Palo Alto, Calif., to buy 'green' power created by gas of decomposing garbage
San Jose Mercury News, Calif. --Dec. 29
Pushing to buy at least 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, Palo Alto has turned to a new supply: rotting garbage in Watsonville.
"I think it reflects what our community wants, what our council has
directed us to do," said Girish Balachandran, an assistant manager of the
utilities department.
Palo Alto will buy enough of the landfill electricity to power about 1,500
homes. That will slightly reduce the air pollution from traditional power plants
and lessen dependence on non-renewable resources such as oil and natural gas,
according to city officials.
Flammable methane percolates up through the ground in landfills across the
country. In the first season of concerts at Shoreline Amphitheater, built in
1986 on an old landfill in Mountain View, gas often filtered through the lawn,
smelling nasty and occasionally catching fire before the problem was fixed.
In many landfills, a network of underground pipes collects the methane to be
burned off or used as fuel.
In the Watsonville agreement, burning methane will generate steam to spin
generators in a power plant to be built by Massachusetts-based Ameresco, Inc.
Ameresco has signed contracts to sell the electricity wholesale to the
utility departments in Palo Alto and the East Bay city of Alameda. Both
departments are in the business of reselling electricity to their residential
and business customers.
When the electricity starts flowing in late 2005, it won't pass directly from
Watsonville to Palo Alto.
"You can't physically direct power" straight from the landfill,
Balachandran said.
Instead, the green electricity purchased by the city will be dumped into the
nation's electrical grid, and Palo Alto will pull an equal amount of electricity
out of the grid.
The city's environmental goal is to reach the 20-percent-renewable level by
2015. An interim goal of 10 percent by 2008 probably will be met before the
deadline, Balachandran said.
Palo Alto buys most of its green electricity from wind farms across the West.
It gets a small amount from a solar energy project near the Alameda County
fairgrounds in Pleasanton.
In general, green electricity cost more than power generated by coal, oil,
natural gas or uranium, Balachandran said.
But the city will pay 5.1 cents per kilowatt hour for the Watsonville methane
electricity, about what it pays for traditional electricity on the open market.
"It's a good price," Balachandran said, made possible by the city's
willingness to sign a 20-year contract.
To engage residents in the "renewables" cause, the city has a
separate program called Palo Alto Green. Participants agree to pay slightly
higher electric bills, and in return the city agrees to buy additional green
electricity.
The program has succeeded in signing up about 10 percent of city households.
But since 85 percent of the city's electricity is consumed by businesses,
especially big corporations like Roche Pharmaceuticals and Hewlett-Packard, the
overall effect is limited.
Still, the city says each volunteer green household has the same effect on
clean air as adding 1.25 acres of forest or not driving an automobile 11,762
miles per year.
The Watsonville plant will have the same effect on air quality as taking
27,000 cars off the road, according to Ameresco officials.
-----
To see more of the San Jose Mercury News, or to subscribe to the newspaper,
go to http://www.mercurynews.com .
(c) 2004, San Jose Mercury News, Calif. Distributed by
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. For information on republishing this
content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax
(213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com. HPQ,