kansas's self destruct button a bill to outlaw sustainability

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Though we dump on the KS legislature, they do have their moments

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0418/Climate-change-deniers-strike-out-even-in-energy-rich-Kansas?nav=92-csm_category-topStories

 

I am going to question their research though:

The article says:
"The state also has the country’s most ambitious renewable electricity standard, which requires utilities to provide 33 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020."

But according to US Energy Information Administration:
"In 2011, half of Maine's net electricity generation came from renewable energy resources, with 25 percent from hydroelectricity, 21 percent from wood, and 4.5 percent from wind."

 

Wood? Really?

 

I suspect that is a euphemism for biomass. Which is mostly trash and byproducts of paper production.

 

I am not necessarily a fan of the biomass plants; however, the CO2 from one is not the same as CO2 from a coal plant. The carbon in that wood is (short of sequestering it forever (i.e. making it into coal)) going back into the atmosphere, and it just came from that atmosphere. In theory, we could manage forests such that we burned wood for power and grew them sustainably. Not, of course, at our current level of consumption.

 

Well, Maine is currently cutting our forests faster than they are growing, so 1) we are not being sustainable even at the current level, and 2) burning primary wood would need to come at the expense of some other use (say, all those Christmas trees we ship out of state for people to put in their houses for 2 weeks). But given the byproducts we have, and the current level of burning, it is not too horrible. I do bet that Texas and Massachusetts have enough wood going into land fills to power some (small) number of plants. Definitely better than letting it anaerobically decompose and produce methane (into the atmosphere).

The point in all this is that details are important, and no one thing is going to be a panacea.

 

In Montana's Flathead Valley, just to the north of us (Columbia Falls) there is a mill, manufacturing all kinds of wood and paper products on site. Last time up there we took a tour. We found it was pretty impressive because of how the leftovers (sawdust, bark, etc) get used - even if it's to generate heat/steam for blasting off the bark. In short - from their own waste, they generate much of their own energy. Maybe we were too easily impressed but it seems pretty slick.
I compare that to when I was a kid (1960's 70's) vacationing in Oregon. There were giant bark burners back then, as far as the eye could see - accompanied by a very brown air.