Staff photos/Jane Howard A group of over 30 people gathered from around the region Monday, July 20, 2009 to learn about clean energy initiatives in Cook County. Here they view the solar panels on a Maple Hill home that were recently installed as a supplemental source of heat. The tour was organized by northeastern Minnesota’s Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERT s), an agency that helps communities identify and utilize renewable sources of energy.
Over 30 people from Duluth, the Iron Range, Ely, Silver Bay, and Cook County gathered at the Community Center Monday, July 20, 2009 to talk about renewable energy projects that have been popping up throughout Cook County. Because this community has been pursuing alternative forms of energy so energetically, Bill Mittlefehldt, coordinator of Minnesota’s Northeast Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTs), held the organization’s regional summer meeting here.
CERTs is a partnership among the state and other agencies established to connect communities with technical resources needed to identify and implement community-scale energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.
The half-day meeting included tours of a Maple Hill family’s new solar-heat panels, the path that proposed biomass-heated hot water pipes might take to deliver heat through Grand Marais, and a solar heat system installed in North House’s new milling shop.
According to Tim Ollhoff of the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance (RREAL), a nonprofit with a mission of making solar energy available to people of all income levels, the State of Minnesota spent $80,000,000 last year on fuel assistance for low-income households.
“…It is our lower income communities that are most gravely affected by the energy crises,” RREAL’s website states. “When energy costs spike, our lower income communities are most vulnerable, having to devote a larger percentage of personal income to the basics of heat and electricity. By mitigating the impact of energy cost volatility, solar energy can dramatically reduce one of the root causes of poverty.
“In order for our society as a whole to transition to a renewable and post-carbon economy, access to solar energy and other renewables must be made economically accessible.”
The house on Maple Hill has two solar panels installed on its south-facing side. A fan pulls heat into the house from air pockets behind the panels. The panels are on the side of the house because they will absorb the most direct rays of the winter sun when heat is most needed. Systems like this have been saving families 16½ – 22% on their annual heating costs.
The system draws heat from the sun on even the coldest of days and even captures some of the light bouncing off the snow, Ollhoff said. It is a supplemental source of heat and does not capture electricity or store heat like some solar systems do.
Installing a system like this would cost about $5,000. More information on RREAL can be found at www.rreal.org.
George Wilkes, co-founder of the Cook County Local Energy Project (CCLEP), talked about what CCLEP has been working on since its inception over a year ago. “We’re trying to create a community conversation on energy issues,” he said.
CCLEP’s email list includes over 250 addresses, and each of its five working groups has 10 to 20 members “trying to select projects that are most workable here,” Wilkes said. “We’re also looking at using our corn product in Cook County to make ethanol!” (This was followed by laughter from the audience.)
Moving forward is difficult when all the work is done by volunteers, Wilkes said. He would like to see CCLEP be able to hire a full-time administrator or have a government agency take over coordination of the program. Hopefully, industry will make energy innovations common practice, he said.
The transportation working group is talking about safe walking and biking routes and ride and delivery sharing. The solar group is following several solar hot water projects going on right now. Theenergy efficiency group is offering a tip of the month on its website and in local media and is trying to educate the public on the financial benefits of increasing energy efficiency.
Jim Boyd talked about the work of the wind working group. Contrary to an early study that depicted northeast Minnesota as a “wind desert,” several locations along the North Shore have been found to have sufficient prevailing wind to support municipal wind towers.
With help from the University of Minnesota, research has been conducted on raptor migratory patterns along the Lake Superior shoreline, transmission lines and roads that could lead to wind towers, and landowners willing to have turbines on their properties. Given those limiting factors, more than a dozen potential sites have been identified. Several research towers may be going up to gather more data.
This is about Cook County – which is at the end of every pipeline imaginable – taking control of its destiny, Boyd indicated.
What about aesthetic concerns? Cook County School Superintendent Beth Schwarz asked. We have to make a choice, Boyd answered. Wind energy is cleaner than coal-based sources of energy, and the sites being considered are remote. Thetowers would need to be lighted but could not be visible from the Boundary Waters. Only three or four towers are being considered because larger sources of wind energy would require jumping through significantly more regulatory hoops.
Chuck Hartley, an engineer with Duluthbased LHB Corporation, talked about the potential of a biomass-fueled plant that could provide heat and electricity for public buildings and more than half of the homes in Grand Marais. He recently submitted a grant application on behalf of the City of Grand Marais that would provide millions of the dollars needed.
Through economy of scale, Hartley asserted, a district biomass heating facility would facilitate lower fuel costs and more effective pollution control while keeping significant energy dollars within the community. Logging and forestry jobs would be created, and forest management practices such as underbrush control and new plantings could be enhanced. About 15 semi loads a week would be needed, he said.
The proposed plant could be the equivalent of taking 6,000 cars off the road, Hartley said. The fuel conversion efficiency for a combined heat and power plant would be about 75%, much higher than Minnesota Power’s 35% efficiency. Emissions created by such a plant would be onetenth the maximum allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency, Hartley said.
Hartley expects that the plant would cut home heating costs by up to 40%. Systems like this are powering and heating many small towns throughout Europe, although no co-generation facility of this type has been built in the United States yet.
David Olson, an engineer who had visited some of those European plants with Chuck Hartley, said, “I think we’ve had our heads in the sand for some time now.”
In rural America, we’re used to doing things in our own time, Mittlefehldt said at the conclusion of the meeting, but we need to anticipate the challenges of the future. “We may need to reach out to each other in new ways. …The people I meet are similar to you. Theyhave a hope in America.”
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