In 30 minutes, the City Council's planning and development committee will jointly meet with the Planning Board's wind energy subcommittee.
I have other plans tonight but I'll be following up on the takeaway points.
I raise this issue in the wake of this week's news that the community of Rock Port, Missouri is poised to become the first city in the country to be powered 100% from wind generation.
In a story at renewableenergyworld.com, a facility located on city-owned parkland "will produce up to 16 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity annually, which exceeds the 13 million kWh Rock Port uses each year."
Granted, Rock Port in the extreme northwest of Missouri occupies 2.9 square miles and had 1,395 residents in the 2000 census, but the concept of a city powered solely from the wind is no small feat.
Considering the Newburyport Sewer Department, for instance, consumed 2,525,476 kWh of electricity across 17 locations in fiscal 2007, there is an argument to reduce that number to something more efficient without sacrificing the power of anaerobic digesters and diffusers.
A wind turbine, or a farm of them, will not singularly help decrease Newburyport's energy footprint. Like the solar panels atop the Tannery mill buildings and the geothermal technology that the Parker River refuge headquarters installed, we need a little bit of everything to offset nuclear and fossil fuels.
If Mark Richey Woodworking had not proposed the installation of a turbine, would the Planning Board have gotten involved as soon as they had? I don't know the answer to that. But I thank the committee and other concerned citizens for looking into wind power.
I don't suggest Newburyport follows Rock Port's example, but I do believe that Rock Port should be studied as a small-scale version of Newburyport and to give perspective to what's possible with renewable energy.
April 16, 2008
Looking to Rock Port
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3 comments:
Well Hull is almost set to become totally dependent on wind power. Roughly same size as our fair city in the summer. Hull owns its own electricity plant, though. That might be worth looking into here down the road.
Newburyport does not have the capital to build a light plant; and other than the existing distribution site along Water Street, there are no existing locations that the city could purchase.
There are 41 communities in Massachusetts that own a municipal light plant, but the kicker is the last municipal utility creation occurred in 1926.
Lexington seeks to create its own plant, and Rep. Jay Kaufman filed a bill in support of Lexington and other communities. That bill appears to be in the House Rules committee now.
Ah, yes, location. But if we did not need National Grid anymore ...? That station probably serves more communities than here, I suppose. There is that land at Cherry Hill. I really like the turbines at Cider Hill Farm - they're almost hypnotic.
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