maine talks about building renewable facilities - mostly it remains just that - talk. The result? More fossil fuels being burned.

This scheme evinces exactly and entirely what the rich kid "pretend we give a fuck about climate change" approach consists: Writing a guilt assuaging check. But physics isn't about psychological guilt games or about writing checks. It's about energy.

Fifteen years ago, Maine produced more than half of its electricity by Greenhouse gas minimized means, including a nuclear power plant that a bunch of loudmouths insisted be shut because they had some grand renewable vision. The same loudmouths are now talking about doing the same damn thing about the natural gas that replaced that nuclear plant - natural gas the burning of which produces waste that threatens every man, woman, child and fish on the planet's surface. Meanwhile the natural gas is still being burned, right now, right this minute.

I don't really give a fuck about the College of the Atlantic's rhetoric about writing checks for Native Americans - at least to the extent that the check writers don't participate in anti-nuclear activities. But I strongly suspect that these people are not calling for the expansion of nuclear power. In fact I would not be surprised to learn that they - in a genuflection to the forces of abysmal moral, scientific and technical ignorance - are opposing nuclear energy.

To the extent that anyone opposes nuclear energy while claiming to give a shit about climate change, they are lying - to themselves and everybody else.

[phantom power]

3. I think I see the real problem.

We need an electron tagging program. Then there will be no more ambiguity about where our electrons are coming from. It will be auditable. I have no proposal for how to do this in the real world, but in the world where Greg Bear's novels are real, this should be easy to do by setting unused particle descriptor bits.

We just need to make extra sure they're really not being used, by the electrons themselves or anybody else.