Northern Michigan's Boone Pickens
 By Keith Schneider
 Apollo News Service
 
The broad ridges south of McBain, snow-covered in winter, cloaked in hay and corn and beans in summer, are adding a couple more permanent fixtures to the scenic landscape. A Traverse City company named Heritage Sustainable Energy is erecting a pair of 350-foot tall windmills capable of generating 2.5 megawatts each, or enough electricity to power roughly 700 homes.
 
 The German-manufactured Fuhrlander machines, among the largest constructed anywhere in the world, are intended to be the first phase of a $330 million project to build 60 windmills on 12,000 acres outside McBain. The mammoth industrial undertaking is led by Martin Lagina, a 52-year-old petroleum engineer who made a fortune in the 1990s drilling for natural gas in northern Michigan. Now, like Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, who's caused a summer sensation by calling for a national investment in clean energy production, Lagina sees the value in producing electricity from wind. His project could put the 14,400 residents of Missaukee County at the leading edge of the clean energy economy that is reluctantly unfolding in Michigan.
 
 Whether Lagina and Heritage Sustainable Energy can actually build 58 more windmills at the Stony Corners project, though, is not at all clear, say authorities in finance and renewable energy. The impediments to success lie like shards of glass in the project's path.

August 22, 2008

The presidential candidates are stumping hard. And while energy and environmental issues are getting frequent mentions, both the Republican and Democratic leaders are neglecting one area: geothermal energy.

It now makes up just a sliver of the electricity generation pie. But experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say that the technology could have far wider applications and be especially useful in times of high energy prices and carbon constraints. Not only is it much cleaner than fossil fuels but it also provides a continuous flow of energy -- all at a competitive prices.

August 11, 2008

If Austin's city council goes along, the municipal utility there will build a power plant that uses industrial waste wood to generate 100 megawatts of electricity in 2012.

Wood chips are part of the biomass family. And unlike other biomass materials such as agricultural crops, using wood will not lead to food shortages. Wood is also advantageous from the standpoint that it can be mixed with certain types of coal before the new compound is combusted. It can all be accomplished, say experts, without having to change the fuel-firing system.

August 8, 2008

Europe's solar energy market may catch fire. Government subsidies there are playing a big part, all in an effort to help the continent reach its goal of increasing its renewable generation mix from 8 percent today to 20 percent by 2020.

The ultimate aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions tied to global warming. The European Union (EU) is a global leader and as such the member nations enacted incentive programs to achieve their desired results. It all bodes well for solar power. Growing demand, in fact, has helped reduce production costs through the advancement of solar-cell designs and manufacturing processes.

August 1, 2008

The electric car has been quietly rolling down the road for more than a hundred years, but it's never picked up much momentum. And once gas-powered cars sported mufflers and no longer frightened the neighbors out of their wits, electric cars lost their quiet advantage to the greater range and power of the internal combustion engine.

Sure, when the air in L.A. became something you could see and touch in the 1980s, fuel prices rose and California passed an aggressive clean-air mandate, it looked like electric vehicles might get a new lease on life. But the air cleared and gas prices fell, the mandate was revoked and electric cars all but disappeared.