Largest Vermont City Powered 100% by Renewable Energy!

Run on 100% Renewable Energy, Burlington, Vermont Powers Ahead

Burlington, the largest city in Vermont, has become the first city in the country to provide electricity to its residents using 100 percent renewable energy, PBS NewsHour reported.

The city recently announced that it’s now producing or getting more power than used by its citizens, all of which comes from wind, solar, and/or hydroelectric means.

This kind of news makes me hopeful! It saves the city millions of dollars, drastically lessens the environmental impact and shows that it is possible! Congratulations Burlington! I hope others follow suit!

Socialist Liberal Greeny scum making this work.

They should change the name to ALGoreton.

~spits~

Star and Flag, great news here, hopefully we can get Thorium online for the
whole planet as it also takes all the old radioactive waste and will burn it
as fuel too.

The Thorium Dream - based on ORNL reactor that ran for years

It also has a much safer design then the current reactors worldwide designed
poorly as seen by several nuclear accidents.

A couple things about this story stick out to me.
For one they get 20% of their power from a river. That is not going to be practical country wide. They benefited from geography. Lucky them.
Another is that they claim a savings of $20 million over the next two decades. That's sounds great but a wind turbine cost $3 million. What did it cost to save $20 million?
I feel that they are only giving the pros of the story and skipping on the cons to find a high point for the green movement.

a reply to: Hoosierdaddy71

The article also says they are producing more power than their consumers are using allowing them to sell the surplus back to the grid.

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

3/4 Renewable.

As NewsHour’s William Brangham explained, about a third of Burlington’s renewable energy is produced at [a] biomass facility. “Biomass is just a fancy word for something that gets burned to produce energy – in this case, they haul in scrap wood from across Vermont, use the heat to make steam, and thus generate electricity.”

That's clever, and ingenious, but not technically renewable.

This is fantastic news however. It just goes to show this CAN be done, if people spend the money and do it properly.

Wonderful. S&F.

~Tenth

originally posted by: Hoosierdaddy71
For one they get 20% of their power from a river. That is not going to be practical country wide. They benefited from geography. Lucky them.

And living in New Mexico, we'd get a great deal from the sun. We'd benefit from geography as well. Lucky us. Oregon wouldn't benefit from the sun so much. But what's the problem with benefiting from the geography? Geography exists all around the country!

Another is that they claim a savings of $20 million over the next two decades. That's sounds great but a wind turbine cost $3 million. What did it cost to save $20 million?

There is more benefit to it than just the cost. Besides, how much will it save over the next 100 years? How much will it save for their children and grandchildren? Thinking shortsightedly is what has us in the mess we're in.

originally posted by: Benevolent Heretic

originally posted by: Hoosierdaddy71
For one they get 20% of their power from a river. That is not going to be practical country wide. They benefited from geography. Lucky them.

And living in New Mexico, we'd get a great deal from the sun. We'd benefit from geography as well. Lucky us. Oregon wouldn't benefit from the sun so much. But what's the problem with benefiting from the geography? Geography exists all around the country!

Another is that they claim a savings of $20 million over the next two decades. That's sounds great but a wind turbine cost $3 million. What did it cost to save $20 million?

There is more benefit to it than just the cost. Besides, how much will it save over the next 100 years? How much will it save for their children and grandchildren? Thinking shortsightedly is what has us in the mess we're in.

Those lovely wind turbines only last 12-15 years not 100. The big corporations are the ones promising windmills will last for 25 years, and we know how reliable the corporations are.

www.telegraph.co.uk...

Your children will be paying to replace the tech that was put in place by short sided people, or just letting them rot like the 14000 wind turbines scattered around the country.

toryaardvark.com...


Do get me wrong, I'm all for green tech and cleaning up pollution, but don't lie or omit data just to push something that is not ready. Renewables will have their day but only when they are ready.




The 14000 is a debatable number by the way, just like all the numbers the wind companies throw at us.

Around here, there would be people working all day long cleaning the snow off those panels. Job creation.

originally posted by: tothetenthpower
a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

3/4 Renewable.

As NewsHour’s William Brangham explained, about a third of Burlington’s renewable energy is produced at [a] biomass facility. “Biomass is just a fancy word for something that gets burned to produce energy – in this case, they haul in scrap wood from across Vermont, use the heat to make steam, and thus generate electricity.”

That's clever, and ingenious, but not technically renewable.

This is fantastic news however. It just goes to show this CAN be done, if people spend the money and do it properly.

Wonderful. S&F.

~Tenth

There may be a timber industry which is based on growing trees in a sustainable way (they'll have 20 or so forest areas with one area being cut down every year). The trees get cut up into timber, and the scrappy bits like small branches, outer trunk parts have to be disposed of. Maybe they collect garden waste like hedge trimmings. Our local recycling center has one of those, and they end up with a huge mound of compost.

originally posted by: Hoosierdaddy71
A couple things about this story stick out to me.
For one they get 20% of their power from a river. That is not going to be practical country wide. They benefited from geography. Lucky them.

What dumb counter argument. Of course they benefitted from Geography. So did the Arabs with Oil !

So if a city is built next to the sea with very strong tidal surges it should not take advantage of it? If we have a lake at the top of a mountain we should ignore it "because of geography". I suspect Phoenix might be able to make use of solar but not tidal.!!!! due to geography.

Why the nippy opinion, do you have shares in Big Oil?

It only makes sense. This is good news, despite the haters.

This can be done and should be done in as much of the US as possible. What this does is A. Drive down the cost of energy. B. Stop brown outs and black outs in peak usage times. C. Protect sections of the grid from terrorist attack. D. Save money for everyone. E. Stop our reliance on foreign oil.

I, myself, have solar panels on my house that provide 95% of all the power I use. Saves me money. if the grid goes down, I still have power! LOL YES! Forever!

I like the thought of perhaps one day some being paid to collect leaves to burn in the bio mass generators.

I have a secret recipe for a fuel that is explosive as nuclear but is not radio active but we are not ready for that quite yet but getting closer.

Oh it's just a ploy by Big Nature ... we'll be crawling back to our nifty state of the art eternal er, internal combustion as soon as those rickety mills and solar panels fall apart ...

Why do folks see renewable energy as a left/right team sport? Can't they see they're being played by Big Money? I truly fear for the States... incredible.

Cool story, btw, and hope it spreads... and here I thought that place only had a coat factory.

That's great to hear that one city is entirely powered by renewable energy.

As a person in the power industry, I'd have to interject that Burlington may be using all 'green' energy, but it's at somebody's expense. There isn't yet a form of green energy that can follow load demand. So they may be enjoying the nice warm fuzzy of green energy, the rest of the grid has to make up for their production being at select times of the day when load demand may or may not be able to absorb it, and when their diurnal sources are not providing energy, some form of fossil fuel or nuclear energy has to make up for it. It isn't as simple as they're trying to make it seem. And what's worse is that the producers that have to make up for unreliable (wind/solar/biomass) sources have to use assets that are actually more expensive, inefficient, and generally contrary to the desired end result in terms of carbon or other emissions.

Dream on.

While capitalist pigs, suppress alternative energy sources as a viable source of energy. To hold on to their profits and pollute the air and water supplies. While they lie about their pollution and bribe gov to keep hold. In return for the bribes they get ten fold back in tax payer money. Have a glass of polluted water there is plenty to go around.. a reply to: zazzafrazz

a reply to: roth1

Dearest, Calm Down, It was a sarcasm post.

originally posted by: lynxpilot
As a person in the power industry, I'd have to interject that Burlington may be using all 'green' energy, but it's at somebody's expense. There isn't yet a form of green energy that can follow load demand. So they may be enjoying the nice warm fuzzy of green energy, the rest of the grid has to make up for their production being at select times of the day when load demand may or may not be able to absorb it, and when their diurnal sources are not providing energy, some form of fossil fuel or nuclear energy has to make up for it. It isn't as simple as they're trying to make it seem. And what's worse is that the producers that have to make up for unreliable (wind/solar/biomass) sources have to use assets that are actually more expensive, inefficient, and generally contrary to the desired end result in terms of carbon or other emissions.

Dream on.

Biomass burn facility can be operated like a coal burn plant.

So if coal can do base load I'd say good odds Biomass can too.

As long as 'green' energy is the same price or less than fossil fuels I am all for its use. I am only against the artificial inflation of fossil fuel energy prices and creative accounting to make 'green' energy seem the cheaper alternative.