Here's a college that's taking it's environmental ethos seriously. Here in America's Dairyland, aka Wisco, Northland College apparently can't even imagine this sort of energy production. It does have a windmill that produces, frankly, not much, energy. But what do I know? I don't have a PhD. My loss, I guess. Granted, the farmers & energy company took the lead in manure electricity. Since we don't have that sort of thing going on here, Northland ought to be pushing hard for just such a facility. They would be walking the walk, as they like to say, when they are not re-inventing the curriculum
Full Disclosure: I'm an alumnus & mostly disgruntled ex-employee of said college. Once in a while I gruntle, but not that seriously.
Earl Audet stands with one of two generators on the Audet's Blue Spruce Farm in this June 23, 2006, file photo in Bridport, Vt. Cow manure is not often thought of as a fount of higher learning, but for students at tiny Green Mountain College, it's lighting the way. The 760-student school in Poultney, on Vermont's border with New York, signed up Thursday to get half its electricity from farms that extract methane from manure and use it to generate electricity for their local utility. The farm is the site of the electric company's first cow power generator, which its owners, the Audet family, fired up nearly two years ago. (AP Photo/Alden Pellett, File)
Earl Audet stands with one of two generators on the Audet's Blue Spruce Farm in this June 23, 2006, file photo in Bridport, Vt. Cow manure is not often thought of as a fount of higher learning, but for students at tiny Green Mountain College, it's lighting the way. The 760-student school in Poultney, on Vermont's border with New York, signed up Thursday to get half its electricity from farms that extract methane from manure and use it to generate electricity for their local utility. The farm is the site of the electric company's first cow power generator, which its owners, the Audet family, fired up nearly two years ago. (AP Photo/Alden Pellett, File)
3 comments:
Ha. I'm an alumnus of Northland as well. They really aren't doing much as far as energy production goes. I don't even think they buy renewable energy like other colleges (Evergreen, Western Washington). But they do have some solar panels ad the new science building is has passive solar features. I don't think the manure would work though, we don't have enough cows this far north.
They need to put some windmills up on the corner of the bay. I about got blown off of the road the other day going ino town.
You cn always count on Mr. Creek for the straight poop.
Yeah, I can't believe that Northland isn't offsetting its conventional energy use through Native Energy.
As an alumnus, I agree that Northland is NOT setting any kind of standard.
There is a huge potential for biomass/methane production up there. They are dumb for not exploring it further.
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