When it comes to new energy sources, NIMR better suited than NIMBY

Bob Doyle, Columnist

In most developed countries, particularly the U.S. and China, fossil fuels are being consumed at a rapid rate. Our country with 3 percent of the recoverable petroleum reserves consumes about 25 percent of the world’s output of petroleum each year. Seventy percent of the petroleum we consume has been imported. Our offshore oil that will be extracted in the next 10-15 years will provide us with about seven months of our current petroleum needs.

As more and more cars are being sold in China and India, there will be even greater demand for petroleum from these two most populous countries (their combined population is over one-third of the world’s population). This greater demand will mean even higher prices for petroleum whose global output has not increased in the past three years.

While the U.S. has significant reserves of natural gas, the amount of known recoverable natural gas will be gone in 10 years at our current rate of consumption (about 20 trillion cubic feet a year). We can always hope new discoveries of natural gas will be made, but we can’t count on this more than a few more decades. We can only rely on our natural gas and those of our Canadian neighbors as natural gas doesn’t transport easily. Coal, of which we have significant recoverable reserves, will last about a century. But coal mining, particularly strip mining, relies on large amounts of petroleum fuel to operate the mining machines.

Our food supply is mostly from industrial agriculture, whose output relies on huge amounts of fertilizer manufactured with natural gas. So once the natural gas supplies begin to wane, we will be back to old-fashioned (organic) agriculture with crop rotation and planting crops that are insect resistant to offset our present heavy use of pesticides (derived from petroleum).

This is the reason why most future studies recommend a shift to eating locally, buying our produce from local farmers. Currently the food that we consume has travelled an average of a thousand miles to reach our mouths. Once the natural gas and petroleum prices get very high, industrial agriculture will fade and transport of food from great distances will drop greatly. But what about energy in terms of location?

NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) is an increasing powerful political movement in rural America and in the tri-state area. Actually, it would be better called NIMR (Not In My Region). NIMR can be seen in the opposition to both wind farms and new transmission lines. So as our fossil fuel supplies face an uncertain future, should there be opposition to new energy sources that are now available?

Wind farms rely on the wind and produce no atmospheric emissions when they operate. Wind farms only make sense in windy areas. The newer wind turbines make less noise than the early models and kill far fewer birds and bats. In the future, we will see many wind turbines in windy backyards that have vertical axes, not needing a tower. Since the wind is intermittent, there will also be ‘solar gardens,’ solar panels not on roofs but on the ground that can track the sun and generate twice as much electricity as solar panels on roofs. But the biggest new energy source locally will be biomass; biomass, unlike wind and solar, is not intermittent.

Many homes will have efficient wood burners outside their homes where burning takes place at thousands of degrees, providing BTUs at a cost comparable to current natural gas prices. The biomass will be largely from local tree plantations, raising fast growing trees that can be harvested every five years. These trees won’t need fertilizer or irrigation, unlike our current industrial crops. Our local area is blessed with abundant rainfall, ideal for tree growth. With local energy, new transmission lines or great wind farms won’t be needed.

In addition, there will be much solar heating, both of water and air and much more efficient LED lighting in most homes.

Hunter’s moon on Tuesday

The evening moon will be fullest this Tuesday evening, rising as the sun sets and hanging in the sky all night. This full moon is called the Hunters’ Moon, providing extra evening moonlight the following few evenings. The Hunters’ Moon is similar to September’s Harvest Moon.

Now featured at the Frostburg State Planetarium is StarLife: Beginning, Middle Age and End, an account of the life cycle of ordinary stars as our sun. This is preceded by SkyWatch, a review of sky events seen in your backyard through years’ end. The Planetarium is in Tawes 302 with free public presentations each Sunday at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Call (301) 687-7799 for a free bookmark that features a campus map showing Tawes Hall and nearby convenient free parking.

Bob Doyle encourages reader comments and questions. Contact Bob Doyle at rdoyle@frostburg.edu.