Vermont Launches 'Cow Power' System 400
odyaws writes "Central Vermont Public Service has launched Cow Power, a system by which power users can opt to buy 25, 50, or 100% of their electricity from dairy farms that run generators on methane obtained from cow manure. Cow Power costs only 4 cents/kWh more than market price, so a household like mine would only pay $5-6/month more at 100% usage. The big question now is whether Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream will use power generated from the manure of cows treated with Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone."
Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)
Beggers can't be choosers. (Score:3, Insightful)
Given that the submitter "odyaws" reports his electricity usage at about 150 kWh/month, that puts him smack in the middle of cheap-ass mom's basement dwellers.
Either the guy is blowing smoke outta his ass about the true cost, or he's the kind of guy that runs AC off the street lamp.
Average American person sucks up over 700 kWh/month. Traditional successfull 'geek' household (decent AC, two-car heated ga
Re:Beggers can't be choosers. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Beggers can't be choosers. (Score:2, Insightful)
Try $60/month? At average price of $0.10/kWh, $0.04/kWh bull shit surcharge will result in 140% premiums over what consumers would pay.
:
How about you ask your parents how much they are already paying for electricity? I will tell you how much my modest household of two spends: $2000+/year at the current rates in CA; +$0.04/kWh will cost me $60+/month.
10 years ago, from http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/press/press142.html [doe.gov]
* The average
Re:Beggers can't be choosers. (Score:3, Informative)
1. I somehow doubt that there is enough cows even in Vermont to supply the manure needed for all the state residential power consumption.
2. There is one major problem with Biogas - it has a very high sulphur content. It will be interesting how did they get around this. 'cuse if they did not the environmental cost of this will be enormous.
Yes, we are cheapass (Score:3, Insightful)
I am almost completely green for $120 a year. Why aren't you?
50% of people (and 99% percent of liberals) whine about the environment, and what the government should do to force everyone else (especially big business) to do something about it. 1% do something avoid hypocrisy and do something themselves.
Join the one percent
Re:Beggers can't be choosers. (Score:2)
Trade, espiecially free trade, suppose that if you don't like a supplier, you can turn to another one. On the oil market, the day Saudi Arabia wants it, it can create an economical crisis in the US and the world (already happened twice). Maybe it is desirable to prevent su
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Beggers can't be choosers. (Score:5, Insightful)
HAVING to turn to other countries for a vital resource = bad.
It's particulary bad when many of those countries are hostile to America, or could become so at any point. Our Middle Eastern peers aren't likely to shut off our oil supply any time soon - they like those oil profits, and we're an awfully big consumer - but they COULD. Or they could jack up the price to something even more obscene. They could play major havoc with our economy and way of life with very little effort.
Knowing we have other options would be a good thing.
Re:Beggers can't be choosers. (Score:3)
Re:Beggers can't be choosers. (Score:3, Interesting)
Recent figures (April 2006) show Canada as the largest supplier for that month at a whopping 17.4%, followed by Mexico at 16.3%, and Saudi Arabia at 16.1%. Nearly half (49.4%) of our oil comes from OPEC countries. And even a non-OPEC country is not guaranteed
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:2)
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:2)
Jon Lovitz??? Is that you?!
for that price... (Score:5, Funny)
let's marginalize alternative power (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:2, Funny)
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll leave aside the global warming debate (which will only bring flames) and focus on the economic and technological side of things. Depending entirely on a problematic, finite fuel source and saying to ourselves that "we'll quit when it becomes neccesary, and not a moment sooner" is essentially procrastinating and pretending the problem isn't there.
The simple facts are:
1) We have a finite supply of easily tapped oil. We have larger, but still finite supplies of less easily extractable sources of oil (like tar sands).
2) Our demand for the aformentioned oil is increasing.
3) We have no oil eqivalents yet that can take it's place. Nuclear isn't good for small vehicles. Solar/wind/hydro/etc are good for local power generation and little else. Fuel cells require either hydrocarbons or cheap electricity.
3) We will need to find another source of fuel eventually, whether in 10 years or 50.
None of these are in dispute, right? Unlike global warming, there isn't even any debate in the oil industry, much less the scientific world. All of these facts are easily demonstrated.
Now given that, why on earth would we wait til we've used our exisitng oil supplies up? For one thing, we do use oil for a lot more than just fuel, so we don't want to run out too soon even if we do develop a non-fossil fuel alternative. For another, we already have the technology to start tackling this problem now, even if it'll take years to completely kick the habit.
Waiting until we're almost out is a recipe for disaster. It's akin to quiting smoking once you've started coughing up blood. What if it runs out on us and we're still 10 or 20 years away from having a viable plan B? Do you really think a massive economic recession in the future is better than a taking a few expensive steps in the right direction today?
Saying "use more oil, the more you use the quicker it runs out" is ridiculous and irrational. I honestly hope you were joking, but even if you are, I've seen plenty of other people express the same idea as a serious solution. Complacancy is an extremely bad idea when you can see a disaster coming.
And like I said, all of the above is true regardless of global warming or the environment.
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:2, Funny)
Was the flames a global Warming joke?
-ed
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:5, Insightful)
If global warming, however, is as dangerous as advertised, well, then we have a market failure. But I don't think gasoline is going to be what causes it.
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:5, Interesting)
What we need to do now is mostly R&D and prototype work. When and if those pan out, then the free market takes over; even a less than totally cheap solution can be competative if it has advantages otehr than price, and "green" marketing is exactly the sort of thing that can make up for the difference in price.
However, as is usually the case, the groundwork can't wait for the free market to take an interest. We won't get alternative fuels without someone doing research into possible sources and people building prototypes that might or might not work. There's no gain in that if you're a for-profit corporation. Money takes the path of least resistance; trying to get it to flow somewhere that's not conductive to profit is like trying to get a lightling strike on a street level object in manhattan.
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like it sorted out Katrina? This blind faith in the economy is THE biggest problem we face on this issue. Because not only will people keep rationalising doing nothing, using this argument, but also it is seen by so many intelligent people as being a solution. It is not. It is doing nothing. The markets are driven by greedy bankers and speculators. They do like a long bet sometimes, but usually they're after a quick buck. Plus they don't have the expertise to predict the fallout from a slow but final oil crisis. When they do invest in a long term payoff, they want it to be rock solid. When it goes bad, they'll just invest in the next best "stable" investment (copper, grain, water....). They will not switch their vast accounts over to biodeisel.
The government MUST force the hand of industry, for the betterment of the majority! Such situations are rare, but this one is clear to me.
Actually, nuclear is a good match for vehicles. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you read US Patent # 4,835,433, you'll see that a device about the size of a keg of beer will crank out about 7500 W for 29.1 years, if you put a small amount of Strontium-90 in it (one gram - about 2mm of 16 gauge wire worth of material). Since Strontium-90 is generally considered nuclear waste these days, it's very easy to "mine" it out of our current waste dumps. If you want something smaller, then something the size of a "D" battery will crank 75 W for the same amount of time.
Even if you don't want to carry it around with you (it emits only alpha and beta particles, not gamma, so it doesn't actually require heavy lead shielding), you can use the electricity generated to generate fuel for use in fuel cells, if you'd rather carry around something combustible with you, instead of a keg of beer with neck-bolts.
What really annoying about the whole nuclear fear in the U.S. is that it's really a very green source of energy. You get more radiation released into the atmosphere from a coal-fired plant, not to mention the sludge for your lungs to filter ut of the air. If the U.S. would follow the lead of France and Japan, and build breeder reactors, and did fuel cycling like Japan does, we could stop digging for more fuel (it'd be generated as a by product of the reactor running), and it'd never be in a form where it could be used to build a nuclear weapon.
-- Terry
Re:Actually, nuclear is a good match for vehicles. (Score:4, Insightful)
This stuff will give you bone cancer [wikipedia.org]. Not exactly what I'd want to put under the hood of every car in the world, especially when accidents are so common. Plus, there's the whole "spontainiously combusts in the open air" business.
I'd think you'd get better results using nuclear plants to generate hydrogen from water using high-temperature electrolysis - that way you centralize your nuclear waste and fuel. You wouldn't really want a mini-generator in every home or every car for the reasons listed above, but regulated and properly governed nuke plants have a solid safety record.
The problem with that of course is it's a huge overhaul of our transportation system.
Re:Actually, nuclear is a good match for vehicles. (Score:3, Interesting)
A well built reactor could have FAR more than adequate shielding to prevent escape of either the beta radiation or the Sr90 itself (where the bone cancer comes in...it gets absorbed as Ca and then is an internal and localized beta emitter). Hyping up the danger of this while ignoring the danger of 10-40 gallons of explosive liquid in every car on Earth, w
A small correction (Score:3, Informative)
Reactors don't have to be built that way, and not all designs are intrinsically risky. For example, a Pebble bed reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_rea [wikipedia.org]
Re:Actually, nuclear is a good match for vehicles. (Score:5, Insightful)
TMI was the USA scare that got us to pay more attention to disaster scenarios. Even IF we had a Chernobyl type explosion in the states, it wouldn't be the big deal it was in Chernobyl since all nuclear reactors are covered by a pressure rated dome [wikipedia.org]. Basically, they're pre-enclosed in a sarcophagus already.
Basically, even with Chernobyl you can argue that coal [google.com] has killed more people.
Nuclear Power deaths: 3 Japanese workers* [umich.edu]
Chernobyl: 47 workers/accident responders, 9 children died of thyroid cancer, and IAEA/WHO estimate that 9000 more might die of cancer. Please excuse me for not using Greenpeace numbers, as they are both biased and known to exaggerate. 9000, in the last 20 years.
Let's take a look at coal.
Wiki says: [wikipedia.org]2004 alone cost China 6,000 workers, though some estimate as high as 20,000. US Coal mining is far safer, with only about 30 deaths/year. Still, we have yet to cover the health effects. 23,600 [earth-policy.org] per year due to air pollution, in the USA alone.
If you figure 1 nuclear meltdown/worst case disaster every thousand years, that kills the same # as chernobyl, that's an average annual death toll of 9 people. Meanwhile, coal mining in the US kills 30, even if you figure in that pollution controls eventually stops all the air pollution.
There's a reason I'd love to shut down every coal plant and replace it with a nuclear one. Preferably breeders that allow us to take all the 'waste' piling up around current reactors and burn it as more fuel again.
*who violated every safety reg in the book, mixing many times the amount of nuclear materials in a steel bucket rather than using the provided shielded equipment meant to do it in limited, but safe, quantities.
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason I left it out of my post was to avoid getting drawn into a debate. The usual arguement against doing anything to combat global warming is that doing so would be expensive. If I can show reasons for quitting oil that are economic, ie consequences that'll bite us in the ass whether the polar caps melt or not, then I can avoid any debate based on the costs of switching away from fossil fuels.
Any time someone brings up the greenhouse effect as an arguement for alternative energy, the debate over anthropic global warming re-erupts and the issues are forgotten about amidst the flames and political bullshit. Better to simply avoid that debate, leave it for the environmentalists and the neocons to fight it out, and focus on the other issues so that people understand why we need to quit fossil fuels. It isn't just a matter of the enviroment; relying on a dwindling fuel suppy to support our entire economy without looking for alternatives is moronic. We shouldn't have all our eggs in one basket.
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:3, Informative)
I don't have much of a beef with what you're saying, but I find it funny that whenever someone wants
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:2)
Besides, even ignoring that, any technological advance worth developing has initial costs. The first generation of any tech takes more effort that the subsequent ones. The benefit of doing this sort of work now is that we'll need to do it eventually anyway, and the sooner we start, the sooner it'
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:3, Insightful)
Hang on, the oil companies do not give a shit what regimes they prop up. No company or country does, it's all 100% self-interest. The issue here is that the benefit in switching away from oil benefits US not THEM. In fact, we've even propped up these regimes on purely political reasons, e.g. getting rid of a socialist alternative. So it's not going to happen any
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:5, Funny)
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:5, Funny)
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:3, Funny)
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:3, Informative)
All the same...
There are questions worth asking:
Methane gas has been killing american farmers for generations. Fatalities Attributed to Methane Asphyxiain (in) Manure Waste Pits -- Ohio, Michigan, 1989 [cdc.gov]
The up-front costs for the farmer can be huge. From Waste to Profit [retrobbs.org] (1988)
If I were the cynica
Re:let's marginalize alternative power (Score:2)
This is just.... (Score:2, Funny)
New math? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think someone misplaced a decimal point. I use about 1500
kwh per month. This extra cost would be $60 per month, not $6.
It would be cheaper to pay farmers not to farm than to come
up with kooky schemes like this that pay them twice - once for
their crazy milk subsidies then again to get rid of the methane
gas that it produces.
We might as well run power plants fueled by combusting dollar bills.
Re:New math? (Score:2)
Re:New math? (Score:2)
Re:New math? (Score:2)
Re:New math? (Score:2)
GENIUS!
Re:New math? (Score:4, Insightful)
The point of subsidies such as this is that it may provide incentive to other "green" energy producers to hook up to the grid. My electric co-op offers a similar sort of deal: I can pay a premium for blocks of 100kWh of wind-generated power per month.
Most of these schemes that I'm familiar with are for otherwise "free" energy: solar or wind power (or now reclaimed methane.) They are trying to offer these producers a limited time subsidy to help offset the startup costs. A 1mW wind generator costs about one million U.S. dollars to get up and running. Unless you get help with the interest up front, it will take quite a while to get that ROI back.
The radio recently reported that my state, Minnesota, published a paper showing that if windmills were erected at all the economically feasible points in the state, our generating capacity would exceed our current consumption by a factor of fourteen. That would mean total independence from fossil fuels for electric production for a long time to come. Just think what that would do towards stabilizing the price of energy, especially when compared to OPEC's cartel.
Remember, the "energy industry" isn't a single entity. The electric power companies have no particular love for the oil or coal companies. (Certainly mine doesn't, as it's a member-owned non-profit co-op.) They're business partners, and nothing more. Being forced to constantly raise their rates to compensate for the costs of fuel and seeing no profit from the increased prices has not instilled friendship. If they can do anything to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, it lowers their costs as much as anybody else's.
Sure, it's "extra" profit for the small energy producers. But it helps reduce dependence on foreign energy, and could eventually replace it at a much more stable price.
Re:New math? (Score:2)
You also have mechanical parts, hence wear and tear, leading to maintenance overhead as well.
Still, back in the
Re:New math? (Score:2)
You do realize that the majority of US electric power is generated by burning domestically-mined coal, right?
Re:New math? (Score:3, Informative)
Consider also having a few light bulbs on 4-6 hours a day, a fridge, a washing machine, a refrigerator and so on and you easily get to more than 3000 kWh/year while living alone.
A typical house(hold) of 4 would easily be consuming 500 kWh per month, if not more if you don't bother restraining power usage (power-saving lightbulbs, etc).
1500 kWh/month (Score:2)
1 "always-on" home server, ~0.2*24*30 = ~144 kWh/month
4 semi-used PCs, ~0.3*12*30 *4 = ~432 kWh/month
2 TVs (~4h/day), 2 refrigerators, 2 washing machines running almost non-stop during afternoons (spin cycle uses up alot of power), I can only a
Re:New math? (Score:2)
Re:New math? (Score:2)
Why pay more ? (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this straigth: you (the consumer) enrols to receive a percentage of your "power" from these guys (up to 100% only from them), and all your money (including the extra 4 cent per kWh, no idea how much the actual price per kWh you have, but I personally pay only about 10-15 cent per kWh, so an extra 4 cent would increase my bill easily by 30% or more) and only "markert price" (no idea how that much that is, but definetely way less than what you get charged as end-user) goes directly to the "manufacturer".
In other words, you basically just make a donation to the "cow power" people, but a donation that's not regarded as donation per se (well, it doesn't specify that, I was just assuming).
So what's stopping you from just using regular power and donating as much $$$ as you want directly to the people involved ?
It gets even better... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It gets even better... (Score:3, Interesting)
But the cow people won't produce it for the rates the electric company is willing to pay them. It's more expensive to produce a watt-hour of juice from cow-fart than it is from coal. Without the subsidy they're paid based on the fossil-fuel rates, and they lose money. This is a way for people to say, economically, "Non-fossil fuel power is more important
Re:Why pay more ? (Score:4, Insightful)
If I want to encourage certain behavior -- in this case, the use of Green power -- it makes more sense for me to pay you to do that behavior, than it does for me to just give you some cash for being yourself.
So yes, it's basically a donation to a bunch of farmers, but it's a donation to a bunch of farmers in return for doing something that assumedly you think is important (if you're participating).
Re:Why pay more ? (Score:2)
Just like hybrid cars. Pay more, but bask in the glow of personal 'greenness'.
Scotland has done this for years (Score:5, Insightful)
Over here in good old-jock-land, we've been doing this for years. When we are not drinking whiskey we are building hydroelectric dams and wind power farms. Several of the electicity companies offer schemes where you pay a little more for your energy, but get a guarantee that it's coming from green sources.
It's not the feel-good factor or the money that's important. What matters is that you aren't pissing in your childrens swimming pool.
bah (Score:2)
Bovine Biofuel (Score:2, Interesting)
But seriously, it's about time people started doing things like this en masse. We waste a shitload of resources we could otherwise make use of on a daily basis (no pun intended). If this catches on and becomes more widespread across the dairy sections of the country, and perhaps the world, people will quickly start looking at how to use other resources to their advantage - how about the methane from other farm animals, or perhaps human waste passing through sewers? Admit
WHO RUNS MAINE? (Score:2)
But seriously, it's pretty cool that a utility is playing friendly with independent energy producers like this. I wonder if the individual farms are paid the premium rate for their renewable energy, or what the deal is.
Way to increase FPS... (Score:5, Funny)
Economy! (Score:2, Troll)
Given the way market forces work, it wouldn't surprise me if this eventually fell to a price comparable with regular power, and stopped billing seperately. I mean, seriously, what else are they going to do with this stuff?
Set up a generator at the White House! (Score:5, Funny)
(And who knew Al Gore had such incredible ecological foresight in not contesting the 2000 election?)
Dirty Fuel? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm assuming this is marketed towards people who want some sort of "green energy" powering their homes. Is this really a clean(er) fuel source?
Sure, burning your favorite fossil fuel on a large scale isn't exactly clean. It is however heavily regulated and uses countless filters & scrubbers to clean up most of the nasty by-products. I'd be tempted to believe that a random milk farmer burning a fe
Re:Dirty Fuel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, its methane obtained from cow manure. I imagine the farmers keep the cow manure and uses to fertilize the grass.
Re:Dirty Fuel? (Score:2)
B&J already have done something like this... (Score:4, Interesting)
The milk waste would be fed to the pigs along with the ususal feed, I don't recall where the pig waste / methane was headed.
IIRC The first three pigs, by contract, were to be named "Ben", "Jerry" and "Ed" in honor of Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield and Ed Stanek - the Vermont EPA official who brokered the deal.
When I worked on the old NSF Student Originated Studies program, one of the 1980 projects out of Iowa was to use manure methane to fire a still, ferment leftover corn waste into alcohol, feed the leftovers from the fermentation back into the pig feed, and use the alcohol in the machinery. Decent efficiencies in the pilot, but a hard sell to the farmers, as they needed smaller farms to go in together to get the delta-t they needed for peak efficiency, and it smacked of big entities twisting little family farm arms. In fact despite the NSF badge, it was just a bunch of undergrads, but still no sale.
Effect of goods... (Score:2)
Of course, that gasoline would be used anyway in the production of these crops, milk, meat and byproducts, and that gasoline can be replaced by some other energy storage medium... but it seems to me that the onus is still on replacing gasoline and other fossil fuels, not burning whatever waste we can find and cal
Re:Effect of goods... (Score:2, Interesting)
The manure isn't removed from the agricultural system. The stuff is piled -- mostly over the Winter because the cows spend most of their time in the fields when the weather isn't too awful. It is spread on the fi
Uhh... (Score:2)
Granted not every farmer is sitting pretty, but most of the farmers I know that have the money to invest in methane-harvesting technology are alreaddy pretty wealthy. And this is just another way to get them higher up on the list.
I'm far more likely to support my farmers by going to the local Farmer's
Re:Uhh... (Score:3, Insightful)
YEAH! Cos like, the domestic farm industry is litteraly rolling in money, right? In actual fact they need government subsidies and regulation to stay afloat. That's the simple matter of it.
And if the best you can do is "bad because someone receives money from it", then how the hell do you live your
Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Informative)
Being from Vermont, I think you have a skewed view of dariy farmers (in VT). I don't know about where you're from but most of the dairy farms here are small family owned business that have been operating for generations, and out of all of the ones I know, NONE of them have mansions. They all have small family farms, work long hours for low income and constantly worry about being able to do it again next year. They do it because they've always done it, because they love it, and its a vermont way of life. They don't do it to get rich, they do it to keep Vermont's agriculture industry alive.
What I see is a local family owned farm which was suffering the same fate as most of the other farms in the state (1-2 bad years from being broke and out of business) finding a unique way to increase their income (and be sustainable, hey novel idea), provide "green-power" in the state where there is a huge demand for it, and be kind to the environement.
These people don't own mansions, these people work hard, bust their ass all day long, and continue a tradition dating back generations, while at the same time doing good for the state, and the environment.
Now, it may not be efficient, but it is a good use of what was being wasted before. What exactly is the problem you have w/ it again?
But do they warn you about... (Score:2)
Methane from Marijuana.. er um I mean HEMP! (Score:5, Interesting)
more [petitiononline.com] This one has a tons of facts covering replacing various industrial materials, historical uses, etc.
more [thehempfactory.com] Much shorter page but some others on the site are good reading.Jonah HEX
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Screw Ben & Jerry's... (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, kudos to the people who thought to start this program in the summer, give it time to work out all the kinks. I've always admired Vermont for their forward-looking thinking, after all the yeller Howard Dean was their gov'na for long time (and despite his unfortaunte public persona, he's got great ideas too).
This APT has Super Cow Powers (Score:2)
What effect will this have on Sci-Fi? (Score:2)
I can just imagine it:
In Star Trek: Cows in Space -- "We've lost anti-manure containment... Ahhhh!!!"
Another intersting use of green power (Score:3, Interesting)
Wind power (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What it actually costs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What it actually costs (Score:2)
Re:What it actually costs (Score:4, Insightful)
20 dollars = 2000 cents
2000/500 = 4 cents per kwh. Which then goes to the farmers.
40%? Where?
googling for prices... (Score:2)
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html [michaelbluejay.com]
"The average cost of residential electricity was 9.86/kWh in the U.S. in March 2006."
The fee charged by Cow Power is 4 cents per kilowatt hour. That makes the price almost, but not quite, 40% higher. The 4 cents also does NOT go to the farmers. That goes to Cow Power. The farmers presumably get market price for the electricity, minus a commission for Cow Power, presumably. Chances are, af
Re:What it actually costs (Score:2)
So in other words, take your annual electricity bill, add 40%, that's what you're now paying. Just for the 'benefit' of using cow shit.
Re:What it actually costs (Score:2)
What makes you think it was done for your benefit? I cannot understand how folk are confused by the price hike. Did you think it was done for you and that your cheque for share of the profits is in the post? ;-)
All of the people who contributed to the last two election campaigns (and who made the presidency possible) got what they wanted. You'll need to wait in line.
Re:What it actually costs (Score:3, Interesting)
This looks like a scam to make this look like the "green" thing to do when in fact, the result is going to make very little difference in how their energy is produced. Sounds jus
Re:What it actually costs (Score:5, Insightful)
Long story short, you're actually exactly right - we don't want this becoming extremely popular in the area. The simple fact is that we don't have nearly as many cows as we did ten years ago, since it's all done in massive superfarms out west. We've had laws passed that keep the milk prices artifically high just so the few family-owned farms still in business don't go under - they're all operating on razor-thin margins as it is, and many are losing money but stay around out of love for what they do.
We actually have a fairly large percent of our population that ARE willing to pay more to be green. My neighbors coughed up for a hybrid not for the gas savings (my father did the math pre-Katrina - even at $3.50/gal, you need to drive about 250,000 miles before you break even after the premium over a standard model) but because it's green - they also paid what I'd imagine is a good bit more for an electric lawnmower instead of a gas-powered one. We've voted down at least half a dozen times a bypass that connects all of the largely-retail areas together, simply due to pollution. While we're largely divided on things like the same-sex civil unions, most of the people in my state put the environment before the economy.
So while the idea may sound like a load of shit to you, the fact is that there wouldn't be enough shit to go around. I hate to be cliche', but this is a perfect example of "if we all do a little, we can all do a lot". Yes, one person using an alternative energy source just makes that person feel good inside, but if we all do it, there's a significant impact. It's not our only alternative idea - we've also looked into using trees in a similar way to a potato-battery (which largely did nothing, one tree had less power than a potato) among several other out-there ideas.
If we've got a dozen different alternative energy methods out there, and each has just 2% of the population using them, we've gone and shifted a quarter of the country - 75 million people - away from oil. While vehicles do tend to need a standard, there's absolutely no reason for every house in the country to get their power from the same method. And already they aren't. But say that we can make all farms not only self-sufficient but even generate a bit of extra power. It may not do a lot out here where the farms are going the way of the Dodo, but out in the land of megafarms, it could actually make a significant impact. I actually know Jerry's (of Ben and Jerry's) wife and son personally (had class with him, in fact), and I can assure you that it would certainly be a B&J thing to do if they found yet another way to support the local community and do something good for the environment.
Re:What it actually costs (Score:3, Informative)
Just like the monopoly for the net, we have issues with how we handle power distribution and generation.
Re:What it actually costs (Score:2)
Imagine that, huh? what a waste of money (not to mention life)!
But seriously now, I've heard that the nuclear industry gets similar government rebates - can anyone quantify this? I suppose future governments having to deal with
Re:Global Warming? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Global Warming? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since decomposing cow manure is going to emit methane whether we tap it for power or not (as will the cows themselves) it stands to reason that letting the methane go to waste is more of a greenhouse gas contributor than burning it. After all, the Co2 we release from combusting it will be resorbed by the plants the cows themselves eat, whereas the methane will not. And if we don't burn the stuff, it'll just end up in the atmosphere anyways.
Re:Global Warming? (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead of growing food to feed the cows and having methane producing manure to contend with, we eat the food and not the cows !!
Meat production (especially from cows) is a crazily inefficient way to feed ourselves and at 50x the water consumption of potatoes.
Re:Global Warming? (Score:2)
Then again, based the URL you have, you're a lot like the guy with whom I had a fairly pointless debate on Technocrat a few weeks ago. He maintained that just because we'd been eating meat for two million years didn't mean that we were designed to eat meat, and that if we just got rid of all meat we'd get rid of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and a host of other economic and health issues. It was my position t
Re:Global Warming? (Score:2)
Umm, it does. The technical innovation that permits this is called the "Plow".
Forget cows, I want to go Tractor Tipping.
Re:Global Warming? (Score:2)
Remember that methane is a very effective greenhouse gas. Collecting and burning it exchanges it for much more friendly CO2, as well as replacing coal produced energy.
There is a town in europe (Germany, maybe?) that is running its bus and train fleet on methane.
Re:Global Warming? (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong.
First, you're assuming that greenhouse gases are a significant contributer to global warming. This is not proved, beyond the obvious fact that without any greenhouse effect at all the average temperature of Earth would be around freezing. There is nothing to prove a causal relationship between elevated CO2 levels and warming. Indeed, it could be that warming (perhaps caused by increased solar output) ha
Re:Global Warming? (Score:4, Insightful)
The laws of thermodynamics aren't proved [wikipedia.org] either. Evidence is examined, and tentative theories are formulated. Nothing is proved. Welcome to science [wikipedia.org].
Re:Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (Score:2)
Though I'm usually not too worried about this kind of stuff, I ingest a lot of milk (1-1.33 L or 0.94-1.4 quarts) a day. I've found one brand I like and I just stick with it, it happens to have that 'from cows not..' label on it. I also remember when Monsanto sued a Canadian farmer [wikipedia.org] when their patented wheat ended up c
WTF (Score:2)
Lameness ?!?
Re:WTF (Score:2)
Re:WTF (Score:2)
My dreams are ruined