$20.5 million from DOE helps communities turn trash into cash
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Generators using methane from a landfill to generate electricity
The Department of Energy has just announced funding $20.5 million for several community-scale renewable energy projects.
UC Davis & West Village
One of the recipients is West Village, next to UC Davis, which generated a bit of criticism among Green Journey readers the last time we covered them. In partnership with UC Davis, they’ve now received $2.5 million in funding for a waste-to-renewable energy (WTRE) system. The DOE provides an explanation of how the new system should work:
The system would generate power from a renewable biogas-fed fuel cell. The organic waste will enter a digester to produce biogas from organic wastes. The biogas will power a 300-kW fuel cell, which will work in combination with an advanced battery system to provide power to the campus’
Montpelier, VT
A second community level energy system of interest is the funding of $8 million to the City of Montpelier, Vermont, for a combined heat and power district heating system that will burn sustainably-sourced wood chips and provide 1.8 million KWh to the grid.
The CHP system will be sized to provide heating to the Vermont Capitol Complex, city owned schools, the City Hall Complex, and up to 156 buildings in the community’s designated downtown district for a total of 176 buildings and 1.8 million square feet served.
We follow these announcements with lots of interest, since we work with partners to identify the best combination of financing streams for achieving community-level sustainability.
As we continue to study eco-districts and similar low-carbon neighborhoods in various stages of design and planning around the world, district-level renewable energy infrastructure — particularly waste-to-renewable-energy comes up time and time again within the case studies of the more successful communities.
A more in depth discussion of the ’success factors’ within green communities will definitely make for an exciting post in the near future as we consolidate our findings.
Video explains value of district energy
Some of these technical terms might be outside of the typical real estate finance and investment discussion, so I found a 40 second video that explains how district energy saves buildings money. Email subscribers should click on this link to go to the video.
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- Photo credit: “Methane powered generators”
[...] $20.5 million from DOE helps communities turn trash into cash | Galley Eco Capital http://www.galleyecocapital.com/2010/01/205-million-from-doe-helps-communities-turn-trash-into-cash – view page – cached [caption id=attachment_3920 align=alignleft width=425 caption=Generators using methane from a landfill to generate electricity][/caption] The [...]